TomAiello

Which is really too bad. Although I have had the pleasure of getting to play with some pre-1986 stuff, the cost of ownership is so very high that its not even a dream of the hope of a possibility at this point in my life. Thank you both for all the information. Get together 5 friends and charter a trust. Then you each throw in the cost of an EBR, and buy an AC 556. Do it again and get a MAC-10. I bet you could find some folks who were interested enough to actually do it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Sorry. I was just listening to the President. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Absolutely. While I'm a little scared about what comes down the pipe in the next several years, in the longer term, having a supermajority (and controlling both houses of Congress and the white house) is going to be a huge liability, simply because you can't please all the people all the time, and it's going to be tough to make excuses when you have total control. Well, aside from the fact that I bet we're still hearing how everything is Bush's fault for at least 3 more years. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It appears that we're being told that it will solve things--so long as the innocents we're killing are in Afghanistan, instead of Iraq. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That wasn't the issue. He knew that those who showed up at the polls would vote for him. What he wanted (and wasn't getting) was organizations and volunteers to help with the campaign. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You often say things like that. Do you have some support for that position? Perhaps start another thread, so we can discuss it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Which is an excellent reason, from a strategic standpoint, not to pick him. Let Palin get steamrollered by Obama, and keep Jindal in reserve as a potential for 2016. An ethnic minority with immigrant roots pushes the party in a much healthier direction, long term. There are several other below-the-radar Republicans with similar backgrounds, and I expect that one (or more) of them will be the rejuvenator that the GOP is searching for. Anh Cao for president in 2016? I think the GOP could do a lot worse. For those not familiar with him, that last bit is obviously rhetorical. Cao, as a Vietnamese immigrant, is not eligible for the presidency. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

No, I don't. Honestly, I think that there's no chance of a republican unseating Obama in 2012, so it's possible that ending her presidential aspirations as a throwaway off-cycle candidate is actually going to be the best outcome for the GOP. I'd certainly rather see her losing in 2012 than losing in 2016, when the Republicans are likely to regain the white house, assuming they don't run a total loser. I think that McCain probably thought that the best place for her in 2012 was sitting around as vice president, not interfering with party politics until after he had safely retired in 2016. Obviously that was a pretty big gamble (given that the election was statistically almost a certain democratic win), but John McCain is nothing if not a confident risk taker. It's a bit premature to cast around for the new face of the Republican party. No one who's politically saavy is likely to want to step out right now, when they'll get steamrollered by the Obama juggernaut. Better to wait until the 2014 midterm elections, and then the 2016 presidential election, and let Palin be the one who takes the steamrollering. On the other hand, I could be mis-estimating Obama's staying power, a la Bush in 1991, and Palin might be the Republican version of Clinton, but I really don't think so at this point. The most likely things to sap the Obama popularity (deficit spending on a morass of a war) aren't things that point to Palin as the solution. If the war in Afghanistan drags on until after the next Presidential election (and I think it will), there's a real chance for a pro-peace Republican candidate to emerge and gather national popularity, and a pro-peace Republican is almost certainly going to come from the libertarian wing of the party. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

To be fair, the other options weren't great either. Bobby Jindal was probably the second choice, and he wasn't a she, isn't nearly so cute (although he's young, which is a big plus), and is Catholic which doesn't tend to motivate the evangelicals as much. Who would you have suggested to them? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I dunno. I could put together a pretty good argument that the election was a lot closer than it would have been had McCain picked Lieberman, or some other more traditional choice. Examining other election results tends to indicate that their response would have been to stay home. Politics is not, apparently, their top priority, which means the trick is to get them out to volunteer, and doing that requires something they like. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'm not a part of her wing of the party, but picking her as the VP nominee was actually a pretty sound choice, tactically. 1) She was a woman. We all know that we'd like to deny that matters, but the fact is that it does matter. 2) She's young and attractive. When you're running an old curmudgeon like John McCain against a young hottie like Barack Obama, you damn sure want some hottie power of your own up on the stage. 3) She's a darling of the evangelical christian right. McCain had zero traction in that camp, and he knew that their activists were critical to the Bush victories. She was his way of getting them to work for him. Note that I'm not saying I'm a fan of hers, or that I agree with her on much (I do on some things, but not most things). But I think that her selection was a very good tactical choice for the McCain campaign, given their situation. Pretty much the only negative that comes of that is after the election, when she's been elevated to national spotlight status, and the rest of the GOP has to deal with it. That's a problem, sure, but not the top thing on your mind when you're trying to win the Presidential election. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

He was actually an actor before he ran for Senate. He became an actor because there was a movie based on one of his cases, and when the film folks interviewed him to try to sort out who to cast as him, they thought he'd do a better job playing himself. From Wikipedia: I still think his all time best line was "this business will get out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it" from Hunt For Red October. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's business as usual in DC. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It'll cost a couple bucks, but the best way to be sure you're legal is to consult a lawyer, licensed in your state, who is familiar with the process. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It does? Billvon spent some time explaining, back a ways, that it actually increases at a greater rate. Bill, can you clarify the science for us again? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Presidents of the United States have historically been dehumanized and oppressed? Is that before or after they have historically high popularity ratings and complete filibuster proof control of Congress? Yep, sounds like pretty terrible oppression to me. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

And are some animals more equal than others, also? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I think the truly anti-war folks mostly voted for Ron Paul. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That's not the reason. The reason is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the politically correct mentality that cries "oppression" in only one of the two cases when the exact same term is used. It does take a pretty good victim complex to somehow think that the exact terminology, caricatures and names, when recycled by the other side, are somehow extra bad this time around. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Right. Which is exactly my point. The minority believed that an absence of bias in the test wasn't relevant. The majority held that it was relevant, and that without bias in the test, the results were fair, regardless of whether they clove to some preconceived notions of racial balance. The idea that a totally fair process must be discarded because it doesn't give the result you want is practically the definition of social engineering. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

He's the most powerful man in the world. I'm sure he can take the same names and caricatures used against his predecessor. He doesn't need the protections of politically correct language policing. Insisting that those caricatures are racist is demeaning to the President and his achievements. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It didn't. And no one is saying that it did. Even the dissent doesn't claim the test was biased--just that it didn't meet the social engineering targets, I don't know why I bother, but once again, not true. The dissent makes no mention of social engineering targets. It's based largely around precedent. I'm beginning to think that you're just saying this over and over to cause my post count to go up. If you could show me part of the dissent that says there was a bias in the test, that would help. From your latest post: That says nothing at all about bias in the test. It tacitly admits that there was _no bias_. We're saying the same thing. The decision is based on disparate results, even when the test is unbiased. Of course the dissent doesn't call them social engineering targets. They use politically correct language, as do you, referring to the desired results as "racially balanced" or other vaguely defined terms, all of which amount to the same thing: a racial quota that was targeted, and failing to meet the quota the--totally fair--results must be discarded. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It didn't. And no one is saying that it did. Even the dissent doesn't claim the test was biased--just that it didn't meet the social engineering targets. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Ron Paul is a way better standard bearer for Libertarians than Bob Barr. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

First thing I did. Mine is a one piece replacement tube. I actually put a telescoping stock, mag extension and oversize safety on it immediately after getting it. Mine's the stock black color. It'll probably stay that way. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com