Posts Made By: James Brown

Rod:

You have two clauses in your post:

1. It about time the stuff stops flowing downhill and the stink rises above where it belongs.

2. Just don't tell it to McCain and Palin and they still believe we "won" in Iraq.

Are these thoughts related? I read the article and it is about an incident in Afghanistan. Maybe you could let us know how this specific battlefield event in Afghanistan is related in any way to the broader historical question of whether we "won" in Iraq?

I doubt that the simple concepts of "won" and "lost" are applicable to war at more than the most simple level of analysis, but you would agree wouldn't you that the situation in Iraq is a lot better than you yourself would have predicted three years ago? I'm not going to ask you to give Bush any credit here, I'd hate to have you choke on your Cheerios, but still...

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

To reach out to Republicans on health care:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100207/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_health_care
A second herculean effort by our president at reaching out to the Republicans.
I'd sure can't wait to hear how they'll lower costs and stop the abuses on pre-existing conditions. Let's hear their plan and their proof they can...

Hi Rod:

I see from the article that this meeting is going to be televised. Given that the meetings to reconcile the House and Senate Bills were not, I wonder whether the President is sincere about reaching out to the Republicans.

Actually, I don't wonder at all. This is a photo-op for one purpose only, to better position the President to blame the Republicans if no insurance reform bill is ever reached.

Do you suppose that the President will have a similar televised meeting with the Democratic leadership to discuss a bill they think could pass both chambers? Clearly the Senate bill can not be passed in the House, or that is the angle they would have pursued.

If the President were sincere, he would have a meeting with both the Republican and Democratic leadership and present them with a moderate framework he supports. That makes more sense to me than playing political "gotcha" games. I won't hold my breath though. It looks to me like Obama has given up on any type of health care reform and is only interested in mitigating his failure by blame shifting.

Jim

Tom Reichel said:

Love the crib notes penned on Sarah Palin's hand @ the so-called "convention" in Nashville...and the softball interview where she had to reference her talking points by looking at her palm.. Remember John Mc Cain chose her...potentially a heart beat away from the Presidency :S

Hi Tom:

Welcome to the forum. I see you've been an Astromarter for two years and only have two posts. Remarkable restraint on your part, or... hopefully you didn't just lose your job?

In any case, Palin is a "has been" who is primarily good for comic relief I suppose. Why are you even interested in her at this point in time? There are lots of juicer political issues out there to dig into.

Jim

Come on Mike, If you're going to photoshop her at least let's have the star-spangled string bikini!

Jim

Tony Aguire said:



I am still proud of my country ...are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii0b2rpXJ5s

America...the ONLY SUPERPOWER

Instead of bitching, lets hear solutions.

Lets see Americans pulling together so we can keep our place.


or we can stay divided and be defeated....

Hi Tony:

We are all very proud of the USA. I disagree with your last line though. One of the themes I used to post now and then is that I believe we are not a divided country. That theme never got much traction here. Still, I think it is very apparent that on the most critically important political issues, the vast majority of US citizens speak with a united voice. This frees us up to argue like mad over secondary issues.

I'm not saying the secondary issues are unimportant. I'm just saying that these issues are secondary to more fundamental issues of politics and governance where the agreement is so universal that we sort of forget that the primary issues are political issues at all.

For example, there are a lot of things that make the USA great that Richard and Rod would agree upon 100%. Things like:

The fundamentals of the Bill of Rights.

The right to own property.

The right to work in the career you choose or are qualified for.

One man, one vote.

The right to move from state to state as you see fit.

The right to spend or invest at least most of your income (the after-tax part) as you see fit.

The necessity of some taxes to provide some level of national and state infrastructure.

The need for a reasonably independent Court system.

And so on.

If you think about it for a moment, we take these rights, obligations and others like them for granted, although most of Earth's inhabitants do not enjoy these rights. Compare the politics and governance of Nicaragua with next door neighbor Costa Rica. I know which style of governance upwards of 99% of US citizens would prefer.

Since we citizens almost unanimously agree on these primary issues of governance, we forget that these are in fact the fundamentals of politics. Our ancestors did not always have these rights wherever they came from and they fought and died to guarantee them.

So, I would argue that we are not a divided nation. We are an exceptionally unified nation. This gives us the liberty to argue about the details with great passion, which creates the illusion that we are divided. The press loves that illusion, but we all know at some level that it is just an illusion. Thus I would expect Richard and Rod (for example only) to be perfectly cordial if they met at a star party, which might not be the case if a Cuban ex-patriot in Florida met one of Castro’s henchmen in the street.

I first started thinking these thoughts because of something along these lines that Bill Clinton said which was quoted by Paul Harvey many years ago. Also, as true radical Ralph Nader once said (from his perspective) there isn't a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats. Ralph sees this as a crisis of course. I see it as the backbone of US strength.

Jim

Chad Cummins said:

I am just curious if anyone in this group is doing any spectographic analysis or anything that they publish. Variable stars? Just wondering really if outside of comets what else people work on or discover...

I sure don't, but check this out from regular Astromart contributor Anthony Ayiomamitis:

http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Photometry.htm

Make sure you check out his astrophotos too and his Analemma project too. Anthony's landscape/astro compositions are absolutely the best.

http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Solar-Analemma.htm

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

The Obama administration wants to consider potential monuments in Utah to prevent the land from being plundered by corporate interests and Oral Hatch is outraged? It doesn't appear from the comments in the article that too many seem to agree with him so just who does he really represent?
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14435850
Can't you just wait to see Flip Romney elected so he can stand there with Oral and shovel the first scoop of earth that turns the natural arches in Utah into a gravel pit?

Whoa, this is so similar to my first go-to with Rod, circa 2004. The issue then was development in my favorite part of Wyoming:

http://www.astromart.com/forums/viewpost.asp?forum_post_id=244793&poll_id=&news_id=&page=

I don’t want to see the scenic splendor of Utah compromised any more than Rod does. But we have to recognize that Utah is already 54% Federal land. It is wrong for the Feds to seize more without local input. Local input is one thing that Clinton and Obama are more than happy to blow off.

Jim

Mark Norby said:

We all know, I'm sure, that divorce is regulated by a secular statute.
Now consider a person of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, (altho the faith under discussion doesn't matter,) who have in their religion their own procedures. What I mean is, even if the state says that a Muslim is divorced, the religion's leaders may still consider the couple still married. They, as individuals may not remarry without fulfilling the religion's requirements for divorce.
Should the state recognize the religion's law against remarrying, and deny the individuals a secular marriage license, which would mean marrying outside of the faith?

No. Absolutely not. The bolded part would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Civil marriage includes the grant of certain rights, privileges and obligations by the state. There is a secular motivation (a benefit to society) and secular enforcement (divorce laws, property division and child support.) It is an entirely secular institution.

Religious marriage is an entirely non-secular sacrament granted or annulled by various religious authorities. From the state’s perspective there is only one permissible point of overlap, the use of the word "marriage" and the fact that both civil and religious marriages are often formalized in one combined (but still clearly two-part) ceremony.

Jim

Steve Thornton said:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33324.html

O.K., let's hear the excuses!

Excuses? Did you even read the article? The whole thing is about how R donors are appropriately pissed that Steele is so spendy. There is no excuse for the inexcusable. >

Excuses are for losers. We'll hear lots of excuses in November and in '12. I have links to a monumental pile of excuses posted here in November '04 if you would like to read through them.

Jim

jess tauber said:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132655.htm

Jess Tauber

I knew there was a reason I was monogamous.

J