Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The obvious flaw is that she doesn't kow-tow to the Left, she doesn't lie about the Administration, she doesn't publish doctored photos, she doesn't lead stories with misleading Headlines . . .

I thought Penske was male, yes?

And he only defends the right-wing terrorists.

S_A_M

edited to fix tags

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Was on a better roll today than even SAM:

In my defense, I write my own stuff.

But then, he's always had good writers.

S_A_M

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man

I thought Penske was male, yes?

And he only defends the right-wing terrorists.

S_A_M

Penske is actually like one of those "group novels." Shape Shifter, Paigow and the guy who was SEF all share the login and just post whenever the moods strikes. The 3 distinct personas is why Penske comes off as so erratic sometimes.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Bush [capitalized] kicked the shit out of that AP idiot Jennifer Loven today. Knocked her ass out of the ballpark. Grand Slam. Pretty impressive for a chimp.

Oh, better yet - when Karzai mocked her with his solid stare and the "where were you when people jumped 80 flights?" speech - that was just the cherry on top.

Outclassed. Your mouthpieces are bush league.

Whoa. I haven't even seen this press conference yet, but just from reading this, let me say:

FUCK yeah! Damn, Slave, you nailed it! Grand slam walk off homer, baby! Fu.Cking. A! Give it to the AP and all those shits on this board who love them! C'mere, man, gimme a high five! There!

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That felt good.

***

Sorry. Penske doesn't appear to be around at the moment, so sometimes we need to step in for him.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Spanky
David Koresh was a multiple felon who needed to be brought to justice. Freedom of religion is not a license to break the law, and the right to bear arms does not give you the right to shoot federal agents. It sucks that he exploited children, and used them as shields, but the responsiblity for the death of these children rests squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Koresh (and their idiot parents who followed this guy). In my mind the only mistake Janet Reno made was to not storm the compound with tanks and armored vehicles seconds after our brave men and women in uniform were killed.

My God. You said something intelligent and accurate.

Quick, post something about how all Democrats are evil and want the terrorists to win, and Bush's policies have prevented a multitude of hijackings that you just KNOW would have happened otherwise. The universe must be righted.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
BTW: This flattering picture aside, you have to admit, when it comes to commentators she is in the top five percent as far as looks go. How many attractive female commentators do the left have?

Don't go dissing Wonkette, man. She was, is, and always will be #1 among the commentators.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Don't go dissing Wonkette, man. She was, is, and always will be #1 among the commentators.

Is she still commenting? she sold the brand, and got out.

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
Whoa. I haven't even seen this press conference yet, but just from reading this, let me say:

FUCK yeah! Damn, Slave, you nailed it! Grand slam walk off homer, baby! Fu.Cking. A! Give it to the AP and all those shits on this board who love them! C'mere, man, gimme a high five! There!

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That felt good.

***

Sorry. Penske doesn't appear to be around at the moment, so sometimes we need to step in for him.

Here's a link

After watching it, tell me if you still disagree.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I'm not sure I get why you went with this sock instead of the Southern General one. Fine distinction indeed.

Very smooth. Criticizing your own sock. I've never seen that ruse before.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
My God. You said something intelligent and accurate.

Quick, post something about how all Democrats are evil and want the terrorists to win, and Bush's policies have prevented a multitude of hijackings that you just KNOW would have happened otherwise. The universe must be righted.

He displays rationality like this once a quarter, like clockwork. I think he just cribs from talking points on a mailing he gets.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Here's a link

After watching it, tell me if you still disagree.

Here's the transcript of the question and answer.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir.
Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the national intelligence estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?
And to President Karzai, if I might: What do you think of President Musharraf's comments, that you need to get to know your own country better when you're talking about where terror threats and the Taliban threat is coming from?
BUSH: You want to start?
Mayor, Kabul: Go ahead, please.
BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that, because of our successes against the leadership of Al Qaida, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent. I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their murderous ways. Some people have, you know, guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe.

Okay, let's go over this yet again. When we went into Iraq, there weren't any terrorists there. Now, at this moment, there are, but most of the insurgents are home grown, native Iraqis. This has been established many times - the number of Iraqis in the insurgency is many times the number of foreign fighters. bush made the terrorists.

Oh, bush hasn't answered the question yet.

The terrorists fight us in Iraq for a reason; they want to try to stop a young democracy from developing, just like they're trying to fight this young democracy in Afghanistan. And they use it as a recruitment tool because they understand the stakes. They understand what will happen to them when we defeat them in Iraq.

