Muda69

https://gizmodo.com/alcohol-is-killing-more-americans-than-ever-1840862638 Where is the outrage? Why hasn't this insidious substance been banned outright here in the United States of America? Oh wait, we tried that once already.......................

You do know that females can now join Scouts, BSA troops? And you are right about the salty shipping costs. $9.25 for 4-6 boxes? No thanks.

Probably true. There is more advertising money for the MSM in the 2020 POTUS election and the associated impeachment trial.

Don't Believe Mike Pence's Spin About Iran and 9/11: https://reason.com/2020/01/06/dont-believe-mike-pence-about-iran-and-9-11/ There is no good reason to believe this is true. (And that goes as well for his follow-up claim about Soleimani plotting "imminent attacks"—more on that here.) The most obvious problem with Pence's claim is that 19 terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks, not 12. We'll be charitable and assume that was a typo. The 9/11 Commission established that between eight and 10 of the 9/11 hijackers traveled through Iran to get to Al Qaeda training facilities in neighboring Afghanistan. That is, presumably, the straw that Pence is grasping for here. But the report does not link Soleimani or anyone else in the Iranian regime to the plot. In fact, Soleimani's name is never mentioned in the commission's 1,200-page final report. Here's what the report does say about Iran's involvement—or lack thereof: The 9/11 hijackers—like Al Qaeda frontman Osama bin Laden—were mostly Saudi nationals. Saudi Arabia and Iran are arch rivals, and much of the post-9/11 chaos in the Middle East is due to those two regional powers jockeying for leverage against one another. Iran, run by hard-line Shiite Muslims, is unlikely to forge an alliance with Al Qaeda, a Sunni group with ties to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, after the attacks Iran actively helped the U.S. round-up members of Al Qaeda, including bin Laden's son. Writing at National Review, David Harsanyi argues that Pence's interpretation of the facts surrounding 9/11 is "mostly right" because Iran has backed other terrorist groups, including Hamas, run by Sunni Muslims. But Harsanyi has to concede that there is "no hard evidence that Soleimani himself was involved" in 9/11, and he admits that the "commission could unearth no evidence proving that the Iranians knew what the 9/11 team was planning (which doesn't mean they did not)." Mostly right? No. These arguments do not support Pence's expansive claims, and they certainly shouldn't convince anyone to go to war. If anything, that kind of Bush-era connect-the-dots-to-9/11 logic should make Americans more skeptical of the administration's case for war with Iran, because it is exactly the same playbook—sometimes even using the exact same players—that led the country into the Iraq quagmire. Needless to say, the fact that Soleimani wasn't involved in plotting 9/11 does not absolve him from a history of plotting attacks that did kill and maim hundreds of Americans, among others. But the question we should be asking is whether killing him keeps Americans safer. By escalating the threat of war, it does not do that at all. Meanwhile, most of those deadly attacks were only possible because the targets were Americans in Iraq—and those Americans were in Iraq, at least in part, because Mike Pence was wrong about whether to go to war nearly two decades ago. He's wrong again now. Do we really want another military quagmire, this time in Iran, where trillions of dollars and thousands of lives will be wasted?

https://reason.com/2020/01/08/can-we-stop-with-all-the-congressional-grandstanding/ Agreed. The less power government has over our lives the better. And too bad that most congressional hearings are all about sneering and 'scoring points' instead of actual learning the facts. Sound like several posters here on the GID........................

Yes.

The military-industrial complex run the federal government, not the people. Every president since Eisenhower has had to fall in line.

