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The Defeat at New Orleans was also one of the worst defeats of British military history especially at the time. Ironically it was after the treaty had been signed. Once Kerry is elected.... 1. Dept of Justice will try to break up Microsoft again. Laws will be passed to prevent "outsourcing". 2. Minimum wage will go up 3. Summits will be held all over the world while people die and the terrorists laugh 4. A Kyoto-like treaty if not Kyoto will be signed wrecking the economy worse than #1 5. The USA will join the international criminal court, people who interrogate terrorists will be brought up on charges against humanity 6. Taxes go up! 7. Socialized medicine 8. USA pulls out of Iraq in 6 months. Terrorist sponsored theocracy takes over. 9. Europe likes us more. Yeah! 10. Kerry appoints another liberal judge to the Supreme Court and on the 2nd day...........

Tie on Presentation. Kerry wins on # and magnitude of Distortions. Kerry was very defensive toward the end. Everyone thought he would dominate domestic policy and he did not. Win for Bush if you ask me.

I have lab mutt but I have 2700 sq feet of house and a big flat yard. I would rule out any medium or large dog becuase of the size of your place and NYC. Mutts are great. Dogs that are rescued seem to be more loyal but make sure its not been abused.

I think drug use has a large effect on memory. People that drink a lot and or use other recreational drugs tend to have very poor memories. If the use is not prolonged and is stopped the memory seems to return. Considering how widespread the use of alchohol and drugs is these days, that could explain why a lot of people have poor memories. Combine that with poor diet and lack of sleep and you have a zombie-fest.

Just because you got an award for helping children in Africa from the UN doesn't mean you support the UN. Besides, I think all of us were confused before reading AR. Now that she has read the material she may not support the UN. Either way its good press for the books like someone else said. As to her playing Dagny, she was blonde in a movie and pulled it off quite well. She is actually quite petite in real life too. The Lara Croft image is camerawork and not quite the real deal. I think she would make a great Dagny personally.

If I wasn't married......I'd probably still stand no chance.

Tried watching it a few times and could not get into it.

Foreign Policy makes my choice and Bush is the only one even close on that. You can't have civilization without security.

I will not be conversing with you any longer Charlotte. I think you are a lost cause.

Here is a good example of how recreational MJ use can effect a family. Two guys of the same age grow up in the 70's as hippie types smoking weed. They both have 1 boy each. One quits doing drugs and the other does not. 30 years later the non-drug user owns a successful business, a house, a boat, has plenty of money for retirement, and lives debt-free. The drug user still rents a house, has a struggling business, can't take vacations, has huge credit card debts, etc, etc. The son of the non-drug user who is also a non-drug user ( except caffiene ) has 2 houses, nice cars, wife, kids, retirement accounts, no debt, etc. The son of the drug user who is also a drug user lives in a tiny apartment, no car, huge credit card debt, no wife, no kids, no plans. This is no coincidence. Ps. the drug users have college degrees and the non-drug users have HS with some college which makes it even more of a contrast.

Charlotte, So by your reasoning ( in another thread ) we should have just lifted all sanctions and bought all the oil Saddam was willing to sell? I think that was tried and all it did was make him hungry for more and he invaded all his neighbors and killed his own people. If you are trying to bring about the end of human life on this planet that is a sound approach. Is that your intention or is your reasoning just flawed?

"So tell us exactly what have trade restrictions done toward instilling “proper republican principles in the populace”?" Thats not the point. The point is not to arm your enemy willingly. Not to trade with known murderers and thieves. You don't try to convert your sworn enemy after they steal all of your stuff. You defend yourself, you seem to be missing that entirely. Hong Kong was basically English until very recently but you know that. You just seem to continually ignore facts and context to make your point. If you'll read one of my earlier posts I'm for the individual deciding who to trade with. Hopefully individuals will make the choice to not trade with people who want to kill them. In your case thats not happening though, obviously.

