pood
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Yet another war, this time with Iran
- Thread starter Jason Harvestdancer
- Start date
Jimmy Higgins
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Maher is a Libertarian. He sometimes sounds like a flaming liberal because the spectrum got so wonky. He can have off opinions on things.
WAB
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Seems some of the old atheist heroes have fallen a tad out of favor: Maher, Hitchens, Harris...
Jimmy Higgins
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Trump team fails negotiations. Solution is to blockade Hormuz Strait.
Man, the people who voted for him must feel really stupid... or be even more stupid.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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Bill Maher has his biases. He is staunchly pro-Israel and anti-Muslim. Maher usually initially favors wars on the Middle East committed by the US. Later on, he changes his tune and his endorsement goes down the memory hole when he makes claims he is consistent.
southernhybrid
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Maher has gotten a lot worse in recent years. I usually watch him, but not for his political opinions. Sometimes he has guests that I find interesting and I do like New Rules, at least most of the time. I think Maher has become rather narcissistic as he's aged. Like all humans, he has many flaws but he does give me a few good laughs.
I'm just hoping he has Neil deGrasse Tyson on again or a few other people I like. It was kind of entertaining watching his two guests screaming at each other over whether the Iran War should end quickly or go on and on. They were yelling so loud that it was impossible to understand a word they were saying.
And, of course my post where I wrote Bannon instead of Baron was just a brain fart.
I'm just hoping he has Neil deGrasse Tyson on again or a few other people I like. It was kind of entertaining watching his two guests screaming at each other over whether the Iran War should end quickly or go on and on. They were yelling so loud that it was impossible to understand a word they were saying.
And, of course my post where I wrote Bannon instead of Baron was just a brain fart.
Toni
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I have always found him smug without anything to back it up and completely unwatchable.
Toni
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No no! I truly believe both should be first boots on the ground. Just the two of them. See how they manage after a month or so.
Pay per view.
Not snark.
pood
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Dawkins, too. But none of them were ever heroes of mine. I do not have heroes.
I know little about Maher except he is described as a comedian and a host. Well, duh. What gives him cred to pontificate on U.S. foreign policy and say that it was “worth a shot” to wage an (unconstitutional) war against Iran, knowing full well that lots of people would die (just not his sorry ass)?
laughing dog
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It sounds like the USA issued ultimatums because good faith negotiators do not quit after a day.
WAB
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He is as smug as hell, and woefully unfunny, as I wrote here years ago. He seems to be going more to the right, but won't go full Dave Rubin.
I do like that he seems to think for himself and isn't afraid of speaking his mind. But every time he cracks a joke, and then waits for the expected burble of yuks, it's infuriating. It's as if the audience is laughing out of a sense of embarrassment half the time.
Jimmy Higgins
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I found him better back on ABC and early on in HBO. But I found shows becoming more political whoredom than viable.
I don't expect people to be perfect but he seemed to become more of a wrestling personna than a comedian.
blastula
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Trump says U.S. will blockade Strait of Hormuz after Iran peace talks fail
Trump said the U.S. blockade will stop Iran from policing the strait and benefiting economically while the rest of the world suffers from its closure.
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
bilby
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I have been an atheist all my life, and have never had heroes.
Heroes are as mythical as Gods; They are imaginary constructs, up to which no real human being can live.
Everyone is an arsehole at some level. If someone is your hero, that just means you don't (yet) know them well enough, or that you are deliberately ignoring a part of who they really are.
WAB
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I didn't say they were MY heroes. Nor did what I type constitute any kind of validation or belief in heroes as a concept. In fact, my use of the word heroes is pointedly ironic in context.
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Toni
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We have different understandings of the word hero.
Jane Goodall was no doubt a flawed human being but her work was groundbreaking and heroic. Diane Fossey as well. Jane Austin, Mary Oliver, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Alice Walker—all flawed human beings who created boundary breaking works. Rachel Carson, Barbara McClintock, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin are all heroes to me. So is or probably was my third grade teacher who taught me to love learning and to believe that it could happen in school, despite the best efforts of my second grade teacher who punished me for reading books. My eighth grade science teacher who also taught me high school chemistry and physics. Being confronted with a class of 8th graders one year when he had only taught science to high schoolers, he looked at the 8th graders text book and announced it was irrelevant and asked us what we hoped to learn, then devised the curriculum to support our major interests: environmental sciences and astronomy, delving into cyber mechanics when that was the stuff of science fiction. He opened many classes with a brief summary of an article he had just read and told us it was on reserve in the school library should we ever want to read it.
As stereotypical as it is to write this but my father, with whom I had countless arguments and shooting matches and who was a deeply deeply flawed person carried the burden of a newly and unexpectedly disabled wife while holding down his job, caring for four children, his father and stepmother who were experiencing serious health problems, his mother in law whose health was precarious and his only sibling who suffered a heart attack and a mental breakdown the same late winter-early spring—as a farmer who still had to find a way to get his crops out to feed his family. When I think about the days he had: for months going to the hospital before work, on his lunch hour and then again with one of us after dinner, the other staying home with the sister too young to be allowed to visit. Every damn day for over 6 months. And he paid off the hospital bills which exceeded his modest year’s salary in the first month alone of my mother’s hospitalization. He was a deeply, deeply flawed person—but we survived because of him. Not just my mother, my sisters and me, but my grandparents and my uncle and aunt and cousins I could write novels based on my father’s flaws and faults but he was also quite heroic.
Heroes are those who display courage and commitment to others or to a cause, despite the obstacles, sometimes despite many failures.
Harry Bosch
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Where am I deluded?? The Ukranians are now the experts in the west on drone warfare. For the number of resources that they have and the constant bombardment and pressure that they are under: they are by far the best.
Derec
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I don't think so.
In all these conflicts air power played a big role, yes.
And WWII was won by the Allies, communists were prevented from taking the entire Korean peninsula, and in Vietnam this only failed because of politics. Also, the commies in Vietnam had major support from China.
How do you figure that? Israel controls the about half of the Strip now, and is eliminating Hamas cells that try to cross the Yellow Line.
Any rebuilding or Israeli withdrawal is contingent on Hamas giving up their weapons.
How is the risk Hamas (and similar terror groups) worse now?
Again, an opinion of one guy. While air power is not the only thing that matters, it is an important part of warfare. Again, Vietnam was not lost because of air power being useless, but because of politics.
Derec
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Even if this were the case, giving up now would be the worst possible outcome.
Have they? I do not see much evidence of that.
That is true, but it is not just because of the Iran war. It also has to do with the Greenland nonsense and generally with how Trump acts.
On the other hand, European allies have been pushing Obama to agree to the rotten JCPOA that left Iran more powerful because of sanction relief. They used that to expand their missile program and fund more terrorism abroad - including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
That happened in January. So if anything, that's an argument that military action should have happened sooner.
Not just the fault of the US, but also the fault of unreliable partners like Spain, which has an islamolefist government that hates Israel.
That is unfortunately true.
I still think that a military confrontation with the regime was inevitable. Yes, this was not a good time for it, but five years from now it would probably have been a lot worse. Before JCPOA, before Regime's vassals the Houthis took over much of Yemen, before they sent even more arms to Hezbollah, would have been a better time to act decisively, instead of giving the Regime sanctions relief and pallets of cash for very few concessions.