I'm sorry but I think you've mistaken the United States for a Nordic Social Democracy or something. If a new parent (male or female) receives several months off with pay that's a benefit willingly provided their employer so it stands to reason they're not going to bellyache about it. The only benefit employers are mandated to offer in the United States is provided for by the Family Medical Leave Act. Mom is entitled to no more than 12 weeks off work, without pay, and that's only if she works for a company with >=50 employees. Kudos to her employer if they offer more than that but they're not required to do so.

I could contrast this experience with the foreign country I'm most familiar with (Finland) but it doesn't look very good for the United States. Different culture and country of course, I doubt we could ever match what they offer, but we certainly could do a lot better than we're doing right now....

Outlawed firearms? Washington has shall issue concealed carry and relatively liberal (by American standards) firearm laws. It's not exactly Utah but it ain't New York either....

That should have been six members. I guess I overlooked poor Estonia....

I said logistical support; I didn't claim that we flew more sorties than they did. They needed access to American force multiplers, i.e., air-to-air refueling assets, communications assets, underway replenishment ships, and so on. That was originally to be the extent of our intervention but it expanded beyond that and I believe we did in fact fly more sorties than the British or French. It's hard to find definitive numbers on this since the mission was flown under NATO auspices and the sorties aren't broken out by member in any of the information I've been able to find, they're just listed as "NATO sorties."

Ultimately I don't really care who flew more sorties; I was just pointing out the fact that even the British and French lack the ability to wage an extended campaign beyond their shores without support from the United States. I could tweak British pride further by pointing out that the operation to recover the Falklands would have likewise failed without American logistical support and the British military of 1980 had a lot more capability than the British military of 2014. If that were to happen again today the UK would be royally screwed, they've let their capabilities atrophy that badly.

With few exceptions European countries just don't see the value of investing in defense. NATO members commit to spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense but only five out of twenty eight members (the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, France, Turkey, and Estonia) actually live up to this obligation. Most of the members of NATO can't even defend themselves, much less contribute to collective defense, and the situation is even worse if you look at the military capabilities of non-NATO EU members.

It's PBS dude. You're reaching even by your standards. I think we're done here. Have fun tilting at windmills.

You don't even have to say "fuck the children." How about "fuck the athletics program?" I wonder what kind of connectivity that new AstroTurf field could have paid for? Or the new stadium that surrounds it, complete with lighting system that would have been the envy of a minor league sports team just a few years ago. I remember playing in the mud with spectators that had to sit on portable bleachers and games being called because we ran out of daylight.

In reality there's more important things than uber high speed broadband, like student to teacher ratio, but I think most would agree both are more important than a bloody football field that primarily benefits a small percentage of the student population. PE is important -- look at the American obesity rate -- but one can teach healthy exercise habits without needing an eight digit venue for the occasion.

They're content to keep their hands clean? Europe has joined the air campaign against ISIS. They'll doubtless join the ground campaign that's coming sooner or later, regardless of what our President thinks.

We're not in the business of policing the entire world. For better or worse we are in the business of policing the Middle East. The reasons for this are too lengthy to describe in a /. post but if you have a plan to extricate us that doesn't leave our critical interests vulnerable (or those of our Allies) I'd love to hear it. So would the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; hell, if his hesitation is any indication he'd like to hear it more than I would. Smarter people than you and I have tried and failed to come up with better solutions than the status quo.

The powers that be are working on that but the pig-headed isolationism evidenced in many of the comments here (not yours) is the wrong way to go about doing it. The United States is the indispensable nation. We're the only country with the ability to project meaningful amounts of power beyond our borders; the UK and France couldn't even manage an extended bombing campaign against a third world country without logistical support from the United States. The United States can't solve this problem alone but neither can the world solve it without the United States.

Excuse me, but where did I advocate for terminating all Sunnis? I advocating for terminating ISIS. There is a difference you know.

Obligatory Godwin time: Not all Germans were members of the SS.

So now you're going to condemn the news media for having the audacity to report what's going on in Syria? This from the person who professes to care about civil liberties? This just gets richer and richer....

You realize I linked to a Frontline PBS piece, right? I've heard a lot of criticism of PBS but warmongering is a new one.....

You're really quite hilarious, do you know that? You ceaselessly whine about civil liberties, without actually understanding how they work in the United States and then you compound that by whining about the emotional imagery that has been shown to the American people by the free press. You do realize that ISIS filmed their executions of American citizens and released it to the world, right? It was picked up by every news agency in existence. What's your best suggestion for counteracting this horrible manipulation of our body politic?

Please link to the comment where I claimed to be anti-war or admit that you're putting words in my mouth.

Idealistic answer: We shouldn't be fine with anyone doing it.
Cynical answer: African warlords haven't used the gruesome execution of American's (and American Allies) for propaganda purposes.

Traffic analysis.

Not saying I agree or disagree with the underlying policy; just saying that historically traffic analysis has proven to be fruitful.

Who said that? One of the reasons we were reluctant to send aid to the so-called moderates was because we were afraid it would fall into the hands of groups like ISIS. In retrospect that was probably a mistake; of course one could go further back and say that it was a mistake to help destabilize Assad in the first place. Devil you know and all that. Did you happen to catch Assad's interview with Charlie Rose? He called this happening; he may be a scumbag but he knew his country better than we ever did. Realpolitik might have been the best play, though it's a bit late for that at this stage.

Incidentally, they're not just our enemy; they're enemies of all of civilization. You're willing to sit on the sidelines while ISIS engages in a campaign of genocide and ethnic/religious cleansing? Go watch this, assuming you have the stomach to get through it. They're barbarians and they need to be terminated with extreme prejudice.

If you can't get behind the moral imperative to intervene, well, they've killed multiple American citizens and that's all the casus belli we need.

I hope you appreciate the irony of whining about the judicial system while simultaneously advocating in favor of summary executions without trial.... :)

So your complaint is that the current guy hasn't catered to your pet issues? Welcome to the fucking club dude.

Don't vote for him or his party if that's how you feel. Just don't try and claim with a straight face that there's no difference between the two major parties. There are significant differences on issues large and small. If neither one of them caters to your pet issue(s) you're welcome to vote for someone who does.

That might have something to do with the American citizens that keep getting their heads cut off. If you think there's any President that would behave any differently you're sadly mistaken. If anything I don't think he's going far enough with those sickos; go watch this, if you can stomach it. Watch how they shoot bound and helpless people as nonchalantly as you would step on a spider. That organization is as close to pure evil as I've seen in my lifetime and if our President had the balls to actually do what needs to be done I would be the first one lining up to go over there and help kill them.