I'm considering it. Not because of here, but because I've got no self-control and can't seem to actually accomplish any work on my computer. It's just... check this quick, and then check that... only takes 15 seconds to check the other thing.
I think I must have spent four hours in the last two days writing up "no, women who think that feminism is about Marxist atheist man-haters are not thinking that because of a societal backlash against all of the good things feminism has accomplished... and then deleting it, *again*, because there's no point in getting into a pointless fight *again*.
Just about anything on the planet would be a better use of my time... even watching Transformers 4 was a better use of my time.
"no, women who think that feminism is about Marxist atheist man-haters are not thinking that because of a societal backlash against all of the good things feminism has accomplished...
Synova, have you been following Stacy McCain's blog series on the roots of modern feminism? Oh, Lordy, girl! It's a gold-mine!
It turns out, it is about Marxist, atheist, man-hating lesbians who get to do said activities from endowed chairs or tenured positions at posh Universities. Pull some quotations from here & ask your "feminist" FB friends if they agree. If they don't, then ask them why people who believe such stupid shit are teaching our kids at big-name university women's studies departments, with nary a peep of protest from the left.?
You are over thinking it. I bet you could put up a bunch of great posts about current science fiction that would be great. Just wing it and throw something up so to speak.
The thing about what McCain is doing is that most normal people on any side of the issue aren't aware of those people or what they say. They're *maybe* aware of MoDo and Naomi Wolfe, but probably not them, either.
Most women who preface statements about equal rights with, "I don't consider myself a feminist, but..." (which was attributed to "societal conditioning") do so because of what normal every-day feminists are up to. They view feminism as "man-hating" because of Hollywood blockbusters about "strong women" who abuse men, and because of popular campaigns that treat all men as presumptive rapists. Women who believe in equality in all ways refuse to identify as "feminist" because they've got first hand experience with women who blame everything on sexism instead of their own crappy work ethic. There's no reason at all that a pro-life woman should consider herself a "feminist" since abortion (not equality) is the defining tenet. That's for mainstream, public, ordinary every day "feminists" and not for the complete nut-jobs heterosexuality-is-abnormal-and-culturally-imposed-on-naturally-lesbian-females "deep thinkers" that McCain talks about.
But my purpose was to *not* get into a fight for no good reason. I try not to just let things go, sometimes, because I think it's better if we matter-of-factly point out that disagreement exists... because if no one says anything people think that there is no disagreement.
But does it do me any good in my life? I'm thinking, not so much.
Talking about current science fiction would actually be fun.
Oh, hey... this is sort of fun and unexpected...
I just read a "trashy category romance" where the romantic hero's parents were *batantly* Bill Ayers and wife, though they taught at Berkeley, and the son was more or less delivered by them to a central American "Che" analog while he was trying to live up to his parent's high ideals, who turned out to be a murderous and power seeking monster who was working to defeat any reforms that didn't center around him gaining power. Even the high minded philosopher of the people was revealed as someone who simply ignored the violence and horror that his own ideas wrought. The son, his eyes opened to the Real World by the brutality of his parent's heroes, turned double agent for the CIA.
But it turned out good in the end because the bad guys were defeated and he was reunited with the girl he loved, the very conventional daughter of Kentucky farmers, who his "open-minded" parents found so horrifying 6 years earlier.
So far the feminists haven't said a thing about the plight of their sisters under Islam, or closer to home, what THEIR plight is going to be in a dhimmi America. As the terror draws closer, and it is drawing closer every day, just watch them deny it -- "What terror? Don't be a bigot!! So we'll have to cover up a bit, big deal."
(1) There can be no better use of one's time than contemplating the deep philosophical implications of the slippery stiffening of the robotic trouser snake.
(2) Tonight's Star Trek TOS is the one where some disease infects the crew of the Enterprise and all the second tier actors get to ham it up. Sulu the swashbuckler. That sort of thing.
I'm considering it. Not because of here, but because I've got no self-control and can't seem to actually accomplish any work on my computer. It's just... check this quick, and then check that... only takes 15 seconds to check the other thing."
