I think what bugs people like you is that, silently, they fear that they actually are dumber.
Nope. Doesn't bother me at all.
I think the height of stupidity, however, is to keep doing the same thing expecting different results. Like the Dems are doing lately.
what you're saying is basically that the majority is always right?
Well, the entire idea of a democratic type government is that more than half the people are more than right half the time. Always Right? No. Often enough? Yes.
Or, put another way, if some candidate is smarter and proposes better policies, he will necessarily be elected.
Most politicians have no special skill better than finding and holding office. This is true on both sides of the fence. How do they get that office? By selling what people will buy.
People 'buy' what is in their interest. Looking at the presidential and senate races, the people have decided that electing democrats, for a variety of reasons, is against their interests.
I could go into why I think this is the case, but that wasn't the point of my original post.
I'm not gonna argue with you about weapons of mass destruction, Iraq-Al Qaeda connections, etc, because if you surf political sites as much as I do, those things have been talked to death.
My point was that the democrats will continue to lose power until they realize that certain behaviors, ideals, and platforms on their side are highly destructive to their popularity.
In this thread, I leave it to the democrats to ponder what those destructive elements might be.
China, Buddhism, Communism all await your concession speech, oh champion of majority rule.
Tell me that China has any sort of consensual, democratic government, and we can discuss them.
Buddism? I don't see what that has to do with anything here.
Communism? That's a failed adventure in social structure, now isn't it? If any communist country could even hold a candle to ours, we might have a discussion. China isn't so much communist as facist, North Korea is utterly worthless outside a weapons program that's still 30 years behind us, and Cuba is an insignificant Banana republic.
The Soviet Union Collapsed.
So, challenger of majority rule, bring me some opposing group that's worth even discussing.
So he provides some evidence, and you respond with "but I didn't want *that* evidence!"
I suppose I should have pointed out HOW MANY MILLIONS OF TIMES i've seen his 'evidence.'
Suppose I grant you his 'evidence' is true, and widely accepted. Kerry still would have lost, because of the fundamental problems I'm talking about.
'Evidence' for various sides has been batted back and forth ad naseum on this and countless other message boards, and i've been at bat many times.
The only thing we can consistently see is that the democrats lose.
But you want a reason that the democratic party failed. Here, I'll try one: the democratic party is less able to mislead people into believing that they share an agenda.
Keep telling yourself that you just need to fool the people more, and fight dirtier. See how far it gets you.
And if you believe that GWB and crew are actually republicans, and not self-proclaimed neoconservatives hijacking the republican party, then you have some more research to do
Although I don't agree with everything Bush has done, I think he's the right president at the right time.
As for the republican party, I'm hoping that the Democratic party will finish dying soon, so another party can rise up that's actually closer to my beliefs. Maybe constitutionalists, some folks along those lines. Until then, I'll pick whoever's closer to what I want.
My point was that the Democrats continue to lose without bothering to question if there's anything fundamentally wrong with their beliefs and platform.
I don't want to argue about any shortcomings of Bush or the republicans, as I'm familiar with them, and I can live with them until a credible alternative comes along.
It should be obvious by now, however, that the shortcomings of the democrats are near fatal in comparison.
You keep up with that righteous indignation. See how far it gets you.
By all means, keep doing the same things over and over again. You'll see the same results. But keep it up.
Why? Cause you're smarter than the rest of America! And smart + $0.75 will get you a cup of coffee!
Oh, yeah, from my side of the aisle, there were no "Good Guys" on the left, and there was plenty of dirty fighting all around. Don't kid yourself that your only problem was Karl Rove conned the American people better than you did.
Americans may not be dumb, but a large percentage of them are surely living under a rock! And that's certainly not the fault of "liberal" Democrats.
You didn't actually READ my comment, did you?
You can cherry pick particular issues all you want, but the fact remains there's something fundamentally wrong with the democrats, and like you, they can't even begin to fathom what it is.
They will continue to lose by ever more embarassing margins until the party comes to terms with it's faults.
Please stop trying to claim that the above people are conservatives. They are not. They are the American version of the Taliban.
You make statements like this, and wonder why you and your kind are not taken seriosly by the majority of the public?
Go read some stories about how the Taliban ran Afgahnistan. Read about what they did to women. Read about how they beat men on the street for not having long enough beards and stoned women for getting raped. Read about the true face of evil. Saddam's regime would be a primer on this too.
Then come back here and tell me that the millions of YOUR COUNTRYMEN, some of which you know, are the same as the Taliban.
You keep losing because there's something clearly wrong with you, not the American people. You're welcome to keep denying your faults, as it will just lead to increasingly larger margins of victory for republicans.
Then maybe, one day, when the democratic party has drowned itself in a 5 gallon bucket it refused to pull its head out of, a new party can rise to counter the real faults of the republican party (which are quite different than what you imagine.)
It's funny that your side loses, and you think, well, obviously we haven't been fighting nearly dirty enough. Guess I gotta step it up a notch!
After such a tremendous and consistent loss, I think it's funny there's no consideration as to wether your message, platform, and candidates are fundamentally flawed. You lost the presidency, house, and senate seats, and have the gall to blame the citizens for your failure, instead of considering what's wrong with you.
