j_b

strickland, if they ever make a movie about cc.com, that casting call would be perfect!! i am not so sure. although nicholson occasionally portrays backwater rednecks, in real life he is quite progressive.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/2004/03/001818.html Wal-Mart nixes 'Uncovered' Posted by Lakshmi on March 26, 2004 @ 10:30AM If you're looking to buy a copy of Robert Greenwald's superb documentary, "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," don't go to your local Wal-Mart. Anderson Merchandising, the company that picks the movies that are sold in the retail chain, has told the distributor of the movie that the film is "unpatriotic" and inappropriate for Wal-Mart. The decision is a form of censorship because Wal-Mart is one of the largest outlets in terms of CD and DVD sales, and is often the only retail source in smaller communities. If you want to protest Wal-Mart's decision, you can either call the company headquarters at 1-479-273-4000 email them through the website.

real competition did not wait for walmart to exist. do a web search for similar hardware specs and you'll find that other options exist at similar prices. so no need to sell your soul to the devil.

"trust us" version 10.0

Fw: i am all for pricier gas. my top reason is to force us to deal with the end of cheap oil in a sensible fashion (i.e. which does not involve waging war), like investing in alternative sources of energy. as for exxon being the epitome of badness, in the grand scheme of things i suspect there are quite a few others that give it a run for their money (anyone involved in profiteering from war imo). it is interesting to ponder that how close we are to events colors our opinion of the actors involved.

"Exxon, whose net income for 2003 is expected to top $21bn, has not paid out a penny of the $5bn (£2.7bn) in damages originally awarded to the fishing communities a decade ago, launching appeal after appeal and deluging the courts with paperwork. Despite intensive clean-up efforts, Prince William Sound remains polluted by large oil deposits that have destroyed its herring fisheries and wreaked havoc with the once-flourishing wildlife." http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=504799

isn't doolittle saying that he invests climbing differently than he invests getting transportation between point a and point b?

interesting links stonehead the yassin assassination in context: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/407592.html

"Andy Bearpark, the soft-spoken Briton in charge of the US-led coalition's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, was detailing an impressive list of achievements Wednesday morning." just imagine, he is soft-spoken too! at a time when it is fashionable for part of the press to make amends for the fact they bought the administration's "facts" hook, line and sinker in the build up to war, the christian science monitor believes it is ok to continue with the fine tradition of uncritically spewing what it is fed by occupation authorities (though the spokeperson was soft-spoken ). and the data going in those plots is from DoD. i am not saying none of it is true, but a little circumspection is in order considering the chronic lack of credibility emanating from this administration. how does one conduct a representative poll in iraq?

we could be doing worse, like watching the tube

tele nut: you are essentially saying that the judge and the jurors in any courtroom do not have the experience necessary to decide whether joe blow broke the law because they are not criminals themselves. think about it. moreover tele nut, since you think the way you do, how can you justify taking order from people like bush, cheney, rumsfeld, etc ... who have no personal experience dealing with the situations you describe ... i don't suspect you are telling them what to do, are you? Fairweather: joe blow's diet changed and he does not eat 10 toddlers for breakfast anymore. instead, now, he only eats 2 adults. do you think he should be commended for saving 8 human lives per day? ... (we were the party behind the continuing enforcement of the sanctions that cost so many lives)

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM2OFX5WRD_index_0.html Patagonian ice dam studied from space cracks open 19 March 2004 A spectacle unseen for 16 years occurred in Patagonia this week: a natural dam of blue ice gave way to crushing lake waters trapped behind it, finally breaking apart. [..]

i don't want to belabor this but ... the administration still does not admit to its lies and in fact continues to lie every day (and they have over a $100million to spend on it). this seems like a good enough reason for people to continue saying they are not falling for the deception by pointing out instances of lying. the only logical reason for which people could stop bringing up this issue, is an acknowledgement of wrong doing by the culprits or their being booted out in november. until then expect more of it.

scott, first let me say that my intent is not to offend you or put you down. not actively backing this administration is different from actively criticizing it. you started objecting to the liar characterization by talking about the editing of the video segment (which as said by wirlwind was not a valid criticism for the reasons he mentioned), then you brought up kosovo. this sequence of event either show that your primary intent was to exculpate shrub from criticism about his lying and not to discuss abuses of power by politicians in general or that you have a very circuitous way of bringing up salient arguments to the discussion. since you pretty much never critciize bush, and always seem to fall on the right-wing side of debates, and that you didn't object to bush's lies even though they were obvious from the get go, it seems fair to infer that your intent is to muddle the water and not discuss abuses of power in general. winter mentioned that 2 wrongs don't cancel one another and he is completely right. anyhow it remains to be determined whether the 2 wrongs can be given the same weight. for what it's worth, i was against the kosovo intervention in the form it was proposed but some type of international intervention was necessary.

