All Hank, all the time.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Spanky

I completely agree with all this. You are a smart guy.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
I agree with all that. You hang with a smart crowd.

I mainly hang out with Less.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Spanky
I mainly hang out with Less.

Isn't he out in the country?

Was that email from him?????

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Isn't he out in the country?

Yes - although I did talk to him on his cell phone yesterday.

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Was that email from him?????

No. He is not in the Israeli army (that I know of) and I don't think he has ever been invited to the White House.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Spanky
Yes - although I did talk to him on his cell phone yesterday.



No. He is not in the Israeli army (that I know of) and I don't think he has ever been invited to the White House.

I meant of not in. Eez not v. ot not k. And the third pair, in the right order. Everything Is Illuminated has me all Russian (or Slavic-language) -ing again.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
so does bin laden.

Bin Laden has people. Arafat had a people.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Spanky I have a good friend from College who is now an officer (Colonel) in the Israeli army. He was stationed in the Golan Heights but he can't disclose his current location. He has been reading the board (he asked me what Americans thought of what is going on here so I told him to read the board), but because he is not a lawyer he does not feel he can post here. He also didn't want to insult me in front of "my friends". I told him to post, but he is too humble and polite. So to paraphrase what he said of my comments:

"your posts consistently demonstrate your complete ignorance of Israeli and Palestinian history and clearly show you have bought into most of the unsubstantiated anti-Israeli propaganda."

In addition he said that my suggestion that Israel should expel the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza shows that "I have no sense of compassion and am devoid of empathy. In addition, my position shows my typical US cowboy attitude of trying to find simple solutions to complicated problems, and such simple solutions always cost untold misery and suffering."

I am still trying to get him to post but until then, I will just have to convey the gist of his emails.

Is he really hot? Married?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
OK fine. But don't expect Muslims and Arabs to accept Israel just because it was created by a UN resolution and then say the UN is a ridiculous organization (which it is). UN resolutions do not equal international law nor are they by definition ethical.

And don't expect Muslims and Arabs to accept Israel based on some moral natural law argument. That doesn't cut the cake either.

Israel was created at the point of a gun, and people got screwed when it was created. It is the denial of this fact that has lead to the current screwed up situation of believing that if Israel is nice to its neighbors or if its neighbors "just get educated" they will change their minds. To expect the original inhabitants of what is now the state of Israel to ever want anything but its destruction, is naive, completely delusional and unrealistic.

If you are going to grab some land, expel the inhabitants and create a nation, if it is going to work, you need to have defensible borders for that nation. Israel grabbed some land, expelled the inhabitants, but then didn't grab a piece of land that was defensible and then they left the people they screwed in a position to wreck havoc on the state of Israel. .

Realizing that mistake, they are now under the delusion that if they grab the land that is necessary to make Israel defensible, they can leave the original inhabitants of that land in the place they have occupied, still hold onto the property and get the people that live there (and the rest of the world) to accept it as morally righteous and ethically defendable act. And maybe a monkey will fly out of my derriere.

Israel either needs to complete the job, expel the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, create a defensible state (by building a huge wall around the whole country), or just give it up and call it a day.

Am I wrong?

I knew eventually we'd find something we agree on. Although, I'd go with a different endgame.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
You scurvy shyster bastard... I'll be on a plane to that faggot village of yours by midnite, and I'll come with big goddamned saps. You can run all you like, but by 3 tomorrow, hell or high water, you'll be lashed to a bridge and beaten like a whore in a Taliban smokeshack.

Good enough? I'm rusty...

I am far too pretty to ever be compared to Steve Forbes. You take that back. it's just goddamned mean and rotten. You're no fucking good, Mr. Slothrop.

Hunter was more a contrarian. He believed in the country too much to be a cynic. Its what killed him. I've lost faith and am treading into a Menckenish harbor or paranoia and alcohol's soft middle age.

If it's Mencken you're shooting for, let me give you a motto:

"There comes a time when every man must fight the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the Black Flag, and begin slitting throats."

I'm thinking of having that be read as my eulogy.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by pony_trekker
Have you EVER seen an airport security person (in NY anyway) that WASN'T Muslim?

In DC a large number appear to be pasty white country boys.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Both Plated and I exposed this canard for what it is back on Infirm, on the Poltics board I invented. Look it up.

If you're counting on Plated as your corroborating source, you are truly fucked.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
The difference Ty is what the symbolism is. The super duper majority of people in the world not only do not give a flying fuck who Pearl Buck or who gets the Nobel Prise for Lit or what books she wrote but all of those things will have absofuckinglutely no affect of any kind ever on their lives. 0. beyond nothing.

The nobel peace prise, while at the end of the day while conveying no tangible power, is symbolic. Giving it to Arafat is symbolic of the fact that the liberals in the West, the US and Europe and the UN have legitimised this guy as a respected world leader to the point where an international organisation will give him its preeminent declaration of being a person who strives for peace. We both know I could go and google and find websites that detail the thousands of innocent civilians who died at Arafat's orders, including instances where he was on site for terrorist killings of civilians. But the liberals in the media, in the US and Europe were willing not only to overlook this, but to give a mass murdering terrorist who espouses a doctrine of hate and race extermination the legitimacy to have an international platform, again, with the Peace Prise being a symbol of that legitimisation.

It's as if GErmany had fought WWII to a stalemate and then HItler got the nobel peace prise. Would you have supported that?

The result of this symbolic legitimisation is that terrorist organisations are now the most powerful entities in the region at issue and are legitimised from being terrorist organisations to being political parties. The result is War.

Perhaps, if the liberals in the West had been willing to differentiate between a terrorist and a statesmen and could call out the former as being persona non grata in the peace process, there would have been an impetus on the Arab populace of the region to find, develop and support responsible statesmen. Instead the West said, we leigitimise terrorists who espouse hate. And those terrorists exploited the hate, tjhe dark side of the force, iyw, and we end up with a region that has no mechanism for a peaceful solution.

Congratulations!

1. He's dead. Remember?

2. Who are you congratulating?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
If it's Mencken you're shooting for, let me give you a motto:

"There comes a time when every man must fight the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the Black Flag, and begin slitting throats."

I'm thinking of having that be read as my eulogy.

Man, that is fucking great. I am going to use that myself from time to time. Thank you.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I completely agree with all this. You are a smart guy.

2.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

• In the wake of the discovery of the bomb plot in the United Kingdom, that aspiring terrorists planned to use binary chemicals to produce an explosive that would be detonated inflight, we can anticipate the following future developments:
  
  1. The Sun rises in the East
  2. You can contract a cold on board an aircraft
  3. There is no system in place to detect explosives in cargo.
  
  JESUS CHRIST!! How much stupidity must we endure from the Bush Administration? How much farther up their a-- can they stick their heads? Binary explosives, and their ready availability, have been a fact since World War II. And we're supposed to believe that George Bush, Tony Blair, and Michael Chertoff have just awakened to this fact? At a minimum, this is a further indictment of the incompetence of Bush and his cronies. They have done NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING to deal with this threat even though security professionals have known and fretted about this for years.

Larry Johnson