Still here.

Cats that look like Hitler - love it!

Dodd!

He completely let the middle crisis fly out of control. Where was he when the soldiers got kidnapped in the first place, on fucking Jupiter?? I’ll give him a pass on the first one but after the 2nd kidnappings by Hezbollah shouldn’t a red flag have gone up??
But I guess we see the Bush administration’s strategy now, give Israel an excuse to bomb the crap out Hezbollah to root out terrorism in south Lebanon and humiliate Iran’s support of Hezbollah. Oh, fucking idiots. Obviously they had the same pathetic intelligence that sucked us into Iraq that they used with this hair brained scheme. Now the dumbfucks are back pedaling so that Israel will find a way to say face, and not give the “terrorists” a physcological victory.
oh the humanity……………

rootz !

Gawd, my elvish blood boils at hearing all the Dems genuflecting before the assault of the current authoritarian, right-wing, expansionist, militaristic Israeli government. It’s THIS HORRIBLE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT

The cats that look like Hitler is the funniest thing I have seen in a long, long time.

I needed that laugh so much I can’t say thanks enough!

Too bad the senate vote won’t be until after the CT primary. I wander how Lieberman would have voted it it was?

No, no, no, oh my God, Dodd: NO!

“They are ineffective.”

“They are incompetent.”

“They’ve bungled the task.”

These statements just play into the new neocon agenda of tossing W under the bus.

I say this:
Ineffective bullying isn’t wrong, bullying is wrong.

Please, can’t we debate the PNAC premise, a wider Middle East war, instead of validating that premise by debating their effectiveness?

========
Had Enough?
========

oops…hearing = witnessing. ..and the final sentence should have: GET IT? Too angry today. Way too angry.

Trex, about your sweet old Siamese with the arthritis — we have two aging cats and a drafty old house. Kitties like to be warm, and elderly kitties need to be warm, and come winter, it’s mighty expensive to heat this drafty old house all day while we’re at work & all night while we’re asleep to keep the kitties comfy — so what to do? Heated kitty beds. They *love* their heated kitty beds.

See www.plowhearth.com, search for “kitty bowl.” Not an employee, just a satisfied customer.

Fitz!
—–
and Shakira: her name means “woman full of grace” in Arabic.

Isn’t Shakira half-lebanese? Perhaps only Shakira’s hips will stop the shelling.

Teddy at 9 — I took this “ineffective” to mean that he sucks at his job, at least in the full context of Dodd’s remarks. *g* And, frankly, who wants a UN Ambassador that sucks at his job when the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket at the moment? We all deserve better.

Dodd is so obedient. He memorizes his framing so well. He will be permitted to retain his life peerage.

Point of order!

Soldiers are captured, civilians are kidnapped. Stop saying soldiers were kidnapped. Even if they were in Israel proper (which is under some dispute), they were still captured.

thinkprogress.org - Will Joe Lieberman Oppose John Bolton?

-sorry if this was posted before

lieberman will vote with us against bolton, and for cloture to satisfy his true party of repukelicans

Emergency appt immediately for Zbigniew Brzezinski to be President and Prof. Cole as VP and haul everyone else to jail– most of the congress can go to Crawford and have a weenie roast with the CM and the pundits so they will shut up and we don’t have to look at their mugs. Good career civil servants can stay and Bunnatine comes back with a promotion and a bouquet of flowies.

there, I feel better.

puppethead -
Fine -’captured and held as hostage’

O/T (though Christy, I’m with you, don’t care how it comes to pass that Bolton gets the boot, just boot his sorry ass)

just saw something hideously disgusting on FOX -

(btw - when all other channels are showing graphic, heartbreaking death & destruction, I turn to FOX merely to see if the big lipped blondes have put on their cheerleading outfits )

some ME reporter has miraculously got his hands on an e mail from of the Canadian UN guys killed by the Israelis - written a week before his death - ‘explaining’ to all that the unit wasn’t going out on patrols at the moment b/c of constant shelling BUT all the rockets were “a Tactical Necessity” IOW - FAUX news just used some poor peacekeeper’s e mail as a means of justifiying his own unneccesary, brutal death - friggin’ pornographic

angie -
Good angle there reverse the Curse! thinking.
We’d have to invite Bunnatine here, say the first Sat post election Nov. 11.

so you mean poor John McCain was kidnapped in VietNam and that he was just a detainee, not a prisoner-of-war? No torture but a lot of “feared up” ? Glad that’s cleared up at last …

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 109th Congress - 1st Session Roll Call Vote 142
June 20, 2005

On the Cloture Motion (Upon Reconsideration, Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of John R. Bolton, of Maryland, to be Representative of the United States to the United Nations )

Yeas 54 Nays 38 Not Voting 8. Lieberman voted no with most other Democrats on the cloture motion which then failed needing 60 votes to pass.

