Free Republic

We certainly know all about the Doolittle raid, but apparently you don’t as you seem to be confounding it with later bombings raids that actually did damage to Japan. The Doolittle raid was more about morale than anything and did little damage to Japan. It was meant to shake Japan’s confidence in its invulnerability. Since it occurred well before any of the island hopping campaign, it was a small scale carrier based force that was at the outer limits of its effective range (bombers had to land in China after the raid). Larger scale raids did not take place until later in the war, after island bases such as Guadalcanal were occupied. IncreAsing the effectiveness of bombing raids was also much of the impetus behind taking Iwo Jima and Okinawa, since these provided forward bases within range for fighter escorts for the bombers.

Usually suicide invalidates life insurance policies anyway, so it wasn’t likely they would pay regardless of his employment status.

True, but he probably needs to be committed :)

That’s probably true, but if the senile old pudding brain in the White House keeps promoting what these Muslims see as pro-Israel policies, they might stay home and not vote. Short of calling for the immediate disbandment of the nation of Israel and the immediate takeover of all of Israel by Palestinians, it would be tough to think of any policy that they would not consider to be pro-Israel.

Even old mush brain won’t go that far, so it isn’t likely that these Muslims will support him. There is certainly hope that they might stay home and that could make a big difference in a close election in MI.

Forget E551. It’s DHMO that is the real killer - and it’s in every single food we eat!

http://www.dhmo.org

It’s called Lagrange points. Look it up. Basically a device like this sunshade placed at a Lagrange point will maintain a constant position relative to the earth and sun at all times as the earth orbits the sun. There are issues with this idea, but maintaining the position of the shade would not be one of them. Gravity will take care of it.

The really ironic part is that those who whine about the suffering of the criminal and clamor for more humane methods of execution are often proposing methods that are less humane and cause more suffering. What they really want are methods that don’t look so gruesome to them, rather than methods that actually cause less suffering.

For example, they would all freak out if we brought back the guillotine, but death by guillotine would be very quick and further severing the spinal cord would prevent nerve signals communicating pain from reaching the brain, so the method would be effectively painless for the criminal. A fast and painless method certainly seems more humane than so-called humane methods that allow the person to live for many minutes during the execution, doesn’t it? In similar fashion, hanging and firing squads give quick death with minimal suffering for the criminal.

Besides what do these idiots know about inhumane execution methods? Bring back crucifixion or drawing and quartering if you want to see REAL inhumane executions. Nothing we do now even comes close.

Probably for the safety of those performing the execution and the witnesses present. If there is any issue with the execution chamber leaking, a nitrogen leak would be harmless to those not being executed. A CO leak could, at least theoretically, yield enough of an exposure to cause harm to innocent people present.

The real irony is that the media (when not expressing opposition to capital punishment) is always pushing for “humane” methods for carrying it out. But what they really push for are methods that seem less messy or horrific to those watching, but are actually less humane to the executed criminal. For example, one of the most humane methods for the criminal would have to be guillotine. While it seems horrific, the blade severs the spinal cord at the neck within a fraction of a second, resulting in (for the brief time the criminal would remain conscious) a complete inability for nerve signals from the body to reach the brain. The criminal would feel no pain at all. Hanging and firing squad likewise result in almost instant death with no real time for the criminal to suffer.

Contrast that with lethal injections or this asphyxiation by nitrogen that was just used. Even if these are pain free, the criminal spends several minutes in the process of dying. Isn’t it more humane to just kill the criminal quickly? But those other quick methods look messy and horrible, so we lean toward the “humane” methods that actually prolong the process and likely cause more suffering (not that making murderers suffer is a bad thing).

So what, now California wants to tax people on their FUTURE earnings? That’s pretty crazy. This is no different than someone with investment income from capital gains. Such gains are taxed when realized, which might well occur when the person lives elsewhere. Run your state better and make it a more attractive place to live (and consider lower taxes), and maybe people like Ohtani would stay.

