Emanuel goes after Chick-fil-A for boss’ anti-gay views

[JD Barleycorn]

Austin Escorts you missed one. The Polish underground rose up in Warsaw to fight the Germans and they were not communists. In fact, in a shameful episode of history the Soviet Army ceased their advance on Warsaw until after the Germans decimated the resistance. That left only the communist resistance fighters who were ordered to bide their time until after the Poles were killed. So one group of Poles allowed another group to die in the name of communism. They were traitors.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Austin Escorts you missed one. The Polish underground rose up in Warsaw to fight the Germans and they were not communists. In fact, in a shameful episode of history the Soviet Army ceased their advance on Warsaw until after the Germans decimated the resistance. That left only the communist resistance fighters who were ordered to bide their time until after the Poles were killed. So one group of Poles allowed another group to die in the name of communism. They were traitors.

+1 Point of fact!!!

[Whirlaway]

Again, TTH gets the logic wrong; If you support a government that defines who is "black", "native american", "handicapped", "male", "female" etc,. then why can't the government define "marriage"?

Answer : It can, and it can do so without being discrimatory.....especially if "civil union" is an option....

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

He's a conservative who thinks that the government ought to be able to tell him who he can and can't marry!! You know, a keep the government out of people's business type!!!



So women who have had a hysterectomy, or men who have had a vasectomy shouldn't be allowed to marry?

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

My reply......

The Soviets didn't direct any operations of the resistance in any occupied country, however the resistance in Norway, France, Italy, Yougoslavia, Holland and Belgium were all members of communist parties that took direction from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU]. Obviously the Russians didn't have the presence in these countries that the British and US had, so the CPSU approved from resistance/communist party members to work hand-in-glove with the covert action services of other allies, in particular the Special Operations Executive of MI-6, and the Office of Strategic Services.

I can't speak for the opinions of Norwegians you may have met, but my family members, who were Labor party members and officials, told me that the occupation was not malicious. They told me that they got along well with German soldiers, and that the Germans treated them respectfully. This is why there were so many sexual liasons between Norwegian girls and Germans, and some Norwegian girls even volunteered to have "Aryan babies" out of wedlock in Nazi-operated programs.

The opinion shared by the men I trained with was, “Never again!” meaning they intended to resist future attacks and resist future occupation at all cost. They were not proud of Vidkun Quisling or how quickly Norway fell to Nazi invasion. They were proud of their monarchs, including King Haakon VII who went into exile in order to resist the Nazification of Norway.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

The US tank engagement you cite in the forest is only one engagement..

No, the report spoke of two engagements. Nevertheless, the essence of your remark is equally valid when juxtaposed. The Allies were on the offensive. As such, their losses in men and materiel were typically higher. In the realm of military conflict, that is neither unusual nor profound.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Of course there were a few outstanding engagments where the Americans held the upper hand. One such tank engagement ended the life of legendary German tanker Michael Wittman, who's tank was hit from behind by a Sherman Firefly. This particular German had destroyed well over a hundred Russian tanks before his SS unit was sent to France, where he was killed by American tankers.

I do not quarrell with much of what you cite above, but I really can't measure the worth of an army by the superiority of their trucks any more than I can by how clean their messkits might be.

Actually, American G.I.s considered the German mess kit superior to their own, but they wouldn’t trade their M1 Garands, their M1911 Colt .45s, their Thompson submachine guns or their M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns for anything the Germans fielded.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

As far as Patton's statements, he was of course a notorious braggart and exaggerater. He privately cursed bitterly about the shortcomings of the American tanks.

Actually, Patton was one of the men responsible for not fielding the M26 Pershing earlier: doctrine and logistics. Doctrinally, Patton believed that the purpose of tanks was to exploit breakthroughs and not to engage other tanks in gunnery duels. Logistically, Patton understood that for every M26 Pershing he received from U.S. factories state side, he could -- and did -- opt to receive 1.5 M4 Shermans. Furthermore, reliance on a single model simplified his logistics and maintenance. Fewer, less varied, repair parts simplified an overburdened transport system, and maintenance was enhanced by the interchangeability of transported repair parts and those acquired from salvaged tanks.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

I'm sorry I can't recall the exact place over the many years where the ratio I cite is to be found, but I really don't see how you can put forward a 5 to 1 ratio in favor of the Germans as countering my argument. 5 to 1 is pretty terrible performace on the part of the American tanks.

