JayB

Clearly more apostle than acolyte.

AlpineK is a better handle... R.I.P. AlpineK. "Hahaha Scotty, you sure are one uptight bastard..."

There are quite a number of factually correct statements in both "Mein Kampf," the Bibble, the myriad Creationist treatises, and virtually every conspiracy theory ever put forward - but the presence of a set of factually correct statements within the context of a larger theory doesn't prove that the central claim put forth in a book or a film is either factually correct or truthful. This seems to be an insight missing from considerations of Michael Moore's work thus far, and this is rather ironic given the fact that people on this thread are riduculing Creationism while falling pray to the very same kind of fallacies that lie at the heart of that body of thought. Perhaps one of Michael Moore's accolytes on this forum would be kind enough to present the central claim at the heart of "Farenheit 9/11"? At this point - much as when creationists stop pretending that what they are really concerned about is the magnitude of the error bars associated with radiometric dating and concede that they are attempting to establish the literal truth of the creation story in the Bible - we can have a real discussion.

I've always been partial to the "Smoke Crack and Worship Satan" autosig of yore...

Yup. It's amazing how many people equate owning a sedan instead of an SUV or truck with the apex of eco-piousness. Living in a single-family home instead of an apartment is, if anything, at least as "selfish and wasteful" as driving a vehicle with a powerful engine* - but I don't see to many folks agonizing over the poorly insulated resource pit that is their 90 year old-POS craftsman in Ballard. *Subaru outback = 17/city, 23/highway per the EPA. Toyota 4-Runner, 16-city/20-highway. This kind of marginal difference hardly constitutes anything even remotely resembling a "sacrifice," let alone the kind of action that could even come close to justifying the onslaught of eco-hero onanism. This is before even taking driving habits and commuting distances into account. The other thing worth mentioning is that choosing a certain lifestyle out of conviction is one thing, living that way because you can't afford to do anything else and have no choice in the matter is quite another.

That was pretty hillarious. An East-Indian academic channeling Stokely Carmichael while a bunch of simpering "activists" line up for their PC-lashings. "Yo!Yo!Yo! Wassup Rid-wan! Break it down straight Brahmin Style fo' dey asses, like they was some Dalits G! "Get real. You are not mpoverished! You are a white and endowed with all the sh*t your ancestors stole and established through racism. So why are you poor? A personal choice for the time being until you grow-up and join your relatives standing on the back of the dominated? What you been doing for a few centuries now? All that white privilege and structural racism still kept you poor huh .... why? You should be concerned that you are underperforming in a system rigged to keep you empowered and dominant? Start accumulating your inheritance ... it is clear that you have the racist attitude to do so in place already. So stop playing in the traffic and get yours before the pie is not yours anymore. I wrote my post because I know your disease and its pretensions. Not cause I'm a hater or "angry" or any other f**king label you want to attach. I'm calling you and yours on your self-involved sh*t. See it for what it is or go on with your crap. But before I roll let me just let you in on a little secret though: most Black folk know you and hate your duplicitous ass. That is why we don't join your causes. This is especially true when you make a fool of yourself by letting your "pasty ass" hang out. And no, I did not get my analysis from TV ... I got it battling folk like you. And I am still standing. I know none of this will mean a damn thing to you ... but now you know that we know your limitations. Thanks for showcasing the racism we know well. Keep cycling nonetheless, just keep your "pasty ass" and its wanna-be politics to yourself. Ridwan" "Whites used to get dressed-up and attend the lynchings of Black folk for fun. Remember? Lynchings would be held on a Sunday and families (kids included) would even pose to have their pictures taken with the lynched bodies of Blacks. The even produced postcards that captured this family 'fun'. "Yippee! How cool is that dude?" The history of fun in the white imagination obviously has a long and tortuous history. What is consistent is that most white people just can't step outside of whiteness. The fact that fun should not be equated with principled struggle is hard to fathom inside of whiteness. Afterall, the world revolves around whiteness ... everything else is just not normal. Whiteness is such an impressed 'normalcy' that my critique hardly even scratches the "awareness" that is feigned. The naked-bike-ride is just one contemporary example of many other white delusionary moments. Saving Africa from AIDS/DEBT and Africans is a favourite of mine. And the 'prophets' of white ascendancy, Geldof and Bono, exemplify the reach of this particular delusionary moment. "Let's throw a concert to save Africa. Yippeeeeeee ... sounds like fun!!!! Can we get naked too?" Onward because we are still very much oppressed! Ridwan!" Jeah! Jeah! Jeah! MC Ridwan straight droppin it from the anti-Colonial tip. Unnngh! Unngh! Unngh! Straight Up. Check it...

