Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
see a doctor. soon. seriously. we're all worried.

If you can't just be happy for us, maybe you didn't want the best for her after all. Have you just been lying to yourself all these months about the way you thought you felt?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Or that word doesn't mean what he thinks it does?

• President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

I particularly like the implied rebuttal in the next sentence of the news article:

• Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists.

Bush was for democracy before he was against it:

• In his first public comments on the crisis two weeks ago, Bush said his aides bluntly warned Musharraf that his emergency measures "would undermine democracy."

WaPo

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Or that word doesn't mean what he thinks it does?

Bush has been making us look bad for years among casual observers around the world by just being an inarticulate idiot. That's one thing - it's personality-based, it's specific to him, and I would have hoped that our image would get a bit better with someone else at the helm and on the news all the time. But being a complete and utter hypocrite about promoting the idea of democracy overseas is going to do much more lasting damage to American credibility, or what's left of it, than his casual idiocy could ever do.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by ironweed
Bush has been making us look bad for years among casual observers around the world by just being an inarticulate idiot. That's one thing - it's personality-based, it's specific to him, and I would have hoped that our image would get a bit better with someone else at the helm and on the news all the time. But being a complete and utter hypocrite about promoting the idea of democracy overseas is going to do much more lasting damage to American credibility, or what's left of it, than his casual idiocy could ever do.

The sad thing is, there is very little that is casual about his idiocy; he actually cultivates it.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed
Bush has been making us look bad for years among casual observers around the world by just being an inarticulate idiot. That's one thing - it's personality-based, it's specific to him, and I would have hoped that our image would get a bit better with someone else at the helm and on the news all the time. But being a complete and utter hypocrite about promoting the idea of democracy overseas is going to do much more lasting damage to American credibility, or what's left of it, than his casual idiocy could ever do.

have you read any, I many even basic, history of American foreign policy since 1945? do you have any grounding? I know the answer from your post, but it might be funny to read what you think you know.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
have you read any, I many even basic, history of American foreign policy since 1945? do you have any grounding? I know the answer from your post, but it might be funny to read what you think you know.

The depth of your cynical hatred for America and all that it stands for never ceases to shock me.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed
The depth of your cynical hatred for America and all that it stands for never ceases to shock me.

you might want to rent a little documentary called farenheit 9/11. We brought 9/11 upon ourself. It isn't their fault it's our's. We backed some dictator in south america and Vietnam was bad too.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
you might want to rent a little documentary called farenheit 9/11. We brought 9/11 upon ourself. It isn't their fault it's our's. We backed some dictator in south america and Vietnam was bad too.

Did we fight the Cold War before or after 1945? I am trying to get caught up on my history but to get to the meat on Wikipedia I need some dates.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed
Did we fight the Cold War before or after 1945? I am trying to get caught up on my history but to get to the meat on Wikipedia I need some dates.

hint: the cold war was fought by Democrat presidents that didn't own slaves.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
have you read any, I many even basic, history of American foreign policy since 1945? do you have any grounding? I know the answer from your post, but it might be funny to read what you think you know.

Good point. Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter were the only two presidents to be able to talk without an implied nudge and wink about exporting democracy. And even they ultimately went all realpolitik-like when push came to shove, on Revolutionary France and SAVAK-era Iran, respectively.

Bush doesn't have great options with Pakistan now. He may have screwed things up in the way he's dealt with Pakistan ever since 9/11, but his disingenousness on the benefits of democracy is nothing new in American foreign policy.

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
hint: the cold war was fought by Democrat presidents that didn't own slaves.

I always thought Eisenhower was a shifty bastard with no belly for a fight. God bless the Kennedys.

[Gattigap]

LA Times

• The Supreme Court set the stage Tuesday for a historic ruling on whether the fiercely debated 2nd Amendment protects the rights of Americans to keep handguns at home.
  
  The justices said they would review an appeals court decision that struck down a 31-year-old ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. The case will be heard early next year and decided by next summer.
  
  While outright bans on the private possession of guns are rare, many cities and states regulate firearms. If the high court rules in favor of gun owners, the decision could open the door to challenges to regulations and restrictions on firearms across the nation.

Me, I'm thinking that this will all end up in a 5-4 decision (penned by Kennedy) in which the majority finds that the 2nd Amendment protects civilian ownership of only 22-caliber or less, while Scalia's scathing dissent points out the prevalence of trebuchets in colonial backyards, which therefore permits citizens to own and possess anything short of fissile material, which of course can only be possessed by Federal agents or terrorist networks.

Gattigap

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by ironweed
I always thought Eisenhower was a shifty bastard with no belly for a fight. God bless the Kennedys.

Indeed. We all know that Ike was (as Robert Welch, head of the John Birch Society, put it) a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy."

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ironweed
I always thought Eisenhower was a shifty bastard with no belly for a fight. God bless the Kennedys.

2. if Chappaquiddick bridge only had safety bumpers we'd have shut down the USSR by the bi-centenial!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Gattigap
LA Times

• The Supreme Court set the stage Tuesday for a historic ruling on whether the fiercely debated 2nd Amendment protects the rights of Americans to keep handguns at home.
  
  The justices said they would review an appeals court decision that struck down a 31-year-old ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. The case will be heard early next year and decided by next summer.
  
  While outright bans on the private possession of guns are rare, many cities and states regulate firearms. If the high court rules in favor of gun owners, the decision could open the door to challenges to regulations and restrictions on firearms across the nation.

Me, I'm thinking that this will all end up in a 5-4 decision (penned by Kennedy) in which the majority finds that the 2nd Amendment protects civilian ownership of only 22-caliber or less, while Scalia's scathing dissent points out the prevalence of trebuchets in colonial backyards, which therefore permits citizens to own and possess anything short of fissile material, which of course can only be possessed by Federal agents or terrorist networks.

Gattigap

I've never understood how the supposed original intent of the framers of the Second Amendment is supposed to trump the plain language, which indicates pretty clearly that the purpose of the amendment is to ensure a well-regulated militia, as opposed to deer-hunting or self-protection, as worthy as those goals are. The NRA deals with this problem by just omitting the inconvenient part of the text.

eta: I think Eugene Volokh pretty much concedes the point:

• The Second Amendment as written was meant to apply only to the federal government, and can only apply to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, when we consider what the Second Amendment means with regard to state laws, we shouldn't look at what people in 1791 thought of the right-to-bear arms — we should look at what people in 1868 thought the Fourteenth Amendment would do as to the right-to-bear arms.
  
  If we do that, we see that while in 1791 the Framers did think of the right as largely aimed at societal self-defense, including defense against government tyranny — albeit self-defense that would be assured through individual gun ownership — in 1868, people saw the right as also focused on private arms ownership aimed at protection against crime.

If the text doesn't provide an individual right, and the framers so understood that in 1791, why isn't that the end of the inquiry? If you have a problem with the notion that the Bill of Rights applies to the states as well as the federal government, that's a distinct issue, but it shouldn't be a pretext to read modern preferences into the Second Amendment.