Oh yeah, as a Bush voter, you folks have been fighting tooth and nail for the past year and half, and have had most of the media on your side too.
You went negative all the time, but couldn't find a charge that stuck. Republicans already have their share of people spouting garbage & conspiracy theories. We've certainly had to put up with plenty from the left.
Your little double-agent-political-James-Bond games would just be a collosal waste of your time.
Using every single tactic in the infamous 'Karl Rove playbook' still won't win you a damn thing if you have no substance to sell to the American People.
What I have a hard time swallowing is that I live in a country where more than half the population is willfully ignorant, politically obstinate, religiously prejudiced, and embarrassingly gullible.
You know what gets me? How Democrats can't seem to shut up about how smart they are. Really. Every single political thread I've seen lately has had some kind of attack on the intelligence of Bush voters, with the implicit or explicit praising of anti-Bush voters.
Tell me, if you guys are so damn smart, then why are you out the presidency, why are you out more senate seats, and why are you out a few more house seats too?
(Note: Americans are dumb is not an acceptable answer.)
When you lose this big, and this consistently, there is something wrong with your side.
You need to think long and hard about what that is. I have my own ideas, of course.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating we summarily execute anyone. Just pointing out that we could, and the convention is misunderstood widely, especially the reciprical part.
As for presumption of innonence, et al, presumably our soldiers track under what circumstances and for what reasons they capture an individual. I believe that our soldiers are by far and wide proffessionals, and would use this information appropriately.
As for the constitution, it's application to enemies in a war is quite debateable- a debate I don't feel like engaging in.
Yes, for the most part physical torture is inneffective and morally repugnant. I am not, however, against various forms of psycological pressure to extract information. What techniques are and are not appropriate is a question I leave to those more experienced in the field. The photos out of Abu Ghraib didn't bother me. The possible death of an inmate did concern me, however.
Let's don't invade Iraq with no plan for an effective occupation
There's an old adage that goes something like this: An imperfect plan delivered swiftly is better than a perfect plan delivered late.
You can monday morning quarter back the entire Iraq affair all you want, but if you accept that something had to be done about saddam, you have to accept some screw ups along the way. There's no procedure written for invading and occupying a country, no 'how to' manual, and all the people with experience from post world war two probably died a couple decades ago.
No plan, no matter how perfect, survives contact with the enemy. (Another military adage...)
I would like to point out that there is a great deal of good news from Iraq, but since it's good news, it won't sell papers, so it doesn't make headlines. You can read all about it here.
calling Afghan natives "spies" is pretty thin. Don't think Karl Rove didn't consider it.
I don't believe the convention has any such distinction as to where they are found, just that they fight out of uniform. Feel free to quote a passage that demonstrates I'm wrong. I haven't checked, it could be there.
you are the sort of monster the Geneva Convention is designed to preserve the rest of us from. I suppose you think torturing people is just fine as long as you think you might find a convenient piece of information from it.
If it'll save some of our boys, I have just one thing to say: Red is positive, black is negative. I'm all for fighting gentlemanly... with gentlemen. With the kind of enemy we find over there, observing the nicest rules of war while they fight the dirtiest way they can is just fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
Remember also that the Geneva Convention is a reciprical agreement. No matter who the warring factions are, the rules only apply at all if both sides follow them. Makes perfect sense if you bother to think about it.
walked away from the Geneva Convention at Abu Gharib and Guantanemo Bay
The Geneva convention was written for wars between nation-states and outlined a 'gentleman's war', if you will.
Among the many myriad of rules in the convention, it states that anyone caught fighting out without the uniform and markings of a nation may be summarily executed as a spy.
So, it would be perfectly in line with the Geneva Convention if we took all the bastards out of Guantanamo, into the yard, and shot them in the back of the head. Same thing for all the syrian and Iranian insurgents in Abu Ghraib.
So, considering they're still breathing, they're getting a damn sight better than the convention says they deserve.
Incidentally, there have been updates since the original Geneva Convention; we haven't signed all of them.
Bin Laden's dead. No one has heard from him in well over a year,perhaps two, we've gotten no new material starring OBL that isn't remixes with voice overs and his name has never come up in any current activities.
I wouldn't be worried about someone who's dead either.
But the observation that more intelligent people tend to be anti-Bush is not invalidated by these exceptions.
What gets me going is how Kerry supporters can never shut up about how smart they are. Get over yourself, buddy. And all those Kerry-loving proffessors?
Well, hate to be the one to break it to you, but Profs are just as capable of being as full of shit as anyone else, it's just that they mistake their PHD's for actual superiority in fields other than their thesis.
And of course, in soft sciences, you often have nothing to validate a thesis against, so it's pretty meaningless.
If you want to know why I support Bush and detest Kerry, I laid it out in great detail elsewhere in these comments. I'm sure you can find it.
Incidentally, I consistently score in the 95th percentile in any standardized test, if you still want to talk about how smart you are.
I don't think that it is very surprising that people who bother to inform themselves about stuff that matters are mostly pro Kerry.
Yet, from reading this, it would appear that you are completely unaware of some specific and very serious accusations against Kerry.
For example, The Swift Boat Veterans for truth. Now, the first thing that's often brought up by Kerry supporters when mentioning the SBVT is that they've been 'discredited'. However, this 'discreditation' consists of only having been shown to be funded by Bush supporters.
