Iowa and the road to the Whitehouse

[CrespoBlows]

Couple of frigates? Learn your history. They sent 6. I checked the frigates in service (frigates were the main warships of the Navy at the time) from the years of 1800 to 1815, there were 13. The main warship today is the carrier. The US has 11 carrier groups. This is similar to committing 5 carrier groups to one conflict.

It was actually 7, and you're taking my use of the word "couple" literally.

No, it isn't. Very bad comparision. A lone carrier group consists of 9 ships. Way more firepower in a carrier group, and those United States frigates weren't even the strongest in the world. The British had 100 gun ships of the line in their navy. Those were the "Age of Sail" carrier groups. The USS Constitution had the most guns out of any ships, with 44. The United States sent a total of 7 ships in 1801, and a total of ten in 1815.

National security? Hmm, let me think, what does protecting merchant ships from piracy have to do with immediate, national security? Nothing.

American merchant ships were being attacked and sailors being imprisioned. The USS Philadelphia was captured. In your words, that would be like pirates capturing an entire carrier group. Not to mention, war was declared on the United States. What exactly was going in Iraq that was even that serious?

Where he loses me is his childish foreign policy position.

Which was the position of Robert Taft, Mr. Republican himself, and the Founding Fathers.

I don't understand how you think bombing nations into submission will foster any kind of goodwill toward the United States. Why has al-Qaeda, and terrorist numbers exploded since the invasion? Our foreign policy isn't working. That kook Ron Paul was warning about a backlash since the early 1980's.

For a free market guy, he's hopelessly naive about how much influence those "entanglements" foster the opening of markets. His utopia of a free global market doesn't exist, not without one governing body, without those entanglements.

Which ones are you referring to?

http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/...s/jeff1400.htm

http://www.100megspop3.com/bark/Beware.html


Why do we need government managed trade to have free trade? We don't need to be in NATO to trade with those nations. We don't need to be in Georgia to trade for their oil. We don't need to have influence in the Middle East to trade for oil. We'd probably could get it cheaper if we avoided it.

Hell, 13 sovereign states "entangled" themselves 200+ years ago for free markets and mutual support. What's happening now is similar, only on a larger scale.

You can't be serious.

The War Powers Resolution does a good job of bridging the extreme positions of "as commander in chief the executive can use miliary force as it wants" and "we can't use force without a formal declaration".

The War Powers Resolution has been ignored by every President since Nixon. I would prefer the commander in chief to consult the Congress before he begins an operation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/op...=1&oref=slogin

Furthermore, whether or not we agree on size/scope of the conflict is immaterial. This isn't about defending action in Iraq specifically. It's about the President as commander in chief and the enumerated powers of the US Constitution. If you disagree, that is yours (or should I say Ron's?), opinion, but don't try and sell it as a fact. The US Constitution is a very short document for the scope of what it governs. There's lots of open space, particulary when you look at the application of government by those that penned it.

Depends who you are talking about. Those who advocated no declaration war with the Barbary Pirates were the Federalist. Alexander Hamilton favored strong centralized power, loose interpation of the Constitution. Madison and Jefferson both favored stricter interpation of the Constitution. No one is a strict constitutionalist, because that would be insanity, but I think the philosophy of the document needs to be kept alive today. By that, I mean returning power to the states, avoiding foreign entanglements, etc. I believe that we need to get back to that, because it is dangerous when government can use their enumerated powers too broadly. All I am saying is that when we are going to commit a lot of cash and troops to a region, we need a declaration. The authorization given to the President is way too broad.

[ORS]

I'm absolutely serious. If you don't see the arrow of time pointing to one world governing body (not in our lifetimes, but that's the endgame), then I can't help you. Time moves on, the scale of sovereign bodies who group together in common interest increases in size. This is clear from the historical record.

[CrespoBlows]

I'm absolutely serious. If you don't see the arrow of time pointing to one world governing body (not in our lifetimes, but that's the endgame), then I can't help you. Time moves on, the scale of sovereign bodies who group together in common interest increases in size. This is clear from the historical record.

Do you support a one world governing body? It don't believe its feasible. Not unless you kill a lot of people. The 13 colonies had similar goals, shared similar heritage, customs, and culture. They were a relatively homogenous population. Do over 200 nations with completely different ethnic and cultural backgrounds compare to that?

[ORS]

To me, it isn't a question of whether or not I support it, because I see it as the inevitable conclusion of geopolitics. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

[CrespoBlows]

To me, it isn't a question of whether or not I support it, because I see it as the inevitable conclusion of geopolitics. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

I agree.

[Mr Crunchy]

You cant get 250M russians to think as 1
you cant get 1B chinese and indians to think as 1
you cant get the continent of afrika to stop killing each other in tribal conflicts that existed before the states were settled

1 world government?
perhaps but it wont happen in our lifetime or our kids lifetimes
it will take a nuclear war and a shit load of corresponding carnage to get this one world govt together

[ARod2212]

To those pinning the economic crisis on the right.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...=&pagewanted=1

From your gospel, the NY Times.

[a700hitter]

To me, it isn't a question of whether or not I support it, because I see it as the inevitable conclusion of geopolitics. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

I think it is coming sooner than anyone would think.

[Coco's Disciples]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

It's a site by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus. Basically takes his baseball predicting prowess and takes it to politics. It's cool, check it out.

[Mr Crunchy]

the 1 world economy is a fact,a thing of certainty and this week we have seen the banks around the world unite.....as far as 1 world govt goes,i dont see it.
i also cant vote for mccain any longer.
when his vp says she believes she will see jesus return to earth in her lifetime I cant get behind the old man anymore
his choice of vp fucked him up,i try not to vote for idiots.
sarah palin is a fucking idiot and mccain is too for selecting her

[Paradisecity]

If John McCain wins and he dies I swear to God I am moving to Canada.

I can almost walk there anyway.

[Mr Crunchy]

i love john mccain and have for a long time inspite of his foreign affairs agenda.
as an american i find our interference with our military to be overboard and rather unamerican in principle when it comes to iraq...i do like his stance on earmark spending and he is a true conservative in economics....
then he was in support of the wall street bailout which personally offends me.
when he went over board and lost me was when he selected mrs palin, i dont like willard romney, i wouldve taken a 45 day leave of absence to work for him if he selected charlie crist from florida,i wouldve assasinated joe leiberman if he was chosen...
people with duel citizenship and loyalties outside of our nation have no business on a national ticket.
i dont like obama, i dont fear his name or his color or his connections to jeremiah wright or billy ayers or tony resko but i do worry about his social agenda being counterproductive to my interests.

sara palin?
id love to face rake her with my forearm while giving her the hi hard one but thats the extent of my passion for her.
she insults my intelligence by winking at me
she insults my intelligence by those ""joe 6 pack"" references
she insults the entire female population by advocating rape victims taking their babies to term.
being the governor of alaska has its issues and they have problems just like the rest of the country but there are 10xs as many people living in a 30 mile radius of boston that there are in alaska,being a successful politician there is equel to being a city council member or a ward boss in ny.
and finally and not to offend those of us who are faithful in christ,buddah,bal,moses,allah or vishnu but i am extremely tired of the God and the Flag crap thats been force fed to us since ronnie reagan got elected and jerry falwell became a kind maker.
Lil George Bush and his crew of born agains and neo Zionists have fucked this country up and the world hates us for it.
I am well versed in the Christian faith.
I find the far rights so called Christian base anything but Christian in their actions and anyone who openly speaks of living in these end times is too far gone for me to be behind.
Mccain wouldve been ideal in 2000,unfortunetly he had to bow to the ultra right and made concessions that just blew me away from him.