true enough sc. the problem is doing so without taking your eyes off the ball. until, scott actually starts criticizing this administration, it will remain a ploy to muddle the issue (as shown by the evolution of his argument in this thread) imo the most pressing task remains to get rid of one of the worst administration in us history. another 4 years of this would be disastrous for us and the rest of the world. exposing their continual abuse of power and total disdain for democracy, should go a long way toward showing that our system can (and has)indeed be abused on other occasions, and hopefully will force future politicians to observe greater standards of accountability. i am somewhat ashamed to acknowledge that for the first time ever, i may think that, today, choosing the lesser of 2 evils is indeed a valid consideration. which is not to say that people should not discuss why alternatives to the current system checks are a necessity (notably this blatantly undemocratic electoral system)

this is probably one of the most common reason for burnout. when it happens to me, i find that long alpine moderates are the best cure.

clinton forced the balkan situtation to be handled by nato instead of the un (the euros wanted the un to handle it but with the un clinton needed permission whereas we essentially control nato 100%). for the iraq conflict, the euros wanted to make a stand for the primacy of international law, which us administrations are refusing to consider with increasing frequency. a kosovo primer in the context of us interventions abroad, by nc but in general i agree with winter that this is not relevant to having a current administration that lies through its teeth every day.

are you thus saying that you never make arguments? you are one scary mxxxxxfxxxxr, peter puget.

i believe all the avatars you mention are still around in one form or another. nobody forced them to post less. well, true they were rightly asked to reign in the verbal abuse and threats of physical violence (this does not apply to sisu) and i do miss most of caveman's climbing contributions. otherwise, i don't see a lack of arguments or diverging opinions in spray, or overwhelmingly antibush rhetoric as gregw claimed. as for your opinion of me, i don't believe you are being very fair but everyone is entitled to their opinions. have a good day.

you mean the ones that changed avatars and suddenly became apolitical? in this case you are wrong. you may think that some of the guys are still here, but they arn't and although you may not miss them I do. apart from trask i am not sure who you are talking about. even though trask may be a personable guy once you've met him, you are right that i don't miss the constant raunchy atmosphere that he brought to the site. if the same few people did not keep bringing him up, he'd be a very distant memory by now. it's unfortunate to have to say this but, overall, see it as addition by substraction.

you mean the ones that changed avatars and suddenly became apolitical?

surely you must be joking, have you seen how many people visit the site these days? yesterday at some point there were ~110 people between lurkers and members logged in. this site has never been more popular. so what does it mean? by using your same lame logic, it'd mean that people are visiting more than before, now that most bush-apologists have been shut up by their own untenable positions?

