tvashtarkatena

That would make her a self-hating Jew. Her actual name is Rosenbaum. The Bolsheviks can be credited for Rand's higher education: they opened universities up to both women and Jews, enabling her to get her degree.

The practice - which appears nowhere in the Koran - is as Islamic as gay reeducation camps are Christian. In other words, not at all.

cool graphical synopsis: linky

Has either AE or KKK even been to a Muslim country? If not, kindly STFU. You're ranting about shit you know fuck all about.

$400 billion...for a plane. That would buy a new national grid and high speed rail system with change left over.

I think time would be better spent abolishing the religious tax exemption and school vouchers, which are, after all, a much bigger fish in addition to being violations of the first amendment.

Mass transit isn't a 'benefit' to the low income folks who depend on it to get back and forth to work and school, it's a basic necessity. By concentrating urban development along the route, it also provides accessible jobs for that very same group. The lack of mass transit in key areas removes one of the most important rungs in the ladder out of poverty - the ability to get to work and school in an affordable, reliable fashion.

If the bitch doesn't have scars, she was begging for it.

He's my bitch, not my wife.

Iraqis are getting in on the fun. Iraqis attack governor's office "Unemployment, power shortages, and corruption..." Nation Building GOP style!

Been watching FOX from the used treadmill I bought my wife for her birthday. They always come through with something: Caption under an interview with Pat Boone: "Legendary Entertainer" Regarding Manny Pacquiao: "Pound per pound, better than Mohammed Ali" Last night led a story with "Wisconsin National Guard On Alert", ostensibly due to a protest at the capitol. Turns out it's state workers - the National Guard is mentioned in a strike contingency plan as a labor source. LOL Michele Bachmann accused the Democrats of trying to create a 'nanny state' for subsidizing breast pumps for low income women.

you'd be surprised what i can pull off on a related note, san francisco also has the finest church buildering i've ever enjoyed Why such Godless country even bothers with churches I'll never know.

Cool interactive showing the history of uprisings in the Arab world from the Wall Street Journal: linky

You driving in SF is like you attending an Evangelical Women's Vegan Temperance Conference and trying not to piss anyone off.

Well, considering that much of the Arab world has enjoyed 'self determination' now for well under a century - playing the stupid fucking historical analogy game - we were still slaughtering injuns and each other right around that point. And, lets look at our 'nice', Christian, western democracies, shall we? Hmmm...might we have gone through a few...hiccups along the way? I recall there being just a wee bit of violence involved...on a scale that the Arab world has yet to exhibit. And, finally, IS the Muslim world more violent than our own? Seems like the USA nears the top of the charts on some of those measures, no? Is Islam really the problem? It does make for the kind of neatly packaged silver bullet solution the Right so loves. Or would colonialism, tribalism, centuries of overpopulated poverty, resource distribution and climate come into play? In short, and as usual, your basic assumptions are fucked, which doesn't do a whole lot for your arguments. Know what I've heard most about the Muslim world? That they have the best hospitality anywhere.

And...sharia? Seriously? That...boutique problem is what you choose to focus on? Most of the mayhem is still happening in Iraq, which is still most of the mayhem that concerns us over there, is a direct result of shitty ideological decisions made by Americans there early on, and our ongoing decision to continue the occupation for damn near a DECADE now. Is sharia really the END GAME for that insurgency? No. Not by any credible analysis. But let's keep telling ourselves that as an excuse for sticking around. Past that, most of the human rights abuses in the Middle East are committed by the very governments we support. Sharia, caliphates, all that crap, are mostly a Fux news propaganda play that Jay and many in our government have bought into. Most folks in Al Qaeda apparently don't believe it'll ever happen. Giving the US enough black eyes to drive it out of the Muslim world has been their agenda. In any case, it's not Al Qaeda that's driving the Iraqi insurgency that constitutes most of our problems over there, although we love to tell ourselves that one, too. It's Iraqis. The counter to that is the creation of secular democracies like the kind we see forming in Tunisia and, hopefully, Egypt. As those events have shown, basic, democratic principles CAN win against the extremists...just as they tend to do in our own country.

wow...who crapped in yer cornflakes? Kind reminds me an experience I had in Bolivia. Out in the middle of nowhere, which isn't hard to find in Bolivia, on a rickety old school bus. Bus breaks down. Some people start walking. Some stay help the driver repair the bus. The repair is successful. It was a loooonnnng walk for the former group. You want a decent society? Pitch in. Wanna go at it alone? Fuck you.

