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I'm pretty much there with you.

There is no way that President Bush would ask, say, the NSA to do anything illegal is there?

And, although there may be a few renegades, there isn't much of official Washington that would use secrets for political gain.

But then there is the press which has recently developed some badly misplaced priorities, actively supporting and publicizing leaks of sensitive ongoing intelligence and military operations against the enemy over and over again. You would think it would be easy to understand that this harms our national security, yet much of the mainstream media passes over the issue in silence. On the other hand, they have endless energy and interest in a kerfuffle involving no crime.

Maybe the media will start taking the war more seriously if Al Qaeda makes significant progress in their announced goal of killing four million Americans. Or maybe not. If there are more successful large scale terrorist attacks in the United States, aided by the media's disclosure of on-going military and intelligence operations, I expect that the majority of the media won't engage in self-examination, but will rather most likely start banging the drums from the fever swamp. The fever swamp runs deep, and support for the President among the media is thin.

Well, if the other party gains power, maybe things will change... or maybe not.

Thank goodness we are a country where you can still engage in dissent against the mainstream.

I wonder if all of you realize that in order for the gov't to spy on someoen by the patriot act, they must be a known al-qaeda contact and one of the contact must be _overseas_

if that applies to anyone here... and you think you're being watched wrongly, you can complain. for the rest of us, regardless of what the media tells you, the gov't isnt listening to your phone calls.
(http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle. asp?ID=20635)

It is standard technique to attack the messenger and question their motives as a way to divert attention from the central issue and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the arguments or opinions raised. I would counter in the same vane that you seem to be an appologist for Bush or someone that feels that the President needs to be followed without question or that if Bush does wrong, if anyone else did wrong in the past in that same post, it makes it alright. Which I disagree with. The issues I raised were about what is happening now. The fact that Bush's ratings are down so badly are an indication that I am not the only one that is calling into question his actions, his judgement, his approach, his agenda and who is consituents really are.

It is odd you say this because it is actually what I am intending to do, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the arguments or opinions raised. I am of the belief that the only reason this is an issue now is because we are using it for political gain. Not because anyone has a sincere notion that the government did anything wrong. As I have stated other presidents have done the exact same thing and nobody cared. I didn't want to defend Bush, Carter or Clinton but it has become necessary because this is some witch-hunt where we are all the sudden trying to arrest people for stopping at red lights (that's what the law say you can do). It is as if this problem just popped up and GW is evil because of it. (Or maybe it is bad because GW is evil).

The fact that his ratings are down really don't have anything to do with this other then people are misstating the facts on purpose to gain political ground against him. As a matter of fact, after his speech Sunday night, his ratings jumped a good bit. But that isn't the point. I know you're concerned with what was done and how it was done. I'm going to assume that you only recently became aware that the government had the ability to do this or that it has done it in the past. Again, it doesn't seem right but it isn't illegal to do.

Some of the central themes I see are that Bush and Co. do not want oversight. That is a key issue. The FISA court was set up so there was oversight by the judicial branch as it has been all along and necesarrily so. What Bush did was direct that the wiretaps should be done without FISA oversight (which was for forgein nationals) and that U.S. Citizens were wiretapped. This I think is a clear and substantial change in the operation of wiretapping and clearly goes against the Constitutional protections we have as U.S. Citizens. This is different and on an entirely different level than all previous presidents.

It might be easier to just reply inline like we would in exchanging email. I will give you that Bush might not want oversight. Oversight means more people have the information and one of the democrat senators that were informed of these steps when they were first taken seems to be the source of the leak that caused what we are discussing today. Oversight seems to have a good way of aiding the enemy when someone see it as political ground to be gained.

You do however need to replace the What bush has done with what the democrats have done seeing how it was in '77 when the FISA laws were enacted and in '79 carter changed them with an executive order to get around the "FISA court" and then again in the '95 Clinton changed definition so to include a wider range of people who can actually bypass the courts. You are also under the wrong impression that FISA was only intended for forge in nationals. It extends to the agents of those nationals regardless of their nationality. Here is a quick read that might clear some things up for you. Everything in the article is verifiable. Of course the article mentions the laws before the patriot a

Asperger's exists, but your sig is fine: it helps clarify that AS is not just geekiness.

