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

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
A lot of Republicans who pretend to give a shit about the abuse would much rather jump all over the rhetoric of people talking about it.

True. I'd much, much rather be hand-wringing about how some soldiers had the sheer audacity to place a Koran in the same room as a toilet.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
True. I'd much, much rather be hand-wringing about how some soldiers had the sheer audacity to place a Koran in the same room as a toilet.

If the President can say happy words every once in a while about respecting other religions, that should be enough to keep Moslems happy. They're not that smart, right?

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
If the President can say happy words every once in a while about respecting other religions, that should be enough to keep Moslems happy.

God knows they should be. We shouldn't have given them those fucking books in the first place.

They're not that smart, right?

You tell me. From a link on that same Sullivan page:

SHIKMA PRISON, Israel (AP) - A badly burned Palestinian woman was alternately defiant and tearful Monday after Israeli soldiers caught her trying to enter Israel with 22 pounds of explosives hidden on her body.

The woman, who suffered serious burns on her hands, feet and neck in a kitchen explosion five months ago, had been granted permission to cross into Israel from the Gaza Strip for medical treatment when she raised the suspicion of soldiers at the Erez checkpoint.

Video released by the military showed 21-year-old Wafa al-Biss taking off articles of clothing on the orders of soldiers searching for explosives, and rubbing her disfigured neck with her burned hands and screaming.

The military said she tried to blow up the explosives Monday but failed and was not injured.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
True. I'd much, much rather be hand-wringing about how some soldiers had the sheer audacity to place a Koran in the same room as a toilet.

Man, it really sucks not to have an antiwar movement to demonize, don't it?

From Harold Meyerson in WaPo:

• Absent a discernible trajectory of progress, the American people are giving up on the occupation. In last week's CBS News/New York Times poll, 59 percent of respondents said the war was going badly, and just 37 percent approved of President Bush's handling of Iraq. A Gallup poll showed six in 10 Americans favoring full or partial withdrawal of U.S. forces.
  
  These figures already match the polling in the middle and late years of the war in Vietnam -- even though that war was fought with vastly higher casualties and a conscript army. In a series of polls taken in November and December of 1969, the Gallup Organization found that 49 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal of U.S. forces and 78 percent believed that the Nixon administration's rate of withdrawal was "too slow." But there was one other crucial finding: 77 percent disapproved of the antiwar demonstrations, which were then at their height.
  
  That disapproval was key to Nixon's political strategy. He didn't so much defend the war as attack its critics, making common cause with what he termed the "silent majority" against a mainstream movement with a large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe. When Nixon won reelection in a landslide, it was clear that the strategy had worked -- and it has been fundamental Republican strategy ever since. Though the public sides with the Democrats on more key issues than it does with Republicans, it's Republicans who have won more elections, in good measure because the GOP has raised its ad hominem attacks on Democrats' character and patriotism to a science.
  
  Which is why, however perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration, and why the Republicans are reduced to trying to turn Dick Durbin, who criticized our policies at Guantanamo Bay, into some enemy of the people. The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits.
  
  Unable to distract people from his own performance, Bush is tanking in the polls. And with congressional Democrats at least partly muting their opposition to an open-ended occupation, it's Bush's fellow Republicans -- most prominently, North Carolina's Walter Jones -- who are now calling our policy into question.

So keep moaning and bitching about ex-Klan leaders, about Durbin, and splitting hairs over whether Korans were flushed, or just in the proximity of urine. I tell you, it's electoral magic!

[Iron Steve]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If the President can say happy words every once in a while about respecting other religions, that should be enough to keep Moslems happy.

Given the form over substance doctrine of moral relavity that the Dems want practiced, when are Clinton and Reno going to apologize for their crimes against the Branch Davidians? Certainly bar-b-queing 50 plus women and children who were just trying to practise their own version of a religion of peace and tolerance is almost as bad as an inadvertant splash of urine on a government owned Koran.

Or is a Mohammed a more defensible drunken pedophile than Koresh?

[Iron Steve]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Man, it really sucks not to have an antiwar movement to demonize, don't it?

From Harold Meyerson in WaPo:

• Absent a discernible trajectory of progress, the American people are giving up on the occupation. In last week's CBS News/New York Times poll, 59 percent of respondents said the war was going badly, and just 37 percent approved of President Bush's handling of Iraq. A Gallup poll showed six in 10 Americans favoring full or partial withdrawal of U.S. forces.
  
