OCinBuffalo

Alright, I see my usual 'no' response has been taken and repeated, so I'll bite: Do you think DJ can reign this guy in? Or maybe a better question is: this guy now officially has lost it all, does that mean we can sign him for league minimum and chuck him at the first sign of trouble? Will he respond to the reality he now finds himself in? Or will he continue to delude himself? Perhaps the most important question: given this new arrest, but at the same time his immediate release, can Goddell suspend him if he's not on a roster? If he can, I imagine he will, and after this last time, I don't see how the suspension isn't for this whole year per Pac Man Idiot. So I guess the final question is: if he is suspended for the year, why bother signing him this year at all? Is it even feasible?

The Longest Day. Why? Because I can tell you right now that we will probably pick a skill player with #1 and that means that between the nerves, the bad info and conflicting views, everything will be going bad on this board in the beginning, just like the movie. Then, we will make some good picks in the middle and things will begin to look up, but we will still have a nagging need/unresolved problem, just like Omaha beach in the movie. Then, at the end of the draft, we will get a steal or a great player who has a lot of promise, that hopefully fits the nagging need, and we will be left sitting against a wall trying to be philosophical about the whole thing, just like the movie.

And this means what, exactly? Remember, I'm not attacking you, just what you said. Well Ok, I guess I needed sleep earlier and I was a little over the top. For that I apologize. Good thing too because I slept through most of the Sabres game tonight. Allah is merciful! Anyway, I am finding fault with 2 simple points you have made. The first is that it appears that you are saying that somehow it's possible to separate the "use" of an ideology, in this case Islam, from it's tenets. I guess the best way to put this is: how else can one "use" or "misuse" an ideology but by it's tenets, the very concepts it subscribes to? It's not like misusing a weapon or a tool. When these terrorist misuse Islam, they are doing so using the ideas contained WITHIN Islam, from the very words in the Koran, which has a hell of a lot more insidious content than even the Old Testament. As far as the New Testament is concerned, it's clear that the life Jesus led was infinitely more in tune with the tenets of Christianity than Mohamed's, the pirate and conqueror, life is in tune with this "religion of peace". Comparing Christianity in this regard with Islam as though one is the same as the other is ludicrous, based on what is written in each book respectively, if we are to take each work as it is. What has been done outside the content of the books is not relevant to this argument, because we are talking about what is in the books themselves, their very ideology. As such, it's easy to conclude that it's a hell of a lot easier to "misuse" Islam than Christianity, because of what's in the book, the ideas put forward, are significantly more pre-disposed to violence. It is also easy to conclude that, all things being equal, the average practicing Muslim, again based on the ideas in the book, is by definition more inclined to accept violence as ok than the average practicing Christian. I'm not saying it's as simple as that, and surely there is no such thing as an "average" person, but in general if we are to believe that religion influences it's practitioners, then the two conclusions above are likely to be true. My second issue is, given all of that, politics has nothing to do with this. Unless we are talking about blurring the line between political power and religion, but hey, where are the only current theocracies in actual operation? Muslim countries. Coincidence? You're right about the smug thing = see not enough sleep. It's no excuse, and I apologize again. "You just laid the groundwork for my essay on why offensive strategies against terrorism are so hard to actually pull off, and why defensive strategies are so important. " ?Que? You can't defend against terror, since terror attacks, by definition, come from unconventional forces = an unseen enemy. How do you defend against an entire populace some of whom can be your own citizens, who don't declare themselves your enemy publicly until right before they blow themselves up? Unless your defensive strategy is: everyone stay in your house, never travel, and hide under your bed in an air tight room, you have to attack terror where it lives. Also, in all cases, you can't win a war unless you fight the enemy on their ground. Unless your essay is humor piece on the hubris of people who don't understand military strategy and tactics trying to tell the rest of us how to fight wars, I suggest you keep this one to yourself. I'd also bet money that you would claim that I favor immediate and complete removal of troops. Nah, I wouldn't. It's pretty clear to me that you haven't sunk to the level of Molson stupidity. The only thing the "immediate and complete removal of troops" idea will win is the election for the Republicans if the Democrats are still dumb enough to stay with it. Only the fools who actually believed the Democrats would "end the war" in 2006 and were dumb enough to vote for them, and now are either too dishonest or too afraid to admit that all of their so-called moral superiority was an illusion, still believe that somehow Obama or Hillary will "end the war". It was a lie then, and it's a lie now. The only question that remains is where is all the moral outrage they showed with regard to Bush for "lying"? They were blatantly lied to by their supposed heroes, and now what, are they are ready to be lied to again? When does the hypocrisy end? I suggest reading this book on the matter and deciding for yourself. It is a pretty convincing argument to me. Convincing that suiciding bombing is on the rise? Sure. Convincing that suicidal cowards ultimately win? Hardly. In fact, few strategies fail as consistently and as miserably as terrorism. Look at the IRA, PLO, Shining Path and the rest of the Communist terror organizations, the French in WWII. All failed to achieve any of their goals solely through the use of terror. It wasn't until politics/diplomacy/intervention from an outside conventional military power was employed that anything was achieved. Sure terror sucks, but it doesn't win unless you fail to fight it = why the original assassins were so effective. Once real military power was applied against them, regardless of the assassins' attacks, they were finished. We shouldn't listen to people who are unaware of that simple lesson from history.

