@vaportrail said:

lol, this message is a double standard. but hey, I guess israel gets a pass for bulldozing homes, running over protestors with said bulldozers, and denying the displaced palestinians water and food! Both sides are at fault, to think otherwise is just willful ignorance.

So sorry, but no sympathy for scum bag Palestinians. They partied hard after 9/11 and are hardly above amoeba level in my book.

@vaportrail said:

lol, this message is a double standard. but hey, I guess israel gets a pass for bulldozing homes, running over protestors with said bulldozers, and denying the displaced palestinians water and food! Both sides are at fault, to think otherwise is just willful ignorance.

Unfortunately there are consequences for invading and attacking Israel.

Losing territory is 1 of those consequences.

Had the United States prevailed in the War of 1812 we'd own Detroit.

Maybe it's just as well....

WSS

@legacy-fan said:

I think I'll quote a Jewish friend of mine (Ha! so Raycess):

"Dear Israel,

Please ignore the international double standard placed on you and defend yourself and the people of your democracy as you need. And by that, I mean please put all those shit eating terrorists, who shoot rockets at your children, in the ground.

Yours,

- My friend's name."

Im ok with this tack.

lol, this message is a double standard. but hey, I guess israel gets a pass for bulldozing homes, running over protestors with said bulldozers, and denying the displaced palestinians water and food! Both sides are at fault, to think otherwise is just willful ignorance.

@vaportrail said:

Tough to say. The protests in Iran got pretty real in '09. Unfortunately, the depressing (lack of) results from them may have hurt the cause, but ya never know.

And the commentariat's incredibly bad at predicting these things. After the Tunisian gov't fell, many pundits insisted that the same couldn't possibly happen in Egypt. A google search of "Egypt is not Tunisia" yields 175,000 results.

Guess we need a Nate Silver of political revolutions.

@sadbrownsfan said:

Kind of getting off topic, but you never heard anyone attacking president Obama for directing bailout money to green energy companies?

Bail out money? Not really sure about that but yes he has written checks to a few green energy entities.

I'd have to look back over the thread but I'm sure I specified common sense, or something like that, alternatives.

Solar panels and windmills? Sure they could probably have an effect, not quite the same effect as say natural gas nuclear plants coal US oil at cetera.

And windmills are operating right now, no reason we don't build more. How about we build them in right to work states instead of China?

What are you opposed to wasting money?

Or is it okay just because they slap the word green on their company bio?

WSS

WSS

"Dear Israel,

Please ignore the international double standard placed on you and defend yourself and the people of your democracy as you need. And by that, I mean please put all those shit eating terrorists, who shoot rockets at your children, in the ground.

Yours,

- My friend's name."

Im ok with this tack.

It's a liberal clusterfuck on the liberal media today. These guys from ABC could have worked for Stalin or Hitler and won some psychotic patriot awards from the National Socialist Party.

@westside-steve said:

Or finding viable alternative sources, I'm not talking about wind and solar so much as I am nuclear and natural gas.

But as to decreasing demand? I haven't heard anyone come out against common sense conservation.

But lest we take our eyes of the real reason don't forget the dollar is propped up by oil, not gold anymore.

WSS

Kind of getting off topic, but you never heard anyone attacking president Obama for directing bailout money to green energy companies?

But as to decreasing demand? I haven't heard anyone come out against common sense conservation.

But lest we take our eyes of the real reason don't forget the dollar is propped up by oil, not gold anymore.

WSS

@westside-steve said:

...

What actually would ease the tension is if we can get the Lollipop Guild to quit blocking US energy production. The closer we get to energy independence the better. Of course China will still want oil so the Middle East will continue to be in same but for our part will have a better hand to play.

...

WSS

Funny you brought that up, there are 3 ways to become energy independent 1. increase supply to meet demand 2. decrease demand to meet supply or 3. increase supply while decreasing demand to meet in the middle. It seems one side of the political spectrum wants to only increase the supply side claiming a waste of money to develop things like smart cars and other green alternatives. While the other side only wants to decrease the demand but not increasing the supply at the risk of the environment. But neither side seems to be ok with doing a little bit of both at the same time.

@alo said:

Iran's got enemies other than the US & Israel who'll freak out if they get nukes. I bet Saudi Arabia would want to go nuclear, a very bad idea for a gov't that could get toppled by crazies.

