[OT] Moon landing

Hum,, what was the recent south park episode ?
I don't ever get to watch it.

Haha Fred :)
Well let me answer the question posed in that cartoon you linked:
The plan is to build a sovereign and strong nation FREE of Islamic extremist bent on killing you Mr. Fred Schecter. See a Muslim extremist cares less if you are liberal, conservative, Jew, Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, and ECT.. The fact that YOU Mr. Fred Schecter live in a nation where individual human rights are paramount over religious decree, makes you the enemy.
A terrorist isn't going to check your meme before killing you. The terrorist isn't going to land the plane and let you off, because you are a Bush hater. You get to visit Ala at the same time the terrorist does.
What Bush is doing in this war on terror is FANTASTIC. The Iraqi people for the first time in their existence and actually adopting and USING their human rights to march in the streets; to vote for their leaders, to own and invest in their country.
They are no longer being tortured to death by Sadam's goon squad. The life of the average Iraqi has improved DRAMATICALLY over the last 2 years.
Yes yes, we see NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN telling us that things are falling apart and bombings are destroying Iraq and that over 2000 U.S. Troops have died in 2 years ... but things are actually improving. Just visit the Iraqi blogs as I do. Just view the postings in the Iraqi news groups. Just filter out the news services with their anti-Bush propaganda, and look and see what the average Iraqi is saying; same thing in Afghanistan. After the quake, WE, not the French, not the Chinese, not the Germans, not the ACLU, are over there providing medial and financial support to people who chant, 'Death to America!'
There was a 60 Minutes special 2 Sundays ago, where they interviewed 14 NY EMT/Doctors over in Afghanistan. The same people, who are being fed the "hate Bush/America" bullshit, would walk for miles to get to American relief stations seeking help. And guess what, once the Afghans saw that we are not, "white devils" and people just like them, they started to thank, and apologize to the U.S. personnel for the years and anti-American fervor.
As a side note, and since we are OT, isn't it funny that these same news organizations, and misguided politicians who call for a speedy withdrawal from Iraq, never talk about the U.S. citizens who DIE right here in good old, US of A! Isn't that interesting Fred?
Isn't it interesting that over 12,000 people alone every year are killed by guns? I am PRO gun by the way. I have read on SEVERAL sites that the leading cause of deaths of African Americans in the United States, for ages 18 - 35 is by a gun. Hmmmm. 41% of the annual gun deaths are from African Americans. Lets do a little math:
41% of 12,000, carry the 2 divide by 5 subtract 1 -> over 5,000 African Americans die ANNUALLY due to gun violence in the United States of America EVER Fing year.
Now lets stack that against the American Death toll in Iraq. Carry the 9, divide by 16, add 7 -> 5 times more African Americans die annually in the United States, than do our troops fighting in Iraq. Now here comes the question that the cartoon you link should ask next:
Why don't we see American political and social leaders have 5 times the agitation and vitriol when it comes to the death of African Americans, as they do for Bush and his efforts in Iraq?
Well, we who are most interested in what is right or wrong as opposed to WHO is right or wrong know the answer.
We should remain in Iraq a 1000 years if necessary to allow those people to live FREELY. Remember Fred; WE (America) had help from foreign powers when we were fighting for our INDEPENDANCE. The people of Iraq deserve NO LESS. Any people who wish to live free of oppression are worth dying for; you, me, the Iraqis, anyone.
Not trying to beat up on you Fred, I just hate the people who are now living FREELY due to other people dying for them, but now don't want to die for other people's freedom ... hypocrisy at its worst.

1) Was that a "bot" generated message? 2) Which day's cartoon were you respnding to? The day I posted my message or the day you posted your message? 3) Can you spell my name?

FWIW,
We have a daughter doing her 3rd tour in Iraq. A son on his 2nd tour in Afghanistan. They both are on the front lines daily. THAT'S DAILY.
They tell us things are changing for the better. They both get sick watching American news casts on any network, in fact, they won't watch them when they make it home for R&R. Because they are there, and know what is being broadcast here, is substantially different from what they see on the ground at the front lines.
Why is that? We all know why.
Randy

Fred,
I made my point, and you understood its intending meaning ... thats all that matters to me :) Oh, its still a left-winged cartoon strip no matter which day its viewed :)
Remember, what is wrong or right ... not who is wrong or right :)
Sorry for not getting you named spelled right, but did it REALLY matter as much as the message of the posting? America has had millions of its sons and daughters die for this and other nations over the past 200+ years ... does the spelling of your name have more value than the sacrifices they made? God, I hope not.

It is a conservative comic strip. you obviously have not read it or have read one single strip and read into it your own agenda. You see, one of the characters is a liberal. The rest are conservatives.
Did you notice the ads all over the web page? Are those "left wing"? There were a *lot* more ads in the previous weeks and months and most were for brilliant conservative message tee shirts.
None of this has to do with my original post which related to a different day's comic. Care to comment on that specific day's comic?