So at least last time Lieberman voted against Bolton.

One might think Bolton was quite effective if the goal was to royally screw up everything at the UN, but that would be cynical.

We have fed the heart on fantasies
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love, oh honey bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
…W.B. Yeats

Hugh:
Thanks for that. Was thinking about finding same info…too lazy/crazy etc. just now.

Stupid ? > Is Lieberman on this Committee. I should know, but…

Teddy @ EPU’d from prior thread

Spot-on, meta 168! Senator Boxer’s views — except for her recently expressed support of RGJoe — are directly aligned with 60% or more of the American people, shown in poll after poll after poll. So what benefits her to move to the right?

It’s not about right versus left. A lot of the Boxer concern trolls you see on the blogs…mostly other blogs, our lovely mods here smack them with the nerf bat toot sweet hehe…keep throwing out that old “but she’s Proggressive! She’s pro-choice!” I don’t think it’s a left-right thing at all. She’s not trying to appeal to more right wing people…in CA it would be pointless, Repubs are never gonna support her, and she doesn’t need their support anyway.

It’s a incumbency versus competitive elections thing, imho. Kind of like how the ACLU will stand up for the Phelps clan just on principle. She’s gonna support fellow incumbocrats, because it makes it easier to keep her own seat. She can ignore her own constituents, since her seat is secure, and can get whatever donations she needs from AIPAC or whatever corporations she chooses to shill for. Bush and Cheney want a monarch instead of a president. Incumbocrats want a House of Lords instead of a Senate.

We abolished a hereditary nobility for a reason Babs. We’re not letting you resurrect it.

It’s not enough to be a member of the Democratic Party. It’s not enough to be Progressive. Our elected officials need to also support our democracy, and not interfere in its natural processes.

Otherwise we lose our republic, and become another two bit banana republic.

EPU’ed, but applicable to Bolton as well:

Does anyone else get the impression that in addition to their innumerable other failings, the neocons never even think about what anyone else might do (the people they talk about fighting, for example.) It’s like they think they’re brilliant chess players because they sit in their bedrooms”think” tanks and decide both sides’ moves, never noticing that they’re just playing the obvious moves for their opponent.

I read an article recently (I thought on The Next Hurrah, but I can’t find it now) about how if the neocons succeed in getting their war with Iran (either directly or by proxy), the Iranians can and will disrupt our supply lines from Kuwait, and our situation in Iraq will bear a close resemblance to Napoleon’s in Moscow.

Since I actually do care about our troops, and not just as political props, this really frightens me and pisses me off.

OfT: I sure hope Matt O. gets his hands on the new Homeland Security report on its own contracting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01683.html

One “benefit” to creating new agencies to supercede old ones — like RGJoe wants to do (again) to Homeland Security — is that the robbery by BushCo, Inc., directly from the USTreasury has no parents:

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the report faulted contracts made by the Transportation Security Administration before it became part of the Homeland Security Department. “It’s hard to imagine that the report can criticize the department for a contract made before the department was created,” he said.

So, since RGJoe wants to re-create Homeland Security in its own new image, the intervening, interim Ridge-headed Department will have no culpability for its own contracting? The $ will be gone, but there will be no extant agency or employees from whom to seek recompense?

Where is Harry Truman in his Chevrolet, going USArmy base to USArmy base during WWII, now that we really need him?

========
Had Enough?
========

Well this would have been EPU’ed on the last thread:

Progress for the New American Century’s statement of principles:

June 3, 1997

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for [the wars of] the future;

we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values [who don’t agree with us];

we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad [elections, free markets; democracy, social justice not so much];

we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly [obedient] to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity [plus the steely eye of the fanatic] may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

http://www.newamericancentury......ciples.htm

Note in particular Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Wolfowitz.