So instead of responding you attempt to to obfuscate and hide behind my apparent "mischaracterization" of course as defined by you. Great. 1. Set your own standard 2. Meet your own standard 3. ??? 4. Profit This is a great argument! And, it would be nice if this is what you had posted earlier! But its not. Instead, you post this now and try to cover for your, or "In a space no one cares about"'s, or both, earlier posts. And to further that effort, you try to cast an aspersion on me. Did you honestly believe that would work?? In fact you did say that the Islam was being USED improperly, and paid no attention to the whether the tenets of the beleif system itseld are fundametnally flawed. Look you can try to smugly brush me off all you want, and you have made a nice attempt to revise your position to make it appear as though you were merely "raising possibilities" all along. Do you really think anybody is buying that crap? Do I sound like your TA? Or some lame dick associate professor? Sorry, all of this is a nice try. But when confronted, you go from making definitive statements to "merely rasing possibilities" in an awful hurry. Why is that? What a surprise, another punt! So, as a guy who regularly posts on this message board, has heard all of the Farenheit 9/11 hoopla, knew enough about Moore to watch Sicko, yet this whole time poor BlueFire has no idea about Moore's beliefs about 9/11, the Bush administration, or anything else but Healthcare. Hmmm. Help me understand why I shouldn't throw the largest of BS flags on this, please. But fine, you wanna punt, go ahead. Hint: each country and situation is different. Also, what you *do* believe is not effective about .5 the time. Sorry. The fact is that you can't be quick and targeted when half the population of a city/country is the enemy. How can you be quick when lots baddies see you coming in and going out? How can you be targeted when half the people are baddies? Who do you target? Lots of opfor like in Somalia(BlackHawk Down) = our small, quick forces get killed. Nobody is quicker and more targeted than Delta and the Rangers. Seals? Same/same. Look how "quick and targeted" Isreal has been year in and year out and what has it gotten them? Your argument smacks of hindsight. Worse it doesn't apply to Iraq or Afghanistan. Worst, where exactly has it been proven that occupation, not the tactics, just the presence of foreign troops causes terrorism? Nowhere. In all cases, every single time, the terms of the occupation has always dictated the behavior of the occupied, not the occupation itself. Well I do have all the posts I have seen from you since I joined the board now don't I? I also have my memory, which is pretty good too. So I guess my extrapolation isn't so bad now is it. More importantly, when I raise these questions, why are you changing the subject to me instead of answering them? Agree with the statment. Don't get the question. Do you mean: Should we give ground in the PR war in order to let people recieve personal vindication?