One could argue that the Baltic Republics and Poland had a history of freedom going back far enough to help them recover and resist Communism. The Polish were considered the most free people in Europe right up until the Russians and Austro-Hungarians divided them up between themselves. So that example is not so good for me. Cuba and China have no history of freedom to fall back upon. Cuba was a Spanish colony who were known to be the most Autocratic colonizers of the Americas. It isn't coincidence that none of the original Spanish colonies in the Americas are worth a damn today. They were only an American protectorate for 50 years, and this was partially during the Imperialist era of the late 19th / early 20th century too. So not much time to instill proper republican priciples in the populace. China is even worse, they had an imperial dictatorship of one kind or the other for thousands of years. They went from that straight to Dictatorship and then to Communism. Thinking that these countries will suddenly embrace Capitalist principles by funding their current way of doing things is poor judgement. I think the best we will see is a Fascist Totalitarian type dictatorship instead of Communist Totalitarian dictatorship. They know nothing else. Trading with thieves encourages thievery. If they want to change their ways then fine but I see no evidence of that happening yet.

I figured I'd answer some of Charlottes question that went unanswered. Cuba - Castro and the Communist stole billions of $$ of private property from US citizens ( and their own ). The trade embargo isn't necessarily to make them lose power but trading with them would legitimize the theft. Its like you buying your car back from someone who stole it from you. Also the Soviets supported Cuba buy buying all of the Sugar from them. They maintain a very poor standard of living ( 1/3 of Peurto Rico if I remember correctly ). Since the Soviets can't buy sugar anymore Castro has tried to create a Tourism/Prostitution industry to compensate. That and the influx of US $$ from family in the USA keeps the Cuban economy going. The Cuban gov't has also tried to sell stolen assets to the Europeans to raise money much to the dismay of the proper US owners of said property. Soviet Union - US companies payed for their industrialization and Stalin used his free labor to build a huge army that almost took over Europe. We built his tank factories, gave him airplane technology and nukes and then the Soviets became the biggest threat to the world for over 50 years. They finally imploded on themselves but not after the US economy was dragged into Keynsianism to fight back. A free market ecomomy could not keep up with the Soviets in Military spending I don't think. Especially since US companies unwisely gave them a huge advantage with free factories and technology. So you can say that by trading with Communist Russia and doing exactly what US companies are doing now in China they created the MORE statist gov't in the USA to combat the threat they helped create. We can hope all day that China will see the brilliance of Free Market economies but their actions against Taiwan and that plane incident should clue you in on what they are really thinking.

Spoiler........... My theory is that Donnie was stuck in a time loop and had been there for quite awhile. He may have tried everything he could to stop it and decided the only thing that would keep everyone he loved safe and stop the loop was to be in his room when the engine crashed on him. Just my theory.

nimble, you do not capitalize your name so that is why his sentence did not start with a capital letter. The timing was a bit odd however. Not my forum though. As to Anarchism as a philosophy I agree it would be bad for the reasons already suggested. It may work for those with the biggest guns but I for one would not like to live there. Eventually thuggism would become the norm and no-one would produce anymore because it would be pointless. Armed marauders would roam the countryside raping and pillaging. It would be like the Middle Ages with bigger better ways to kill people. If that is appealing I think there is something very wrong with you.

I think it should be a personal decision. I don't want my government telling me who I can and can't buy stuff from, period. Tariffs are a way of doing that and any objectivist will be against those. Now personally I think Chinese made products are garbage and I go out of my way not to buy or sell them. Also I think many companies are foolish to set up factories there. They have nationalized stuff once before UNDER THE SAME GOVERNMENT and therefore are not to be trusted. You will notice that they "opened" up the economy once they ran out of money for state projects. Maybe when they feel they have enough money they will "close" them back and nationalize everything again. Hey stupid Americans, thanks for all the factories! The USSR did this for years. Thats how Stalin got all his factories. US companies built them for him. There are other places to get cheap labor if that is the point. Places that have not nationalized in the past and that don't have world domination on the mind.

