Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 16, 2009 16:41:55 GMT -5
1. Nikita wasn't just testing JFK with the missiles in Cuba. He was trying to close a strategic gap by bringing new weapons into play. 2. Read the article you posted again. The Russians will not be basing any aircraft in Cuba. 3. The Russians already have bombers close to our airspace (they resumed patrols a few years ago). A bomber stopping to refuel in Cuba doesn't change the strategic picture at all. JFK didn't act on Cuba because he was trying to look strong, he acted because the missiles in Cuba were a game changer. In 1962 the Soviets only had a few ICBM's, but they had lots of MRBM's and IRBM's. Putting the shorter range missiles in Cuba completely changed the strategic picture. In 2009, a 50-year old bomber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu-95) stopping in Cuba to refuel doesn't change the strategic picture at all. Raising tensions just for the sake of looking strong doesn't help anybody. Agree with #1 but Nikita would not have used this if he had not judged JFK to be weak, based on face-to-face meeting with him. As for #2, google the subject and you will see it's more than merely refueling. They are looking to base some bombers there. As for #3, it's true but they are limited to about 30 minutes on station now but if they could base the bombers in Cuba they would have extended time on station. I have a question, do you choose to totally ignore the possibility of Russia basing strategic bombers in Cuba? Bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons? I say that's a game changer as it augments their ICBM fleet. As for the possibility the Obama administration is conducting behind the scene negotiations with Russia, I hope that is going on but I seriously doubt it. Even if it is going on, it's usual to make some public statement like "this is serious" or the like. But your fears only make sense if you're unaware of the invention of the intercontinental ballistic missile. I know this might be a news flash, but Russia does not need airplanes to nuke us to smithereens. Furthermore, saber-rattling is not the proper response to every foreign policy situation. I don't see how responding with militaristic bluster would make the Russians less likely to base bombers in Cuba.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 15, 2009 18:07:58 GMT -5
Put a boot in their ass. That's probably the sort of nuanced foreign policy we should go for in this instance. Unless President Obama immediately unleashes global thermonuclear war on Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela, he will be acting weak in the face of grave hypothetical threats from the Russian air force chief. Please, Republicans, keep telling yourselves that you lost the last two elections because you weren't crazy enough.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 15, 2009 17:55:39 GMT -5
Yeah, why go to New York every year when you could go to such fabulous locations as Newark, Hartford, and Tampa. Not to mention Milwaukee in winter.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 13, 2009 15:53:35 GMT -5
Ozomatli at 9:30 last night. Very fun show. They are a latin, jazz-ish band and are good performers. They had one of the guys from Jurassic 5 with them last night - the one with the deep voice, can't remember his name right now. They are from LA and come around DC once or twice a year. Playing somewhere in Baltimore tonight. Chali 2na? He used to be with the band with his J5 DJ, Cut Chemist. I didn't know he was touring with them again.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 12, 2009 13:12:41 GMT -5
It gets even more trippy when Adama only speaks with lyrics from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in Season 4.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 12, 2009 10:32:14 GMT -5
I'm wondering what posters' reactions have been to President Obama's first weeks in office. I, obviously, am not a supporter of his policies and many of his actions to date but wanted to get reactions from others. I'll start it off with one observation and that concerns the bill he signed yesterday. During the campaign he pledged there would be no earmarks yet the bill contained many earmarks from both Republicans and Democrats. At the signing he decried the use of earmarks but signed it anyway rather than warning the Congress beforehand he would not sign it or actually vetoing it. Sorta reminded me of a friend that used to say "I'm going to stop procrastinating, starting tomorrow". I don't mean to have this thread only about earmarks but other early observation on his presidency. I'll bite. Generally, I'm happy. Campaign promises on Gitmo, torture, the global gag rule, Iraq withdrawal, and stem cells have all been enacted (admittedly, these aren't good things from your perspective, but you asked for my take). I've also enjoyed the release of the OLC memos, the Lily Ledbetter act, and the ending of DEA medical marijuana raids. Obama's term thus far has been dominated by two themes: reversing the Bush administration and the economic crisis. As important as these two are, they don't really give him any opening to create his own legacy, the "change you can believe in" so to speak. He's making the right noises thus far in terms of fundamental health care and energy reform (the transportation bill reauthorization next year will be telling), but neither of those projects are anywhere near fruition as of yet. Obviously, he has 4-8 years to go and it's early, but this should be noted nonetheless. I also think that Obama has no good options when it comes to the financial crisis, so he and Geithner are simply doing things to buy time and kick the can down the road. He's not being bold enough, in other words.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 12, 2009 10:15:46 GMT -5
I wasn't kidding. You walk you ass to the station. There are also things called buses. Use them. Chuck Norris turned 69 yesterday. I bet he still walks to the Metro....and when he gets there, the metro rides him. In other Chuck Norris news, he's apparently a secessionist now.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Ugh
Mar 12, 2009 10:13:30 GMT -5
Post by Bando on Mar 12, 2009 10:13:30 GMT -5
For the record, I don't "suck" blood. How terribly gauche. I drink it out of a bejeweled crystal goblet, of course. To follow Boz, I'd also like people to stop mocking my bleeding heart. It's a serious medical condition!