No shit. Who do you think was gonna fund them? George Soros?
You won't hear, however, that Kerry has now retracted his two decade old 'christmas in cambodia' story, which he has previously stated was a strong basis for his political beliefs. Swift Vets said Kerry was never in Cambodia. Kerry's people later agree. Then the swiftvets said at least one of his purple hearts was bullshit, and given for a self inflicted wound (no one ever said it was intentional, which would have been a court marshal level offense.) Kerry's people later changed their tune on that.
So, as someone who says he bothers to inform himself, why aren't you bringing that up?
Are you also aware that Kerry is either a war criminal or a liar? In the 70's, there was the 'winter soldier investigation', where Kerry and a bunch of veterans- some real and some not- claimed that US soldiers routinely commited the worst war crimes against the vietnamese, and that Kerry had seen or participated in such activities. If Kerry had seen them and not reported them, that makes him complicit and a war criminal.
More than likely he lied, however. Under oath and in front of congress. Kerry served a year on the gridley and 4 months on a swift boat. He would have never been in a position to see any such war crimes that he testified to.
Kerry stabbed our soldiers in the back for political points.
Okay, so you might say 'so what, that happened thirty years ago' And it is possible that people can change dramatically in thirty years.
But we've seen his bald-faced lies for cheap political points in the last debate. See here. Short story: Kerry claimed to have met with the UN security council and was making buddies with them. Security council members later say that never happened at all.
Now, we all know politicians are liars, but what kind of man does it take to make such an easily and immediately provably false statement on national TV?
What else? When Kerry was skiing some time ago, he fell on the slopes after a collision with a Secret Service agent. When asked about it, he said "I don't fall, the son of a bitch knocked me down." I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't insult someone who was supposed to catch a bullet for me. What kind of a man does that?
I could go on, but that's enough for now. I've been paying attention and bothering to inform myself, and I find Kerry to be a reprobate. You don't seem to have taken much time to inform yourself of Kerry's failings, have you?
Now, why vote for Bush?
Because he knows what the stakes are, that's why. I'm no Bush fanboy, as I think his domestic agenda sucks (though probably for different reasons than you.) However, Overall he's the right president at the right time.
For the past several decades, terrorists- the muslim, middle eastern variety- have been carrying out attacks against the west of increasing adaucity, culminating in 9/11. They've carried out significant attacks in other countries since then- that russian school, spain's trains, etc. They're in a war against the west. Bush realizes this, and has a decent plan that he's been executing for the past 3 years. Strangle off state support for Al-Qaeda and their brothers, and spread liberty in the middle east. Is it easy? No. But
DO all arabs think alike no matter what country they live in? Do all muslims think alike no matter what country theylive in?
Bah. Of course not. That's a ridiculous question. But there's enough similarities to allow us to make generalizations.
This implies that there is only one arab mind and that's it's knowable. the premise of the book itself is racist. Look, maybe you haven't been paying attention, but different cultures are, in fact, DIFFERENT. No one gives a shit when we say asians are hardworkers, and the work ethic is rather dominant in most asian countries. It's a common joke that the Irish are heavy drinkers, Brits are reserved, etc, etc. Cultures have definate, identifiable traits that seperate them from others. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp? No? Then why do you toss around the term 'racist' when we start saying bad stuff about one culture, one that happens to involve many countries in the middle east?
For a small glimpse, with details, into the 'Arab mind', check out this: Why Arabs Lose wars. It should have enough frontline observations to get even a multiculturilist like you doubting your usual lines.
I'll even give you a few opening paragraphs: False starts
Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the U.S. Army in the 1930s evaluated the Japanese national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that that country would be permanently disadvantaged in technology. Hitler dismissed the United States as a mongrel society and consequently underestimated the impact of America's entry into the war. American strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the North Vietnamese approximated our own and that the air bombardment of the North would bring it to its knees. Three days of aerial attacks were thought to be all the Serbs could withstand; in fact, seventy-eight days were needed.
As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one's own cultural norms.....
Culture is difficult to pin down. It is not synonymous with an individual's race nor ethnic identity. The history of warfare makes a mockery of attempts to assign rigid cultural attributes to individuals -- as the military histories of the Ottoman and Roman empires illustrate. In both cases it was training, discipline, esprit, and élan which made the difference, not the individual soldiers' origin. The highly disciplined and effective Roman legions, for example, recruited from throughout the Roman Empire, and the elite Ottoman Janissaries (slave soldiers) were Christians forcibly recruited as boys from the Balkans....
These problems notwithstanding, culture does need to be taken into account. Indeed, awareness of prior mistakes should make it possible to assess the role of cultural factors in warfare...
Reading this article should wash any thoughts of cultural equivalency out of your head- you can hem and haw all day about quality of life, consumerism, etc when comparing cultures, but you can't on war. One side wins.... and one side dies. Demonstratable superiority.
Saudi Arabian Wahhabis are the first that come to mind. Palestinians the second, and let's not forget the Taliban- though Afgahnistan is technically Asian.
That's enough to get you started. Are all the countries you listed the same? No. Are the source of the lashing-out losers I term " failed Arab Muslim" sufficiently Arab & Muslim to justify the label? I think so.