A 5 to 1 ratio of losses to kills is bad, but it’s not as exorbitant as the 17 to 1 you were proffering. Furthermore, the 5 to 1 ratio is only theoretical in a tank on tank engagement. When you factor in Nazi tank losses attributed to indirect artillery fire and American P47 Thunderbolts and British Hawker Typhoons – known collectively as “combat teams” which worked together in coordinated attacks – the ratio is actually much closer to 1:1. And, as noted above, the Allies were on the offensive; thus, forced to engage Nazi tanks in hull-defilade positions – not in open field combat.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

German U-boats were very survivable for the first half of the war, but by 1943 all submarines, whether they were German, American, British or Japanese, were all "underwater coffins" because anti-submarine warfare had advanced, not because there was anything wrong with the U-boats per se.

You are once again ignoring the industrial, logistical factor just as you did when you deprecated U.S. trucks and truck production. U.S. industrial capacity was a battlefield multiplier. Hitler ignorantly ignored that factor when he disdainfully declared war on the U.S. in 1941.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

In terms of the low morale of American draftees, their poor performance was documented in study after study by the war department, and these studies became de-classified and available beginning in the 1960s.

Contrary to what one sees in "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers," most US draftees didn't want to sacrifice their lives for far away soil and didn't believe that the Germans or Japanese were ever going to actually invade the United States. Added to this was the expectation by the American public after Pearl Harbor that the aim of the war was to bring about a peace, like the first war had ended with an armistice. All this was shattered when Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill later announced that the aim of the war was the conquest of Japan and Germany, and that the fight wouldn't be over until their capitals were occupied and their governments overthrown. That's when a lot of Americans lost their zeal for the "crusade."

All able bodied German men who did not enlist were conscripted: a Hobson’s choice. Read The Forgotten Soldier and Cross of Iron. Those two books will disabuse you of your notion that all German soldiers were universally motivated and heroic. The German had its fair share of dispirited shirkers.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Toward the end of the war this sentiment resulted in a lot of American military dicisions that favored Stalin. The American command didn't want to ask their soldiers to sacrifice for capturing Berlin, or any particular advance, when they could see that the Russias could accomplish it if the Americans just held back and waited. It's also the reason why the Russians were allowed to take so much ground in Asia from the Japanese.

SHAEF recognized taking Berlin would exact high casualties. SHAEF also recognized a joint operation with the Soviets would have incidents of fratricide: it was already happening in the air war over Germany. Hence, SHAEF wisely opted to stand back and allow the Soviet capture of Berlin; plus, the Soviets were already closer to the objective.

You are wrong when you claim the Allies “allowed” the Soviets to take so much ground in Asia. The Soviets accomplished that feat quite on their own. Stalin was very willing to let the Allies sacrifice tens of thousands of lives in “Operation Downfall” (the Allied military invasion and conquest of Japan) just like the Allies had let him sacrifice thousands of Soviet troops to conquer Berlin. Even so, Stalin started shifting Soviet units to the east in February 1945 – before the battle for Berlin – from the German Eastern Front. But the A-bomb was a game changer, and he knew it. When Stalin heard, through his network of spies, that the U.S. had successfully developed and tested the A-bomb, he advanced his D-Day for “Operation August Storm”: the Soviet invasion of Northern Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, Sakhalin and the Kurils. He had no intention of being left out of sharing the spoils of power and influence in Asia during the post-war period, and he meant to negotiate from a strong, fait accompli position.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

As for John Basilone, I stated before that the Marines and other all-volunteer US units had high morale.

Basilone distinguished himself when he held off a Japanese wave on Guadalcanal. Basilone burned his arm because he had to hold a .30 calibre machine gun on his arm while he used it to rake the on-coming Japanese. He and his men on that occassion had no where to go but into the sea if they let the Japanese drive them back.

