Open Mic for August 10, 2011

Another Open Mic day arrives. This time I am a little bit better prepared as I actually have time to add some thoughts to the contributions that I am presenting. I have been trying to take more time lately and dedicate it to writing here at SUFA. I know that it may not seem to be so to everyone, but I am trying to make the articles appear on a more regular schedule, similar to what used to happen at SUFA. I still haven’t gotten to the point where I have time to write more than twice per week, so unless we have regular contributions from others, we aren’t going to get to the point of having new articles every day for a while. For today’s topics I have offered up an opinion piece written by James Zogby over at the Huffington Post, touching on Iran’s image within the Middle East, and a debate over what is “free speech” and what isn’t during a political campaign…

The 12th Imam – Fact or Fiction Part Two of Three

The first question that I would ask is….Does it matter? Many people claim that religion is not the reasons for the tension in the Middle East. I claim that religion is the ONLY reason for tension in the Middle East. It is not American Imperialism or mercantilism as I previously mentioned. It goes back a whole lot further than that. So, let’s take a journey into the world of Islam and its definitions and why I make my claim that the ME tension is strictly religious.

Why Libya is An Extension of Suicidal Policy

The other day I was perusing through the comments here at SUFA and stumbled across a short and simple post from Mathius. He asked whether there was anyone here at Stand Up For America that agreed with what was happening in Libya, specifically, the US participation in that country. I don’t remember what the answer was from everyone who answered. What I distinctly remember is what I thought when I read his question….. No, but why? I most certainly don’t like what is happening in Libya, or what happened in Afghanistan or Iraq either, for that matter. Although I understood the the first foray and tolerated the second. But the real question I wanted everyone to answer, because it seemed as though most were answering “No”, was WHY are you opposed to what is happening in Libya?

The Jekyll and Hyde Game of Iran – Part One of Three

Make NO mistake about it, Iran is the new threat and has been since the debacle of the elections last. Yes….make no mistake. Iran is more dangerous than China, Russia, Europe, and the United States. NOTE: More dangerous…not more powerful…YET!!! But that time is closing unless we, the United States, get off our collective ass and throw political correctness in the trash can and not give a rat’s ass what China or Russia or Europe thinks. The following is an opinion of D13 based upon his knowledge, research, and tactics….and it is what I would do in the place of A-jad.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for July 6, 2010

Another Tuesday night means that we have found our way to another open mic night. I have chosen to not yet address the video series that JAC suggested, for a couple of reasons. First, I would like to give more people time to view the videos. It takes a total of about three hours, which is more time than some have had to give to it quickly. Second, I want to be very available to discuss those videos when the time comes. Today will be a day of my being on the road, which means that I will not be able to weigh in on anything during the day Wednesday. I will try to do so Wednesday night, but cannot be sure I will be able. For this week’s offerings from me, we have the black panther voter intimidation case, the ban on offshore drilling being re-pushed by the “never waste a crisis” administration, some key players in the middle east suddenly not so friendly with Iran, and the federal government’s suggestion of a far reaching online identity program that they propose would help us to be more secure in terms of our private information. As always, I encourage everyone to bring to the table the topics that they want to discuss as well. Open mic night is meant to be the night to do it!

Wednesday Night Open Mic for June 23, 2010

Open Mic again gets moved to Wednesday night this week. As many of you know, work has kept me extremely busy these last couple of weeks. It hasn’t gotten better yet, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is distant, but it is there. Let’s just hope it isn’t a freight train heading my way. On top of that I was really hoping to wait to weigh in on the whole Obama/McChrystal debacle until some sort of decision was announced. It would have been OK to speculate on what was going to happen, but I was more interested in commenting on what went down instead of what might go down. As for the other topics this week: We have Iran doing its best to ratchet up tensions in the Middle East. We have an Iowa school where some uptight parents are up in arms because their children were shown parts of the human anatomy. I will leave it at those three topics to start. They should be plenty to get things started. Then I can add to that throughout the day as the discussions dictate.