Are all Arab-Muslims terrorists? No. Are All terrorists Muslim & usually arab? With one exception for Timothy Mcviegh, yes.
Generalizations exist because they have some basis in reality. The generalization I made is likewise based in reality.
The problem is that there have been a lot of racist books written about arabs and muslims..
That's funny, I haven't seen any of these, but I have seen a number of books describing how arab/muslim culture is thouroughly corrupt, self-destructive, and an obvious dead end.
That's not racist, because no one is saying "Damn doon-coones are a bunch of murdering terrorists from birth," but they are saying that their culture- LEARNED BEHAVIORS -leads to suppression of women, backwards thinking, economic failure, brutal regimes, and all around a horrible way to live.
A little over 100 years ago we came in full contact with a society that had nothing on western civilization- feudal, warrior-ruled, emperor worshipping, and about equivalent with europe 500 years ago. The country was called Japan. Instead of turning their backs on a way of life that offered a great deal of benefits, they eagerly embraced the ways of people better than them militarily, in terms of organization, production, etc. Now they are undisputably the equal- if not the better- of many european countries.
The Arab's culture, however, is very face/shame based, and they have been unable to admit they have been bettered by western civilization. That's just one of their problems.
So don't talk to me about 'racist' books that describe their culture as a corrupt failure, because culture can be easily disconnected from skin color.
The current position of Arab nations in the world, when compared to European and many Asian countries makes it clear they are failures in the modern world. These particular losers have chosen to strike out.
(Losers hijack airplanes full of civilians to carry out their war. Winners have an air force.)
People are just people, no matter what the skin color. Cultures can be (and are) quite depraved and dysfunctional. We see alot of that in the middle east.
Oh, by the way, if you still think I'm racist after skimming over how their culture is horrible, then it is you who links behavior to skin color, and that makes you the racist.
Funny thing, if you put people's money into a pool, and a Central Committee doles it out and dictates what can and can't be done, we call it Socialized Medicine -- EVIL!! But if the people who dictate what can and can't be done also get to own the whole thing and rake off enough to get rich, we call it an Insurance Industry -- GOOD!!
That's because when you have private insurance, there's still competition, and choice. If you don't see why those are preferable to a large, omnipotent & (wannabe) omniscient government agency that you have no choice but to pay or the police come-a-knockin, then there's little point in explaining it further.
I've been tempted in the last few elections to just vote for the cantidate who actually talks to his/her protestors or the cantidate with the least protestors.
I was a counter-protestor down at a lefty protest in DC, and let me tell you at least half the people were stark-raving mad. No way the secret service would let any of those people near Bush, regardless if they had anything intelligent to say- and most of them didn't.
The WTO protesters, the ANSWER clowns, the usual gaggle of lefties who show up at these protests equate Bush with hitler and think that palestinians blowing up buses full of Israeli school-children is A-OK. Not exactly the type that can be reasoned with.
or the cantidate with the least protestors Something I learned in life a while ago: you can't make everyone happy, so don't even try. If a major candidate has few or no protesters, it means that he never has, or never intends to do anything important, anything risky, anything contreversal. Such actions are often needed to move the world forward, or to solve long standing problems.
Or it could just be a candidate is so irrelevant that no one gives a damn about him.
Either way, it's the most idiotic reason to vote I've ever heard of. But it's your vote, cast it as you wish.
The Republican party has been way overreaching this year.
This election year has been raised to a fever pitch all around. It ain't pretty, and the Dem's hands are far from clean. Take, for instance, the repeated and now increasing talk of Bush re-instating the draft.
It's an absolutely ridiculous proposition that has no basis in reality, and Kerry is using it to try to scare young people into voting for him.
go and tell your party that an independant voter won't even consider your cantidates because of this
Where you in the middle of these WTO protests? I wasn't, but I've been in the middle of an ANSWER protest, and things were on edge. I can easily imagine scenarios where cops would be justified bashing a few heads.
The cops know what kind of clowns these protests tend to bring- the violent ones- so I can't blame them for taking a harsh stance right out of the gate. The lefty-protest types have brought it on themselves, even if not at this particular event.
A lot of my favorites have been posted already, but here's a few more: Kim Du Toit
The motto: Turning america back into a riflemen, one person at a time. Blogs about guns, WoT, liberal failings, etc.
He also keeps a count of media stories of home invaders or other criminals lawfully and rightfully shot in self defense. Also known as "Dead Goblin Count", which is above 80 right now. Not sure when he started the count.
His readers sponsor two snipers headed to Iraq, and so far we've outfitted them with first class scopes for their rifles, rangefinders, and a few other toys that are significantly better than what Uncle Sam provided them.
Slashdot Mirror
McDonalds, and the republicans, have the decency to sell people what they want. The dems could learn something from that.
I think what bugs people like you is that, silently, they fear that they actually are dumber.
Nope. Doesn't bother me at all.
I think the height of stupidity, however, is to keep doing the same thing expecting different results. Like the Dems are doing lately.
what you're saying is basically that the majority is always right?
Well, the entire idea of a democratic type government is that more than half the people are more than right half the time. Always Right? No. Often enough? Yes.
