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Anonymous wrote:Ohh, I see, you are right.
Sorry, I did not see this when I chimed it.
TheManWithAUsername wrote:Anonymous wrote:in his new book, is that another way of saying "tokens"?
? I think you misread a headline.
TMWAU is right. Powell accused Cheney of taking cheap shots at him and Rice. Odd that Gaddafi thinks more highly of Rice than Cheney does: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/gaddafi-loves-condi-rice/2011/03/04/gIQALw3rdJ_blog.html
jsteele wrote:takoma wrote:Jeff, it would help if each page told us whether we are logged in; sometimes I post and find I have lost my identity.
Ask and you will receive. Check the top of the left-hand column, above the navigation links.
Way to go! You have my vote for reelection.
TheManWithAUsername wrote:...
Another benefit of a screen name: you get to edit posts, like I just did for my "Nazi" typo.
Yes, it's like having a super power -- the ability to go back and relive your mistakes. Time travel!
Now all you anonymous Muggles, join us Wizards!
TheManWithAUsername wrote:Anonymous wrote:I do think that there would be greater civility, even if people were required to log in under anonymous user names. People naturally feel a desire to protect their reputations, even if those reputations are disconnected from real life identity. But there would also be less site traffic. It's a tradeoff that I'm sure Jeff has thought about.
Someone here also pointed out to me that it's too small a world, so you could be identified by your posts under certain circumstances. Then the person you work well with on the PTA might find out you're a neo-Natzi or something.
I hadn't thought of that. Now that you mention it, it's obvious to me who you are. I'm a man and I have a user name; you must be me. Especially since I agree with just about everything you say. And given my dumb sense of humor, that name of yours is exactly the sort of thing I would make up.
Okay, I admit I know that's not the case, and you and Jeff know it too. But who else would be gullible enough to believe this paragraph and not the previous one?
TheManWithAUsername wrote:I just keep the window open.
Careful, you may get wet!
(For those who don't already know, I have a tendency toward juvenile humor.)
TheManWithAUsername wrote:Usernames!
Yes! You are still as anonymous as you want to be, but at least we know from post to post that you are the same person, and this new post is not, for example, someone parodying you.
All you have to do is click HOME in the menu bar at the top of the page, and look above the menu bar on that page for the Log in link or the Register link, and then remember to log in when you come back after being away. Jeff, it would help if each page told us whether we are logged in; sometimes I post and find I have lost my identity.
Anonymous wrote:Of course it is. I am mocking the guy who always criticizes Obama's vacations.
I am waiting for a thread where every posting is an ironic comment by someone mocking the other side and nobody knows that it's all satire, thinking s/he is the only one subtle enough to use parody.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:There actually is an answer to this question, Mr. Steele. Nuclear strategy is a well-developed body of thought. The purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter, never to be used. In order to deter, you need the ability to retaliate in the event that anyone attacks you first. Given how devastating a nuclear first strike would be, you need to have enough nuclear missiles to ensure that a sufficient number survive to preserve a second-strike capacity. So, you need more of them than you might think, it depends on your assumptions regarding how effective a first strike would be based on the size, accuracy, etc. of the enemy warheads. You *could* avoid this problem by launching your retaliatory strike before the first strike arrives, but if that were the strategy we'd probably all be dead by now, due to false alarms. The certainty of a robust second-strike capability is a stabilizing feature that goes a long way toward preventing a nuclear war.
What a load of crap. You can't possibly have studied this in school, or you would know how many mistakes we made in nuclear deterrence. The evidence is in the record. All you have to do is to read presidential campaign history from the 1950's through 1960 to know that. Certainly the fact that we can achieve deterrence on a fraction of our past levels says that we were wrong before.
I can't think of a single person involved in arms negotiation who would call this a "well developed body of thought". You are a fraud.
I don't claim to be an expert, and I don't know whether the strategy described by the first PP is "correct", but it looks to me to be what we followed, or what we wanted the USSR to believe we were following. Even if first PP and I are wrong, you might try substance rather than insult to disabuse us of our error.
What may confuse OP bit about Harry Thomas Jr is that he is known as Tommy, probably to distinguish him from his father.
TheManWithAUsername wrote:Anonymous wrote:You *could* avoid this problem by launching your retaliatory strike before the first strike arrives, but if that were the strategy we'd probably all be dead by now, due to false alarms.
Are you speculating there, or do you know something about it? That is, have there been false alarms that would have resulted in retaliation if we didn't have such a large stockpile?
I'm surprised there are many false alarms at all, at our level of tech. Add to that that the false alarm would have to be of a massive first strike designed to take out our bases, and it seems very unlikely to me that such a mistake could occur even once. We're talking about the whole board lighting up a la Wargames, right?
There's more, though. Assume that you're right, that the point is to have the ability to second-strike after we've actually been hit by a massive first strike designed to take out our capacity to retaliate. That leaves at least two questions:
1) How would we in fact be able to retaliate, given "their" number of missiles?
2) Why would we bother? A strike large enough to take out most of our missiles would devastate the earth, not just this country, so we wouldn't have to retaliate.
(A third question is why we would want to ensure that the whole world, and not just our country, was destroyed, but I understand that that's part of the game of deterrence.)
I think you answered your own question. Although it would be crazy to retaliate, there is no deterrence unless the enemy believes you are hard-wired in advance to do automatically what would no longer make sense when the time actually arrives. That is why the term Mutual Assured Destruction was considered to have such an apropos acronym.
OP, what troubles are you referring to? I see old stuff about his sexcapades, but the only recent things I find are about Italy's financial problems putting him in jeopardy.
Anonymous wrote:Wow, someone really needs to get a life. What kind of person spends so much time responding to their own post in order to try to bait the liberals into a frenzy? Sad.
Just to clarify the prior exchanges, to which you were probably responding, the one that brought up smelling good as the most important was me trying to be cute. I did not realize I had not signed in and would be anonymous.
TheManWithAUsername wrote:takoma wrote:As to Lincoln's decision, though, we'll never know whether race relations would be better now if tha Confederacy had been allowed to stand and they had (presumably) given up slavery a couple of decades later. I'm certainly not advocating (in retrospect) another generation of slavery, just saying that judgment of his decision to fight secession is complex.
Why do you think it would have ended that soon?
Wishful thinking, I suppose. I might as well be an optimist when I can't be proven wrong.
Anonymous wrote:I think we should ban anyone who supports the right of secession. How can you have a President who believes in that? What if Lincoln shrugged his shoulders and said "eh. to each his own"?
I realize you were not being literal about the ban, since that would require amending the Constitution, so I'll agree that advocacy of secession is prima facie evidence that someone should not be elected president. As to Lincoln's decision, though, we'll never know whether race relations would be better now if tha Confederacy had been allowed to stand and they had (presumably) given up slavery a couple of decades later. I'm certainly not advocating (in retrospect) another generation of slavery, just saying that judgment of his decision to fight secession is complex.