Wednesday Night Open Mic for June 9, 2010

As promised, the one day delay on the open mic thread proves to be just the one day. As much as I hated pushing it off for a night, I was compelled to as I found the other topic interesting and pertinent given that we were on an election night in many places. I have enjoyed the conversations thus far this week, even though some have been frustrating with some periods of unwillingness on the part of some to even consider anything other than their opinion as plausible. For tonight’s open mic we have a host of topics. We will discuss a private Christian school firing a teacher for having sex and getting pregnant three weeks before her marriage. Additionally, we will discuss the 15 year old killed on the Mexico border, California’s referendum to allow open primaries, and another round of UN sanctions that are sure to have the desired effect on Iran….

Why START II is a Waste of Debate Time

As we enter a new week, I don’t want to take away too much from attempting to finish the Corporate taxes conversations because I haven’t gotten much of a response from the left yet, and I figure that will happen more today. But I do want to have a new topic, and thus wanted to address something that wasn’t too massive a topic to handle at the same time. This weekend has flown by for me, with a lot of yard work with Mrs. Weapon, which was nice. Added to that was some good time spent out on Saturday, hitting the farmers market here, and while there having a fried catfish sandwich at the North Carolina Seafood market. I must tell you it doesn’t get much better than that. Overall I have had a very busy, but awesome weekend with Mrs. Weapon, something that doesn’t get to happen too often (I usually work the weekends). Add in some time with legendary couch slayer, Canine Weapon, and the weekend was complete. But when I had time, I read up on the START II treaty negotiations and found myself thinking, “who cares?”

Another Two Articles for Your Perusal

I don’t have a guest commentary on this fine Thursday night. So instead I figured I would take the opportunity to hit on two different articles that I felt would make for some interesting commentary. I have a belief, and I will write more on this later, that national security will become once again one of the focus issues in the upcoming congressional election cycle. In fact, it may be the defining issue, even surpassing deficit spending and the economy. But overall, and again I will cover this in a full article coming soon, I believe that we may be more vulnerable in terms of national security than we have been in a very long time. These two articles play into this concept, but not completely. However, I am interested in hearing the take on these topics because we have not gotten into the subject of the first one very much and the second is a reversal of previous claims that our own resident pirate used in his argument against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. So here they are. Feel free to discuss away. I will do my best on Friday to jump in fairly often and offer my thoughts as well. and as always, you can use this thread to post articles that you want to talk about as well.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for February 9, 2010

Open Mic night returns once again and this week we have some interesting topics and some conversations that we are continuing from other days. I wanted to discuss the Sarah Palin speech from the other night, but it didn’t warrant an entire article so it is a topic here. Additonally, I was planning on discussing Mathius’ contribution yesterday written from the perspective that liberals are elitist and he wondered aloud what one written from the other side would look like. I have instead decided that I will make that its own article instead of giving it small legs here. I think it will be a good discussion to focus on. That should be Sunday night’s article since there will be a guest commentary this week. For the record, I really liked that last week there were some folks who posted open mic topics of their own. That is more what I envisioned this to be. I provide a few topics to get us started and then others provide the things that they want to talk about.

Rejecting Iran’s Possible Dangers

There is no guest commentary submitted for this evening so I told Black Flag that I would respond to his comments about Iran as the topic for tonight. This is not going to be a long post, as we have hashed out Iran as best we could in past debates. We have, frustratingly, not agreed on much, as it seemed to me one side of the argument pointed out Iran as a danger, and the other was intent to instead point out the US as a danger. I will address that fact quickly below, and then move on, as re-hashing it will serve no purpose for us here. As for the topic, I know there are many here who are not interested in this topic. Feel free to use this thread throughout the weekend to discuss any topic you like. I will monitor when I can to respond to whatever subjects you bring up. If you would like to peruse the last discussion that we had on this subject in October, you can do so by clicking HERE (will open a new window). So on to the quick discussion topic…

