Azalin

I liked the spirit of snafu's rebuttal, but we're not talking Kings and individual votes, we're talking about electoral votes. Therefore I give round 1 to Nanker for his uncharacteristically serious and informative opening statement.

He makes a pretty mean cream soda too.

That's the spirit.

I say absolutely not. The_Dude gets to choose who goes first. I haven't seen Mr The_Dude around in a while. The pressure is on. Will he show up to debate, or will he forfeit?

I'll take con on Austin's having the best live music - I'll start the thread and wait for The_Dude to choose the order.

A pox upon thee, sir. You have been removed from my Christmas card list.

Honest answer - I don't know. I don't believe in adopting xenophobic policies, but it sure looks like a good portion of terror attacks in the west originate in neighborhoods where the people are not assimilating or otherwise integrating into the local culture. As far as I understand radical Islam (which I honestly do not understand at all), putting them to death for killing innocents won't deter them since they believe they will attain martyrdom. The only thing I can think of at this point is to consider imposing a moratorium on immigration and acceptance of refugees until a greater degree of assimilation and integration can be attained. It's definitely going to take a greater mind than mine to solve a problem like this. But gun ownership is a constitutional liberty and immigration is not. Violent death might be lowest now than ever before, but that's no reason to accept innocent people being murdered - there's no acceptable amount of killing as far as I'm concerned.

More - we need more. This is going too slow. We should have three or four matches going at a time. If people are too slow to the fight, then we whittle them out and move on to the next bunch! In other words, carnage! That's what we need here, my friend - pure, unmitigated, PPP-style carnage.

This is happening more and more, all across Europe. It's somehow easier for us to accept the murder of innocents when it happens in a culture and land as far away as the middle east - Shiites vs Sunni, Arab Vs Israeli, the eternal struggle that is the middle east. It's only when places like Brussels, Nice, London, Paris, Berlin, Orlando, San Bernadino, Fort Hood, New York, and Washington happen that we vow vengeance and mourn the dead. But it's happening in the west more frequently, and it's happening to people who are completely innocent. The victims are people who live far away from and have nothing at all to do with Islam. jihad, or anything remotely related to these evil bastards. The victims are people like us - liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and worst of all, westerners. Our freedom to choose how we live our lives; what philosophy or even theology in which we choose to base our personal values is what makes us their enemies. If we do not share their faith or believe that Sharia is the best set of laws for governing our society, then they believe we deserve to die. You only need to consider the aforementioned attacks to know this is true. Pray for the innocent dead. These people are victims. Too many have been lost. This needs to stop. The more western society prattles on with their political correctness, the more this is going to happen.

That was good.

Would you think it fair to say that the reason Reagan was able to withstand it (as opposed to the Nixon couldn't) was because of his amicable demeanor toward the press? Our current president might learn a lesson from that.

It sounds like they're describing typical confirmation bias. People tend to get their news and information from what they consider to be "trusted sources", most of which are simply biased toward the reader's preconceived point of view. People generally appear to be more concerned with "being right" and being able to back it up than with actually understanding issues. Personally, I find open discussion to be a good remedy for this. This place can be pretty irritating at times, but I've learned a lot from people on both sides here, if for no other reason than having to back up a position of my own without resorting to simply regurgitating sound bites.

The reason nobody seems to know about him or his greatness is because they've taken Zod out of the classroom.

Crazy is not how I would describe it. And what exactly is your definition of drama? Or flabbergasted? I thought I was being reasonable. A challenge to one's statements or ideas is not an attack, so don't take it as such. But I would ask you, if you are not advocating socialism for the US, then what's your point? Don't worry about making me feel better, either - you can't. That would imply that you have the ability to make me feel bad. You don't.

It does indeed sound as if you're advocating socialism, having listed five points you consider as being beneficial, and following up with "I could go on". Are the five happiest countries as you call them leaders in industry, technology, business, agriculture, etc with multicultural populations in excess of 320 million, that have constitutional liberties similar to those that we all enjoy?

What a great show that was. I still catch reruns from time to time. There's at least one good laugh in every episode, even after all these years.

General Disarray

Needless to say, his stomach was blackened by the time he had finished.

Colonel Mustard was always a favorite, provided you didn't encounter him in the conservatory with a candlestick.

Definitely Blake over Potter.

Yep, that's what clinging to consensus gets you. The belief that scientific fact is determined by popular vote never ceases to amuse me.

I'm not much of a conspiracy guy, but I don't close my mind to them either. The best way to sum up my take on the Kennedy assassination is that it's a lot more believable to me that there was more to the Kennedy assassination than there is to any 911 false-flag conspiracy. But that's just me.

I lived in Irving TX for approximately eight months back in 1997-1998 and worked in down town Dallas. Coming in from the suburbs, I would drive to the park & ride and take a bus in and out of the city. Every afternoon I took the same route home, and it wasn't until a couple of weeks before I moved back to Austin that I realized that I rode home every single day right past the book depository and Dealey Plaza, straight over the "X" painted in the road where JFK had been shot. I was very young when he was assassinated - I had just turned six, but I remember it quite well despite my age. Needless to say I felt like a bit of an imbecile when I realized how frequently I had passed over a spot that I've seen countless times in documentaries and news reels.