Or, put another way, if some candidate is smarter and proposes better policies, he will necessarily be elected.
Most politicians have no special skill better than finding and holding office. This is true on both sides of the fence. How do they get that office? By selling what people will buy.
People 'buy' what is in their interest. Looking at the presidential and senate races, the people have decided that electing democrats, for a variety of reasons, is against their interests.
I could go into why I think this is the case, but that wasn't the point of my original post.
I'm not gonna argue with you about weapons of mass destruction, Iraq-Al Qaeda connections, etc, because if you surf political sites as much as I do, those things have been talked to death.
My point was that the democrats will continue to lose power until they realize that certain behaviors, ideals, and platforms on their side are highly destructive to their popularity.
In this thread, I leave it to the democrats to ponder what those destructive elements might be.
awwww, poor baby is throwing a fit. Someone have a warm bottle of milk around here?
China, Buddhism, Communism all await your concession speech, oh champion of majority rule.
Tell me that China has any sort of consensual, democratic government, and we can discuss them.
Buddism? I don't see what that has to do with anything here.
Communism? That's a failed adventure in social structure, now isn't it? If any communist country could even hold a candle to ours, we might have a discussion. China isn't so much communist as facist, North Korea is utterly worthless outside a weapons program that's still 30 years behind us, and Cuba is an insignificant Banana republic.
The Soviet Union Collapsed.
So, challenger of majority rule, bring me some opposing group that's worth even discussing.
So he provides some evidence, and you respond with "but I didn't want *that* evidence!"
I suppose I should have pointed out HOW MANY MILLIONS OF TIMES i've seen his 'evidence.'
Suppose I grant you his 'evidence' is true, and widely accepted. Kerry still would have lost, because of the fundamental problems I'm talking about.
'Evidence' for various sides has been batted back and forth ad naseum on this and countless other message boards, and i've been at bat many times.
The only thing we can consistently see is that the democrats lose.
But you want a reason that the democratic party failed. Here, I'll try one: the democratic party is less able to mislead people into believing that they share an agenda.
Keep telling yourself that you just need to fool the people more, and fight dirtier. See how far it gets you.
And if you believe that GWB and crew are actually republicans, and not self-proclaimed neoconservatives hijacking the republican party, then you have some more research to do
Although I don't agree with everything Bush has done, I think he's the right president at the right time.
As for the republican party, I'm hoping that the Democratic party will finish dying soon, so another party can rise up that's actually closer to my beliefs. Maybe constitutionalists, some folks along those lines. Until then, I'll pick whoever's closer to what I want.
My point was that the Democrats continue to lose without bothering to question if there's anything fundamentally wrong with their beliefs and platform.
I don't want to argue about any shortcomings of Bush or the republicans, as I'm familiar with them, and I can live with them until a credible alternative comes along.
It should be obvious by now, however, that the shortcomings of the democrats are near fatal in comparison.
You keep up with that righteous indignation. See how far it gets you.
By all means, keep doing the same things over and over again. You'll see the same results. But keep it up.
Why? Cause you're smarter than the rest of America! And smart + $0.75 will get you a cup of
coffee!
Oh, yeah, from my side of the aisle, there were no "Good Guys" on the left, and there was plenty of dirty fighting all around. Don't kid yourself that your only problem was Karl Rove conned the American people better than you did.
Americans may not be dumb, but a large percentage of them are surely living under a rock! And that's certainly not the fault of "liberal" Democrats.
You didn't actually READ my comment, did you?
You can cherry pick particular issues all you want, but the fact remains there's something fundamentally wrong with the democrats, and like you, they can't even begin to fathom what it is.
They will continue to lose by ever more embarassing margins until the party comes to terms with it's faults.
Please stop trying to claim that the above people are conservatives. They are not. They are the American version of the Taliban.
You make statements like this, and wonder why you and your kind are not taken seriosly by the majority of the public?
Go read some stories about how the Taliban ran Afgahnistan. Read about what they did to women. Read about how they beat men on the street for not having long enough beards and stoned women for getting raped. Read about the true face of evil. Saddam's regime would be a primer on this too.
Then come back here and tell me that the millions of YOUR COUNTRYMEN, some of which you know, are the same as the Taliban.
You keep losing because there's something clearly wrong with you, not the American people. You're welcome to keep denying your faults, as it will just lead to increasingly larger margins of victory for republicans.
Then maybe, one day, when the democratic party has drowned itself in a 5 gallon bucket it refused to pull its head out of, a new party can rise to counter the real faults of the republican party (which are quite different than what you imagine.)
It's funny that your side loses, and you think, well, obviously we haven't been fighting nearly dirty enough. Guess I gotta step it up a notch!
After such a tremendous and consistent loss, I think it's funny there's no consideration as to wether your message, platform, and candidates are fundamentally flawed. You lost the presidency, house, and senate seats, and have the gall to blame the citizens for your failure, instead of considering what's wrong with you.
Oh yeah, as a Bush voter, you folks have been fighting tooth and nail for the past year and half, and have had most of the media on your side too.
You went negative all the time, but couldn't find a charge that stuck. Republicans already have their share of people spouting garbage & conspiracy theories. We've certainly had to put up with plenty from the left.
Your little double-agent-political-James-Bond games would just be a collosal waste of your time.
