Offering constructive criticism to the social cripples in our midst since early 2005.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore

I know several people working in the country right now on infrastructure, and everything they tell me points to huge improvements everywhere, structurally and societal, and they talk with disbelief (and a lot of anger) about the level of vitriol and misinformation that seems to pervade the MSM reporting of Iraq right now. I get a lot of my optimism about Iraq from them, and I think I'll believe them more than ten coastie reporters who have already expressed hatred for all things Bush.

Not to out your friends, but are they in Baghdad? Basra? Kirkuk?

Here's the thing -- I'm glad to hear that there are places where improvements are occurring, but I don't understand the complete disconnect between that view and MSM reporting.

In trying to square that circle, I am more reluctant than you appear to be to share your view that the mainstream media is uniformly populated with Bush-haters who choose not to point to huge improvements everywhere, structurally and societal, and instead write about varying levels of chaos in Baghdad.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
And from Terri Schiavo's grave, Vince Foster's suicide note, Hillary's thighs, Bill's cigar, and TK's car. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

retro-Whiff.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
So, NFH didn't tip us off to his hospitalization.

Here's the question:

Rehnquist
a) Resigns first
b) Dies first.


I'm taking b.

2.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Not Bob
FDR's wheelchair at Yalta.

Speaking of fraud:

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Speaking of fraud:

what cup size is Hillary?

i wouldn't go out with her because of who she voted for in 2004.

[Penske_Account]

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
what cup size is Hillary?

I am not sure about her cup-size, but her arse is double-wide, if that helps.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If Robert Byrd was saying the klan is the way of the Democratic party (instead of its more pernicious ways of hurting minortiy groups) would it be on teddy or one of them to say no?

Only if Byrd held some position within the party making it reasonable to think he was speaking for others. If a Presbyterian minister says something stupid, no one thinks he's speaking for the Lutherans.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Only if Byrd held some position within the party making it reasonable to think he was speaking for others. If a Presbyterian minister says something stupid, no one thinks he's speaking for the Lutherans.

He is the Conscience of the Party. What other title do you need?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
I guess, if you think responsibility is an either/or rather than a sliding scale. I happen to think that a lot of people are sorta responsible, if it isn't made too difficult and you remind them. So providing easy-access birth control and education will change the behavior of a lot of them. We are agreed that pretty much nothing will keep people from screwing.

I'd also note that, even if people think they are behaving responsibly (using birth control), if they haven't been taught how to use it correctly they will still get knocked up. I've read somewhere that about 1/2 of unplanned pregnancies are due to birth control failure, not non-use.

Have you read much about our sex/HIV education in Africa?

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
He is the Conscience of the Party. What other title do you need?

He is the Conscience of the Senate, actually. That makes him Dr. Frist's problem

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Not Bob
He is the Conscience of the Senate, actually. That makes him Dr. Frist's problem

I believe the Dems gave him that title.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Not Bob
He is the Conscience of the Senate, actually. That makes him Dr. Frist's problem

what I find strange about this post is the election, by anotherwise intelligent thoughtful person, albeit a demo, to try to marginalize the fact that one his political party's leading lights is a virulent and long standing racist. If I were a demo, I would be throwing up on myself on a daily basis due to the disgust I would have associating with an organization that openly flaunts a klansman as a hallowed icon.

And that is not even getting to the fact that its other leading light is an abusive sexist drunk killer of young women. Or the de facto head of the organization is a rapist and felonious perjurer.

Yuk. I need to go take a sponge bath.

[SlaveNoMore]

Molly Ivins corrects herself on Saddam's casualties:

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.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
......It is unforgivable of me not have checked. I am so sorry.

Yes, following in the grand tradition of Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, and Dan Rather et al. The leftist MSM has no shame.