I asked first. Do you practice being smarmy or does it come naturally?>

As though it weren't obvious enough already, the answer to your question would be "No".

I asked first.>

Thank you for demonstrating exactly the distinction I had in mind.

To make it plain: To my knowledge, you have never actually *lied* on this forum. But I have often seen you use fallacious arguments, strategic silences and casuistry, techniques many might consider dishonest.

Whether you agree with that last judgment or not, I think the example serves to show why my question answers yours.

<Do you practice being smarmy or does it come naturally?>

I am but your humble apprentice. ;-)

There are questions, and then there are rhetorical questions.

As a footnote: <OCF> you seem to have a hang up about 'lying'. You've accused many people of 'lying' on this forum. What's it all about? Did you mean 'dishonest' instead?

<CM: Such entitlement.>

<benji: I suspect that goes for many around here - this is a chess website after all ;0 >

No, you are.
(Wow, diceman has entered the hallowed halls of our most deeply intellectual posters, it can only be down from here)

<the hallowed halls of our most deeply intellectual posters> …and remember,
they are definitely, absolutely, and positively, not Anti-Semitic.

…they will tell you that many, many, many, many, times during the day.

Why?
…because they aren’t.
Absolutely positively and most definitely.

Just ask them they will tell you.
(actually, if you wait, Abdel will probably tell you many, many, many, many, more times without even asking)

…it’s a little known fact, but that’s how folks who aren’t Anti-Semitic spend most of their day.

Absolutely, positively, and most definitely.

I think this is quite a bit different than Japan attacking modern nations like the Phillippines and South Korea, to kill and conquor lands already settled. In the case of Japan and Nazi Germany much of it wasn't just trying to take territory, there was also an element of killing just for the sake of killing--the Holocaust, and Japan's active slaughter of unarmed chinese civillians.

<HeMateMe: The growing north american population of white colonists pushing the native americans off of their lands bears no resemblance to Nazi germany or the Roman empire.>

That's right. They weren't slaughtered and imprisoned in concentration camps. They just sort of…got bumped in to another area, sort of like a friendly heavy metal mosh pit.

   <HeMateMe: <Mortsie> The United States has never been an "empire". We didn't colonize the world…>

No, those hundreds of military bases scattered throughout the world http://socioecohistory.files.wordpr..., along with the McDonalds and Starbucks to keep the troops well fed, don't constitute an "empire", more like a peace-keeping brigade.

In the 50's and 60's on Guam the locals were punished if they spoke anything but English in school and at their government jobs. Now their mother tongue, Chamorro, is all but dead.

Foreign military bases? Maybe they are there to use high end eqipment which detects the building and testing of nuclear weapons. Maybe knowing such things about the rest of the world will save YOUR dumb butt, one fine day.