[Doofy]

Happy 4th, dudes!

[ghporter]

Cheers, mate! Thanks for the sentiment.

[Peter]

Independence Day (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


any excuse for a day off eh?

[residentEvil]

i got the rest of the week off myself. and being on salary; yes i'm paid too.

[stevesnj]

Originally Posted by Peter 

Independence Day (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


any excuse for a day off eh?

..paid day off for some!

[anonymac]

This is a day when all americans celebrate having a republic and realize how horrible the british monarchy and society really is, the tyranny of the british government on all people and their god given freedoms that include free speech, gun ownership and transport, and free association. America, the world salutes you and your government.

[BlueSky]

Dear Brits,

You can have it back now, we're done with it.

Thanks much,
George and Dick

[residentEvil]

Originally Posted by BlueSky 

Dear Brits,

You can have it back now, we're done with it.

Thanks much,
George and Dick

the brits didn't have it to begin with. what makes you think they can have it?

[Kevin]

Some people ruin every dang thread in here with political zealotry.

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

My small $75 pack this year, we usually spend $200+ on fireworks, but I got a iMac this year.

[Lateralus]

I have about 300 bottle rockets that have been sitting in my closet sine 2003ish. I was thinking about breaking off all of the rockets, throwing them in a bucket and lighting them on fire.

Could be fun...

[Peter]

do it
record it
youtube it.
tm

[Jawbone54]

Day off, shmay off...

I'm at a mandatory conference.

[stevesnj]

Originally Posted by Kevin 

Some people ruin every dang thread in here with political zealotry.

haha i know...right


and this is why a fireworks factory shouldn't be near homes.

YouTube - BIG Fireworks explosion at enschede netherlands

[Jawbone54]

Originally Posted by stevesnj 

haha i know...right


and this is why a fireworks factory shouldn't be near homes.

YouTube - BIG Fireworks explosion at enschede netherlands

Oh my god...

Wow.

[TheoCryst]

Wow, it was only 112ºF (44ºC) today... I hate the friggin desert. How can you have a holiday when you can't even go outside without liquifying?

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst 

Wow, it was only 112ºF (44ºC) today... I hate the friggin desert. How can you have a holiday when you can't even go outside without liquifying?

More over; How can you afford explosives when your electricity bill is $500?

[ghporter]

There are no fireworks at our place today-and maybe none at the numerous places around us that do professional fireworks. Rain. LOTS of rain. It's was the rainiest June on record and now it looks like July is going to follow suit. Bleah. I am within sight of SeaWorld San Antonio's fireworks display (from my driveway I can see it when they shoot 'em off), but I'm doubting that they will this time...

Anyway, the good news is that we're not so drought-ridden that all fireworks are banned for fire safety. The bad news is that a lot of people are going to risk drowning for a few fire crackers.

[Kerrigan]

Dear Indians:

This place sure was a dump before we got here. No roads? WTF was up with that? You could have at least had roads, Egyptians had them for thousands of years.

[Doofy]

Paleface go invent um heap big Hummer. No need roads then.

[Brass]

Originally Posted by anonymac 

America, the world salutes you and your government.

Which parts of the world? I don't know of many people any outside North America that would do this.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Displacing the native Americans slowly and gradually was stupid, but not intentionally evil. Go read up on the "Trail of Tears." Andrew Jackson shamed every one of us who calls himself or herself an American by that, quite intentionally evil bit of work. Putting all "anti native" actions on a par lessens the enormity of the really bad ones and makes minor issues take on incorrect implications.

Finally, if it were not for our government (especially our government of the late 1910s and the 1930s and '40s), a lot of the world's peoples would be under someone's quite nasty thumb, or just barely climbing back to a level of civilization we would call "decent". It was the American entry into the First World War that decided its outcome, and the American entry into the Second World War that decided it. And after the Axis had been defeated in Europe and the Imperial warmongers destroyed in Japan, it was American investment-much of it taxpayer funded through the Marshall Plan and a similar but less well publicized plan* for Japan-that got those theaters back into the world and out of abject poverty.