I hear ya. I took a month off a while ago to work on a project. It really helped to break free from the peeking.
IS is deliberately killing women, especially professionals, like doctors, and those in political positions. All with the goal to terrify them into submission and do things like wear the niqab:
"This violence against women in particular is not arbitrary, but rather a weapon used by IS to terrorize Iraqi women to force them to abide by the Sharia provisions that it is imposing, such as wearing the niqab. The group's practices limit their freedoms and silences them out of fear that the circle of women opposing its laws will expand."
Still, you cannot lump "lesbian feminists" together as one like-thinking bunch. Else how do we acknowledge independent thinkers like Camille Paglia?
Camille Paglia speaks no one on the feminist left. That's why she still teaches at a minor college in Philly, while the clowns quoted at McCain's teach at hoity-toity schools. It's righties like us who like Paglia. She is a feminist collective of one.
That's for mainstream, public, ordinary every day "feminists" and not for the complete nut-jobs heterosexuality-is-abnormal-and-culturally-imposed-on-naturally-lesbian-females "deep thinkers" that McCain talks about.
I understand the difference you're trying to make, but here's the secret teaching: all that "socially acceptable" "liberal" (in the older sense of the term) feminism wants to believe that it has some sort of clear moral standing within "liberalism". The problem is, as the "nutjob" feminists discovered when they thought about it long enough, that it has only the most tenuous of roots within classical liberalism, definitely not deep enough to support the societal edifice that they'd like to build. Whether or not the "socially acceptable" feminists want to admit it or not, the nutjobs have worked through the logic of it. "Socially acceptable" feminism is intellectually parasitical on nutjob feminism.
This is, I think, the real reason why young women don't identify as feminist. It doesn't take long before the young woman who looks deeper into any sort of feminism, even via print or on-line women's magazines, will wander straight into the nutjob wing of feminism ("Wait --- all penis in vagina sex is rape? Uhhhm, I'm quite fond of PiV sex, thank you!").
@Deborah: Many of us know guys who went to Iraq (more than once) to fight against a milder form of such barbarism. The few I know have left the USMC. Who is left to be "boots on the ground"?
Over the lest several years, our POTUS and it seems like half the country have done their level best to denigrate the service those guys did.
Camille Paglia has been talking about man hating Marxist, Nazi feminists running colleges of education for decades. 84% of all public school teachers are women and public school teachers vote 92% Dem. I went back to college in the late 90's to get my teaching license. I was shocked. And, I'm pretty shock proof.
Chick, I can't readily find it, but I saw a great article about pre-invasion Iraq; women were doctors, were free to go without hijab. After the invasion morality police formed, enforcing dress codes on women and chopping off fingers of smoker.
Besides officiating over a complete clusterfuck, we succeeded in salting Iraq with depleted uranium and tarnishing our very high standing in the world.
I think you may be implying that Obama should have kept us in Iraq, even without a SOFA, but I'm glad we left when we did. Nothing but nothing is going to fix the Wahhabi Sunni radicalism but for them all to have it out with each other and segregate into their separate territories.
It will be interesting to watch the world join together to fight IS. And Ebola. Interesting times.
I know how to strengthen the United States military, reduce the deficit, obliterate ISIS immediately and keep so-called terrorism, in actually annoyism, tampered to non-existence, on the defensive, and at bay for decades beyond my death.
How? How can these wonders be brought about?
By initiating a non-governmental, non-U.S. military Christian Mercenary Army that works closely with US government and US military for organization and for training.
Kind of like the FRB, officially independent of government but run governmentally nonetheless.
That members pay to participate specifically to kick (so-called) terrorist ass without compunction. To get it out of one's system, as it were. Give the government some money and they'll let you go kick terrorist ass. The government will assist you, help you get started, get you signed up and sorted, provided intelligence, strategies, plans and all the things that go with war.
Those would be like the officers of yore.
The Christian fighters who are paid will be financed mostly through churches participating in the Crusade and by fundraising, an ongoing thing like politics, part of the stream will come from the political stream.
They got jihad this and jihad that, we got Crusade.
