All Hank, all the time.

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Bob
Palestine/the Occupied Territories/Judea and Samaria/The Promised Land/Trans-Jordan/the British Mandate....

of Anaheim

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Did Lincoln Chafee retire?

He is no longer in the party. And thankfully his seat is not required for us to be in the majority any more. But what he did was unforgiveable.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
bitch brought done a galactic empire- one that does that, maybe you don't want too many more.

True - but it was an evil empire, which from your point of view kind of makes her a female Ronald Reagan. That should make you and Slave all tingly and woozy.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Spanky
He is no longer in the party. And thankfully his seat is not required for us to be in the majority any more. But what he did was unforgiveable.

What? I thought he was still a Republican -- titularly, anyway.

What could this mean? If Slave can't continue to get smashed and cry into his beer at The Irish Bank about "That Muthafuckin' RINO Chafee" anymore, at whom can he now direct his ire?

[SlaveNoMore]

Sexual Harassment Panda
True - but it was an evil empire, which from your point of view kind of makes her a female Ronald Reagan. That should make you and Slave all tingly and woozy.

Whereas the Jedi with their simple pronouncements against order and trade were nothing more than the faculty of Berkeley... if the faculty of Berkeley were actually allowed to believe in some higher power.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by PlainJane
Imagine it is America.

In 1964 a "Mexican Liberation Organization for Independence of the South-West states of the USA" - MLO - was created with the help of the Mexican government.

In 1972 the MLO murdered the members of US wrestling team at Olympic Games of Munich.

Since then, the citizens of the United States have been subjected to random acts of terror by the members of various factions of the MLO.

1993: Mexican and US representatives met in Oslo and signed a breakthrough agreement of mutual recognition between the USA and the MLO Organization, which began the US-Mexican peace process.

The chain of agreements that followed, were facilitated by Panama - Wye River Memorandum, Camp David, summit at Sharm El Sheikh, Tenet Plan, Road Map.

During all this time the MLO organization continued terror activity against the USA and ignored all agreements it had signed.

The UN and EU observed the suicide bombings, kidnappings and home made rockets fired across the border by the MLO, but financially, politically and morally supported the MLO and the Mexican government struggle against the USA.

10 months ago the US government announced its decision to withdraw from New Mexico and transferred full control of the territory to the MLO.

6 month ago, US government ignored the protest of its people and deported the non-Mexican American population from New Mexico, hoping to save lives and reduce the cost of the conflict.

The MLO responded with an escalation of the terror. Katusha rockets from the recently left territories landed on the US. Suicide bombings and kidnappings never stopped.

A week ago MLO members used a tunnel to attack a US military border post. Two US solders were killed, 4 wounded and one kidnapped.

The MLO made a demand to release Mexican terrorists from US jails.

The US army in order to free the kidnapped solder and punish the MLO entered New Mexico. A Power station, bridges and the Interior ministry building was bombed.

A Panama Foreign Ministry spokesman called for restraint and advised that diplomacy is a viable option.

The President of Mexico has asked the United Nations for help in freeing the MLO members. The UN special envoy, Alvaro de Soto, says he will discuss the issue with the US government.

The US's 4-day military offensive in New Mexico has prompted recriminations during a UN Security Council debate sought by Spanish speeking countries.

For how long would the United States tolerate this -- just curious?

Turn it around. The year is 1776. We are the PLO and Israel is Britain. Or perhaps we could set it in Algeria in the 50s and early 60s.

Like I said earlier, I am pro-Israel. But that doesn't change the fact that what has kept the State of Israel around is a ruthless efficiency at killing off its enemies, on Israeli soil or elsewhere, and when the zone of conflict was Arab-occupied territory, Israel has displayed little regard for collateral damage until very recently.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Here's a recent review of that Suskind book, if anyone cares:

• History as a Cartoon
  Books
  BY ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
  July 6, 2006
  URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/35523
  
  It is no secret that the attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in two wars. The first was the one in which the United States finally engaged with Islamic terrorists, who had declared war when they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. The second is the war against the war.
  
  This latter is an internecine executive branch struggle, pitting insurgent factions of the intelligence community and veterans of the foreign service bureaucracy against Bush administration policy-makers. So sordid has it become that strategic leaks were a staple of the 2004 presidential campaign. Failing their transparent design to topple a sitting president, the renegades have nonetheless continued apace, recently exposing key programs aimed at penetrating Al Qaeda's international communications and money movements.
  
  The insurgency thrives due to its ideological soul mates in the mainstream press. One of the brightest stars in its firmament is Ron Suskind. A past winner of the club's coveted Pulitzer Prize, which is now awarded annually for the best leaking of national security information, Mr. Suskind in 2004 authored "The Price of Loyalty," which, courtesy of a disgruntled cat's paw (a former treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill), painted an election-year portrait of President Bush as a dimwit whose strings were pulled by dark forces: principally, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney.
  
  Mr. Suskind is back again with "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" (Simon & Schuster, 367 pages, $27), another explosive best seller on the same overarching theme. If the far-left anthem "Bush lied and people died" is where you're coming from, if you think your country and its "visceral, emotive, non-substantive and faith based" president have been hijacked by wild-eyed neocons bent on an American empire that serves Israel's interests, this is the book for you.
  
