crwtom

not quite yet - but with the recent CBS poll at 34% approval we're getting closer and closer Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

i think the question should really be Do you regular SC posters ever get any work done? looking at some post frequencies and lengths of posts I think some must spend about one or two hours per day in average (That is, if they miss a day posting there'd be another with three or more hours of writing posts) Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

the point being that the Repubs are much more likely to base their campaigns on presenting themselves as national wardens of "moral values" (whatever that is) Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

a guy that never made it beyond the municipal level of gvt and that of a city whose electorate is hardly representative of any other part of the country. The dems will have field day with this one ... Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

i believe we had enough of the country being run by academic theory and ideology. There's a dire need for a more pragmatic approach and those would be bad choice from this point of view. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

one thing either party can learn from the past decades is ** senators don't win presidential elections - governors do. ** only JFK managed to disprove the rule and only very narrowly so hope the dems go for someone like Warner, Rendell or Vilsack Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

this is in fact quite disturbing. The one thing that, up to now, I tended to be mildly optimistic about in Iraq was that there would be no major escalation into a civil war between different religions and ethnicities. I had listened (and talked) to quite a few exiled Iraqis who had all sorts of opinions about the invasion. One things I heard repeatedly was that people there were Iraqis first and their religions and ethnicities came second. Everyone of them rejected the possibility of a civil war as absurd and pointed to long traditions of mutual tolerance etc. The last weeks must have been a rude awakening for many Iraqis. This is not unlike Yugoslavia where no one would have coveiced it possible that a major civil war could break out in a country that was a major destination for western European tourists and by many thought to be next in line for western integration as Poland or Hungary. The departure of a "strong man" and no power to secure order and safety as replacement. Very disturbing ... Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

What do you expect from a bleeding heart liberal ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

beer speed fermented, watered down to homeopathic levels with added berry flavor. cigarettes with chemically treated tobacco, scientifically designed ultra filters and menthol flavor coffee shock frozen, at dishwater strength, diluted with tons of diary products, and with added hazelnut or cinnamon flavor. ... need I say more? It seems in this country a lot of people don't like the taste of either beer, tobacco, or coffee but feel compelled to drink or smoke in order to look cool (or, in the case of beer, because they enjoy peeing a lot). As a result beer/smokes/coffee get perverted and contorted into some sort of candy or baby food to make it bearable for them. I must admit though that things have become a lot better in recent years. I am able to get a well roasted bean in special shops as well as a few good brews if I stick to ales and stouts. It is still hard to get a good Pilsner (I guess still too bitter even for the more enlightened US tastes) and have never seen packs of Gitanes or Gauloises on the shelves anywhere. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

it depends how well you can deal with the addictive part. I had friends who could smoke just a couple a day or only on social occasions. That never worked for me. A month after starting smoking I was doing a 20-pack of cigarillos a day (fully inhaling) because the regulars didn't have enough kick anymore, as well as a lot of stronger French cigarettes (no filter, of course). After sometime I reverted back to regular cigarettes since the stench and dirt of the stronger brands in clothes, skin and rooms were unbearable. But with the weaker (US) brands my consumption in stress times often went to three packs a day. So after 5 years smoking it was time to quit (very painfully) and I haven't taken a single puff in 16 years. In fact, given my addictive experience I'm sure a single cigarette would have been enough to get me back to three packs the next day. I'd say skydivers are more likely to fall in the high addiction potential category - as opposed to the more mellow characters that are OK with the occasional/social cigarette. Gitanes, papier maïs, no filter Gauloises Carporal are also good (again, filters are for wimps) Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

You apparently have not the first idea what a systematically planned and executed genocide of 6 Mio people means. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

who are the threatening neighbors of Germany? The fact that there are only allies around has become a strong argument to do away with short and medium range missiles. FWIW, Germany already hosts 150 or so nuclear war heads (in possessions of US) which, under current treaties, would be delivered with German planes and pilots. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

It's a sort-of and de-facto Elective Consitutaional Monarchy. After getting rid of George the IIIrd a couple of hundred years ago people have finally found back to George the IInd. Among democracies in inudstrialized countries the mystique and reverence around the office of president is quite uniquely American. Hardly anyonen in the other countries would come up with statements that you have to stand with your president no matter what, that the chief exec is a symbol of the nation and must not be insulted and stuff like that. The difference of course the presidential system that combines head of state and chief executive, and is which replaced in almost all western and eastern democracies by paliamentary systems now-a-days, after countires had to reinvent themselves over and over again after being consumed by mutliple world wars and revolutions. The US system, in contrast, is stuck in the state-of-art of 1789, following the untested and rather schematic philosophy of Baron de Montesquieu, and a desire to make General Washington some kind-of semi-monarch. Of course there are also European monachies, and insulting the moarch there is also no small matter. However, they don't claim to be republics and the monarch rarely has any powers. Prime ministers, on the other hand, have basically no "aura" that would that they can hide behind. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