That's right, Crusade, Bitches, and it's billed as the Crusade to eliminate global terrorism.
And it is a terrible, somewhat lawless force. The most fiercely phenomenally financed military operation in history without a dime of taxpayer's money, just people, portions of the Christian community, mostly, and other malcontents organized for war.
It appears this extremist branch of Islamists are the 'end times' types. Christians has theirs too. Repeating what I've learned, never let a good crises go to waste, this is a perfect opportunity to bring into being a Christian force that will overwhelm the likes of ISIS.
Plust it lets off steam.
It creates a constructive avenue for the hot-blooded among us to pursue.
IS, or ISIS, whatever, attracts males who see a way of making something of themselves righteously. A way of ahem getting ahead, advancing in meaningful ways they cannot in civilian life.
Creating the response force is natural and automatic, just like the old days, except this time even more fierce more immediate more destructive because the gap between us is tremendous, their religion makes it so, and without reform it will always be so, and that just is not going to happen anytime soon. They'd have nothing technological were it not given them or stolen.
I read it a long time ago in an Anne Rice book. The Vampire Lestat, I think. It's a thing about humans. Culturally speaking humans need an outlet for violence, thus such things as colosseums, wicker man burning, modern day rock concerts. The ultimate outlet, of course, wars.
I'm sorry if you felt insulted. But how did you not imply that things were better for Iraq under Saddam? Doesn't that mean you have to negate what existed there then? _____________________
I'm drawing a line here because I want to separate you from what I'm about to say: I see the emergence of of Neo-isolationists -- people who want to disengage from wars abroad but engage and even open ourselves up to threats like Ebola. I'm just asking for a little consistency from such people.
I would like to introduce you to dogbomb, a man-child who likes to play electronic games.
If you can take the accent -- Grandpa, is that you? -- it's hard to take, but can grow on you, and it only takes a couple years immersion to understand. He's a gamer and he is introducing a game to other gamers.
The character is plunked in a room and must navigate around to find keys to bring to a central location.
It's the sort of thing that baffles me. I don't know where to start, where to go, what to attempt. I am very bad at figuring out what is expected of me. I am a total dud playing these electronic games. As a result they hardly interest me. But somehow I became intrigued. I think because the response from others was so strong. Suddenly a lot of people appeared out of nowhere who were really interested an none of them mentioned his accent, like everyone accepts that as normal.
[I also watched a video of an Irish ballplayer speak as a Frenchman doing an English accent. Everyone was in on the joke and not a single French person could tell they were being put on, that they are being imitated, and neither could I. He sounded the exact same to me in both cases, his original Irish accent and his put on French-English]
But this player understands immediately what to look for, where to search, how the corridors are arranged, where the rooms are. He flies around the geometric spaces covering what seems every inch and advances through Eschesque architecture that has me stumped until his character changes into a being that is a dot and uses triangles to cast pathways to travel and advance.
He just accepted his new state of being as if passing from an Earthbound state to a mathematical spiritual state. All the while understanding how to manipulate the environment to use his power up abilities as he progresses.
Standard game fare.
In the end he says he just wants to show off how much of a gamer he is.
And he is!
He sure impressed me. It made me want to buy the game and try it even though he's calling us nonces all the way through.
Define better. In general, life under the Saddam regime was better than the hell we have created in Iraq, which has spread to Syria and is greatly endangering Jordan and Lebanon.
But I'm a broad sweep of history kind of a gal and see this working out pretty well, now that IS has concentrated the attention of right-thinking people everywhere.
But I'm a broad sweep of history kind of a gal and see this working out pretty well, now that IS has concentrated the attention of right-thinking people everywhere.
Saddam's sons and their cronies had rape palaces. They would take women off the street, maybe some of them professionals, and gang rape them in one of the many palaces. They would sometimes release them but if they didn't go along, they would be killed.
