The Only Numbers that Matter

Freedom Elz wrote:
> On Sep 16, 7:27 pm, Thomas <none....DeleteThis@none.man> wrote:
>> Freedom Elz wrote:
>>> "Chris" <no....DeleteThis@goaway.com> wrote in message
>>> news:dvpoe39pbgd91oi712gnha3b03i1l9p4u1@4ax.com...
>>>> On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:33:18 -0400, "Bushay" <busha....DeleteThis@yahoo.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> "Chris" <no....DeleteThis@goaway.com> wrote in message
>>>>> news:ebnne3t4f58kd72ujkdreuhc1ps6fluoo1@4ax.com...
>>>> You're just a bigot.
>>> He is, but then again, so is the guy he's insulting.
>> And so is the guy I am responding to.
>>
>> Difference is, you and I are bigoted against people for decisions they
>> make, not what race(s) they are born into.
>
> Or in your case its what language they speak

Huh?

> and which international
> border they born behind.

Pot, meet kettle.

-Thomas
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

>>The US puts the allies on their back and carries
>> them to victory in WWII, and you take credit for it.
>
>Because THAT is a myth. The Commonwealth and Soviet Union had more to
>do with winning the Second World War than the US did.

That's not true, Elz. I have a feeling you're only paying attention
to one half of the war - in the European theatre, as that's where
Canada performed quite well indeed. More than America though? I'd
debate that issue (if I thought this argument was worth it) quite
strongly. Canada suffered 10% of the casualties that America did.

But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
Soviets had won that thing without American materiel. It is also
questionable whether there wouldn't have been some sort of settlement,
had Germany been able to field all of her Western European armies in
the East, but they were up to their asses in American soldiers at the
time.

In addition, neither Canadians nor Soviets did squat in the Pacific
theatre compared to what America did, where America did damn near
everything to beat Japan, with some thanks to some very good work by
the Australians, particularly in New Guinea. Yes, there were soldiers
from a number of countries doing very good work out there, but let's
be honest - America did the bulk of the Pacific work.

These Canada-America arguments are pretty stupid, in my opinion. Both
countries benefit tremendously from having the other sitting across a
4,000+ mile unguarded border, and our relationship has been largely
pretty good. I don't get the animosity from either side. I think
Canada's great, though admittedly, I spend much more time in Western
Canada than in the eastern part.

Back to lurking in this particular thread...

Chris
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

"Thomas" <noneman.TakeThisOut@none.man> wrote in message
news:zfmdnV3RsvwNTnPbnZ2dnUVZ_hqdnZ2d@wideopenwest.com...
> Grande Mal wrote:
>> "Thomas" <noneman.TakeThisOut@none.man> wrote in message
>> news:J_-dnVHawox8J3DbnZ2dnUVZ_jGdnZ2d@wideopenwest.com...
>>> Freedom Elz wrote:
>>>> "Thomas" <noneman.TakeThisOut@none.man> wrote in message
>>>>> You need hockey to give your country an identity.
>>>> Just like starting and then losing wars is yours.
>>> We've lost one war, last time I checked.
>>
>> One this century.
>
> Hmh. One war this century - Iraq. And we're winning that one right now.

3,782 US dead, 27,753 wounded and not a square foot of Iraq secured. The US
is trapped- can't win and can't leave.
Wasn't this war won about three years ago? Thought I remember Dubya
declaring victory?

>> Actually, the fat lady hasn't sung yet but she's warming up her pipes.
>
> Not even close.

No, really! Listen... hear it?

>> Last century's loss, to be honest, wasn't one you started.
>
> The French started the Vietnam war, yes. It'd be nice if we let them get
> their asses kicked again and spared a bunch of relevant lives, but
> whatever.

Thought I told you about the word 'relevant'? Listen again- it's good that
you're trying to expand your vocabulary but you need to learn the meaning of
these new words and use them in context, when they're relevant.

> Man, the world would be a completely different place if it hadn't been for
> the Vietnam War and weak, incompetent American leadership during said war.
> There would be no Iraq war, no Islamofascist terrorism, and even if there
> were, there certainly wouldn't be American opposition to a war. The drug
> problem wouldn't be as big as it is.
>
> Then again, women would still be getting the shaft, and minorities would
> be disadvantaged instead of privileged like they are now.
>
>> The loss in the century before, though, was your own damn fault.
>
> The US has only lost one war. Since you are Canadian, I assume you hold
> the same ridiculous, baseless position that the US lost the War of 1812.

