Making Baby Jesus Cry

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Too bad that our President diverted the nation's attention and resources from the war on those people in order to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Now, now, Ty - remember, SH supported al Qaeda by cutting a few checks to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers.

Oh, and I think he gave a BandAid to Abu Nidal once - but if Oliver North had gotten off his lazy ass and taken him out, like he promised, that would never have happened.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Wow Ty, good lesson! taking one small part of a post and responding to it makes it easier! 123-7

Agreed. Ty does violence to the elegant unity of your argument by only addressing one of the five or so bumper stickers you quoted in your post. For shame!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Saying "those people" almost always goes with a racist or sexist or someother ist statement.

Wow Ty, good lesson! taking one small part of a post and responding to it makes it easier! 123-7

Don't be a jerk. You said, "we are at war with people . . . ." I said, "those people . . . ."

Pretending that opponents of Bush's foreign policy are anti-Arab bigots is so 2003.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Yeh, this is product, and yeh, itsprobably specifically targeted to create record sales, but still... I can only hope this gets some serious airplay:

Sweet Neo Con - Rolling Stones

"You ride around your white castle,
On your little white horse
You lie to your people,
and blame it on your war of course

"You call yourself a Christian,
I call you a hypocrite
You call yourself a patriot,
well I think you're full of shit

"Oh, sweet Neo Con,
What path have you led them on?
Oh, sweet Neo Con,
Is it time for the atom bomb?

"You parade around in costume,
Expecting to be believed
But as the body bags stack up,
We believe we've been deceived

"The horror you've unleased,
Will backfire with more grief
When will you ever learn,
Sweet Neo Con, as the world burns?

"Oh, sweet Neo Con,
What path have you led them on?
Oh, sweet Neo Con,
Is it time for the atom bomb?
Oh, sweet Neo Con,
What path have you led them on?
Oh, sweet Neo Con,
Is it time to drop the bomb?"

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Spanky
Do you know how many deaths are attributable to Hussein since he has been in power and do you know how many people in Iraq have died since the war started?

Nope. We don't do body counts.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Spanky



Again. As long as you are willing to say the world would be better off if we had let Saddam stay in power you can bitch all you want.

He hasn't been around much lately, but FWIW, bilmore cornered the market on "The murderous fuckhead is gone! So siddown and shaddup!" argument sometime in 2003.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Nope. We don't do body counts.

This Molly Ivins column from July 12 is probably relevant to this discussion:

CROW EATEN HERE: This is a horror. In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong.

The only problem is figuring out by how large a factor I was wrong. I had been keeping an eye on civilian deaths in Iraq for a couple of months, waiting for the most conservative estimates to creep over 20,000, which I had fixed in my mind as the number of Iraqi civilians Saddam had killed.

The high-end estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths in this war is 100,000, according to a Johns Hopkins University study published in the British medical journal The Lancet last October, but I was sticking to the low-end, most conservative estimates because I didn't want to be accused of exaggeration.

Ha! I could hardly have been more wrong, no matter how you count Saddam's killing of civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, Hussein killed several hundred thousand of his fellow citizens. The massacre of the Kurdish Barzani tribe in 1983 killed at least 8,000; the infamous gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja killed 5,000 in 1988; and seized documents from Iraqi security organizations show 182,000 were murdered during the Anfal ethnic cleansing campaign against Kurds, also in 1988.

In 1991, following the first Gulf War, both the Kurds and the Shiites rebelled. The allied forces did not intervene, and Saddam brutally suppressed both uprisings and drained the southern marshes that had been home to a local population for more than 5,000 years.

Saddam's regime left 271 mass graves, with more still being discovered. That figure alone was the source for my original mistaken estimate of 20,000. Saddam's widespread use of systematic torture, including rape, has been verified by the U.N. Committee on Human Rights and other human rights groups over the years.