The Looming Threat of Iran

I promised Black Flag that I would make this the topic for this evening. And it is about time that I addressed it. We have watched Iran for years and seen their rhetoric, their realities, their revolution. The western media has, no doubt, contributed to the negative image that Iran has in so many minds. I will have plenty to say here on the subject of Iran. I have studied that country for most of my adult life. I have been there. I know the people, the structure of their government, and their position relative to the United States. I find it a fascinating country. I also find them a scary country, and for some very good reasons. We are now in the midst of a Presidency that is interested in discussing things with them on a diplomatic level, and I have no issue with that. However, Obama should be aware that he cannot rely on those diplomatic measures to sway the opinion of a government that is quite radical at its heart. So tonight I open the discussion on Iran. The one request that I have for everyone is to please refrain from ranting against them merely because they are a muslim country. The fact that they are muslim has relevance. Treating being muslim as a general slur does not.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for September 29, 2009

Tuesday night and time again for open mic. I know that there are a couple of topics already lined up for this as there is the promised discussion between Charlie and myself and a thread that has been requested by Common Man that I also promised to put up. On top of that there are a few different topics out there in the news that I want to touch on so I have a full night planned here on what is supposed to be my “easy” night, lol. I have blockaded the puppy here with me so that he has no choice but to hang out with dad. And I will settle in to begin the discussion with Charlie (or at least to open it as my schedule ends tonight at 4:00 am and doesn’t bring me back to the site until around noon on Wednesday). Then we can get down to business. And once I get this all done I have some comments from yesterday’s post to go back and respond to! Oh the life of a blogger never ends. And to answer Charlie’s first question about wondering how I keep up on the site? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I am not sure that I do. I never feel like I have enough time to do all I want to do for the readers here.

Iran Showing Its True Colors

I admit to falling victim to a silly desire…. hope…. as the elections in Iran finally reached the day for citizens to cast ballots. I really believed there for a bit that the elections would accomplish two things. I thought they might actually remove Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from power and simultaneously show Iran to have progressed past the islamic theocracy that has gripped that nation in an iron fist of repression and kept the nation from advancing out of the middle ages. But those hopes were dashed with the returns coming in and a victor declared before the polls even closed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected by a wide margin. My shoulders slumped just a little bit, and then I started reading all of the papers throughout the region and I realized that this election might actually be stolen, unlike the bogus claims from Algorians in 2000 (That’s right, I said it) …

Some Thoughts on Obama’s Muslim Outreach Program

I must admit that as I write this, I have a brain that has been a bit taxed this evening in some introspective thought as well as some challenging dialogue on philosophy and government. But I am bouncing back long enough to offer some thoughts on President Obama’s speech from Cairo. I have to admit that there were things that I liked and things that I did not like. I applaud that the President feels that the right thing to do is to go out and kiss and make up with the entire world. He is doing so in gripping fashion. I think it is a waste of time, and I further think that the time has come for a Democrat to man up. But I don’t imagine that is going to happen anytime soon, so let’s stick to the speech shall we?

Gun Control on an International Level

I have long held the belief that we, the United States of America, as the preeminent world super-power, must do our best to protect the world. There is a certain honor in the biggest guy on the block protecting the 99 pound weakling from the bad kids. I served my country for ten years, and I wasn’t a pencil pusher. I did a job where I literally put my life on the line for our country and our way of life. I am still proud of that service. I will always remain that way because I also think there is honor in serving something greater than yourself that you believe in. I believe in America, and that she is a great country. I fought for you, not for the Presidents that I served. And I would do it again.

Libertarian Party Act IX

Well we are finally out of the holiday season for me. And that means we can get back to business. The next to last section of the Libertarian Platform. We have certainly covered a lot in all of the first 8 acts, and we now near the finish line. But we aren’t done yet. There are some inportant areas still to be covered and analyzed. I look forward to your thoughts on these three areas…