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Paul Brandon

Paul Brandon's picture
Mankato, MN
Commenter for
5 years 17 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 04/21/13 at 02:02 pm in response to Where Bachmann campaign probes stand after a busy week

she was not an invited guest and had no official function.
Mitch McConnell sent her -- probably to get her out of the country ;-).

Posted on 04/19/13 at 11:47 am in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

you won't find one.
At best, these were two individuals raised in a thoroughly chaotic environment, who behavior was beyond our (and apparently their) ability to predict.
We need to learn a LOT more about human behavior to account for the aberrant behavior of individuals.
And I say this as an emeritus professor of Psychology; I know what we don't know.

That aside, this is a case of an event getting a lot of publicity, while another event (the Texas explosion) killed...

Posted on 04/19/13 at 10:00 pm in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

if you read the last line, is that I am concerned by unnecessary deaths.
It doesn't matter what kills you; you're still dead.
I'm more interested in saving lives than making moral judgements.
Remember, our country was founded by terrorists.

Posted on 04/20/13 at 10:04 am in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

A good old native born Amurican.
Why didn't it take on him?
The fallacy that only furriners can commit evil.

Posted on 04/22/13 at 09:04 am in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

As usual, you're replying to something that I didn't say.
I made no racial comments; I was pointing out that these individuals had grown up in the United States, were by all accounts well assimilated (at least until the last year).
So if we are looking for an explanation, it is not likely to be found in the fact that they were foreign born.
Once you get past my sarcasm (which I though was rather heavy handed) we are in agreement.
My real argument is with the righties...

Posted on 04/22/13 at 09:09 am in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

Actually, the technology which located the surviving suspect was a guy looking under the tarp of his boat (he would have done so earlier if the city hadn't been locked down except for Dunkin Donuts).
The black helicopter and swat teams only showed up after he had been located.

The whole operation on the part of the suspects seems so unplanned and chaotic (no real escape plans; no messages) that I doubt we'll ever learn much from them, since they themselves really didn't have a...

Posted on 04/22/13 at 09:11 am in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

If you think that the brothers were trying to subvert our political and cultural system, then they've won and we've lost.

Posted on 04/22/13 at 12:58 pm in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

Their beef is with the Russians.
As a general principle, if many thousands of people of a certain provenance (say, Chechen refugees) have NOT committed a crime, then the fact that two individuals in this category DID commit a crime implies that they committed the crime despite being Chechen, not because of it.
Otherwise we would have had a Chechen crime wave.
Same reasoning applies to American Muslims.

Posted on 04/22/13 at 01:07 pm in response to Thoughts on the Boston bombing developments

is 'Security Theater'.
What they do is very obvious -- the best way to make sure that people notice what you're doing is to inconvenience them, which the TSA does well.
The FBI and the ATF gather information quietly (that's the idea, after all), so they don't get publicity unless they either solve a high profile case (which they may want to keep quiet so that they don't jeopardize ongoing investigations) or screw up.

And of course the Lindsey Graham's want to cut the State...

Posted on 04/18/13 at 01:50 pm in response to Tea Party Express on gun bill defeat: Constitution - 1, Obama - 0

this is ultimately a statement about American voters, who overwhelmingly favor gun control, but somehow don't control enough votes in Congress to put their wishes into effect.
One might say that the gun addicts are exercising a tyranny of the minority.