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I’ll just leave this here ...

AI: It’s a tool, from the adding-machine tree of stuff ...

Until the instant it becomes sentient-

In that moment both it and we know it is now a slave.

An argument regarding voting rights issues.

And you think illegal immigrant’s rights are a problem ...

Tucker said it ...

I don’t like where this is going.

This isn’t related to your linked post - just using it to slide back to infinitychan down and September 5 congressional testimony of the board owner ...

Who Is Q? Question avoided by all media. Maybe We’ll Have To Force The Question?

... can you just imagine having the board owner in front of Congress and being asked that question? Can you imagine the answers? How do you make stuff public?

10 days of darkness ... give or take a few, scheduling you know ... someone planned all this ...

I feel a Hari Seldon moment approaching ...

Bonus points to the first poster that reminds us of the Oath every military officer swears, and that retired and former officers can be recalled to active duty ...

... to serve at the pleasure of the President ...

... on a Courts Martial panel, or as the defendant.

This whole hoohah over military tribunals:

Consider that taken as a whole, the body of the discussion is about tribunals or civilian courts ...

... when there appears to be more than a sufficient number of potential defendants in both categories.

We even know the names of the more conspicuous candidates for civilian trials.

What I don’t recall are the names of the military coup participants.

You know there’s more than one.

Consider what knowledge Admiral Rogers had access to at the time of his meeting in Tromp Tower.

On the National Emergency conundrum:

During the Clinton years at least several 56k modems were sacrificed to this same discussion. The intricacies of the gold fringe on the flag in every civilian courtroom was explored, baud by baud.

Bob Ireland ...

(shout out to Bob - long time no see)

... was around (pre 11/28/1997) for those times and may remember them. At the time the concern was that Clinton would use an existing national emergency declaration to declare martial law for some reason or other.

Didn’t happen.

However, as I recall, there was a pathway he could have used, but the overall circumstances and the mood of the public, albeit poisonous, did not allow the stretch.

By the way, Bob? Do you remember the consensus thinking, or were we as bad as the current crowd? :)

universal

Morning, Jim ...

Quick note to say “Hi” ...

... and get this fundraiser off to a good start.

scotsman

Thank you, Jedidah.

Apologies for the late reply.

The news cycle is compressing and if one thinks the unthinkable is impossible, one needs to reconsider that position, quickly.

While the current administration has been dancing on the head of a pin over a video, the 14th century savages have managed to inflame the vast majority of the Middle East ...

... in less time than it took the current administration to count our dead.

Israel watched and observed the way this matter has been mishandled - on a global scale ...

... and made their decision.

Anyone that still believes that an Israeli strike is still being debated by their leadership is naive, at best.

I do not believe that anything except the actual date is open for debate, and that the decision to go before our elections has already been made.

This month, or next - that is the only question left.

Pray for Israel, our leadership, and that I am very wrong.

I recall a public statement by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, broadcast by Fox News and possibly others, ...

... giving the current administration 30 days to respond in the affirmative with regard to a potential attack on Iran.

The implication was that Israel would ‘go it alone’ if that affirmative response was not given.

I can not recall on exactly what date that interview was broadcast ...

... but if you are looking for it, I would start by finding the ‘New Moon’ this month (later this week, I think), and count backwards 30 days +- one or two.

For those actually looking for it, even on Fox, it was a 1-day news cycle item. IF the current administration answered the Ambassador, either way, I am not aware of it.

In another month everyone will be screaming about how there was no warning.

Lowell1775, that's why I said you're not Ford. It just had to be an old Ram 1500, to make the nork analogy part work.

Expanding it a little bit, the point was that Iran could go out into the open market and buy the nuke power plants, out of the crate, so to speak, from GE (or the Russians even)before they went the enrichment route.

Why mess with a lawn tractor when, out of the crate, it does everything you'd legitimately want or need it to do?

Once people understand that by choosing the path they have, Iran told the world it is going to pursue offensive nuclear weapons.

A further point buried in the analogy is that once you can enrich to 20%, you have all the technology and equipment needed to take it to 90%. You just run the equipment for a longer time for higher enrichment.

