Quote by BlueSkyThe similar interest was meant to be disliking the US. However seeing that it was highly unlikely I would convince you that any one treated fair ish in our system of government could hate it.

Dislike the national government by a segment of the population does not make a part of a country a colonial holding. If colonial status was to be granted based on a part of the Hawaiian native population's dislike of Hawaii being part of the United States, the status can be applied to numerous other U.S. states, as well. There are plenty of people in the South who are less than pleased to be part of the United States, for instance. That dislike doesn't make Mississippi a colony anymore than it does Hawaii.

Quote: I also wasn't in the mood to explain the finer workings of the electoral collage, and our democracy to you in order to make my first argument work.

You would also need to explain how they were relevant to the discussion in the first place.

Quote: As for the fact that colony can apply to many places. It isn't really my fault we are speaking English, and the words are literally so encompassing.

Similarly, it isn't my fault that there are specific definitions of the words that apply to different situations. "Colony" when used to discuss imperialism (or colonialism) means something different than "colony" when used to discuss a community of nudists.

Trying to use an improper definition as a means to be literally correct does your argument no favors, and if you feel the need to do so, your argument must not have been strong enough to survive without doing so.

Quote: It appears sense you didn't bother to rebut the two towns I listed. My argument must have been logically, and factually plausible.

Or your examples simply weren't relevant to the discussion.

Unless your argument on the State of Hawaii being a colonial holding of the United States really has no support outside of comparing it to an art colony and a former leper colony and playing word games.

Quote by BlueSkyAnd lastly where does my logic come in to my argument?

Clearly, it doesn't, since there is no logic to be found in your argument.

Or rather, your new argument.

Any argument about imperialism is by default a political one. As such, there are specific political definitions that apply to such terms as "colony" in such a discussion. In fact, you understood this, and the original argument you tried to use clearly says so.

Your original argument on Hawaii being a colony centered, not on Hawaii being an island, but on the Hawaiian monarchy being overthrown by American fruit-growing interests and the islands subsequently annexed by the United States, creating the Territory of Hawaii, which was subject to direct American political (colonial) control.

When asked why Hawaii was a colony, you said it was because it is an example of us "permanently occupying a foreign nation". Clearly, your meaning was that Hawaii was a colony because of American political control. Nothing to do with geography at all.

From 1898 to 1959, you'd have been right; Hawaii was, for all intents and purposes, a colony of the United States. After 1959, and Hawaii's admission into the Union, that status no longer applied. Hawaii was no longer a possession of the United States; it was one of the United States. By becoming part of the integral territory of the United States, political colonial status is removed.

Which is the status you were talking about originally. You only switched your basing to Hawaii being physically seperated later, when your original argument became untenable and your pride prevented you from admitting defeat to an "arrogant fool" such as myself.

So you substituted your orignal, refuted argument for one that may be literally true on some level, but not on the one we had been discussing before. It is a similarly weak argument, as there are all sorts of extremes it can be logically taken to. If being an island is all that is required for something to qualify as a colony, what prevents Manhattan Island or Staten Island from qualifying?

You've changed your argument from one that was factually unsound to one that is logically ridiculous.

As a matter of fact, they are not seperate from the ruling nations; like Hawaii, they are all integral parts of their nations proper, not colonial possessions.

Northern Ireland is one of the component parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That it is across the Irish Sea from Great Britain and there is a large Irish Catholic minority that wants to be part of Ireland is irrelavent.

Corsica is one of the regions of France, and contains 2 departments. That it is physically seperated from mainland France by the Ligurian Sea and its people and language are closer to Italian than French is irrelavent.

Hokkaido is a Japanese prefecture, and more importantly, one of the Japanese home islands. That it became Japanese later than the other three, and that the Japanese suppressed the non-Japanese native population is irrelavent.

Hawaii is one of the 50 United States of America. The process it went through to become one is irrelavent.

Quote by BlueSkyWell hate to break it to you but my logic doesn't really come in to play here.

It most certainly does, because you're using it, and because it's flawed.