I have a diagnosis for Aspergers which I got in the middle of a breakdown, and has been very useful in helping me to get the resources that I needed to get well. I am still prone to staying in the house for days on end, whereupon I get cabin fevour, although I can lie, and tell truth from fiction. My breakdown occurred because a therapist undermined me over a period of several years: over that time, I corrected what he was telling me, without realising the conclusions that he was drawing. I look at it now, and I am amazed: my therapist thought that I was a psycho because I told him that the golden rule doesn't work "because different people want different things", and because I valued freedom "but I'm not so much into equality"... My love of the subtle and the self-organising was taken for cunning and not caring...

Maybe Leo Strauss had a point with his concept of the Straussian text, which has an exoteric ("outward") meaning that wasn't necessarily the same as the meaning drawn by the careful thinker. I ignored the exoteric, and, like Nietzsche, enjoyed using terms against their usual emphasis. In Straussian terms, I was being irresponsible, and I paid for it with a major mental collapse.

Do I have Aspergers? Nowadays, having mostly pulled out of my breakdown, I barely suffer any social symptoms that I had. Certainly, there's still a trace, but prolongued analysis of many miscommunications, and the sequence of events that led to my breakdown have by and large prevented me from further major miscommunication as far as I can tell, and indeed it is common for Aspergans to aquire social skills (albiet late). I still have major problems with timeliness, and my ex- comes around once a week to help me to tidy my house, or else I wouldn't do it. It's not that I don't care: I love a tidy house; it's that I get trapped in routine and other activities...

I am nowhere near as incapable as the character described in the Grandparent post, but I definately have difficulties. I also have advantages: I studied maths at Cambridge, and although I failed through depression, I was seen as being very capable by my supervisor. So, corny and PC though it sounds, I do not consider AS to be a disease, but rather a case of cognitive specialisation.

To belief the reverse is simple Strausian doublethink (paragraph six).

It is amazing how many scientifically educated individuals, or at least scientifically aware individuals in fact appear to deduce the opposite of that which is reached with a simple application of Bayesian logic.

Late last year it was reported US and British goverments forced the shutdown of 20 extremist websites in 17 countries. A quick search will show you plenty of these cases, but here is one article .

One thing to point out about this entire thread though. To the best of my knowledge ICANN has never messed with DNS or any such action to take down these sites, its always been governments forcing individual ISPs to shut them down. So the whole argument about taking down websites and the US retaining control of the basic web infrastructure, aren't really related much as the US has never used that method to take down websites (yet). In theory they could and that is worrisome and probably worth a more long-term look at who should control this. Not that I'm terribly in awe of the UN's effectiveness, but since I personally think sites should only be taken down in the most extreme cases (or never) the UN's very ineffectiveness to reach a consensus could actually work in our favor here ;-)

Jihad at San Francisco State

CU prof's essay sparks dispute - Prof Ward Churchill says 9/11 victims were not innocent people

USF Professor Sami Al-Arian calls for "Death of Israel" and "Damn America"

University of New Mexico Professor Richard Berthold addressed the terrorist attacks in his morning class on Western Civilization, remarking, "Anyone who can bomb the Pentagon has my vote

US Universities have been especially anti-American since the '60s.
Of course, they don't mind that the government helps to pay their salaries.

Why the UN? Because there's no corruption in the UN, right?

NO! That is a recipe for continuation of the status quo. They BOTH need to feel the heat NOW. Otherwise the Dems will take over and think their social agenda of increasing the loss of our freedoms for different reasons was the cause of their "success" at the polls. You wind up in a perpetual seesaw resulting in the steady elimination of all rights equally between the two. You repeatedly trade bully one for bully two, then reverse and repeat.

There is nothing you or I can do to stop the pendulum of the bi-polar polity, other than convince enough people who will vote to actually change it. There was a chance at a third party with clout, but Buchanan, the Republican loyalist to the end, took the FEC money and trashed them in 2000. Demcorats still blame Nader, the fools, they should be blaming Buchanan, Perot and Ventura.

