Need I remind anyone that Iran is a third world country?  If they execute as well as a first world country...  remember the Iran-Iraq war?  It was WWI all over again. Both ISIS and Iran are our enemies, so a nasty war of attrition that kills many on both sides sounds like something in our interest,...

Barbarians doing what barbarians do. Very depressing

Dan Carlin's stuff is great. He is one of only two podcasts I've sent money to. I wish more people would listen to him because he provides excellent historical context on many current events.

A dictionary attack won't guess four random whole words that are in the dictionary?  I'm skeptical.  4^4? There are a lot of words in the dictionary - the combinations are astronomical. Maybe a silly question, but how do you keep track of all these unique, complex passwords for your various account...

All to many people have weak passwords, or even worse, use the same password for multiple web pages.  The problem with that is a hacker only needs to compromise one and now they have your password for all of them. In addition to using long upper/lower/number passwords, another option is to use a pas...

MUCH better than letting a violent group of religious extremists run roughshod through an entire section of the world decapitating and burning people alive. I'm pretty sure the women of Saudi Arabia prefer their current state to living under ISIS rule. This is the "bad things are happening som...

Guest workers (e.g. braceros program) in combination with severe penalties for employers who employ illegals would be a huge step to reducing the number of illegal immigrants we have - note how many of them left during the great recession.  Without jobs, there is much less of a motivation to come. T...

TennPaGa wrote: Or perhaps, just let them emigrate to the Middle East.

...and let the anarcho capitalist feminist Kurd paramilitary kill them.

Works for me!

So how would the four parts of the PP behave in the face of a no Big Bang quantum singularity?

Nice pic, it reminds me of pictures of Israeli Army women, some of which are pretty damn hot.

If ISIS is a bunch of badasses who are going to conquer all the way to Rome, how come they can't beat a bunch of paramilitary women?

So what do the reformocons believe, exactly? Are they the GOP’s answer to the New Democrats, a moderate faction devoted to making their party more electable by dragging it to the center? Or are they clever marketers trying to rebrand Reaganism for the 21st century? The simplest answer is that refor...

It's simple.  The Saudi Royal Family are not jihadists.  They may be inhumane to their citizens but they're not looking to take over the world. The Saudi Royal family themselves are a bunch of rich old men, they do not wage jihad themselves by strapping bombs on themselves.  However, they use their...

Are you serious?  Comparing a modern Arab state like Saudi Arabia with an anarchronistic jihadist state like ISIS is like the difference between Humpty Dumpty and a cracked egg.  Why don't we attack Iran for sponsoring terrorism, Hezbollah, etc.?  Same reason.  Invading Iraq was a HUGE MISTAKE -- n...

Irrespective of whether or not one believes in God, I think it is difficult to argue that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition is not the cornerstone upon which Western Civilization has built its moral/ethical values system. This is wildly off-topic, but I think one can argue that the Romans and...

The whole place has been nothing but a source of consistent global trouble for tens of centuries . The geographic region has not produced "consistent global global troubles" over the tens of centuries.  Rome conquered much more in both extent and duration.  The mongols almost certainly ki...

fnord: I think you're overlooking the fact that ISIS is capturing, torturing and crucifying or beheading Western citizens, including Americans, not just the local Arabs.  We're going to nuke them more for the former than the latter. Seriously, people, CRUCIFIXATION with all the horror that entails!...

I have yet to hear one good strategy for ending or even containing this problem that doesn't result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dead people in the next decade. Other than small scale terrorism, what has you thinking there will be hundreds of thousands/millions of dead people? In te...

I would argue that it's much easier just to kill a few hundred thousand terrorist (or terrorist wannabees) than it is to figure out a way to employ half a billion disaffected Muslim youth. I agree with you that killing a few hundred thousand terrorists is easy (well, as long as one assumes that the...

Ok, so now we're going to win the war on terror with a Middle East jobs program? A jobs program is way, way down the list.  That sort of thing only makes sense after some level of stability has returned - e.g. the Marshall program after WW2 ended. In the near term we should provide equipment (and n...

It's not just mystical religious people who are susceptible. Right-leaning survivalist types essentially believe the same thing with a government collapse Mad Max flavor in which naturally they will be the survivors. ::) Secular leftists believe the same "end times"-type happening, but to...

I suppose it could even be argued that ISIS wouldn't exist without the West. I think the majority of the blame belongs to Britain in particular, with France deserving a lesser share.  After WWI they carved up the middle east along artificial lines to maximize the stability of their colonies and pro...

If that all sounds silly there are many Christians who have similar views about the Middle East - just different battles fought by different people in different places before Jesus returns. I don't listen to such things any more but I suspect there is a lot of end time talk in churches right now ab...

I agree that the oil/energy part is not the big problem.  Solar, wind, and other renewable energy forms are all benefiting from technological progress, just as oil has (fracking, horizontal drilling, etc.).  There isn't any clear indication that this progress will stop, which means that energy price...

If there were credible evidence that the Saudis were behind 9-11 (so far its mostly conspiracy theories) I'd absolutely say bomb them. But I haven't seen it. True, but it was mostly Saudis that flew the planes in 9-11, and the mastermind (bin Laden) was Saudi as well. And as for the Saudis being a ...

Because its the right thing to do? What precisely do you propose to do once we invade and kill a bunch of them?  Institute a democratically elected government that oppresses them until new terrorists form (hint: We tried that, it is called Iraq. Didn't go so well did it?)?  What was right about tha...