PROTIP: Don't go into specifics unless you know the specifics you're using are correct. If they're not, such as saying that the United States has three "colonies" which you list, when we in fact have more, or listing a U.S. state as a colony, when by definition it is an integral part of the United States proper and thus as far removed from a colony as you can get, does you no favors.

If you're not interested enough to look up the specifics you're naming, there's no point in naming them.

Quote by BlueSkyHawaii is an example of us permanently occupying a foreign nation.

The same thing can and has been said about the United States annexing the Republic of Texas in 1845. But that doesn\'t matter. Hawaii is today an integral part of the United States. It\'s been almost half a century since you could legitimately call it a colony.

Using your logic, though, Northern Ireland, Corsica and Hokkaido are all colonies, as well.

Quote by BlueSkyCurrently we have 3 "colonies"; Wake island (admittedly it is just an airport but it is still there), American Samoa (witch we got out of a treaty with Germany), and Hawaii (the monarchy was overthrown by a group of mostly American immigrants)

How does Hawaii (a U.S. state) count as a colony?

At the same time, if Hawaii counts as a colony, how do Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Marianas and the U.S. Virgin Islands not?

Quote by GodGundam10But think about this. Was it fair for the IOC to tell Japan's athletes that they couldn't participate in 1948 because of what their government did? Or was it fair to tell Germany's athletes the same thing in both 1920 and 1948?

It becomes less unfair when you weigh in the fact that neither Germany nor Japan existed as a sovereign state in 1948.

Quote by tandkzyJust think about Patton , everybody knows him , a famous general of American in WWII . He killed himself after the war . NO war , NO Patton , he think he was not needed any more .

That's nice and all, but it's wrong. Patton was crippled in a traffic accident and died soon afterwards in an Army hospital. It was hardly a suicide, and he definately didn't think he wasn't needed anymore; he was convinced the next war (this time against the Soviet Union) was right around the corner.

Now, there has been speculation that his death was a result of murder, but it wasn't a suicide.

Quote by tandkzyNow , American have the bigest army in the world

I believe you're forgetting someone.

Quote by tandkzyBut China and Koera not fool , they won't fire first . But if Japanese got a light , it will be attack badly by its neighbor , and everything will happen .

So, you're saying that China and Korea wouldn't attack Japan first, but if Japan "got a light" (whatever that means), they would attack Japan first?

Care to resolve this contradiction?

Quote by PrairieDogGuy2006If there was no World War II (for instance), there would not be a rise of the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) within the United States of America.

It wouldn't?

I direct you to a book called War is a Racket, written by one Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, in 1935. The Military Industrial Congressional Complex (which is what President Eisenhower called it originally, cutting Congress out in the name of politics) was already entrenched before World War II.

All those colonial empires that European nations built before World War I would still exist. This is cool if you want to live in the Dutch East Indies, French Equitorial Africa or the Belgian Congo, but others might prefer independent countries.

Of course, "world war" is an expansive term, and World War I wasn't the first world war. There were others before. The American Revolutionary War grew into a world war, for instance.

Quote: Britain and USA will not be like what they are today.

You'll have to expand on this. If you mean them being oh-so mean people who invade other people's land, they were like that before the world wars. How do you think the British Empire came to encompass 2/5 of the world's land area by 1914?

When talking about actors becoming politicians, and using Ronald Reagan as an example, it should be remembered that Reagan spent two terms as Governor of California before running for President. Experience in office counts, and those who have it will nine times out of ten trounce those who don't in presidential races. The closest Clooney has is his father running for Congress in 2004 (and losing).

As it stands, I can only think of three actors that have held a major elected office in recent years, and only two of them are even eligable to be President: Fred Thompson and Jesse Ventura.

All taken, I'm not overly enthusiastic about George Clooney. Besides political differences and his lack of political experience, I just don't like the guy. If not because he comes off as a jerk, then because of how he fagged up the role of Batman.

And besides, this sounds like a cheap attempt to recapture the coolness of an earlier rumored presidential run by an actor. There's only one political novice actor who should run for President and you all bloody well know it.

Quote by DreamTravellerOh... my god. Please learn history while you still are in school. Japan was at war with the allies before 1941. Or didnt you know that Japan joined the Axis in 1940?

