Crap Throwing Monkey

Well...yeah. To most people, the who, why, and how matter. A lingering death from cancer is heroic, an 18-year old's suicide is tragic, being buried alive is horriffic, freezing to death homeless on the streets of NY in January is largely ignored. Most people don't give death a second though; it's dying that holds the public fascination.

There was a lot of conflict that was anything but one sided before the US and the UN, and Christianity and Islam, even existed. That little conflict goes all the way back to Philip of Macedon. Of course, that simply demonstrates the point many of us are making: it's not Islam that's the problem, it's extremism. That article you've posted makes that point itself. It actually goes to great lengths to point out that it's extremism that's the problem. Of course, it goes to equally great lengths to contradict that as well...but that's because it's a sh------- article. It does, however, point out yet again just how ungodly horrible Clinton's foreign policy was - where it existed. Most Muslims feared Islamic extremism more than Clinton did.

Thus the other logical fallacy in monkey-boy's argument. "Please name me one major religious conflict currently on the globe that doesn't involve Islam on one side of it." Uhhh...generally, most countries aren't characterized by their religion, be it Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, or what have you. Therefore, major conflicts between them are generally not characterized as religious...and the question is unanswerable: since the question presumes that all religious conflict is Islamic, it therefore follows that no religious conflict can be named that doesn't involve Islam. And from there, the idea that all Islam fights for religious reasons because only Islam fights fore religious reasons is only a short leap of fallacious logic away. His argument is truly logically !@#$ed.

Give me a !@#$ing break. You're a lawyer. You KNOW that it's entirely possible to be acquitted of an illegal act. You've probably accomplished just that for some of your clients. A lawyer implying that an act isn't illegal if the one who does it is acquitted. Christ. You're so transparently trolling here, it's not even amusing.

And Egypt. Anyone notice the only occupied territories the Israelis have withdrawn from border Egypt? Israel-Jordan relations are probably better than most suspect. Jordan's a relatively weak country surrounded by relatively strong neighbors with a relatively large population of displaced Palestinians, and they successfully execute a delicate political balancing act trying to deal with all parties. The Israelis, for their part, tend to be remarkably understanding about the tightrope Jordan walks - for example, negotiating with Jordan the terms under which Jordanian military forces would be committed to battle in the Yom Kippur War, so that neither Jordan nor Israel were directly threatened by each other, but the majority of Jordanians and Palestinian refugees who supported the war would be satisfied by Jordanian participation. In fact, Jordan's another good example of a Muslim country with a "great and thriving" religious minority. The Christian community in Jordan is not particularly large (but then, neither is Jordan itself), but it's fairly active, and there's generally no strife between them and the Islamic minority. In fact, if you ask a Jordanian of either religion about the friction between the Islamic and Muslim communities, the response is usually a confused "What? What are you talking about?"

Actually, his response will be "But those aren't religious conflicts!" (Or, in the case of Bosnia, "That's not a current conflict!") You see, he's constructed this nice circular argument where major religious conflicts only involve Islamic countries, because only Islamic countries fight for religious reasons, ergo Muslims are universally bad...just because. I'm sure he would characterize any other conflict - the Irish Troubles, for example - as not being religious, simply because Islam wasn't involved (Northern Ireland, for example, being a revolt against direct British rule - never mind the fact that the area was completely polarized along Protestant and Irish Catholic lines). Indonesia invading East Timor, on the other hand, IS a religious conflict, because Islam is involved. Never mind the fact that, at the time, East Timor was a majority Islamic country invaded by a Catholic general at the behest of a totalitarian dictator who not only was motivated by the desire to suppress East Timor's democratic movement, but discriminated against Muslims anyway. But it's so much simpler to just say "Muslims bad!" Saves people like him the trouble of actually learning about things.

Let's see...we can keep the same porous line and put a top-ranked QB behind it to get killed. Or we can draft a top-ranked offensive lineman six picks later, and improve the line so that the QBs we have don't get killed. And you think a QB is going to make a greater impact than a lineman?

It's not the government's job to denounce every !@#$ing idiot who says something stupid. It IS, however, their job to give consideration to the policy statements of foreign leaders. That you can't see the difference is...unsurprising.

But you have a sense of humor, because David Letterman abused Bill O'Reilly.

Yeah, no big deal. Hell, I've probably got that many under my couch right now...

"The Refrigerator" Perry: strength and conditioning coach.

Wow. That's almost as bad as watching Travis Henry throw an option pass. Almost.

Don't ask me. I'm not the one that said "great and thriving" implied not being attacked by mobs or having you markets blow up because you have different religious views. Let me try and lay it out for you: You said "great and thriving" meant "not being attacked by mobs or having you markets blow up because you have different religious views." In Israel, Jews are attacked by mobs and have their markets blown up because they have different religious views. Therefore, according to your definition of "great and thriving", Judaism is neither great nor thriving in Israel. Of course, now you're saying you're only referring to "great and thriving" religions in Muslim countries. I have a sneaking suspicion your definition of "Muslim country" is one in which no other religion can possibly be widely followed. In other words, I doubt I can win this argument, as nothing can penetrate your stunningly tautological circular argument that no religion can be "great and thriving" in an Islamic country, because an Islamic country by definition does not have any other religions that are "great and thriving". Normally, I'd call someone as ignorant as you a !@#$ing moron. But the usage of an a priori assumption as circular proof that said a priori assumption is true is one of those little logical satires that not only amuses me but requires a higher level of rational and creative thought than most !@#$ing morons can achieve. So thank you for making me laugh tonight (unless you stumbled upon it accidentally...in which case you're a !@#$ing moron). And your brother-in-law knows this was because of religious strife and Islamic persecution of Christianity because...? I'm certain it's due to his 20-year experience with the entire Indonesian occupation in East Timor, of course. I'm sure in no way are you taking what your brother-in-law witnessed over the course of - what, a day? Three? Two weeks? - and generalizing it not only across the entire two decades of Indonesian occupation of East Timor, but the entire Indonesian nation. I'm equally sure you're not telling me that Indonesia's motivation behind invading East Timor in the first place wasn't to persecute Christians. You're not stupid enough to think your brother-in-law's experience represents the motivations of the Suharto government a quarter-century removed. Wait...what am I saying? Of course you are. You're argument's akin to saying that Christians persecute Buddhists because we fought in Vietnam for ten years. It's very easy to make that argument: we killed lots of Buddhist Vietnamese. It's also unsupported by the facts: nowhere in the historical record was any decision ever made to persecute Buddhists by invading Vietnam. But if all you look at is Christian pilots and bombed-out Buddhist villages, then you get the impression that it was a holy war. It's the difference between looking at the whole picture, and generalizing a single narrow picture to what you think is the whole picture. Oooh, attack my Bazooka Joe comment. Hit me where it hurts.