I think you're right about the load distribution. If all three pieces were bomber I'd probably just use another clove for the loop tied to a single piece, but if not I think I'd just tie an overhand or a figure-eight on a bight to adjust the length of the loop and use this arm for the best piece of the three. In super-sketch situations where it'd be worth investing the time in a megacluster, I suppose you could clove one or more of the "arms" to a biner slung on a sliding-X between two pieces... When I was playing around with this rig something around two feet seemed to work most of the time. If you need to belay from a stance that's way to the left or right of the central point of your anchor then you might need more distance between the knots in order to prevent the knot from restricting the equalization.

Don't miss the suicide-vest + scimitar + burqua dance at about 5:30... G4zgURMOZ6k More Farfur. gi-c6lbFGC4 Appropriating a Disney character for these purposes shows that, whatever else, at least the Hamas leadership hasn't lost its sense of irony... Uno Mas.. xEB0SvMzKzg

Yes, and...there's plenty more where that came from. Meet Farfur: 5G_YjKRDNVE "Farfur seems entirely innocent: he looks like Mickey Mouse, speaks in a squeaky voice and his name means “Butterfly” in Arabic. But the fuzzy-faced rodent — the star of a Palestinian children’s show, broadcast on Hamas-controlled television — is pitting Israel and Hamas against each other on a new battlefield: satellite television. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has ordered Hamas to withdraw Farfur’s show, Tomorrow’s Pioneers, on the ground that it is being used to “indoctrinate Palestinian children to violence, hatred and murder”, according to their statement. The perpetually smiling puppet, which routinely urges Palestinian children to support armed resistance, sang in one recent episode: “We will destroy the throne of the tyrants, we will pour the fire of death on them.” In another, Farfur admits to cheating in his exams because “the Jews destroyed my house”, and that he could not find his schoolbooks, buried in the rubble. Hamas refuses to ban Farfur. “This programme tries to relay noble Islamic concepts to the children by teaching them about life from our point of view,” according to Fathi Hamad, the chairman of al-Aqsa TV in Gaza City. The dispute also sheds light on one of Hamas’s newest weapons: its satellite television station is part of a strategy to strengthen its grip on Palestinian society, especially children. In a climate of factional fighting and international sanctions, Hamad said that al-Aqsa television, often known as “Hamas TV”, is part of the movement’s battle for the hearts of the Palestinian people. “It is a way of teaching children about the importance of Islam from a very early age,” he said. The station was modelled on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, which is watched across the Arab world. It was launched in January last year, broadcasting from a secret location in Gaza. This year it went to satellite, opening offices in the West Bank and hiring dozens of staff. The programming has evolved from hours of Koranic readings but now includes children’s shows, Islamic MTV, with videos of fighters from its armed wing, and an Islamic fashion show, geared to women, with tips on how to dress modestly and raise obedient children. Some secular Palestinians object to its message. Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian Information Minister, who hails from the secular Third Way movement, has appeared several times as a guest on the station. Last week, however, he said that Farfur’s show had crossed the line. “It reflects a mistaken approach to the Palestinian struggle for independence and should be suspended to allow for a review,” he said, but he conceded that the Palestinian Government had no jurisdiction over private stations. Hazem al-Sharawi, Hamas TV’s West Bank manager, said that al-Aqsa had no intention of turning back: “We don’t incite. We present facts. We can’t cut off our children from the reality they live every day. “We need to launch a counter-offensive. We have to stop preaching to ourselves and start broadcasting to the whole world,” he said. " Times of London Article

