Politics: J'accuse!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Slave Once Again
Your right, I'm sorry, me bad. I forgot. I try not to look at the scar for fear of vomitting and just keep focused on her cranberry sized nipples.

Obviously you have never seen a C-section scar. They are hardly noticeable after a year.

So tell me, if you wife ends up with a scar on her breast because she has a lump and needs a biopsy, are you going to vomit from that?

I don't think scars are a turn off to most men. If someone keloids, well, that might make their scars noticeable, but most scars fade pretty well at least on lighter skinned people.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Wrong. There have been several different trails of investigation, aside from Chalabi. This article and the embedded links describe a couple of them.

http://www.nationalreview.com/commen...0404182336.asp

This is an interesting article, but it's hard to tell what the author's sources are. There's a lot of speculation about what Saddam could have done, but not much proof. I note this paragraph towards the end:

• Indeed, the whereabouts of the full U.N. Oil-for-Food records themselves remain, to say the least, confusing. By some official U.N. accounts, they were all turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority; by others they were not. A U.N. source explained to me last week that some of the records might be in boxes somewhere on Long Island; yet another says they were sent over to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Especially crucial, one might suppose, would be the bank records, which should show into which accounts, and where, the Oil-for-Food funds were paid. But what is clear is that no one has so far sat down with access to the full records and begun piecing together the labyrinth of Saddam's financing with an eye, specifically, to potential terrorist ties.

Certainly the structure of the Oil-for-Food program appears to have been rife with the potential for kickbacks to the Iraqi government, much like any contract in a Third World country. Since Saddam's regime evidently decided whom to sell to, it evidently could exact a price for this. It's unclear to me, however, that there's any substance to the suggestion that Saddam was anything other than venal. That much is not really news. Clearly, though, there's more to the story that's not out yet.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
Why don't you make the exchange of sex for money completely explicit?

Because it is about paying me enough attention and making our relationship a priority. I don't ask them to spend the money. That they do on their own.

Fringey, sweetie, you ought to try not sleeping with them on the first date. You might not be alone if you did.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
No, you're not. You're excited by a chance for a quip, misaimed as it may be.

If you want to admit that our "news" organizations no longer simply present "news" at it appears, but instead decide which stories to present because they fit their own personal sense of values, then you should make a comment . . . well, much like you've just made. You've just equated the selection of what is "news" with serving an agenda. I would rather a "news" organization presented news.

I see. So we expect so little of Bush and Rumsfeld et al. that it is equally newsworthy that Americans torture Iraqi prisoners as it was that Hussein committed atrocities. I, personally, was not surprised that Hussein committed atrocities -- I thought he was a bad man -- but I was surprised that our military was torturing people -- I didn't think they were bad men and women. So I thought the latter was "news" and the former wasn't.

Apparently it was "news" to you that Hussein was a bad man, but you expected our troops to commit war crimes. Funny that.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I see. So we expect so little of Bush and Rumsfeld et al. that it is equally newsworthy that Americans torture Iraqi prisoners as it was that Hussein committed atrocities. I, personally, was not surprised that Hussein committed atrocities -- I thought he was a bad man -- but I was surprised that our military was torturing people -- I didn't think they were bad men and women. So I thought the latter was "news" and the former wasn't.

Apparently it was "news" to you that Hussein was a bad man, but you expected our troops to commit war crimes. Funny that.

Mass graves containing thousands of murdered humans don't qualify one as simply a "bad" man. They qualify you as a mass murderer. Mass murder is always big news. Unless, of course, you just don't care about the people who were murdered.

This is (again) what I mean about lacking perspective.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Apparently it was "news" to you that Hussein was a bad man, but you expected our troops to commit war crimes. Funny that.