This ISIS scourge is an opportunity for REAL feminists to step up to the plate. Crushing ISIS should led by feminists. A western female leader should tell feminists to put all their other goals on hold. That women should be a integral part of going to the ME and killing these savages. Because all other feminist causes pale in comparison and show feminists to be the effete insular elitists, which many are. We have metrosexuals leading our country, the UK and France. We need a tough woman to lead the charge. Not Hillary, a heterosexual woman.
Obama inherited a functioning (not perfect but functioning) Iraqi state with a modest number of American troops left to check the inevitable radical muslim led assaults on that state. Obama withdrew those troops precipitously even though he was forewarned by the brass that doing so would lead to the current hell.
As a nation, we clearly chose by vote to let the costly hard-fought success of a free Iraq fall apart. There was no ambiguity in the candidates' positions. We did that because many of us are stupid and decide things based on our current feelings that ebb and flow like the tides. In similar fashion many of us fell victim to 70's fashion, if even for a short time. Thank God we can learn from our mistakes. This is the inherent wisdom of conservatism - messing with things that are not broken is risky business, and throwing away success is not progress, but incompetence due to maleducation which many, like our President, have received in stifling quantity. We have gone from a history as a liberator and creator of peace to a fair-weather friend and one night stand of a protector. We have lost something rare and amazing about ourselves - the ability to win, sustain our commitments, and advance our world - we have lost the ability to be trusted because we have chosen supremely untrustworthy leaders. It's not the first time, but it's becoming something of a habit among many of our voters.
My most embarrassing choices from the seventies involve turtle necks, hair dryers and colors - far far too many colors. It was like temporary insanity, or maybe the mirror technology of the era was defective.
ricpic, bago, here is an article I found about the negotiation process re SOFA.
On one level we have Obama attempting to get cooperation from Iraqi leadership, asking the Iraqi Kurdish president to step down and let Allawi, a Sunni with a good Sunni following to step in. The guy says no. Other attempts are made to get the Iraqis to arrange a more fair and balanced parliament. They don't budge.
As far as numbers, JCS Adm. Mullens strongly recommended 16000 troops, HRC and Panetta, 10000. Obama said 7000 and ended up at 3500 and six f-16s.
The Iraqis balked due to the demand for troop immunity and because Iran was saying no to these proposals.
Nine months after the departure this was the situation:
"It is too soon to fully assess that prediction. But tensions have increased to the point that Mr. Barzani has insisted Mr. Maliki be replaced and Iraq’s lone Sunni vice president has fled to Turkey to avoid arrest.
Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid."
Choose a month and go down it. We left December 2011. The tolls did not start rising till around April 2013.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq was still around, except the ones who'd gone to join the anti-Assad forces, and morphed into ISIS. A significant number of those were disaffected Baathist former officers and soldier, who having been cut off from the political process become vulnerable to Wahhabism.
Were we to wait around for all of this to come to fruition to fight for people who did not care enough to see the need to play fair with their fellow countrymen, and who had looked to Iran for guidance?
I see your point, but the Arab culture is Spartan, proud, and stubborn (see Palestinians), and it would have been over 50 years before they all got along. If then. It's a mug's game.
38 comments:
Is Deborah MIA?
I'm considering it. Not because of here, but because I've got no self-control and can't seem to actually accomplish any work on my computer. It's just... check this quick, and then check that... only takes 15 seconds to check the other thing.
I think I must have spent four hours in the last two days writing up "no, women who think that feminism is about Marxist atheist man-haters are not thinking that because of a societal backlash against all of the good things feminism has accomplished... and then deleting it, *again*, because there's no point in getting into a pointless fight *again*.
Just about anything on the planet would be a better use of my time... even watching Transformers 4 was a better use of my time.
Are you on Fascebook, synova?
I've avoided it.
@Synova,
"no, women who think that feminism is about Marxist atheist man-haters are not thinking that because of a societal backlash against all of the good things feminism has accomplished...
Synova, have you been following Stacy McCain's blog series on the roots of modern feminism? Oh, Lordy, girl! It's a gold-mine!
It turns out, it is about Marxist, atheist, man-hating lesbians who get to do said activities from endowed chairs or tenured positions at posh Universities. Pull some quotations from here & ask your "feminist" FB friends if they agree. If they don't, then ask them why people who believe such stupid shit are teaching our kids at big-name university women's studies departments, with nary a peep of protest from the left.?