In the current circumstances, the best that can be achieved is an evenness of parties, and the abrasion that comes with it. I think that a large part of the economic boom in the 90's was due to the great friction between the parties. Neither side had enough power to suck their vigorish off of the top, and the free market that could, did. The equities traders screwed it up, but equity traders should be dealt with. If they didn't venture for capitalisation of the business, they are leeches, sucking from the valuation of the compensation provided to the producers of the product.

An Abridged Listing Why I Beat Upon Republicans Presently

The republicans have gained the upper hand in large part by betraying both their core ideology and the Dreamtime America. NeoConservatism's maturation can be traced from marxism to trotskyite CIA stooges to Scoop Jackson DemoHawks to Reagan to the Son of Bush. They have never given up the marxist trait of spewing rhetoric, the truth notwithstanding. The self-confessed American traitor, David Horrowitz calls Kerry and Fonda traitors, and is given stature within the Right. The putrescence of moral relevancy oozing from the partisan defense of a president who fixed the intelligence and the facts around his policy of familial vengence, and took America into an unrighteous conflict without contemplating the aftermath. a president who sings sweet songs of liberty and democracy, yet gives aid to dictatorial destroyers of democracy, has liasons with leaders loathsome of liberty, and goes out on ManDates with Saudi Princes who come to the USA laden with extra baggage.

When did conservatives begin to support due process of law applied inequally to humans? That is a high crime against America, yet they still repeatedly remind us that a stained blue dress is impeachable? Why not decry Blood-Stained Iraq Sands?

Bush's SCOTUS nomimee Roberts is a dangerous and activist judge who DOES NOT adjudicate using original intent, and all the country can think about is which way he'll decide on abortion cases. His assent in the Hamdi v Rumsfeld appeal is frightful. It posits that a president is above the very law that legitimises his power, stating this is a function of war power, in a war upon unstated enemies, of an indeterminate duration. Why hasn't anyone asked Roberts just what the hell he was doing during that ongoing criminal enterprise: The Reagan Administration? This is ano

• Pictures labeling people "racist" and "traitor"
• A feature article: Requiem for the Left: They're All Stalinists (and Hypocrites) Now
• Another article, Nixon: The "Anti-Semite" Who Saved Israel
• Prominently featuring David Horowitz.

Yeah, it's a right wing rag. (not to imply that there aren't a lot of left wing rags, too)

• Pictures labeling people "racist" and "traitor"
• A feature article: Requiem for the Left: They're All Stalinists (and Hypocrites) Now
• Another article, Nixon: The "Anti-Semite" Who Saved Israel
• Prominently featuring David Horowitz.

Yeah, it's a right wing rag. (not to imply that there aren't a lot of left wing rags, too)

• Pictures labeling people "racist" and "traitor"
• A feature article: Requiem for the Left: They're All Stalinists (and Hypocrites) Now
• Another article, Nixon: The "Anti-Semite" Who Saved Israel
• Prominently featuring David Horowitz.

Yeah, it's a right wing rag. (not to imply that there aren't a lot of left wing rags, too)

the columbine kids did not draw upon an all-encomapssing idealogy or fight for a cause; nor did they have outside support. The ONLY similarity is that they killed.

There is a way to be so lucky.

some kids get it easier than others

"Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Leave the talk here to nerdy stuff. Take your Israel-bigotry to the craigslist forums. They're so out there, they think basically think Clinton was a radical right winger. Such idiots we have on these Internets...

The state department is wrong.

Oh yeah, and lets not forget that we could have killed al Zarqawi in the past, because we knew right where he was and we had had him cornered. This was not our agenda however, so we let him live.

Which is also why President Clinton declined to take custody of bin Laden when offered him. Hindsight is always 20/20, ain't it?

I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.

A war is an armed conflict.

You cannot have a "war" on terror. War simply spreads more terror.

Yes, you can. And yes, it does.

If a people are being oppressed (from their prespective, not ours), they will spread terror against their oppressors.

That's a naive viewpoint. It's hard to terrorize your oppressors when your oppressor can gas an entire village of people and slaughter them all. If revolutions were this simple, there'd be no more dictators.

A man is the most dangerous when you take away his hopes and dreams, and from their perspective this is exactly what we have done (I am sure I stole that quote from somewhere).

