Crap Throwing Monkey

Congress. Have you ever compared a budget -any budget - the White House sends over with what Congress eventually passes? They tend to be only superficially similar.

I prefer gunfire. Realistically...among elected officials, campaign reform so that !@#$s with large war chests can't get reelected just because they have large war chests. Among the vast slew of worker bees...wish I knew, my client would be easier to deal with then. How do I tolerate it? I accept at any moment that the freedom to go to Borders and buy a compilation of bin Laden's statements and some Arabic language tapes comes with the slight risk that some gomer's going to drive a car bomb through the front door of the store while I'm shopping. Speaking societally...teach people that life isn't TV, that risk is inherent, and that it's up us as a society to understand and choose what risks we want to take. That'll never happen, people are too busy watching "America's Next Top Bass Fisherman" or whatever the new, hot "reality" show is. Well...we could always lobby the government to institute some sort of "ethics reform". I'm sure that would limit personal abuses of power... I almost typed that with a straight face. Almost.

The flip side of that is that the majority (by no means all...e.g. Pat Robertson's crowd) of whack-job nut-case bizarro parties seem to get lumped together with the Democrats by default. Closer ties between the Democratic Party and lunatics like, say, Earth First aren't necessarily a good thing.

"Expand the Circle of Development by Opening Societies and Building the Infrastructure of Democracy" Expand the circle of development? What is that, a kindergarten class for nation-states? I also like the substance of "Work with Others to Defuse Regional Conflicts": Genocide? Nice headings. Basically says "We'll work to keep fights from starting, inteverne when they start, rebuild when they're over, and kill everyone who gets in the way." What, they couldn't say "Genocide Prevention" or something? Jesus Christ, these idiots SUCK at marketing?

Actually, I wouldn't argue that it's not happening; it is happening. We're more heavily watched than we know, generally. And you'd probably be very surprised to find out that I agree more with Mickey than with you. I don't think freedoms should be sacrificed for the sake of security. The difference is that, whereas Mickey seems to think that terrorism can be fought effectively without sacrificing freedoms, I believe the risk of further terrorism is an acceptable risk for preserving our freedoms. The REAL issue I have is with Mickey's reasoning...or lack thereof, as he seems to think some Braveheart-like display of standing around shouting "FREEDOM!" at the top of his lungs somehow constitutes an informed opinion on the subject. My problem isn't Mickey's opinion. It's that he arrives at it via a process that's, at best, idiotic.

"Champion Aspirations for Human Dignity"? What the !@#$ is that doing in the National Security Strategy? That may even exceed a Clinton level of stupidity. And that's even above and beyond that they're not championing human dignity, just aspirations.

You think. You don't know. And your mischaracterizing my statements to the point where I won't even bother quoting the rest of your post, as it's simply bull sh--. What I said, simply, is that terrorism works against western liberal societies because western liberal societies provide protections under which terrorism can work. Period. You want to fight terrorism (in this case, specifically meaning transnational Islamic fundamentalists bent on marginalizing through direct and indirect conflict the US role in the world with the ultimate goal of establishing a new pan-Islamic Caliphate), you have to look at how we enable terrorist tactics to work. Period. That does not mean saying "I don't think anyone wants to lose their freedoms", because 1) you don't know that, you only think it, 2) that's not what I said, and 3) that's not the point. The point is determining how to effectively prosecute the poorly-named "Global War on Terrorism"...part of which determination should be figuring out how to do it so as to minimize both the impact on civil rights AND the protection such civil rights grant to terrorists. And that's why your post was bull sh--. That's a far cry from your overly-simplistic "I don't think anyone wants to lose their freedoms" Sesame-Street feel-good knee-jerk lack of comprehension.

You almost sound surprised. When's the last time the government did any sort of "ethics reform" that wasn't simply some sort of smokscreen to hide their lack of ethics? Isn't this just business as usual? Although Shays' comment floored me. Some subtlety is usually exercised in these situations...