You are over thinking it. I bet you could put up a bunch of great posts about current science fiction that would be great. Just wing it and throw something up so to speak.
The thing about what McCain is doing is that most normal people on any side of the issue aren't aware of those people or what they say. They're *maybe* aware of MoDo and Naomi Wolfe, but probably not them, either.
Most women who preface statements about equal rights with, "I don't consider myself a feminist, but..." (which was attributed to "societal conditioning") do so because of what normal every-day feminists are up to. They view feminism as "man-hating" because of Hollywood blockbusters about "strong women" who abuse men, and because of popular campaigns that treat all men as presumptive rapists. Women who believe in equality in all ways refuse to identify as "feminist" because they've got first hand experience with women who blame everything on sexism instead of their own crappy work ethic. There's no reason at all that a pro-life woman should consider herself a "feminist" since abortion (not equality) is the defining tenet. That's for mainstream, public, ordinary every day "feminists" and not for the complete nut-jobs heterosexuality-is-abnormal-and-culturally-imposed-on-naturally-lesbian-females "deep thinkers" that McCain talks about.
But my purpose was to *not* get into a fight for no good reason. I try not to just let things go, sometimes, because I think it's better if we matter-of-factly point out that disagreement exists... because if no one says anything people think that there is no disagreement.
But does it do me any good in my life? I'm thinking, not so much.
Talking about current science fiction would actually be fun.
Oh, hey... this is sort of fun and unexpected...
I just read a "trashy category romance" where the romantic hero's parents were *batantly* Bill Ayers and wife, though they taught at Berkeley, and the son was more or less delivered by them to a central American "Che" analog while he was trying to live up to his parent's high ideals, who turned out to be a murderous and power seeking monster who was working to defeat any reforms that didn't center around him gaining power. Even the high minded philosopher of the people was revealed as someone who simply ignored the violence and horror that his own ideas wrought. The son, his eyes opened to the Real World by the brutality of his parent's heroes, turned double agent for the CIA.
But it turned out good in the end because the bad guys were defeated and he was reunited with the girl he loved, the very conventional daughter of Kentucky farmers, who his "open-minded" parents found so horrifying 6 years earlier.
So far the feminists haven't said a thing about the plight of their sisters under Islam, or closer to home, what THEIR plight is going to be in a dhimmi America. As the terror draws closer, and it is drawing closer every day, just watch them deny it -- "What terror? Don't be a bigot!! So we'll have to cover up a bit, big deal."
(1) There can be no better use of one's time than contemplating the deep philosophical implications of the slippery stiffening of the robotic trouser snake.
(2) Tonight's Star Trek TOS is the one where some disease infects the crew of the Enterprise and all the second tier actors get to ham it up. Sulu the swashbuckler. That sort of thing.
Not a whole lot of science in that fiction.
(3) Science friction burns my fingers.
Funny. I never before noticed the rockabilly vocals.
Wow. Turns out it's true that you never get so old you can't learn something new!
Hooray!!!
"Is Deborah MIA?
I'm considering it. Not because of here, but because I've got no self-control and can't seem to actually accomplish any work on my computer. It's just... check this quick, and then check that... only takes 15 seconds to check the other thing."
I hear ya. I took a month off a while ago to work on a project. It really helped to break free from the peeking.
Chick, what did you and yours make of Char's ascension to Fashion Week?
@deborah: We don't talk about "that show." They (wife and daughter) know I loathe it.
We did finish out the last two episodes of "True Detective" last night. I'm going to go back and read what you wrote about it.
Where's Titus, BTW? I thought he'd relate to the "feel the spray on your face" part in the commercial.
IS is deliberately killing women, especially professionals, like doctors, and those in political positions. All with the goal to terrify them into submission and do things like wear the niqab:
"This violence against women in particular is not arbitrary, but rather a weapon used by IS to terrorize Iraqi women to force them to abide by the Sharia provisions that it is imposing, such as wearing the niqab. The group's practices limit their freedoms and silences them out of fear that the circle of women opposing its laws will expand."
al monitor
I'm sure Titus would say that he does the spraying.