Energy companies posting huge profits. Fabulous.

TeddySanFran at 9: I gotta agree with Christy here, ineffective isn’t the same as incompetent. Incompetent means he doesn’t know what he’s doing (which I agree excuses deliberately bad behavior), ineffective means he knows what he’s doing, but is unwilling to accept that it doesn’t work, and change it.

As for “bully,” I agree, but when so much of the public is unwilling to see the difference between bullying and “being tough” (which can actually be a good thing diplomatically), I think it’s an effective turn of phrase. Even if you say “My objection isn’t that he’s been a bully,” the memorable part is calling him an ineffective bully, so the final (correct) impression is that he’s mean, and he’s not doing us any good.

Isn’t the real question we should be asking “Why do Republicans have so much hate and contempt for Veterans?”

Please, can’t we debate the PNAC premise, a wider Middle East war, instead of validating that premise by debating their effectiveness?

No, we can’t, Teddy. And that’s the problem.

The past two weeks have revealed in all its horror the fact that it is not politically permissible to advocate non-violence anywhere in the ME. Think of all the pols falling all over themselves to support the war hysteria while immediately silencing anyone who dares to say “killing is wrong, not matter who does it.” Look what happened to Tasini — Hillary skewered him for suggesting that when Israel takes actions that appear to recklessly disregard the safety/lives of Lebanese civilians it is morally unacceptable, and he his immediately vilified on all sides.

This is how we get near unanamious resolutions out of Congress in which the notion of an immediate end to the killing is not even mentioned.

Even Kofi Annnan has had to tone down his conclusion that the Israelis deliberately targeted the UN outposts, even though today’s NYT contains half a page of evidence that suggests it at least recklessly conducting shellings despite repeated UN calls to stop because they were hitting the UN buildings and vehicles for hours before they leveled the building killing four people. All the evidence suggests the Israeli’s acted in reckless disregard of the safety of UN peacekeepers — that’s enough for a conviction, folks — but because Annan needs US support for any eventually ceasefire — he’d like a ceasefire uh, two weeks ago — he has to avoid offending an “ineffective bully.”

This is madness, folks. National insanity.

We all know that the best outcome for our preferred candidates is that they not be asked these tough questions because we’re afraid of what they’d say. If they were honest, their careers would be over. But the reason we call them “preferred” is because we’d like to believe, but don’t really know, that if asked, they’d say, “stop the killing first; then negotiate.” But not a single prominent leader of either US party has had the courage to say that. NOT ONE.

The problem we face is enormous. It is not politically safe to be sane. So it’s not just changing the MSM to get fair and honest reporting of the liberal/conservative stuff, to stop shilling for the cowardly warhawks, to quit spouting eliminationist rhetoric. No, we have to create conditions right here in the good ole USA in which is is political safe for someone to advocate sane foreign policies that might actually lead to peace.

As Soros describes in his book, we have to treat the US as though it was an authoritarian thug regime, and start from scratch.

Ooops, that should be project not progress.

‘Bolton and Joey, sitting in a tree…’

;>)

I saw a smidge of Nelson(Fl) and Obama. The roof started dripping when Nelson made his bigboy “I want you to be a meanie to Russia and China” spiel (you have to visualize Batman underoos in there somewhere) and then the dripping actually made poor Obama have to get up. On top of that, Bolton got really snide with him. “My name is Bolton T*O*N not T*E*N and I don’t work in OMB…”

Lovely. God Opens the sewer line on them all. It’s a pity no one believes in Omens and Portents anymore.

Ok - maybe it was just a roof leak.

Bolton, Joe, and Scalito (has a ring to it)

darkblack

my eyes! my eyes! It burns! Guess we know how Bolton keeps that mustache clean.

That’s just twisted.

OT - if you are in need of a giggle… over at Pam’s House Blend, there is an excellent example of how to deal with the Phred Phelps gang…

You Tube Video Interview

nice video!

ANOTHER great post, CHS, und mit Kitlers to boot! Seeing that one of ‘em’s named Mao reminded me of two old dears I knew years ago. Mousy Tongue and Golda Meow.