Read Stephen Ambrose’s D Day: June 6, 1944, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, and Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany. Read Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far and The Longest Day (Ryan and Ambrose’s books on D Day complement each other well). Read Charles B. Macdonald’s Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II. Read about enlistee 2LT Daniel Inouye @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye. That article and those books (and there are others) should disabuse you of your notion that U.S. soldiers were a recalcitrant, dispirited lot. Citizen Soldier is especially revealing. It introduces aspects of U.S. culture inculcated into U.S. troops that helped insure they prevailed over their Nazi counterparts.

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Actually, American G.I.s considered the German mess kit superior to their own, but they wouldn’t trade their M1 Garands, their M1911 Colt .45s, their Thompson submachine guns or their M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns for anything the Germans fielded.

My reply....

I don't know about that. The Thompson, M1 and model 1911s were as good as anything the Germans were using, but the German machine guns were better than the .30 machine guns the Americans had. German infantry tactics were built around their machine guns, which had much higher rates of fire than allied machine guns, and were light and portable. The allies didn't have anything as easily deployed. Two German machine guns with overlapping fire in concealed postions was a huge mulitplier which the allies lacked.


A 5 to 1 ratio of losses to kills is bad, but it’s not as exorbitant as the 17 to 1 you were proffering. Furthermore, the 5 to 1 ratio is only theoretical in a tank on tank engagement. When you factor in Nazi tank losses attributed to indirect artillery fire and American P47 Thunderbolts and British Hawker Typhoons – known collectively as “combat teams” which worked together in coordinated attacks – the ratio is actually much closer to 1:1. And, as noted above, the Allies were on the offensive; thus, forced to engage Nazi tanks in hull-defilade positions – not in open field combat.

My reply.....

My point is that in France the allies were at a stand-still because the British lacked manpower and the US had problems with morale, leadership, tactics and armour. The poor Shermans were getting blown to bits by the score by German tanks and JAG Panzers, who were only rarely hit when the Shermans could manage to get behind them or on their sides.

What destroyed the Germans, both armour and infantry was the Air Corps, not only tactical air but the pounding from B-24s, B-25s, and B-26s that had to be brought in because the ground forces weren't advancing. As it was the bombers, P-47s and Typhoons wiped the Germans out.



All able bodied German men who did not enlist were conscripted: a Hobson’s choice. Read The Forgotten Soldier and Cross of Iron. Those two books will disabuse you of your notion that all German soldiers were universally motivated and heroic. The German had its fair share of dispirited shirkers.

My response.....

There were some slackers in the Wehrmatch of course, but the combat power and effectiveness of normal German Army units, not to mention the Waffen SS, was much higher than most US units because the Germans [which also included many non-Germans] were fighting close to their own homelands.

By this I don't mean to disparage US drafted soldiers. If I were drafted into that war I would have been a shirker too. I wouldn't have believed in that war.

A similar situation happend in Korea, where the combat power and effectiveness of US units was very low because of morale issues. US servicemen stayed close to the roads and bugged out when communists threatened to encircle them. US servicemen didn't want to die for a free Korea, and I don't blame them. The US had air superiority, artillery, and all manner of advantages the communists didn't have, yet the communists prevailed until they ran their supply lines too long. Once again it was US airpower that saved the day.

SHAEF recognized taking Berlin would exact high casualties. SHAEF also recognized a joint operation with the Soviets would have incidents of fratricide: it was already happening in the air war over Germany. Hence, SHAEF wisely opted to stand back and allow the Soviet capture of Berlin; plus, the Soviets were already closer to the objective.

You are wrong when you claim the Allies “allowed” the Soviets to take so much ground in Asia. The Soviets accomplished that feat quite on their own. Stalin was very willing to let the Allies sacrifice tens of thousands of lives in “Operation Downfall” (the Allied military invasion and conquest of Japan) just like the Allies had let him sacrifice thousands of Soviet troops to conquer Berlin. Even so, Stalin started shifting Soviet units to the east in February 1945 – before the battle for Berlin – from the German Eastern Front. But the A-bomb was a game changer, and he knew it. When Stalin heard, through his network of spies, that the U.S. had successfully developed and tested the A-bomb, he advanced his D-Day for “Operation August Storm”: the Soviet invasion of Northern Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, Sakhalin and the Kurils. He had no intention of being left out of sharing the spoils of power and influence in Asia during the post-war period, and he meant to negotiate from a strong, fait accompli position.

