Fake, But Accurate
 

Yes. He and others mocked a woman who had been burned or scarred, but they did it in Kuwait or Iraq.

I'm not saying that the mistake is OK -- and, really, while it certainly could be a lie, it seems equally likely to me that he recalled that it happened on a military base in the Middle East and got the country wrong, though of course if you start with the assumption that he's lying then it's much easier to conclude that he's lying -- but what you and the right-wing nutjob bloggers are doing goes way beyond making a mountain out of a mole hill. I mean, who cares? I'm not defending the error, but I think the reaction to it is pathological.

He didn't just "buy a ticket." Malkin did that. He enlisted and his serving his country there.

Some of those attacking his attackers have served, too, so let's just stop pretending that the right wing has some sort of special credibility or claim to communion with the experiences of soldiers and Marines on the groud in Iraq. That fact that Beauchamp's piece attacks that pretense is probably what agitates the right wing so much.

Fake, But Accurate
 

not to interrupt, but it seems like there is this big gap in your argument whenever you say this, like since implicit in his stories is the point that those "serving our country there" are doing horrible things, it seems odd that you think "serving our ountry over there" puts him on a pedestal relative to this discussion.

Fake, But Accurate
 

It doesn't put him on a pedestal, but it qualifies him to talk about what's going on there, unlike Michelle Malkin, Captain Ed, and the other wingnuts of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.

Fake, But Accurate
 

No. It qualifies him to perhaps write a report from the standpoint of a soldier, but that only gives him standing to be the one tlling the truth............or lying.

Fake, But Accurate
 

I don't understand why you think we're disagreeing. Of course he may be lying.

I re-post this comment by "roger" because something of its tone will appeal to sebby:

• By this point, Beauchamp has become a meta-issue, and the question really is: how is it that, on the same week that Oxfam issues the most scathing look at the effect of the occupation since the Lancet report, both the liberal bloggers and the conservative bloggers ignore it completely to talk about what Rush Limbaugh would call "fraternity pranks"? I think it is one of the great reasons that liberal interventionism is fucked from the very beginning. If an 'empire' like the U.S. can be so grossly and systematically inattentive to the effects of its interventions, and tends to follow Paris Hiltonish/Beauchamp mini-scandals to the exclusion of all else, then this empire could never, in a million years, be relied upon for liberal intervention. It be like relying on pre-schoolers for heart surgery. I think we can all agree that Americans are the dumbest, smuggest, shallowest, morally challenged, naive, goofy and psychopathic people on the face of the earth; that they exist in such a bubble of attention deficit disorder and irrationality that it is a miracle that they have survived; and that, luckily, their the leadership is doing the world a favor by outsourcing their jobs and plunging them into such mindless debt that the country is bound for a future as a world historical grease spot and a footnote much sooner than anybody thought. Perhaps the accumulation of all this prosperity - through slaveholding, the theft of Indian lands synchronized with the massmurder, of the Indians, loose bankruptcy laws to bilk nineteenth century investors, sharp practices and shoddy manufactured goods - has simply led to a general social amorality and an ethos of boredom and illiteracy, instead of creating a New Jerusalem on the hill. It is more like a brothel run by Tinker Bell.

I assume you posted this DU-ish claptrap for our amusement. Unlike some leftist nonsense, this one was so over the top, it actually made me laugh.

One: This guy loses all respect immediately for referring to the fully debunked Lancet report - but whatever.

Two: His point about us being preoccupied with Paris, etc, is noted, but is he really suggesting this star-fucking is restricted to the USA? England, Germany and Italy are just as, if not more, preoccupied with scandal rags than we are.

Three: He refers to Americans as "the dumbest, smuggest, shallowest, morally challenged, naive, goofy and psychopathic people on the face of the earth". I laugh aloud, note our GNP, and the fact that everyone in the waking world would prefer to live here, even though they feel compelled to bitch about us.

Four: This quote is the best:

"Perhaps the accumulation of all this prosperity - through slaveholding, the theft of Indian lands synchronized with the massmurder, of the Indians, loose bankruptcy laws to bilk nineteenth century investors, sharp practices and shoddy manufactured goods - has simply led to a general social amorality and an ethos of boredom and illiteracy, instead of creating a New Jerusalem on the hill. It is more like a brothel run by Tinker Bell."

