Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I know Matt, Kevin and Josh like to ignore these Dem gaffes, so someone needs to point them out to you.

Like you, when you can be bothered to explain what the hell you're talking about.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America."

--President Bush yesterday at his Rose Garden press conference with Prime Minister Allawi

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by sgtclub
No, but Polosi is kind of hot for an older broad.

Why not go all the way to the top? I bet Hillary's not getting much since Bill's heart almost exploded.

S_A_M

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Why not go all the way to the top? I bet Hillary's not getting much since Bill's heart almost exploded.

S_A_M

I thought club was male.

[Aloha Mr. Learned Hand]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Why not go all the way to the top? I bet Hillary's not getting much since Bill's heart almost exploded.

S_A_M

Like she was getting any from Bill before...

[Replaced_Texan]

According to the Campaigns for People e-mail I just got, the Stars of Texas PAC is returning ALL corporate money, including $100,000 from AT&T. As of September 5, the PAC had raised $32,500 from individuals and over three times that amount from corporations. In Texas, corporate money can only go towards operation costs. The Stars Over Texas PAC was formed in December with the goal of donating to Republican legislative candidates who will support Mr. Craddick's leadership in the House.

See www.burntorangereport.com for more info on the PAC. (warning: liberal Texas blog)

[Diane_Keaton]

She's being interviewed tonight on 20/20. And she's now on the Washington State Sex Offender's Website due to her crime of causing a young boy to get REALLY REALLY LUCKY WITH A HOT LOOKING SEVENTH GRADE TEACHER. Every seventh grade boy's nightmare. Heh.

[Aloha Mr. Learned Hand]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
She's being interviewed tonight on 20/20. And she's now on the Washington State Sex Offender's Website due to her crime of causing a young boy to get REALLY REALLY LUCKY WITH A HOT LOOKING SEVENTH GRADE TEACHER. Every seventh grade boy's nightmare. Heh.

True, but if the roles were reversed, is there any chance in hell that Barbra Walters would interview a MALE convicted sex offender who had sex with a 12 year old GIRL?

Not a fucking chance.

[SlaveNoMore]

Aloha Mr. Learned Hand
True, but if the roles were reversed, is there any chance in hell that Barbra Walters would interview a MALE convicted sex offender who had sex with a 12 year old GIRL?

Not a fucking chance.

[channelling SEF]Only if it was the Prophet Mohammed[/channelling SEF]

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
She's being interviewed tonight on 20/20. And she's now on the Washington State Sex Offender's Website due to her crime of causing a young boy to get REALLY REALLY LUCKY WITH A HOT LOOKING SEVENTH GRADE TEACHER. Every seventh grade boy's nightmare. Heh.

And already removed. But was she ever that hot looking?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Things must be grim indeed if I'm looking to Arnaud de Borchgrave:

• A bridge too far?
  
  By Arnaud de Borchgrave
  Published September 22, 2004
  
  
  MADRID. -- Before the Iraqi war, Europe's principal intelligence services shared the Bush administration's view that Saddam Hussein was hiding his stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Today, these same services disagree with the White House on several critical assessments.
  
  Off-the-record conversations with intelligence chiefs in five major European countries -- each with multiple assets in Iraq -- showed remarkable agreement on these points:
  
  * The neocon objectives for restructuring Iraq into a functioning model democracy were a bridge too far. They were never realistic.
  
  * The plan to train Iraqi military and security forces in time to cope with a budding insurgency before it spun out of control was stillborn.
  
  * The insurgency has mushroomed from 5,000 in the months following collapse of Saddam's regime to an estimated 20,000 today and still growing. Insurgents are targeting green Iraqi units and volunteers for training, and some have already defected to the rebels.
  
  * Iraqi soldiers trained by the U.S. are complaining the equipment ordered by the U.S. from Ukraine being assigned to them gives them "second-class status."
  
  * To cope with the insurgency, the U.S. requires tenfold the rebel strength -- or some 200,000 as a bare minimum. Short of that, the insurgency will continue gaining momentum. The multiple is based on the British experience in Northern Ireland for a quarter-century as well as France's civil war in Algeria (1954-62), when nationalist guerrillas were defeated militarily, but won the war diplomatically. France deployed half a million men to defeat the fellaghas in Algeria.
  
  * The U.S. occupation has lost control of large swathes of Iraq where the insurgency operates with virtual impunity.
  
  * Iraq was a diversion from the war on a global movement that was never anchored in Baghdad.
  
  * Iraq does not facilitate a solution to the Mideast crisis. And without such a solution, the global terrorist movement will continue spreading.
  
  * Iraq has become a magnet for would-be Muslim jihadis the world over; it has greatly facilitated transnational terrorism.
  
  * Charting a course out of the present chaos requires an open-ended commitment to maintain U.S. forces at the present level and higher through 2010 or longer.
  
  * The once magnificent obsession about building a model Arab democracy in Iraq now has the potential of a Vietnam-type quagmire.
  
  * Everything now undertaken in Iraq is palliative to tide the administration over the elections.
  
  * What is urgently needed, whether a Bush II administration or a Kerry White House is for the world's great democracies to meet at the summit to map a common strategy to confront a global challenge. The war on terrorism -- on the terrorists who have hijacked Islam -- is only one part of a common approach for (1) the defense of Western democracies and (2) the gradual transformation of an Arab world that must be assisted out of poverty, despair and defeat.
  
  * A war on terrorism without a global strategy, which must include funding major educational reforms in poor countries like Pakistan, where wannabe jihadis are still being churned out by the hundreds of thousands, could only lead to the gradual erosion of Western democratic structures.
  
