Making Baby Jesus Cry

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Sorry, spelling hasn't ever been my strong suit.

We've got the one God, three persons thing, too. And it probably doesn't help matters that the Virgin of Guadalupe is sorta kinda important to My People.

I sort of like to pick and choose though. My favorite quasi-religious ceremony ever is New Years Eve in the Taos pueblo, which picks and chooses from Judeism, Catholicism, Pueblo rituals and touchy feely spiritual stuff that isn't really defined.

ETadd link.

FYI, I used my Virgin Mary tie tack today.

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Bob
I can't believe this analogy didn't come to me last night, but whatever.

I would rather live in the semi-socialist parliamentary democracy of Great Britain of 1976 than the free-market dictatorship of Chile of 1976. Give me a lumbering statist economy with the right to call James Wilson a moron as I work on the fickle wiring of my Triumph Spitfire over a free market economic paradise in which my teenaged daughter is raped and killed by the army because her boyfriend wore a Che Guevara t-shirt before the junta took over.

And I'd rather live now in one of the social democrat statist Scandanavian countries than free markert Asian Tiger Singapore. Call me nutty.

I can't believe that people here would so easily trade away the rights of 50% of the population.

Actually, I guess I can believe it. As much as some have tried to hide it, property rights have always been accorded more deference than civil rights by a certain political segement here in the US.

Lest we forget, the United States only came into existance via the deliberate punting in the Constitution of the slavery issue for 20 years (and then some).

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Bob

• Manal Omar is regional representative in Iraq of Women for Women International, a private organization. She told a reporter, "Many Iraqi women are outraged by the idea that [the current draft of the] constitution refers to Islamic Shariah [law] as the primary legal source, especially as it relates to the personal-status law."

I haven't read Iraq’s interim constitution, but I understand that it contains an equal protection clause appplicable to men and women. The current draft reportedly does not have such a clause.

Per the WSJ today, both of these are inaccurate.

1) it refers to sharia as "a" legal source, not "the"

2) it also contains equal protection issues. That being said, the true concern should not be the language but the implementation. Even Iran has guarantees of liberty - its the enforcement of those rights that is being questioned (i.g., who appoints the courts).

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Per the WSJ today, both of these are inaccurate.

1) it refers to sharia as "a" legal source, not "the"

2) it also contains equal protection issues. That being said, the true concern should not be the language but the implementation. Even Iran has guarantees of liberty - its the enforcement of those rights that is being questioned (i.g., who appoints the courts).

1) Good. That is a significant difference, and one which seems to have been the subject of much debate. I assume that the VoA columnist and the Iraqi Minister of Women quoted in the column were looking at an earlier draft.

2) Also good, and I agree with you that enforcement is the key.

On to your mention of the US Constitution -- I don't think that using our struggles is a particularly apt comparison here. If it was the French army who had been the exclusive military force defeating the British during the Revolution, and it was still patrolling the streets of Philadelphia during the debates while Tories were blowing them up every so often, and the proposed draft that Madison et al cobbled together rejected some basic principles important to the French, then it might be a decent analogy.

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Bob
On to your mention of the US Constitution -- I don't think that using our struggles is a particularly apt comparison here. If it was the French army who had been the exclusive military force defeating the British during the Revolution, and it was still patrolling the streets of Philadelphia during the debates while Tories were blowing them up every so often, and the proposed draft that Madison et al cobbled together rejected some basic principles important to the French, then it might be a decent analogy.

Perhaps. I just think it's odd that the current discussion on the Iraqi constitution seems to willfully ignore the "civil rights" issues that were swept aside during the founding of our own republic.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Perhaps. I just think it's odd that the current discussion on the Iraqi constitution seems to willfully ignore the "civil rights" issues that were swept aside during the founding of our own republic.

That was a long time ago, and I don't think that people actually lost rights that they had before the Constitution was ratified.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I was right, you were pulling that moral relativity shit.

WTF?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
What? Ty, you just had a brain fart. There is every reason for the Sunnis to buy into to a 1 Iraq, precisely because they are sitting on shitty real estate and no oil.

If they're running it, sure. But not if the majority (the Shi'ites) rules.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
If they're running it, sure. But not if the majority (the Shi'ites) rules.

Ergo the federalism issue and the need for the national administration of the oil trust.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
None of those things have been debunked in than in the land of spurious reasoning aka the people's republic leftwingia.

The failure to effectively utilize the intelligence of Able Danger because of the Gorelick Wall is Clinton's fault. Failing to properly address Islamic terrorism aggressively after WTC I, OK City, the Cole, Khobar Towers et al. is Clinton's fault. Shooting a camel in the arse with a cruise missile does not cut it.

Please explain to me how Gorelick's wall has anything to do with Able Danger. Quote from the wall, please.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
The same government whose intelligence that Bush relied on for WMDs pre-War you criticise. You can't have your cake and eat it too Ty. You are either anti-intelligence or not. Choose!

I don't need my view of the world reduced to something that could be explained by a six-year-old, but if it works for you, stick with it.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." ~ H.L. Mencken

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Ergo the federalism issue and the need for the national administration of the oil trust.

I thought spanky said there would be free markets. If their major (by far) industry is nationalized, how will Iraqis ever be free?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by nononono
Sorry, but why, if freedom and rights "for the people" were important enough to invade a country for (and yes, I am putting aside for this point the other reasons), can we wait and allow "evolution" to take care of these things for women?

“There are two kinds of people; human beings and women. When women start acting like human beings they are accused of trying to be men.” -- Simone De Beauvoir

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Ergo the federalism issue and the need for the national administration of the oil trust.

And yet the insurgents don't seem to be buying it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And yet the insurgents don't seem to be buying it.

100 bombs went off in Bengladesh today. Doesn't Rumsfeld have an exit plan there?