Oddly enough, it was really the "enlightened" English and Dutch who started these practices. We seem to be okay, but look at them. But hey, that's not fair - they're Euro.

Roger sounds like a 19 year old Cal student.

2

Look, it's like an automated Politics Board!

Boo

I find it amusing to see this headline GOP hopes to make inroads with Hispanics on the day that this study is released Hispanics exceed Anglos in Harris County.

Hah. Texas is going to go Democratic by 2020 if not sooner, simply because of population shift.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

I haven't read it yet, but a friend tells me that this Vanity Fair will wreck Rudy's campaign if anyone reads it:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/073...63,6.html/full

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

No. It won't.

aV

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

Quick question: what do you think the political affiliation is of 95% of VF readers?

I mean, we're cool with Villiage Voice or Vanity Fair lying, it's when you guys get CBS News going on the document fabrication stuff that we get a bit concerned.

aren't most hispanics pretty solid Catholics? By 2020 it will be pretty clear that a vote for the Dems is a vote for one Islamic world.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

turns out bilmore was right about global warming..

http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+fin...rticle8383.htm

bright side for the Dems? Bush is in charge of NASA so you can blame him for the mstake.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

What part of that VF piece is lies? Or are you just insinuating for kicks?

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

I liked this part:

I guess it's a good thing the U.S. isn't part of the planet and can't be affected by global warming. They sure showed that devious lefty propaganda machine!

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

We are totally self-sufficient, dumbass. That's why it doesn't matter if LA/Long Beach or the greater Houston area get bombed into oblivion -- it's not like we import stuff, or anything.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

Fringey isn't geting sex so she can't concentrate- that explains why she says stupid shit, but you, you're not bright, but you have no short term excuse-

there is some small rise in temperature, and we know it is catastophic BECAUSE we have had the hottest years ever in the last few years, because otherwise you don't have any bad effect. But now you don't, except you can ignore facts some more and keep up the charade.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

seriously, would you be harmed at all if Orange County was under water? you can't recommend anything there.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

I know scoring points on the internet means a lot to you, but just take a step back and read what you're saying. If the average temperature of the planet were increasing, but the spikes were somewhere other than 1998, everything would be ok? Is a "bad effect" the unprecedented melting of the ice caps we're seeing right now? Rising sea levels? You want to tell me all of that is not happening? Bilmore said some strange shit, but he was never this dumb.

I don't care if the hottest year was 1998, 1968 or 1928. I didn't know what they thought it was before and I didn't much care, because I can look around me and see what's happening. I'm glad you have a nice little gotcha blog to tell you everything is hunky dory.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

unprecedented?

Ty. Can we have a subboard with a test to get log on privelege?

so weed, your point is that you don't change your mind when the evidence reverses on you, because you know what algore and them told you is true, even though big parts of it turn out not be true. I might just as well say "I don't care that ice caps are melting because I can look and see that it isn't as hot as it was 60 years ago."

shocking
 

I was watching a history show about US and Japanese plans to invade/defend Japan.

In mid-1945 the US ordered 400,000 purple hearts in anticipation. We are still using them.

No political point, just a surprising factoid.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

oh, and since you replied twice, here goes!

Is your mindset so warped that you can't even be pleased that we didn't have thwe hottest year ever? You want the world to die, so you can sit and think "Bush was wrong!" Man, you have kids, right?

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

Board motto!

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

turns out Hank was pwned....

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

Strong criticisms no doubt, but they can't be distilled to soundbites, so they are relevant only to those who watch the campaign closely and parse the factual details. The average voter (a) does not read VF and (b) hasn't the tolerance for deatil or attention span to connect the dots to develop a picture of Rudy as more opportunist than hero. And to the layman voter, the more ink it takes to prove Rudy's not a hero, the less credible the criticism.

And Hillary will never attack his hero credentials because it leaves her open to attack from the people who blame her husband for not killing bin Laden in Afghanistan when he had the chance.

Rudy's also got the hero pedestal whether he deserves it or not because it is already part of the general historical consensus.

And digging into 9/11 is the last thing the Dems want to do. They can't win a debate on the security issue because, facts be damned, they are perceived to be the weaker party in that arena. Their best course is to avoid it and battle Rudy on the economy.

