Andrew Grathwohl

Considering the irrational foreign policy of the US, would an individual not be sanctioning evil by joining the military today? Our country's military is underdeveloped as compared to how far along we could and should be. It does not come close to effectively protecting American blood and treasure. Anybody who involves themselves in the military today and obeys unlawful (or irrational) commands - as almost all do - are immediately guilty of contributing to the wasteland that is the American foreign policy of altruism. Any otherwise good soldiers receiving benefits of any kind from the military are earning income derived from the vices of others. Ayn Rand famously said: "A nation that violates the rights of its own citizens cannot claim any rights whatsoever. In the issue of rights, as in all moral issues, there can be no double standard." Has America not, along with the rest of the planet, lost her claim to her rights? Because the right to self-defense is a natural consequence of man's right to life, and because all rights stem from the right to life, then it appears to me that Ayn Rand would be vehemently opposed to any involvement in the military today.

Capitalism is a social system as much as it is an economic system, based on private ownership of capital.

Mr. Atwan drew the conclusion through his interviews with Bin Laden: Considering this is one of the only Western reporters to ever speak to the man, I call this credible enough. Until there is evidence to disprove this, I will stand by it. You're confusing motivation with strategy. I agree with all of the motivations you've cited, however, that Bin Laden believed these attacks would draw Americans into Middle Eastern soil is nothing more than one of the strategic elements in Bin Laden's attack against us. I have no problem with waging war against countries in the Middle East - just the ways by which we are going about doing so. No need to put words in my mouth, Jake.

How exactly do you draw an indication of time from the senses I've utilized to merely draw a conclusion? The 9/11 Report, Abdul Bari Atwan's interviews with Osama Bin Laden, and Bin Laden's two videos - one from November 2001, and the other from October 2004 - all provided pretty clear evidence. And in fact, the November 2001 video features him next to a few of the 9/11 hijackers, so yes, this would have been created before the Afghanistan invasion.

Actually, from what I've read, heard, and seen, the American response to 9/11 is precisely what was intended by the attackers. Osama Bin Laden made the claim countless times that he wanted Americans to be on "his soil" so that he could target us easier. He anticipated the American response, and that it would, in a way, cause us to act self-destructively. Sadly, I think his predictions have been somewhat accurate.

Unless we drastically change policies, it is an inevitable occurrence.

I thought this too, but

Well, the candidate is going to be Robert Blumenthal - a very popular, well-liked veteran CT Democrat. PPPPolls just released the latest data on Blumenthal vs. the Republican candidates: http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/20...ly-favored.html These results do not surprise me at all.

I find it funny that anybody could take the 9/11 truth movement seriously. Their entire premise is based on the belief that the government somehow was in cahoots with, or was directly involved in, the flying of airplanes into one of the country's most important landmarks, in the middle of its most important city, right in the middle of rush hour ... and the only people who could figure out this grand scheme were a bunch of braindead college students with iMacs. Considering all the immense failures of the Bush administration, and their inability to perform even simple acts of policy with any amount of rational thought, I find little credibility in the claim that they could be so successful at pulling off such an enormous feat with such precision.

RussK, you propose that private contractors fill voids that the military cannot. If so, why are they still private contractors, if they are engaged in military activity overseas? It's quite fishy to me that they would continue to operate under the employment of a private firm, if all they're doing is providing services that our own military is unable to provide efficiently/properly. What's the practicality of not being an employee of the United States, when engaging in military activity on behalf of the United States? Why not buy the equipment and hire the men themselves? To me, there must be a reason of practical evasion involved. Is there no benefit - no rule that can be ignored - in being a private contractor versus a member of the armed forces? Just to share a personal anecdote... a family friend is working with the peace core currently in Afghanistan, and the only pictures I've seen of her have shown multiple heavily-armed private contractors guarding her. She must always be under the protection of these guards if she is to leave her base. She must travel everywhere in a heavily-armored truck, owned and operated by the same private contractors. What would the reasoning be behind this? A marine could just as easily do this job - why not hire these contractors as employees of the military? (I'd ask her myself but it's almost impossible to communicate with her due to her location). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the government had a monopoly on the use of force. Is the hiring of private contractors not a contradiction of that principle?

Chris Dodd just announced his retirement. It's probably the end of the road for Peter, but we'll see... :dough:

Peter discusses foreign policy some more: Starts around 2:25 Edit: At around 5:30, he says some great things regarding the Patriot Act. Edit#2: At around 8:50 he speaks in detail about Iran. He continues into part 4.