This is all just really strange. My job is nowhere near as important as running our entire Department of Defense. Yet, if I am going to have surgery, I would have to notify my boss and the HR manager of my expected absence from work. I suspect just about any job would require the same. So we are expected to believe that a cabinet-level official, in charge of all of our armed forces and part of the succession line to the Presidency, can just take off work and go to a hospital for surgery and notify NOBODY?

It also can be misleading if you misunderstand what it means. For example a lot of folks think that people died a lot younger in the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods. In fact, people who survived to adulthood mostly lived about as long as we do now, maybe with just slightly shorter lifespans. The life expectancy was much lower then mainly because there were a lot more people then who did not survive infancy, which drags the average way down.

Why would Trump want to distract from Biden’s crimes, and why would he take millions in bribes to do so?

I know I’m being pendantic here, but when did we stop teaching how to write clearly in schools? How about “To distract from Biden’s crimes, Dems accuse Trump of taking millions in bribes”? It really isn’t that hard and anyone writing for a living should be able to do better.

Slave rebellions were a serious fear in the South. Many believe that the fear of reprisals is what convinced slave owners to stand firm and demand that the US Constitution allow slavery back in 1789. In fact, the year after it was ratified (1792) all the slaves in Haiti rebelled, tortured, and killed everyone who was white or even 1/8 white. There had been several smaller attempts at slave rebellion in the South as well. Given the choice to keep slavery or to risk being butchered in retaliation, most powerful people in the South chose to keep slavery. John Brown’s raid shocked the people in the North, but in the South, it spread terror.

Read the paragraph above. It explicitly states that the South insisted on maintaining slavery as a choice between keeping slaves or risking being butchered in retaliation and that the South insisted that the new Constitution allow slavery because of fear of rebellion. How else should this paragraph be interpreted other than as an argument that the South maintained slavery mainly because of fear of reprisals. This is demonstrably false. If the South wanted to, they could have sold their slaves to owners of sugar plantations in the Carribean or just sent them back to Africa. They did not do so because they weren’t keeping slaves because they feared reprisal, but because their economy and social structure relied on slavery.

The war’s causes and the importance of slavery among them can be debated, but this article loses much credibility by its historical inaccuracies.

The South maintained slavery because it was integral to the economic and social structure. The author seems to be implying that the South would have voluntarily rid itself of slavery except for fear of slave revolts.

The “micro civil war” that erupted in the 1850s was a result of the doctrine of popular sovereignty that was implemented in the Kansas Nebraska Act. Certainly the goal was to make slavery legal in the newly incorporated Kansas Territory, but it had no effect on Missouri, which was admitted as a slave state via the Compromise of 1820.

I’m sure there are others, but I am not wasting my time reading any more of an article by an author who cannot manage to get basic history correct

It’s a good law. The whole “Do you know why I pulled you over?” question is a trap to try to get you to confess to something to prevent court challenges. It’s easy enough to just answer “no” to it, but not everyone does.

In all the traffic stop interactions I have had, I have always answered no when asked that question. The cop has always then given me the reason for the stop immediately after and asked for my license, registration and proof of insurance. Still, it’s a good law; for legit stops, cops generally already have PC and can easily just tell the person what the reason is. They really don’t need a confession to bolster their case.

Jesus most certainly was a Jew. He was born in the region of the world we now call Palestine (which is larger than just the Gaza Strip and the West Bank - it actually includes the modern nations of Jordan and Israel), so it technically Jesus could be said to be a Palestinian Jew.

Of course to make an equivalence between Jesus and modern Palestinian Arabs is completely historically inaccurate and intentionally dishonest. The ancestors of modern Palestinian Arabs came to the land more than 600 years after Jesus lived, during the Muslim conquest

The fear of social equality of black people was a very big factor in secession. The majority of people in the South owned no slaves. There was no middle class to speak of in Southern society; there were a small minority of very rich plantation owners and their families, a much larger number of poor white subsistence farmers who basically survived by growing enough food to feed themselves and their families, and slaves. The plantation owners certainly did not want abolition obviously, but mostly for economic reasons - they were wealthy but lacked liquidity or investment capital. Almost all of their wealth was tied up in land and slaves. Ending slavery would have cost them a large portion of that wealth.

