Confessions of a California Dem
 

It makes perfect sense. You should try living in California.

The Marlboro Marine
 

I rescind my complaint.

Confessions of a California Dem
 

If you have a Senator -- even one -- who has proven emself capable of unscripted outrage at any point in the last 30 years, then you wouldn't possibly understand.

Confessions of a California Dem
 

Sad, but 2

hoo-boy
 

“What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project, and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally,” Mr. Gore told Fortune. “It’d be promising too much to say we can do it on our own, but we intend to do our part.”

This guy has the ability, in one quick sound byte, to remind all of america why we are lucky the Supreme court protected our institutions and stopped the Forlida vote steal. Can anyone fathom the depths of this man's hubris?

Confessions of a California Dem
 

Like Santorum's screed about gays being a step away from dog-fuckers? Or announcing to the NYTimes magaizne that he and his wife slept with their stillborn baby for an evening?

Scripting's not so bad.

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

http://content.cartoonbox.slate.com/...9d8c7550177fca

*Yes, I am aware that Hank may argue that Lt. Decatur didn't worry about treating the Musselmen well when he led his Marines into "the shores of Tripoli," or that William Henrry Harrison was a war criminal for what happened at Tippicanoe, but that's just because he wants to bad-mouth our national heroes.

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

Do you think that Mr. Rall is aware that pirates are still a rather nasty problem in the world, or would that just get in the way of his, um, point?

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN236820.html

aV

fighting joe
 

You should tell the Pentagon that this is just hyper-partisan paranoia:

• The Pentagon is not preparing a pre-emptive attack on Iran in spite of an increase in bellicose rhetoric from Washington, according to senior officers.
  
  Admiral William Fallon, head of Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, told the Financial Times that while dealing with Iran was a “challenge”, a strike was not “in the offing”.
  
  “None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go,” he said.
  
  “Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.”
  
  Adm Fallon did not rule out the possibility of a strike at some point. But his comments served as a shot across the bows of hawks who are arguing for imminent action. They also echoed the views of the senior brass that military action is currently unnecessary, and should only be considered as an absolute last resort.
  
  In recent months, President George W. Bush and his top officials have made a string of tough statements that have fuelled speculation that the US was preparing to strike Iran over its nuclear programme. Adm Fallon declined to comment specifically on whether the US rhetoric was feeding the speculation, but said that “generally, the bellicose comments are not particularly helpful”.

The Financial Times

Of course, the FT is known as a paranoid lefty rag, so YMMV.

eta: But wait, there's more:

• In Washington and in the world at large, fears are growing that the US may mount a pre-emptive military attack on Iran.
  
  President George W. Bush recently described the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme in near-apocalyptic terms, warning America’s partners to prevent Tehran from obtaining the bomb if they were “interested in avoiding world war three”. Vice-president Dick Cheney declared, in an echo of his prewar rhetoric on Iraq: “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
  
  New US sanctions on Tehran, tensions between the two countries in Iraq and a New Yorker magazine article alleging that the White House has told the Pentagon to work on plans for an attack have all intensified the air of confrontation.

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

He asked, so I told L'il Ty that there are still pirates around. Alas, he then had nightmares for a week.

He was a ninja for Halloween. I think these things are connected.

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

I suspect that Mr. Rall wasn't thinking about modern piracy when he drew his Barbary Corsair. I know that I certainly wasn't when I saw the panel, and I just read a long-ass article about some troubling pirate confrontations with the US Navy within the last couple of weeks.

fighting joe
 

If Israel actually strikes Iran, will the "US is nothing more than an AIPAC Zionist puppet" set on the Left make a distinction?

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

that's funny! did you watch The War?

It was funny too! We killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Italy alone. We shot prisioners dead. I had heard of the Germans doing it, but we did too. I don't know if the Captains that ordered realized they were ruining the long standing US rules, but they did it. Oh, and if we did happen to have a Japanese soldier surrender on Okinawa we torutured the shit out of him to hopefully learn where others were hiding.

You guys are historically goofy.

i think the point of the cited parts of the War was that any war is going to have those things. You should factor into the decision to have a war that bad shit will happen. of course I'm sure there are blogs-a-plenty that say what bush/Cheny has "allowed to happen" is only on par with the gulags.

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

A friend of mine (who is a partner at a large firm, but that's another story)'s band played at a small venue here in Houston on Friday. They were offered the headliner, but they demurred claiming they didn't wanna stay up that late.

Anyhow, they were followed by a young, enthusiastic, not very musically good, but fun anyways two man punk band. Their final song told the tragic story of a relationship that failed because, as the lyrics said:

I am in to ninjas.
She was into piiiii-rates.

It was my favorite song of all time that four mintues.

Millions for defense; not one penny for tribute!
 

Hank, we have had this discussion before. There is a fundamental difference between recognizing that bad things happen in a war, and in enshrining those bad things as policy approved at the highest level.

I can virtually flat out guarrantee you that we didn't torture German prisoners in WWII away from the battlefield in order to learn how far along the Luftwaffe was with the heavy water project, or with where V-1s and V-2s were being aimed. And I strongly suspect (but am slightly less confident, if only because of the attitudes of the era) that the same is true about Japanese prisoners away from the battlefield.

This is not about Sergeant Rock in the hedgerows with Fritz trying to find out where the sniper that killed Gus is hiding. This is about what happens outside of the blood rage of immediate action, and is instead about policy decisions made in the light of cool reason. The fact that you continue to ignore this distinction puzzles me.