FWIW, I e-mailed a barely-respectful SLAP upside the head this a.m. to Voinovich.

Sen. V. wrote a lengthy op-ed a few days ago, trying to justify his current support of Bolton nomination.

Guess it’s just too much strain on his tender psyche for him to consider standing up to the admin. twice in one year. Twit!

Adie - I swear, they must have photos on all these guys… Voino, Specter… (or threatening their children or something)

there is no other possible explanation of their flips

OT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....15_pf.html
“Bush advisers who have been buffeted in the past year by a catastrophic hurricane, rising gasoline prices, a failed Social Security initiative, Republican revolts, criminal investigations and a relentless overseas war said they have grown accustomed to constant crisis. “This is a new normal for our administration in the last couple years,” said one senior official. “You begin to expect the unexpected.”"
***
Guess what, guys? The people of this country are NOT fond of constant crisis, careening from one disaster to another. It’s like a car with no steering and no brakes. It means we have a failed leader and terrible representation in Congress. It’s not just the natural order of things, not when this president decided, DECIDED, to inflame the Middle East.
/rant over

To post something on topic, I think we all agree that Bolton is probably the worst possible person for the job.

But he does have a point about the effectiveness of the UN. (most of his disapproval of the UN is based on the fact that the UN doesn’t kowtow to the US enough, which is ridiculous, it shouldn’t have to.) Once the BushCo people are out of the Whitehouse, I think a serious reform of it should be undertaken. Specifically, to move it toward more of a “world government” model, as opposed to just a place where nations go to bloviate and occasionally defuse crises.

I think our unfortunate precedent-setting entrance into the “preemptive war of choice” arena make such reform necessary. Before long half the nations on the planet will be doing the same thing. Giving the UN some offical “teeth” would seem to be a good course of action.

Certainly we need to get rid of the security council veto ability.

Well, I’ve got Chuckles and Dame Hillary representing me. Then again…not so much.

Well, Lieberliar may have voted no on Bolton then, but the prevailing sentiment seems to be that:

“everything changed after Hizbollah captured 2 soldiers.”

>>>>>>>>

can’t change horses in midstream doncha know?

we are in crisis, we need the same evildoer in power so we can sink further into the morass, no ceasefire, no negotiating, no nothing.

psst, here, over here, look at my big military-industrial complex– ain’t it pretty and special? It costs a lot to feed it, in blood and treasure, but it’s bigger than anyone else’s. BOO!

Oh, God, please, no. Bolton made that horrendous criminal statement and now my ears are bleeding.

Who and when was the last official envoy to the Middle East? Time to go googling.

lhp, prior thread, you asked Mary about the link to the LATimes article on US Attorney cutbacks that P J Evans had linked to. I left it at the bottom of previous thread.

Senate Foreign Affairs Committee

Republicans
Lugar, Richard (IN) , Chairman
Hagel, Chuck (NE)
Chafee, Lincoln (RI)
Allen, George (VA)
Coleman, Norm (MN)
Alexander, Lamar (TN)
Sununu, John (NH)
Murkowski, Lisa (AK)
Martinez, Mel (FL)
Voinovich, George (OH)

Democrats
Biden, Joseph (DE), Ranking Member
Sarbanes, Paul (MD)
Dodd, Christopher (CT)
Kerry, John (MA)
Feingold, Russ (WI)
Boxer, Barbara (CA)
Nelson, Bill (FL)
Obama, Barack (IL)

Lieberman is not on this committee.

Wondering.

I notice on prev. post that some commenters numerical ref. to earlier comments on the same thread don’t seem to match up. Is this to with moderation and deletions or something?

OldCoastie.

I’m so ANGRY at these morons!?! NOTHING could be worth selling their souls this way!

BTW, Vitch has always been a wobbly-kneed pol., always w/ kinda strange circle of ‘influential friends’ around him, always just a bit too smarmy-acting when he was out winning votes by playing the MrClean act.

An utter waste. Get more good work done if they had one-a those kitlers warming his chair in the Senate.

PfffsSHT!

CNN just announcing that Rummy is mulling whether to send a battalion to Baghdad that’s just finishing up a year-long tour of duty in Mosul and was supposed to be headed home. “They’re professional soldiers and they’ll get along with life…”

Promises broken again?