  While today's politicized press has embraced Mr. Suskind's Bush-bashing, the press of a bygone day, one more objectively critical, might instead have asked whether one can ever arrive at a semblance of truth by only talking to one side of a heated historic dispute. In this regard, Mr. Suskind's book, however unintentionally, is hilarious.
  
  In an "author's note" at the very end, Mr. Suskind thanks the "nearly one hundred well-placed" sources whom he has chosen to accommodate by not identifying. Let's leave aside the broad license to mutilate that this confers on the author, who vents his own considerable prejudices through seemingly authoritative accounts from raconteurs whose anonymity renders them conveniently unimpeachable. There is not, here, even a fig leaf of objectivity. It is pluperfectly obvious whose versions of events Mr. Suskind values, and whose - no matter how central to the story - were readily substituted by caricature.
  
  So we learn in lush detail, including extensive quotations from private conversations, of the thoughtful, agonizing, nuanced deliberations and frustrations of such luminaries as a former CIA director, George Tenet (likable, passionate, and able ... but compromised because he owes Mr. Bush, who did not fire him despite the CIA's abysmal performance prior to September 11), Brent Scowcroft (a former national security adviser and still confidant of President George H.W. Bush who, we learn through Mr. Scowcroft, has a cold and distant relationship with his less able son), various CIA upper and middle managers, and even some FBI grunts. Their conversations are rendered in rich, frequently self-serving detail.
  
  To the contrary, the powers to whom they valiantly try to speak truth are metaphors, not people: "Imperial America" is fighting a "so-called 'war on terror.'" (In case you miss the point that Mr. Suskind doesn't believe we're in a real war, he helps you by repeating it every few paragraphs.) It is ruled by Mr. Bush, a barely literate Bible thumper whose refusal to read even short memos has created an "evidence-free realm" that he rules by drawing on "the deep well of faith." His then-national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is "a fierce academic-bred achiever, alone at 46, bemused and appraising, cool and sealed each morning in a snug Oscar de la Renta." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is the sharp-elbowed, Machiavellian infighter, singularly responsible for the failure to capture Osama bin Laden out of petty resistance to playing second fiddle to the CIA. Mr. Suskind reports that Mr. Rumsfeld has allegedly told the Joint Chiefs, "Every CIA success is a DoD failure." In all manner of machinations, "Don" is joined at the hip with "Dick." That would be Mr. Cheney, of course, the villain of the book. Indeed, when Mr. Suskind wants to convey how effective Al Qaeda's ruthless no. 2 terrorist, Ayman al-Zawahri, is, he can't resist describing him as "bin Laden's Cheney."
  
  Mr. Cheney is the father of the book's gravamen, the "one-percent doctrine." This is the device by which the administration has supposedly dispensed with evidence-based decision making, the mooring that, for Mr. Suskind, made President Clinton's America a nation of laws, not men. It is, for Mr. Suskind, the colossal blunder that has led to the misadventure in Iraq and a national hysteria over terrorism. According to Mr. Suskind, Mr. Cheney has decreed that if a situation presents a 1% risk of a "high-impact" event, the government must treat the threat as if it were a certainty and move to preventive measures rather than dawdling over such niceties as, well, proof.
  
  The notion is absurd, and it is manifestly false that anything close to it has ever been an operating principle. There can be no gainsaying that the attacks of September 11 shifted the nation's priorities. Though Mr. Suskind chooses not to dwell on it, when terrorism was treated as he prefers - i.e., like a crime rather than the "war" he ceaselessly belittles - the United States managed to convict less than three dozen operatives (mostly low-level) while the nation was attacked repeatedly and Al Qaeda's ranks swelled. Plainly, with a committed enemy and righteous fears about weapons of incalculably destructive power, the focus had to shift to prevention rather than prosecution. But the thought that an obsession over prevention has meant the death knell of reason, and that error in high-pressure judgment is the tell-tale sign of deceit, is a nearly libelous oversimplification.
  
  For all his repetitive snipes at the president's supposed lack of sophistication, the irony is that Mr. Suskind has given us history as a cartoon.

Having read the book, I would note that it's a more sympathetic portrayal of Bush and Cheney, especially in the months after 9/11, than this guy admits. And the alternative to writing accounts based on leaks is writing accounts based soley on official accounts, which is no different in principle.

Some of my thoughts about the book are here, if anyone cares.

[flare up]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Turn it around. The year is 1776. We are the PLO and Israel is Britain. Or perhaps we could set it in Algeria in the 50s and early 60s.

Interesting comparison, The Founding fathers were akin to ruthless baby killers and those who indiscriminately kill masses of civilians in the name of stealing others' land in order to create a politcally oppressive theocracy. What type of loonie moral relativist are you?

And further, if the analogy worked the Jews would all be dead at the bottom of the mediterreanean by now, pushed into the sea as is the palis design, and we would have the People of Allah's Republic of Palestine there now.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by flare up
...and we would have the People of Allah's Republic of Palestine there now.

