A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
I thought that was possible when I first replied, but I'm not sure that there aren't too many conflicting underlying assumptions to make that leap. In any event, (aside from my reply to Sidd above), I'm going to move on to discussions about {fill in non-abortion topic of choice}. This topic, and even the corrollary topics, generate too much ire.

When do we announce war against Iran?

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
When do we announce war against Iran?

Just Iran? I thought we'd get more bang than that for $80 fucking billion dollars. Or is the rest in a secret fund somewhere?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by ironweed
Just Iran? I thought we'd get more bang than that for $80 fucking billion dollars. Or is the rest in a secret fund somewhere?

We're doing covert ops now through the Pentagon, so who knows where we are.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by ironweed
Just Iran? I thought we'd get more bang than that for $80 fucking billion dollars. Or is the rest in a secret fund somewhere?

They're setting up a SERP for the Bush administration.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed
Just Iran? I thought we'd get more bang than that for $80 fucking billion dollars. Or is the rest in a secret fund somewhere?

didn't you see Farenheit 911? This is all about building an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. We'll get there.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
We're doing covert ops now through the Pentagon, so who knows where we are.

I found this whole "news" item pretty amusing. We've been doing covert ops through the Pentagon for decades. The CIA is institutionally incapable of producing tactically useful HUMINT in a timely fashion for battlefield use. Rummy's biggest change to the existing system was to give the CIA a 72 hour window to object instead of approval rights, and arranging for pentagon and CIA operatives to be made aware of the others' respective locations & activities. To me that sounds like a good idea.

Come to think of it, I've been laughing my ass off at the "news" rather a lot recently. US SF are doing recon in Iran - really?!? Ya think?!? Amazing!! Next they'll tell us that we are making covert incursions into Pakistan!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
Come to think of it, I've been laughing my ass off at the "news" rather a lot recently. US SF are doing recon in Iran - really?!? Ya think?!? Amazing!! Next they'll tell us that we are making covert incursions into Pakistan!

Well, I, for one, was taken aback. (Lou Reed Live line, I think.) Next, Hersch'll try and tell us that we've tapped phones somewhere. Heads will roll, I swear.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by ironweed
Just Iran? I thought we'd get more bang than that for $80 fucking billion dollars. Or is the rest in a secret fund somewhere?

That was just the down payment. Read the damn contract, why dont'cha.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
I think you miss the point. We have a right to freedom from unreasonable search, too, but this freedom is tempered when applied to children - see the school locker cases. My point was, we may hold that there is a Const. right to have an abortion, but that right is (or should be, IMHO) tempered for children. What is held as a right for adults in our society may not always be appropriate for free exercise by the will of children.

I understand that point, thanks, but that didn't seem to be the point you were making. A school's right to search lockers is a better analogy -- i.e., one involving government action -- then the analogy you made before, to non-state action, of a parent's ability to prevent a child from publishing certain speech. (Hell, my wife has the ability to prevent me from certain speech too, First Amendment notwithstanding.)

I haven't argued, and don't argue, the notification/consent issue on constitutional grounds. It's not a sound argument for the very reason you raise. My argument is based on the cost/benefits analysis and on what I believe are the limits of what government can and should do. It surprises me that small government types believe that government should be in the business of trying to maintain or create family bonds and lines of communication when those bonds and lines are already apparently broken, or non-existent.

But, as you said, 'nuff said on this subject.

Originally posted by bilmore
That was just the down payment. Read the damn contract, why dont'cha.

Gotcha. Plus I gotta say Bush looks pretty savvy paying for his wars in U.S. dollars. Now I understand the whole "ruin the economy" strategy he's been pushing the last four years.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by ironweed
Just Iran? I thought we'd get more bang than that for $80 fucking billion dollars. Or is the rest in a secret fund somewhere?

It's times like this that I wish we could pull up the discussions on the old board (in between Infirm and here) from just before the war started -- when some of us were asking whether it was worth spending a few hundred billion when the evidence of WMD was somewhat shaky, and others were claiming that the abundant oil wealth of Iraq would cover the cost of the invasion.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
didn't you see Farenheit 911? This is all about building an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. We'll get there.

How are we going to build a pipeline across Afghanistan when we can't even get the fucking F train to run from Brooklyn to Manhattan when it snows? Maybe if we flew some Taliban over to take potshots as it goes by there'd be a little money forthcoming for maintenance and repair.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
But, as you said, 'nuff said on this subject.

As if!!

Interesting take on abortion vs. having the kid in Egypt (not having to do with minors):

The standard three-step program for any unmarried upper-class Egyptian girl who becomes pregnant is an abortion, an operation to refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first unwitting suitor the family can snare.
But Hind el-Hinnawy, a vivacious 27-year-old costume designer, decided she was not going to playact her way through the virgin-marriage pageant. Instead she did the unthinkable here: she had the child and then filed a public paternity suit, igniting a major scandal and prompting a national debate over the clandestine marriage contracts that young couples are using to have sex in this conservative, religious society.
Advertisement

"The whole society says: 'No! No! No! Don't say this.
It's shameful.
It's a scandal. Go have an abortion. This girl was not well raised.
She's loose,' " said Attiyat el-Abnoudi, a renowned Egyptian documentary maker . . .

Interesting that NOT getting the abortion (and virginity-restoring operation) is loose.

Anyway, this was sent to me by a friend who was more interested in the "secret marriage" aspect b/c of her dissertation topic about the same kind of thing in medieval Italy. Uh, maybe it was a later period. I'm not so scholarly. Anyway. From NYT sometime this week.

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
It's times like this that I wish we could pull up the discussions on the old board (in between Infirm and here) from just before the war started -- when some of us were asking whether it was worth spending a few hundred billion when the evidence of WMD was somewhat shaky, and others were claiming that the abundant oil wealth of Iraq would cover the cost of the invasion.

Next best thing:



Link

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by bilmore
In any event, (aside from my reply to Sidd above), I'm going to move on to discussions about {fill in non-abortion topic of choice}. This topic, and even the corrollary topics, generate too much ire.

Whether it is ire or something else the topic sure seems to get in the way of logic. Sorry, Bilmore, but you made a big point to say parental notification should be required so a parent gets to give the kid "information" and the parent's views, yet you didn't bother responding when Ty and myself said, "What if all the information was given before the crisis happened?". If you feel a certain way for no specific reason and you're working from a gut level feeling instead, then why not just say so, rather than trot out these "informational" reasons? Although I believe abortion should be legal, I also think an embryo is "life" and I would not, like others, pretend to be working from anything other than a gut feeling or personal value and belief system.