There are wildly varying estimates of the number of civilians, especially babies and young children, who died as a result of the sanctions that followed the Gulf War. While it is true that the ill-advised sanctions were put in place by the United Nations, I do not see that that lessens Hussein's moral culpability, whatever blame attaches to the sanctions themselves -- particularly since Saddam promptly corrupted the Oil for Food Program put in place to mitigate the effects of the sanctions, and used the proceeds to build more palaces, etc.

There have been estimates as high as 1 million civilians killed by Saddam, though most agree on the 300,000 to 400,000 range, making my comparison to 20,000 civilian dead in this war pathetically wrong.

I was certainly under no illusions regarding Saddam Hussein, whom I have opposed through human rights work for decades. My sincere apologies. It is unforgivable of me not have checked. I am so sorry.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
This Molly Ivins column from July 12 is probably relevant to this discussion:

I can't believe that you were so busy looking for old Ivins columns that I scooped you on this:

New law could mean death penalty for doctors
Legislators say that wasn't their intent with the abortion measure

By KELLEY SHANNON
Associated Press

AUSTIN - Texas doctors who perform abortions without parental approval or after the third trimester could face capital murder charges because of a new law that takes effect this week, a prosecutors group says.


The Texas District and County Attorneys Association has outlined that scenario in its new book updating the Texas penal code and in public presentations around the state. The group says such charges could occur under the new law because of the 2003 fetal protection law.


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...olitan/3330600

[nononono]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
I can't believe that you were so busy looking for old Ivins columns that I scooped you on this:

New law could mean death penalty for doctors
Legislators say that wasn't their intent with the abortion measure

By KELLEY SHANNON
Associated Press

AUSTIN - Texas doctors who perform abortions without parental approval or after the third trimester could face capital murder charges because of a new law that takes effect this week, a prosecutors group says.


The Texas District and County Attorneys Association has outlined that scenario in its new book updating the Texas penal code and in public presentations around the state. The group says such charges could occur under the new law because of the 2003 fetal protection law.


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...olitan/3330600

Well, as it appears that no one actually wants the thing to operate that way, I expect they will change it asap and before someone tries to prove a point with it (pro or con). But wtf, the DAs didn't have any legislators' ears before it got passed?

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by nononono
Well, as it appears that no one actually wants the thing to operate that way, I expect they will change it asap and before someone tries to prove a point with it (pro or con). But wtf, the DAs didn't have any legislators' ears before it got passed?

Our part time legislature is not supposed to meet again until 2007. They could, of course, call yet another special session since they still haven't figured out how to do the school financing thing, but all indications are that they'd rather that the courts figure out that whole mess.

Republicans still hate activist judges that legislate from the bench, though. Don't forget that.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed
Agreed. Ty does violence to the elegant unity of your argument by only addressing one of the five or so bumper stickers you quoted in your post. For shame!

You do know the Islamists have decided to ban football, right?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
You do know the Islamists have decided to ban whiskey*, right?

* Edited for vast improvement



Poor Hank, always playing small ball. You should swing harder.

[nononono]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Our part time legislature is not supposed to meet again until 2007. They could, of course, call yet another special session since they still haven't figured out how to do the school financing thing, but all indications are that they'd rather that the courts figure out that whole mess.

Republicans still hate activist judges that legislate from the bench, though. Don't forget that.

Well, it's fair to expect that legislators, in the business of making laws, could actually manage to make some that don't say the opposite of what they intend, isn't it? Nevermind, I've been close enough to politics to know the answer there.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Gattigap
* Edited for vast improvement



Poor Hank, always playing small ball. You should swing harder.

WATER.

Do you think Picasso's professors gave him suggestions?

Do you think they later felt stupid about the gall of doing so?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by nononono
Well, it's fair to expect that legislators, in the business of making laws, could actually manage to make some that don't say the opposite of what they intend, isn't it? Nevermind, I've been close enough to politics to know the answer there.

A former TX SC Justice told me about one of her former colleagues, who had served in the legislature prior to being elected to the SC. The case turned on legislative intent, and in his dissent, the Justice said something to the effect of "I know that's not the intent of the legislature, because I voted for it and that's not what I intended."