Nuke the damn oil leak!!

[funk de fino]

Sensantionalize? I think they've tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation. They've only talked about the impact to the USA, so far. They haven't talked about the international impact and how long it will take to recover from this. This is, at least, a half-century worth of damage.

Read his post again. You've just done it.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

Just one question. Why?

Oh I see, why live in a country that I "loathe", is that the question?

I find America to have many advantages over the country of my birth, as well as many flaws. We are planning on having dual citizenship and moving back and forth freely between both nations at whim.

Does anyone just "like" or "dislike" America? Does it have to be posters wanting to tear down the flag and dance naked through the burning White House vs those that think it is a shining beacon to the world, unmatched in history?


I love what America was supposed to be, and maybe by becoming an American I can, in some small way, help shape it more towards those lofty, and possibly unreachable goals. Does that answer satisfy?

PS - I have only (i believe) said that America is militaristic. I haven't, to my knowledge, made a judgment call on the morality of that militarism. Militarism took America from the fringes and made it the world's only superpower, and has helped secure its wealth ever since.

Labeling me a peace-nick idealist would be way off the mark, believe me.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Read his post again. You've just done it.

You really think saying the impacts will last 50 years is sensationalist? My but what an optimist you are.

 

[leftysergeant]

I just can't think of any other way to make corporations take the law seriously than to liquidate a few of them when they corrupt the government and kill people. Can you? Fines? Big whoop!

Extinction of the corporation and imprisonment for executives who know they broke the law sounds pretty effective to me.

If thjey don't get their chains yanked painfully, they will soon be back to trying to run the country, and the life of every thing on the planet is at risk again.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

I just can't think of any other way to make corporations take the law seriously than to liquidate a few of them when they corrupt the government and kill people. Can you? Fines? Big whoop!

Extinction of the corporation and imprisonment for executives who know they broke the law sounds pretty effective to me.

If thjey don't get their chains yanked painfully, they will soon be back to trying to run the country, and the life of every thing on the planet is at risk again.

Liquidate?

THIS guy isn't sat next to you by any chance?

 

[theprestige]

You know what?

I originally wrote a stream of crap trying to sound clever and debate this point, but instead I'll just post THIS.

If that's not the budget of a nation committed to warfare I don't know what is.

You do know that the U.S. defense budget underwrites a substantial proportion of the national security for all its allies?

Whatever country you came from, I guarantee that their demure, peaceable defense budget is possible in large part due to the military assets the U.S. is ready and willing to use on their behalf. This is especially true if you hail from Europe, and are therefore almost certainly a beneficiary of NATO--to which the U.S. has committed more resources than all the other members combined.

 

[Skeptic]

Extinction of the corporation and imprisonment for executives who know they broke the law sounds pretty effective to me.

This is, quite literally, a quote from Lenin, by the way.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

You do know that the U.S. defense budget underwrites a substantial proportion of the national security for all its allies?

Whatever country you came from, I guarantee that their demure, peaceable defense budget is possible in large part due to the military assets the U.S. is ready and willing to use on their behalf. This is especially true if you hail from Europe, and are therefore almost certainly a beneficiary of NATO--to which the U.S. has committed more resources than all the other members combined.

See my post above.

I make no MORAL stance about American militarism, I merely acknowledge its existence.

In fact, I have far more issue with the self deception about how America utilizes it's military might, than the actual utilization itself.

Do you get where I'm I'm coming from?

 

[Skeptic]

I love what America was supposed to be, and maybe by becoming an American I can, in some small way, help shape it more towards those lofty, and possibly unreachable goals. Does that answer satisfy?

You're making excuses... for which there is no need.

If your real goal was to make the country better, to move it toward an ideal, you'd be far better moving to some African and Asian country, where your efforts to improve the place would be much more likely to be effective, saving many more lives, for example.

The truth is that you came to America to improve your own life. So what? That's what America is for. The genius of America is to realize that when people do that, they, on the whole, make the country better much more than the usual country-improvers and utopia-chasers.

An immigrant who came to America and opened a deli improves the residents' convenience in the neighborhood where it's opened, thus improving America. A professor who flies in to give lectures about "the awful horrific American imperialism" or "How to defeat American militaristic chauvinism" or similar attempts at "improving" America only "improves" his own ego.

P.S.

As an aside, these folks, by the way, are typically contemptuous of the working-class deli-opening guys, in whose name they claim to speak. I cannot see why. It's easy to teach a deli owner to give passable lectures on "the Marxist-feminist criticism of American capitalist imperialism" (or the equivalent). It would be a rare "American studies" professor indeed who could run a deli without the deli losing most of its customers within a week and going bankrupt in a month.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

As an aside, these folks, by the way, are typically contemptuous of the working-class deli-opening guys, in whose name they claim to speak. I cannot see why. It's easy to teach a deli owner to give passable lectures on "the Marxist-feminist criticism of American capitalist imperialism" (or the equivalent). It would be a rare "American studies" professor indeed who could run a deli without the deli losing most of its customers within a week and going bankrupt in a month.