PP will love this one link to article Spain got the point By defaming the Spanish while Madrid weeps, the Bushites display a sneaking contempt for democracy Jonathan Freedland Wednesday March 17, 2004 The Guardian Maybe they think it's payback time. In 2001, many American conservatives were appalled by the reaction in some European quarters to 9/11, a reaction crudely summarised as "America had it coming". They insisted it was grossly insensitive to attack the United States and its foreign policy while Ground Zero still smouldered. They were right and I took their side, urging people at least to pause a while before adding greater hurt to an already traumatised nation. But look what's happening now. A matter of days after the event branded Europe's 9/11, and American conservatives - including some of the very people who were so outraged by the criticisms hurled at the US in September 2001 - have started whacking not just Spanish policy, but the Spanish people. Witness David Brooks in yesterday's New York Times, outraged that the Madrid bombings prompted Spanish voters to "throw out the old government and replace it with one whose policies are more to al-Qaida's liking. What is the Spanish word for appeasement?" Rightwing blog artist Andrew Sullivan also raided the 1930s lexicon for the same, exhausted word: "It seems clear to me that the trend in Europe is now either appeasement of terror or active alliance with it. It is hard to view the results in Spain as anything but a choice between Bush and al-Qaida. Al-Qaida won." Not to be outdone, former Bush speechwriter David Frum, the man who coined "axis of evil", sighed at the weakness of the Spanish: "People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife ... And this is what seems to have happened in Spain." Perhaps this is how the Bushites hope to avenge what they saw as European insensitivity two and half years ago, by defaming the Spanish even as Madrid still weeps. But this assault should not go unanswered if only because, if allowed to settle in the public mind, it will widen yet further the already yawning transatlantic gulf of misunderstanding. Put aside the imprecision (and worse) that comes with the abuse of the word "appeasement": the menace of al-Qaida is real and serious enough without making hyperbolic comparisons to the Third Reich. Focus instead on the two grave errors that underlie this latest argument from the right. One is a misunderstanding of democracy, the other is a failure to make crucial distinctions. The first mistake is the more surprising, for no word is invoked more often in support of the "war on terror" than democracy. Yet these insults hurled at the Spanish show a sneaking contempt for the idea. For surely the Spanish did nothing more on Sunday than exercise their democratic right to change governments. They elected the Socialist party; to suggest they voted for al-Qaida is a slur not only on the Spanish nation but on the democratic process itself, implying that when terrorists strike political choice must end. It comes from the same mentality that prompted Republicans in 2002 to run TV ads against the Democratic senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in the Vietnam war, placing his face alongside those of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It is the same thinking that led one Republican congressman to quip recently that a vote in November for John Kerry will be a vote for Osama. It is a bid to reshape the political landscape, so that parties of the right stand on one side and all the rest are lumped in with al-Qaida. The tactic is McCarthyite, the natural extension of the bullying insistence that, in President Bush's own words, "You are either with us or you're with the terrorists". If that is the choice, then there is no choice: it is a mandate for a collection of one-party states. But this is not the heart of the matter. The right's greater error is its failure to distinguish between the war against al-Qaida and the war on Iraq. About 90% of the Spanish electorate were against the latter; there is no evidence that they were, or are, soft on the former. On the contrary, there have been two mass demonstrations of Spanish opinion in the past few days: let no one forget that 36 hours before the election, about 11 million Spaniards took to the streets to swear their revulsion at terrorism. It takes some cheek to accuse a nation like that of weakness and appeasement. The Spaniards showed they knew the difference between the struggle against al-Qaida and the conflict in Iraq. It is hardly a shock that this distinction is lost on the likes of Frum and company: the Bush administration worked tirelessly to conflate the two, constantly eliding Saddam and 9/11 even though the president himself has had to admit no evidence links the two. The Spanish electorate were not voting for a cave-in to al-Qaida. On the contrary, many of those who opposed the war in Iraq did so precisely because they feared it would distract from the more urgent war against Islamist fanaticism. (Witness the US military resources pulled off the hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan and diverted to Baghdad.) Nor was it appeasement to suggest that the US-led invasion of an oil-rich, Muslim country would make al-Qaida's recruitment mission that much easier. Of course, this is not to argue that if only the war had not happened then Bin Laden and his henchmen would have laid down their arms. Al-Qaida's leaders are murderous, guilty of the most wicked acts; nothing we can do will reach them. But that is not true of the many thousands, perhaps millions, drawn to the message of extreme Islamism; the people who would never plant bombs, but might cheer when they go off. These are the hearts and minds that have to be won over if the war on terror is ever to be won. To assert that the conflict over Iraq made that task harder is not a surrender; it is a statement of the obvious. It may be comforting, but this struggle cannot be won by painting the world in black and white, with America as the good guy and everyone else cast as terrorists or their allies. It will require nimble, subtle thinking - constantly making awkward but essential distinctions. So, yes, it is quite true that al-Qaida will be chillingly gratified by the Spanish result but, no, that does not mean that Spaniards voted for al-Qaida. Similarly, it is quite possible to be strongly opposed to the Iraq adventure and militantly in favour of the war against Bin Laden - indeed the two sentiments can be strongly linked. There is a difference, too, between appeasing men of violence and seeking to limit their appeal, just as the leaders of global terror must be separated from those who could become their followers. Islam is no monolith, nor is the west, and all the fine gradations within these categories matter enormously. The world has never looked more like a complex knot, and it will take precision and patience to untangle it. Wrenching away at it in fury will only make the problem harder - and our lives more dangerous.

i don't claim to speak for any of the participants to these tragedies. wouldn't you think that someone remote from these actions, yet informed and rational, is in fact best suited to assess their sanity?

you go, wonderboy! go get some! of course whatever you do will never amount to half of what i have done but who is counting? older man