yeah, thank God we have Bush - the great uniter - hahaha Cheers, T (edited for grammar upon request) ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

you may have a point - if he'd handle a gun wiht the same competence and skill that he's managing governance he'll probably confuse the front and back end of the gun and shoot himself in the face. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

what about homicide bombings ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Yep, you go through any larger Chinese city and you see one internet shop crammed against the next one. Noone is happy that Google-do-no-evil complied with censorship, but they are still a few notches in government compliance behind all of the others such as Yahoo!, MSN, etc. Those have been agreeign to censorship lonmg times ago. Also Goolge does not run Gmail and similar services there to avoid having private records confiscated by the Chines government. Even if they did some evil, I'd much rather see Google dominate the Chinese internet market than Micro$oft or some Chinese homegrown service. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

if anyone should be boycotted it is Yahoo! As opposed to Google they caved in to the US government, and didn't even attempt to put up a fight. Yahoo! also gave up email information on a Chinese reporter evetually got him a 10 year prison sentence for nothing more than forwarding a government memo to foreigners. Google just has the more brilliant minds, the better business philosophy, and, last but not least, more ethical/social attitudes as compared to all the others. That's what made them the biggest of all. I'm not surprised that Google is the one of them all fighting the snooping and it is a very important fight in their philosophy. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

this is piece from the article a bit twisted though ... Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

what puzzles me is who she's trying to convince. Black approval of the current admin is already in the single digits. To take a risk in strong rethoric such as this one just to sway some of the remaining 7-10% doesn't seem to add up. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

that is precisely the question (see post just before yours). It was perhaps a race to prevent the USSR from invading France and perhaps also a race to get at least some piece of Germany. But US leadership consciously decided against the final race for Berlin to avoid about 100K more US/allied military casualties. All US advances stopped at the Elbe in early 45 and Berlin was left to the Soviets. Having East Germany gave the USSR, of course, a much stronger position in the subsequent decades of the cold war. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

you can easily turn the question around and ask whether the western allies could have won without the Soviet front. Ever hear of American daylight bombing raids over Germany? much of the breakdown of the German airforce and the resulting almost complete air supremacy of the allied forces had to do with severe fuel shortage in Germany. That in turn was related to not having access to oil fields in the Caucasus area, which in turn was a result of the loss in Stalingrad. more than half a million German soldiers were either killed or captured in just the battle of Stalingrad - an entire army was wiped out there with very few survivors. The subsequent series of German losses and breakdown of the eastern front ate up 100's of thousands, even millions more German troops. If you throw in those who were not killed or catured but just busy with the fighting and the logistic you are approaching tens of millions. And those were adult, well trained soldiers in contrast to the Luftabwehr in which to a large part older people and teenagers were operating anti-aircraft guns. If those millions of German soldiers that had been killed, captured, or otherwise pinned down in the eastern front had been lined along the coastlines of Northern France the outcome of D-Day could have easily been a very different one. Among historians Stalingrad is most often identified as the single most important turning point in the war - or the series of defeats Moscow-Stalingrad-Kursk-etc that broke and consumed German armies thoughout 1942 and early 1943. The D-day invasion more than one and a half years later was still important since it hit close to home for Germany and had a seriously demoralizing effect. It did divert troops from the east and accelerated the Soviet invaions. However, in mid 1944 Germany was already losing the war and, in size and/or significance, the Battle of Normandy was a fraction of what the Battle of Stalingrad was. What I find the more insteresting historical question is whether the US (and western allies) were right to stop their invasion at the Elbe. The Battle for Berlin was projected to be very bloody with about 100'000 more US casualties, and the decision was made to leave this final blood bath to the Soviets since the war was decided anyway. The historical result of this decision was, of course, that Germany was split in half, and, during the cold war, the Soviets considered East Germany as one of their most valuable and loyal allies. The "cold war" and Soviet empire may have ceased to exist a decade earlier than it did had the US decided to push through to Berlin in 1945 regardless of casualties. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

http://www.cookiecentral.com/ seems to have a lot of good info. In any case, any decent browser should allow you to erase existing and block future cookies. The above URL contains articles that describe a few more intelligent tricks such as placing empty files in cookie directories etc.. You may lose some conveniece - but that's always been the price of security. The NSA thing sounds like an honest software glitch. But you never know - perhaps "doubleclick.com" is secretly run by them Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

no it's not - I cannot rewrite my arguments a dozen times. go back and read Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

I went to length to explain that Switzerland is nowhere near a reasonable comparison. As I said - if wealth and crime rate in the US would be anywhere near those in Switzerland there'd be a point of discussion. But there is none. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true