Due process? Separation of powers? The fact that the Bush administration doesn't control either? That he doesn't control every person in every federal office? Blasphemy. Don't you know that the minute Bush got elected suddenly he became dictator of America and omnipotently aware of every thing every single thing that every single Federal employee does, and is therefore responsible for it, but at the same time is an idiot, and a good liar to boot? </sarcasm> Seriously, it's this endless oversimplification = BushBad = that has made all of these arguments cliched. They may have had some value, um probably in 2006 sometime, but whatever value is long gone, thanks to repeating the same thing over and over again, which is all the democrat "leadership" seems capable of doing. God forbid they propose a workable idea, and lead on how to implement it....what? nothing? oh yeah, tell us about how bad Bush is again. I promise that these guys will stop hearing Bushbad the minute they stop saying, well, Bushbad. I know it's an addiction and I know it's a hard habit to break. How about if they provided 1, just 1, workable idea about how to improve things in Iraq, instead of endlessly defining the problem, again? Better yet, how about offering 1 workable idea about how to make sure we don't mess with the Constitution, but still get the NSA, CIA, FBI and HS the tools they need to prevent another 911? <crickets for five minutes....then "Bushbad"> The fact is that with 9/11 we didn't even have the law on the books to figure out who was supposed to do what and how regarding so many issues that anybody would have been accused of "running roughshod" over the constitution by doing anything. Again, it's cliched. I'm interested in getting things right and results, not blame. I guarantee that whoever spends most of their time on that this time around wins.

Sure I did. You simply don't have the moral courage to respond. Or is it that there is nothing you can reasonably dispute? Still want to talk about/change the subject to bad Christians when the subject is clearly bad Muslims? How about telling us again that the way an ideology is USED i.e. how National Socialism was USED, is the only thing that's bad, not the ideology itself, i.e. National Socialism is not a bad idea, it was just used improperly. I'm sorry, that's simply retarded thinking no matter how you slice it. Defend it. This is very similar to the dumbass socialists out there trying to tell us that the massive failure that is socialism/Communism, as evidenced by every country that has tried it, can be a good idea, it's just that those 50+ countries that did try it simply didn't USE it properly. And, if only they let this new crop of "smart" people (MoveOn.org and Molson_Golden) USE socialism properly, that this time it would work. Their arrogance is staggering. As if all of the "smart" people who have been involved in giving socialism a try for the last 100 years were all nitwits compared to these new "smart people". I am curious how you come to the conclusion that all ideas are fundamentally good ones, and it is simply their improper use that give people the "impression" that they are bad. Also, if there is a terrorist threat, should we be treating these scumbags as humans, never mind prisoners of war? Obviously our people don't get humane treatment when they are captured. I am curious to hear what standard, Christian or otherwise, you would apply. I am also curious to hear what your personal response would be if one of the people they cut up was someone in your family or one of your friends. How about this, what would you want me to do to the people who do this if their victim was you? If it was your head on a pike or whatever? I am willing to listen to you only because you have said some reasonable things in the past and I don't think you are too far gone into the Molson_Golden stupidity vortex just yet.

