You said at the Pilot 's Place that you didn't like this website nor its participants.   I'm paraphrasing of course, but why are you back?  What changed?

I for one am glad to have her back and hope she stays.

I don't think you understand the basics of a system of government where sovereignty rests with the people.  By living in community, there is always a restraint on freedoms and the good of the many are balanced by the needs of the few.  The democratic process is how that balance is arrived upon.  The alternative is a few powerful people deciding who gets what.  Do you know of a country that has more freedom than we have?

What makes you think that the military would depose Trump?  The military leaders have stated that they don't have a role in politics.  They haven't dragged him out yet.  Perhaps they will on the 20th.  We shall see.  If the military had to put done an insurrection mob like we saw today, there will be blood.  Lots of blood.

I think you're idealistic and you don't understand our (military) culture.  They will not be part of a coup and therefore a president is not only denied the power to enforce a coup, but they also have a strong force dedicated to the Republic. 

The military would never depose Trump or any other legitimate president, but on Jan 20th he stops being president and it becomes illegal to follow his orders.  Therefore, in addition to Posse Comitatus, nobody is going to be able to use the military to become king for life.  It's a matter of honor to serve the country and not a person.  That's why it's insulting to suggest that the military would be a dictator's muscle.  Ever. 

BTW, the military WAS called out to put down the crowd yesterday, the National Guard was activated to guard the Capitol. 

I also think you don't understand the corruption of a system where a two party system means the people don't really have their own sovereignty anymore.  Democrats are in power for 2 years and you can fully expect them to ingrain their biases and bigotry as law.  That's going to restrict options further, more then it does today, and it's going to cost money.

As far as your mocking of the 2nd Amendment and ARs specifically, it is incomprehensible how you can preach the nobility of a Republic while mocking the means by which it came about.  The 2nd Amendment assures all the other ones are ultimately enforceable by the people.  If government ceases to represent all the people, then it it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.  Ultimately, that's what yesterday was about, a protest about the rights of the people.  Note, there were only a few arrests and just one gun shot in the capitol and none of them were ARs.

Ah, but you say, people can't be trusted to responsibly own guns, but this isn't true.  There's over 100 million gun owners in the US and fewer than 15,000 gun homicides per year, most of which are not committed by legal gun owners or even by legally registered guns.  The number of people who get guns through the system and then commit crime with them is fewer than 1 in 200,000.  So, do you take away the right of the responsible 199,999 because of the sins of the 1?  If you are an anti-gun bigot then you gladly do.

One single whistleblower caused 3 years of investigations and an impeachment of a president, despite overwhelming evidence of literally nothing worthy of impeachment.

Thousands of witnesses who signed sworn affidavits needed to have their cases investigated, tried in a court of law, and convicted in a matter of days or weeks, or else bflynn and the MSM will say that you are just stirring up the shit pot, and there is no “there” there.

No, sure, I'll tell you what.  You identify the people and we'll just line them all up and shoot them?  Too harsh, ok, we'll just put them in jail until we get around to trying them.  Maybe we'll just shoot them first and try them later?  Would that satisfy your thirst for "justice"? 

Let me be very bold here:  YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE ELECTION OVERTURNED.  It is childish and immature to continue to try to fight that, it's one of the reasons I left here for a few weeks.  If there were individuals who committed fraud, then identify them, get them convicted and get them out of the election world. 

The simple facts are that it's over.  But if you're not accepting that, then you ARE stirring the shit pot because you can't accomplish anything else.

Yes, I work withe SOX compliance too and I agreed that it cost a lot of money. 

But there was good that it did because it put the CEO and CFO on the hook for fraud, which they hadn't previously been.  You seem have focused entirely on the extra waste rather than the positive that it did achieve. 

I think the core issues with the original question are still the inability to define a lot of things are purely left or right policies, except maybe in the past 20 years AND that you can make arguments for the positive and negative on anything.  I can even go to Gay Marriage and say that it's 100% supported by the Constitution and the 1st Amendment because personal beliefs about Christian matrimony are religious beliefs and cannot be established as official law.  Marriage is a personal belief and the government has no business defining it one way or another.

The point that keeps being missed is there is a balance of cost vs benefit. Nobody is saying problems should not be addressed. What we are saying is when the solution begins to have a cost way greater than the benefit, that's a whole new problem. The cure is worse than the disease. I can't speak to SOX compliance because I know nothing about it but when people who do know, who work directly with it, say the cost way exceeds the benefit, we should listen.

