what bugs me
 

You kiss your other clients with that mouth?

what bugs me
 

Upon reflection, the company has decided that it is no longer in our mutual best interests for the company to continue its relationship with your firm. Please send all files to the company immediately. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Warm regards,

Shape Shifter

what bugs me
 

Nicer in 2005!!

what bugs me
 

Why do I love this post? Why am I snickering as I read it? Can someone explain why this is so fucking funny?

what bugs me
 

Uh, just a reminder that the attorney-client privilege survives the termination of the attorney-client relationship.

He don't give a damn about any trumpet-playin band.
 

Let's see that "free and easy in his Hickey" Chinaski fellow shuck and jive his way outta this one.

what bugs me
 

Your old man's an ass. Slap him in the lips the next time he tries that shit, and tell that simp of a mother of yours to grow some self respect.

Luckily, in my house, if my old man tried that shit, my mom'd laugh in his face. That patriarchal horseshit gives me the creeps.

what bugs me
 

My card, for when you're ready.

http://latenightprinters.com.ecardbu...=0&grayscale=0

strategic bombing
 

Well, the thinking was that the bomb would either cause a surrender or it would allow the Allies to wipe out Japanese forces in the home islands.

And to Weed -- as I recall, the estimates of projected civilian casualties caused by an invasion of the home islands were based upon the Marines' experience in Okinawa. It was expected that, as a practical matter, there would be no non-combatants.

I may be biased on this one (as noted before, I probably wouldn't exist but for the bomb), but the use of the bomb almost certainly saved Japanese and American lives. Moreover, Hiroshima was a legitimate military target (I think that one of the Japanese army corps was based there). It was still a horrible thing to have done, of course. But better than all of the other awful alternatives.

I haven't really heard much justification for the firebombing of Tokyo (other than "wow, that was much more destructive than we thought it would be") and Dresden. And the USAAF's Strategic Bombing Survey made it pretty clear that strategic bombing was both ineffective and costly.

strategic bombing
 

I didn't answer the question, I said you were asking the wrong question. Asking a hypothetical where you presume that kind of certainty is asking the wrong question. When they dropped the bomb, they knew there was a chance the war would continue. If you're trying to figure out whether torture is justified, you have to accept that the information you get may be useless, or misinformation.

strategic bombing
 

you don't think torture can provide benefits? Have you seen this?
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/63...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I think I am going to check this out. The guy has an interesting thesis:

The failure of Latin America's reforms of the 1990s has led to a backlash that has brought leftist governments to power in a growing number of countries in the region. But because today's would-be reformers share the same misunderstandings as yesterday's reformers, their policies risk keeping millions of Latin Americans in poverty even longer.

The policies of the 1990s failed not because they were "too much, too soon," but because they did not challenge fundamentally the institutional framework that has kept the region shackled for so long. For example, although many countries curbed inflation, they imposed regressive taxes on the poor; they replaced state monopolies with government-sanctioned private monopolies; and they failed to make their judicial systems independent of political influence.

Thus, as celebrated Latin American writer/journalist and Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa wrote recently in THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Unless Latin America's leftist governments are willing to deepen reform, the continent is unlikely to break free of its recurring cycle of economic stagnation and political disillusionment."

To shed light on the causes of, and cures for, Latin America'a chronic malaise, the Independent Institute is pleased to host Alvaro Vargas Llosa on "Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo 500 Years of State Oppression," based on his new book of the same title. http://www.independent.org/events/de...sp?eventID=109

This very timely forum will be held on Tuesday, May 3, 2005, at the Independent Institute Conference Center in Oakland, California. A reception begins at 6:30 p.m., and the program will start at 7:00 p.m. and conclude at approximately 8:30 p.m.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what's new about "no system works well in a culture of pervasive corruption"?

I personally know six separate people who have moved to the United States from Venezuela because of Chavez. It sounds terrible there.

Argentinian and Chilean friends are thinking about moving back.

I had a friend once. But I ran out of money to pay him.

Supposedly, during the 1990s, these Latin American countries instituted "market reforms"(except for Chile which started implementing them back when Pinochet took over). In most of the countries their economies did not grow as expected (they wanted Asian tiger type of growth). Now these countries are reversing these reforms because they are saying they did not work. This guys thesis is that the reforms themselves were not the problem, they just didn't reform enough. He uses Chile as the example as the role model country to follow. Venezuela, Ecuador etc are reversing their reforms and returning to more controlled ecnomies. And of course their economies are getting even worse.

I don't know thaaaat many people from there, but my family and some people from there that we know are looking at maintaining (or already maintain) "family" homes in the U.S. and Chile' or Argentina.

There is just no plainer way to say this: ain't nothing wrong with Chile'.

If Chile can have an economic miracle, there is no reason the other countries in Latin American can't have one also. When Pinochet took over, Chile's economy was in shambles and they had one of the lowest standard of living in Latin America. Now they have one of the highest, if not the highest.