You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq we would see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining the radical movement, requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993.
Mayor, Kabul (fawning): Yes, sir.

BUSH: We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole.

Mayor, Kabul (panting): Yes, sir.

BUSH: We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. They kill in order to achieve their objectives. You know, in the past, Osama bin Laden used Somalia as an excuse for people to join his jihadist movement. In the past, they used the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a convenient way to try to recruit people to their jihadist movement.

Yes, there were terrorists who carried out these acts. What did Iraq have to do with it? Absolutely nothin', uh-huh.

Still waiting - bush still hasn't answered the question. How has the war in Iraq made the US of A safer?

They've used all kinds of excuses. This government is going to do whatever it takes to protect this homeland. We're not going to let their excuses stop us from staying on the offense. The best way to protect America is to defeat these killers overseas so we do not have to face them here at home. [Everybody - DRINK!] We're not going to let lies and propaganda by the enemy dictate how we win this war.

Now, you know what's interesting about the NIE? It was an intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions -- the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February -- at the end of February. And here we are coming down the stretch in an election campaign and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody's taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

Well, I guess it's someone in the executive branch, right?

I talked to John Negroponte today, the DNI. You know, I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there's a leak, because it means it's going to be hard to get good product out of our analysts. Those of you who've been around here long enough know what I'm talking about.

But once again there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign in order to create confusion in the minds of the American people. In my judgment, that's why they leaked it.

And so we're going to -- I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. It will stop all the speculation, all the politics about somebody saying something about Iraq; you know, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy.

And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible -- declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself. And he'll do so in such a way that we'll be able to protect sources and methods of -- that our intelligence community uses. And then everybody can draw their own conclusions about what the report says.

QUESTION: Why is that declassification not a political act?

BUSH: Because I want you to read the document so you don't speculate about what it says. You asked me a question based upon what you thought was in the document -- or at least somebody told you was in the document. And so I think you'll be able to ask a more profound question when you get to look at it yourself as opposed to relying upon gossip and somebody, you know, who may or may not have seen the document trying to classify the war in Iraq one way or the other.

It's a -- just I guess it's just Washington -- isn't it? -- where, you know, we, kind of -- there's no such thing as classification anymore, hardly. But, anyway, you all take a look at it, and then you'll get to see.

After all that talk about declassifying the NIE, we get 3 - count 'em, 3 - pages from a 30-page document. Well, that seems like a good way to assess the whole thing.

I'm not saying we should get to see the whole thing, but bush was stupid to act like he could do it so that everyone could see what was in it, and that somehow wasn't supposed to be a political act.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
Here's the transcript of the question and answer.



Okay, let's go over this yet again. When we went into Iraq, there weren't any terrorists there. Now, at this moment, there are, but most of the insurgents are home grown, native Iraqis. This has been established many times - the number of Iraqis in the insurgency is many times the number of foreign fighters. bush made the terrorists.

Oh, bush hasn't answered the question yet.



Yes, there were terrorists who carried out these acts. What did Iraq have to do with it? Absolutely nothin', uh-huh.

Still waiting - bush still hasn't answered the question. How has the war in Iraq made the US of A safer?



Well, I guess it's someone in the executive branch, right?



After all that talk about declassifying the NIE, we get 3 - count 'em, 3 - pages from a 30-page document. Well, that seems like a good way to assess the whole thing.

I'm not saying we should get to see the whole thing, but bush was stupid to act like he could do it so that everyone could see what was in it, and that somehow wasn't supposed to be a political act.

Didn't you read slave's link?

• It’s not so much what he says as how he says it

And how he says it proves that he's a strong leader, that he's tough on the Global War Against Journalism.

eta: "You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."—Interview with CBS News, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2006

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
My God. You said something intelligent and accurate.

:bow2:

[Spanky]

Another view on the Popes lecture.

It seems that Hitchen agrees with Less on this one.


Papal Bull
Joseph Ratzinger's latest offense.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Sept. 18, 2006, at 11:40 AM ET
Pope Benedict XVI
There are many popes within Christianity—the Coptic Church has one, and the Eastern Orthodox Church also boasts a patriarch or holy father—but we have acquired the habit of using the term to describe only the bishop of Rome (as the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church describe him), and this is a pity for many reasons. It confers a sort of supreme authority on the leader of only one Christian sect, and it therefore helps to give non-Christians the impression that the representative of Roman Catholicism represents rather more of the "West" than he actually does.

