Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Does that mean that Atticus is no better than Larry Craig? And if you're defending Larry Craig, does that mean Atticus isn't much of a hypocrite at all?

the fact that an elected official from Idaho might have to hide his sexuality is equal to an enlightened, educated man finding the elected offical's sexuality cause for a laugh? can you support that with a blog cite? and this isn't personal to AG, several of you guys do this sort of post.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
the fact that an elected official from Idaho might have to hide his sexuality is equal to an enlightened, educated man finding the elected offical's sexuality cause for a laugh? can you support that with a blog cite? and this isn't personal to AG, several of you guys do this sort of post.

From the police report, it's pretty clear that he lied like a rug.

I say we file this under "Monica Lewinsky", and that the Senate deal with in the same way Sen. Craig advocated dealing with Clinton's little lie about sex. We should simply hold Craig to the same standards he demanded of others.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
the fact that an elected official from Idaho might have to hide his sexuality is equal to an enlightened, educated man finding the elected offical's sexuality cause for a laugh? can you support that with a blog cite? and this isn't personal to AG, several of you guys do this sort of post.

Interesting that your take-away from this is "Dems are hypocites." Confirmation bias at work, I guess.

My question: what should I have done? Not posted it? Allow a sitting U.S. Senator to continue to sponsor anti-gay legislation because it's really hard to be gay in Idaho and he's entitled to his privacy? What about his gay constituents -- do you think they also find it hard to be openly gay in Idaho, in no small part thanks to the good Senator? The moral high ground here may very well be a molehill, but neither you nor Senator Craig are on it.

BTW, for the record, I don't find his sexuality laughable. I find his lack of discretion laughable, the same way I laughed as Clinton's lack of discretion, and in case you weren't reading newspapers then, homeboy was straight. NTTAWWT.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
does this mean it is now okay for Dems to admit they trumped up Watergate, and that john Mitchell was innocent of all wrong doing?

Now that's funny.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Interesting that your take-away from this is "Dems are hypocites." Confirmation bias at work, I guess.

My question: what should I have done? Not posted it? Allow a sitting U.S. Senator to continue to sponsor anti-gay legislation because it's really hard to be gay in Idaho and he's entitled to his privacy? What about his gay constituents -- do you think they also find it hard to be openly gay in Idaho, in no small part thanks to the good Senator? The moral high ground here may very well be a molehill, but neither you nor Senator Craig are on it.

BTW, for the record, I don't find his sexuality laughable. I find his lack of discretion laughable, the same way I laughed as Clinton's lack of discretion, and in case you weren't reading newspapers then, homeboy was straight. NTTAWWT.

huh? he was playing footsie, at most a hint at what he'd like to do. no one prosecuted Billy for what he did w/ Monica.

how do you get arrested for playing footsies in Minnesota?

Fuck, can you imagine being Flower's criminal lawyer? That sucker must be on call all weekend long.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Does that mean that Atticus is no better than Larry Craig? And if you're defending Larry Craig, does that mean Atticus isn't much of a hypocrite at all?

eta:

Hilzoy:

• I have a certain sympathy for closeted gay men and lesbians. I think that being so deeply ashamed of a part of yourself that's so fundamental, and that you can do nothing to change, must be close to unbearable; and the knowledge that coming clean would involve not only admitting that you're gay, but also that you have lied for years to people you care about, and who trust you, would only make it that much worse. But my sympathy vanishes when it comes to people who support amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage, as Craig did. There are limits to what you get to do to protect your own secrets, and being willing to permanently destroy gay men and lesbians' chances to marry the people they love, and with whom they have found happiness, is way, way outside them.
  
  (For the record, I don't have much sympathy for straight people who support this idiotic and mean-spirited amendment either.)
  
  Craig seems to have made a habit of voting against laws that would secure the rights of gay men and lesbians. In addition to supporting the Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, he voted against a bill that would have banned job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, against expanding the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, and was rated zero by the Human Rights Campaign in each of the last three Congresses (1, 2, 3; all pdf.) I truly can't imagine what it would be like -- how little self-respect a person would have to have -- to amass that sort of voting record while cruising for gay sex in airport restrooms.
  
  And besides, if I had any sympathy for Larry Craig, the fact that he "handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?”" would have destroyed it. The laws are meant to apply to everyone, Senators included. No one gets to violate laws he himself supports and then use the fact that he has been elected to high office to get himself off the hook. Being elected Senator means being given a position of trust and responsibility that you should work every day to be worthy of, not a Get Out Of Jail Free card.

Shame on you. Pointing stuff like this out makes Hank appear to be much less clever than he claims to be. Do you have any idea how much of Hank's self-esteem is rooted in his rapier wit on lawyer-populated internet-style chatting boards? If you had any sense of decency you would delete this immediately before Hank sees it.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
huh? he was playing footsie, at most a hint at what he'd like to do. no one prosecuted Billy for what he did w/ Monica.

how do you get arrested for playing footsies in Minnesota?

Fuck, can you imagine being Flower's criminal lawyer? That sucker must be on call all weekend long.

If all he was doing is playing footsie then he should cowboy up, go to trial, and let the chips fall.

Of course, we all know he got busted for trying to get or give a blow job, which, personally, I don't think is such a big deal. Craig, apparently, along with a large number of his colleagues, seems to feel otherwise.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Shame on you. Pointing stuff like this out makes Hank appear to be much less clever than he claims to be. Do you have any idea how much of Hank's self-esteem is rooted in his rapier wit on lawyer-populated internet-style chatting boards? If you had any sense of decency you would delete this immediately before Hank sees it.

bullshit. some buzz head justifying the dual treatment he doles out doesn't prove anything.