  These figures already match the polling in the middle and late years of the war in Vietnam -- even though that war was fought with vastly higher casualties and a conscript army. In a series of polls taken in November and December of 1969, the Gallup Organization found that 49 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal of U.S. forces and 78 percent believed that the Nixon administration's rate of withdrawal was "too slow." But there was one other crucial finding: 77 percent disapproved of the antiwar demonstrations, which were then at their height.
  
  That disapproval was key to Nixon's political strategy. He didn't so much defend the war as attack its critics, making common cause with what he termed the "silent majority" against a mainstream movement with a large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe. When Nixon won reelection in a landslide, it was clear that the strategy had worked -- and it has been fundamental Republican strategy ever since. Though the public sides with the Democrats on more key issues than it does with Republicans, it's Republicans who have won more elections, in good measure because the GOP has raised its ad hominem attacks on Democrats' character and patriotism to a science.
  
  Which is why, however perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration, and why the Republicans are reduced to trying to turn Dick Durbin, who criticized our policies at Guantanamo Bay, into some enemy of the people. The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits.
  
  Unable to distract people from his own performance, Bush is tanking in the polls. And with congressional Democrats at least partly muting their opposition to an open-ended occupation, it's Bush's fellow Republicans -- most prominently, North Carolina's Walter Jones -- who are now calling our policy into question.

So keep moaning and bitching about ex-Klan leaders, about Durbin, and splitting hairs over whether Korans were flushed, or just in the proximity of urine. I tell you, it's electoral magic!

Once again the value of a republican form of government can be seen. If we had government by majority vote on each and every decision (or by opinion poll) we would never a coherent policy that when employed would be allowed to run its required course to successful fruition.

If the American people are so worried about the prolonged dispatch of troops on foreign territory then they should be chronologically consistent, i.e. we still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Europe and Korea from dispatches that occured relative to wars that ended approximately 60 and 50 years ago, respectively. Let's bring home the troops indeed! Bon voyage Paris!

[Iron Steve]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
21-year-old Wafa al-Biss

A worthy freedom fighter oppressed by the fascist Israelis. She is certainly the Jose Padilla of her nation!

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Good job, fellas. I think those bones are just about dry, though. Byrd will probably only survive so many more elections, you know. After all, he's no Thurmond.

Hey -- here's some fresh new meat! Dick Durbin. Dumbass Democratic Senator from Illinois, who marred an uncomfortable critique about Gitmo with a wonderfully inapt Soviet gulag analogy. Go get em, guys! Bonus points if you can work in a persecution-of-Christians angle. And, if it's vicious enough, we might get Hello to contribute to the site!

Love and kisses,
Brother Rove

Which site? Brother Hello contributed here last year! and cut way back on his posting since December!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Man, it really sucks not to have an antiwar movement to demonize, don't it?

From Harold Meyerson in WaPo:

• Absent a discernible trajectory of progress, the American people are giving up on the occupation. In last week's CBS News/New York Times poll, 59 percent of respondents said the war was going badly, and just 37 percent approved of President Bush's handling of Iraq. A Gallup poll showed six in 10 Americans favoring full or partial withdrawal of U.S. forces.
  
  These figures already match the polling in the middle and late years of the war in Vietnam -- even though that war was fought with vastly higher casualties and a conscript army. In a series of polls taken in November and December of 1969, the Gallup Organization found that 49 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal of U.S. forces and 78 percent believed that the Nixon administration's rate of withdrawal was "too slow." But there was one other crucial finding: 77 percent disapproved of the antiwar demonstrations, which were then at their height.
  
  That disapproval was key to Nixon's political strategy. He didn't so much defend the war as attack its critics, making common cause with what he termed the "silent majority" against a mainstream movement with a large, raucous and sometimes senseless fringe. When Nixon won reelection in a landslide, it was clear that the strategy had worked -- and it has been fundamental Republican strategy ever since. Though the public sides with the Democrats on more key issues than it does with Republicans, it's Republicans who have won more elections, in good measure because the GOP has raised its ad hominem attacks on Democrats' character and patriotism to a science.
  
  Which is why, however perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration, and why the Republicans are reduced to trying to turn Dick Durbin, who criticized our policies at Guantanamo Bay, into some enemy of the people. The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits.
  
  Unable to distract people from his own performance, Bush is tanking in the polls. And with congressional Democrats at least partly muting their opposition to an open-ended occupation, it's Bush's fellow Republicans -- most prominently, North Carolina's Walter Jones -- who are now calling our policy into question.