My reply.....

I think you're facts comport with my argument. When you say the allied command didn't take Berlin because the casualties would be high that's my point.

Read Stephen Ambrose’s D Day: June 6, 1944, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, and Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany. Read Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far and The Longest Day (Ryan and Ambrose’s books on D Day complement each other well). Read Charles B. Macdonald’s Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War II. Read about enlistee 2LT Daniel Inouye @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Inouye. That article and those books (and there are others) should disabuse you of your notion that U.S. soldiers were a recalcitrant, dispirited lot. Citizen Soldier is especially revealing. It introduces aspects of U.S. culture inculcated into U.S. troops that helped insure they prevailed over their Nazi counterparts.

My reply.....

Well these are not inaccurate works per se, but they tend to dwell on patriotic themes because they're intended for a mass American audience. I really differ with Ambrose when he lionizes American servicemen and their performance. He selectively dwells on the few high-performing units, thereby giving the impression that all American units were like that.

I actually sat in a lecture by Ambrose about the war and it was very different than the content of his books. In his lecture he went on and on about how American soldiers wanted to get wounded so they could have a ticket home, and didn't want to be there, and the class tensions between officers and enlisted men. He focused on morale problems at home, the "mobilization crisis," and other indicators of sagging public enthusiasm.

In particular he told the story about how an American in a foxhole in Belgium had his hand blown off by shrapnal and jumped gleefully out of his foxhole waving his stump in the air saying, "I can stay alive! All I've lost is a hand and I get to go home!"

His books are totally different.

[essence]

Your point is?

That Hitler was morally superior to Churchill and Europe (and USA) should have been Nazified and all non Caucasians should be eliminated from Europe and USA and Norwegians are the only heroic race and they fought valiantly only to prevent a communist invasion?

I think you are letting detailed discussion of facts get in the way of your overall message.

Or do you want to recant your previous posts? Hurting business, is it? Pimping not so easy at present?

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Austin Escorts you missed one. The Polish underground rose up in Warsaw to fight the Germans and they were not communists. In fact, in a shameful episode of history the Soviet Army ceased their advance on Warsaw until after the Germans decimated the resistance. That left only the communist resistance fighters who were ordered to bide their time until after the Poles were killed. So one group of Poles allowed another group to die in the name of communism. They were traitors.

Yeah I tried to list the countries where the resistance were all communists, such as Norway, France, Italy, Yougoslavia, etc...

In Poland the Poles of course were invaded by Stalin ALONG WITH THE GERMANS in Sept 1939 and were as much at war with the communists and Russians as with the Germans.

The central point which German bashers and apologists for the allies have to deal with is.....

If the real reason why Britain and France declared war on Germany was in defense of Poland then why didn't they also declare war on Russia?

The answer is simple, but it's not easily accepted because it runs counter to all the propaganda of the winning side.

The answer is that the French and British wanted to destroy Germany and used the Polish issue as a pretext.

In fact the British and French told the Germans over and over again in private that they wouldn't declare war if Germany invaded Poland, and the Germans relied on this.

The British and French leaders and planners were fed up with Germany since 1919, and thought they had a strong plan for defeating and conquering Germany once and for all.

That involved holding back the German Army on land with their 3 million man army, blockading it at sea with their superior navies, and then using strategic bombing [only the allies built heavy bombers] to pummell the German civilian population into submission.

This was THE ACTUAL ENGLISH/FRENCH plan in 1939-1940 for defeating Germany, and they had every reason to think it would work.

This is why the British goaded the Luftwaffa into retaliating on British cities after repeated RAF bombings on German ones in 1940. The British needed for the Germans to be the first to bomb cities in strength, so that allied area bombing could be morally justified.

It explains why the British put all their available budget into building Manchester and Lancaster heavy bombers [which carried four times the load of B-17s] and hardly built any tanks at all.

Although it was not the normal load, under certain conditons the Lancaster bomber could carry 20,000 pounds of bombs.

