hworta269 comments

In America in Plano Texas they have the highest guns to people ratio in America and the lowest crime rate in America. In Europe criminals can get guns easily but they dont need guns because everything in Europe that one can defend themselves with is illegal. Its even illegal for a woman to hurt a rapist attacking her. However they have a low overall homicide rate as their culture and people just dont really commit that many uber violent crimes. This is changing with the demographic changes of immigrants from far flung nations though hence the latest French Massacre. The jist is that not all places work the same way as cultures are very different. Americans have a very strict view of criminal justice however the courts often do not sentence criminals like they should and let them out early, something I have heard many cops complain about. Chicago and Illinois have some the strictest gun laws in ALL of America so even the gun grabbers cant say much except to make up lies...

MarkG was right. When the Us pulled out of Vietnam massive numbers of people were slaughtered. REmember also that South Vietnam was a nation America did have relations with. Also America came into Vietnam to help the silly French who seemed to mess up every place they went really bad. Almost every single communist regime killed massive numbers of people to come to power. But hey details America is evil and all that crap and history be damned...

France is a thinly veiled police state. However political correctness keeps them from really monitoring people they really should monitor. I would bet real money those munitions get used in a terrorist attack at some point. If not be the people that stole them then by the people who bought them from the people who stole them...

Wont comment much on this as I am American and not Korean. However I doubt their courts will be influenced much by the American Supreme Court. Most Americans do not agree with that decision... but oh well....

Iran is building a bomb now, and ICBM's those are for America BTW. Iran gets to not let inspectors in any of their facilities in the deal now, they will promise they are abiding by the deal. So they get the bomb later. If the other nations want verifiable proof Iran is not building nukes they will not sign the deal. America will sign the deal and our administration would probably be happy to just give them nukes anyways cuz its not fair in the world that only a few western nations have nukes, Obama's words not mine. They seem to think disarming America will magically make the world more peaceful and erase nuclear threat. Basically any deal that wont let Iran build nukes they wont sign, end of story... they are also the largest state sponsor of terror, do they need nuclear reactors and better missiles. Also why does an oil rich nation need nuclear reactors for energy and why are they ONLY building nuclear power reactors that output material that is easy to make nuclear bombs with? Its a farce and laughable to even try to tell us with a straight face their program is anything but a clandestine nuclear weapons project. Also if America lets Iran nuke up there are a few other nations in the middle east that also want "nuclear power plants" as well. So even their neighbors who have the same religion as them do not trust them and oppose our current deal...

Seriously people are going to deride the EU which has already taken how many hundred of thousand refugees already? How about some other UN nations take in refugees in such large numbers?

In the past the Catholic Church did have a monopoly on barbarism. The whole world was like that honestly. However apologizing is a nice feel good thing until people realize they can now sue for money.... bat details....

CrazyJoe is 100 percent correct. Japan the government owes all its debt to its own people and companies. They are not going to crash the national economy. Now western countries sells their debt to their enemies who want to crash their national economies. So Japan and Greece or any other Western country have nothing in common when talking about GDP to debt ratio. its comparing carrots to books...

I think the protesters were mostly disliking the Japanese Kimono and just tacked racist onto it because they knew it would motivate white liberals who feel guilty about everything...

Anthony most of that 50 percent paying the voluntary fee are probably Japanese. They should make it compulsory as humans in large numbers do impact the area and it needs to retain its natural beauty. Anyways future generations of Japanese people should inherit beautiful landmarks... just my ,02

The sad thing is that most people love Chinese people they meet. Its their absurd government which rules their people and geographic location with ah iron fist. The communist mantra is always the devil made me to the bad things I had to do. In fact having more and more Asian located nations participating in exercises sends a message to would be aggressors that even nations with small military forces can be part of a much larger combines military force. The way China is going its only a matter of time before more nations come under their threat and the world notices this...

China's victory over Japan? Holy 1984 batman. A real victorious nation does not need this kind of gaudy display to make themselves feel better than they actually do. I also have not met a single American that was proud that America had to carpet bomb two entire countries....

Japanese produced rice is very good, but there is also the exact same rice grown in California which is also high quality, its just farmed with larger tractors.. and its much cheaper... This being said I do think Japan should protect its farming sector as relying on massive foreign imports for food is dangerous and nations like China could threaten this trade in the future to get what they want....