*double take* BWUAH!? We have taken whose hopes and dreams? Al Qaeda's? Well, yeah, then good, fuck them. Iraq? How in the world have the hopes and dreams of Iraqis been dashed by the United States?

Lets not forget that only one nation has ever used a Nuclear Bomb during warfare, and it was used on civilians, TO SPREAD TERROR!

Everybody loves to drag this one out. I think the power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without as much loss of life, but I wasn't sitting in the Oval Office in 1945 looking at casualty lists and projecting casualty lists of an invasion of Japan's homeland and trying to make a decision. I think that Truman really thought he was doing the right thing for America. The bomb was not dropped to "spread terror," that was an ancillary benefit.

At least the polls are starting to show that Americans have started to figure out that Bush is evil, however it is too bad it took this long! Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

I don't believe the man is evil. Men like Osama bin Laden are evil. Men like Saddam Hussein are evil. It's a little disturbing how comfortably and easily you draw a moral equivilency between a regime that fed political opponents into plastic shredders and the current American president.

In case anyone cares to read more, I dug up some links:

Skulls, boats and genocide

Multiple Migrations

I'm not aware of any other nation, anywhere, any time, that has been so forgiving of such vicious sedition. We are so magnanimous and tolerant in our strength that we allow filthy little termites like these to teach in our colleges, when in practically any other time and place in human history the vermin would be lucky to continue to draw breath. Got it?

-ccm

For those concerned about the government taking their home for a Walmart, she's solidly against the government abusing eminent domain to enrich private developers. The daughter of a poor Alabama sharecropper, she consistly sides with those who lack political power and connections--those who can't keep their homes from being taken away with a single, well-placed phone call.

Brown would also expose just how condescending modern liberalism is toward black people. In every other group (i.e. Jews), a multiplicy of viewpoints is accepted by all. But liberals viciously attack any black person who dares to break with the one point of view they dictate as acceptable. Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and Janice Brown are all exceptionally intelligent and able. As you'll notice if there are confirmation hearings, like Condi, she's quite attractive and articulate.

Liberalism treats blacks as if they must live on the liberal plantation and always vote Democratic. No thinking is allowed. Liberals do not like 'uppity' blacks. They like race-ranting mouthpieces like Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Sharpton. Fortunately, a new wind is blowing.

You can read more about Judge Janice Rogers Brown here and here.

The negatives? You hear that soon enough, stuff so vile you'll wonder why Judge Brown has not been locked up in an institution for the criminally insane. Write those who say such things off as bigots.

--Mike Perry, Seattle, Editor: The Life of Toussaint L'Overture: The Negro Patriot of Hayti

Report: 108 Died In U.S. Custody

Do you believe the myth that "American Indians" were created by a Divine Being in the Americas? If not, aren't they also immigrants? Maybe they even committed genocide against a previous group of inhabitants.

What then? 2 years? 5? Off with his head? Whatt is going to rehabilitate him?

An ass-kicking.

Oh wait. That's not civilized.

Being civilized means the uncivilized get to walk all over us.

Perhaps Ward Churchill can help us understand why Mr Grisby deserved to be robbed.

Parent poster said:

It's more than a little ironic that the only foreign invasions Canada has ever faced have come from its southern border. 8^)

Kicked our red, white and blue asses, too. We don't mention those non-wars in our history classes much, either.

Rumor has it you bastards even have a Canadian Navy sub in a shopping mall somewhere

Meanwhile, here's an Iraqi viewpoint on the whole war thing. When in doubt, ask the victims what they think of the change in management.

• without them
• with our own posse, on our own dime
• in our own security interests
• in the world's security interests
• in accordance with previous UN resolutions
• when French diplomats had previously indicated that they would not veto the war
• ...and then expect the US to allow French companies to make money off of the reconstruction

Some might even say that France is Our Oldest Enemy. Come to think of it, many French seemed to be adapting to the Vichy government quite well.

(Thus sayeth the American with French and German heritage, among others.)

Here's a good news story:

America, the Great Santa

Did you know the U.N. is building a new headquarters, at the cost of US$1.3 billion? Where is the outrage?

