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

[dtb]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Hussy!

pot/kettle/etc.

[Spanky]

I point out that this statement, to T-Rex, is not only utterly stupid but is bigoted:

"And the Arab world wants democracy as much as they want a hole in the head. They don't get it, they don't care to get it."

And T-Rex defends it by saying that military force may not be the best way to achieve our ends - as a defense of this statement? Is it just me but there is absolutely no connection between this statement and his defense of it.

This statement does not discuss military force. This statement says that the Arab world, that is all two hundred and seventy million Arabs from Morocco to Baghdad, do not want Democracy. In addition it says that they don't get it.

If I said all blacks south of the Sahara not only don't want Democracy, but that they also don't get it. Wouldn't that be considered bigoted?

To sum: I point out an obviously stupid and bigoted statement and T-Rex defends it by pointing out an extraneous issue, instead of acknowledging the obvious.

Then Shapeshifter points out that, in response to my calling the above statement bigoted:

"This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have."

I assume that this means he is saying that it is bigoted and racist to assume that everyone wants democracy. Isn't that what he is saying? The system we were discussing is democracy?

When I pose this Shapshifter says that I am being arrogant, acting like an eight grader, and other stuff.

Then Shapeshifter says that:

"I never said it was bigoted or racist to impose democracy on the ME"

Earlier he said:

"This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have."

Is it just me or are these guys so caught up in being right that they simple can't acknowledge the obvious.

Let's us try this again:

T-Rex can't you just acknowledge that this statement is not only bigoted but stupid:

"And the Arab world wants democracy as much as they want a hole in the head. They don't get it, they don't care to get it."

Shapeshifter - can't you just admit that this statement implies that it is bigoted and racist to assume that Arabs would want democracy. And such statement was not well thought out and is wrong.

"This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have."

btw: We all understand that you think that military force is not the best way to bring democracy to the middle east. By acknowledging these above statements no one will assume that you have changed your positions on this issue, nor will we assume that you are acknowledging that military force is a good way to bring peace to the middle east.

[SlaveNoMore]

Op-ed in (all of all places) the NYT:

Where's the Newt?
By JOHN TIERNEY

We are in the midst of a remarkable Washington scandal, and we still don't have a name for it. Leakgate, Rovegate, Wilsongate - none of the suggestions have stuck because none capture what's so special about the current frenzy to lock up reporters and public officials.

The closest parallel is the moment in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" when members of a mob eager to burn a witch are asked by the wise Sir Bedevere how they know she's a witch.

"Well, she turned me into a newt," the villager played by John Cleese says.

"A newt?" Sir Bedevere asks, looking puzzled.

"I got better," he explains.

"Burn her anyway!" another villager shouts.

That's what has happened since this scandal began so promisingly two summers ago. At first it looked like an outrageous crime harming innocent victims: a brave whistle-blower was smeared by a vicious White House politico who committed a felony by exposing the whistle-blower's wife as an undercover officer, endangering her and her contacts in the field.

But if you consider the facts today, you may feel like Sir Bedevere. Where's the newt? What did the witch actually do? Consider that original list of outrages:

The White House felon So far Karl Rove appears guilty of telling reporters something he had heard, that Valerie Wilson, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, worked for the C.I.A. But because of several exceptions in the 1982 law forbidding disclosure of a covert operative's identity, virtually no one thinks anymore that he violated it. The law doesn't seem to apply to Ms. Wilson because she apparently hadn't been posted abroad during the five previous years.

The endangered spies Ms. Wilson was compared to James Bond in the early days of the scandal, but it turns out she had been working for years at C.I.A. headquarters, not exactly a deep-cover position. Since being outed, she's hardly been acting like a spy who's worried that her former contacts are in danger.

At the time her name was printed, her face was still not that familiar even to most Washington veterans, but that soon changed. When her husband received a "truth-telling" award at a Nation magazine luncheon, he wept as he told of his sorrow at his wife's loss of anonymity. Then he introduced her to the crowd.

And then, for any enemy agents who missed seeing her face at the luncheon but had an Internet connection, she posed with her husband for a photograph in Vanity Fair.