Wait, what.

Japan wasn't at was with anyone except China before 1941. Joining the Axis didn't bring them into Germany's war against the Allies, just as Japan allying with Germany didn't bring the Germans into Japan's war. It wasn't until Japan moved to seize European colonial holdings in Southeast Asia to make up for what they weren't getting from the United States because of the trade embargo. This was in 1941.

I believe you were telling someone they needed to learn history?

Why should I believe you when you say that Nazi Germany would have arisen? You've offered no reasoning to support that position other than the assertion itself, and the evidence that has been presented contradicts it. You say Hitler that Hitler was an opportunist who would have seized an opportunity to take power; Germany's defeat in World War I and the upheaval that followed it *was* Hitler's opportunity. Without it, there wouldn't have been an DAP for Hitler to use as his vehicle, since it was founded as a consequence of the Armistice and the rise of the Weimar Republic. If there is no Weimar Republic, there's no DAP, pure and simple.

All of which still leaves Hitler as a foreign-born corporal in the Bavarian army who, to take power, would have had to have gone up against the entrenched Junker class that dominated Germany before the war and, had Germany won, would have still been entrenched in power.

An established system is a lot harder to displace than one that is trying to establish itself. The system Hitler displaced wasn't an established one, and had Germany won, wouldn't have existed for him to displace in the first place.

If you're so desperate to find fascism rising from the ashes of World War I, promising national redemption, maybe you should look, as alternate history writers do, to the nations that would have needed redeeming in the first place, namely the defeated ones. A twice-defeated and twice-humiliated France would have been the perfect place to find people promising national redemption. Instead of a Third Reich, a Third Empire or Third Kingdom.

When you inevitably respond to this, do remember that threads that haven't been replied to in several months are generally considered dead, and that it's best to leave them be; nobody likes necromancers. Second, if you're going to tell me the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich was inevitable, regardless of the outcome of World War I, try telling me why; you've singularly failed to do that.

And stop littering your posts with quotation marks.

Quote by PrairieDogGuy2006I think WWII would had happen regardless who won the war back in 1914 -1918. Yes, Germany would have aquired more lands from France, Spain, Portugal and the rest of W.E. Made their push toward England (Great Britian) and destroy the English way of life. The thought of both France and England under German rule would have been the killing grounds for the Germany S.A. ( armed militia.(The precursor to the much hated S.S.). WWII may have ended differently, with a much enhanced Germany. This would have allowed the Nazis to gain a far greater "death grip" on Western Europe. England would have to go on a"heighten alert" status. The U.S.A would have not gotten involved, considering President Woodrow Wilson stance on U.S. "isolationism" unless the attack was directly at the the U.S.A.

The Jewish folk would have been "liquidated" alot sooner, therefore fueling the Nazis state of Germany in preparation for WWII in a much more vile way. Suppose the the Nazis had attacked the U.S.A. by using submarines to launch torpedoes or even rockets (such as the "V-2" or perhaps a"V-numeric") against American cities. At that time, the U.S. was not prepared to fight directly.

WWII may had ended alot differently and more in all... ended in Nazi Germany's favor. Instead of a victorious win over the Axis nations, the United States and it's allies may be "killing grounds" for it's population. Adolph Hitler and his henchmen would have enslaved the world and "Open the Gates of Hell itself".

You paint what tries to be a disturbing picture, but one built on very weak foundations. You assume that World War II would have been inevitable following World War I; this is possible. However, you seem to be operating under the premise that Nazi Germany was just as inevitable, which it wasn't.

The Nazis were a product of Germany's defeat in World War I, the Versailles Treaty, and the Weimar Republic. Without the defeat, there would have been no Versailles (or it would have been Germany imposing it, not the Entente), and the Kaiser would still have his thrones. In such a situation, there wouldn't have been any need for the Nazi Party; a victorious Germany wouldn't have needed its greatness restored, and there wouldn't have been a demand for a Third Reich if the Second Reich still stood. Adolf Hitler would have been just another Bavarian corporal, nobody who could have challenged the entrenched Prussian officer class that dominated Germany. This also means that there would have been no SA and no "killing fields" for them. And no Holocaust.