The problem is people run on their emotions and not rationality.  CEOs are seen as rich and greedy so we need to "get" them and it's irrelevant if more harm is done than is worth it.  You can apply this to a lot of things and both liberals and conservatives are guilty, but liberals tend to apply it much more and in ways much more damaging.

* I feel rent is too high!  Poor people need lower rent because I feel sorry for them and I can't be bothered to look at the actual long term result of rent control because the logical part of my brain is eclipsed by my feeeeeeeelings.
* Criminals are evil and need to be punished and it doesn't matter if too many innocents are wrongly convicted because I feel very emotional and angry about crime.
* Drugs are bad and we must eliminate drugs and it doesn't matter if innocent pain patients and their doctors are wrongly persecuted, because I have a loved one ruined by drugs so I feeeeeel very emotional about this.
* Global warming is scary and the sea levels are rising and it doesn't matter that eliminating fossil fuels will cause mass economic collapse, because my emotion of fear must be addressed by draconian policy.
* Guns are evil. It doesn't matter that gun control causes more crime. My emotions tell me we need to get rid of all guns!
* The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination and so we can't let gays marry because I am very emotional about my faith.
* I feeeeeeeeel emotional about animals and so everyone should be forced to be vegan and I don't care if it causes nutritional deficiencies.
* I feeeel bad when animals are killed for their furs so I don't care that fake fur is made of plastic and is far more harmful to the environment. I actually cry tears over the poor little animals so I need to force everyone else to not wear real fur and I don't care that humans have been killing animals for their fur for a million years and it's actually perfectly normal and acceptable to Mother Nature. 

MY FEEEEEELINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT. I don't give a damn about facts and reality and what Mother Nature designs, and most important I don't care about anyone who doesn't FEEEEEL exactly like I do.

Not saying that's what's going on with SOX but maybe.  Give me hard numbers for the extra waste vs the positive that it did, and convince me that emotional distaste for rich evil capitalist CEOs isn't the underlying motivation.

It would be hypocrisy if I changed, but I have remained consistent - We should be in Syria because it is good for the US, just as we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. I challenge you to find a contrary statement that I have made about Syria, here or anywhere. An apology is in order but I won’t hold my breath.

You can exhale now.  I will "sort of" apologize.

My reply to you was knee-jerk, just as I assumed your complaint was.  As I learn more about the situation, I agree with you that we should not abandon the Kurds.  I would have (and did) complain when Obama did similar.  One difference though is that Turkey is a NATO member and we have a treaty to defend them.  But we don't have a treaty to aid them if they are the aggressor.  The problem though, is that over there, WHO THE FUCK KNOWS who the aggressor is.  They hold grudges for thousands of years.  We don't even hold them for a score of years.  their psyche is different than ours.

But back to my apology, your post was one of the first times I heard of the situation.  Later, I heard about it on CNN, PBS, WAPO and NYT.  They all sounded like you and it sounded obvious that they were only complaining because it was Trumps decision.  They will complain no matter what Trump does, and since I usually agree with Trump, I usually disagree with those guys.  But on "further review", in this instance, they were right, just like a broken clock is right twice a day (unless it is a 24 hour clock; then once a day).  This might have been one of those times.  And so were you (right).

ON the other hand;
I don't think it would really make a hill of beans difference if we did stand and fight Turkey (or Syria or the Kurds or anybody else over there).  All we do in those wars is spend money, lose American lives and make even more enemies.

So, my apology is not so much that you were right, but that I shouldn't have called you a hypocrite for stating your beliefs.

Of course she truly believes it. AND she’s being manipulated by adults. Teens are extremely easy to lead around by the nose, aside from when they’re in the rebellious phase. But the rebellious phase can happen anywhere from 11 to 23 or later, may only last a short while, or may only be confined to their parents or only to one or two issues. Just pack their head full of extremist ideology and hint that they’re doing something heroic and you’ve got a dedicated minion. It’s why late teens are the best military recruits.

I don’t understand why y’all are arguing about this.

She is in the past. Let it go, there are bigger issues than gloating over a political corpse.

l

I care nothing about the balance of discussions - I care about what I think it right according to how I was raised, just as everyone does I think.  I'm a moderate and an independent, which means that I don't follow party lines.

The label on your posts says Liberal, but whatevs. Until we get rid of labels, and focus instead on actual issues and their resolution, there really won’t be true discussion and true progress, I think. And humans seem insistent upon tribalizing themselves.