Here is a news story on the Iran earthquake, also long since forgotten:

"Long Live Israel, Long Live America"

I also highly recommend this article which I just came across. It is a scholarly debate on "The Koran and Anti-Semitism" and involves Jewish, Christian and Islamic scholars.

On the second page of this article, the Jewish scholar says:
I certainly do not deny the numerous borrowings of the Qur'an from Jewish and Christian scriptures. I only underlined their re-interpretation, and application in theological and legal constructions entirely unique to Islam. For instance the Hebrew Abraham is not the same as the Muslim Abraham who prepared to sacrify Ishmael (instead of Isaac), and built with him the Kaaba. And the same goes for other biblical figures mentioned in the Qur'an including Jesus, the Muslim prophet, Isa.

The Muslim scholar responds:
To state that the Abraham of the Qur'an is not the Abraham of the Torah is so ridiculous that no scholar of repute would dare say something like that.

The Jewish scholar counter-responds:
I am surprised by the diatribe provoked by my remark on the different identities of the people named in the Bible and in the Qur'an. The Qur'an states in several verses that they are the same people and therefore this is a matter of faith. But Professor Muhammad will allow Jews and Christians to have another view on their own Scriptures, and, in fact, most of their scholars do not adopt the Muslim interpretation, although there is a tendency now in interfaith dialogue to avoid the matter. I have created no new fact and I do not understand Prof. Muhammad's irritation if I say for instance, that King David was an Israelite King of Israel and not a Muslim prophet - although I do acknowledge this Muslim belief which I do not share.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.a sp?ID=15859

McCarthyism (when freedom of expression went out the window)

You should try reading "Traitor" by Ann Coulter (neoNazi on Fox). I skimmed part of it and she seems to think that they ought to bring that back...

Even this right-wing dirtbag David Horowitz (gee, I wonder if he's another Jew neocon) had problems with the book The Trouble with "Treason"

Every nation has the right to self defence

Kindly explain how deliberately shooting pregnant women at point blank range constitutes "self defence".

Two Arab terrorists executed each little girl at point blank range with a shot to each one's head, the youngest child being only a two-year-old, after they first blew their mother to bits.

Some "self defence" huh? From what? An unborn child who one day might cry too loudly?

Wake up, they are a murderous death-cult with no concern for human life, Israeli or their own.

Self defence. Puhleese!

Technology is the least of our Middle East problems. Support for Israel may be the greatest cause of our problems.


Yes. How stupid are we to support the only liberal democracy in the middle east (iraq not withstanding). How stupid we are to support the only place in the middle east where both Jewish and Arab Muslim have citizenship and live together to reserach and produce amazing products and technologies. We should just allow Israel to be destroyed.

Grow a brain

One futuristic but likely scenario is Korean/Chinese soldiers battling American national guardsmen in Los Angeles. When groups like the Korean-Americans refuse to assimilate, they become a problem.

Scott Johnson, of Power Line writes about how working to undo the damage of the Patriot Act is such a left wing position:

The concept of secrecy during wartime does not seem like much of a theme with which to scandalize average citizens. Average citizens might be more interested in seeking the thread that connects left-wing legal outfits such as the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The thread that is apparent to me from my visit to the Guild convention is the assault on the critical legal components of the defense of the United States from its Islamofascist enemies in the name of a Constitution that in reality they hate.

I don't have much firsthand experience with The Weekly Standard. It has the reputation of tilting conservative, but not in the rabid, right-is-good-left-is-bad style of, say, Newsmax. So I'll give this one a pass.

Little Green Footballs, on the other hand, is a lair of unrepudiated scoundrals. I don't think I can do better a better job illustrating that than this quiz.

Calling LGF and Power Line critical, at least as in critical thinking is as much a misnomer as calling the seat of power during the largest expansion of government in the past 50 years a conservative administration

Of course, it leaves out a number of things, like the connection between Iraq and the 1995 OKC bombing. For that, you'll have to read this or this.

Iraq has had a lot more involvement in terror, specifically terror against the US than many people know and than the news agencies let on. We've also found a number of WMD that were never reported by the mass media. You should really read David Kay's report to congress.

A summary of David Kay's findings

more info about Iraq WMDs.