Since the war started with an American invasion of Canada and ended in New
Orleans, with the American capitol being burned along the way, you'd have a
hard time spin-doctoring this one into a victory.


> I further assume that, like Elz, you hold firm to the militia myth.

No idea what that is, and too lazy to google it. If it matters, give me a
brief.

> Heh, Canadians. The British win some battles in the War of 1812, and you
> take credit for it.

At the time, there wasn't a difference between Canadian and British. Well,
besides the French but you don't call them Canadian, anyway. There was some
Native Indian involvement, too, that was probably skimmed over in your
'history' textbooks.
Don't see your point.

The US puts the allies on their back and carries
> them to victory in WWII, and you take credit for it.

WWII was won by the USSR. In Europe, anyway. The US won the war in the
Pacific.

A South African
> wins NBA MVP, and you take credit for it.

No, that horse is dead. Spur it if you want- all you get is a cloud of dust.

> Some things never change.
>
> -Thomas
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

"Chris" <noone DeleteThis @goaway.com> wrote in message
news:lhrte351suhefbdkt44t8ud75nhiu45lbp@4ax.com...
>
>>>The US puts the allies on their back and carries
>>> them to victory in WWII, and you take credit for it.
>>
>>Because THAT is a myth. The Commonwealth and Soviet Union had more to
>>do with winning the Second World War than the US did.
>
> That's not true, Elz. I have a feeling you're only paying attention
> to one half of the war - in the European theatre, as that's where
> Canada performed quite well indeed. More than America though? I'd
> debate that issue (if I thought this argument was worth it) quite
> strongly. Canada suffered 10% of the casualties that America did.
>
> But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
> and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
> Soviets had won that thing without American materiel. It is also
> questionable whether there wouldn't have been some sort of settlement,
> had Germany been able to field all of her Western European armies in
> the East, but they were up to their asses in American soldiers at the
> time.
>
> In addition, neither Canadians nor Soviets did squat in the Pacific
> theatre compared to what America did, where America did damn near
> everything to beat Japan, with some thanks to some very good work by
> the Australians, particularly in New Guinea. Yes, there were soldiers
> from a number of countries doing very good work out there, but let's
> be honest - America did the bulk of the Pacific work.
>
> These Canada-America arguments are pretty stupid, in my opinion. Both
> countries benefit tremendously from having the other sitting across a
> 4,000+ mile unguarded border, and our relationship has been largely
> pretty good. I don't get the animosity from either side. I think
> Canada's great, though admittedly, I spend much more time in Western
> Canada than in the eastern part.
>
> Back to lurking in this particular thread...
>
> Chris

No worries, Chris. There's no Canada-US animosity, just Thomas-Elz-Grande
Mal animosity.
And like hockey, it's just a game.
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

On Sep 17, 5:46 pm, Chris <no... DeleteThis @goaway.com> wrote:
> >>The US puts the allies on their back and carries
> >> them to victory in WWII, and you take credit for it.
>
> >Because THAT is a myth. The Commonwealth and Soviet Union had more to
> >do with winning the Second World War than the US did.
>
> That's not true, Elz. I have a feeling you're only paying attention
> to one half of the war - in the European theatre, as that's where
> Canada performed quite well indeed. More than America though?

I'm not saying Canada on its own Chris, I'm saying the Commonwealth
nations
(UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc) and the Soviet
Union. BTW
you are correct in that I am only looking at the European part of the
war, the war
with Japan was certain in its outcome right from the beginning IMO.
Japan was a
technologically backwards empire bent on expansionism without the
menas to
support it, they stood no chance of winning a prolonged war against
anyone.


> I'd
> debate that issue (if I thought this argument was worth it) quite
> strongly.

Chris, I think we can debate this rationally without getting personal,
if you
want to try.

> Canada suffered 10% of the casualties that America did.

True, but Canada also had more men in uniform per capita than any
allied nation,
1 million men from a population of 11 million at the time. And there
was no
conscription.



> But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
> and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
> Soviets had won that thing without American materiel.