Funny, once again, we see in Molson_Golden fashion, another shining example of an obvious liberal(not a real Democrat) changing the subject with a equally predictable and infantile "but Christians did it too" argument. What these terrorists do has nothing to do with what what anybody else does. McViegh has nothing to do with these people and I grow weary of you lames trying to justify the bad behavior of people you support by pointing out bad behavior by somebody else. Bad behavior is what it is. Grow up. "Just because little Johnny did it too, doesn't mean that what you(or somebody you like) did is ok." This thread is about the effect of Muslim extremism on the rest of the Muslim population and how that effect is spreading. It has nothing to do with Christians. Even if it did, let me be "Mommy" here and remind you once again: two wrongs don't make a right. Moreover, a wrong conducted today based on a wrong conducted 700 years ago make: a retarded argument. Support for such retarded arguments merely demonstrate either the stupidity of the supporter, or the willingness of the supporter to subject themselves to retarded arguments, as long as they get to prove, however tenuously(or don't prove at all), that they are "right" or Bush/America is bad. Unfortunately for you, all you are demonstrating here is why we should not let people who think like you be in charge of anything. Dopey. This is flat out dopey. So now I suppose that the vast majority of the German people, who incidentally elected Hitler to office, were all somehow not aware of the fundamental tenets of National Socialism? Nah they supported the ideology but rejected the violence. Right? How about the millions of Nazi party members? I suppose that they weren't committed to the acts of economic violence, never mind the actual violence, that was perpetrated by the Nazi ideology. Right? Nah, it was just the SS that gave Hitler the power, not the millions of civil servants. The "vast majority" of Communists Party members the world over, who in most cases either supported violence or committed it themselves, did not do it based on their "revolutionary ideals". Nah. The KGB did all the dirty work and none of it was supported or even know by the rank and file. Right? Sure the average worker had no idea that his government was making people disappear( even when it was him who was disappeared to a work camp), invading other countries, starting wars all over the globe. They simply supported the "worker's paradise" that they lived in, not the consequences of letting a few supposed "intellectuals" run things. Or, isn't that the point of Communism? And of course, we can just as easily assume that the terrorists, Hamas included, who incidentally produce no goods or services and haven't for 30 years but somehow are able to live/buy weapons/equipment/bribe officials/travel the world, do so because they have a magic bag that produces an endless supply of money, because the "vast majority" of Muslims reject extremism and violence and of course no economic or military support is coming from them. Like I said. Dopey. So are you willing to go on that backpacking trip through Pakistan or aren't you? Or, are you for the third time, gonna try and Clinton-scate around the question? Does it depend on the definition of the word "is" by any chance? Well I don't know, you have consistently trumpeted Micheal Moore's beliefs on this board and he told us in no uncertain terms that "There is no terrorist threat". So, I don't think it's unreasonable for any of us to believe that you would agree with him on this issue as well. After all, Farenheit 911 was a "documentary". Right? And while you hesitate trying in vain to muster up your best smug response, remember that nothing in that movie has proven to be true. Nothing.

Fundamentally, the video's logic is flawed because it assumes that the effects of global warming are NOT inevitable, and it assumes that human activity both to create global warming and to stop global warming will ALWAYS have an effect. The bottom right quadrant can occur even though the left column was chosen, and, it's contrapositive, the top left quadrant can occur even though the right column was chosen, are both true statements. And that is where this construct's, this guy's, this video's, and anyone, obviously not trained in logic, who supports this video's, argument ends. Permanently. Read the rest if you want to know why. The effects of global warming can be inevitable, just as inevitable as the 3-4 ice ages we are sure happened(anyone who has ever been to Watkins Glen knows this and you don't have to be a genius to see the obvious effect of glaciers moving back and forth), with no human involvement whatsoever. Also, humans may or may not be able to stop another ice age from occurring. 1. It is entirely possible that humans do everything we possibly can to avert global warming, AND, that the earth still undergoes a disaster, THEREFORE, humans end up dead, having no affect at all. 2. It is also possible that humans do nothing we possibly can to avert global warming, AND, we have no effect on the cause, THEREFORE, humans end up dead, having not been the cause of global warming. His little logic chart doesn't take these, or others, into account. It is lame at best and representative of the general lack of logic training so blatantly prevalent in so-called "intellectuals" running around today. It's like nobody took Course II, or, they forgot it by the time they got around to their grad work. The false choice: in his rows we can only choose true or false with regard to global warming being extremely bad. What about the opposite? What about extremely good(i.e. averts the next ice age)? This chart is premised upon global warming having no effect or a bad effect, when it is LOGICALLY possible that it can have a good effect. Building a logical construct that doesn't include all possibilities is wrong all day, every day, and twice on Sunday. Therefore, the premises of his argument are biased, and as such, illogical. It may have some rhetorical value, but it is logically worthless. Inversely, the false choice in the columns is that we can only choose true or false on whether humans do something. We don't see a place for whether either choice has an effect on the outcomes. Logically the whole thing breaks down because it is possible(and I am inclined to believe far more probable) for the bottom right quadrant to occur(mass chaos) even though the left column(do something) was chosen. Bottom right can occur even though left column was chosen = my statement. The contrapositive(which is always supposed to be true as well by the way) of my statment? It is possible for top left quadrant to occur even though even though the right column was chosen = we can still have mass economic upheaval and a new great depression even if we choose to do nothing about global warming. This is also, hopefully obviously, true. Getting it now? Both my statement and it's contrapositive are TRUE! Thus proving the soundness of my argument, and, proving the ridiculousness of the video's. Most importantly it proves that his little chart is perhaps the furthest thing I have seen from a logical endeavor in a long while. Environtolgists should leave the logic and the math, and the use of both, to those of us who are trained how to use them properly. They can have their "science" but logic/math is our domain and here we have rules here that must be followed, especially by outsiders. Anybody want to put me to the test, please understand I can CASE statement this out for you, that's right, the whole thing....properly.