[gnadfly]

Wow. This thread has gotten off topic.

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by essence

Your point is?

That Hitler was morally superior to Churchill and Europe (and USA) should have been Nazified and all non Caucasians should be eliminated from Europe and USA and Norwegians are the only heroic race and they fought valiantly only to prevent a communist invasion?

I think you are letting detailed discussion of facts get in the way of your overall message.

Or do you want to recant your previous posts? Hurting business, is it? Pimping not so easy at present?

I think you're the only one here trying to impose morality on any of these issues.

I think if you actually read my posts you'll find they're morally neutral, and my only point is that people like Churchill and Roosevelt were morally as bad as Hitler, and were therefore hypocrites.

My point here is only hypocracy.

Which is a criticism equally applied to you.

[essence]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

and my only point is that people like Churchill and Roosevelt were morally as bad as Hitler

Thank you for confirming again your views.

Go get help.

Did you have a bump on the head?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...14129956242491

See 28:47

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by essence

Go get help.

If you were working for the CIA in the 1950s and you were ordered to work with former Nazis I would like to have seen your superiors laugh at you when you balked because of who you were ordered to work with. What would you have told them, "but they're eeeevil..blah. I don't wanna do it."

What a joke your stupid moralizing is.

Perhaps you should consider growing up, as in becoming an adult in the real world.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

My reply.....

Well these are not inaccurate works per se, but they tend to dwell on patriotic themes because they're intended for a mass American audience. I really differ with Ambrose when he lionizes American servicemen and their performance. He selectively dwells on the few high-performing units, thereby giving the impression that all American units were like that.

I actually sat in a lecture by Ambrose about the war and it was very different than the content of his books. In his lecture he went on and on about how American soldiers wanted to get wounded so they could have a ticket home, and didn't want to be there, and the class tensions between officers and enlisted men. He focused on morale problems at home, the "mobilization crisis," and other indicators of sagging public enthusiasm.

In particular he told the story about how an American in a foxhole in Belgium had his hand blown off by shrapnal and jumped gleefully out of his foxhole waving his stump in the air saying, "I can stay alive! All I've lost is a hand and I get to go home!"

His books are totally different.

Yeah, the Allies were so exasperatingly benevolent when they let their wounded and disabled retire from the war. Servicemen wounded in Hitler’s cause could only hope to be sent back to their units after they healed. Hitler’s soldiers were so devoted and highly motivated. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg – who lost his left eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand in Tunisia – wasn’t discharged. No indeed! Instead, von Stauffenberg remained in the Werhmacht and was instrumental in the execution of the failed 20 July Plot.

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Yeah, the Allies were so exasperatingly benevolent when they let their wounded and disabled retire from the war. Servicemen wounded in Hitler’s cause could only hope to be sent back to their units after they healed. Hitler’s soldiers were so devoted and highly motivated. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg – who lost his left eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand in Tunisia – wasn’t discharged. No indeed! Instead, von Stauffenberg remained in the Werhmacht and was instrumental in the execution of the failed 20 July Plot.

I think von Stauffenberg was posted to non-combat administrative duties after his injuries.

If von Stauffenberg would have stayed in the bunker instead of running away the blast from his bomb would have killed Hitler.

As it was Stauffenberg was motoring away from the scene as fast as he could so he could get back to Berlin and get in on the spoils of the new government, in which he wanted the highest post.

If Von Stauffenberg was the patriot he's portrayed as being he would have stayed in the bunker and shot and killed anyone who survived, including Hitler.

And to me that would have been a good thing.

[JD Barleycorn]

What does all this have to do with Chicago Nazis and the clamping on down on free speech (namely the CEO of Chik Fil A).

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

What does all this have to do with Chicago Nazis and the clamping on down on free speech (namely the CEO of Chik Fil A).

Like I said before, people of the same sex getting married is the re-definition of marriage into something purely romantic and absurd. It will lead to all manner of harms, particularly same-sex spouses adopting children.

Just because the CEO of a company doesn't want homosexuals to marry doesn't mean that he hates anybody, or wants to harm anybody.

It means quite the opposite.