The nuclear deal is they get to build nuclear weapons and ICBM's of course they are gonna take the deal...

Hillary wont win the election if she gets nominated which is why last time the Dems went with Obama against Hillary....

so having sexual encounters with young girls is a minor thing? really?

Bah America does let allies build bases in America. They even invited Japan to build a base to train pilots because America has a lot more Airspace but Japan refused.....

Ohhh snap son he has bigger balls than any leader in the west!!!

wanderlust, the building is designed to reflect the sunlight and heat away, to save on the AC bills..... I think a better solution would be to use solar power generating glass for windows instead of the concave reflecting crap...

@malfupete I believe you are correct. The problem with government bonds in Japan is they pay like .01 percent interest. So in effect every year the government keeps your saved money, locked safely away, in a government backed bond you are losing money through inflation. I am pretty sure they have indexed funds in Japan, like they do in every single other stock market on Earth. All the filthy rich people in the world have all or most of their money in a stock market in some location. The absurdity that government bonds are 100 percent safe and stock market = gambling only belies the ignorance of the person making such accusations. Also the point of putting the pension funds in to something like a stock market index fund would also shift the financial hit from massive amounts of retirees from the government to the stock market.... All government bonds are is little pieced of paper that state the government will try to repay you the amount due at the time its due.. See America and Greece for examples of how safe those investments really are...

China signed the treaty in 1952 about this exact issue. The truth is that no one cared about these islands until they found energy in the ground, suddenly China and gang shifted gears....

Politician who gets caught praising a murdering dictator wont step down, the hell you say?

The actual islands are not what is really in dispute... its all the ocean and minerals in the groups for x number of miles off of any island a country owns. In 1952 almost the whole damned world to include China signed the treaty of San Francisco which settles who owned which islands. To get more to the point of this story, Japan should not only build up more of these kinds of ships but also think about rewriting its Constitution with the future expectation being that America is or can be not so close an alley... Today we are, but a few more bozos gets elected in America like our current regime and all bets are off... sad to say... a long time ago Japan did something bad, however today, yesterday and every day between today and WWII the Chinese government has been murdering either its own people or the people of its neighbors constantly... who is the bigger threat to world peace? honestly?

Japan is not in a static world. While Japan is weakening the Yen, China is propping it up. America and Europe are also printing money. The net effect wont be to bad for the key economic players, its the third world that will suffer the most as commodities are priced in dollars..

JeffLee, you asked the single most important question in this whole damned debate. The reason why Japan can get away with a GDP/DEBT ratio like it has is because of who it owes most its money to, Japanese people and companies own most of Japan's debt. I have linked to a financial analysis of Japan's debt for reference. Japanese people/companies are not going to bankrupt the government by calling in all their debt at the same time.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/USCP/PNI/MONEY/2012-01-08-PNI0101biz-ask-stevePNIBrd_ST_U.htm

Chamkun, yes the Tokyo fire bombings were far more devastating during WWII than either nuclear attack. I also believe that far more civilians died during the conventional carpet combings than both nuclear attacks. I do not believe the attacks was what caused Japan to surrender. I honestly think it was the Russians moving in on Japan during the end of the war in an attempts to carve Japan up the way they did Europe. War is supposed to be horrible and horrific, it is supposed to be something no one wants to repeat, even the winners.

Is the loss of life a regrettable thing, always, does this mean that all actions which include massive loss of life are bad, absolutely. Do we have the right to claim that killing people this way is so much worse than another way, another acceptable way, probably should not.

So the moral of this story, is the teachers should wait until some poor kid commits suicide to then do something about this? Also the mentality that the person lashing out has 100 percent culpability is misguided. No one will know the whole story, so all the kids who hid this from the teachers were in the wrong. Innocent people do not hide having a knife pulled on them BTW... at either rate a slap on the head would be the least of any punishments were my own kid(s) involved in something like this...

Hate speech/hate crime laws = thought police... bad idea

Yeah, tough kid, most people do not survive such encounters with trains like that....

Yes, while other countries and companies were only worried about economic influence America has been spending billions of dollars to curb death from deseases in Africa.... the economic interest was not overlooked, it was placed where it belonoged, second to helping people live, access energy, and drinkable water.....