Tommy, I hope I'm not missing something but I've noticed most of your posts are always revolving around specific concretes. Once you grasp the underlying concepts these concretes will not pose you so many problems. Try reading/learning more about objectivism, take some time to absorb the information and come back and talk.

smokers stink! , thats reason enough to not do it. It increases the chance of lung cancer but so does smoking weed. As to the MJ, take month off from smoking it and see how much more motivated you are and clearheaded. That should be enough to tell you that its not good for your brain. Yes you may think of interesting things while high but do you remember much of it the next day. Probably not. So whats the point. Other drugs like LSD, Coke, Heroin, Ecstacy are similar but can be much more destructive or physically bad for you. Alchohol is one of the worst drugs though and its legal, go figure. I'm for legalizing all drugs because I think the war on drugs is more destructive than the rugs themselves. There is a certain segement of the population that will use drugs legal or not. Why create another problem to fix this one. Well I'm rambling and I've had no COFFEE so I must have my fix. :)

I think all they will do is blow up the suspected terror camps and blow up the known nuclear program. Some spec forces troops may be on the ground but committing a massive ground campaign to "control" the country is unlikely. They are close to revolt over there anyway all they need is a trigger.

I'm a salesman for a mail order Recording/Pro Audio company. I have been doing this for about 9 years although the job description has changed a bit over the years with the internet and all. Have been in the AF, in a crappy band, I'm an aspiring writer ( of course ). My other full time job is Dad for the last 9 weeks. I get home and take care of my boy until I go to sleep for a few minutes at a time.

Some of you are dropping context here and evading facts. Gulf War 1 happened before Bush took office and many of the post Gulf War actions were taken by Clinton ( and botched I might add ). He basically did nothing while saying on record in 1998 that he "knew" Saddam had WMD's. Everyone knew he had them. Remember Gulf War 1 when all the troops went in with Chem Warfare gear on? He had used them on the Kurds and the Iranians in the past so there was every reason to expect that he still had them. Well they were never accounted for. Baghdad was never occupied we basically stopped with the agreement that he would account for all his WMD's and dispose of them. HE NEVER DID THIS! This alone is justification to FINISH THE JOB of Gulf War 1. Thats it. Nothing need more be said for the justification for the war. By the way they did find Sarin gas in some warheads. Its not been covered in the media because it was "small" amounts but it was enough to kill 500,000 people. I'm sure they will find more and there is good intel that much of it was moved to Syria along with the Republican Guard and Saddams family. Now the actual execution of "Iraqi Freedom" and the spin that has been put on and the appeasement of Al Sadr are all very debateable points. You depose Saddam but appease Al Sadr who is just as bad if not worse. Why? To "win hearts and minds". Rubbish. Take him out! How many American soldiers do his militia have to kill before we take him out?

Common Sense seems to dictate you don't have sex with Family or people at work. I mean you are going to see or know a sibling for the rest of your life and it would create numerous future problems obviously. Whether its ethically wrong there is a good question. Here is a concrete example that I'm sure has been plyaed with in fiction a lot ( Star Wars is a good example ). What if a brother and sister were seperated at birth and they met later as adults but did not know they were related ( actually Symarillion by Tolkien takes this further and thats probably where Lucas stole it from ). Would it be immoral for them then have a sexual relationship/ get married?

Release, I have been in the music retailing business for about 10 years now and I do very well for myself with no college degree. Since I have been at it for awhile and talk to studios all the time I may be able to give some advice. Full Sail - I too have heard bad things, its very expensive and most people can't afford the equipment they train you on. Unless you want to get a job interning at a large studio that has that equipment ( which pays very little ) and working your way up a very small corporate ladder, it doesn't seem like a good idea. You would be better off spending the money on the equipment, learning how to use it, and marketing yourself if you want to start a studio. One of our guitar teachers started his own studio in his house. He started doing it part time while teaching and charging $20 an hour. Eventually he quit his main job and is now doing over $100 an hour sessions and is backed up for years. Oh yeah and he didn't go to college either. So you can surely prosper without college. Good luck.

Stay in the class and maybe you will even convert some of the other students or at least get them interested in Objectivism. Be vocal don't just sit and let him spew bad philosophy without questioning it. This is a a good thing I think if you make the most of it.