Using every single tactic in the infamous 'Karl Rove playbook' still won't win you a damn thing if you have no substance to sell to the American People.
What I have a hard time swallowing is that I live in a country where more than half the population is willfully ignorant, politically obstinate, religiously prejudiced, and embarrassingly gullible.
You know what gets me? How Democrats can't seem to shut up about how smart they are. Really. Every single political thread I've seen lately has had some kind of attack on the intelligence of Bush voters, with the implicit or explicit praising of anti-Bush voters.
Tell me, if you guys are so damn smart, then why are you out the presidency, why are you out more senate seats, and why are you out a few more house seats too?
(Note: Americans are dumb is not an acceptable answer.)
When you lose this big, and this consistently, there is something wrong with your side.
You need to think long and hard about what that is. I have my own ideas, of course.
1. Apology accepted.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating we summarily execute anyone. Just pointing out that we could, and the convention is misunderstood widely, especially the reciprical part.
As for presumption of innonence, et al, presumably our soldiers track under what circumstances and for what reasons they capture an individual. I believe that our soldiers are by far and wide proffessionals, and would use this information appropriately.
As for the constitution, it's application to enemies in a war is quite debateable- a debate I don't feel like engaging in.
Yes, for the most part physical torture is inneffective and morally repugnant. I am not, however, against various forms of psycological pressure to extract information. What techniques are and are not appropriate is a question I leave to those more experienced in the field. The photos out of Abu Ghraib didn't bother me. The possible death of an inmate did concern me, however.
Let's don't invade Iraq with no plan for an effective occupation
There's an old adage that goes something like this: An imperfect plan delivered swiftly is better than a perfect plan delivered late.
You can monday morning quarter back the entire Iraq affair all you want, but if you accept that something had to be done about saddam, you have to accept some screw ups along the way. There's no procedure written for invading and occupying a country, no 'how to' manual, and all the people with experience from post world war two probably died a couple decades ago.
No plan, no matter how perfect, survives contact with the enemy. (Another military adage...)
I would like to point out that there is a great deal of good news from Iraq, but since it's good news, it won't sell papers, so it doesn't make headlines. You can read all about it here.
calling Afghan natives "spies" is pretty thin. Don't think Karl Rove didn't consider it.
I don't believe the convention has any such distinction as to where they are found, just that they fight out of uniform. Feel free to quote a passage that demonstrates I'm wrong. I haven't checked, it could be there.
you are the sort of monster the Geneva Convention is designed to preserve the rest of us from. I suppose you think torturing people is just fine as long as you think you might find a convenient piece of information from it.
If it'll save some of our boys, I have just one thing to say: Red is positive, black is negative.
I'm all for fighting gentlemanly... with gentlemen. With the kind of enemy we find over there, observing the nicest rules of war while they fight the dirtiest way they can is just fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
Remember also that the Geneva Convention is a reciprical agreement. No matter who the warring factions are, the rules only apply at all if both sides follow them. Makes perfect sense if you bother to think about it.
walked away from the Geneva Convention at Abu Gharib and Guantanemo Bay
The Geneva convention was written for wars between nation-states and outlined a 'gentleman's war', if you will.
Among the many myriad of rules in the convention, it states that anyone caught fighting out without the uniform and markings of a nation may be summarily executed as a spy.
So, it would be perfectly in line with the Geneva Convention if we took all the bastards out of Guantanamo, into the yard, and shot them in the back of the head. Same thing for all the syrian and Iranian insurgents in Abu Ghraib.
So, considering they're still breathing, they're getting a damn sight better than the convention says they deserve.
Incidentally, there have been updates since the original Geneva Convention; we haven't signed all of them.
Bin Laden's dead. No one has heard from him in well over a year,perhaps two, we've gotten no new material starring OBL that isn't remixes with voice overs and his name has never come up in any current activities.
I wouldn't be worried about someone who's dead either.
I think Bush was the first president to be compared to a monkey so convincingly
This says alot more about the people who made the comparisons then Bush himself.
But the observation that more intelligent people tend to be anti-Bush is not invalidated by these exceptions.
What gets me going is how Kerry supporters can never shut up about how smart they are. Get over yourself, buddy. And all those Kerry-loving proffessors?
Well, hate to be the one to break it to you, but Profs are just as capable of being as full of shit as anyone else, it's just that they mistake their PHD's for actual superiority in fields other than their thesis.
And of course, in soft sciences, you often have nothing to validate a thesis against, so it's pretty meaningless.
If you want to know why I support Bush and detest Kerry, I laid it out in great detail elsewhere in these comments. I'm sure you can find it.
Incidentally, I consistently score in the 95th percentile in any standardized test, if you still want to talk about how smart you are.
I don't think that it is very surprising that people who bother to inform themselves about stuff that matters are mostly pro Kerry.
Yet, from reading this, it would appear that you are completely unaware of some specific and very serious accusations against Kerry.
For example, The Swift Boat Veterans for truth. Now, the first thing that's often brought up by Kerry supporters when mentioning the SBVT is that they've been 'discredited'. However, this 'discreditation' consists of only having been shown to be funded by Bush supporters.
No shit. Who do you think was gonna fund them? George Soros?