This happened at my university (Indiana University, in Bloomington, IN) and I have been unable to fathom how one of the most so-called "progressive" areas of the midwest - an area that has gone so far as to ban smoking in public areas - could justify man-hating god freaks advertising on buses, while a bunch of intelligent, college-attending kids couldn't get a reasonably inoffensive advertisement on the same bus line. It makes me want to stop paying their ridiculous out-of-state tuition fees, funded by a university job which taxes me too much, while being housed in a student slum that I pay too much rent to live in...

This is a very interesting prediction - something that is not too crazy of an idea at all. I was reading an article by somebody claiming that GPUs were going to become the metric for computing power, rather than CPUs. Perhaps nVidia is vying to accomplish some sort of more sophisticated version of what AMD/ATI does with their chipsets? If CUDA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA) is any indication of where the company is headed in the next couple of years, then it appears that nVidia is trying to tap into the ever-expanding market of parallel computing opportunities, making their chipsets just as important as, if not more important than, the CPUs they parallel.

I've already done a few! The system is quite sophisticated and intelligent. I think it's really going to help. We should all thank you for your efforts, if you were part of Chad's team! Thanks to your help, we have a true capitalist running for senate in my home state. I had brief correspondence with him a few times and worked on the issues page of his website, but regardless of my short conversations with the guy, I know for certain he was a fired up individual with a lot of drive. He did good work!

Yes, but there were issues in the beginning. The campaign is working to resolve them now.

Would you care to explain why you think that? I don't think anything I said in that post could be construed as being factually-inaccurate.

At the moment, Peter's in third place out of three. Two candidates have dropped out. However, he has been hitting the pavement hard, going to all the local RTC meetings in CT, and working on launching his online phone-banking system. He's going to get out there and really make himself heard in the next few months, both through the 15,000 volunteers calling homes for him, and the commercials and ad space he's about to purchase. His issues page was just launched today, and can be found here: http://schiffforsenate.com/?q=issues

Well, TIME certainly didn't take a very negative position on Ben Bernanke. TIME called him Person of the Year because of what (they perceive) he did to "save us," not destroy us. So not only is the choice ridiculous, but they didn't even execute it correctly.

But losing demand is not the same as losing value. Gold's value only changes when market forces cause there to be a change in gold's supply, inventory, or usage. It's not a question of demand to begin with; demand is infinite. Remember the age-old economic question: How can unlimited wants be satisfied with limited resources?

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages...1947251,00.html I'm not all that surprised, but I'm pretty disgusted. Some of my favorite quotes include: And that's only on the first of six pages!

I'm VERY happy that this video is finally surfacing.

Just found this on another forum. It's a PDF of Irwin Schiff's long-lost illustrated story-book about capitalism. A very clever and fun read - may be useful for some of those Objectivist parents out there! http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy-grows.pdf

The US and other Anglosphere countries are still wrong, no matter how much more wrong other countries are. Evil behavior must be recognized, no matter what other virtuous behavior is exhibited. Unfortunately, there isn't that much virtuous behavior to exhibit anyway. The founding principles of a nation should have no bearing on the truth, and the truth is that we are not the great nation that we used to be. The world's healthiest overweight person is still overweight. The person who steals a penny is still stealing, even if there are people out there stealing millions of dollars every day. And the world's freest nation is still not free. Ayn Rand demonstrated the four necessary aspects of a dictatorship: The United States has nearly one-party rule, considering the shocking similarities between Republicans and Democrats - it has indeed nationalized and expropriated an enormous amount of private property - and it engages in censorship on a daily basis. Ayn Rand's own definition of dictatorship is startlingly similar to the political climate of the US. It is for this reason that I find the general sentiment of the United States around here so peculiar. I admire and recognize the aspects of this country that deserve such attention, but none of us should be afraid to express distaste when necessary, even if it's not that bad by comparison. Are we really to settle for less than what is both obtainable and achievable?

And Ancient Rome's organized and innovative uses of a constitution, checks and balances, and a Republican separation of powers have no influence on your opinion, clearly. I wouldn't deny the vast expansions and improvements brought about by the Greeks, but don't make up nonsense like this. The Ancient Romans accomplished a lot over their existence, especially within the first 450 years.