If Pakistan, Iran, and Saudia Arabia all have nukes...I don't particularly like our odds of the shit never hitting the fan.

FYI Pakistan has nukes. But you are right about Saudia Arabia would want to get nukes if Iran does, so would Turkey.

Edit: Turkey has nuclear weapons also, but they borrow through NATO from the US.

And at least you understand what I mean by civilized.

Keep these crazy f****** from having a Bomb until the very last chance.

As far as actions we could take to make the region more peaceful? I'm thinking that's probably wishful thinking. I certainly don't think that throwing Israel under the bus will be very helpful. I think the Palestinian ordeal is nothing but an excuse. Uncivilized elements will just find different reasons for there, well, incivility.

What actually would ease the tension is if we can get the Lollipop Guild to quit blocking US energy production. The closer we get to energy independence the better. Of course China will still want oil so the Middle East will continue to be in same but for our part will have a better hand to play.

Keep in mind that it's been a long long time since the world has had a bench clearing brawl. Sooner or later everybody will have nuclear weapons. World War 3 will be no Night at the Opera.

No offense to you younger guys or your kids but I'm hoping we can kick that can down the road for 30 or so years.

WSS

Realists in the early 90's predicted that the absence of a shared Soviet threat would lead to a power struggle in W. Europe in which Germany would seek to reduce its relative weakness by developing nuclear weapons. John Mearsheimer argued that the US should just hand over nukes to Germany because a conflict over their program otherwise was inevitable.

Ultimately, that prediction proved to be kinda crazy because the region had changed so much since the years when Britain, France, and Germany bombed the shit out of each other. Germany didn't "need" nukes, which would have made spending so much dough on 'em irrational.

With that in mind, it seems like the best course of action would be a short-term plan to strongly discourage Iran from developing nukes, coupled with a long-term strategy to eliminate their desire to acquire them: either by changing the political dynamics in the region or the economics of it. Working towards Mideast peace could help with the former, depriving them of all that oil money could help achieve the latter.

Or the Iranian people could do us a solid and rage against their own regime, this time successfully.

@diehardbrownsfan said:

Why would any of that change my mind? They still stone people to death for adultery. They hang people for crimes we would get 30 days in jail for. So what is your point?

Yeah, and we put marijuana users in federal fuckmeintheass prison, while the assholes in the government and on wall street that were in large part responsible for the housing bubble get severance pay. Iran is clearly much worse in that regard than the US, but we still have our own issues. The problem with Iran is the Islamic fundamentalism, but guess what, the same secularization that you bitch about here is also going on over there! Women are being empowered over there, and I'll go ahead and predict that in my lifetime, there's going to be a 19th amendment-like shakedown in the Middle Eastern countries because you can't suppress the female half of your population when they're educated. With higher education comes less religiosity. But no, you won't get any of that because all the MSM wants to show are the zealots that are burning American flags.

Lastly, I just saw Argo. If you haven't seen it yet, go fucking watch it now, god dammit. I thought it was better than Lincoln.

One of two things will happen:

A - Israel quits acting like the spoiled brat in the region, and this would force both sides to talk to each other, or at the very least respect each other out of mutual fear. Imagine that! It'll be like a smaller Cold War.

If this happens, then it's going to result in a fuck ton of nuclear research, the scale of which has never been seen. It might be what gets us off of fossil fuels.

B - Maybe the whole region will get glassed, and we won't have to worry about which Retarded side to support anymore. On the plus side, the nuclear winter ends global warming and overpopulation; 2 birds, 1 stone.

If the US manages to stay out of the nuclear exchange, I'm happy with either outcome. Plus, we're going to be energy independent in 20 years, so there's no reason to keep appeasing any of the idiots in charge over there.

If Pakistan, Iran, and Saudia Arabia all have nukes...I don't particularly like our odds of the shit never hitting the fan.

WSS

@westside-steve said:

So why does Obama want to keep them from having a nuclear weapon?

WSS

To maintain the status quo in the region. Iran's gain of influence is at ours and Israel's expense. Like I said before, I think that us losing influence in that region is inevitable. It's a fight we can't win, and if they get nukes, Israel is forced to back off and act like everyone else.

WSS