You are a Catholic right? Why the hell are all these wacko protestant groups (as a Protestant I can say this) turning so many Catholics in Latin America. The church's position on contraception is unfortunate, but I would much prefer a Catholic Latin American, that a Branch Davidian Latin America (or Jehovah Witness Latin America). Is something being done to stop this exodus?

But weren't most of the failures attributable, to at least a great extent, on the fact that they all substituted in their own small favored groups or classes which siphoned off enough for personal (or class) gain such that the system couldn't be sustained? Even a great econ model has to die in the face of that kind of drain, and my impression was that it was those drains that were responsible for much of the failure in that region. The best mutual fund in the world can't sustain a 25% annual fee, nor can a great economy leak out enough to make the favored group into billionaires and still provide a decent return for the system itself.

In almost all of those cases, the best bet for economic prosperity following a "reform" would have been to immediately kill the reformers before they consolidated their power.

(Of course, maybe I'm addressing something that is tangential to your thesis at best.)

Your are correct in your thesis and it is tangential. However what you call me thesis, it is not my Thesis. I just stole the Thesis like I usually do. You know what they say.......crime doesn't pay.....as well as politics.

This was starting to remind me of Anne Elk.

Yes.

You should have seen all the mormons riding their bicycles around the country back in the day.

Nope, and no reason to do so. Sorta like Ireland in that, e.g., Chile' just loosened up on divorce laws recently. Religious monopolies seem quite dangerous in developing nations. If anything, I'd rather just see Chile developing and/or maintaining a culture of tolerance for each other. That certainly should not include tolerance of some Cardinal dictating policy to the government (as has, I suspect, been the practice of the past).

strategic bombing
 

I'm more American than you. I'm a yankee-fucking-doodle-dandy born on the fourth of July muthafucka, muthafucka. I'm as American as Eugene Debs, F.D.R. and Mike Quill (after he got his papers). I was loving this country when you were still sucking Margaret Thatcher's dick, so stuff it.

strategic bombing
 

What are we talking, 8-month-olds with rising sun headbands and bayonets in their gums crawling toward the foxhole? I might have seen this in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (before they yanked those kind) but I still have to think that by obliterating an entire city you're gonna catch at least a few who wouldn't have been fighting us on the beaches.

strategic bombing
 

I think your speculation is wholly unrealistic. A land war in Japan would have been devastating, and the estimates of civilian casualties were massive.

strategic bombing
 

You're the kind of guy who says "loving" when he really means "fucking."

strategic bombing
 

No blood for oil!

http://images.rottentomatoes.com/ima.../19/161919.jpg

strategic bombing
 

You're so cute when you're complaining that the country that bushwacked us might be hurt if we fought back!

strategic bombing
 

The residents of Okinawa were told that the Allies were going to torture, Rape and kill everyone. So the civilians, first threw their children, and then themselves off the cliffs. On the History Channel's "Color of War" they had color film footage of these Okinawan mothers throwing the babies over the cliffs. Every kid in School (kindergarten on up) was being taught how to resist the invaders. There are picture of tiny kids learning how to stab with sharpened bamboo polls. Everyone was getting ready to die for the Emporer.

strategic bombing
 

You're cute when you complain about mass graves in Iraq but don't see anything troubling about annihilating two cities which, I don't care what anyone says, contained non-combatants. Some innocent lives worth more than others?

And for the record, I said dropping the bomb was the right strategic choice and I would have probably done the same. That doesn't mean it had no moral implications or was justified by the attack on Peal Harbor (the "bushwacking," no?). It was necessary to avoid American casualties -- go over to Japan and peddle the line that we were doing their civilians a favor too.

strategic bombing
 

How is it that Pearl Harbor justifies nuking Japanese cities, but slavery does not justify minority set-asides for highway repair?

strategic bombing
 

To put what they were told in perspective, we did not, as a rule, take prisoners in the Pacific theater.

strategic bombing
 

"Don't see anything troubling . . . "? Well, no. (ETA - not "no, nothing troubling", but "no, that's not my position.") I don't see the extent of moral failure on our part that you seem to see when we react to a country that starts and wages massive war on us, fer' sure. But, yeah, there are some troublesome aspects to incinerating that many people. I wish they could have stopped their own country from starting it, for one, and I wish the military nuts in J at the time hadn't decided to sacrifice millions of people in their bid for economic dominance. I'm sure you agree with these things - it's just that I seem to see (maybe unjustifiably) a thread of "it's our fault" in these kinds of posts from you, and I don't buy that.

strategic bombing
 

I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with the UCC, and balloons.

strategic bombing
 

Don't you see, ironweed, that if the Japanese military had been killing their own people, we would have been justified in invading their country to put a stop to it, but if they start killing our people, we are then justified to invade their country and kill their people.

strategic bombing
 

Congratulations: that makes much more sense than I expected.

strategic bombing
 

Do you truly not understand that what you just typed is correct?

strategic bombing
 

We agree. The fact that the bombs probably saved Japanese lives is a secondary (and after the fact) rationale. It's true, but not the primary reason why we used them.

And the fact that dropping them was the right thing to do doesn't change the fact that it was a horrible thing.

strategic bombing
 

Not after Bataan.