I live in a blue state. 70% of the people here voted for a ban on gay marriage. the city of detroit voted 90% for john-John and 70% in support of the ban on gay mariage. Imagine the numbers in Idaho if its like that here.

the guy is a politician. his voters put him in Congress to represent them. voting against a ban on Gay marriage probably wouldn't represent his voter's position really well.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
bullshit. some buzz head justifying the dual treatment he doles out doesn't prove anything.

I live in a blue state. 70% of the people here voted for a ban on gay marriage. the city of detroit voted 90% for john-John and 70% in support of the ban on gay mariage. Imagine the numbers in Idaho if its like that here.

the guy is a politician. his voters put him in Congress to represent them. voting against a ban on Gay marriage probably wouldn't represent his voter's position really well.

Aw, shit. Now I just feel bad for the guy. Now I understand that he wasn't actually in the lead for many years of legislative combat on gays, he was just a reluctant passenger on this train, riding the engine of constitutent sentiments, all the while battling his inner demons. Well put, Hank. Well put.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Aw, shit. Now I just feel bad for the guy. Now I understand that he wasn't actually in the lead for many years of legislative combat on gays, he was just a reluctant passenger on this train, riding the engine of constitutent sentiments, all the while battling his inner demons. Well put, Hank. Well put.

his arrest and the subsequent publicity are his own problem. I'm sure the democrat's candidate will bring it up next election. all that is his to deal with.

What i find weird isn't whether he is a hypocrite. He appears to be one. What I find weird is that you guys don't see that you are also.

also, did anyone think it weird how AG always claimed nfh was really a guy pretending to be a girl? what if he was? what is wrong with that?

[Gattigap]

It's probably as good a time as any to review the history of the Singing Senators:

John Ashcroft - Lost his Senate seat to a dead man and was replaced by the dead man's wife. Resigned after a controversial and much-criticized stint as Attorney General.

Larry Craig - see today's news.

James Jeffords - Left the Republican Party to become independent at a time when doing so would cause the most stir. Generally despised by Republicans for doing so.

Trent Lott - Forced to step down as Senate Majority Leader after making comments that could be easily construed as racist, implying that the country would be better off if it maintained its segregationist past ways. Has never fully recovered politically.

A cursed musical ensemble? Or should anyone who intentionally chooses such outfits and songs be immediately suspect?

Gattigap

[Hank Chinaski]

Mark Twain, The Greatest American Humorist, Returning Home, New York World [London, 10/6/1900]

............. There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.

Originally posted by Gattigap
It's probably as good a time as any to review the history of the Singing Senators:

John Ashcroft - Lost his Senate seat to a dead man and was replaced by the dead man's wife. Resigned after a controversial and much-criticized stint as Attorney General.

Larry Craig - see today's news.

James Jeffords - Left the Republican Party to become independent at a time when doing so would cause the most stir. Generally despised by Republicans for doing so.

Trent Lott - Forced to step down as Senate Majority Leader after making comments that could be easily construed as racist, implying that the country would be better off if it maintained its segregationist past ways. Has never fully recovered politically.

A cursed musical ensemble? Or should anyone who intentionally chooses such outfits and songs be immediately suspect?

Gattigap

It's a pity none of them ever choked on vomit. Someone else's vomit.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by ironweed
It's a pity none of them ever choked on vomit. Someone else's vomit.

Who knows what kinky shit they get up to behind closed doors . . .

[Spanky]

Here is an exchange between a friend of mine and a Lieutenant Colonel working with the Iraqis.


Colonel:

How are things? The word here is that the surge is working. My guess is that the street gang/insurgent jerks are having a tough time setting up their little road blocks and checkpoints which would mean that shaking down the locals is much more difficult. They may be having money problems.
Tough! Have you folks figured out exactly what they want? Some of them may just want chaos and others want things to be ordered and under their control. What does Abdulla Average think? One hopes that people will get tired of the mess and start trying to put things to rights. Who knows?
Stratfor says that AQ has some serious problems, organizationally speaking, but that there is still a largre group of guys who believe that a pan-Muslim super state is the future. The far lefties here in the US want the US to abandon Israel and believe that then the bad guys will lay off. That seems to me to be dumber than a shit sandwich. Human nature is that when one's enemy is in retreat then it is time to press on and cause a rout, in my view, anyhow.
Stay safe. Colonels are supposed to be in the rear with the gear and from what (his wife) tells me, you are not.
Your Friend
Thaddeus




Thad,
All is well - thanks. We definitely have them in a retreat, and it is time to rout them, but the situation is much more complex than I think I could ever explain in American terms. The way of thinking, the values, the approach to problem-solving, and the kind of governing that the local fellow is used to continues to make our biggest gap - we don't speak the same language, literally and figuratively to impact change here as fast as most Americans want. It's hard enough for us to spend enough time to understand and start to see some change, but it is even more of a daunting task to get it across to the American Public that there is any marked improvements. AQ is definitely our big enemy here, and should continue to be based on their root reasons for existence and their future impact on Americans. We will keep improving our foxhole while we are her and in it, but transitioning that mentality and vision that we see is a challenge. Abandoning Israel is an entirely different argument that should have no impact on our involvement here, but abandoning Israel with the belief that the bad guys would lay off is myopic at the least. Any historian can see that there will always be a "bad guy" set against us and against Israel from the Middle East - it is part of their core.
Anyway - I am staying safe (for the most part) and when I get shot at, the guys help me fire back pretty ferociously. They all work hard to protect me, but my job is out and about with Iraqi Army Soldiers.
Thanks for the picture - it brings back some good memories. Take care my friend, and God Bless.