  * The "war on terror" is a misnomer tantamount to rhetorical disinformation. One can no more fight terrorism than one could declare war on Adolf Hitler's Panzers in World War II or Dreadnoughts in World War I. Terrorism is a weapons system that has been used time and again for the last 5,000 years. The root causes are the problem, not the weapon.
  
  * Ignoring the causes guarantees escalation -- to weapons of mass destruction.
  
  
  Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

[SlaveNoMore]

From the October 4, 2004 issue of the Weekly Standard:

The disgraceful behavior of John Kerry and his team is sufficient grounds for concern about his fitness to be president
by William Kristol
10/04/2004, Volume 010, Issue 04

• WE REALLY DON'T KNOW what a President John Kerry would do about Iraq. His flip-flops about the war, his inconsistencies, the ambiguity of his current position (win or withdraw?)--all of these mean we can only guess about a Kerry presidency. He would probably be inclined to get out of Iraq as soon as possible; it might be the case, however, that as president he would nonetheless find himself staying and fighting. Who knows?
  
  What we do know is this: Kerry and his advisers have behaved disgracefully this past week. That behavior is sufficient grounds for concern about his fitness to be president.
  
  On Tuesday, President Bush spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. Senator Kerry decided not to say anything supportive of the president as he made the American case to the "international community." Nor did he simply campaign that day on other issues. No. Less than an hour after President Bush finished speaking in New York, Kerry was criticizing his remarks in Jacksonville, Florida: "At the United Nations today, the president failed to level with the world's leaders. Moments after Kofi Annan, the secretary general, talked about the difficulties in Iraq, the president of the United States stood before a stony-faced body and barely talked about the realities at all of Iraq. . . . He does not have the credibility to lead the world."
  
  So Kerry credits Kofi Annan--who a few days before had condemned the "illegal" American war in Iraq--as a more accurate source of information on the subject than the president of the United States. Kerry also seems to think it significant that the General Assembly sat "stony-faced" while the president spoke. Would the applause of delegates from China, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, France, have made the president's speech more praiseworthy in Kerry's eyes?
  
  Then Kerry was asked about Kofi Annan's description of the war in Iraq as an "illegal" invasion. Kerry answered: "I don't know what the law, the legalities are that he's referring to. I don't know." So the U.S. government is accused of breaking international law, and Kerry chooses not to defend his country against the charge, or to label it ridiculous or offensive. He is agnostic.
  
  Then Kerry continued: "Well, let me say this to all of you: That underscores what I am saying. If the leader of the United Nations is at odds with the legality, and we're not working at getting over that hurdle and bringing people to the table, as I said in my speech yesterday, it's imperative to be able to build international cooperation." It's our fault that the U.N. is doing almost nothing to help in Iraq. After all, according to Kerry, "Kofi Annan offered the help of the United Nations months ago. This president chose to go the other way."
  
  Leave aside the rewriting of history going on here. The president of the United States had just appealed for help from the United Nations and its member states to ensure that elections go forward in Iraq. Kerry could have reinforced that appeal for help with his own, thereby making it a bipartisan request. He chose instead to give the U.N., France, Germany, and everyone else an excuse to do nothing over these next crucial five weeks, with voter registration scheduled to begin November 1. If other nations prefer not to help the United States, the Democratic presidential candidate has given them his blessing.
  
  Two days later, Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi spoke to a joint meeting of Congress. Sen. Kerry could not be troubled to attend, as a gesture of solidarity and respect. Instead, Kerry said in Ohio that Allawi was here simply to put the "best face on the policy." So much for an impressive speech by perhaps America's single most important ally in the war on terror, the courageous and internationally recognized leader of a nation struggling to achieve democracy against terrorist opposition.
  
  But Kerry's rudeness paled beside the comment of his senior adviser, Joe Lockhart, to the Los Angeles Times: "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips."
  
  Is Kerry proud that his senior adviser's derisive comment about the leader of free Iraq will now be quoted by terrorists and by enemies of the United States, in Iraq and throughout the Middle East? Is the concept of a loyalty to American interests that transcends partisan politics now beyond the imagination of the Kerry campaign?
  
  John Kerry has decided to pursue a scorched-earth strategy in this campaign. He is prepared to insult allies, hearten enemies, and denigrate efforts to succeed in Iraq. His behavior is deeply irresponsible--and not even in his own best interest.
  
  There is some chance, after all, that John Kerry will be president in four months. If so, what kind of situation will he have created for himself? France will smile on him, but provide no troops. Those allies that have provided troops, from Britain and Poland and Australia and Japan and elsewhere, will likely recall how Kerry sneered at them, calling them "the coerced and the bribed." The leader of the government in Iraq, upon whom the success of John Kerry's Iraq policy will depend, will have been weakened before his enemies and ours--and will also remember the insult. Is this really how Kerry wants to go down in history: Willing to say anything to try to get elected, no matter what the damage to the people of Iraq, to American interests, and even to himself?
  
  --William Kristol

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop

* Iraq has become a magnet for would-be Muslim jihadis the world over; it has greatly facilitated transnational terrorism.

However, this particular "problem" plays as a Bush positive throughout most of the country.

The more jihadis flock [i]there, the less jihadis there are to flock here.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
And already removed. But was she ever that hot looking?

Linky still works for me. Re: whether she was hot looking, I'd say she was at least for rural Wash.

And apparently still looks good: (with one of two children with the 7th grader)

Unlike the boy who looked a whole lot better as a 7th grader.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Aloha Mr. Learned Hand
True, but if the roles were reversed, is there any chance in hell that Barbra Walters would interview a MALE convicted sex offender who had sex with a 12 year old GIRL?

Not a fucking chance.

I had the same thought about as I was watching the movie, Monster, recently. It was interesting and all, but I just couldn't see the same, largely apoligist, movie being made about a male multiple killer. Which is to say I didn't sympathize somewhat.