The poor white farmers who were the majority of Southerners also opposed abolition, but economics meant almost nothing to them. Freeing the slaves would not have either harmed or helped the poor subsistence farmers making up most of society. They were fearful of black equality. The wealthy plantation owners were harmed by abolition, but they still remained at the top of society. It was this class of poor whites who were most supportive of the Jim Crow laws and Black Codes that were developed after Reconstruction. These prevented true equality for black people and allowed the poor white people yo maintain their position in society.

Good point. The compromise of 1850 and the fugitive slave law it enacted often is overlooked in these discussions. While abolitionist sentiment existed in the North long before that, it was relatively limited and few people were overly concerned about slavery. The fugitive slave law was what really sparked a more widespread support for abolition.

It isn’t often discussed but it’s quite easy to ignore the plight of slaves when you never see any slaves, never really hear much about them and never really personally experience the result and consequences of slavery. There was no TV, internet or movies in the 19th century so few people were ever personally exposed to slavery and its actual effects. The fugitive slave law changes this. Escaped slaves were brought by abolitionists to cities like Boston and New York. People in those cities resented the southern owners who came to recapture their “property”. It is difficult for anyone with an ounce of compassion to see someone in such a desperate and hopeless situation escape from that situation and have to sit powerless while their own government allows them to be returned to that situation.

Besides the effect of the legitimate reclamation of escaped slaves another fact about this law is often ignored. The law set up a system where disputes over whether or not a slave was the legitimate property of a slave owner were to be decided by a federally appointed adjudicator. This adjudicator was to be paid per case, but his pay was based on his decision - he received double the pay when he decided in favor of the owner instead of the slave. Besides the fact that it would be very difficult for a free black person to provide evidence that he was not really a slave belonging to a plantation owner claiming him as escaped property, the financial incentive for the judge most often led to these cases being decided in favor of the owner. Essentially the fugitive slave law allowed de facto legal kidnapping and enslaving of free blacks living in the north.

Even still, abolition most certainly was not a majority position in the north, nor was it the motivation for fighting the war. The truth is that the North and South from the founding were really separate and distinct societies. The fact that they remained united as a single country had more to do with common external threats than anything else. The industrialization of the North led to an economically symbiotic relationship, with the South supplying raw materials for textile factories in the North. Those factory owners most certainly did not want to see abolition destroy their profitable system.

BTW OP, if the factory owners wanted land to grow cotton themselves, why would they not have just bought cheap land in undeveloped western states like Texas and Arkansas back in the 1840-1850 time frame? There would have been no need to go to war to get that land, and the cotton-growing lands further East were being depleted since cotton growing is very nutrient-draining on soil. The truth was that either secession or a complete overhaul of Southern society was inevitable. The South was surpassed by the North in every material way by 1860 -population, infrastructure, economic and industrial development etc. The only way secession could have worked is if the North was willing to allow it.

Don’t confuse results of the war with motivations for it. From the Northern perspective almost the sole motivation was preventing secession. Emancipation was a military and diplomatic measure (it ensured that Britain and France would not intervene for the CSA). Carpetbaggers infiltrating the Southern economy during Reconstruction likewise was a result of war, not a reason for it.

They could have a REAL playoff. They do it in every other NCAA sport, including all the lower divisions in football. They just don’t want to; even the new 12 team system starting next year is still not a real playoff.

A real playoff MUST include automatic berths for all conference champions. That way all teams can reach the playoff based solely on an objective, in-field accomplishment. Also, teams cannot win all their games and be denied a championship under such a system. If there are at large bids, then there still will be controversy, but at least a team cannot be denied a chance to win even though they haven’t lost any of their games, like FSU and Liberty this season. Yes, Liberty would get a well-deserved chance to win a title in a real playoff. They probably would fail to do so, but they at least deserve the chance to be eliminated on the field by a better team, and not by a committee sitting in a hotel conference room in Texas.