@chicklit/Synova,
Still, you cannot lump "lesbian feminists" together as one like-thinking bunch. Else how do we acknowledge independent thinkers like Camille Paglia?
Camille Paglia speaks no one on the feminist left. That's why she still teaches at a minor college in Philly, while the clowns quoted at McCain's teach at hoity-toity schools. It's righties like us who like Paglia. She is a feminist collective of one.
That's for mainstream, public, ordinary every day "feminists" and not for the complete nut-jobs heterosexuality-is-abnormal-and-culturally-imposed-on-naturally-lesbian-females "deep thinkers" that McCain talks about.
I understand the difference you're trying to make, but here's the secret teaching: all that "socially acceptable" "liberal" (in the older sense of the term) feminism wants to believe that it has some sort of clear moral standing within "liberalism". The problem is, as the "nutjob" feminists discovered when they thought about it long enough, that it has only the most tenuous of roots within classical liberalism, definitely not deep enough to support the societal edifice that they'd like to build. Whether or not the "socially acceptable" feminists want to admit it or not, the nutjobs have worked through the logic of it. "Socially acceptable" feminism is intellectually parasitical on nutjob feminism.
This is, I think, the real reason why young women don't identify as feminist. It doesn't take long before the young woman who looks deeper into any sort of feminism, even via print or on-line women's magazines, will wander straight into the nutjob wing of feminism ("Wait --- all penis in vagina sex is rape? Uhhhm, I'm quite fond of PiV sex, thank you!").
@Deborah: Many of us know guys who went to Iraq (more than once) to fight against a milder form of such barbarism. The few I know have left the USMC. Who is left to be "boots on the ground"?
Over the lest several years, our POTUS and it seems like half the country have done their level best to denigrate the service those guys did.
Camille Paglia has been talking about man hating Marxist, Nazi feminists running colleges of education for decades. 84% of all public school teachers are women and public school teachers vote 92% Dem. I went back to college in the late 90's to get my teaching license. I was shocked. And, I'm pretty shock proof.
Great header quote, by the way, Lem.
Chick, I can't readily find it, but I saw a great article about pre-invasion Iraq; women were doctors, were free to go without hijab. After the invasion morality police formed, enforcing dress codes on women and chopping off fingers of smoker.
Besides officiating over a complete clusterfuck, we succeeded in salting Iraq with depleted uranium and tarnishing our very high standing in the world.
I think you may be implying that Obama should have kept us in Iraq, even without a SOFA, but I'm glad we left when we did. Nothing but nothing is going to fix the Wahhabi Sunni radicalism but for them all to have it out with each other and segregate into their separate territories.
It will be interesting to watch the world join together to fight IS. And Ebola. Interesting times.
@deborah: Don't you feel compelled to defend Saddam Hussein?
Just a little?
What I wrote isn't fixed by Obama and democrats. You must think I'm lying when I talk about demoralized troops.
Way to keep it on a mature level, chick. If I want to be insulted, I have people in real life for that.
And I don't like being informed what I 'must think.' If you want to know, ask.
I know how to strengthen the United States military, reduce the deficit, obliterate ISIS immediately and keep so-called terrorism, in actually annoyism, tampered to non-existence, on the defensive, and at bay for decades beyond my death.
How? How can these wonders be brought about?
By initiating a non-governmental, non-U.S. military Christian Mercenary Army that works closely with US government and US military for organization and for training.
Kind of like the FRB, officially independent of government but run governmentally nonetheless.
That members pay to participate specifically to kick (so-called) terrorist ass without compunction. To get it out of one's system, as it were. Give the government some money and they'll let you go kick terrorist ass. The government will assist you, help you get started, get you signed up and sorted, provided intelligence, strategies, plans and all the things that go with war.
Those would be like the officers of yore.
The Christian fighters who are paid will be financed mostly through churches participating in the Crusade and by fundraising, an ongoing thing like politics, part of the stream will come from the political stream.