Attempting to revive his moribund church on a visit to Germany, where the Roman congregations are increasingly sparse, Joseph Ratzinger (as I shall always think of him) has managed to do a moderate amount of harm—and absolutely no good—to the very tense and distraught discussion now in progress between Europe and Islam. I strongly recommend that you read the full text of his lecture at the University of Regensburg last Tuesday.

After the most perfunctory introduction, Ratzinger goes straight to his choice of quotation, which is taken from 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. This potentate supposedly once engaged in debate—the precise time and place is unknown—with an unnamed Persian. The subject was Christianity and Islam. The Byzantine asks the Persian to "show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." (On the face of it, not a very open-ended inquiry.) But, warming to his own theme, the purple-clad monarch of Constantinople allegedly added that "to convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death."
-

Now, you do not have to be a Muslim to think that for the bishop of Rome to cite this is the most perfect hypocrisy. There would have been no established Byzantine or Roman Christianity if the faith had not been spread and maintained and enforced by every kind of violence and cruelty and coercion. To take Islam's own favorite self-pitying example: It was the Catholic crusaders who sacked and burned Christian Byzantium on their way to Palestine—and that was only after they had methodically set about the Jews, so the Muslim world was actually only the third victim of this barbarity. (Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is the best source here.) Yet of all the words he could have chosen, to suggest that religion might wish to break its old connection with conquest, intolerance, and subjugation, Ratzinger had to select an example that was designed to remind his hearers of the crudest excesses of the medieval period. His mention of Manuel II was evidently not accidental or anecdotal. He refers to him repeatedly and returns to him again in the closing paragraph, as if to rub it in.

And of course now we hear, as could have been predicted, the pathetic and unconvincing apologies issued by his spokesmen and finally Ratzinger himself. These will only serve to convince infuriated Muslims that by threatening reprisal, calling for the severing of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and issuing a few more sanguinary fatwas, they can force yet another retreat. The usual things have happened: the shooting of a nun in Somalia and the desecration of Christian churches in Palestine. And so the ecumenical "dialogue" goes on.

To read the bulk of the speech, however, is to realize that, if he had chanced to be born in Turkey or Syria instead of Germany, the bishop of Rome could have become a perfectly orthodox Muslim. He may well distrust Islam because it claims that its own revelation is the absolute and final one, but he describes John, one of the apostles, as having spoken "the final word on the biblical concept of God," and where Muslims believe that Mohammed went into a trance and took dictation from an archangel, Ratzinger accepts as true the equally preposterous legend that St. Paul was commanded to evangelize for Christ during the course of a vision experienced in a dream. He happens to get Mohammed wrong when he says that the prophet only forbade "compulsion in religion" when Islam was weak. (The relevant sura comes from a period of relatively high confidence.) But he could just as easily have cited the many suras that flatly contradict this apparently benign message. The familiar problem is that, if you question another religion's "revelation" and dogma too closely, you invite a tu quoque in respect of your own. Which is just what has happened in the present case.

The Muslim protesters are actually being highly ungrateful. When the embassies of Denmark were being torched earlier this year, Rome managed a few words of protest about … the inadvisability of profane cartoons. In almost every confrontation between Islam and the West, or Islam and Israel, the Vatican has either split the difference or helped to ventriloquize Muslim grievances. Most of all, throughout his address to the audience at Regensburg, the man who modestly considers himself the vicar of Christ on Earth maintained a steady attack on the idea that reason and the individual conscience can be preferred to faith. He pretends that the word Logos can mean either "the word" or "reason," which it can in Greek but never does in the Bible, where it is presented as heavenly truth. He mentions Kant and Descartes in passing, leaves out Spinoza and Hume entirely, and dishonestly tries to make it seem as if religion and the Enlightenment and science are ultimately compatible, when the whole effort of free inquiry always had to be asserted, at great risk, against the fantastic illusion of "revealed" truth and its all-too-earthly human potentates. It is often said—and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate—that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way. Now its new reactionary leader has really "offended" the Muslim world, while simultaneously asking us to distrust the only reliable weapon—reason—that we possess in these dark times. A fine day's work, and one that we could well have done without.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
Another view on the Popes lecture.

It seems that Hitchen agrees with Less on this one.


Papal Bull
Joseph Ratzinger's latest offense.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Sept. 18, 2006, at 11:40 AM ET
Pope Benedict XVI
There are many popes within Christianity—the Coptic Church has one, and the Eastern Orthodox Church also boasts a patriarch or holy father—but we have acquired the habit of using the term to describe only the bishop of Rome (as the 39 Articles of the Anglican Church describe him), and this is a pity for many reasons. It confers a sort of supreme authority on the leader of only one Christian sect, and it therefore helps to give non-Christians the impression that the representative of Roman Catholicism represents rather more of the "West" than he actually does.