A twice defeated and humiliated France is another matter, though. Your picture, however, seems to be assuming that Germany would have annexed the entire country, along with Spain and Portugal, which German troops had never come close to during the war, and Great Britain, which would have required the destruction of the Royal Navy an amphibious invasion to accomplish. This is great overestimation of Germany's capabilities, its strategic aims, and its very nature. Imperial Germany was very different from Nazi Germany; it didn't go around seeking to destroy a country's way of life like you're describing.

Your argument is, quite frankly, ridiculous and anyone who had studied the history of the World Wars could tell you as much. Why you bothered to post it, and almost five months after the last post, is anyone's guess.

Quote by Yu-huangDo you feel it's morally wrong for people to marry their cousins?

That depends. Are we in Shelbyville?

Quote by Shinsengumi89And the President has been in power for over 10 years i belive,

Vladimir Putin has held the office of President since December 31, 1999 (in an acting capacity until March 26, 2000) following Boris Yeltsin's resignation. Before that, Putin had been Prime Minister from August 8, 1999. That doesn't quite add up to "over 10 years".

To be honest, I don't really care if Russia reverts to a more dictatorial government or not; if they want to, let them. Dictatorship, in and of itself, isn't any more or less moral than any other form of government, and Putin's government has managed to stabilize the Russian economy and restore Russian power and prestige on the world stage after it's decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From Russia's perspective, I can't see how that's a step back.

Wars mean different things to different people, and the point of view of one group might not be shared by another. In the specifically mentioned case of Estonia, for instance, they became involved in World War II when they were annexed by the Soviet Union, along with Latvia and Lithuania barely a generation after becoming independent from Russia; they have no reason to view the Soviets as liberators. Oddly, the closest thing the Baltic States had to liberators were the Germans. Not that they owed any goodwill to the Nazis, since the Soviets annexed them as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to begin with.

If you want to reduce it to numbers, it's possible for a country to view the 5 years of Nazi domination it endured as not so bad as the 50 years of Soviet domination that replaced it.

Your assessment of the oil supply is flawed, in that it only looks at oil as an energy source. It has other uses which can't so easily be replaced by things like solar and nuclear power. Look around your house, or just around where you're sitting. How much of what you see is made of plastic?

Plastic is one of the great advances of industrial civilization. It has so very uses, and so many forms to fit those uses.

And even if we switched to other sources for energy, we'd still need oil to make plastics.

Also, why are you using an international agreement in support of your argument that we should close our borders?

The United States cannot close its borders and sever its ties with the world. Period. Before World War II, it was possible for us to do so; we were self-sufficient, and we faced no credible threats to our national security from elsewhere in the world. During and after World War II, however, that changed; new threats (Germany, and then the Soviet Union) that could hurt us if given time emerged (for our part, World War II could be said to be a pre-emptive war against Germany), and we became dependent on other countries for manufactured goods to the detriment of our own industrial base, which has been allowed to decline, as well as oil, which our economy needs to survive, and the demand for which cannot be met with domestic sources anymore.

Incidentally, the proposition bears a certain striking resemblance to Stalin's Soviet Union. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union largely isolated itself from the world diplomatically and economically, was capable of sustaining its isolation on its own resources, and much of the world was more than happy to oblige it. We all know how that turned out.

Shinsengumi was asked to go through the listed charges provided in the first post, which are the supposed basis for impeachment proceedings the California legislature is pushing for, and if they were grounds for impeachment. He did so, and argued against all of them. You ignored him. You said we live in a society of laws; shinsengumi argued that that the charges State Assemblyman Koretz listed do not, in fact, violate the law.

You also displayed ignorance as to how impeachment proceedings work. You might want to rectify that before you lecture shinsengumi, Liger, myself or anyone else on the law.

The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, followed by the President Pro Tempore of the the Senate, Ted Stevens. After that, we get into cabinet secretaries.

Assuming that no complications spring up regarding the succession, which some Constitutional scholars have been able to come up with.

I like how Acyx didn't even bother to read shinsengumi's second post, in which he went through the charges in order.

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