They got jihad this and jihad that, we got Crusade.
That's right, Crusade, Bitches, and it's billed as the Crusade to eliminate global terrorism.
And it is a terrible, somewhat lawless force. The most fiercely phenomenally financed military operation in history without a dime of taxpayer's money, just people, portions of the Christian community, mostly, and other malcontents organized for war.
It appears this extremist branch of Islamists are the 'end times' types. Christians has theirs too. Repeating what I've learned, never let a good crises go to waste, this is a perfect opportunity to bring into being a Christian force that will overwhelm the likes of ISIS.
Plust it lets off steam.
It creates a constructive avenue for the hot-blooded among us to pursue.
IS, or ISIS, whatever, attracts males who see a way of making something of themselves righteously. A way of ahem getting ahead, advancing in meaningful ways they cannot in civilian life.
Creating the response force is natural and automatic, just like the old days, except this time even more fierce more immediate more destructive because the gap between us is tremendous, their religion makes it so, and without reform it will always be so, and that just is not going to happen anytime soon. They'd have nothing technological were it not given them or stolen.
I read it a long time ago in an Anne Rice book. The Vampire Lestat, I think. It's a thing about humans. Culturally speaking humans need an outlet for violence, thus such things as colosseums, wicker man burning, modern day rock concerts. The ultimate outlet, of course, wars.
I'm sorry if you felt insulted. But how did you not imply that things were better for Iraq under Saddam? Doesn't that mean you have to negate what existed there then?
_____________________
I'm drawing a line here because I want to separate you from what I'm about to say:
I see the emergence of of Neo-isolationists -- people who want to disengage from wars abroad but engage and even open ourselves up to threats like Ebola. I'm just asking for a little consistency from such people.
I would like to introduce you to dogbomb, a man-child who likes to play electronic games.
If you can take the accent -- Grandpa, is that you? -- it's hard to take, but can grow on you, and it only takes a couple years immersion to understand. He's a gamer and he is introducing a game to other gamers.
The character is plunked in a room and must navigate around to find keys to bring to a central location.
It's the sort of thing that baffles me. I don't know where to start, where to go, what to attempt. I am very bad at figuring out what is expected of me. I am a total dud playing these electronic games. As a result they hardly interest me. But somehow I became intrigued. I think because the response from others was so strong. Suddenly a lot of people appeared out of nowhere who were really interested an none of them mentioned his accent, like everyone accepts that as normal.
[I also watched a video of an Irish ballplayer speak as a Frenchman doing an English accent. Everyone was in on the joke and not a single French person could tell they were being put on, that they are being imitated, and neither could I. He sounded the exact same to me in both cases, his original Irish accent and his put on French-English]
But this player understands immediately what to look for, where to search, how the corridors are arranged, where the rooms are. He flies around the geometric spaces covering what seems every inch and advances through Eschesque architecture that has me stumped until his character changes into a being that is a dot and uses triangles to cast pathways to travel and advance.
He just accepted his new state of being as if passing from an Earthbound state to a mathematical spiritual state. All the while understanding how to manipulate the environment to use his power up abilities as he progresses.
Standard game fare.
In the end he says he just wants to show off how much of a gamer he is.
And he is!
He sure impressed me. It made me want to buy the game and try it even though he's calling us nonces all the way through.
Define better. In general, life under the Saddam regime was better than the hell we have created in Iraq, which has spread to Syria and is greatly endangering Jordan and Lebanon.
But I'm a broad sweep of history kind of a gal and see this working out pretty well, now that IS has concentrated the attention of right-thinking people everywhere.
Getting late...'night :)
But I'm a broad sweep of history kind of a gal and see this working out pretty well, now that IS has concentrated the attention of right-thinking people everywhere.
I hope you're right about that.
I just read Wiki's bio of Saddam. Yeesh.
'Night
I'd post the photos of my great-grandfather who actually was a seaman,in and despite rough waters, except that I know better than so to do.
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(Also, I did actually know my grandfather, my great-grandfather's son, for many years. FWTW.)