Now that's a great point. Unless of course, they have Hummers on Mars and Jupiter. Nothing like a real control group when one is attempting to conduct real scientific research. Oh, I forgot, England, which makes up less than 1% of the surface of the earth, is a fine "control group". If things are getting hotter on planets that have no humans at all, and never have, with the exception of our space garbage, um, I mean Nasa programs, then that would poke a serious hole in the environtologists argument. In fact, if it was proved that 4 or more planets were in fact becoming warmer, that's too much of a coincidence and that's pretty much the end of Al Gore.

Ramius: You know I agree with you on most things(I still haven't paid enough attention the the 3.5 thing), but do we have to give Molson_Retard a reason to bring up grammar? More importantly, this is a personal pet peeve of mine. There is no such word as irregardless. I know I am being a super-duper annoying prick by raising this as an issue but I can't help it. I fully realize that when one is dealing with this level of short-sighted, "I just read Bill Belechik's book" mentality, grammar goes by the way-side. But, for me, this is on the level of re-signing vs. resigning, and we all know how annoying that can be. I am still waiting for anyone on this board to own up to the facts of the last SB. Namely, the Pats* Lbs are old and that their O line is weak as hell. It's as if the Ravens and the Giants didn't blatantly expose both statements as beyond doubt, in the regular season, never mind the playoffs. MakeBaby suddenly looks like a star? Or was it the fact that both teams were successful using a well-formed game plan, and, the Giants won because they stuck with it(um, 1991 comes to mind), and the Ravetards lost because they got away from it? I have waited a while to bring this up, and, the tools who were arguing with me a year and a half ago based on my "the Pats* are hiring mercs for one last shot at the SB before they go down" are conspicuously absent. Edit: And, their basic, "yeah, but Roosevelt Colvin" argument was silly to begin with, and has been proven stupid per his release. So, apparently, the best news about the server being down is that Dawgg and Hollywood_Douchebag, and the rest, have gotten off the hook regarding the supposed "our Lbs being older than OCinPhilly doesn't matter because of Colvin" argument. Yeah, your Lb corp is so good, you are looking at drafting Gholston as a OLB? Right, so what exactly were those guys saying? Anyway, I have spent the last 30 minutes reading the posts in this thread: commendable on both sides. Rarely do we see logical arguments based on facts, and even acknowledgment of facts that contradict each other's view on this board. At least we can take solace in the mostly objective posts here. For the dumbasses that want to know why this thread is still at the top: it's because this is the quality one can expect from this board when we get our schit together....

Wait! One poorly constructed example using one bad team doesn't define the behavior and results of the other 31? Blasphemy!

