FaCubeItches

LA used to have two weathermen with the porn-stariest names ever: Johnny Mountain and Dallas Raines. I think Dallas may still be working, but Johnny is retired now.

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If Merica were not prolific oil consumers, the oil cartels would not be an issue. If we wish to fix either, we must fix ourselves first. I for one am in full agreement with Jefferson here, the price on our sons and daughters in such a conflict is a price too great!

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We have plenty of oil on our own, but part of our population/politicians won't let us use it. Thus, we either have to go nuclear if you want to get off oil (which the same people won't let us do) or buy oil. If you don't want to do either of those, we're just going to have sacrifice the same sons and daughters in a domestic conflict.

Our political system is too schizophrenic, and frankly, too corrupt to resolve most of the problems facing the country (and it's no better at state/local levels, either).

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Ill clarify and say this century

There was zero reason to start a war with Iran.

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Iran started the war in 1979, and it has been ongoing in fits and starts at a fairly low intensity ever since, so the war isn't part of this century. It's a reasonable point to argue whether they had a legit casus belli, but the conflict has been ongoing for nearly 50 years. It's just gotten a lot more active on the US' part for the first time since 1988.

Government mandated shutdowns of entire nations and most of the global economy definitely counts as politics.

Chinese real estate: to maintain the illusion of constant, massive growth, the Chinese government engaged in - and encouraged - rampant overdevelopment of, and speculation in, real estate. It has been collapsing and is wiping out huge amounts of wealth and causing pretty significant economic disruption. Think of the 2008 subprime mortgage mess on steriods.

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Legitimately the stupidest decision in modern politics

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Not even competitive...



Vietnam, War on Poverty



Iran hostage crisis, giving away Panama Canal



War on Drugs



NAFTA, China MFN status



Global War on Terror



Letting China fall to the communists

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Is this season a failure if we don’t make it to the sweet 16?

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Incremental progress - get to where we consistently make the tournament, and then start worrying about making it through multiple rounds.

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then turkey.

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You really think Israel is going to attack a NATO member?

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When has Iran attacked us?

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Attacks by Iran/Iranian proxies on US personnel and embassies:

November 1979-January 1981: Iranian students — with the backing of Tehran — take 66 Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

April 1983: A suicide car bombing kills 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The Iran-backed terrorist group Islamic Jihad, a precursor and early branch of Hezbollah, claims responsibility.

October 1983: Operatives of the Iran-backed Hezbollah drive a truck bomb at a Marine compound in Beirut, killing 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel.

December 1983: Hezbollah operatives drive an explosives-filled dump truck through the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City.

March 1984: Terrorists kidnap CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut, subsequently torturing and ultimately killing him in 1985. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.

December 1984: Hezbollah terrorists hijack Kuwait Airways Flight 221 on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan and divert it to Tehran, killing two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

June 1985: Hezbollah terrorists hijack TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome and kill a U.S. Navy diver.

April 1988: Iranian mine in international waters damages USS Samuel B. Roberts

July 1989: Hezbollah operatives kill U.S. Marine Corps Col. William Higgins after kidnapping him the previous year while on a United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon.

June 1996: A truck carrying 5,000 pounds of explosives blows up the Khobar Towers, a U.S. Air Force housing complex in the Saudi Arabian town of Khobar. Nineteen Americans die and some 500 people are injured. The Iran-backed Hezbollah Al Hijaz, a terrorist group in Saudi Arabia, is deemed responsible.

August 1998: With the assistance of Hezbollah, al Qaeda suicide bombers almost simultaneously blow up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounding thousands. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, al Qaeda developed “the tactical expertise for such attacks months earlier, when some of its operatives — top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them — were sent to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.”

2003-2011: Iranian-backed militias kill at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Iranian training and material support for Iraqi militias during the surge greatly increased the difficulty of U.S. forces to combat the insurgency and included some of the deadliest weapons used against American troops, including explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

January 2007: Twelve men affiliated with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) disguised themselves as U.S. soldiers, entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the Iraqi city of Karbala, killed five U.S. soldiers, and wounded another three. In 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a $15 million bounty for information on an IRGC Quds Force commander who planned the attack and other “assassinations of coalition forces in Iraq.”

July 2014: Hamas terrorists kill two Americans serving in the IDF during fighting between the terrorist group and Israel in Gaza as part of Operation Protective Edge.

December 2019: Rockets fired by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, kills an American security contractor and wounds several U.S. service members and Iraqi personnel at the K1 military base in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

January 2020: A direct Iranian ballistic missile attack against the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq causes more than 100 U.S. troops to suffer traumatic brain injuries.

March 2020: The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007, announces that he likely died in an Iranian prison at an unknown date.

September 2020: U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Iran is weighing a plot to assassinate U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks.

February 2021: An rocket fired by an Iran-backed militia at coalition forces in the Iraqi city of Erbil wounds a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.

July 2021: Iranian-backed militias conduct at least three rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in 24 hours in Iraq and Syria, wounding two U.S. service members.

September 2022: An Iranian rocket attack kills an American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan.

November 2022: A captain in Iran’s IRGC orchestrates the killing of an American citizen living in Baghdad who worked at an English language institute.

March 2023: An Iranian drone kills an American contractor and wounds five service members and another contractor when it strikes a coalition base near the Syrian city of Hasakah.

December 2023: A drone attack conducted by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia against U.S. forces in Erbil wounds three American soldiers, including one critically injured with shrapnel to the head that placed him in a coma.

January 2024: A drone launched by Kataib Hezbollah kills three U.S. soldiers at a U.S. military base in Jordan and wounded more than 40 other service members.

October 2024: Iran executes German-Iranian national and U.S. permanent resident Jamshid Sharmahd on fraudulent terrorism charges.

November 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces charges against an Iranian national and two American accomplices for plotting to assassinate President Trump.

March 2025: A U.S. jury convicts two agents of Iran for plotting to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022.


There are also additional US citizens who were killed/wounded in attacks in Israel, but most, if not all, seemed to be dual-citizens, and appear to have been attacked as Israelis, as opposed to being specifically targeted as Americans, so they are not included.

"Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
- Lavrentiy Beria.

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Jerry Outhouse

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I just saw that Mel Kiper, Jr. has every single person on this board picked to go in the 6th and/or 7th round in at least one of his nearly infinite mock drafts! Congratulations to everybody! Your hard work and dedication has not gone unnoticed!