Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Leaving aside Ty's point, which you somehow missed -- I can only imagine how you would respond if Clinton had posted a how-to guide to building a nuclear bomb -- in Arabic! - on the Internet.

In the early 1990s, I was a year away from dating Uma Thurman. Therefore, we are now married.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Pat Buchanan's reasons for why the Rs are losing: : A combination of corruption and excessive commitment to free trade principles.

I suspect the new R, when the dust settles, will have a strong element of protectionism to go with its religious fundamentalism and hawkishness. More the inheritors of William Jennings Bryant (late in life - the Monkey Trial WJB) than Ronald Reagan.

Pat's livin' in 1955. Protectionism isn't even an option.

I'm surprised a man who worked so closely with Nixon, who was a strong proponent of free trade and opening relations with China, would harbor such politically unevolved views. Protectionism is as silly a solution for the lower and lower middle classes as the Democrats' minimum wage increase.

The only course is to embrace free trade and let the global market inflict the necessary pain on certain sectors of our economy. Get it over with now, because there's no stopping it. Even the Dems admit that.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Get it over with now, because there's no stopping it. Even the Dems admit that.

You don't seem to understand.

The Republican's stronghold is in the South and Midwest. They don't listen to you Northeastern elitists.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
I like how Slave assumed both that a gay guy outing someone must be a Democrat, and that it was done to persuade homophobes to vote Democratic. Sure, that follows.

It's Dems that are peddling the "out" list and it was a Dem from the HRC that peddled the Foley IMs.

Better yet - explain to me why it wouldn't follow.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
It's Dems that are peddling the "out" list and it was a Dem from the HRC that peddled the Foley IMs.

Better yet - explain to me why it wouldn't follow.

No idea about the "out" list, but let me say, whoever got Foley out of office and away from pages did a big service. Hastert, Boehner and Reynolds apparently had plenty of opportunities but let him remain.

[Spanky]

Free trade used to have bipartisan endorsement. Over the years the Democrats haved soured on it. I met Ms. Pelosi, she is a nice women with a great sense of humor, but she just doesn't belong in the speakers chair.

A look at Pelosi's voting record
TODAY'S EDITORIAL
November 3, 2006


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would bring to the office a level of left-wing liberalism that will be unprecedented. In the National Journal's 2005 ideological ratings, which were based on scores of votes, Mrs. Pelosi was ranked more liberal than 91 percent of her House colleagues on economic issues, 96 percent on social matters and 82 percent on foreign-policy issues. Here are her relative rankings (economic, social, foreign) for 2004 (93, 88, 81), 2003 (92, 89, 70), 2002 (88, 84, 90) and 2001 (94, 83, 93).
Until she received a 95 percent liberal rating in 2005 from the Americans for Democratic Action (the nation's pre-eminent liberal organization), Mrs. Pelosi had racked up five consecutive years (2000-04) of 100 percent ratings. Her lifetime ADA rating is 96 percent. Last year, the American Conservative Union gave her a 0 rating. Her lifetime ACU rating is 3 percent.
Typical for her 20-year House career, Mrs. Pelosi received a 100 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America last year and a 0 rating from the National Right to Life Committee. A Roman Catholic who has repeatedly voted to uphold partial-birth abortion, who has voted against parental notification when minor children seek abortion and who has shown no concern for the rights of the innocent unborn, Mrs. Pelosi has consistently opposed the death penalty.
Over the years, Mrs. Pelosi has consistently voted against welfare reform, including the 1996 bill signed by President Clinton and its re-authorization. In 1998, she opposed a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer in the classroom. In 1999, she opposed allowing state and local governments to display the Ten Commandments on public property, including schools. She has voted against education IRAs. In 2003, she opposed a $10 million program for school vouchers in the District of Columbia. That same year she voted against the 10-year $400 billion Medicare prescription-drug bill because she preferred one that was twice as expensive. Mrs. Pelosi has repeatedly voted for tax increases and opposed tax cuts, even the 2001 bill that doubled the child tax credit to $1,000, among other cuts.
As the United States has become increasingly dependent on foreign sources for oil, Mrs. Pelosi has always opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In recent years, she has become protectionist -- leading the opposition in 2000 against then-President Clinton's successful effort to establish permanent normal trade relations with China. She also opposed giving Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush trade-promotion authority; and in 2005 she voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. In 2004, she voted to end Radio Marti broadcasts to Cuba. She voted to reduce funds for the B-2 intercontinental bomber, which performed superbly in the 1999 Kosovo War, in 2001 in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Mrs. Pelosi has repeatedly opposed anti-missile defense, even as a nuclear-armed North Korea has tested ballistic missiles.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
You don't seem to understand.

