Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

Bit in bold and italic highlighted by me.....

quote:

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"And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."

Donald Rumsfeld in Mosul

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: USA
Posts: 24302

Of course it was shot down. Who didn't know that?

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location: I cant say I buy this completely,
Posts: 2506

feh.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location:
Posts: 16671

quote:

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Originally posted by Trenchant_Troll
Of course it was shot down.

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__________________

[Ignore Sig]

taste the fucking rainbow

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 7680

I always thought it was a disservice to jouralism that when they reported Todd Beamer had said "Let's roll." not a single one of them mentioned he was quoting Optimus Prime.

Todd Beamer and Optimus Prime rule.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 7680

From here:
http://www.usian.org/articles/mar242002.html
Optimus Prime would make a kickass president.

It is my personal feeling that this country hasn't had very good leadership lately. Not a whole lot of presidents have inspired love and loyalty from the population. This last election leading in basically a direct 50/50 split of the population's approval shows that it's just getting worse. Neither of them was particularly interesting and I wished that I could have found someone on the ballot that I really did want to be president. No dice, ain't happening, bucko. Anyway, we need a president so after a while of flipping coins and wishing it would land on it's side or that Clinton would just declare neither of them could be president or something, we somehow picked Bush. So now he's the president, or something. He sits in the office, I assume he makes a decision once in a while, and he loves to get caught in pictures that make him look like such a moron. Also, he said: "we're gonna schmoke em out". Which is just absolutly golden. I hope that ends up on some piece of money sometime. But politics is not my real aim here. What I want to talk about today is how much of a kick ass president Optimus Prime would be.

Optimus Prime, leader of the autobots, keeper of the Prime Matrix, big semi truck, and childhood hero of mine, was a great leader. And just like President Bush, he too said: "Let's Roll Out!" all the time. That doesn't mean he was from Texas, no, Bush stole that from Optimus. Optimus Prime faced off against Megatron on countless occasions, died and came back to life more than once, and lead from the front. He had a trailer full of other robots and guns and missles that he didn't even really need. He took on probably something like seven Decepticons at once and the only one who even scratched him was Megatron. And what about that cool chest compartment where he kept the Prime Matrix? I wish I had a cool chest compartment, I could keep all sorts of things in there.

And as I was saying before, a leader who inspired loyalty and love, this is another thing that Optimus Prime was. His underlings loved him, always asked him for advice and trusted him to get them out of situations where they knew that they would have no hope without him. Once, Optimus Prime offered to fight any decepticon one on one in order to save the Autobots from being over-run by Devastator and the rest. And when he bit the big one in the movie, kids around the world cried as he lost his color and started to decay. Some people have said that I cried because I have an unhealthy attachment to robots, but I say it's because he was a better leader than Reagan, Bush, Bush, Carter, and Clinton combined. And if it was Optimus Prime versus Fidel Castro, who would you root for?

Let's take an example of what Optimus could do instead of our current president. We've got terrorists and a bad economy happening so let's theorize how the Autobot leader would handle it. As far as terrorists go, smoking them out is the last thing Optimus would do, he hates lazy stoners and enemies are better neutralized by tearing out their optical sensors and depriving them of energon cubes. I imagine that he would put together a team of Autobots, maybe Sideswipe (the Lambourghini), Jaz (the Porsche), and Wratchet (the ambulence) to go over there and start stepping on airfields. Then he would probably send Beach Comber, Cosmos, and Bumblebee to go scope out any Decepticon activity in regards to the Taliban. After that was done, and the defenses were down, if they hadn't given up already, he'd probably send Omega Supreme over there to just start blasting things until he could singlehandedly stomp out the terrorist network. What if they fled the country you say? Well what government is going to tell Omega Supreme that he can't walk across their border? There isn't a wall on earth that could stop this guy, and nothing short of missles of mass destruction are going to knock him down. Tanks? Please!

On to the economical problems we're dealing with right now. Here I think Optimus would negotiate a deal for cheaper energon cubes and set the homeless to work with Perceptor (the microscope and Autobot scientist) who would make a giant energon factory. The homeless would have jobs and more people would be spending money, and with the factory up and running we could slowly become less dependant on foreign energon and focus on strengthening our own economy. And we could also rejuvenate ourselves by making giant Anti-Starscream missle arrays, which would mean fat government contracts for defense contracts. Couple this with a factory based industry putting together new Autobots and you've got yourself a manufacturing giant that toppled the depression when we started World War II. And with the energon factory he would solve the energy crisis as well, reducing the need for all these stupid "Keep turning your lights off, It's working" commercials. So what if Optimus Prime was president for a while, and then some government decides that they will have Megatron lead them so they can topple the American dogs? Well as we've seen in many episodes that even though Megatron is cunning and dangerous, Optimus Prime could still whip his ass in a one on one battle, even with treachery and a distraction. After establishing the world's largest energon supply, Optimus would simply start an embargo to end Megatron's reign of terror. And when Megatron became the aggressor, trying to get energon to sustain himself, Optimus would challenge him to a rock-em-sock-em robot boxing match on an oil platform in the Atlantic ocean. Ultimately, we all know that Megatron would lose.

So we've shown that optimus would make an excellent president. But he wouldn't be president forever, term limits would force him to retire eventually, and even if he was vice president and then the president resigned a little more than halfway through his term, Optimus could only be president for nine and a half years total. So what then? After that what are we supposed to do? Well thats where the Matrix of Leadership comes in. When Optimus' time is up he simply opens up that cool chest compartment and passes the Matrix to his Vice President, who can then continue leading us where Optimus left off.

Vote Optimus! He's red and blue!

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