bgates, you’re right on all the points, and stick by your guns. Good job using data, and not getting emotional.

It’s great that there are differences of opinion when it comes to business; it provides an opportunity to make money (e.g., are homes prices going to fall big-time or not). It’s painful when folks have widely divergent views on foreign affairs, because lack of early, forceful action causes greater suffering later.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself” — John Stuart Mill