It seems settled that the physical structure that generates the mind evolved to its current form during the Pleistocene.
Sounds about right to me.
Sheldon's mom on The Big Bang Theory proclaimed her belief that his super intelligence is a gift from Jesus.
Half of Sheldon's genes come from her.
Saddam's sons and their cronies had rape palaces. They would take women off the street, maybe some of them professionals, and gang rape them in one of the many palaces. They would sometimes release them but if they didn't go along, they would be killed.
This ISIS scourge is an opportunity for REAL feminists to step up to the plate. Crushing ISIS should led by feminists. A western female leader should tell feminists to put all their other goals on hold. That women should be a integral part of going to the ME and killing these savages. Because all other feminist causes pale in comparison and show feminists to be the effete insular elitists, which many are. We have metrosexuals leading our country, the UK and France. We need a tough woman to lead the charge. Not Hillary, a heterosexual woman.
The most tragic thing about Marpi Point was that our victorious heroes were denied their rightful spoils of war.
...the hell we have created in Iraq...
Obama inherited a functioning (not perfect but functioning) Iraqi state with a modest number of American troops left to check the inevitable radical muslim led assaults on that state. Obama withdrew those troops precipitously even though he was forewarned by the brass that doing so would lead to the current hell.
As a nation, we clearly chose by vote to let the costly hard-fought success of a free Iraq fall apart. There was no ambiguity in the candidates' positions. We did that because many of us are stupid and decide things based on our current feelings that ebb and flow like the tides. In similar fashion many of us fell victim to 70's fashion, if even for a short time. Thank God we can learn from our mistakes. This is the inherent wisdom of conservatism - messing with things that are not broken is risky business, and throwing away success is not progress, but incompetence due to maleducation which many, like our President, have received in stifling quantity. We have gone from a history as a liberator and creator of peace to a fair-weather friend and one night stand of a protector. We have lost something rare and amazing about ourselves - the ability to win, sustain our commitments, and advance our world - we have lost the ability to be trusted because we have chosen supremely untrustworthy leaders. It's not the first time, but it's becoming something of a habit among many of our voters.
Robert Plant tied his shirts into blouses like that too and women swooned.
I like the guy's guitar: a black Gibson Les Paul.
My most embarrassing choices from the seventies involve turtle necks, hair dryers and colors - far far too many colors. It was like temporary insanity, or maybe the mirror technology of the era was defective.
@bagoh20: Mirror technology in those days was fragmented and multifaceted: link.
I have an embarrassing HS graduation photo like so many others.
Et tu Bago?
ricpic, bago, here is an article I found about the negotiation process re SOFA.
On one level we have Obama attempting to get cooperation from Iraqi leadership, asking the Iraqi Kurdish president to step down and let Allawi, a Sunni with a good Sunni following to step in. The guy says no. Other attempts are made to get the Iraqis to arrange a more fair and balanced parliament. They don't budge.
As far as numbers, JCS Adm. Mullens strongly recommended 16000 troops, HRC and Panetta, 10000. Obama said 7000 and ended up at 3500 and six f-16s.
The Iraqis balked due to the demand for troop immunity and because Iran was saying no to these proposals.
Nine months after the departure this was the situation:
"It is too soon to fully assess that prediction. But tensions have increased to the point that Mr. Barzani has insisted Mr. Maliki be replaced and Iraq’s lone Sunni vice president has fled to Turkey to avoid arrest.
Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid."
Here is a graph from Iraq Body Count:
IBC
Choose a month and go down it. We left December 2011. The tolls did not start rising till around April 2013.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq was still around, except the ones who'd gone to join the anti-Assad forces, and morphed into ISIS. A significant number of those were disaffected Baathist former officers and soldier, who having been cut off from the political process become vulnerable to Wahhabism.
Were we to wait around for all of this to come to fruition to fight for people who did not care enough to see the need to play fair with their fellow countrymen, and who had looked to Iran for guidance?
I see your point, but the Arab culture is Spartan, proud, and stubborn (see Palestinians), and it would have been over 50 years before they all got along. If then. It's a mug's game.
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