so....you don't trust the CIA and the US government, until they say what you want, at which point their logic is unimpeachable?

It's hard to take over a country yourself when you're trying to pretend you're not helping the locals, and said locals aren't really good at taking over a country. Like the US support of the various South Vietnamese Governments during the Vietnam war: If your "allies" are incompetent, corrupt idiots, it's really hard to make things work.

I get the feeling that the United States at this point couldn't overthrow a volleyball over a low wall made of aluminum cans.

Oh, how I wish I had mod points...

I occasionally post AC to reply to people who, I feel, are a bit "too emotional".( The AC post your referencing wasn't mine, BTW).
I sometimes like to make a point, then move on without having someone take potshots at me for disagreeing with them.
For example, If I somewhat mistakenly believed (truly, I do not, honestly!) that Host Files are useless and not worthy of the media they're stored upon, I would most certainly post AC when commenting on an statement by a certain Host File evangelist.

Actually, I'm curious about your views on the H1N1/bird flu, as it sounds like you're not just pulling stuff off the internet and quoting it.

But if that's the case, then the government should simply say "Do not us the proprietary MS format going forward, use format X". I don't see how Microsoft factors into this, other than grandstanding.

Wait, did you just tie non-backwards compatibility to monopoly dominance?
Seems to me if someone wanted to maintain a monopoly, they'd stay forever backwards compatible, to keep people from ever changing.

Good lord. In College I could NOT stop playing Twilight Zone Pinball!

Rummikub used to be my family's go to game for vacations. Now a simple game of dominoes is it,

Yes, it is.
Taken from the famous case, "Swedish Chef v. Wusthoff cutlery (1982)"

I find it interesting that white rice always gets the blame laid on it, but there are literally billions of healthy people who eat white rice almost three times daily.

"running around your house on a gasoline powered vacuum cleaner destroyer bot."
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

So the suggestion is, have stringent environmental demands on the appliance and then have someone buy two? I bet you flush your low flow toilet four times, don't you?

You do realize that all the countries that have nukes DO have nukes pointed at their capital cities, right?