I personally care more about the preservation of modern poltiical freedoms and liberal values than I do about preserving whatever whims that unfettered democracy gives rise to from time to time that may imperil those values - something that came about through a democratic process in the Reichstag comes to mind here. If the mass of people in a given region use the vote to endorse a species of barbaric fanaticism that's actively hostile Western values and the strongest Western ally, that's their right, but they shouldn't cry when they have to live with the consequences of those choices. The notion that any impulse that's sanctioned by an open vote is sufficient to compel the rest of the world to explicity endorse it, much less subsidize it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is just insane. Hamas is a band of murderous Islamist fanatics who would turn on the West right after they realized their founding ambition of destroying Israel and killing everyone inside it. Their conduct towards their own people should leave no doubt concerning how they'd behave towards the objects of their hatred were they ever to gain the upper hand. The Palestinians tipped their hand when they elected Hamas, and now Hamas has shown the world their true nature, which differs from that of Al-Queda only in the fact that their barbarism and savagery - rather than taking aim at the entire civilized world -is directed at Jews in general and Israel in particular. The sooner the world recognizes this reality, the better. JJ0bWEnW_WU

Cause Effect...

After viewing this video, I predict the era of the monkey-bomber will nigh be upon us. What they lack in fanaticism, ruthlessness, and obedience they surely make up for terms of agility.

Inshallah.

Enjoy... http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/3m/_/_tnx

[Cue high-hat..] Why do you hate freedom? [badump-chink...]

"Interesting, because I've never voiced an opinion on vaccinations one way or the other. Ever. How are your reading comprehension classes coming? Have you gotten to the memory improvement modules yet? Hurried response regarding fluoridation in 3, 2, 1...." I hope you won't have your feelings hurt if I confess that I wasn't thinking of you when I made that post. I just finished listening to an NPR seg on autism - which has inspired a fervent vaccination victim-cult that makes the cyanide-jello quaffing, purple-hood-and-black-Nike sporting comet-hoppers look like Aristotle by comparison - and it made me think of the folks in the Pre-K collective on Bainbridge who were withholding vaccination from their children. It was on "Rx for the World," on PBS a while back. Gates Foundation funded thingy on the threat from various scourges, plagues, etc around the world and the various impediments to addressing them effectively. What better way to gratify the request for some Hippie Bashing, I thought... But since you mentioned it, the paralells between the FluoroDissidents and the Cult of Vaccino-Autism are rather striking....

They've informed me that they're busy putting the "Vaccination Free Kintergarden Graduation Ceremony" video together. Should be up on YouTube in a moment, at which time they'll be free to comment. Please be patient. Meanwhile, in Hamastan... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13877653.htm Apples certainly aren't falling far from the tree. Or is is the reverse? Getting confusing...

Que the bizzare equivocation "I've seen kids next door playing with toy-guns too," reflexive condemnation of the West, and robotic recitation of the usual stock of trite, dismissive retorts in five, four, three, two, one...

It's really a terrible shame what meth has done to Spanaway. Used to be such a nice place back in the good old days, when the heshers circling their BMX bikes in the 7-11 parking lots with their KISW painter hats with the safari flaps were staring vacantly into the distance after huffing the fumes wafting up from a plastic bag filled from some kind of random industrial sealant, as opposed to twitching and muttering to themselves between 5-hour Galaga sessions next to the Slurpee machines.... Winning Entry From the Spanaway Jr. High Art Show. Someone's got talent..

Hey Ken, lay out your cordalette, start at the center, tie a couple of overhand knots a couple of feet apart, and then tie off your pieces with clove hitches. Seems to take about the same amount of time to rig as a cordalette if you've already got the knots in the middle.