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 23:14:05 GMT -5
With the season all but over, might as well keep the B&G board humming along... As an Irish-American, I'm very sad to see killings once again unfolding in Northern Ireland. ( WaPo Link) Why I'm worried: - with a bad economy, the possibility of disaffected young men looking for a cause is even greater than before.
- in the past, the IRA could just quietly slip the names of dissidents to the British, or just kill them themselves. Now, I'm not sure Gerry Addams even knows who these people are.
- if Republican violence keeps up, it's more than likely that dissident Unionists will begin violent reprisals.
Why I'm hopeful: - The overwhelming majority of the Catholic and Protestant peoples and political establishment are very much opposed to any resumption of violence.
- These new dissidents probably view the old Sinn Fein/IRA hands as traitors to the cause. As such, people like Gerry Addams have no reason to help them at all, making them fairly marginal.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Ugh
Mar 11, 2009 22:53:55 GMT -5
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 22:53:55 GMT -5
Under the law, intent/purpose/knowledge > recklessness > negligence. I don't have my Black's Law Dictionary handy, but will post the definition tomorrow (unless one of the other thousand lawyers on HoyaTalk wants to ) And here's one of my big problems with the article. 'Intentionally' committing an act might not always be the relevant mental state, as the article would lead one to believe. In my jurisdiction, for example, leaving a child in the backseat of a car might appropriately be charged as a) criminally negligent homicide; b) abandoning/endangering a child; or c) injury to a child. For a), the actor must act with criminal negligence. For b) and c), the actor must act intentionally, knowingly or recklessly. If anyone's curious, the Texas definitions of those terms (sorry C2C, but Black's definitions have no bearing on criminal law unless a term is undefined, and mental states are always defined) can be found here. When A) a crime has been committed, according to the letter of the law (and in many jurisdictions, the stories described in this article are crimes according to the letter of the law); B) district attorneys are elected; and C) there is a dead child involved, it is not overly surprising that some of these cases go to jury trial. Taking the case to trial satisfies bloodsuckers like Boz, and the jury nullification/not guilty verdict satisfies bleeding hearts like Bando. If the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, well, most elected DAs don't rely on bleeding hearts for re-election anyways. However, Weingarten never delves deep enough into the workings of the criminal justice system, which would have made the article much more interesting, IMO. On page 2, Weingarten writes: "There may be no act of human failing that more fundamentally challenges our society's views about crime, punishment, justice and mercy." But he fails to state what our views are on those subjects, or delve into a discussion of our views on those subjects, or debate whether our criminal justice system is even adequately equipped to deal with these subjects. He skips what could be a very worthwhile discussion in favor of shoving gruesome story after gruesome story in the reader's face. If it bleeds it leads, I suppose. I think you're criticizing for an article he didn't write. His focus was how this impacts the families involved. Any criminal and justice aspects were not the thrust of his piece.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 19:46:28 GMT -5
Also, it looks like Metro is going to use stimulus funds to close its budget deficit, so no service will be cut ( Examiner link) I agree that we could use garage expansion at a lot of outlying stations, but I don't know if Metro is going to have the budget for that anytime soon. In the short term, they could probably implement performance parking (charging more during peak times, less during non-peak) to alleviate some congestion. The aim is to get more people using Metro and get them off the road. Increasing parking fees during rush hour is not a help. As for walking to the Metro as was suggested. Let's see you do it when you are well over 70 years old with a bum back. Well, I think Drums was joking, but most of the outer stations aren't walkable to anything anyway. Hey, I agree with you that we should expand garages. Performance parking won't have any affect on getting more people onto Metro, but it will make it possible for you to get a spot if you really need one. (conversely, this was why Metro's original proposal to charge for parking on weekends was stupid; if you want to encourage Metro use when there's plenty of space in the garage, charging for parking is counterproductive).
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Ugh
Mar 11, 2009 16:31:25 GMT -5
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 16:31:25 GMT -5
I hear what you're saying, Boz. I guess I'd just ask you (and this is echoing Weingarten, of course) what the point of prosecution would be. It's not like it would have any deterrent effect, and it's certainly not any more punishment than they're already inflicting upon themselves. Is this just a case of justice that has be implemented regardless of externalities?
