Mickey

No one is forcing me to stay but there are some who seem to have a problem with me pointing out that the joke was a humorless and thinly disguised insult. The result was an epidemic of panties getting into a wad, including yours. Tell me, is there a rule against expressing an opinion on the idiocy and mean spiritedness of a "joke" around here? Sorry I didn't act true to the form you imagine for me. I see it didn't stop you from imagining one anyway so no harm done. Interesting though, you don't like anyone complianing about a rightwinger nasty joke and you would also object to fighting fire with fire by posting one from the other side. Hmmm...

Their purpose isn't to kill Americans, it is to drive Americans out of the ME. Killing Americans is the means to that end, not the end. Count the number of suicide attacks against the US prior to our stationing troops in the middle east. The bin Laden version wants to establish a caliphate in the ME which requires the fall of the governments and monarchies in the region which they believe survive only because of US power backing them up. I don't think that Osama is planning on starting a Caliphate in Idaho or occupying Toledo anytime soon. Saudi oil on the other hand is another issue. That he wants. If you have a plan that will wipe out all such fundamentalists that will not also wipe out muslims who are innocent of this "disease" and that will actually succeed, I'm all for it. Providing that it doesn't create more and more and more terrorists. If your extermination program creates 2 sworn enemies of the United States for every 1 that you kill, I think there is a problem, no? I am not advocating hugging them, loving them or any other such nonsense. Knowing your enemy is the key to defeating him. Why does every effort hereabouts to understand our enemies get mocked as appeasment? It is common sense to study your foe. Maybe that is why the Bills are playing so poorly, they aren't studying game file of their opponent for fear of being called an appeaser.

Right AD, your ceasless repetition of "dummycrat" and the like has nothing to do with the difficulty in having reasonable discussions. It enhances the quality of debate . Tell me again about not sinking to the level of your adversary. Isn't your chief complaint hypocrisy? Interesting given your penchant for personal insults. No one who disagrees with you is ever just simpy wrong, they are also [insert insult here]. For example: It couldn't possibly be that I simply think that government, on some limited issues, does a decent job and on other issues, a lousy one. It has to be that I'm a [humorless utopian loving partisan hypocrite]. I could have also included lawyer which is a word you never use except as an insult. You insult me, my party, my profession, etc, etc. Do you think that maybe all those insults have a little to do with how we never have an exchange here anymore that is any more interesting than this one? I think you pat response to that is usually something along the lines of "yes I am rude but your posts are so stupid I can't help it so its your fault".

Once a year I don't and one look at the calendar this morning told me I was running out of time. Had to get it in. Look, you can ignore this or poke fun at it or whatever. I knew this kind of response was coming the minute I decided to complain about the joke. I'm just telling you as a friend, in all seriousness, that kind of thing is really getting very tired, very old and a stumbling block to any serious discussion. Some of you guys might truly just be joking around but after listening to the Coulters and Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world for so long now and hearing the same oh-so-funny shiite here, it becomes pretty clear that it really isn't meant as a joke anymore. At the very least it is reaching the point that it is not possible to tell the difference anymore. I certainly don't think that any complaint of mine is going to stop the parade of that sort of thing around here and I am not on a crusade to rid the world of fart jokes. Not every insult is funny and this one, to me anyway, wasn't. I have as much right to say that here as VA did to post it here in the first place.

Gee, AD riding to the rescue of yet another righty, how fresh and new. How utterly unpredictable. Yeah, I have posted sooooo many jokes about conservatives haven't I? 5,000 or so posts, count how many of them were mean spirited jokes. Why should facts get in the way of a good insult though right? What is the problem here anyway Mr. Thought Police, do I have to find every idiotic joke told on this board to be funny to avoid criticism or just the right wing ones? For now I am going to cling to my independence of thought and decide what I find to be funny for myself whether it pleases you or not.

Check my first post on it Tom, I didn't claim offense, just pointed out that it was a ridiculous joke and that its premise, intellectual republicans listening to NPR, was nonsense. Besides, I'm not offended I think in the sense you are using the word. I didn't report it to the mods and demand it be expunged. I just think it was insulting and not funny. I won't lose any sleep over it but at the same time, I decided not to be shy about calling it what I think it was. The response to that was that I didn't have a sense of humor. That is when I brought up that not only wasn't it funny, it was insulting. Your point is well taken that lots of humor depends on mocking somebody, somewhere. I think intention is the key and repetition is an indication of that. Like the "dummycrat" thing. At first I laughed but after enough times its clear it is no longer being meant as a joke, it long ago stopped being funny. Its clearly meant as an insult. This particular "joke" is just the umpteenth version of "dummycrat" I have heard.

Right, "flightsuit" gets mocked but yet, somehow, "dummycrat" never gets old. No wonder you can't have a decent discussion around here. Everyone is too busy trying to come up with the most clever insult.

Awwww, c'mon, I was only joking, don't you have a sense of humor?

I see, so a joke which ends with a non-thinker registering as a democrat wasn't meant to mean that democrats are stupid? Please. I got the joke, it just wasn't funny and was insulting to boot. Its an insult inside of a joke. Typical. I didn't find it funny anymore than I would have if it was a polack joke. Do I have to find every stupid joke told on this board to be funny to have a sense of humor or can I decide once in awhile that a given joke is both insulting and humorless? You can only post "Joe is a dick...just kidding" so many times before its clear it isn't meant as a joke.