On the plus side, the PoARoP would represent a stable, longlasting democracy in the Middle East.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by flare up
Interesting comparison, The Founding fathers were akin to ruthless baby killers and those who indiscriminately kill masses of civilians in the name of stealing others' land in order to create a politcally oppressive theocracy. What type of loonie moral relativist are you?

Hmmmmm. Perhaps the question would best be answered by the survivors of the Cherokee or the few remaining Oglala Sioux?

[Spanky]

Someone said that the Economist has no sense of humor. Would Time, Newsweek, or any of the other US rags dare a cover like this week's Economist? US newsmagazines are full of so much fluff that they don't dare have a sense of humor. The Economist, because it actually prints relevent news with intelligent commentary can afford to joke around.

http://www.economist.com/index.html

[Gattigap]

Sebby --

I don't know much or care much about Lieberman, but I came across this explanation for Why Democrats Seem To Hate Lieberman, and thought you'd find it interesting.

linky

• It's becoming quasi-trite to say this, but Lieberman's votes really don't substantively diverge from those of a variety of other moderate senators. Yet the netroots are trying to save the Nelsons and eject Holy Joe. Why?
  
  Because it's not about the war. Or moderation. Or ideology at all. It's about partisanship. The lines are brightly drawn, but in unexpected places. You can support the President's war, but you can't protect him from criticism. You can vote with Republicans, but you can't undermine Democrats. You can be a hawk, but you can't deride doves. The politics here are tribal, and Lieberman's developed too severe a crush on the neighboring chieftain to participate. I've tried to explain why that may be -- he gropes towards praise and recognition, and receives both more readily from the right -- but pop psychology isn't quite the point. And nor is ideology. Or the war. For all the mockery Bush received, his assertion that "you're either with us or against us" was more widely applicable than he realized. Lieberman's actions convinced liberals that he didn't merely disagree with them, or fear the political ramifications of their positions, but that he was actively against them. And while they can withstand an impressive amount of disagreement, they won't stand for dislike.

Gattigap

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Here's a recent review of that Suskind book, if anyone cares:

* * *
For all his repetitive snipes at the president's supposed lack of sophistication, the irony is that Mr. Suskind has given us history as a cartoon.[/list]

Niced to hear from someone without an axe to grind.

S_A_M

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Sebby --

I don't know much or care much about Lieberman, but I came across this explanation for Why Democrats Seem To Hate Lieberman, and thought you'd find it interesting.

linky

• It's becoming quasi-trite to say this, but Lieberman's votes really don't substantively diverge from those of a variety of other moderate senators. Yet the netroots are trying to save the Nelsons and eject Holy Joe. Why?
  
  Because it's not about the war. Or moderation. Or ideology at all. It's about partisanship. The lines are brightly drawn, but in unexpected places. You can support the President's war, but you can't protect him from criticism. You can vote with Republicans, but you can't undermine Democrats. You can be a hawk, but you can't deride doves. The politics here are tribal, and Lieberman's developed too severe a crush on the neighboring chieftain to participate. I've tried to explain why that may be -- he gropes towards praise and recognition, and receives both more readily from the right -- but pop psychology isn't quite the point. And nor is ideology. Or the war. For all the mockery Bush received, his assertion that "you're either with us or against us" was more widely applicable than he realized. Lieberman's actions convinced liberals that he didn't merely disagree with them, or fear the political ramifications of their positions, but that he was actively against them. And while they can withstand an impressive amount of disagreement, they won't stand for dislike.

Gattigap

what none of you seem to nderstand is that Joe L. is still going to be a Senator next year. They're just trying to figure out now if he'll have a D next to his name.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Sebby --

I don't know much or care much about Lieberman, but I came across this explanation for Why Democrats Seem To Hate Lieberman, and thought you'd find it interesting.

linky

• It's becoming quasi-trite to say this, but Lieberman's votes really don't substantively diverge from those of a variety of other moderate senators. Yet the netroots are trying to save the Nelsons and eject Holy Joe. Why?
  
  Because it's not about the war. Or moderation. Or ideology at all. It's about partisanship. The lines are brightly drawn, but in unexpected places. You can support the President's war, but you can't protect him from criticism. You can vote with Republicans, but you can't undermine Democrats. You can be a hawk, but you can't deride doves. The politics here are tribal, and Lieberman's developed too severe a crush on the neighboring chieftain to participate. I've tried to explain why that may be -- he gropes towards praise and recognition, and receives both more readily from the right -- but pop psychology isn't quite the point. And nor is ideology. Or the war. For all the mockery Bush received, his assertion that "you're either with us or against us" was more widely applicable than he realized. Lieberman's actions convinced liberals that he didn't merely disagree with them, or fear the political ramifications of their positions, but that he was actively against them. And while they can withstand an impressive amount of disagreement, they won't stand for dislike.

Gattigap

I have to say that as a Democrat, I would be offended by being characterized that way. Politics isn't tribal. The biggest problem facing this country today is that too many people are acting as thought this is not only true, but proper.

I say this is the biggest problem facing us today, not terrorism or taxes or jobs or immigration, because the attituds that you're either with us or against us is standing in the way of finding workable solutions to all the other problems.