There's enough loopholes simply via the fact that fighting terrorism falls in the gray area between military action and law enforcement, and our protections are not designed to recognize that gray area. Attempts at recognizing them - FISA and PATRIOT Act, for example - have been generally insufficient. I've been saying for a few years now that as part of prosecuting and winning the war on terrorism, we have to give serious consideration to the societal implications and decide what kind of a society we want to be 50 years down the road. When I've said that, it's just this sort of issues I've been imagining. Too bad no one listens to me. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one actually thinking about this sh-- rather than having knee-jerk reactions to the news story of the day. And even though I think about this...I still don't have a solution. Best one I've thought of is: rigorous adherence to constitutional protections intra-nationally, no constitutional protections extra-nationally. Basically, the "border" between law enforcement and military action goes from being a vague philosophical gray area to a well-defined line represented physically by the country's borders. And that's a patently sh------- idea (not the least of which because it's still ambiguous - it still doesn't solve the current problem under discussion of NSA wiretaps on international calls). It's just the best I've had.

McCain and Feingold fingered Hillary? Oh, wait, you said "dike". Nevermind... (I know, low blow. Couldn't resist. )

Someone just tell me Wyche is still there. I hate to think of JP's development progressing if this team's going to make wholesale coaching chances every so often. Wyche is at least a decent QB coach, and stability in the coaching staff does count for something in developing a young QB. Please keep Wyche.

"Will be"? Christ, man, you already are.

I think I said that...

Hollywood isn't a philanthropic non-profit organization. Much as they pretend to be.

Wile E. Coyote as OC, and a bag of stale pretzels as DC. Oh wait, it's been done...

I think that observation gets to the root of the problem: that while law enforcement unequivocably requires warrants for this sort of thing, and national security organizations operating outside US territory unequivocably don't, the point where there is crossover involves a tangled mess of legislation and precedent. I've been trying to untie all this crap for a week now...yesterday, I'd figured out the NSA didn't need warrants because they couldn't operate legally inside the US anyway (so how do you get a warrant for something's that's illegal regardless?)...yet although it's not stated directly in the PATRIOT Act (God, I hate that name), there is a de facto requirement for them to operate in the US for the NSA to satisfy the information-sharing requirements. So the NSA is doing something it's not mandated to do (or mandated NOT to do) as required by law, not operating in a way that's not required by law for them, but required by virtually everyone else...and people wonder how this happened???? It happened because the legislation's !@#$ed up. At least, that's what I thought yesterday. Today I think that analysis is wrong. I don't know what I'll think tomorrow. The only two things I'm really sure about are: 1) the relevant legislation and regulations are !@#$ed up, and 2) this is what happens when you let politicians whoring for votes run with their knee-jerk reactions without thinking things through. And not only was most of this predictable, some of it was predicted. It's not difficult to find credible analysis (i.e. outside of rense.com and the like) from as early as December of 2001 that the PATRIOT Act and related decisions would lead to US intelligence organizations engaging in extra-judicial domestic operations.

How many posts do you think it'll take before I'm a loser because I have 5k posts?

Is it? So by that standard, Judaism isn't thriving in Israel, since Palestinian mobs regularly attack Jews and blow up buildings. I was pretty sure your definition of "great and thriving" would be nonsensical. I hadn't realized it would be THAT nonsensical. East Timor: a Portugese colony, primarily Catholic now but at the time Islamic, that declared its independence and was subsequently invaded and terrorized by Indonesia. The invasion and early stages of the subsequent occupation, including an estimated 60k deaths a year, was largely the responsibility of General Moerdani, an Indonesian Catholic. The later stages were more the responsibility of Suharto, who courted the more extreme Islamic elements in Indonesia to defy the rising calls for democratic reform...and which ultimately led to his step down from power, as the Muslim majority in Indonesia became progressively more outraged at the abuses of the hard-line Islamic radicals, particularly with respect to the government's persecution of Christians. But keep trying to tell me that you have any !@#$ing idea what you're talking about, or that ALL - or even any significant portion - of Muslims in Indonesia are a problem or a threat to a community of 20 million Indonesian Christians that, despite their numbers and the support of the majority of Muslims, aren't a "great and thriving" religious community. You'd have been better off trying to use Laskar Jihad's violent and oppressive attempts at converting the Christian population of Sulawesi...but you probably are as ignorant on that as you are everything else, so you probably wouldn't know that the vast majority of Indonesian Muslims did not support Laskar Jihad - a group made up primarily of non-Indonesian veterans of the fighting in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Probably as many as you... As opposed to your Bazooka Joe comics?

How appropriate for their particular brand of broadcast diarrhea.