Chris, this is a common position of Americans as well but it is also
exaggerated. For
starters, the UK also had lend lease going with Soviet Union, even
Canada
did as well. But the truth is most of the equipment that they got was
second rate
junk like P-39s and the Valentine tank and they had no influence in
key battles
such as Kursk or Stalingrad. By the time the Soviets began to turn
back the
Germans they were already churning out over 2000 T-34 tanks (the best
of the
war) a month. Rifles, personal kit etc, was all Soviet in the early
days and the
army held its ground on the backs of its civilian population, taking
food, clothing
etc from them not lend lease.




> It is also
> questionable whether there wouldn't have been some sort of settlement,
> had Germany been able to field all of her Western European armies in
> the East, but they were up to their asses in American soldiers at the
> time.

Correction: They were up to their asses in Allied soldiers at that
point.



> In addition, neither Canadians nor Soviets did squat in the Pacific

Well considering we entered the war against Germany from the outset,
why
would we send more troops there? But here's something that you may not
know,
Canadians were sent to defend Hong Kong in the fall of 1941. They were
fighting the
Japanese on the ground months before Americans were. See the Battle
of
Hong Kong for reference. BTW, equating Canada's contribution in the
Pacific
to that of the Soviets is historically inaccurate, aside from Hong
Kong the RCAF had fighter squadrons supporting you guys in the
Aleutians in 1942! The Soviets didn't do anythign against the Japs
until August of 1945.



> theatre compared to what America did, where America did damn near
> everything to beat Japan, with some thanks to some very good work by
> the Australians, particularly in New Guinea. Yes, there were soldiers
> from a number of countries doing very good work out there, but let's
> be honest - America did the bulk of the Pacific work.

I'm not disputing that, the point here is that they did not do the
bulk of the work
in Europe as a number of revisionists in here would like to believe.



> These Canada-America arguments are pretty stupid, in my opinion. Both
> countries benefit tremendously from having the other sitting across a
> 4,000+ mile unguarded border, and our relationship has been largely
> pretty good. I don't get the animosity from either side.

Lately its been beginning and ending with Thomas, he's been taking
potshots
at us for months now and I've let it pass but I've had enough of his
fat mouthy
ass on this particular subject.
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

Chris wrote:
>>> The US puts the allies on their back and carries
>>> them to victory in WWII, and you take credit for it.
>> Because THAT is a myth. The Commonwealth and Soviet Union had more to
>> do with winning the Second World War than the US did.
>
> That's not true, Elz.

It's just like I said in the closing of my post. And it's exactly why I
didn't bother reading the replies.

You can't debate rationally with kooks.

-Thomas
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

>> But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
>> and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
>> Soviets had won that thing without American materiel.
>
>Chris, this is a common position of Americans as well but it is also
>exaggerated.

As an aside, having read several hundred books on WWII, I can tell you
that a lot of the western literature (i.e. American, British, etc.)
is....shall we say, slanted towards the Allies in many respects. To
the victors go the spoils, I suppose.

Anyway, there are an increasing number of better books coming out all
of the time, as historians are doing better research, information is
easier to get out of some countries, and a lot of data is being
de-classified by the US government.

It's still hard to get good historical perspectives out of some
countries - Russia, Japan, China, etc. I'm hoping that this continues
to improve, and good WWII literature starts to emerge en masse from
some of these places. I'd enjoy reading them, as they'd almost
certainly contain a lot of information written from an entirely
different perspective.

Chris
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

>> In retrospect, sure it's easy to look at that and see how it would be
>> tough to maintain an empire that big with so much ocean between
>> 'colonies', and Japan had no realistic oil resources anywhere near
>> its' shores.
>
>If they could have held Indonesia, they would have more than enough oil
>to sustain themselves.

Easier said than done, given Indonesia is a really long way away from
Japan, and across an ocean no less. That was dicey, no matter how you
slice it. Germany had a much better chance of keeping the Ploesti oil
fields in Romania than Japan ever had with the oil in Indonesia.


>> Yeah, it's funny watching you guys go back and forth over this.
>> America is great for Canada, and Canada is great for America. For
>> different reasons, perhaps. But the end result is the same.
>
>Canadia is irrelevant to the US.

That's absolutely not true. If the US had to extensively guard that
border like many countries in the world have to guard their borders,
that would significantly change the US economy, foreign policy, and
even culture, to a certain extent.

Chris
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

xpenenyx.TakeThisOut@earthlink.net wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:34:47 -0400, "finsfan" <hmatthews5.TakeThisOut@cogeco.ca>
> wrote:
>
>
>>>> Economy is coming to halt because no one wants to spend a dime,
>>> The Dow is higher now than it has ever been. At the time of this writing,
>>> it is up 85.76 since yesterday's close.
>
> No it was higher in mid-July when it was slightly over 14,000.