Hello Fred,
As I stated in the first posting, it was not meant to attack you, but people who a ignorant and selfish of and with freedom. Sorry I reference you in the reply. If you are a converative thinker, then God bless you for using your brain and not "feeling" with it.
I just want to know why people get excited about 2000 lives lost in Iraq over 2 years, but do very little to stop 5000+ black lives lost right here on streets of America ... I guess some problems you can solve very easily if you order in a F-18 airstrike.
Sorry for the feeling of "messenger being attack". From most of your postings, you seem to be a fellow down to earth, reason thinking, rocketeer.

Randy, Our heartfelt prayers for you and your loved ones over in Iraq. I pray they stay safe and return home soon. Just my two cents for you and your family.

Thanks, we always deeply appreciate prayers and good thoughts. They fully understood what they were doing when they signed up and so did we, and they certainly have a lot of good company. We hope for the best but try to be prepared for the worst, if that's possible, but either way, they have a job to do like thousands of others and they're doing it. They need to be allowed to finish it. It wasn't finished the first time and now they're back having to do it from the beginning.
The point of my post was, they are being effective but change is slow. As parents, it isn't going as fast as we would like either, but it is going better than the media would have us believe but that's not good copy for the networks, and for the people serving through it all to be jerked around like they are a dog on a leash by some, "I got a medal for a splinter in my butt politician" is very gauling. They are votes to them, nothing more. "Vote for me, I'll bring them home." Right, so they can go back in a year or two when it will be even harder. The biggest problem today is that people don't know how to finish anything, especially when it's not fun or makes tons of money.
It could be over very quickly if they were allowed to fight it as a real war not as some politically correct BS event. It's time to take the gloves off and get it done. The people there are ready, willing and able, if the whiney politcally correct pany wastes on the Hill will turn them loose. My only wish is that Hillary and her friends had to go house to house blind folded and with 1 hand tied behind their backs ferreting out the bad guys.
Sorry for the rant, the prayers are appreciated. : )
Randy

If this war is so great, why haven't Bush and Chaney's kids joined the military to serve? In fact, of 535 senators and representatives in congress, THREE have children in the military. I'd bet these war for oil profiteers wouldn't be so fast to declare war if THEIR kids were the ones that were putting their lives on the line so Exxon and Shell and Mobil and Amoco could increase their profits.
Most of todays military is there because they couldn't get money for their education any other way. No one screams when the poor die.

The so-called "greatest generation" got through the Depression and beat the Axis, but too many of them blew their most important job: raising their children to have the same gumption, perseverence and responsibility.
As a result, America has become a nation of (mostly) spoiled over-grown children. Everything has to be easy and risk-free. As soon as anything starts to get difficult or costly or risky, they want to cut and run. Never mind that the long-term costs of doing so may be far greater.

F%$K you Kaplow...(:-(

That's probably pretty close to (or maybe a bit higher than) the national average.
Mario

Bob,
This comment sounds like it was made by a person who has no idea what the military is all about. As a former enlisted man in the US Air Force, I am greatly offended by this remark. I know many young people who have joined the military and I can't think of any that this statement fits. The greatest motivation to join the military now, as when I enlisted, seems to be desire to serve the people of the US. These young men and women put their lives on the line to try to make the world a better place. You may disagree with the war in general, but don't badmouth the fine people who are doing what the country has asked them to do.
Mario

Just for the sake of accuracy, that statement is not correct. I believe there's around 1.4 million in the military, and let's say for the sake of argument that an average military family has two family members serving, so lets say there's only 700,000 families in the U.S. that have provided a person in uniform.
Congress's ratio of people to childern (of those people) in the military is 535/3 = 178 to 1
In order to equal that ratio, there'd need to be almost 125,000,000 families in the U.S. Needless to say, that's FAR from how many families are currently in the U.S. The U.S. average ratio is probably closer to 50 to 1.
Dave

Just for the sake of accuracy, there are other factors to take into effect as well. For example, my presumption (based on what I've seen) is that the 'average' age of senators and congressman is 'older' than the average age of parents of a 20-year-old. Thus, it would be more accurate to find out how many of the current congress have kids who are now or have IN THE PAST been members of the military -- or to add in those who've been members themselves.
David Erbas-White

let's say for the sake of argument that we use only real numbers with actual links to their sources so we don't pull numbers out of our butts.
Manpower: 1,434,000
"Household"? 111,278,000
"Family"? 75,596,000
Now let's say that I will not attempt to figure out how many of the DOD people are "children" vs. "adults". Let's say they are all "children" of someone since we do not have a clone army.
That makes 77.6 households per DOD military "man".
Now, is the figure of "3" for Congress only "children" in the "under 21 years old" sense? Or do any Congresspeople have adult children serving or who have served?
-Fred "Why didn't Rick D. post this?" Shecter

Sure. A 'fermi problem' is generally used to get an upper/lower limit, or an approximation.
If you want to take into account children of congressmen that HAVE been in the military, then the problem gets really complicated. You need to compare the number of congressman's children that HAVE EVER served in the military to the total number of people in the U.S. that HAVE EVER served in the military, but only up to an age where their parents are still alive (it's a fuzzy cut-off, but say probably around age 50). People over, say, 70 years old would not have a parent that could be a congressman, and should not be considered.
Dave

He didn't.