Pac_Man

Yeah, but the left is a lot less idealistic than it likes to give itself credit for. Whether it's FDR's extermination bombings, LBJ's assault on the poor (and often black) family, the NY Times' decision to whitewash the Ukrainian famine, or France's decision (following WWI) to turn a blind eye to its soldiers' rape of the German women in occupied Rhineland, the left has a lot of skeletons in its closet. In fact, the communists alone have 110 million skeletons in their closet.

Well, if you insist . . .

Mommy, mommy, he did it too! IBM spells it disc: http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/s390/os390/bk...disc1_srch.html So does dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=disc Sorry.

Are people still discriminated against based on race? I believe they are, though probably not to the extent that a Jesse Jackson would have us believe. Yet this lingering discrimination receives far more attention than something which may be more prevalent: discrimination against unattractive people. Some time back, I read about a study which indicated attractive men are, on average, more likely to rise to the top of an organization than ugly men. This is true even in traditionally all-male organizations such as the military. Is it more fair to discriminate against someone based on being born ugly than it is based on being born black? I personally don't see a difference. If you can do the job better than anyone else, your race or level of personal attractiveness shouldn't matter. Why, then, is so much attention given to the problem of anti-black discrimination, and so little given to the problem of appearance-based discrimination? Ultimately, I believe many unattractive people know a lesson that many black people would do well to learn: instead of crying about how life is unfair, it's better to make the best use of the cards you've been dealt. The culture of victimhood that exists in elements of the black community would be a hinderance to anyone. It also appears that, as racism and the effects of racism have declined, many in the black community have actually increased their focus on the issue. Ultimately, they are only hurting themselves; and would be better served by focusing on how to take advantage of the many opportunities they do have. In fact, many black people have done this already, and have built excellent lives for themselves. This is not to say that every black person who complains about racism has embraced a culture of victimhood. Sometimes, complaints about racism are legitimate. But any black person who thinks, I can't get anywhere in life because of my race is artificially limiting his or her own scope of accomplishments.

You are right: his perspective could be broadened further by living in Israel. But as a general rule, I trust life experience more than media accounts. When I first heard about this guy's experience, I didn't want to believe it myself. My feeling was the Jews had gotten a raw deal throughout most of human history, and if anything were (on average) more intelligent and capable than Gentiles. But the more I considered things and the more I learned, the more it became clear to me that the Israelis were no angels. When people you trust--who are in a position to know more about something than you do--tell you something, it pays to listen. That's also why I sat up and took notice when Ronald Reagan made the following remarks in his autobiography. An American Life by Ronald Reagan, pp 423 – 442.

You are right about the long-term disadvantages of torture. Unfortunately, torture is nothing new for the U.S. military. Torture and the threat of torture were used on various prisoners to extort confessions during and after WWII.

If someone wanted to make a case that humanity is degenerating back to monkeys, CTM's posts would make an excellent exhibit A.

By the time I was in third grade, the vast majority of my classmates had already begun to demonstrate a far greater level of maturity and wisdom than can be found in CTM's posts.

One of my friends from high school spent over a year living in Palestine. He was raised Christian, but is not particularly religious. He's intelligent, of good character, and a nice guy. According to him, most of the problems in Palestine have been created by the Israelis. He's also said the Israelis are experts at manipulating the media; and that the Palestinians are a bit naive about it. The Israelis apparently find ways to quietly provoke the Palestinians, then to draw massive media attention to the resulting retaliation. This guy began giving talks about the Palestinian situation at the college he graduated from. However, the college had to cancel his talks, after wealthy Jewish donors threatened to stop making contributions unless he was silenced.

You've done us all a favor by sharing your guess of some guy's intentions and thoughts with us. Excellent "contribution." My original post to this thread was an examination of reasons why people in the Middle East might hate us. My point was that the things that were good about this country (such as the American Heartland) are less visible to people overseas than this nation's flaws (mass media, multinational corporations, etc.). That you blamed the thread's degeneration on my first appearance shows either a) That you didn't bother reading the thread before making your comment, or b) You didn't particularly care about the truth Either way, your comment was not worth the disc space it took.

Instead of crying about a problem you helped create, why not do something to fix it?

What it means is that from time to time I'll point out the ridiculousness of CTM's actions, so long as he continues to choose to make a fool of himself.

Are you guys telling me the IP addresses of posters are made publicly available?

Given that there is a report about the killing of two Afghans in custody, there was more credibility to the cartoon's accusation than I'd realized. I apologize for my words about the cartoon's author.

Speak for yourself.

Well, as I wrote in another thread, I'm open to an intelligent discussion. In the unlikely event CTM abandons his quixotic and bizarre flame war against me and makes an honest effort at debating intelligently, I'll respond in kind. But if he keeps throwing feces at me, I'm just not going to sit here, smile, and call his feces gold.

I saw it as an accusation against our interregators--that they are guilty of killing people through torture.

Enjoy your bluegrass and thigh slapping. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the monkey picked a fight with me, not the other way around. If you'd like to verify this claim, you can go here: http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?showtopic=24512&st=60 I was trying to have an intelligent discussion about judicial selections and judicial activism. CTM saw the need to turn this into a flame war, and he's been on several threads flaming me ever since. I tried to turn things back to an intelligent discussion, and he responded with more flames. So forgive me if I fail to share your opinion about how much sense CTM's posts make.

You can see the cartoon for yourself by using the link in the first post of the thread.

Good comeback.

If that's true, then that's pretty sad.

lol

I was just messing with you. But I know where you're coming from. On boards like these, it's so easy to get used to everything being a flame that you're just not in the mood for a friendly ribbing.

Hey I never said that wanting to shake people's hands after a throwing session made sense. If it made as much sense as all that, you wouldn't be doing it, now would you?

Well, it kind of slipped on its way out of his hand, so he missed me. Speaking of which, he's got a bad habit of eagerly offering to shake people's hands immediately after his throwing sessions. Watch out for that.