The Republican's stronghold is in the South and Midwest. They don't listen to you Northeastern elitists.

The day Republicans abandon free trade, is the day I leave the party.

[SlaveNoMore]

Sidd Finch
Leaving aside Ty's point, which you somehow missed -- I can only imagine how you would respond if Clinton had posted a how-to guide to building a nuclear bomb -- in Arabic! - on the Internet.

In their hopes of belatedly finding some evidence to support Bush's rationale for war, the Admin and the Congressional right wing published that guide to the world. Lovely.

Jim Geherty:

I'm sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?

What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been "no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat", for the past three years solid. Now we're being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.

Let's go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.

I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a "Boy, did Bush screw up" meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the "there was no threat in Iraq" meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh... al-Qaeda.

The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.

The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn't dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet. It doesn't work. It can't be both no threat to America and yet also somehow a threat to America once it's in the hands of Iran. Game, set, and match.

Having now read it, I can see that every stop has been pulled out to ensure that a reader will believe that posting these documents was a strategic blunder of the first order.

But the story retains its own inherent contradiction: The information in these documents is so dangerous, that every step must be taken to ensure it doesn't end up in the wrong hands... except for topping the regime that actually has the documents.

(By the way, is it just me, or is the article entirely devoid of any indication that Iran actually accessed the documents? This threat that, "You idiot! Iran could access all the documents!" is entirely speculative. If the government servers hosting the web site have signs that Iranian web browsers accessed those pages, it's a different story; my guess is somebody already knows the answer to that question.)

I'm still kinda blown away by this paragraph:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Is this sentence referring to 1990, before the Persian Gulf War? Or 2002, months before the invasion of Iraq? Because "Iraq is a year away from building a nuclear bomb" was supposed to be a myth, a lie that Bush used to trick us into war.

And yet here is the New York Times, saying that Iraq had a "how to manual" on how to build a nuclear bomb, and could have had a nuke in a year.

In other news, it's good to see that the New York Times is firmly against publicizing sensitive and classified information. Unless, of course, they're the ones doing it.

ONE LAST THOUGHT: So Iraq had all the know-how, all the plans, all the designs, "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building." Unless they were keeping these documents around as future material for paper airplanes, all this stuff constituted a plan of action for some point in the future; but to complete creating these weapons, they would have needed stuff. I don't know an exact list of what they would have needed, but articles like this one give a good idea. Sounds like you need a firing mechanism (the right kind of firearm would suffice), some fairly common industrial equipment like a lathe, material for the bomb casing, some fairly common conventional explosives, all of which would have been easy to get in Iraq. Oh, and, of course, the nuclear material itself.

They would have needed something like... um... you know... what's that stuff called? Oh, that's right.

Yellowcake.

But we know Iraq would never make an effort to get yellowcake. Joe Wilson had tea with officials in Niger who said so.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

1) Unemployment at five-year low

2) Unions hire the homeless to walk their picket lines

(although this article is dated, it is au courrant, based on walking by another one of these "picket lines" today.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
It's Dems that are peddling the "out" list and it was a Dem from the HRC that peddled the Foley IMs.

Better yet - explain to me why it wouldn't follow.

You're right. Bad, bad Democrats. It's not as if a rabidly anti-gay evangelist was buying drugs and using them to pay for sessions with a gay prosti....

Oh, wait. This just in:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061103/...ex_allegations

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Evangelist Ted Haggard admitted Friday that he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a gay prostitute who claims he was paid for drug-fueled trysts by the outspoken gay marriage opponent.

(Note: In fairness, he claims he never actually used the meth.)

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Jim Geherty:

I see your point.

You are against publicizing classified information, especially if the NY Times does it.

But you are in favor of publicizing classified information -- like, a how-to guide to building an atomic bomb, in convenient Arabic -- if the NY Times is against it.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch

(Note: In fairness, he claims he never actually used the meth.)

Bill Clinton is now off the hook for the lamest denial of drug use.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Bill Clinton is now off the hook for the lamest denial of drug use.

It's a close call on lamest denial of sex (it was a "massage"), but, then, there are many contenders for this one.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

the stench is everywhere in this town......

Change "in this town" to "on this board" and we have a new board motto!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
1) Unemployment at five-year low

This is the silver lining on the 130,000 jobs Bush has created in Iraq.