Why bother? The "everything liberals say no matter how ridiculous is right" apologists are in full force in this thread, busy "learning" from a blatant idiot. Of course, it is their willingness to "learn" from the silly and/or grinningly pulling up a chair when boneheads like Sean Penn "share their views" that makes them morally superior to the rest of us. Or, haven't you been paying attention to their mantra for the last 10 years? Look I don't care what this guy says, it should have nothing to do with this campaign. It's not like Hillary can control what her crazy-ass brother does, or can control whatever recent stupidity comes out of her husband's mouth either = strange because I always thought Bill was the "expert" politician. We have issues like dealing with Iran, Iraq, and the economy to think about and instead we are spending time thinking about this guy. WTF? . It's like thinking about what clothes to wear when your house is on fire. I'm already bored with this story and I certainly don't need liberals trying to spin it into this preacher's blather suddenly turning into FDR's fireside chats. Move on already. I blame the press for following it because the Hannity's of the world wouldn't let it die in the first place, even when everyone knows why he won't let it die. I also blame dumbass Obama's people for not getting him out of that church ages ago, but, I wonder if this is the level of incompetence we can expect from them going forward. That's certainly not encouraging. But, I'm sure the usual suspects won't miss the chance to get all self-righteous on this...imagine my delight.

Hmmmm. The same crusade from the same guys saying the same things since I joined the board. But I need to read more. Check. Bull. That's precisely what they are saying. Apparently they think that potential HOF QBs can always be found in the 5th round. All valid points, but also all uncertain points. We have no idea if any of this is true. Nor do we know for sure what any of it will mean. For example, is the run blocking a result of bad schemes or bad players? Based on what I saw at the games last year, when I keyed in on the line, I would say that the first problem was the scheme. There is no way, with size of the guys we have, that we should be double teaming anyone. Well, maybe helping Fowler, but see, that's the point. Is is Fowler or is it the scheme? IMO, a little of both. That's why I like Pollack(center) in the 3rd = where he is supposed to be drafted. Who said anything about 5 years? Ask the Redskins owner Dan Snyder how his "win now" plan has worked out. Nah, he doesn't want to draft and develop players, better to overpay with $$$ and draft picks for somebody else's mediocre starters. I don't have to tell you that you are wrong about this, go on over to any Redskins board and they will take care of you. Do you still think we should have overpaid for Clements? How about getting Steinbach in here? How about NOT over-paying for Darwin Walker and not signing him long term? No, the reason is that for all but 2 years we had Donahoe "the genius" making drafting "decisions"(um trading up to get McGahee when we already had a reasonable RB and a terrible O line comes to mind) and hazing secretaries for going to dinner with each other at 1 Bills Drive. Then, we had Marv come in and draft as many good players as he could given the mess they were in, and fill holes with stopgaps until we could draft again. The first has nothing to do with the second.

I agree that there are different views on this that are reasonable. However, I don't agree that based on the situation = 31 other teams drafting and acquiring FAs, that somehow the job Marv did overall shouldn't be viewed as excellent. It's not like you get to pick your team in a vacuum. As such, you can't draft a D lineman in the second round who has 4th round value, just because "we always draft D lineman". And, this notion that 1st round D lineman are always best is busted by a 1st round QB(1st overall) throwing to the 1st round WR(8th overall) that won the SB this year.