Pretty much everything about the manner in which Mexico is administered and governed has kept it poor, backwards, and corrupt in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Exporting the most desperate reduces some of the political costs and consequences of maintaining the status quo. I'd say the net effect of Mexican immigration has been quite positive, and I'm glad that the country affords the opportunity for some of them to avoid squandering their talents and their lives in a country that doesn't enable them to make the most of either.

If the businesses under discussion have the capacity to pass on higher labor costs to consumers via higher prices, then they'll do so. Otherwise you'll either see increased capital investment driving innovation and mechanization in the sectors that they work-in, or the the production that they are engaged in will cease in the US and occur where the total production costs are lower. That's fine with me. Interesting Case Study: "The WWII Bracero program expired in 1947, but Mexican workers continued to migrate north, and U.S. farmers continued to employ them outside legal channels. In 1950, a presidential commission was asked to review the need for additional Mexican Braceros and, citing distortion and dependence, it recommended that none be admitted. But the Korean War was used in July 1951 to justify approval of a new Mexican Farm Labor Program, PL-78. PL-78 was deliberately limited to six months — at the request of the Mexican government — to put pressure on Congress to approve employer sanctions so that Mexicans would be encouraged to enter the United States under the program instead of illegally. Congress did not approve employer sanctions, i.e. penalties for employing illegal aliens, and the Bracero program grew in size and lasted longer than anticipated — legal admissions of Braceros peaked at 445,000 in 1956. The most important effects of the Bracero program were indirect, and they set the stage for Mexico-U.S. migration in the 1970s and 1980s: U.S. farmers had to pay round-trip transportation from the Mexican workers’ homes to the United States place of employment, so farmers encouraged workers to move to the border area to limit transportation charges. The result was the growth of Mexican cities on the border, even though there were few jobs there. Mexican workers often had to pay fees and bribes in Mexico to be selected as Braceros, so many went north illegally. Illegal workers could be hired without penalty by U.S. farmers. If an unauthorized Mexican worker was apprehended, he was made legal in a process referred to, even in U.S. government publications, as "drying out the wetbacks" — illegal workers were taken to the Mexican border, issued work permits, and returned to the farm on which they were working. The availability of Braceros permitted the southwestern states to become the garden states. California fruit and nut production rose 15 percent during the 1950s, and vegetable production rose 50 percent. Average farm worker earnings, however, rose much slower than factory wages: farm workers’ wages rose from $0.85 an hour in 1950 to $1.20 in 1960, while factory workers’ wages rose from $1.60 to $2.60 an hour, i.e., farm wages fell from 53 to 46 percent of factory wages. Braceros in the fields and a booming non-farm economy encouraged Mexican-Americans to change from a predominantly rural to a mostly urban population. One of the most important lessons of the Bracero program occurred at its end, and showed that those closest to agriculture were most wrong about what would happen without Braceros. As Congress debated whether to end the Bracero program in the early 1960s, farmers argued that Americans would not do farm work and that, without Braceros, crops would rot in the fields and food prices would rise. The California Farmer, on July 6, 1963, said that growers and canners "agree the state will never reach the 100,000 to 175,000 acres planted when there was a guaranteed supplemental labor force in the form of the bracero." (Don Razee, "Without Braceros, Tomato Growers will Slash Acreage in ’64," California Farmer, July 6, 1963, p. 5). These predictions were wrong. Take the case of processing tomatoes. In 1960, 80 percent of the 45,000 peak harvest workers used to pick 2.2 million tons of the tomatoes used to make catsup in California were Braceros, and growers testified that "the use of Braceros is absolutely essential to the survival of the tomato industry." In 1999, about 5,000 workers were employed to ride machines to sort 12 million tons of tomatoes harvested by machine on 300,000 acres. In the tomato case, the end of the Bracero program led to the mechanization of the tomato harvest, expanding production, and a reduction in the price of processed tomato products...." Cut off the pressure-relief valve that the mass exodus of the poorest and most desperate Mexicans has provided for the monumentally inept, corrupt, and innefficient political class that's run the country into the ground ever since the advent of the PRI, and you'd probably see some interesting political developments South of the border.