Soulless bastard pretty much describes the whole BushCo bunch.

Kurt - Right. On.

Ok Kiddo, whenever a comment triggers the troll software, it goes into moderation and has to be manually approved by a moderator. It normally takes at least a few minutes to find and release it. In the interval other comments have posted. When the moderated comment gets released it bumps all those that came after it down one. That’s why a lot of us identify comments by time stamp which does not change. HTH

Kurt at 45: As I understand it, there is broad consensus for reform at the UN, and it was well underway when Bolton was appointed and trashed much of it because they wouldn’t switch from the plans they’d spent months on to doing exactly what he wanted right now! I don’t have a link handy, but there was one proposal that the US officially supported (after Bolton was appointed) literally until a day or two before it was to be adopted, and then he suddenly declared that we didn’t support it any more, and expected the committee to vote in an acceptable replacement.

So despite the fact that UN reform is his big issue, and despite the fact that they were actually adopting a lot of things that the US and even Bolton wanted, he still manages to be a detriment to his own stated goals.

Thanks Prairie Sunshine.
What happened to all those Iraqi units that we trained? Why can’t they go into Baghdad?

OK kiddo

Presume you’re correct. A bunch of posters use [time of posting] instead of number. Makes sense, & I keep trying to remember to train myself to do likewise.

So far, too hard for me to chew nails & remember the posting clock at the same time, sigh…

meta at 11:49 — I think that would be Dennis Ross, but I’m not entirely certain there wasn’t anyone after him.

Boxer after ranting on and on about Al-Maliki and acting all outraged about him not condemning Hizb., etc.(see pow wow’s excellent reportage on the previous thread) said to Bolton, I know this is not your fault(wha?) and then proceeded to Darfur and said, I know you care about what is going on there.

Betcha she bounces to a yea. Just sayin.

FWIW, I’m with TeddySanFran on this. Dodd’s comment was neither clever nor did it make a lick of sense. Bolton has in fact been a complete successful obstructionist bully, which is why he was hired. And if he had succeeded not merely in obstructing but in bullying countries into concordance with the Bush administration’s positions, which is what I take to mean by Dodd’s assertion that he was ineffective, the world would be all the more worse off.

And when will we see the website for cats that look like Bolton?

Thomas Ricks on Charlie Rose repeat now talking about his book, Fiasco. No shit.

puppethead points to a broader problem of how language is used to promote war and justify killing.

Watch any channel, network, cable, whatever, and you’ll see the following tends to be true:

Israelis/US military people are called “soldiers.”

Those they fight against are called “insurgents,” “militants,” “terrorists,” etc.

US/Israeli operations, including those that level buildings with bombs/artillery, even when they kill civilians, are called “operations.”

The other side’s operations are called “terrorist attacks,” suicide bombings, and so on.

The persistent use of such language is what convinces people, over time, to accept killing on one side, but to condemn it on the other, and to regard civilian killings on one side as “terrorism” and civilian killings on the other side as “unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage.

If we want the world to be different, we have to demand honest use of the language, every day.

Redshift, I’m getting the same, Dennis Ross. I don’t believe W appointed anyone to fill this role. Big vacuum. Duh.

Looking more closely at the June 25, 2005 cloture vote on Bolton, 2 Democrats voted for cloture (for Bolton): Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR).

The only Republican to vote against cloture (against Bolton) was Voinovich (R-OH).

These Senators did not vote: Burns (R-MT), Coleman (R-MN), Feingold (D-WI), Johnson (D-SD), Kerry (D-MA), Kohl (D-WI), Levin (D-MI), Thune (R-SD).

In this context, a non vote was the same as a vote against cloture (and against Bolton) since it did not contribute to the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and move the nomination to a final vote. Interestingly, the noble Lincoln Chafee did vote for cloture (for Bolton).

Hugh -
Thanks, AGAIN.
—-
““This is a new normal for our administration in the last couple years,” said one senior official. “You begin to expect the unexpected.””"

This quote is EXACTLY what I meant when I said, NOTHING is NOT on the table. NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisiton!” thinking on a whole spectrum of ‘who could have imagined’ scenarious. EVERYTHING is ‘on the table’ and is possibe. EVen Spanish Inquistion scenarios.