Singers:
shut up and sing!

Journalists:
Shut up and just REPORT the damn news!

We IMPLORE you!

FYI:

Bill Moyers is not a journalist, he is a political activist.

A shell? What, a whole one? That couldn't just be a shell mislaid from earlier times?

Worst of all, we didn't need to attack Iraq. We had Blix inside, troops massed on Iraqs borders. Any chemical attack, and we'd have been right to go right in.

I don't often participate in Slashdot discussions when politics is involved; for what reasons, I'm not sure. However, I feel that you have made some factually incorrect points, sir. Whether you know this or not is not my concern, rather giving proper information is.

The swift boat stuff was all concerned actions 30+ years ago. Did Kerry tell recent lies about those actions? I don't think so -- all the fact checking I've seen supports Kerry and says the swift boat gang are liars.

In fact Kerry has lied about href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=K erry+V+device&btnG=Search+News">his service

Even though President Bush's records have come to be something of a hinderance to his re-election campaign, my research on Senator Kerry has shown that he is far more apt to take liberty with his service record to be all things to all people. Therein lies John Kerry's major flaw: He wants to be on both sides of the fence--a decorated war hero and an anti-war advocate.

Posting anonymously, because the popular view on slashdot seems to be more liberal and libetarian, and I'm a bit more of a conservative geek than that.

"On O'Reilly anyone expressing their views to forcefully will have their microphones cut or ask to "Shut up" in a stunningly unprofessional way. "

This is complete BS. I've seen O'Reilly quite a few times, and the only times he's cut someone's mike is when either (a) they were passing off completely unsubstantiated lies or (b) they were completely dodging O'Reilly's questions.

And then about CNN - you don't think it's a conflict of interest for Carville and Begala to work directly for the Kerry campaign _and_ be on TV? The fact that you can point out one instance of Fox News doing the right thing and CNN doing the wrong this doesn't mean it's an epidemic. Are you sure you're not just ignoring the times when CNN is unethical?

'They don't have a Hannity telling you "180 more days before George Bush gets relected". You can't do that in journalism, one ought to say "180 more days for the 2004 election".'

Except that Hannity is not a journalist. Hannity & Colmes is a right-wing/left-wing slugfest. Period. Hannity pulls for the right and Colmes pulls for the left. I don't see the problem here.

""Where WMDs found in Iraq?""

Yes. The fact that you aren't aware of them just means that you don't pay enough attention. The fact that Fox News watchers probably have other sources of news as well (other than Fox or the traditional media) is not what the traditional media wants. For information on Iraq's WMD finds, see here and here, not to mention the WMD that were shipped to Syria and used in an attempted assassination of King Hussein of Jordan.

""Is there a connection between Iraq and 9/11 ?""

Yes! Hussein Al-Hussany, who helped McVeigh in the OKC bombing, was a member of the Republican Guard, and after the OKC bombing went to work for Logan national airport. Hussein Al-Hussany sued Jayna Davis for slander for publishing reports about this, AND LOST. Ramzi Youssef, one of the ones who carried out the first WTC bombing, was being employed by Iraq at the time.

Anyway, it's a long connection, but the imminent connection is between the larger war on terror and Iraq, and between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, which noone denies exists.

Of course, the people who don't believe network news don't come up with the same answers as the people who do, but that doesn't make their answers wrong. What can I say but look up the facts and check them yourself.

As for that, I haven't heard that argument from any conservatives

That's strange, because I can't think of a single conservative mouthpiece or media source who has not said something similar to the grandparent's posting. The following comes up in the first few pages of a Google search:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp ?ID=6317
The Hate America Left
Ben Johnson, columnist, FrontPageMagazine.com

http://anncoulter.com/columns/2002/070302.htm
Liberalism And Terrorism: Different Stages Of Same Disease
Ann Coulter, AnnCoulter.com

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/weekend_sites/080 904_081304/content/what_would_happen_if.guest.html
"For every eye that has to police the protesters, that's one eye less watching for terrorists. Do they care? No... You hate the president. You hate the country."
Rush Limbaugh Transcript, 8/12/2004

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/2/26 /124459.shtml
'Hate-America Leftists' Lead the Appeasement Movement
Wes Vernon, columnist NewsMax.com

http://www.americandaily.com/article/917
"People who hate America... these are John Kerry's constituents"
JB Williams, columnist, The American Daily

http://www.americandaily.com/article/2390
The Hate-America Crowd Speaks Its Mind
Doug Patton, columnist, The American Daily

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/07/04/loc_br onson4.html
Hate-America crowd has its own picnic
Cincinati Inquierer, columnist, Peter Bronson

http://www.wtoctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2028797
"Why are people who hate America still living here?"