^ Quick comments on the above:

1. Displacing native Americans was indeed largely a planned enterprise. It was a genocide, by any means available to the society of the day. Please don't try and make it look like it was just 'stupid'.
2. WWI however was stupid, criminally stupid, but not good vs evil in any way. It would have made very little difference to your or my life today had the outcome been different. The US entered WWI for economic reasons (both France and the UK were heavily indebted to the US and a lost war would have put repayments at jeopardy), for political reasons (the Zimmermann telegram, where the Germans were trying to barter an alliance with Mexico) and for PR reasons (the criminal sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine).

A copy of the Zimmermann telegram:



3. The US entered WWII not for altruistic reasons and certainly not to save the world. Whilst it can be argued that WWII was a war of good vs. evil, the US, initially, did as little as possible supporting the alliance powers. It was only when Germany and Italy declared war to the US that the European theatre became important to the US armed forces.

Moreover it can be argued that US politics, and specifically Roosevelt's politics, of the 1940's prolonged the war unnecessarily.

George N. Crocker, in his book “Roosevelt’s Road to Russia” recounts:

“The Bishop of Chichester had been approached in Stockholm by two anti-Nazi Germans who asked him to find out whether the British and American governments would negotiate for peace with a German democratic government if the Hitler regime were overthrown…There was an opposition to Hitler led by General Ludwig Beck, Carl Goerdeler, von Kluge, von Manstein, Admiral Canaris, General Oster.Count von Stauffenberg…to succeed, they needed some encouragement from outside. This they never got.”

General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who attended the 1943 Casablanca Conference with Roosevelt stated:

“No attempt was made by the western allies to divide the Germans by offering Hitler’s enemies decent terms of peace-this in spite of the fact that British and American intelligence agents were aware that Hitler was faced with the opposition of men holding some of the highest appointments in the Army, Navy, and Civil Service”

Instead, Roosevelt insisted on “unconditional surrender” which the German people took to mean total slavery.
British military historian J.F.C.Fuller recounts, “Gagged by this idiotic slogan, the Western Allies could offer no terms, however severe. Conversely, their enemy could ask for none, however submissive.”

So, while US armed forces did indeed break the back of the Hitler regime and liberated millions of people in Europe (a courtesy not extended to the Russian people who were busy getting slaughtered in the millions by Stalin) and deserve praise and gratitude, the US government was driven by Realpolitik instead of idealism.

[Mastrap]

Wtf, hamster is time travelling again?

[ghporter]

Update: it was NOT raining and we just watched SeaWorld's fireworks. They were great.

On the derailing subjects above, keep in mind that we look at the past with our own biases, and we tend to judge the biases of the past badly because we don't share them. Remember that a lot of people thought the world was flat, no matter what others said (WAY back the Greeks proved it was round), and there was "solid proof" that non European peoples were lesser peoples-by the biases and conventions of that time. Displacing the native Americans slowly and gradually was stupid, but not intentionally evil. Go read up on the "Trail of Tears." Andrew Jackson shamed every one of us who calls himself or herself an American by that, quite intentionally evil bit of work. Putting all "anti native" actions on a par lessens the enormity of the really bad ones and makes minor issues take on incorrect implications.

Finally, if it were not for our government (especially our government of the late 1910s and the 1930s and '40s), a lot of the world's peoples would be under someone's quite nasty thumb, or just barely climbing back to a level of civilization we would call "decent". It was the American entry into the First World War that decided its outcome, and the American entry into the Second World War that decided it. And after the Axis had been defeated in Europe and the Imperial warmongers destroyed in Japan, it was American investment-much of it taxpayer funded through the Marshall Plan and a similar but less well publicized plan* for Japan-that got those theaters back into the world and out of abject poverty. Big bad America shipped flour and milk and money to people we'd been fighting-and who had steadfastly tried to kill us all-out of the goodness of the American people's hearts.

*the Government and Relief in Occupied Areas program funded projects in both Europe and Japan, but about 75% of non-repaid funding was GRIOA. The rest was in loans that were repaid over decades.

[Lateralus]

Yes, that's all fine and dandy.

But the problem is that such acts by our country took place 60+ years ago. Far too long ago for most of the people in today's world to have a strong connection to. The world isn't still punishing the axis for World War II, so I don't see why we should still be expecting any points over it either.

More over, it was the stance of Woodrow Wilson on Germany at the end of WWI that set WWII in motion. We're not perfect, even when we're trying to help.

What matters is what we've done with our stewardship role as of late. And I'm not particularly impressed with how we've handled our foreign policy either.