If Dodd meant what Christy took him to mean, then his sentence structure and framing was particularly convoluted. If Dodd meant Bolton was ineffective and a bully he should have said that.

To my eyes, “ineffective” modifies “bully” in Dodd’s sentence. Especially since he used the word “bully” alone in the preceding predicate phrase.

scarecrow at 12:03 pm
BULLSEYE

OT Is Ned going to use that electricity thing you gave him in the primary, save it for the general, or do you know?

JohnC 11:50 - thank you. That would have taken me forever to find, once I saw the post.

You are very welcome.

scarecrow; good point and for a reliable offender: Linda Gradstein of NPR; One side “reports” or “says” or “tells us” to indicate that it’s a fact and the other side “claims” or “alleges” to show that the information is suspect. grrr

The Reaganites test-drove the language manipulator when the contras became freedom fighters, and it worked. They still use our language against our better instincts.

Ah Orwell.

John Casper — Probably not, and the moment is gone. I think those of us who kicked it around concluded that the story was too long and too complicated, and could only be turned to advantage through very carefull explanation far beyond the patience/capabilities of ordinary local news shows. However, according to our hostess, they’ve got it just in case it comes up again, so at least they’ll know about the history. Thanks for asking.

Update–CNN reporter saying brigade, not battalion, may go from year-long tour in Mosul into Baghdad.

John Casper…11:56am

Adie…11:59am… Thanks guys :)

3700 soldiers will likely go from Baghdad after a year’s tour of duty in Mosul if Rummy signs off, according to CNN reporter.

RE: Bolton’s Vietnam-era military service. Funny about that. I graduated in 1970 and knew the war was lost. How come I ended up in combat? Back then Guardsmen were known as “FNG’s” for good reason.

i know i’m a newbie and not to well liked for my different ME views, however……………..

scarecrow- is there really another way of describing a suicide bombing other than a terroristic attack
furthermore what should we have called 9/11
and a soldier is a representative of a governmental condoned military branch. even if you don’t agree with the governments decision there is no other way to desribe him/her
please this is not an attack just a person trying to understand anothers views

Chavez looks deep into Putin’s eyes and sees:

Aircraft and helicopters.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/.....index.html

After Bush booted Putin on the WTO issue, he was expecting … what, exactly?

Dru– yes, good examples. Notice how subtle it is, so that after time, we don’t even know how we came to perceive the credibility of different people differently. Jane/Christy have written about this many times in the broader context of political dialogue.

OT update:

First step completed: Called phone company this morning, got a young woman in Kansas, which is nowhere near where I live. i explained the sitch she said call the police. There are things they can do to trap “Anonymous” calls (caller id blocking) but not if a valid number shows up. She said sometimes wrong cell phone numbers can appear in the caller ID window but not land lines, which this number is. I asked if she knew of companies that would allow you to mask your real phone # on caller id, she said no. I asked to be transfered to phone tech support. After a longish pause, she said Well, you’d just get me, there are only three of us in the office. I hate being older. It just highlights how much most young people don’t know.

Next stop: Monrovia PD. Film at 11. Tch, like I have time for this shit!

Thanks again, guys, for all the support.

If you haven’t been back the Scorecards thread, you’ll have missed this. I can’t have that.

ROAR, Sandlin and LJ/Aquaria!

ralphbon at 12:00 pm: But he wasn’t sold as being an obstructionist, nor are they selling him that way now. What’s important here is not what makes him popular with the wingnuts, but what makes him acceptable to senators. If Dodd can make the debate about what he’s really doing, rather than a phony “pro-reform” persona, then they either have to admit it’s true and defend it, or try to argue that he’s not.

I’m not saying he’ll succeed, but putting forth the idea that he’s preventing us from getting any cooperation at the UN seems like an effective way to counter the push for “we’re in a crisis! We can’t change personnel now!” If Bush himeself, on his open mike, is saying we need an effort from the UN, then an effective argument can be made that having someone at the UN who’s obstructionist is worse “in a crisis” than changing to someone else.

very aside:
—-
folks who may like mandolin and bluegrass stuff like David Grisman’s ‘Dawg’ style…Boston area FDLers can find live Grisman show at Passim’s in Bostont tonight. Could be a way to rechage.
—
Music soothes many things, imho.

