racist.
Funny (political, religious) pictures
- Thread starter strawman
- Start date
figmentPez
Staff member
Of course, but he can still be the president's hat.
I was actually shocked by those findings, because the double stuffed 'looks' like it is more than double...
They have been fluffing the stuff to make it look bigger than it actually is...
Gas, at times it seems like you know what international relations are about, then you post these things that make it seem you have no idea.
He doesn't, most of the time anyway. Doesn't make him any less entertaining.
GasBandit
Staff member
We can't all be content with your guys' model of uniform incorrectness.
See? Comedy gold
Nope. Just take a simple line: If the UN says to go in, then the USA will. Or if an allied country ASKS for help with a conflict, then you can evaluate your alliance and help them (or not). Or if something of yours is directly assaulted (you're allowed to defend yourself) you retaliate. That's it unless the UN says "the UN is stepping in."
The (good) consequence of such is that people will finally see the UN for what it is: a dictator's club. It will lose all world respect from those that see it as having anything resembling moral authority (it doesn't have it, but people think it does). Shift the blame to them every time something bad happens that they vote to NOT intervene in. THEN things can change globally once they're cut out of anything resembling respect.
GasBandit
Staff member
While I don't disagree with you, I'm going to anyway just because that's kind of my thing.
As you note, the UN is usually paralyzed when it actually comes to intervening in a situation that one would normally consider to be the very reason for their existence. Hell, it's pretty much a given that any action worth taking will be vetoed by Russia, China, or both - regardless of the situation. The issue becomes, then, that when things actually need to get done, they get done outside the auspices of the UN. Which begs the question, why even have the UN at all?
The UN does have a minimally useful purpose - even if it is only to provide a forum for diplomats to lie to each other with raised voices on camera. It was part of why world war 3 stayed "Cold," and if that forum is removed it makes international diplomacy a fair amount less efficient. This in turn greases the skids on the paths to armed conflict. Without UN ballyhoo, we might already have been dropping bombs on Damascus and reading about it in the paper afterwards.
How about that the Affordable Care Act has around 400,000 words to it?
I always found the number of words in a bill argument to be the most unconvincing argument for why a bill was bad. We shouldn't have to dumb everything down to Michelle Bachmann's level, and god forbid we make our representatives WORK for us and all those perks they enjoy for their position of power.
Simplicity is better, fewer loopholes, less ambiguity. You have to work harder to keep a bill simple (and without tons of riders and pork added) and get the job done. Make bills specific, don't add funding for pet projects that involve livestock to a defense bill, or visa-versa.
Zappit
Staff member
Their staffs do most of the reading, and they have to put together the Cliff Notes version for the lazy fuckers. Most people on said staffs are quite in line with their bosses politically, and they're getting more politically extreme. Extremists tend to be less...analytical, considerate of consequences...intelligent, really. The lobbyists who write these bills just need to cram in lotsa words to cause them to throw their hands up and vote blindly.
Well unless you know of a way to make a congressman or senator "do their job", as you put it, and read through a 1,000 page bill, I'm also for reduction of bill size. People obviously don't give a flying fuck whether or not their congressman/senator fully reads a bill because they continue to elect them--while this "gives us what we deserve" it doesn't really fix anything. I WANT SOLUTIONS DAMNIT--and barring solutions, I'll have a beer.
The EU press is pretty bad at overstating "Heath and Safety Gone Mad" instances. For example, they claimed that bananas couldn't be too big, or that bartenders would have to start wearing hair nets, or that businesses couldn't put up christmas decorations due to fire hazards. All these rumors were circulated, mostly by the Daily Mail, and are all untrue.
I dunno, my Senator read the bills he voted on and they voted him out for an ideological hack, so yeah, we get what we deserve. I'm getting too old to care anymore.
Are we ever too young to be jaded? I'm too old for it to be angst.
And no, haven't had my midlife crisis yet. It's not as far away as you probably think, though.
North_Ranger
Staff member
There is a problem with EU legislation being rife with seemingly redundant phraseology, going into hyperextensive details and regulatory examples. According to my Basic Translation prof back at the university, this is because every piece of legislation has to be translated to every official language in the Union, so there is a very real need to limit language-based loopholes.