Nothing like ignoring the 400 lb gorilla in the room....you guys wanna play the hindsight game, I'm right here for ya. It's like you guys don't understand that you can't turn an organization around, in any business, in a few months. It takes a few years in the NFL because they only get to hire 2-3 months out of each year unless you are doing what we had to last year and getting people off of the street. Also, I honestly don't think you, BillNYC and AKC understand how many holes this team had after the 2004 season. Let's review: WE LOST TO THE STEELERS BACKUPS the last game of the season and thereby missed going to the playoffs. And, before you start talking about the (in)famous 7 game win streak, please remember that most of that was against candy assed teams. In 2005 the fact that our defense was either too old or too lame or un-talented was severely exposed, not to mention we had a terrible offensive line, and were led by a 2nd year player at QB, with Mularkey-ball play calling and absolutely horrid team chemistry. As such, when Marv/DJ took over we had(I broke this down, but in the interest of brevity I deleted it ) : 7-9 viable starters. That means we had a grand total of 7 starters, optimistically 9, and a whole s-load of holes. Can somebody remind me why any of us thought we weren't going to go 2-14 in 2005? I didn't, and I was crazy for doing it, if we are talking hindsight here. So we went 5-11 and that was the end of Donahoe, thank God! Snap out of it: One draft of all O line or D line would have done exactly NOTHING to fix this mess. Instead, Levy went out and got guys like Mike Gandy and Peerless Price as stopgaps, and then drafted the best players he could get at each position, based on their value and his draft position. There was no way in hell one or two drafts was going to produce a whole new football team that was playoff ready, although if you remember, we were in it all the way to the Cleveland game last year, with 17 players on IR and a rookie QB. That's quite an accomplishment in and of itself. That's a hell of a long way from losing to Steeler Backups at home with supposedly "star" veteran players and with the playoffs on the line. To make it simple, when you are at -9, getting back to 0 means you moved nine spaces forward. Bringing up the Pats* drafts, when they already have pieces in place like a great safety, great lineman, great CBs, great O line and a probable HOF* QB, and are simply inserting one player to an already killer line up each year, is the weakest of arguments. This ridiculous premise that when you are in our situation, somehow drafting all lineman will cure all evils is a farce at best. You wanna bring up the SB? Ok. No lineman was involved in perfectly throwing the ball, and no lineman was involved in making the catch on the fade route that won that f'ing game. And, they weren't involved on the previous passing play where the Pats* almost won that game = QB to WR, either. You wanna know why? Lineman are important, but they do NOT win games in the last 60 seconds, skill players do. End of story. In two drafts, Marv and Co. have drafted 3 times the number of solid, contributing players that Donahoe did his whole time as GM. This is undeniable.

In the final analysis of both the McGahee and Spikes trades combined, we won big. We ended up with Poz, Edwards, Stroud and 2 extra 7th round picks, and kept our draft intact(we draft in each round) both last year and this year(something the Skins should learn from us). In return we gave up Spikes, McGahee and Holcomb. If that's not a heist, I don't know what is. Never mind the fact we have gotten better players while paying them less. Thanks Marv for setting it up, thanks Brandon and Co. for knocking it down.

Yeah, but did he ever see Farve in red shorts?

Are you kidding? Seriously are you kidding? Speedboats? If we are in a real shooting war with Iran those speedboats die 20 feet out of the harbor/dock. For the OP: 1. First off, the Saudis would never allow Iran to be the potential cause for the break-up of OPEC and an end to their power. A shooting war with Iran ends OPEC permanently. I will explain further if need be. Suffice it to say that most of Saudi Arabia's power comes from being able to moderate the rest of the Muslim states in return for us being their entire armed service. It's a long story and it ends with the Saudis doing everything in their power to make sure we don't fight a real war with Iran. 2. Second, Russia will almost certainly try to intercede. The last thing they need is another customer of their military hardware going down. Why do you think they were against the Iraq war? Because of some moral stance? Please, from a country that has invaded 40 others? They didn't want to lose a customer, period. Now I don't know how much they will try to do, but they will probably do what they did with Iraq = sell them anti-stealth radar, and whatever guns they can get their hands on. 3. China is pissed off because now we have even more control of the area but their won't be much they can do about it 4. Europe plays its game of "being pissed" but actually loving the fact that we are again taking care of one of the problems they left the world since they were in charge, just like Iraq. They get to say all kinds of stuff, but actually get to benefit from the war, and still don't have much of an effect. In all cases, our oil supply isn't going anywhere. Kinda helpful to have all those divisions already in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar now isn't it?. Here's what I would hope we do: 5. We absolutely crush some of Iran's armed services and all of their security police/"Republican Guard" types. Hopefully we do a lot of it with artillery and air, and hopefully we don't try and blitzkrieg through leaving our supply lines and command and control in disarray like last time. We need to use a "castling" strategy and keep drawing their army into a pitched battle for each "castle" we capture. This way, there will be no insurgents to kill, since we already killed them all on the battlefield. Against conventional wisdom, pitched battles, given our military superiority, are actually the best way to limit our casualties. We also don't care if the enemy "melts" away, because we want them to be sent back out for the next pitched battle. We want them to surrender, in uniform, so that we can treat them like prisoners of war, and so that we can hold them until the war is truly over. 6. We use our "castles" to secure and to create solid governmental services, infrastructure and organization and we get the populace to at least elect a local government before we move on to the next "castle". This way we leave an area that is secure, can police itself with a little help, and can provide basic services so that the people have a least some faith in the government before we move on. 7. For each of the pitched battles less and less Iranians show up, ultimately ending in no one showing up, ultimately ending the political will of the opposition to continue, permanently killing the crazies that do show up, and permanently ending the power of the Mullahs to command people to do anything.

