magekillr

Um, the policies called, "The War on Drugs" is something proposed by the US, not some gang war battle about drugs (1). The most extreme drugs are the cause for concern with respect to these cartels, they barely even deal in marijuana. Legalizing marijuana is the first step, and you could even combine decriminalizing all other drugs with the legalization of marijuana. Decriminalization is really the only first step that I see towards making these cartels lose some of their power. We can go from there when we figure out how to truly stop them.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123518102536038463.html It seems as though Mexico is going to be one of Obama's biggest challenges in the coming years. Many analysts have said that Mexico poses a bigger threat to the security of the United States than radical terrorists (I can't find my link for this...). This uprising in violence and essential "take over" of many border cities, mixed with public reception of marijuana 1, could lead to a more sensible drug policy in America. Decriminalization among all drugs is a must. A sensible gun policy along the border may very well be necessary as well, as approximately 90% of the weaponry among the drug cartels come legally from US gun shops/shows 2. Eventually, our National Guard is going to have to go into Mexican border cities because the Mexican government can't find enough clean cops and military personal for Calderon's anti-Cartel efforts. It hasn't reached the point of a narco-state, yet. However, it is fast approaching the levels of one. The Mexican Army can currently contain the cartels, but for how long? Will this be the catalyst for the beginning of the end to the failed US Drug War? Or will we continue down the same path that we always have? Eric Holder recently called America as a nation of cowards when it comes to race issues, and I would agree with him. However, Mr. Holder had better ramp up some serious changes with respect to drug policy in America, or he is a part of those cowards himself.

Let's not stop there, venomai. We must also institutionalize it completely. Firstly, medical schools around the world must be forced to teach about torture, and its effects on the human body to determine when one has been tortured "too much". Surely a doctor must be present to determine if we've gone so far that we'd kill him, no? What about offering grants to find the best torture methods among researchers?

Yes, that's one of my many qualms with torturing under any circumstance, but this hypothetical deals with that. What it doesn't deal with is the lengths that one would go. What about the terrorists' children and family? We don't have the terrorist, but he agrees to comply once we torture his loved ones.

Where do you draw the line when using pure numbers for your justification? The reason that the numbers argument runs into trouble is because, as you stated in the latter paragraph, is that what if the authorities think that one person out of 5 has the information. Do you torture all of them for that one person? It's only 5, 4 being innocent, to save millions. Where is the line drawn? Why is 1 any less frivolous than 5, when compared with millions?

--Kenneth Himma Many flaws in this thinking, even beyond the "realism" of such a situation, but is torture ever acceptable under any circumstance?

Are you saying with regard to homosexuality? Please, that's ridiculous. That could be the case with what we're attracted to on the basis of race, or aesthetics, but not gender.

I like this chart: year/revenues/spending/growth GDP/unemployment rate 1929 -- -- -- 3.2% < Hoover era, Great Depression begins 1930 4.2%, 3.4%, - 9.4%, 8.7 1931 3.7 ,4.3, - 8.5, 15.9 1932 2.9, 7.0, -13.4, 23.6 1933 3.5, 8.1, - 2.1, 24.9 < FDR, New Deal begins; contraction ends March 1934 4.9, 10.8, + 7.7, 21.7 1935 5.3, 9.3, + 8.1, 20.1 1936 5.1, 10.6, +14.1, 16.9 1937 6.2, 8.7, + 5.0, 14.3 < recession begins, first major drop in government expenditures 1938 7.7, 7.8, - 4.5, 19.0 < recession ends, June 1939 7.2, 10.4, + 7.9, 17.2 1940 6.9, 9.9 1941 7.7 ,12.1 1942 10.3 ,24.8 1943 13.7 ,44.8 1944 21.7 ,45.3 1945 21.3 ,43.7 Kinda defeats the whole, "Government should be saving, people should be saving, and the government should be giving people tax cuts" argument from Libertarians and some conservatives.

War is horrible for the economy, debt, and obviously civilian loss, but it's great for a few contractors and cronies (Halliburton, Black Water, Lockheed). Please stop telling people that war spending is "good" for the economy. If FDR could have spent just as much money as he did on the war effort, and people produced and sold infrastructure (if that's possible) instead of guns and tanks, we would have spent a lot of money, but we would be able to see the returns on our investment. This is why infrastructure and long term = good.

http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/96xx/doc9619/Gregg.pdf I'm saying that the short term gains, which are SIGNIFICANT, are more effective than long term losses, which are less than 10% of the short term gains. Here's a good way to show why the stimulus is better: Scenario 1: 5 7 9 11 12 15 Scenario 2: 8 9 10 11 12 14 People saying it's bad are the ones looking at the final number in scenario 1, without adding up all the numbers together to realize that scenario 2 produces a much bigger number (because taking the sum is the proper way to interpret policy). The stimulus package is going to be effective because it allows high shorter term growth for slight long term trade-offs. One final summary so people understand: Instead of the bottom dropping out of the economy now, it'll merely fail to grow as fast for a few years later on with the passage of the stimulus. So instead of people starving without jobs, you'll have them not being able to buy a 27 inch TV and instead having to settle for a 25 inch.

Why? I forget if the stimulus is officially 1 trillion or 800 something billion, lets just say 800 billion for the sake of discussion. The Us is in effect printing 800 billion dollars for an 800 billion dollar spending project/stimulus. Printing 800 billion new bills has a way of causing inflation, granted with the whole world in economic trouble it wont be as bad of inflation. The other problem is that talking like the economy is going doomsday hurts markets based on emotional speculation. I'd rather have very minimal negative GDP that's expected by 2019 from this bill than lose any growth that could be gained from it (which is expected to be as high as 1.4 to 4.2% increase in GDP). The thing is, the losses from a crunching economy and no growth are far greater than any GDP loss that we'll lose 10 years from now due to inflation.