Right. "Now" as in recently, than "ever" as in the past (and, more
specifically, during the Clinton years that Finsy is so eager to see
return).

I doubt that his argument was that Bush ran the economy into the toilet
between July and today, which is the only way that your attempted
correction would be relevant.

> It
> closed today up 335 and about 1000 points for the year.
>>> Nikkei, on the other hand, dropped 325.62 yesterday.
>
> I don't really follow the Nikkei but I've found most of the exchanges
> around the world mirror the Dow. When it's up there are too.

Well, considering that the TSE closes before the NYSE opens, that'd be
pretty tough. Tomorrow's TSE could very well reflect today's NYSE and
NASDAQ gains though.

-Thomas
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

Chris wrote:
>>> But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
>>> and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
>>> Soviets had won that thing without American materiel.
>> Chris, this is a common position of Americans as well but it is also
>> exaggerated.
>
> As an aside, having read several hundred books on WWII, I can tell you
> that a lot of the western literature (i.e. American, British, etc.)
> is....shall we say, slanted towards the Allies in many respects.

Just like the majority of the writings on the Civil War are undeniably
rabidly pro-Union.

Difference is in the level to which liberties are taken with regards to
historical fact.

-Thomas
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:12:01 -0400, Thomas <noneman RemoveThis @none.man> wrote:

>Chris wrote:
>>>> But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
>>>> and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
>>>> Soviets had won that thing without American materiel.
>>> Chris, this is a common position of Americans as well but it is also
>>> exaggerated.
>>
>> As an aside, having read several hundred books on WWII, I can tell you
>> that a lot of the western literature (i.e. American, British, etc.)
>> is....shall we say, slanted towards the Allies in many respects.
>
>Just like the majority of the writings on the Civil War are undeniably
>rabidly pro-Union.
>
>Difference is in the level to which liberties are taken with regards to
>historical fact.

Historical fact is always slanted somewhat by one's perspective.
Certainly the actions leading to the irrefutable results are. My
previous comment is pointed towards getting that alternative
perspective.

Chris
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

"Thomas" <noneman RemoveThis @none.man> wrote in message
news:5JCdneLlrsvOZnLbnZ2dnUVZ_vOlnZ2d@wideopenwest.com...
> finsfan wrote:
>> "Thomas" <noneman RemoveThis @none.man> wrote in message
>
>> Christ the collapse of Mortgage Companies (subprime), record numbers of
>> bankruptcies, home foreclosures.
>
> The economy didn't cause that. The economy is effected by it.


What a hoot! Fuck, man, how come I never noticed before that you're
genuinely stupid?
Hey, tell me, does the ecology cause the leaves to fall or is it just
effected by it?


>
> Actually, I really can't think of anything scandalous that Bush has done.
> Perhaps the Miers thing.

Hey, did you see that video of him at a round table with some of the leaders
of European nations and that idiot gets up, goes behind the Chancellor of
Germany and starts to massage her neck and shoulders! It was hilarious! She
shudders, jerks away, Bush is standing there with his hands in the air,
looking like the complete moron he is.
'Course, that's not really scandalous, just a national embarrassment.
If you like, I'll find a link for you.

>
> -Thomas
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter 

"Thomas" <noneman RemoveThis @none.man> wrote in message
news:uL2dnQuQM5pax23bnZ2dnUVZ_q3inZ2d@wideopenwest.com...
> Chris wrote:
>>>> But, while the Soviets took the brunt of the German army's aggression
>>>> and beat them, who was it who armed them to do it? No way would the
>>>> Soviets had won that thing without American materiel.
>>> Chris, this is a common position of Americans as well but it is also
>>> exaggerated.
>>
>> As an aside, having read several hundred books on WWII, I can tell you
>> that a lot of the western literature (i.e. American, British, etc.)
>> is....shall we say, slanted towards the Allies in many respects.
>
> Just like the majority of the writings on the Civil War are undeniably
> rabidly pro-Union.
>
> Difference is in the level to which liberties are taken with regards to
> historical fact.
>
> -Thomas

'Historical fact'?
Care to define that little abiguity for your audience?
 >> Stay informed about: The Only Numbers that Matter