Bill Carthcart, WTOC 11, Savannah Georgia
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp 20040706.shtml

Michael Moore and the problem of American self-hatred
Dennis Prager, Townhall.com

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArti cle.asp?ID=14125
Hate-America Advocates
Jean Pearce, Frontpage Magazine

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2159
American Academics Who Hate America
Daniel Pipes, Capitalism Magazine

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArti cle.asp?ID=9298
A Hate-America Superhero
Joshua Elder, FrontPageMagazine.com

Read Christopher Hitchens article on this movie before you fall for it hook, line, and sinker. Hitchens is a lefty, by the way, or at least he was one, but he seems to be waking from his stupor.

Boy, what a bunch of idiots here at Slashdot. It would be depressing if I let it get to me.

Hitchens is a liberal claims the parent post

Liberal compared to whom? Tom DeLay? The late Francisco Franco?

Hitchens likes to think of himself as a modern George Orwell. A man who has turned away from misguided leftist views toward more informed right wing views.

After seeing communism and various other forms of leftism during the civil war in Spain (where Orwell was almost killed by Soviet NKVD assassins), Orwell turned against some of his leftist views. Out of this came is masterpiece 1984, which was inspired by Stalin's Soviet Union.

But there are a few things that "Hitch" misses in his alcoholic fog as he compares himself to Orwell:

1. Orwell was one of the greatest english stylists of the twentieth century. Few people would make a similar claim for "Hitch".
2. Orwell's turning away from the left did not involve embracing people from the ultra-right wing like Ken Starr and John Ashcroft.
3. Orwell did not move rightward for personal financial gain. I would guess that "Hitch" has found it more profitable to be a right wing pundit than a poorly paid writer for The Nation .

Rather than being a modern Orwell, as Hitchens would like to believe himself to be, he is more like David Horowitz, someone who went from shallow left wing views to equally shallow right wing views. Hitchens is a second rate writer seeking a profitable gig.

Ok, who modded this down all the way from 5 to -1, Redundant? How can this possibly be redundant? There is no mention of Hitchens or his rebuttal before this post. Was it modded down only because it provided a half-decent rebuttal of Moore's movie? Was it modded down by the same people who cried out (and rightly so) when Republican morons attempted to pressure movie managers into not playing this movie? Seems a bit hypocritical to me...

Anyways, here's a link to the full article rebutting Moore's movie. I'm curious whether this post will be modded down as well... after all, dissenting viewpoints are dangerous...

Wanna bet this gets modded flamebait/offtopic because it deviated from the "useful idiot" line of leftist /. pap?

But spending money to turn a city police station into a war room for day to day operations? I know it's crime-ridden New York city and all, but this is beginning to get ridiculous. If they actually need to fund the police that heavily, they have bigger problems than public service deficiencies. Like this one: they're looking less like a democracy and more like a police state... ;o)

Maybe if they would stop nailing people to the wall for protecting themselves against crime (N.B., there are quite a few other examples of NYC persecuting self defense), there wouldn't be this "need" to make a war room.

The first hurdle was cleared in the spring of 1998. In the middle of "Monica-gate," Clinton signed a secret memorandum of notification ? informally called a "finding" ? that explicitly allowed the CIA and other U.S. armed forces to take actions that might lead to bin Laden's death. Before the finding was signed, the military and the CIA were supposed to avoid any action that might, conceivably, result in the death of bin Laden or other targeted persons. Unfortunately, the finding was not a death warrant. Clinton's order did not overturn a long-standing ban on political assassinations. The legal distinction was Clintonesque: Bin Laden could be killed accidentally, but not on purpose. So, a covert team could accidentally shoot bin Laden in the crossfire, but not aim at him. At least inside America's increasingly rule-laden intelligence services, this was seen as a major bureaucratic step forward. Operatives no longer had to avoid actions that might set off a chain of events that might possibly result in bin Laden's death. If bin Laden was killed, the covert team would have little to fear from military or Justice Department lawyers. Ordinarily, if a covert operation turned lethal, a federal criminal investigation could be launched.

