Politics: A new beginning

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I can't think of a fun right-wing sock. Just for Fun? Fluffy? Noooo. They are predictable and irrational. It's hard to do a good sock on the P board at all.

were you on infirm? there were more socks, or maybe just lunatics, than here. but there were many that were fun. there were liberals that were fun, BT et al, and they certainly had "socks", but not the way atticus intended the word.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I can't think of a fun right-wing sock. Just for Fun? Fluffy? Noooo. They are predictable and irrational. It's hard to do a good sock on the P board at all.

I enjoyed Fluffy. Where'd he go?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I don't urge that we intervene. I'm just saying Dean can't say he was against Iraq, but for Bosnia because of humanitarian reasons, can he?

LDE seems to have seen some explanation from Dean, which I have not. So I suspect he can say that. I guess I tend to think the situations were different. Dean obviously is not a career diplomat, but he, like Bush, was a governor of a border state without any other apparent interest or background relating to foreign policy, and you guys seem to think Bush worked out all right. If you're really concerned about consistency, you could noodle about Bush's complaints about "nation building" during the presidential campaign -- at least Dean's comments go back several years.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
were you on infirm? there were more socks, or maybe just lunatics, than here. but there were many that were fun. there were liberals that were fun, BT et al, and they certainly had "socks", but not the way atticus intended the word.

Too many socks to bear on infirm. The ones that showed up for the periodic Israel/Palestine wars were sheer terror.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I really can't even put mental energy into the guy anymore. i think the people on this board with kids, largely have 3 or 4 year olds. By 2008, Atticus and Ty will agree with me that a guy who yelled at ref's and the other team during kid's soccer games cannot be president. I feel it more important than the whole natural born citizen thing.
And I know I'm full of shit here alot, and the above sounds stupid, but just remember, and think how you feel once you see it.

Point well taken. Larry Sr. was a bit of a ref screamer and he's probably not presidential timber either.

However, I have the same disdain for someone who would react to a terrorist attack against our troops by saying "bring 'em on" when neither he nor any of his family members are in harm's way. It was such a throwaway line, and I'm sure no one else in the world got as bugged about it as I did, but anyway, there it is. My political motivation laid bare. How's that for earnest and boring?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience

However, I have the same disdain for someone who would react to a terrorist attack against our troops by saying "bring 'em on" when neither he nor any of his family members are in harm's way. It was such a throwaway line

Yea, but the troops loved it and that's who he was speaking to, and that's why they love him. You cannot be a good commander and chief and also by wishy washy.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Yea, but the troops loved it and that's who he was speaking to, and that's why they love him. You cannot be a good commander and chief and also by wishy washy.

I know of a few troops who didn't love it. But again, this was just my own irrational response.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I don't urge that we intervene. I'm just saying Dean can't say he was against Iraq, but for Bosnia because of humanitarian reasons, can he?

Um, in Bosnia wasn't there like a mass civil war going on with random people shooting at each other and a general lack of any kind of regime? So we were going in to impose and keep the peace. Iraq had a bad and violent regime, but there was order and after they killed/crippled/imprisoned the people who rose up under the last Bush action thinking they'd get backup, it didn't seem as though there was any kind of generalized war thing going on. Of course now things are destabilized and arguably they are better off with an outside presence there than they would be if we up and left all of the sudden.

But I could be wrong on Bosnia. I wasn't paying attention to that stuff at that point in time.

Note that I'm not saying that Saddam's regime was good, just that it was relatively stable and there was order. The situation in Bosnia seemed very disordered and the labor force was getting killed off and infrastructure was getting destroyed.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
and even though these are from the Iran war time period, they show how easy it is to hide this stuff, they show we may still find more, and they show Iraq was good at hiding it.

Just an update:

Mortar shells found in southern Iraq by the Danish military do not appear to contain chemical weapon agents as originally suspected, Fox News has learned.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108390,00.html

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Yea, but the troops loved it and that's who he was speaking to, and that's why they love him.

I have no doubt that Bush is far more popular with the troops than was Clinton.

But, I would suspect that particular line by Bush did not play quite as well among the guys and gals hunkered down in Iraq hearing the occasional large explosions and sniper fire around them (or among their families). However, even if so, you won't find soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines saying so publicly, because that's not what active-duty service members are supposed to do.

The institutions, and their cultures, do control their responses to such things.

[Ignore a few folks popping off to reporters and/or web blogs.]

S_A_M

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Mortar shells found in southern Iraq by the Danish military do not appear to contain chemical weapon agents as originally suspected, Fox News has learned.

And if it's Fox News saying it, the mortar shells must have actually contained some kind of antidote for bio-chem weapons.

Is Fox News using "has learned" so it can wiggle out of it if it turns out to be completely wrong? Just wondering if there's good info-sharing on the right.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
But, I would suspect that particular line by Bush did not play quite as well among the guys and gals hunkered down in Iraq
S_A_M

I suspect you are wrong.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch

Is Fox News using "has learned" so it can wiggle out of it if it turns out to be completely wrong?

I just assumed that's a tack-on that should be read: "We're not investigating this report too carefully, but others are, and this is what they've reported, not that you should believe them, because they're liberal crackpots."

Isn't it time for Bill O'Reilly to eat Hillary Clinton's shoe or something? Or is it call Bill Clinton a liar?

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
I'm sure no one else in the world got as bugged about it as I did, but anyway, there it is. My political motivation laid bare.

I'd wager that many more of us than would like to admit it make their political judgments on similarly personal grounds. Basically, everyone has something that will just bug them and render them utterly unable to tolerate certain pols. Everyone's personal "smell" test, as it were. For some it may be an issue (abortion, schools), for some it may be a character test of some sort (going to church, your "yelling at small children" issue), but there is often something that just sparks some visceral reaction that drives some people bonkers.

Anyone who thinks they make all such decisions based on pure rational reasoning is a lunatic.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

A glimpse inside the war on terror, from O'Neill's book by way of DeLong's blog:

• O'Neill, meanwhile, would head up the first active assault: the financial war [on terror]. But how? Over the next few days, O'Neill met with David Aufhauser, who, he decided, should act as an honest broker... organizing a fractious interagency group to track terror assets... seize some assets, and quickly. The President was to announce the new executive order on September 24[, 2001], launching the war on terrorism. He needed some assets to point to. "It was almost comical," Aufhauser said. "we just listed out as many of the usual suspects as we could and said, Let's go freeze some of their assets."

Not that this was enabled by the USA PATRIOT Act, but . . . .