So keep moaning and bitching about ex-Klan leaders, about Durbin, and splitting hairs over whether Korans were flushed, or just in the proximity of urine. I tell you, it's electoral magic!

Gatti, I wish you were right. But unless you've got someone to run, and a discernible base to galvanize, you can't win shit. No matter how badly the GOP keeps fucking up, the Dems have no Option B. Hillary? She's the biggest lead zeppelin on the lot. She'd only further galvanize the GOP. Wesley Clark? I donno, maybe if they clean him up... but even then, he's less experienced than the present president. I don't think the nation will suffer a second presidency by a person so obviously beyond his Peter Principle so soon after the current one is concluded.

Its always been "the economy, stupid." I think the shit will hit the fan with a housing market correction before Bush leaves, which will all but hand the next election to the Dems. The question is, like last year, will the Dems offer a body who can be there to take over? Or will they run another tired corpse like Kerry?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
True. I'd much, much rather be hand-wringing about how some soldiers had the sheer audacity to place a Koran in the same room as a toilet.

Absolutely agreed.

Koran, Bible, Torah, Book of Mormon, Dianetics, Moby Dick, The Little Engine that Could, Aesopf's Fables, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Less than Zero...

Which of these is different from the other? We wouldn't give a prisoner Pj O'Rourke's Modern Manners if he claimed it were a sacred text, and there's as much basis to worship Mr. O'Rourke as there is to believe in the Koran. Why in the hell is our govt spending my tax dollars to allow waterheads to feed their fantastic beliefs?

[Iron Steve]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Gatti, I wish you were right. But unless you've got someone to run, and a discernible base to galvanize, you can't win shit. No matter how badly the GOP keeps fucking up, the Dems have no Option B. Hillary? She's the biggest lead zeppelin on the lot. She'd only further galvanize the GOP. Wesley Clark? I donno, maybe if they clean him up... but even then, he's less experienced than the present president. I don't think the nation will suffer a second presidency by a person so obviously beyond his Peter Principle so soon after the current one is concluded.

Its always been the economy, stupid. I think the shit will hit the fan with a housing market correction before Bush leaves, which will all but hand the next election to the Dems. The question is, like last year, will the Dems offer a body who can be there to take over? Or will they run another tired corpse like Kerry?

The order of your sentences is off.

This should have been the first sentence:

"The question is, like last year, will the Dems offer a body who can be there to take over? Or will they run another tired corpse like Kerry?"

This should have the conclusory sentence:

"I don't think the nation will suffer a presidency by a party so obviously out of touch with reality."

[Iron Steve]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Koran, Bible, Torah, Book of Mormon, Dianetics, Moby Dick, The Little Engine that Could, Aesopf's Fables, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Less than Zero...

Which of these is different from the other?

Less than Zero is more fun ideal to try to attain?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Iron Steve
The order of your sentences is off.

This should have been the first sentence:

"The question is, like last year, will the Dems offer a body who can be there to take over? Or will they run another tired corpse like Kerry?"

This should have the conclusory sentence:

"I don't think the nation will suffer a presidency by a party so obviously out of touch with reality."

How are the Dems less in touch with reality than the GOP? If anything, they are running neck and neck in the cluelessness category.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
God knows they should be. We shouldn't have given them those fucking books in the first place.

Do you believe the Bible is sacred but the Koran not?

From a literary and creative perspective, I am offended by the Koran. Its a shitty work. The author didn't even come up with his own entirely new characters or plot. He just threw together a shitty sequel to the Old and New Testaments. Thats pretty intellecctually lazy. As far as religions go, Judaism is Star wars, Christianity is the Empire Strikes Back and Islam... well, its Return of the Jedi. Yep, Ewoks and all...

But that said, you wouldn't really suggest one of those three books is divine and the others not. Really, 5000 years is but a blip in human history. I'm fairly certain Judaism, Christianity and Islam will be remembered as nothing more than interesting socio/cultural movments to historians in 10021.

So wouldn't it be a little silly to compare the credibility of one to the other, or claim one is divine while the other not?

[Iron Steve]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
How are the Dems less in touch with reality than the GOP? If anything, they are running neck and neck in the cluelessness category.

In 2000 maybe, but the last I checked there was a 3 million plus margin between those necks. I'm not a christian from the heartland but I'm not so arrogant or so naive as to ignore the fact that a sizeable plurality/majority of the electorate are. Like it or hate it the secular humanist moral relativist platform of the Dems is putting them further and further out of touch with the majority of the American electorate.

Don't believe me, run Hillary, we dare you!