Why?

that was from the hannity interview right? Read the context, he says something to the effect of "if Obama is going to pursue turning america into a socialist country I want him to fail" Believe me, I dont like Rush limbaugh at all, he is an idiot, but he didnt say he wants obama to fail. He said he wants a socialist policy for america to fail, which Im sure many of you disagree with but the key thing is he said he wants policy to fail not the overall presidency. He wants the stimulus plan to fail. Rush Limbaugh doesn't know what socialism is. He wants it to fail because he knows full well that if it works then everything he's been talking about since Clinton will be one big lie (even though most people know it is already). He just wants to prove a political point, nothing more. This has nothing to do with "socialism" The "S" and the "N" words (socialism and nationalization) are like the boogie man to uneducated people that are still stuck in the Cold War. Now I'm not saying if you oppose the two that you're uneducated, I'm saying the uneducated doesn't know what socialism really is. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Rush Limbaugh ALWAYS does it, however. He never backs up his arguments with guests that know what they're talking about, it's just him blubbering. I agree many talking heads don't know much about economics, but that's why they read what economists say in order to talk about it. Rush just blabbers on about how "it's never worked" and, "this is such a waste of money, I hope it fails." This is still a murky and shallow amount of economists on their shows, but it's not hard to find even conservative economists supporting a stimulus: http://mediamatters.org/items/200902110027

I mean, if you guys wanna call Rush just a "talking head that entertains", that's great, but the reality is that millions take him seriously, and believe him to be the Second Coming of Christ. I wouldn't call him an entertainer, either. He's nothing but a hate mongering, racist, sexist, xenophobic moron. Who fails out of college, including ballroom dancing, I mean...really. Surely not someone that's knowledgeable about economics. http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archi ... o_tank.php No one hates America more than Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh. No one in their right mind would HOPE that what he is doing will fail, just so he can prove a political point. He is so deafly afraid of a second New Deal because it brought in 50 years of Democratic majorities, and shut morons like him out. Sad, Rush, that you'd put yourself and your ideology ahead of millions of people.

Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo was established well before Bush and so was waterboarding. Yes, but not for the reasons that Bush used it for. I am not talking about the detention fascility in and of itself, I'm talking about the suspension of Habeas Corpus for the prisoners. They were there without being charged, even though prior detainees were there WITH charges.

Guantanamo Bay.

Exactly. We don't know yet how this will work out. Too many "omg obama is failing" threads. All the Dems were taking pot shots at Bush during his term, now all the Repubs are taking shots at Obama, what goes around comes around. I am personally aiming for the kidneys :twisted: Might you reconsider your avatar? and it could be because Bush was a total failure at the end of and during his tenure, where criticism was warranted. I've already criticized Obama where I felt it was warranted, such as not listening to Paul Volcker enough, his continuous raids of Pakistan, and his hiding Bush from being convicted of War Crimes.

Oh no! Providing a fleet of hybrid vehicles for our federal employs would be AWFUL! It would bring down our carbon emissions, buy cars that people cannot afford right now because banks aren't loaning money, bring up demand for an industry that's currently dying and laying off employees, and be some of the first steps towards green energy! How DARE they spend this on these "pork" projects! I mean, it's not like the Postal Service is the largest federal employer in America...oh, nvm. By the way, what constitutes "pork", raven? By the GOP's standards, it's anything that isn't tax cuts (which do cost money, by the way). Here's what pork really is: My friend, Evan.

I most certainly am not a Democrat unless by Democrat you associate the party with Dennis Kucinich. Although he's a little protectionist, and supports unions too much for my taste, everything else is great :D . And no, there's a hell of a lot of conservatives here.

Yes, me too. Here is an argument about where Keynes went wrong, and why it's been since corrected: http://economistsview.typepad.com/econo ... acuum.html

Fail. Educate yourself about recession economics, and the burden of debt: http://economistsview.typepad.com/econo ... -debt.html You obviously have no training in economics, whatsoever. McCain's Former Economic Adviser: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/ ... nswer.html [hide=] [/hide] This part is funny: Stop talking about things that you have no knowledge of.

Why? why what? Why do you consider him "white", when he doesn't consider himself "white"?

Why? It's been debunked, repeatedly. These dumb xenophobic people continuously question this because they can't deal with him winning. Yah, AFTER Obama's citizenship was being "questioned" for several months. It was simply a counter that has pretty much the same evidence as the Obama people had, but they continued to press Obama because of his "foreignness".

Right, cause stealing people's cars, shooting random citizens, and being involved with gangs is such a much better format? Explain how they're so much different that Amazon continues to sell GTA, but removes this game?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... puter-game What are your thoughts on this? I think the game in itself is a pretty twisted idea, but then you have games like Grand Theft Auto that are still on their sales list. I think it's too much of a double standard. What about Call of Duty 4? Killing is fine, but rape isn't? How does this game differ from games where you graphically murder someone? Both are heinous crimes; how can we condone one and condemn another? I think that we are being desensitized to war and violence, and taught that the enemy is inherently "bad" and that God is on our side. While this desensitization has been taking place, we seem ever more fervent to rid the world of sexual taboos. Movies are rated R if they show a woman's boobs, but they're rated PG-13 if it's a thrilling horror movie with blood and gore (mild). Too much of a double standard there as well, but let's try and keep it to video games. Thoughts?