https://jalopnik.com/classic-tractors-from-the-80s-are-becoming-popular-with-1840854969 Modern tractors are incredibly sophisticated and expensive machines, with lots of very advanced technologies for operation and control, but the fundamental mechanical design hasn’t changed all that dramatically since the 1980s. In much the same way that a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle can get your ass to and from work at generally the same sort of speeds as a 2019 Volkswagen Passat, on the exact same roads, using the same basic principles, a 40-year-old tractor does essentially the same job as a modern one, at a fraction of the cost, and with the ability to effect repairs without involving John Deere reps to come out with a USB key or enlisting the help of Ukranian hackers. What would be interesting is if one of John Deere’s competitors were to look at this and see an opportunity for lower-tech but still useful modern tractors, sold at a price well below what a modern, CPU-choked Deere goes for. Perhaps Mahindra & Mahindra or Case or one of the other big tractor makers will wise up? With less regulations than the automotive world, and with a significant portion of the potential market actively hostile to massive increases in tech, you’d think this could be a good idea. To be fair, though, I don’t know jack feces about farming. But I do know it’d drive me up the wall if I legally wasn’t allowed to repair a vehicle I owned. Yep, sometimes "modern technology" isn't all it's cracked up to be.

"Well we are" is no answer and you know it. Why can't the likes of Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan defend themselves? Pakistan has nuclear weapons, isn't that a sufficient enough deterrent?

FTA: I took Accounting 101 during my college years and let me you if such extra credit would have been available I would jumped on it.

And why has the U.S. engaged in these proxy war in Iran over the decades? What is their purpose? If it used to be oil then frankly that ship has sailed. The United State of America has been the world's largest producer of oil since 2018: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6 So Mr. Trump's solution to these 'festering' proxy wars is to assassinate certain Iranian officials then follow that up with a 'real' war?

UMass Amherst Removed a Professor for Showing a Downfall Hitler Parody Video: https://reason.com/2020/01/06/umass-amherst-downfall-video-lowry-accounting/ UMass Amherst is a public university, and punishing a professor for an attempt at humor raises some troubling First Amendment issues. The administration should correct course and reinstate Lowry. No one should be encouraging accounting professors to make their classes even more boring. ..... Agreed. Public universities are not "safe spaces" nor should they be.

Thank you for the clarification. Do you, in your legal opinion, believe Mr. Underhill went too far in this case?

Why I Don’t Trust Trump on Iran: https://mises.org/power-market/why-i-don’t-trust-trump-iran I have contacted my elected representative in the U.S. Congress and urged him to demand the return of US troops from the Middle East.

https://reason.com/2020/01/06/divided-appeals-panel-slaps-federal-judge-for-allowing-jury-nullification-defense/ An interesting story, and yet another example of the federal government abusing the interstate commerce clause to effectively terrorize individuals when state statutes are already sufficient.

Another large dairy files for bankruptcy: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/business/borden-dairy-bankruptcy/index.html

Trump Wants to Target Iranian Cultural Sites, Says His Tweets Shall Serve as Notice to Congress: https://reason.com/2020/01/06/trump-wants-to-target-iranian-cultural-sites-says-his-tweets-shall-serve-as-notice-to-congress/ Destruction of cultural heritage sites and artifacts is opposed by the U.N. Security Council. The council—of which the U.S. is a permanent member—in 2015 condemned "the destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria … whether such destruction is incidental or deliberate, including targeted destruction of religious sites and objects." And condemning destruction of cultural sites and objects goes much further back than that. As the Los Angeles Times points out, the Hague Convention of 1907 said "all necessary steps must be taken" to spare "buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected." And the Geneva Convention states that "any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples." Acts such as these are considered by many to be a war crime, and a lot of U.S. media has been condemning them as such, as have some Democratic politicians. "Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It's a war crime," tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.). "The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.). Trump also announced over the weekend that his tweets shall serve as official notice to Congress of his intent to engage in military action against Iran. "These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," Trump tweeted on Sunday evening. Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) says all that needs to be said on this one: But for the record, here's how the House Foreign Affairs Committee responded: Quippy principles from Democratic leaders ring hollow, however, when party members in Congress have repeatedly voted against measures to rein in presidential war powers or require more congressional oversight. Trump's dangerous Twitter tantrums come as Iranian people have been pouring out in mourning over Soleimani, ("for now, Iran is united—in anger at the United States," says The New York Times) and the Iraqi parliament has voted the U.S. military out. Owing to that last bit, Trump has started threatening Iraq again. "If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame," the president said. Meanwhile, it hasn't taken long for the administration's justification for murdering Soleimani to start unraveling. Trump and company initially insisted that Soleimani's death was necessary because he posed an "imminent" threat to American citizens and was planning an upcoming attack that would cost hundreds of U.S. lives. But a range of administration officials suggest that Trump's political image was the only thing under imminent threat. The option of attacking Soleimani had been floating around as a potential (but not optimal) plan for months. .... Trump the Dictator.