Once the ambient static electricity engines are up and running, there will be no more need of deli owners.

 

[theprestige]

See my post above.

I make no MORAL stance about American militarism, I merely acknowledge its existence.

In fact, I have far more issue with the self deception about how America utilizes it's military might, than the actual utilization itself.

Do you get where I'm I'm coming from?

Not really, no. You note the U.S. military budget as being indicative of a society committed to warfare, but you have no moral stance on this? Why bring it up then?

You accuse Americans of self-deception about how their military might is used, but you have no moral stance? Really?

You imply (quite strongly) that you believe that American society is committed to warfare, and not to peacekeeping (as evidenced, you propose, by their military budget), but you have no moral stance on this?

This seems to me to be so improbable as to completely obscure wherever it is that you would have me "get" that you are "coming from".

So where are you really coming from?

 

[theprestige]

Once the ambient static electricity engines are up and running, there will be no more need of deli owners.

No, I'm pretty sure that once the ambient static electricity engines are up and running, the deli owners will use them to keep their meats and cheeses at suitable temperatures, thereby increasing quality while decreasing costs, and making their services more in demand than ever.

 

[Nova Land]

Extinction of the corporation and imprisonment for executives who know they broke the law sounds pretty effective to me.

This is, quite literally, a quote from Lenin...

If this is a literal quote from Lenin, could you provide a primary source in which it appears?

Perhaps you mean the idea expressed sounds to you like something you feel Lenin might have agreed with. That would, of course, be quite different from being a literal quote from Lenin.

I'm sure Lenin had many uncomplimentary thoughts about corporations and corporate executives. But the idea that executives who knowingly break the law should go to jail does not sound uniquely (or even distinctively) Leninesque. It sounds like a reasonable position which could have been espoused by many respected US politicians -- as does the idea that corporations which engage in deliberate and serious lawbreaking deserve to be put out of business.

 

[Gazpacho]

America was born via war, hence Americans tend towards war as a solution.

Most nations were born via war.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

Not really, no. You note the U.S. military budget as being indicative of a society committed to warfare, but you have no moral stance on this? Why bring it up then?

You accuse Americans of self-deception about how their military might is used, but you have no moral stance? Really?

You imply (quite strongly) that you believe that American society is committed to warfare, and not to peacekeeping (as evidenced, you propose, by their military budget), but you have no moral stance on this?

This seems to me to be so improbable as to completely obscure wherever it is that you would have me "get" that you are "coming from".

So where are you really coming from?

That's some paranoia you've got there.

Even Freud would tell you, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I'm sorry that I can't be the secret America hater gnawing at the roots of liberty or whatever.


I perceive America as being like the Roman Empire, or the British Empire when the East Indian Trading Company had massive political clout. A nation forwarding it's interests primarily through military might.

I'd also comment that those powers were, in general terms, more honest with themselves about how they used their military might.

I don't really object to what America is, more to the mythology of what some seem to think it is. It's a powerful myth, as illustrated by the reaction of certain parties at the slightest whiff of criticism of any aspect of America or Americans.

I'm actually rather fond of the place.

 

[Skeptic]

If this is a literal quote from Lenin, could you provide a primary source in which it appears?

The part about "extinguishing" the corporation as the best solution.

As for them being arrested: you know as well as I do LS doesn't care if the executives are actually guilty of anything -- as Lenin said, the police is simply an "instrument of state power" to spread socialism.

 

[Kthulhut Fhtagn]

If that is what it takes to change the attitudes of the corporate idiots, yes. I also think that Don Blankenship should be in jail and all his assets liquidated. Worker safety should come first. If your business model fails because of it, you have no business being in business. The idea that corporations have huiman rights is absurd, but they asked for it. Let them suffer human penalties as well

You may not agree that corporations should have human rights but Don Blankenship does have human rights. Tossing him in jail and liquidating all of his assets violates what constitutional amendment again?

 

[lionking]

Its not a ridiculous idea.

We explored it (but did not do it) with Project Plowshare, the Soviets killed several gas fountains this way.

In the (vain) hope of getting this thread back on topic, did the Soviets do this a mile under water?

 

[Damien Evans]

America wasn't born via war. It was born via the pursuit of FREEDOM! It was this honorable and noble quest for....

ha ha, I nearly got it all the way out. Hoo, boy. I haz the humerz. But honestly, can you think of a nation that wasn't born via war?

New Zealand. San Marino. Monaco.

 

[Skeptic]

You may not agree that corporations should have human rights but Don Blankenship does have human rights. Tossing him in jail and liquidating all of his assets violates what constitutional amendment again?

For LS, evil capitalist pigs have no human rights.