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C-SPAN interview with the Afghanistan Reconstruction Inspector General. Spoiler alert: our reconstruction efforts suck in many ways, and this interview is wonderful in giving some details as to how much! I was floored by how messy these organizations sound and he makes some salient points about basic questions for creating some sort of a skeleton of a "business plan" in order to track things. USAID in particular sounds like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off - appealing to US liberals who want to try and reform Afghanistan but they can't even tell you which of their programs is effective and how effective they are! But ask for money to teach Afghan girls from the Subaru driving yoga pants wearing chakramom in Aspen and sure as poo poo you'll get some without any questions. This man needs to run for an office of some sort.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:23
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LorneReams posted:AWD seems to be a false crutch that gets people killed where I live. Every winter when I'm home in VT, I inevitably see flatlanders in the ditch in various AWD/4WD vehicles. I'm not against it as a rule, hell my current car has selectable AWD, but if you don't know how to drive in bad weather it just means you'll get further from home before you get stuck.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:23
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LorneReams posted:AWD seems to be a false crutch that gets people killed where I live. I'm sure they'd manage to kill themselves pushing it in a rear-wheeled Toyota pickup with bald summer tires too.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:24
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Evil Fluffy posted:If you don't buy used you're just being dumb. Buy a 2-3 year old car that's 90% as good as a brand new vehicle and can cost half as much. Maybe costs 2/3 as much if you managed to get a hold of a vehicle off of a low mileage 3 year lease. Still worth saving 5-10k by buying a car that has maybe 20k miles on it though. Save the difference and use it on other things besides a car payment. Bonus points if buying used lets you skip getting a loan and pissing away thousands of dollars in interest. I tend to agree, however....The biggest variable in owning a car is in how it's driven and kept up...and the latter can be negated by someone being lovely with the former. Yeah, that '12 only has 40K miles on it, but if the previous owner actually let his dipshit 16 year old floor it everywhere while using the car as a write off, that's a rough 40K miles. That's seals and bearings and struts and control arms that are going to fail much MUCH quicker than some every man that drove the car mildly each day around 20 miles to and from work. I don't even care if it's re-certified by the dealer (which you're going to take a bath on anyway), you cannot tell how the last rear end in a top hat drove it. That is the single biggest determining factor on whether the car is going to last 100K before major service or 10K before it starts leaching money out of your wallet. At least out of the gate, you don't have to worry about that poo poo and everything is under warranty.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:24
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Amergin posted:C-SPAN interview with the Afghanistan Reconstruction Inspector General. Spoiler alert: our reconstruction efforts suck in many ways, and this interview is wonderful in giving some details as to how much! Vice's doc about how much we failed in Afghanistan is extremely depressing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI
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Jan 5, 2015 19:35
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Nintendo Kid posted:A few pipelines? No. Dozens if not hundreds of pipelines have to be fully replaced or have significant chunks taken out if you're removing all crossings of the Oglalla aquifer. It's definitely not "a percent of a percent" and gently caress you for going on about the "enviromental cost" of pipelines that have been operating fine versus the nevironmental cost of burning a lot more diesel. There's not a project in the world where "trucks used in the project" do anything to global diesel usage rates. Like, maybe if you decided "gently caress Florida" and started moving the land that comprises it to the Rockies.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:52
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PostNouveau posted:There's not a project in the world where "trucks used in the project" do anything to global diesel usage rates. Like, maybe if you decided "gently caress Florida" and started moving the land that comprises it to the Rockies. Because no other project in the world involves transferring millions if not billions of barrels of oil and refined product a year on trucks and rail indefinitely, that was previously transferred in much more efficient pipelines. That is what you advocate, and it will mean a lot more pollution and fuel usage in the states affected!
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Jan 5, 2015 19:55
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PostNouveau posted:Like, maybe if you decided "gently caress Florida" and started moving the land that comprises it to the Rockies. If there was ever a better reason for restarting New Deal-style works programs than this, I've yet to hear it!
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Jan 5, 2015 20:04
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zoux posted:Vice's doc about how much we failed in Afghanistan is extremely depressing. My brother is a veteran and this documentary is what convinced him that VICE is the business. I'm excited what their news agency will become when they're finished setting up all the bureaus (there are more hipsters now but they seem to be funneling them into busy work).
