It's software, all the way down.

Good answer. It's typically not a good idea to eat next years seed crop.

"I apologize."

Sorry, this is the internet. We can't have that, now, can we?

Leonids. November 2001. Never to be forgotten.

Oh lord, you realize you just started another conspiracy theory, right? I should start an email chain tonight, attributing this to some vague authority. I wonder how long it would take to propagate.

Mississippi River watershed.

"This is the question no apologist can ever answer". The answers are all over these threads here. Read and learn, citizen.

Ok, I get it. You really don't like Pax Americana. Well, like all things, this too shall pass. You will rejoice in it, perhaps, if you're one of the lucky ones to live through it.

After the war, we helped rebuild both antagonists of WWII. Today they are strong democracies and allies. We have our differences, but can work through them.

Bewail the evilness of America all you want, but there's not much historical evidence of this kind of thing ever happening before.

Excellent idea. Good posting. Serves as a fine example of what intelligent intercourse is all about.

Between the wingnuts on the right who will whine about anything BHO does, the wingnuts on the left who will whine that BHO isn't all love and unicorns, Russian trolls who have allowed cold war thinking to be revived, and Muslim trolls who are just pissed, yeah, there's going to be a lot of negatives. Oh, and let's not forget the Slashdot Hipsters who're "too cool to fool".

As old as mankind, child. There, there, back to sleep now.

Tonight on Fox! Osama bin Talkin'!

Excellent posting, gman. Thanks. Another factoid that escapes the revisionists is the fact that, previously to the a-bombs, we were fire-bombing cities. Tokyo lost over 100,000 people in a previous raid. It took 100's of bombers and 1000's of men, with very little loss on our side because we had air superiority. (ref. wikipedia; "The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9–10 March 1945 was later estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history.[2]")

The Japanese, with their warrior culture still in control of their living god, took these blows as any good warrior would.

When the idea finally sunk in, after the second a-bomb, that maybe we could, instead of sending a hundred bombers to bomb one city in one night, send one bomber each to a hundred cities in one night and utterly destroy them, well, the smart ones were finally able to overcome the warriors.

I'd rather "the taxpayers dime" than the taxpayers millions.

That's called killing two stones with one bird.