Redshift @11:58

I believe that UN reform that was in the works was mostly about expanding the number of nations on the Security Council (plus a bunch of things that while important, aren’t really relevant to this current discussion).

I think they need to move toward eliminating one country, such as China or the US, being able to bring a resolution completely to a halt with the Veto. In other words, it becomes more like a World Legislature. Obviously there would be sovereignty issues that would drive neocons into a froth hehe…but with the increasingly dangerous security situation, and with the increasing pace of globalization, I think it may be necessary.

God Bless Net-Neutral Google!
The cat who looks like John Bolton.

(aka Puss-in-Jackboots).

OT - CNN - harry reid is a victim of identity theft
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITI.....ity.theft/

Kitlers
That’s hilarious.

You gotta make Kitler shorthand for Bolton…

mommybrain, thanks for continuing to pursue the situation in the face of idiocy in corporate (NOT customer) service. Please keep us updated on your successes in establishing to your satisfaction that all is under your control.

Geez, Mommybrain - I’m surprised by the phone company’s lack of knowledge! Good luck at the PD….

Seems to me with my mom’s case, we were able to put all kinds of call blocks on the line (including anyone who did not identify by caler id)… routed them through a system (if the call were legit) and it intimidated the heck out of the guy who was trying to do the intimidating…. we were able to set up all kinds of “permissions” for which calls could go thru and which ones were blocked… but this is SoCal - perhaps there are just more crazies out here…

(but we knew he was a chickensh*t as*hole when we started and our guesses at his reaction was correct)

lo — the point is not to sanction those attacks; they were evil and dreadful. The point is to recognize that what happens from all sides is sometimes difficult to distinguish from a moral standpoint.

When the US deliberately bombed the Pakistani village last winter, hoping to kill al Qaeda leaders, but instead killed over a dozen civilians, how should we view that? Was it:

An “operation with unfortunate collateral damage?”
Or an act of state terrorism?

I would like someone to describe how these distinctions have any meaning when explaining what happens to the families.

And I’ll leave you with one other thought. Suppose you knew that if you bombed a certain building, you would surely kill an al Qaeda official. But you also knew that an innocent child was in the same building and would certaintly be killed by that bomb. What would you do?

Does it matter if the child is yours or mine, or Afghani? And if so, why?

scarecrow at 12:03

don’t suppose u remember a fella named Gingrich, and his handy lists.

SURE! It caught on, rover draws em up & spreads em; karen hughes ring a bell? rummy adds his pseudo-quaint nonsensical babblings, & those are picked up too. When was the last time you heard a half hr. straight of rhetorical questions posed AND answered by the poser - uh - BEFORE rummy grabbed the center mike?

They all feed their spokespeople.
They all feed the MSM bobbleheads.
They all feed jr., & some of the time he actually reads the stuff correctly. Even if he messes up, those dang, loaded words are so familiar to us that even WE find OURSELVES unconsciously correcting him.

‘1984′-speak has been here for awhile now.
Good luck educating the MSM/neocon-repeater-signal.

BTW, I’m not willing to give up trying either. Thanks for your own efforts, & those of all the firedawgs out there.

Won’t be easy, but we CAN make a difference.

*ilson46201-I’ll check back later for your response. Thanks
Larry

Warp Machine # 1
Bolton is just one of the many hydraheads of the same Nazi beast… but being at the UN he is in the right location to begin a redress of a problem that has plagued the planet since early man was able to wield a club. An ageless problem that has only in the past several generations threaten the survival of all life.

You know that the job created immediately post that 2001: A Space Oddity moment at the obelisk was the second oldest profession: weapons maker.

The common thread among the links above is the word “War”. So, examining Cui Bono? from war, in the context of the emerging American industrial colossus of the past 100 years (…looking for those who have profited unscathed and flourished accordingly) brings us to this group. [mod. pdf file warning]

I appreciate CHS post’s as I check in often during the day to find intelligent well thought out opinions and updates on current news and happenings, and kitlers to keep perspective on our lives. It is somehow comforting that there is others who view this world askew similarly as I do and can lay it out as understandably as CHS does while still keeping a level head about it all.