(I don't really have a position either way, as I've never really thought about it. I'm just playing Devil's advocate here.)
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 15:15:33 GMT -5
Also, it looks like Metro is going to use stimulus funds to close its budget deficit, so no service will be cut ( Examiner link) Magic money!!! Yayyy! Isn't this exactly what a stimulus is supposed to do? It's not a long-term solution, obviously, but it keeps a transit-dependent populace from enduring heavy service cuts, which would just exacerbate the downturn.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 10:49:19 GMT -5
Next up: a Georgetown Metro stop. A pipe dream I know, one that most likely will never get realized, but a dream nonetheless. You're much more likely to see a light rail stop than a heavy metro line. Although they need to split the blue and orange lines at some point, so who knows?
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 10:32:44 GMT -5
I do, I also see some differences though. This team got markedly worse in comparison to it's peers as the season went on. That wasn't really the case with that UConn team, they just didn't play anybody so they started off hot by out-athleting teams. This team beat a great UConn team and a great Memphis team early, and by March looked like an NIT bubble team. There are similarities, but it's not the same season, and I don't think we've laid the same type of groundwork for future success as they did. I hope I'm wrong. You say that as if that Uconn team got any better as the season went on. They may not have gotten worse, but they certainly got no better. We showed potential this season that they never showed. This whole collapse from us was all mental. Anyone who doesn't see that is fooling themselves. If we just played this season instead of thinking and playing scared, we could have easily been .500 in the league. In the begginning of the season I said we were either going to be really good, or really bad because with young teams is usually one or the other. It turned out we were both, we just choose the worst part of the season to be really bad in. I am not exactly sure how they set the ground work to be really good and we haven't. A sophomore point guard that didn't play in the Big East the season before, a freshman center that has a ton of potential but is still kind of raw, a power forward that underperformed and didn't take on leadership duties, a shooting guard that was our of control too much during the season and a small forward that is playing out of position and had a lackluster season. No, didn't just describe the 2008-2009 Georgetown Hoyas, I described the 2006-2007 Uconn Huskies. Pg- Price, Sg- Dyson, SF-Austrie, Pf-Adrien, C- Thabeet. Does it mean we will have a similar next two season as them? No, I don't think we will for a variety of different reasons, one of them being I don't see Thompson forcing players out to bring in new ones or players getting arrested and failing out of school just yet. But I do think there is room for similar improvement that that group of players showed, and to act as if there was some obvious framework set for them that this group doesn't have is just revisionist history. Exactamundo. We are eerily similar to that UConn team. This doesn't mean we'll be good next season, but it does mean that we're not necessarily damned for all time, as other posters are saying.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 10:28:07 GMT -5
Also, it looks like Metro is going to use stimulus funds to close its budget deficit, so no service will be cut ( Examiner link) I agree that we could use garage expansion at a lot of outlying stations, but I don't know if Metro is going to have the budget for that anytime soon. In the short term, they could probably implement performance parking (charging more during peak times, less during non-peak) to alleviate some congestion.
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 11, 2009 10:15:02 GMT -5
I'm catching up to you folks, but I have a problem. I'm at the point in Season 3 where they've successfully fled New Caprica. Gaeta was just spared execution because of the yellow dog food bowl, Baltar is stuck on a Basestar, Starbuck is PMSing, Lee is fat (and let me tell you, looks hilarious)... and reference is made more than a few times to the people they left behind on New Caprica. Um... HELLO?!? They went back to (old) Caprica to save Anders and a couple dozen freedom fighters, but they won't consider going back to New Caprica to save what I can only imagine (and judging by the intro to the show giving me the survivor count) are a few thousand refugees? Am I just jumping the gun, should I wait a few more episodes... or are they seriously going to strand people back on New Caprica? Not a big deal, just a huge error in judgment by the producers if true, if you ask me. The Bill Adama I've grown to know would come up with a way to scout New Caprica one last time for any stragglers, especially considering it seems to be common knowledge some were left behind. I'm pretty sure "people we left on New Caprica" is a euphemism for "people who died on New Caprica"
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 10, 2009 18:20:19 GMT -5
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 10, 2009 16:06:12 GMT -5
So because you had higher expectations than the Esh years, you're more disappointed now than during school? Who, pray tell, gave you those higher expectations?
|
|
Bando
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
I've got some regrets!
Posts: 2,431
|
Post by Bando on Mar 10, 2009 16:02:55 GMT -5
I agree with Boz. Disband the basketball program and we should instead load all of this money into the football program to get that on par with our peer institutions in the Patriot League I'm really hoping this isn't a sarcasm fail.
|
|