A "bad man". Wow. Averaging 3000 deaths per day of his reign, he's a "bad man", whose acts you equate with panties on heads. Yeah, I would consider his deeds to be more newsworthy over the past ten years, but your media disagreed, I guess. Same media that talks about the horrors, today in the NYT's lead article, of Iraqis being stripped naked. Wonder how many people died today in North Korea, or Africa? We'll never know, will we? But we know that some Iraqis were nekkid. And I bet we hear about some Palestinians who had to move. But very little about famine in China.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
A "bad man". Wow. Averaging 3000 deaths per day of his reign, he's a "bad man", whose acts you equate with panties on heads. Yeah, I would consider his deeds to be more newsworthy over the past ten years, but your media disagreed, I guess. Same media that talks about the horrors, today in the NYT's lead article, of Iraqis being stripped naked. Wonder how many people died today in North Korea, or Africa? We'll never know, will we? But we know that some Iraqis were nekkid. And I bet we hear about some Palestinians who had to move. But very little about famine in China.

How many people died today in traffic accidents? Or from preventable maladies, e.g. as the result of smoking. Quite a few, and yet they will receive less attention that the sarin-filled artillery shell that killed no one earlier. Something is news in large part because it departs from our expectations. Hussein's deeds were in the news over the past ten years. Anyone who was paying attention didn't need a refresher course. In fact, conservatives weren't doing a lot of lecturing about the need to focus on Hussein's bad deeds a few months ago when the President was getting better press. It's only now that recent events have turned uglier that we are hectored about this.

How many people died today in North Korea? If that's not being reported, it has at least as much to do with the fact that the administration would rather that North Korea is not in the headlines, and with the concomitant reality that our press corps is hard pressed to cover foreign events. Not profitable. There are all sorts of press failings we could discuss -- the free market doesn't do a particularly good job of telling people things they don't want to know. But your real problem here is that people do want to know about what we did to Iraqis in our custody, and that the media is telling them.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Something is news in large part because it departs from our expectations.

Lets stop reporting on famines in sub-saharan Africa, then. It is a fucking desert people. You cannot grow food in the desert. You choose to live in a desert, you will die unless you can afford to have your water or food imported. Those living in sub-saharan Africa cannot. Hence it is expected they will die. No need to report on it.

[Not Me]

U.S. athletes told to cool it at Olympics

• NEW YORK — American athletes have been warned not to wave the U.S. flag during their medal celebrations at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens, for fear of provoking crowd hostility and harming the country's already-battered public image.
  
  The spectacle of victorious athletes grabbing a national flag and parading it around the stadium is a familiar part of international sporting competition, but U.S. Olympic officials have ordered their 550-strong team to exercise restraint and avoid any jingoistic behavior.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/...1028-9603r.htm

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
-- but I was surprised that our military was torturing people -- I

Once again, I'm still waiting to see the torture

Making a prisoner dress like Batman and stand on a crate doesn't qualify in my book*

Now forcing the prisoners to watch the heinous Private England get gangbanged may actually qualify as torture in my mind, but I don't think you mean this.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
There are all sorts of press failings we could discuss --

That the Frenchies applauded Michael "Fat Slob" Moore's new fabricated screed should be so obvious as to not warrant media attention - but guess what

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by bilmore
Yeah, I would consider his deeds to be more newsworthy over the past ten years, but your media disagreed, I guess. Same media that talks about the horrors, today in the NYT's lead article, of Iraqis being stripped naked. Wonder how many people died today in North Korea, or Africa? We'll never know, will we? But we know that some Iraqis were nekkid. And I bet we hear about some Palestinians who had to move. But very little about famine in China.

Another market failure? Amazing. Time to re-think capitalism. Maybe we should appoint a bipartisan committee. You know, balance.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Once again, I'm still waiting to see the torture

Making a prisoner dress like Batman and stand on a crate doesn't qualify in my book

You know, I have seen these pictures so much that it is desensitizing me to them. Not only that, I am actually starting to giggle when I see them. You have to admit that the panties on the head thing is kind of funny.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Another market failure? Amazing. Time to re-think capitalism. Maybe we should appoint a bipartisan committee. You know, balance.

Hey, we own talk radio. And Fox News is kicking ass and taking names on cable. Broadcast news is bleeding to death. The only reason it survives is because people in the sticks cannot get cable.

[bilmore]

So, can I vote for this guy for social issues, and Bush for taxation and foriegn affairs issues?


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi..._gay_marriage/