Adie — the name rings a bell. I think I agree with your point, except I might change “they” to “we” in some cases. We all fall into the trap. Pogo was right.

“i know i’m a newbie and not to well liked for my different ME views, however”
lo, as far as I am concerned, you are always welcome to post here, because you are sincere, and you are civil.
A suicide bomber sacrifices their own life when they kill others. The IRA never did that and the world came to know that the history of British occupation in Northern Ireland was not a beacon of light.

When people commit suicide, it’s a sign of extreme hopelessness. That doesn’t mean all suicide bombers are not always victims or sacrificing themselves for something worthwhile, but it’s worth noting.

When lots of people do it, it’s a sign that the hopelessness is widespread within a society.
These people have nothing to lose and that is what makes them so dangerous. I think what a lot of us fear is that it is the economic exploitation of a 2nd, 3rd world cultures by 1st world cultures that is underpinning this.

I’m working off the theory that everyone has responsibility and everyone is going to have to make some sacrifices. We need to hold everyone accountable.

“furthermore what should we have called 9/11″
This was done by a very small group of Sunni’s.
Now, Bush and Israel are driving Sunni’s, Shiia, Arab and Persian to unite against Israel and the US. That’s in no one’s interest.

Hezbollah are Shiia. The Shiia work the oil fields in Saudi Arabia for a Sunni monarchy. If the Shiia decide to cut Saudi oil production, as a show of support for Hezbollah, our gas prices could go to $10/gallon. Support for Israel will dry up in a heartbeat if this happens.
The U.S. and Israeli are operating from a position of weakness and the whole world knows it. We need that ME oil. The sooner the US and the Israel take it down a few notches, start working with people, the better it will be for everyone.
Israel will take more hits, so will the US, but this is a battle for hearts, minds, and pocketbooks imo. The pacificsts won’t win this, but neither will the chickenhawks. It’s going to take years of forgiveness, diplomacy, accountability, sacrifice, from everyone.and a whole lotta luck. No one will get what they deserve.

Dear Larry — when your level of political discourse is limited calling a human female a bitch and Lieberman is a prick, it’s kinda feeble.

Calling Condi a b**ch was specifically called out as bad form earlier in the comments but you then made the same assertion. That’s not cool, especially here…

Warp Machine # 2
Prominent names are Rockefeller, Harriman, Walker and Bush. That would be George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.
Prescott, as has been linked many times, kept the Nazis in brown shirts and helped build up their war machine as well as profiting from sales of arms to America in preparation of its defence from fascism.
Added bonus for Prescott. At the end of World War II he avoided Nuremberg prosecution himself (for which he more than qualified) and proceeded to fold all the toxic R and D fruits of the Nazi death machine into establishing the fledgling CIA and the American military industrial complex via Project Paperclip. [As linked before!]

killing innocent people is wrong no matter who they are. But by definition i think terrorism is aimed at instilling fear that innocent anybodies at anytime are at risk in the hopes of having demands met.

bombing a building full of all queda or hezbolla that also has innocent civilians can be seen as an operation with unfortunate civilian casualties esp when leaflets forewarned civilians to leave.
Now does the classification of the death of anyone as a civilian casualty diminsh the loss of life, surely not but there is a distinction.
i hope this makes sense

BTW if anyone is interested, Lieberman is on the following committees:

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Armed Services
Environment/Public Works
Small Business Committees

scarecrow at 12:21

IMO, you HAVE spotlighted a big problem.

Thanks for bringing it up.

Impossible to deal with such things in public, without touching raw nerves all around, but people must be made aware of how language is used and abused in a political sense.

I do think most FDLers are aware, so there’s an element of preaching to the choir here.

Don’t neglect other venues. Your message is important.

Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an ultra-conservative Jew — does that make all Israelis terrorists? Shamir blew up the biggest hotel in Jerusalem — does that make all Jews terrorists? Arial Sharon enabled the Massacre of Shabra and Shattila — are all Israeli leaders war criminals?

Dont tar with a broad brush the actions of a minority within a large group…

There’s very little that enhances the diminishment of loss of life for the dead persons themselves, methinks.