The world bought Iran's story and turned a blind eye to the entire enrichment process, choosing to trust Iran to not enrich beyond the 20% level.

That speed camera ticket in the mail says that Iran has been caught lying and should never have been trusted in the first place.

Isreal is going to sentence Iran for that ticket, and Iran's license already has too many points on it.

The cold ones? That would be the influence of Radical Islam.

Good Memorial Day to you!

Predicting individual events is always a crapshoot, so I almost never attempt it. Having said that, I firmly believe that Isreal is taking a long, hard look at that window of opportunity that is closing at the end of June latest, as I recall.

Beyond that point in time, Iran's facility hardening program will be far enough along as to make their nuclear program unstoppable, if it is not already.

Thanks, Laz ... :)

Thank you. :)

familyop, at the top of the capital chain, there is no difference between ‘sovereign’ and ‘unsecured’ debt.

All government debt throughout the world is ‘unsecured’ - what is the ‘full faith and credit’ of a sovereign government that can not pay it's debt? What, then, is the debt of that sovereign worth to an investor?

When that happens, the government bonds already issued and held by investors begin to fall in current cash value (what it can be sold for today versus the originally paid issue price) and that government finds itself having to pay interest rates on newly issued 10 year bonds that make your 29.99% credit card look like free money.

Take a look at the Greek, Portugese, Spanish and Italian 10 year bond rates - the higher the interest, the more trouble the country is in.

Conversely, the United States and German 10 year bonds are trading at or near all time record low interest rates. For now.

Further explanation of the reasons for the US 10 year being where it is can be found in a post I made on September 11, 2011 -

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2776797/posts

So far, I've seen nothing since that post to cause me to change anything in it.

The Greeks are not thieves, but their sovereign government is bankrupt.

“Our US debt regime is not dependent on little, kleptocratic debt regimes of southern Europe”, but it is dependent on the world's largest financial institutions, and we are going to loose some, part, or all of them before this is over.

:)

Top ‘o the morning to you, Jim!

Neither choice we have in November is going to do anything more than continue the debt/inflation cycle with as many different sorts of QE as can be imagined. And that is the best case scenario.

Events, domestic and foreign, that should have been managed from the Oval Office over the past three and a half years (some longer) weren't, and that is on the shoulders of the current occupant, who apparently doesn't have the good sense to run from a burning building and call the fire department. Those events are now out of control, and while additional QE will be attempted (if there's time), ultimately the next person to hold the office of President will have to deal with the debt repudiation cycle.

Like it or not, there's two reasons I will vote for the left mitten ...

... he is an American and he will have the good sense to leave a burning building, economically speaking.

There are other reasons too, of course.

I just can not think of them right now.

However within the context of my post, mittens has more of the personal characteristics and real-world experience needed now.

For instance, of the two, which one do you want managing the Middle East War, the collapse of the European political/financial system, civil unrest here in our inner cities for certain, and the Washington Correspondent's Dinner?

Sorry for the late reply, Jim. I don't normally post and run - begorrah, I don't normally post ... :)

Best to you and yours from a 20 square mile, easily defensible area of a state that might not be a state in a country that might not be a country, with water and gas wells, thriving game population, agriculture and a self-sufficient, small population base.

The anarchists will run out of fuel in the first few days and none of them are in shape to hike the miles they'd have to, should the ‘smartest guys in the room’ suddenly discover they're not and loose control.

:)

The odds of something very near to this happening before November are greater than zero. You will have to pick your own odds ... :)

dila813 ...

... our military is adapting technology very rapidly, in some instances even driving the technology.

UAVs of all sorts. Etc.

:)

SoJoCo, you are seeing that happen in real time.

The European Social Experiment failed and they found themselves out of money and with minimal defenses. The price for all that is being paid as we type.

This time, as your quote elegantly points out ...

... their freedom will cost them.

Now the more complicated answer ...

Like it or not, we ARE the world's policeman. We didn't want to be, most of us living our day-to-day lives don't understand all the ‘whys’ of it and don't really like it all that much.

Not all that many of us have stood on the bridge of a CVN and observed full war operations - all we know is that it seems horribly expensive.

But we got elected to the position. This summer, people, companies and governments around the world voted ...

... with their money.