You won't hear, however, that Kerry has now retracted his two decade old 'christmas in cambodia' story, which he has previously stated was a strong basis for his political beliefs. Swift Vets said Kerry was never in Cambodia. Kerry's people later agree. Then the swiftvets said at least one of his purple hearts was bullshit, and given for a self inflicted wound (no one ever said it was intentional, which would have been a court marshal level offense.) Kerry's people later changed their tune on that.
So, as someone who says he bothers to inform himself, why aren't you bringing that up?
Are you also aware that Kerry is either a war criminal or a liar? In the 70's, there was the 'winter soldier investigation', where Kerry and a bunch of veterans- some real and some not- claimed that US soldiers routinely commited the worst war crimes against the vietnamese, and that Kerry had seen or participated in such activities. If Kerry had seen them and not reported them, that makes him complicit and a war criminal.
More than likely he lied, however. Under oath and in front of congress. Kerry served a year on the gridley and 4 months on a swift boat. He would have never been in a position to see any such war crimes that he testified to.
Kerry stabbed our soldiers in the back for political points.
Okay, so you might say 'so what, that happened thirty years ago' And it is possible that people can change dramatically in thirty years.
But we've seen his bald-faced lies for cheap political points in the last debate. See here.
Short story: Kerry claimed to have met with the UN security council and was making buddies with them. Security council members later say that never happened at all.
Now, we all know politicians are liars, but what kind of man does it take to make such an easily and immediately provably false statement on national TV?
What else? When Kerry was skiing some time ago, he fell on the slopes after a collision with a Secret Service agent. When asked about it, he said "I don't fall, the son of a bitch knocked me down." I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't insult someone who was supposed to catch a bullet for me. What kind of a man does that?
I could go on, but that's enough for now. I've been paying attention and bothering to inform myself, and I find Kerry to be a reprobate. You don't seem to have taken much time to inform yourself of Kerry's failings, have you?
Now, why vote for Bush?
Because he knows what the stakes are, that's why. I'm no Bush fanboy, as I think his domestic agenda sucks (though probably for different reasons than you.) However, Overall he's the right president at the right time.
For the past several decades, terrorists- the muslim, middle eastern variety- have been carrying out attacks against the west of increasing adaucity, culminating in 9/11. They've carried out significant attacks in other countries since then- that russian school, spain's trains, etc. They're in a war against the west. Bush realizes this, and has a decent plan that he's been executing for the past 3 years. Strangle off state support for Al-Qaeda and their brothers, and spread liberty in the middle east. Is it easy? No. But
So, are you in fact, basing your entire position on the title of the book, or some die-hard multi-culturalists review of the book?
I haven't read the book, but i have come across what is probably a lot of similar material, some of which i have shared with you.
DO all arabs think alike no matter what country they live in? Do all muslims think alike no matter what country theylive in?
....
...
Bah. Of course not. That's a ridiculous question. But there's enough similarities to allow us to make generalizations.
This implies that there is only one arab mind and that's it's knowable. the premise of the book itself is racist.
Look, maybe you haven't been paying attention, but different cultures are, in fact, DIFFERENT. No one gives a shit when we say asians are hardworkers, and the work ethic is rather dominant in most asian countries. It's a common joke that the Irish are heavy drinkers, Brits are reserved, etc, etc. Cultures have definate, identifiable traits that seperate them from others. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp? No? Then why do you toss around the term 'racist' when we start saying bad stuff about one culture, one that happens to involve many countries in the middle east?
For a small glimpse, with details, into the 'Arab mind', check out this: Why Arabs Lose wars. It should have enough frontline observations to get even a multiculturilist like you doubting your usual lines.
I'll even give you a few opening paragraphs:
False starts
Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the U.S. Army in the 1930s evaluated the Japanese national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that that country would be permanently disadvantaged in technology. Hitler dismissed the United States as a mongrel society and consequently underestimated the impact of America's entry into the war. American strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the North Vietnamese approximated our own and that the air bombardment of the North would bring it to its knees. Three days of aerial attacks were thought to be all the Serbs could withstand; in fact, seventy-eight days were needed.
As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one's own cultural norms.
Culture is difficult to pin down. It is not synonymous with an individual's race nor ethnic identity. The history of warfare makes a mockery of attempts to assign rigid cultural attributes to individuals -- as the military histories of the Ottoman and Roman empires illustrate. In both cases it was training, discipline, esprit, and élan which made the difference, not the individual soldiers' origin. The highly disciplined and effective Roman legions, for example, recruited from throughout the Roman Empire, and the elite Ottoman Janissaries (slave soldiers) were Christians forcibly recruited as boys from the Balkans.
These problems notwithstanding, culture does need to be taken into account. Indeed, awareness of prior mistakes should make it possible to assess the role of cultural factors in warfare...
Reading this article should wash any thoughts of cultural equivalency out of your head- you can hem and haw all day about quality of life, consumerism, etc when comparing cultures, but you can't on war. One side wins.... and one side dies. Demonstratable superiority.
Which arab/muslim cultures?
Saudi Arabian Wahhabis are the first that come to mind. Palestinians the second, and let's not forget the Taliban- though Afgahnistan is technically Asian.