The military-industrial complex:

Without Evidence of 'Imminent' Attack on Americans, the White House's Justification for Killing Iranian General Seems Hollow: https://reason.com/2020/01/04/absent-evidence-of-imminent-attack-on-americans-white-houses-justification-for-killing-iranian-general-collapses/ Why would Trump opt for a "far out" plan like assassinating a foreign official—an act of war, make no mistake about it—when other presidents have passed on the opportunity to do so? It could be simply Trump being Trump. The president wrote on Twitter that Soleimani "should have been taken out many years ago." And Vice President Mike Pence expanded on that idea in a thread posted to Twitter on Friday in which he laid out a long history of Soleimani's involvement in everything from the 9/11 plot to various attacks conducted by Iranian-backed militia since America invaded Iraq. There's no doubt that Soleimani has blood on his hands and that he worked to make America's ill-conceived occupation of Iraq even more of a disaster than it already was. It's highly likely that he was still doing that when he was killed on Thursday. But there's a big gap between saying that Soleimani was killed for his track record going back years or decades versus saying—as the White House and State Department have officially stated—that he was killed to prevent some impending, immediate threat. And this distinction matters. It matters as a philosophical or moral concern regarding how America will continue exercising its global police powers. Is the standard for assassinating foreign officials now as murky and minimal as proclaiming them to be "bad guys?" More importantly, it should matter in a very practical way to anyone who wants to soberly assess whether the White House did the right thing in droning Soleimani this week. The attack has ratcheted up tensions, caused the State Department to warn Americans to leave Iraq immediately (even if that means fleeing across the desert into another unfriendly country), and resulted in the Pentagon ordering thousands more Americans into harm's way. The onus is on the White House to prove that the alternative—not killing Soleimani—would have been worse. But it doesn't seem like that was the calculus that actually drove the decision to kill Soleimani at all. The Washington Post reports that Trump was "motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S. surveillance drone." (For what it's worth, I praised Trump when he called off that 2019 airstrike, a decision that likely saved dozens of lives and may have averted war.) Taken together, the reporting from the Post and the Times paint a picture of Trump making a crucial decision that could put lives at stake and further destabilize the Middle East because he wanted the media to portray him as a tough guy. Rather than facing down an immediate threat, it seems like the White House has created a much more dangerous situation because it retaliated against Soleimani for any number of prior offenses, including the attacks at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad last week. That's not the official story, of course, because as terrifying as "we assassinated a foreign official just because we wanted to, risk of war be damned" might be, "we assassinated a foreign official on a whim so the president would look like the tough guy portrayed in MAGA memes" sounds even worse.

How about a 25% reduction in the size and scope of the federal government, across all departments, agencies. bureaus, etc.? That should save some energy consumption right there.

Uni-party.

lol, interesting video until the "orange man bad" political rhetoric starts. How about just let the free market decide? And the insinuation that government (aka taxpayers) should buy "poor people" LED bulbs is eye-rolling, but a liberal staple. And CFL's frankly suck. I no longer use them. LED's are still too expensive. So I've stocked up on incandescent bulbs and have a several years supply now. Also for Christmas I received a couple of these: https://www.ucogear.com/candle-lanterns/ The website obviously markets them as primarily an outdoor product but I find they work fine indoors as well.

Historians Roast the 1619 Project: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/1619-project-top-historians-criticize-new-york-times-slavery-feature/ As one of the comment's to Mr. Lowry's opinion piece states:

I guess Mr. Trump now believes starting a "war" with Iran will help boost his re-election chances: Iran vows 'harsh' response to US killing of top general: https://apnews.com/e36db7c72c1adba1a6cae75091bc273d And the military-industrial complex gets richer, on the backs of American taxpayers and dead/wounded American servicemen. Despicable.