Well, since you know me better than I know myself, I'll have to defer to you. Not everyone. Just idiots. Right now, just you.

And if your fiancee didn't keep your balls in a desk drawer, that might even matter.

1) I'm not bitter. I'm cynical. 2) I'm not cynical or bitter towards everyone. Just idiots. Right now, pretty much just you.

I'd agree with you, but I already know you're an idiot.

Try harder. You mean with this horny bunch constantly hitting on you, it never occured to you that an Anna Kournikova avatar might be popular?

That's bad news? A major successful operation, maybe... While I think the media's full of sh-- almost all the time...it strikes me that the media's reporting of "only" bad news may have something to do with the American public's inability to discern good news from bad...

Excuse me, but what do chicken nuggets have to do with poultry products?

That remind anyone else of Sideshow Bob?

Her neck's a bit long...

You're quoting what the commission said based, not on the widely available commission report itself, but on what the National Review says the commission said? Read the report if you want to argue the commission's word. In fact, you can download it in PDF format, and search for all the instances of "UAE" or "Emirates", and see exactly what the 9/11 Commission reported. Yes, I know actually staying informed is difficult. Try to make the effort anyway. Or just shut the !@#$ up. Either way...

The glibness of your response is appreciated...but he's fundamentally correct, in that asymmetric tactics and operations (i.e. terrorism) are designed to take advantage of the protections provided by the society such tactics are used against. That is, one of the very reasons terrorism is a successful tactic against Western liberal democracies is BECAUSE of the nature of Western liberal democracies. That doesn't mean that our freedoms should be trashed in the interest of combatting terrorism (as you liberal whiners characterize the conservative Nazis), anymore than we should cave in to terrorism to protect our freedoms (as you conservative whiners charactize the liberal cowards). It does mean that a good solution is probably somewhere in between, however...and that, as I've said before, part of prosecuting the war on terrorism (which, as an aside, is NOT a war on "terrorism", but a war on the transnational political variety of fundamentalist militant Islam) should be to decide what kind of a society we want and expect to be at the end of said war. Naturally, that discussion hasn't happened. And won't. It requires more thought than can be packed into a 90-second news story; sound bytes are much more effective.

Three of the four goals happened in front of me. On at least two of them, the defensemen made errors that resulted in the goal (that first goal, by Clymer, was an egregiously bad defensive play. I was jumping out of my seat yelling at whatever bozo - Campbell, I think - left Clymer wide open to cover an already covered Ovechkin well before the goal...without cutting off the obvious pass, either. !@#$ing stupid.) Miller wasn't great...but he wasn't nearly as bad as he looked, and after the first period he was good when he had to be. They have a pretty decent core to build a team around. Give them two years and, provided they find a suitable replacement for Kolzig, they can be competitive again. They're nowhere near as bad a team as their record, though. And Ovechkin is something else...he's like a cross between Gretzky and a truck. And as for the Sabres, I have only one other thing to say: any team that gives up two goals in six seconds to go down 3-1 at the end of the first period, then outscores their opponent 5-1 through the last two periods to win, is a very good team. An average team folds in that situation. The Sabres played with the same sense of "Of course we'll win this" panache that the Bills had in the early 90's.

That is the first picture I've ever seen that literally hurt my eyes.

Ain't that the frickin' truth. "Oh, we can't buy this house. The cats won't have any birds to watch..."

Actually, I thought I'd use the index, but the bloody thing doesn't have one. And anyway, I'd rather use Campy's common sense, since he seems to have a surfeit on this topic. Campy, what page of the Commission report details post-9/11 meetings between UAE officials and al Qaeda? Hell, let's take out the qualifier: what page details any meetings between UAE officials and al Qaeda?

Well...you expect him to greet you with open arms? You are a horrible human being who sucks, blows, and is an idiot, after all...

I have the Commission report right here on my desk. What page should I be looking on?