That's enough to get you started. Are all the countries you listed the same? No. Are the source of the lashing-out losers I term " failed Arab Muslim" sufficiently Arab & Muslim to justify the label? I think so.
Are all Arab-Muslims terrorists? No. Are All terrorists Muslim & usually arab? With one exception for Timothy Mcviegh, yes.
Generalizations exist because they have some basis in reality. The generalization I made is likewise based in reality.
The problem is that there have been a lot of racist books written about arabs and muslims..
That's funny, I haven't seen any of these, but I have seen a number of books describing how arab/muslim culture is thouroughly corrupt, self-destructive, and an obvious dead end.
That's not racist, because no one is saying "Damn doon-coones are a bunch of murdering terrorists from birth," but they are saying that their culture- LEARNED BEHAVIORS -leads to suppression of women, backwards thinking, economic failure, brutal regimes, and all around a horrible way to live.
A little over 100 years ago we came in full contact with a society that had nothing on western civilization- feudal, warrior-ruled, emperor worshipping, and about equivalent with europe 500 years ago. The country was called Japan. Instead of turning their backs on a way of life that offered a great deal of benefits, they eagerly embraced the ways of people better than them militarily, in terms of organization, production, etc. Now they are undisputably the equal- if not the better- of many european countries.
The Arab's culture, however, is very face/shame based, and they have been unable to admit they have been bettered by western civilization. That's just one of their problems.
So don't talk to me about 'racist' books that describe their culture as a corrupt failure, because culture can be easily disconnected from skin color.
The current position of Arab nations in the world, when compared to European and many Asian countries makes it clear they are failures in the modern world. These particular losers have chosen to strike out.
(Losers hijack airplanes full of civilians to carry out their war. Winners have an air force.)
People are just people, no matter what the skin color. Cultures can be (and are) quite depraved and dysfunctional. We see alot of that in the middle east.
Oh, by the way, if you still think I'm racist after skimming over how their culture is horrible, then it is you who links behavior to skin color, and that makes you the racist.
Funny thing, if you put people's money into a pool, and a Central Committee doles it out and dictates what can and can't be done, we call it Socialized Medicine -- EVIL!!
But if the people who dictate what can and can't be done also get to own the whole thing and rake off enough to get rich, we call it an Insurance Industry -- GOOD!!
That's because when you have private insurance, there's still competition, and choice. If you don't see why those are preferable to a large, omnipotent & (wannabe) omniscient government agency that you have no choice but to pay or the police come-a-knockin, then there's little point in explaining it further.
I've been tempted in the last few elections to just vote for the cantidate who actually talks to his/her protestors or the cantidate with the least protestors.
I was a counter-protestor down at a lefty protest in DC, and let me tell you at least half the people were stark-raving mad. No way the secret service would let any of those people near Bush, regardless if they had anything intelligent to say- and most of them didn't.
The WTO protesters, the ANSWER clowns, the usual gaggle of lefties who show up at these protests equate Bush with hitler and think that palestinians blowing up buses full of Israeli school-children is A-OK. Not exactly the type that can be reasoned with.
or the cantidate with the least protestors
Something I learned in life a while ago: you can't make everyone happy, so don't even try. If a major candidate has few or no protesters, it means that he never has, or never intends to do anything important, anything risky, anything contreversal. Such actions are often needed to move the world forward, or to solve long standing problems.
Or it could just be a candidate is so irrelevant that no one gives a damn about him.
Either way, it's the most idiotic reason to vote I've ever heard of. But it's your vote, cast it as you wish.
The Republican party has been way overreaching this year.
This election year has been raised to a fever pitch all around. It ain't pretty, and the Dem's hands are far from clean. Take, for instance, the repeated and now increasing talk of Bush re-instating the draft.
It's an absolutely ridiculous proposition that has no basis in reality, and Kerry is using it to try to scare young people into voting for him.
go and tell your party that an independant voter won't even consider your cantidates because of this
Where you in the middle of these WTO protests? I wasn't, but I've been in the middle of an ANSWER protest, and things were on edge. I can easily imagine scenarios where cops would be justified bashing a few heads.
The cops know what kind of clowns these protests tend to bring- the violent ones- so I can't blame them for taking a harsh stance right out of the gate. The lefty-protest types have brought it on themselves, even if not at this particular event.
Get everyone addicted, then charge for it! mwah ha ha...
The first hit is always free, kid.
(BTW, i just joined the beta three weeks ago.... I'm hooked.....)
A lot of my favorites have been posted already, but here's a few more: Kim Du Toit
The motto: Turning america back into a riflemen, one person at a time. Blogs about guns, WoT, liberal failings, etc.
He also keeps a count of media stories of home invaders or other criminals lawfully and rightfully shot in self defense. Also known as "Dead Goblin Count", which is above 80 right now. Not sure when he started the count.
His readers sponsor two snipers headed to Iraq, and so far we've outfitted them with first class scopes for their rifles, rangefinders, and a few other toys that are significantly better than what Uncle Sam provided them.
Comments are allowed with registration.
Anti-Idiotorian Rottweiler
Typically home to many, many rants about liberals. Fun to read at times. Also loaded with fiskings of various news articles.
Comments also allowed.
Both Kim and Misha are immigrants, now citizens, who I'm proud to call my fellow countrymen.