Bill Clinton gave the CIA instructions to get Osama Bin Laden dead or alive, but lacked sufficient information or international support to carry the order out, the former US president said this weekend.Government sources have said the Clinton administration gave the Central Intelligence Agency approval to conduct covert operations targeting bin Laden in 1998, following the bombings that year of two US embassies in east Africa.

Echoing President George Bush's approach, if not his words, Mr Clinton said: "At the time we did everything we can do. I authorised the arrest and, if necessary, the killing of Osama bin Laden and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it.

sweatshops - get a clue

I suppose that you have some theory as to why we took over Iraq (a secular non-terrorist country) in response to Osama and some other Saudis attacked us?

You proceed from false assumptions. Iraq may well have been a secular country, but it was hardly "non-terrorist." Would a "non-terrorist" country provide safe harbor to terrorists such as Abu Abbas (matermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking) and Abu Nidal (a Palestinian terrorist with a lengthy rap sheet)? Would a "non-terrorist" country have its intelligence agents communicating and coordinating with 9/11 planner Mohammed Atta? Would the leader of a "non-terrorist" country ante up $25k for each family of each Palestinian homicide bomber who carried out his mission of murder? Read this and this and get your facts straight.

Of course, that ignores the fact that all of the major news services are either extremist right wing

Again, you're assuming "facts" not in evidence. Since when is Fox News the only game in town? (Even that assumes that Fox News is "extremist right wing," which you would realize is false if you had ever watched it. Making the same claim for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, etc. is even more absurd. You would have to be to the left of Lenin to conjure up a claim like that.)

If all you're going to do is waste my (and others') time with logical fallacy after logical fallacy, then I see no point in continuing this discussion. Arguing with someone who substitutes errors, omissions, distortions, and lies for truth is pointless.

That was not the point to force the war.

I think that whatever Iraq becomes (democracy paradise, religious dictatorship, etc) it will not be a friend of USA.

Your sarcasm is welcome, but take note that the accused part are those that supposedly are given Iraq freedom, human rights and democracy

Actually, the WMDs are probably buried in sand. Saddam seems to have had a penchant for burying things.

Strangely enough, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell agree with the Iraqi cleric that 9/11 was an act of God. While you are thinking about those hardline religious folks, keep that in mind.

The Forbes article is quite right. Minimum wage laws do not cause massive unemployment, but this depends on the minimum wage increase. For example, increasing minimum wage from $5 to $6 will only unemploy people making $5/h, which is clearly a minority. This does not make minimum wage beneficial at all, as overall employment has decreased, and nobody gets an increase in their wages either.
If someone makes $0.75/h, surely a minimum wage of say, $3, $4, or $5 will cause drastic unemployment. I'm not sure what level you wish to set, but too little a minimum wage will be pointless, and too high a level will be devastating. Anything in between will be a combination of both.

The article's most supportive claim for your argument is as follows:
Minimum wage can help in certain situations when the free market is values labor lower than what it should be. By increasing minimum wage they will shuffle off into more productive employment.

This is indeed possible. The free market is not smooth. It is often jerky and sudden, as the business cycle indicates. But it is difficult to tell when labor is being undervalued. A permanent minimum wage policy may do good in some situations, but harm in many others. I apologize for not providing more examples, my books are in another city at the moment.

Here's the NYTimes link that isn't dead, it's not directly about unemployment, but rather about the situation of 'exploited' labor:
here
And although we can't follow up Nhep Chanda, between working in a factory, and looting through garbage, she'd probably be better off 20 years from now with the former.


A combination of pure capitalism and socialism can be beneficial, particularly in controlling education, pollution, and natural monopolies. This much is true. The effects of other policies are questionable.
Thank you for the debate and I hope we've both taken something out of this,
Killswitch1968