I guess you don't have to bring facts, but that also means you don't get to whine about others bringing facts that contradict your opinion. Right?

That's where they screwed up. They should not have vetted anybody for political leanings and simply got the best people they could find. Oops wait, isn't that what they should always be doing? I don't know if the fortress mentality is something most Republicans bought into. I do think that most of them bought into, "let's go kick ass on everybody who has pissed us off = axis of evil", and to hell with anybody who says "yeah but how exactly should we go about that?". I have to admit that I wanted to go kick ass after 9/11 as much as anybody. I even went to the recruitment office. But that thinking stopped for me around 10/11, and when they told me I would be managing computer projects. I still think that the entire Iraq war was simply as stepping stone to go after Iran, and that all of that goes back to simply an extrapolation of the "let's go kick ass" thinking.

Are you trying to tell me that we won't be hearing: 1. see the Bush Admin. is responsible for everything everybody does, not matter what level they are, so this wiretapping is Bush's fault 2. therefore Bush is bad 3. therefore Republicans are bad 4. therefore vote for Democrats from you for the next 2 months, and that this activity is not an example of gaining a political advantage?

See I don't know about the "political" part of the thinking. I think after 9/11 the Bush people got extremely paranoid and wanted everybody on every post in lock step so that they could ensure that they wouldn't be distracted by dissent, even when that dissent was reasonable = fortress mentality = always bad things to come from that. The reasoning being that they needed to get away from talking and start doing, regardless if doing meant doing something wrong. I don't see fortress mentality = Republican/conservative agenda. In fact the two things share little in common, with exception of "illegal immigrants are invading the fortress". Free trade, deregulation, cutting the size of government all != fortress mentality and are all conservative values. Now, since the fortress mentality has put people who probably don't belong there in important positions/seemingly politicized those positions, then yes I agree. That has unfortunately created a precedent for either side to put people in positions, due to their ideology, who are going to get us all killed.

No, but I think dolts like you will distort the facts of this case to try and gain a political advantage. Besides, what possible political advantage can be gained by having a screw up by a government agency be exposed for what it is?

Hey like I said this is not some political agenda. Do you honestly think that Bush is running some little company such that he can know what each and every one of his employees does? No, the ever increasing size of government has seen to that. There are millions of employees in the government and believe me when I tell you most of them test the limits of acceptable competence every day. Tagging an obvious bureaucratic foul up, and an even lamer attempt by their bosses to get their employees out of a mountain of work, as part of Bush's personal political agenda, is frivolous at best. You are kidding yourself if you think he even knows about it. That's why there is an attorney general, FBI Director, and 2-3 managers above the people who screwed this up. Those folks need to be reviewed for performance and dealt with accordingly. Now as far as the request for immunity from liability by the telecoms, I'm not sure. On one side, I like the fact that keeping the liability might give the telecoms pause, however, the last thing we need is an opening for a whole new brand of frivolous lawsuits. As if we don't have enough already. Ask yourself this: is the real reason the house Democrats won't support immunity because of the first thing, or is it because they get giant campaign contributions from the massive trial attorney lobby?

Looks like they screwed up: 1. first getting more records than they needed and then not getting individual subpoenas for each record because that would create a mountain of work 2. tried to get out of doing that work by creating one subpoena that covers everything 3. tried to cover for that by calling the blanket subpoena an "emergency" request So I see this as bureaucratic laziness more than anything else. Plus, they shouldn't have gotten too many records in the first place. Another shining example of how well the FBI handles its Information Systems. This is NOT some nefarious conspiracy to screw us. This is a couple of government employees trying to shirk the work they created for themselves. What a surprise!