The smeared whistle-blower Mr. Wilson accused the White House of willfully ignoring his report showing that Iraq had not been seeking nuclear material from Niger. But a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that his investigation had yielded little valuable information, hadn't reached the White House and hadn't disproved the Iraq-Niger link - in fact, in some ways it supported the link.

Mr. Wilson presented himself as a courageous truth-teller who was being attacked by lying partisans, but he himself became a Democratic partisan (working with the John Kerry presidential campaign) who had a problem with facts. He denied that his wife had anything to do with his assignment in Niger, but Senate investigators found a memo in which she recommended him.

Karl Rove's version of events now looks less like a smear and more like the truth: Mr. Wilson's investigation, far from being requested and then suppressed by a White House afraid of its contents, was a low-level report of not much interest to anyone outside the Wilson household.

So what exactly is this scandal about? Why are the villagers still screaming to burn the witch? Well, there's always the chance that the prosecutor will turn up evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice during the investigation, which would just prove once again that the easiest way to uncover corruption in Washington is to create it yourself by investigating nonexistent crimes.

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:

What do you call a scandal that's not scandalous?

Nadagate.

link here

[sgtclub]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050716/D8BC7F500.html

• WASHINGTON (AP) - After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.
  
  The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter wrote an article identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA officer.
  
  "I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations.
  
  The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove testified to a grand jury about it last year.
  
  Earlier in the week before the e-mail, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence, including a "highly doubtful" report that Iraq bought nuclear materials from Niger.
  
  "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote in the e-mail to Hadley.
  
  "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."
  
  Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Hadley, now Bush's national security adviser, said he could not comment due to the continuing criminal investigation. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances, never invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the president's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides.
  
  Rove, Bush's closest adviser, turned over the e-mail as soon as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's covert work for the CIA.
  
  He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony.
  

[SlaveNoMore]

Replaced_Texan
as Mark Yost, an editorial writer at Knight Ridder's St. Paul Pioneer Press.

His colleagues are unimpressed.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Spanky

Then Shapeshifter points out that, in response to my calling the above statement bigoted:

"This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have."

I assume that this means he is saying that it is bigoted and racist to assume that everyone wants democracy. Isn't that what he is saying? The system we were discussing is democracy?

When I pose this Shapshifter says that I am being arrogant, acting like an eight grader, and other stuff.

Then Shapeshifter says that:

"I never said it was bigoted or racist to impose democracy on the ME"

Earlier he said:

"This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have."

Is it just me or are these guys so caught up in being right that they simple can't acknowledge the obvious.

Let's us try this again:

T-Rex can't you just acknowledge that this statement is not only bigoted but stupid:

"And the Arab world wants democracy as much as they want a hole in the head. They don't get it, they don't care to get it."

Shapeshifter - can't you just admit that this statement implies that it is bigoted and racist to assume that Arabs would want democracy. And such statement was not well thought out and is wrong.

"This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have."

btw: We all understand that you think that military force is not the best way to bring democracy to the middle east. By acknowledging these above statements no one will assume that you have changed your positions on this issue, nor will we assume that you are acknowledging that military force is a good way to bring peace to the middle east.

All I was trying to point out to you is (1) the email quoted by Ty and (2) while we certainly feel that Democracy is the best system (you can spare us the Civics class lectures), (a) others may not agree for reasons Ty has given at length and, (b) even if they do agree, they don't want it imposed on them by us.

I have no interest in debating your "Democracy #1" strawman. Just because you (and I, for that matter) disagree with the people in (2)(a) does not make you a bigot or a racist. Similarly, the writer of the email is neither a racist nor a bigot for making the observation that the (2)(a) people seem to predominate in Yemen.

If you cannot see the distinction between what I originally posted and me calling you a racist and a bigot*, you should eat more Apricots. I hear they're good for improving your reading comprehension.

*Or "racist fuck," for short.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by sgtclub
WASHINGTON (AP) - After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.

Talk about much ado about nothing. Hopefully the liberals have the decency and self-respect to put their partisan witchhunt aside now and push Mr. and Mrs. Plame back under the slime covered rock they crawled out from under.

On more important topics, has Rehnquist kicked yet?