Hey - a revision to the tagline. I didn't think the Birkenstock was a piece of footwear favored by metrosexuals, but perhaps they've come out with a new line. I do think that repeatedly giggling over lines like "Why do you hate Freedom," - whenever the motives of Islamists and their relation to the US are brought into the discussion - by people who can't identify the group who attempted to assasinate Nasser, or what the aims of the said group were, and what role they played in the eventual assasination of Sadat, etc, etc, etc, or who indulge in a penchant for bizarre conspiracy theories as the default mode for comprehending the world around them, who refer to the folks detonating themselves amongst crowds of civilians in markets in Iraq as "Freedom Figthers," with no sense of either shame or irony, and for whom any national setback is viewed first and foremost as a means of securing a tactical domestic political advantage indicates that they are are either profoundly misguided, unserious, craven, myopic, decadent, and fatuous or embody some dismal amalgam of each. What impact this collective has had and/or will have on the national trajectory is an open question, but it most certainly hasn't been nor ever will be positive. How does your rhetoric about the power-mad administration hell-bent on whatever agenda you've projected onto them square with the administration abiding by the judicial rulings that have not gone in their favor? Their interpretation of the powers granted them under the law is challenged and overruled, they abide by the rulings in those cases, and the administration will vacate the White House at the conclusion of Bush's second term - at which time a candidate from your favored party will likely have to contend with the very same set of problems.

I'd agree, but the question is whether they didn't want to adhere to it because they thought that the subset of searches in question didn't require a warrant per their interpretation of FISA, they believed that the intelligence was so valuable that the ends justified the means and overreached the authority granted them by FISA, or they were embarking on a sinister plot to fundamentally undermine the Constitutional structure that preserves all of the political freedoms that we hold dear in order to impose a corporato-fascism on the public under the guise of promoting national security in order to enrich the sinister cabal that put them in power. I'd argue that the first two are more probable than the latter, and that what will emerge from this dispute is legislation that resolves the fundamental conflicts that have been under consideration.

Calling BS on this one. They were data mining. They said they wre limiting the wiretapping to selecting cases but they were not. The ATT whistle blower showed that they were drift-netting all kinds of domestic and foreign communications with no cause and then sifting it. The Bushies have primarily fumbled after they have someone in custody. There are adequate systems to put someone on trial for terrorism. They have simply detained hundreds of folks (some guilty some not) without any way for people to defend themselves. It's a stick in the eye to a democratic system and our Constitution. BS on the methods or the motives? Using algorithms to evaluate data for the purposes of determining which communcations are suspicious enough to warrant additional surveilance and monitoring seems like something quite apart from actually monitoring the content of the communications that gave rise to the said data sets. This seems like a reasonable activity for intelligence agencies to engage in, but it also seems like an activity that calls for careful statutory limits and judicial oversight because of the potential for abuse. If one were actually serious about reconciling the conflicting perogatives of preserving civil liberties, and intercepting electronic communications from known or suspected terrorists originating from outside the US with destinations in the US - then it seems as though one's primary goal would be to construct a set of rules and a system of judicial oversight that did so as effectively as possible. If the said conversations are taking place in real time, and are over long before the current mechanisms in place for granting warrants can act - then asking if there's some means by which you can get warrants granted quickly enough to be effective would be the way to go. It seems to me like the Democratic leadership in Congress actually went about attempting to take making ammendments to the rules and generally taking constructive action along these lines in order to insure that this sort of intelligence gathering was both effective and legal, while their base went about chanting "Warrantless Wiretapping" over an over again in between hatching an infiinity of conspiracy theories about how a collusion between the Mossad, the Carlyle Group, The Masons, and Dick Cheney brought down the twin towers.