Attempting to revive his moribund church on a visit to Germany, where the Roman congregations are increasingly sparse, Joseph Ratzinger (as I shall always think of him) has managed to do a moderate amount of harm—and absolutely no good—to the very tense and distraught discussion now in progress between Europe and Islam. I strongly recommend that you read the full text of his lecture at the University of Regensburg last Tuesday.

After the most perfunctory introduction, Ratzinger goes straight to his choice of quotation, which is taken from 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. This potentate supposedly once engaged in debate—the precise time and place is unknown—with an unnamed Persian. The subject was Christianity and Islam. The Byzantine asks the Persian to "show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." (On the face of it, not a very open-ended inquiry.) But, warming to his own theme, the purple-clad monarch of Constantinople allegedly added that "to convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death."
-

Now, you do not have to be a Muslim to think that for the bishop of Rome to cite this is the most perfect hypocrisy. There would have been no established Byzantine or Roman Christianity if the faith had not been spread and maintained and enforced by every kind of violence and cruelty and coercion. To take Islam's own favorite self-pitying example: It was the Catholic crusaders who sacked and burned Christian Byzantium on their way to Palestine—and that was only after they had methodically set about the Jews, so the Muslim world was actually only the third victim of this barbarity. (Sir Steven Runciman's A History of the Crusades is the best source here.) Yet of all the words he could have chosen, to suggest that religion might wish to break its old connection with conquest, intolerance, and subjugation, Ratzinger had to select an example that was designed to remind his hearers of the crudest excesses of the medieval period. His mention of Manuel II was evidently not accidental or anecdotal. He refers to him repeatedly and returns to him again in the closing paragraph, as if to rub it in.

And of course now we hear, as could have been predicted, the pathetic and unconvincing apologies issued by his spokesmen and finally Ratzinger himself. These will only serve to convince infuriated Muslims that by threatening reprisal, calling for the severing of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and issuing a few more sanguinary fatwas, they can force yet another retreat. The usual things have happened: the shooting of a nun in Somalia and the desecration of Christian churches in Palestine. And so the ecumenical "dialogue" goes on.

To read the bulk of the speech, however, is to realize that, if he had chanced to be born in Turkey or Syria instead of Germany, the bishop of Rome could have become a perfectly orthodox Muslim. He may well distrust Islam because it claims that its own revelation is the absolute and final one, but he describes John, one of the apostles, as having spoken "the final word on the biblical concept of God," and where Muslims believe that Mohammed went into a trance and took dictation from an archangel, Ratzinger accepts as true the equally preposterous legend that St. Paul was commanded to evangelize for Christ during the course of a vision experienced in a dream. He happens to get Mohammed wrong when he says that the prophet only forbade "compulsion in religion" when Islam was weak. (The relevant sura comes from a period of relatively high confidence.) But he could just as easily have cited the many suras that flatly contradict this apparently benign message. The familiar problem is that, if you question another religion's "revelation" and dogma too closely, you invite a tu quoque in respect of your own. Which is just what has happened in the present case.

The Muslim protesters are actually being highly ungrateful. When the embassies of Denmark were being torched earlier this year, Rome managed a few words of protest about … the inadvisability of profane cartoons. In almost every confrontation between Islam and the West, or Islam and Israel, the Vatican has either split the difference or helped to ventriloquize Muslim grievances. Most of all, throughout his address to the audience at Regensburg, the man who modestly considers himself the vicar of Christ on Earth maintained a steady attack on the idea that reason and the individual conscience can be preferred to faith. He pretends that the word Logos can mean either "the word" or "reason," which it can in Greek but never does in the Bible, where it is presented as heavenly truth. He mentions Kant and Descartes in passing, leaves out Spinoza and Hume entirely, and dishonestly tries to make it seem as if religion and the Enlightenment and science are ultimately compatible, when the whole effort of free inquiry always had to be asserted, at great risk, against the fantastic illusion of "revealed" truth and its all-too-earthly human potentates. It is often said—and was said by Ratzinger when he was an underling of the last Roman prelate—that Islam is not capable of a Reformation. We would not even have this word in our language if the Roman Catholic Church had been able to have its own way. Now its new reactionary leader has really "offended" the Muslim world, while simultaneously asking us to distrust the only reliable weapon—reason—that we possess in these dark times. A fine day's work, and one that we could well have done without.

Wow. Such a high level of ignorance on so many fronts. Proof once again that no religious or political perspective has a monopoly on stupidity.