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Jan 5, 2015 20:28
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PostNouveau posted:There's not a project in the world where "trucks used in the project" do anything to global diesel usage rates. Like, maybe if you decided "gently caress Florida" and started moving the land that comprises it to the Rockies. One more time: if you want to replace a pipeline with trucks, then I expect to see an environmental impact analysis that says replacing that pipeline with trucks is beneficial. "OH, BUT OUR AQUIFER!" isn't really enough, here. There's risks associated with transporting this poo poo no matter how you do it, and if you really think that fleets of trucks spewing emissions are better than using pipelines that already exist and have been in use without incident, then you might want to substantiate it. This really isn't too relevant to Keystone XL, where a big point is to make it economically viable to start in on the tar sands, so it's getting to be a derail. BRAKE FOR MOOSE fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 20:35
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zoux posted:Vice's doc about how much we failed in Afghanistan is extremely depressing. Quoting this just to flag it so I can watch it at home Also, though it hasn't come up in here yet the business news today is going all chicken little about the euro falling vs the dollar. Remember that long term trends matter more than day to day fluctuations, and single bad trading days don't mean the sky is falling. However, I refuse to miss out on what might be my last chance to be right, so let me declare  "We're all gonna die!"   
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Jan 5, 2015 20:55
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I think we accomplished exactly what the American public wanted us to accomplish in Afghanistan. They certainly didn't want it to be rebuilt and stabilized.
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Jan 5, 2015 20:57
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Fried Chicken posted:Quoting this just to flag it so I can watch it at home Time to start planning another eurotrip. Gotta wait a little bit longer to see if the USD > EUR exchange gets even more favorable, but not so long that the entire continent goes up in flames.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:03
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The Palestinians are going to end up like the Native Americans or worse, and this outcome is supported and funded by our government. So yeah, the actual goals got accomplished. Afghanistan was only a failure in the eyes of the willfully misinformed naive dipshits that seem to make up most of America.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:04
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SedanChair posted:I think we accomplished exactly what the American public wanted us to accomplish in Afghanistan. They certainly didn't want it to be rebuilt and stabilized.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:06
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The part that I remember is this depressed rear end major who keeps talking about how they are trying to keep Afghan commanders from keeping prepubescent gently caress boys and letting their men gang rape them but try try as they might they can't get them to give it up.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:06
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How did I miss that? Christ.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:15
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AmiYumi posted:Yeah, remember that the public sentiment even among supposed leftists was largely "nuke 'em into glass". Even now you still get a "well Iraq was wrong, but Afghanistan was totally right and justified" response from most Americans. If wr authorized chemical warfare against insurgents, we wouldn't have the Afghan mess. We'd have a stable and secure democracy in Central Asia loyal to America. zoux posted:The part that I remember is this depressed rear end major who keeps talking about how they are trying to keep Afghan commanders from keeping prepubescent gently caress boys and letting their men gang rape them but try try as they might they can't get them to give it up. Yeah, it happens. How else do you keep morale up in auxillary units? You can't ship in enough indian whores for everyone.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:16
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FlamingLiberal posted:How did I miss that? Christ. They call them tea boys in the doc and he's not as explicit as I am.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:17
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FlamingLiberal posted:How did I miss that? Christ. It's kind of an ongoing thing which people tend to dismiss as "LOL orientalism" but that doesn't make it not a thing. And we hand out Viagra like candy to these tribal leaders, so those dancing boys can look forward to efficiently created anal fissures! The system works.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:18
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zoux posted:They call them tea boys in the doc and he's not as explicit as I am. Ah, the end result of extreme misogyny.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:21
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I think pederasty has a pretty long tradition in human history actually.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:26
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Seriously though, at that point you should just loving shoot them. gently caress practicality, child rape deserves death.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:28
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Stultus Maximus posted:Ah, the end result of extreme misogyny. Sometimes, they're even girls! Gender equality in pedaresting. An Angry Bug posted:Seriously though, at that point you should just loving shoot them. The tea boys or our Afghan allies? If you shoot them, their family takes arms against you. Like I said, you have to use chemical weapons to eradicate the issue on a community basis.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:28
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zoux posted:I think pederasty has a pretty long tradition in human history actually. And in many, if not most cases, it's due to an extremely misogynistic society.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:29
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My Imaginary GF posted:If wr authorized chemical warfare against insurgents, we wouldn't have the Afghan mess. We'd have a stable and secure democracy in Central Asia loyal to America. Put General MIGF in charge, i'm sure he'll blow the Taliban away with his grasp of strategy.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:29
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Or better yet be caught in the fallout.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:31
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Panzeh posted:Put General MIGF in charge, i'm sure he'll blow the Taliban away with his grasp of strategy. I'll blow them away by killing them without giving a poo poo about civilian casualties. If there are no hearts and all minds asphixiate, you don't need to waste time doing bullshit feel-good work that has no impact. Stultus Maximus posted:And in many, if not most cases, it's due to an extremely misogynistic society. The Afghans have a tradition of child sex slaves. We, too, in America have traditions. Tradition, such as castration. Tradition, such as use of chemical weapons to eliminate enemy forces.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:31
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It doesn't matter if you're trolling, by the way. You're still a horrible person.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:32
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Stultus Maximus posted:And in many, if not most cases, it's due to an extremely misogynistic society. I'm not sure what the connection is there?