Duhhh, democrats are stupid, duhhh, huhh, duhhhh, yuk, yuk. You know, my initial post ended with the words "And here is the part where you righties accuse me of not having a sense of humor for not finding mean spirited insults to be very funny." I deleted that part to give you guys the benefit of the doubt. I laugh at jokes, at least the good ones. I don't laugh at insults. This was both, a joke and an insult. I think this is the typical insult thinly disguised as a joke, and a bad one at that, which so often makes an appearance here. It reminds me of the same response I get when I point out the kind of thing Ann Coulter says, you know, "Liberals are traitors who should be shot", etc. The defense is always, "don't you have a sense of humor?, she was only joking". Sorry but after the 10,000th rendition of "dummycrats" and the like, it is clear it is no longer funny nor a joke, it is a purposeful insult. Its about as funny and original as a polack joke. Ha-ha.

"Democrats are stupid" hyuk, hyuk, yuk. Sorry, that joke was 99% insult and 1% funny.

Is this your idea of an "intelligently designed" joke? Right, a republican listening to NPR or reading philosophy? The same party who worships at the foot of the most anti-intellectual President in US history is the "thinking party"? Please. This is the party that mocks all college professors as "eggheads".

Even so, we get a lot of oil from the middle east and if Europe couldn't get theirs from the ME, wouldn't they then increase imports from non-ME suppliers? Its simple economics, if ME oil goes up, so does the price of non-ME oil. Limited supply + unlimited demand = higher prices. A ME embargo means even more limited supply + unlimited demand = even higher prices. Certainly, no on wants to see a nuclear armed state run by whackos whether they be muslim nutcases or some other breed. The thing is though, we can't stop other states from becoming nuclear states. The hope and the strategy is the same as it was in the cold war, no matter how looney some such nation might be, it is still pretty unlikely they would initiate a nuclear exchange that would end up in the complete obliteration of themselves, their nation and their culture. That is why you don't see Bin Laden strapping on a backpack bomb. It is one thing to convert 1 out of every 1,000 recruits into suicide bombers, quite another to forfeit your entire nation, all its people, its past and its future for no reason other than to hurt your enemy.

Exactly. He wasn't able to push a starter on what might be the worst line in all of football. The coaches have been desparate to try and get a line together that works. They were even willing to give Peters a shot to beat out Williams despite his huge salary and draft investment. If there were even a hint that Preston could play, I think we would have seen him on the field.

I think that is Donahoe excuse number 379A if my excuse-o-meter is not on the fritz. I know, that is a little unfair. After all, he did take us from 3-13 to 4-9 in only 5 short years. Patience.

We will have to pursue the same strategies as we did during the cold war. Mutual assured destruction, missile defense, alliances, etc. The whole shooting match. Anybody invades anybody, they get nuked. Suicide terrorism is one thing, involving one or a handful of suicides. I don't see a whole nation committing suicide by going after an enemy who has enough nukes to obliterate them. The real problem, a nuclear muslim state with lots of oil decides that with its nukes, it is empowered to jack up the price of gas for the US until its standard of living resembles that found in Inodnesian slums. All our soldiers, weapons, jets, training, etc. will mean zippity doo dah if they can fire off enough nukes. We will have no choice but to pay and pay and pay. The only solution: energy independence, some way, some how. Drilling amongst the reindeer will not do it.

We will be embraced as liberators so I don't think we will really need a plan.

What use exactly would you make of the Air Force against an insurgency such as what is going on in Iraq?

Chicot, don't you understand that if you watch enough John Wayne war movies the fact of US invulnerability becomes readily apparent? We can't possibly be defeated except by internal cowardice from liberal pansies. Considering what the rest of the world might do in response let alone the oil rich muslim nations of the middle east is for panty-waist internationalist UN loving "forward thinking" Berkely bra burning fags. World War, shmerld war. Get with the program. Seriously, the idea that we could actually lose a war is just not on the right wing radar screen. It doesn't jibe with their favorite answer to every problem: kick ass.

Unless you have discovered a way to run your car on piss, that is not such a good idea.

How destabilizing would a war between Iran and Israel be? I don't think there is a muslim in the middle east who wouldn't side with Iran in such a conflict. They may have been, to a large degree, content to watch Saddam be overthrown from the sidelines but I can't beleive that the Sunni-Shiite divide is so vast that Sunnis would twiddle their thumbs while Israel and the US went to war with Iran.

Yep, that is all we need. A new offensive line. A new defensive line. A new secondary. Oh, and a new coaching staff. And a new GM. Just a few tweaks like that and off we go.

Naaaah. I have had it with nice guys, with high character guys. Some of the most successful coaches in this league were the biggest jerks. BB, Parcells, Johnson, even Ditka. Anybody but a nice guy.

I think a plan that depends that heavily on drafting well given the uncertainties of the draft is not a very solid plan. Besides, what is the point of finding players in the draft if you let them go as soon as they prove their worth and have to be paid larger contracts to stay? Another problem with that plan is that even if it works, if you replace a good player with a good player, you don't get better, you just stay the same. Any goof up in the plan, a draft bust or two, and you get worse in a hurry. In the end, you end up overpaying anyway. You just end up overpaying a guy like Gandy to stink up the field rather than a guy like Jennings who at least held his own.

I don't think McGee is that good of a corner. A great return man, no doubt, but he has done little to distinguish himself as a starting corner. How much better would we be with Winfield starting and McGee as the nickel instead of Greer who gave up the TD that lost the Miami game? It isn't really rocket science. You do not get better by losing good football players. Balance sheets have nothing to do with the ability to block and tackle. If you are forever shopping the basement, that is where you will be, in the cellar. The last few years frankly, remind me of the 1970's where periodically, just as we were getting good, there would be a max exodus of good players from the team like Marlin Briscoe or JD Hill, etc.