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
All I was trying to point out to you is............I have no interest in......reading comprehension.

We know.

You know I love you like a third cousin once removed whom I have never actually met but heard referenced in family discussions, in a platonic way, nttawwt, but I think that it is time to toss in the towel, Shifty. Preserve what little dignity you have left.

[SlaveNoMore]

How did this not get more widely reported:

...Meeting in Paris, London and Brussels, [the relationship between Plame and Wilson] got very serious, very quickly. On the third or fourth date, he says, they were in the middle of a 'heavy make-out' session when she said she had something to tell him...

She was, she explained, undercover in the CIA...

Maybe Plame herself was the initial leak.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
How did this not get more widely reported:



Maybe Plame herself was the initial leak.

Is that a violation of the applicable law? Perhaps she should be prosecuted.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Op-ed in (all of all places) the NYT:

link here

Nice to know that Tierney is cribbing ideas for his column from this board.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Can someone explain to me why the conservatives on this board don't want to look at Joe Wilson's explanation of what some Republicans call his "lies," but find the facts leaked by Karl Rove's attorney completely exculpatory? Whatever.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I point out that this statement, to T-Rex, is not only utterly stupid but is bigoted:

"And the Arab world wants democracy as much as they want a hole in the head. They don't get it, they don't care to get it."

And T-Rex defends it by saying that military force may not be the best way to achieve our ends - as a defense of this statement? Is it just me but there is absolutely no connection between this statement and his defense of it.

Look, you're not trying very hard. The statement is not bigoted. It's reportage. Someone living in the Arab world is telling you what he sees, not what Arabs are capable of.

And I don't recall what I said about military force, but the point was that we have pursued policies -- military and otherwise -- that are effectively delegitimizing democracy among Arabs and strengthening other constituencies. It's not just the invasion of Iraq, though clearly that's a part of it. It's also our support for undemocratic regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, among others, and the perception that our policies value Israeli lives and interests more than those of Palestinians.

This statement says that the Arab world, that is all two hundred and seventy million Arabs from Morocco to Baghdad, do not want Democracy. In addition it says that they don't get it.

If I said all blacks south of the Sahara not only don't want Democracy, but that they also don't get it. Wouldn't that be considered bigoted?

I think you are taking one sentence out of context and misreading it. I don't think the author of that e-mail meant to speak definitively about all Arabs. I think he is taking Yemen to be typical.

To sum: I point out an obviously stupid and bigoted statement and T-Rex defends it by pointing out an extraneous issue, instead of acknowledging the obvious.

Why are working so hard to fulminate about what's not being said instead of trying to engage with what is?

Let's us try this again:

T-Rex can't you just acknowledge that this statement is not only bigoted but stupid:

"And the Arab world wants democracy as much as they want a hole in the head. They don't get it, they don't care to get it."

No. It's neither bigoted nor stupid. I hope it's wrong, but I'm afraid that the author is seeing something real.

We all understand that you think that military force is not the best way to bring democracy to the middle east.

But of course it's more complicated than that. It's hardly just a question of military force. Under Hussein, there was very little civil society in Iraq, so it should be no surprise that the transition has been rough. We tried to support the opposition, and there just wasn't much there to support. I suspect things would have gone if the country had been run under UN auspices instead of by the Cato and Heritage Foundations. That would have been a use of military force, too.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Dissent. See the Lord Butler report.

Why the Butler Report is not the last word on the subject.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Can someone explain to me why the conservatives on this board don't want to look at Joe Wilson's explanation of what some Republicans call his "lies," but find the facts leaked by Karl Rove's attorney completely exculpatory? Whatever.

Ty, I read the spin in Joe's letter. Enough, already. It's his - what - fourth or fifth go-around on the facts at hand, and after the Senate blasted him.

He's back on TV every day shifting his story yet again.

You want timetables of lies, go here , or all of Maguire's posts for a week here or, hell, even watch how Josh has changed his tune 4 times this week. That Wilson repeated lied is indisputable. Come on, already.

Let me say this about Rove, or Novak, or Miller, or whomever - if it's revealed that anyone during Fitzgerald's investigation actually committed perjury, then they need to suffer the legal consequences. Period.