It is also expedient for the ends that it has yet to be used for. A professional military man identifies with his military branch and may well be more apt to fire upon "unruly civilians".

At the end of the Vietnam War when we were agitating for the end to the draft, there were anti-war types who warned us that a professional army would bring its own set of problems and that we would live to regret it. I have lived that long.

Does anyone think that America is immune from the military coup just because we are USA?

It does the same thing in both Windows and OS X but does not work in Internet Explorer." - Pinky

I can report that it works just fine in FireFox in Linux also. After all, we always get the latest stuff in Debian Linux (Sid) and FireFox 3 is working fine here.

However, she could also use an editor or a word processor to type up replies and spell check. Then she could copy and paste into the window on Salon. That would slow her down just a tad and maybe help. I think she would do better if she just though about a few of those posts a bit before hitting the send button.

Does not always help though, just today I used "manly" when I knew that would not get past all the sharp eyes here. Oh, well stupid is as stupid types I always say.

... expressed a few threads ago about the mercenary military. It's one thing to bear loyalty to a country or even a commander-in-chief. It's another thing entirely to bear loyalty exclusively to the highest bidder for one's services." -- hrh

I am afraid you have a point. A real and dangerous point.

I still think the professional military is a real danger. The very purpose to one's career is killing. This is not the same as being drafted and just wanting to survive the hitch and get back to "real life". Plus, many of those drafted hated the "lifer" and the army as a whole.

Now we have a professional military and the damn mercenaries. Yes, that Blackwater bunch is a real danger.

I see the power at the center becoming ever stronger. We have militarized police, federal agencies, and the professional military all being told that they owe allegiance to the "commander in chief" rather than the constitution. Danger Will Robinson!

Note: does the younger crowd catch the "Lost in Space" reference? It has not been on TV in a while.

... and it did not hurt a bit.

Now have an appointment with a nice young FBI agent Monday morning. I wonder what that could be about? Now I am on the pacifist list and the no fly list. :-)

I can hardly spell the Hague, and now my name is going to be on a document there. Wonders of the intertubes!

http://wikileaks.org/

A fellow over at Moon of Alabama wrote:

"No one talks about Guantanamo bay too much any more. Although the snail like progress of the detainees cases through the judicial systems means that those arrested as children will probably have their cases determined in time to win the freedom to apply for old age pensions, most westerners particularly amerikans prefer to pretend Guantanamo Bay doesn't exist.

In that light I suggest all humans be directed to Wikileaks whose front page is taken up with a photo of a detainee tortured by having his mouth wired shut by sewing his lips together with an old coat hanger."

The picture is amazing. American inhumanity is fast catching up with the worst in history. We will catch the Spanish Inquisition at this rate.

I did not know about wikileaks. Interesting site.

I love your dictionary. :-)

You wrote:

... The answer was obvious, Ron Paul at the time, and now Barr. (Please, I am not a libertarian troll.) ... I believe that libertarian economic theories are based on pure fantasy and have given cover to the worst abuses of markets and so-called captialists and their political lackies. But you know, they are very good on war and civil liberties. ...

...Of course, the Dems would have to stop his lunatic economic policies. Everything else would be status quo, but so what, the big issues would be going in the right direction. ...

I was unaware that there were "libertarian economic theories"; and did not know that they were "lunatic". Could you help a fellow out here and tell me what you mean by these statements and use a few examples?

I went to wikipedia and they listed a lot of stuff on different classifications of economic thought; I saw they had listed the schools: Classical economics, Marxist economics, Neoclassical economics, Keynesian economics, and Other schools and approaches.

I hoped to find "libertarian economics under 'other'" but I see: "Other well-known schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practiced at and disseminated from well-defined groups of academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Austrian School, Chicago School, the Freiburg School, the School of Lausanne and the Stockholm school.

Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their appearance in the literature; classical economics, Keynesian economics, the neoclassical synthesis, post-Keynesian economics, monetarism, new classical economics, and supply-side economics. New alternative developments include ecological economics, evolutionary economics, dependency theory, structuralist economics, Abstinence theory and world systems theory."

Where is this "libertarian economics" that is so repugnant to you? Why have the many experts keeping watch over that page at wikipedia never noticed it?

I await your reply educating me on this horrible, lunatic danger to the Republic.