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Jan 5, 2015 21:32
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zoux posted:The part that I remember is this depressed rear end major who keeps talking about how they are trying to keep Afghan commanders from keeping prepubescent gently caress boys and letting their men gang rape them but try try as they might they can't get them to give it up. Strong parallels with what Hersh hints is in the Pentagon's secret tape there.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:34
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Fried Chicken posted:Strong parallels with what Hersh hints is in the Pentagon's secret tape there. What's that now?
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Jan 5, 2015 21:37
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zoux posted:I'm not sure what the connection is there? If the cultural idea is that women are subhuman and not worth being partners with men except to produce more men, are not allowed to be seen in public or interact with non-relatives, sexual relations become extremely twisted. Or to put it in Afghan terms, "How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face?…We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."
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Jan 5, 2015 21:39
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My Imaginary GF posted:We, too, in America have traditions. Tradition, such as castration. Ahh, so that's why you post like you do!
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Jan 5, 2015 21:43
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Shots fired big time at the GOP just now by White House press secretary quote:"There's no arguing that who Republicans decide to elevate into a leadership position says a lot about what the conference's priorities and values are,"Earnest said during the briefing.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:43
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Stultus Maximus posted:If the cultural idea is that women are subhuman and not worth being partners with men except to produce more men, are not allowed to be seen in public or interact with non-relatives, sexual relations become extremely twisted. Or to put it in Afghan terms, "How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face?…We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful." Hmm that's just so far beyond my ken I couldn't even conceptualize it. Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Shots fired big time at the GOP just now by White House press conference Here's a funny thing: their conference and constituency doesn't give a poo poo.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:45
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Shots fired big time at the GOP just now by White House press conference If there's one thing Americans hate more than reverse-racism, its nazis. And Scalise is a loving Nazi. In Congress! As the Republican Whip! Do you trust Congressional Republican Nazis with whipships? We must use our intelligence services to investigate how far the nazi infiltration of the Republican party goes, and make all proceedings of the investigation public. Stultus Maximus posted:If the cultural idea is that women are subhuman and not worth being partners with men except to produce more men, are not allowed to be seen in public or interact with non-relatives, sexual relations become extremely twisted. Or to put it in Afghan terms, "How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face?…We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful." America should accept unaccompanied Afghan women as special refugees--while there's still time. zoux posted:Here's a funny thing: their conference and constituency doesn't give a poo poo. Here's the other thing: Their donors, especially non-WASPs looking for a good excuse to reduce contributions without reducing access, give a poo poo. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 21:47
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My Imaginary GF posted:If there's one thing Americans hate more than reverse-racism, its nazis. Duke said if Scalise is blocked he will put out a list of republicans and democrats who associate with the KKK.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:49
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Armyman25 posted:Most veterans avoid going to the VA if they can help it since it has a somewhat deserved reputation for offering substandard care. You mainly see really old, poor, non-retirees there. Probably depends on your local VA hospital. I've gotten great service at mine over the past ten years. Been seeing the same doctor the whole time and he somehow remembers me even though he sees hundreds of vets.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:51
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zoux posted:People really have no business making their own decisions. Democracy is a failed experiment. We must return to monarchy or dictatorship. 
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