If this election turns on security and foreign policy, the Dems will lose. They have a great hand in the economic malaise and populist call for wealth redistribution. That is where they should aim their money and efforts.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

Watching the global warming debate evolve is like viewing a really dark comedy that isn't very funny. First it was a scare about the actual temperature rise, then it was a skeptic-as-celebrity dispute about the conventional wisdom, then for a brief time it shifted to the hypocrisy of the Hollywood do-gooders behind a lot of the global warming awareness measure and now its a front page discsussion in Newsweek about the global warming denial industry.

I gave up caring about it when Vanity Fair sent me the "Green Issue" a couple months ago. I don't know whether that's a win for the Right or Left but one thing's sure - just like the hopeless Palestine/Israel situation, I'm not reading about it anymore. I've been skipping that section of the Times since 1987. I can skip the "Green" section I'm sure the Sulzburgers are sure to add soon enough.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

What piece is read by the average voter is the better question. I get VF and I like it. I also find it wildly naive and childish in its politics. Graydon Carter's a fucking buffoon, and giving Sy Hersch a five page spread on anything is just silly. But that's all irrelevant because what you or I think about VF doesn't mean shit. Our votes aren't the ones that matter this election.

The bigger stories are the ones emerging from North Carolina and California about attempts to piecemeal electoral votes.

And bigger than that is Hillary morphing into her husband ans selling out the DailyKos, or "idiot" wing of the Dem party.

record over your Al Gore videos, it's still good to recycle
 

I know. But there's a difference between understanding that fuck all is ever going to be done about it and denying that it's actually happening. The latter just makes one look like a tube.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

On the VF article, since I don't read VF myself I'm not going to suggest that a lot of other people. OTOH, one wonders whether the conventional wisdom about Rudy will change if the reporters covering the race internalize that piece.

On the next election -- and this may come as some shock to you -- we are fighting a war in Iraq, and it is going poorly. As a direct result, Republicans lost the House and Senate in the last election and President Bush's approval ratings are in the crapper.

Carry on.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11
 

On the first, we'll just have to wait that out and see. Remember, the press has a vested unterest in seeing a Republican elected. They've had 8 wonderful, crazy news years out of W. Republicans mean more war on terror, which means more pretty colors of bombs going off, warnings of dire impending attacks and Wolf Blitzer and Sean Hannity sucking off retired generals. That shit sells.

On the Iraq war issue, I disagree. The fact is, nobody with their fingers on any of the levers gives a fuck about the soldiers over there. Those guys largely fall into a category of anonymous lower to middle class backgrounds and none of the people debating the war even discuss them, except to use their deaths for emotional effect every now and again. And all that posturing looks as scripted and vacant as it is. The average ambitious American is more interested in taxes and debacles like the mortgage lending nonsense going on. You care about the soldiers, and that's too your credit.
Most people only care about them in theory.

I loath what that ass has done in Iraq, but the situation, and the people in DC - and those running - offer no credible solution, and I stopped watching or caring months ago for exactly that reason. Churchill called the place an unholy quagmire early in the last century, and he was right. It's a hopeless futile mess that will never end.

If they institute a draft, then I'll care.

And run myself into bankruptcy paying for my son to study in New Zealand for high school and college.

I gave up having any faith in anything worthwhile coming out of DC a long time ago. We need to institute term limits. That's the only way.

earmarks
 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/earmarkspercap.jpg

per capita earmarked federal $$$, by state

earmarks
 

What states do the empty dots represent?

earmarks
 

Texas.

earmarks
 

Hah.



Note: The above is a completely non-substantive post. In. Your. Face.

Note to note: the comment was not directed at RT individually.

earmarks
 

States whose initials seem to be missing include New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida and Texas.

earmarks
 

Tom Delay's not looking so bad now, though.

earmarks
 

Actually, I think that his departure is part of the reason that Texas's bubble isn't there. For better or worse, he was a pretty fucking powerful member of Congress and could direct things to the state. This is the first time in a very long time that we don't have someone of his stature in Congress. Before him there was Jim Wright, before that Sam Rayburn, LBJ, etc.

Nowadays, what powerful Texas Congressmen are there? KBH? Maybe. Lloyd Dogget? Perhaps. Shelia Jackson Lee? Ha. But it's not like Texans are running the show up there anymore.

I of course blame Tom DeLay. His Republican World-Domination plan made it so powerful Dems in the state were targeted, to the detriment of Texas.