Yeah, low income folks who can't live within walking distance of mass transit get zero benefit from it, right? Pretty much on par with the rest of your...ehm...logic.

a contemporary Wall of Hadrian could be made of concrete, right JayB? It's the only solution I've heard him mention. Or perhaps sitting on a throne of indignation, hammering away at the Koran might be a better solution? And yes, yes, before you start again, the Koran has passages that support violence, OMG. For the sake of argument, let's consider the possibility that there is literally nothing that we can do to affect the beliefs or practices in question anywhere outside of our own borders, and any discussion of such is inherently futile with regards to actually changing anything. Would evaluating sharia, jihad, etc from a liberal western framework be an enterprise worth engaging in? Would it even be permissible to discuss? How about applying the opposite boundary condition. Assume that simply by discussing and critiquing the practice of stoning adulteress' etc we could end the said practices. You - the enigmatic 'kimmo' could eliminate the death penalty for apostates forever just by articulating a critique of the practice. Or for simplicities sake - by pressing a button. Would you press it? I think reality lies somewhere between those two poles, with a general distribution that's very close to the "there's nothing we can do about it" end of the spectrum, but it depends upon who you are dealing with. If we are talking about determined Islamists who are out to slaughter as many civilians as possible - then killing or capturing as many of them as possible while making the maximum possible effort to minimize killing innocent civilians in the process is a good, concrete policy. At the other end of the spectrum - simply having the courage of our convictions and articulating liberal Western critiques of barbarous practices, beliefs, etc that are perpetuated or inspired by any of the gradations of Islamism that are associated with things like putting apostates to death seems like something that has no moral or practical downsides. There's a broad spectrum of other actions that probably fit somewhere in between these two. For the sake of argument, let's consider a world where the oceans are filled with beer and every weekend lasts 9 days. Now, back to the real world. First, save your 'there's nothing we can do about it' for Billcoe. The most important influence we have internationally is through example. Ours has been fucking abysmal of late. If you want human rights to improve (a very low priority for us, apparently), then we need to practice our values as embodied in our Bill of Rights. That means pulling support for civil rights abusers like Mubarak. It also means respecting a people's right to self determination - ie, not invading places like Iraq. It also means harm reduction, not 'zero tolerance'. We don't, at all, understand Afghanistan - we shouldn't be there. Yup, the Taliban is fucked...so is Myanmar and the Congo - but they're not our problem - and, Allah knows, things haven't exactly gone well over there, have they? The bottom line is that liberals, in general, believe that we should practice the basic values in the Bill of Rights, and that Righties have done whatever they can to circumvent those values. As a result, we're responsible for imperial invasions, torture, et al. Not a great example. We treat our Muslim like shit in this country. Our Muslims are related to their Muslims, no? This is probably the most direct channel to the Muslim world...one we've filled with a big ole bigoted, anti-Islamic message. Oh well, opportunity missed, eh? Finally, we should stop bullshitting ourselves that we have more power than we do, and that our way, which begs for so much reform, is the only way or the best way. If we were applying economic and diplomatic pressure to scale back some of the most egregious human rights abuses, that would be one thing. We're not. It's not a priority for us. In many cases, we support and fund those governments who commit the lion's share of those human rights abuses. Our 'unfettered' support of Israel? Yeah, that might be something we could look at. No injustice there. Finally, the War on Terror thing is complete bullshit. We've turned international criminality into a hall pass to do whatever wherever we wish - with the appropriate and predictable negative response. We destroyed, completely, and entire society of 24 million people this way. Let's create an ideal free market economy from scratch in our dusty little petri dish! Um...that got noticed. None of this is going to happen, of course, because we're saddled with religious freaks of our own.

One city that seems to integrate various public transport systems is SF, particularly given its funky geography. Which is awesome, cuz having a car there is a nightmare.

YES, THOSE ARE THE ONES WE"RE WAITING FOR YOU TO PRODUCE! Aren't you one of them? Chris Hedges, Ward "Little Eichmann's" Churchill, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. The non-existence of people who attribute all Islamist violence to exogenous forces that have no connection whatsoever to Islam isn't really an interesting claim to parse sense such people do, in fact, exist. Much more interesting to speculate upon what motivates people to engage in a passionate defense of actors who are inspired by a ideas that's completely at odds with all of the liberal values that supposedly inspire them. Nope! Concrete policy proposals...you get an 'F'. And Islam, per se, is no more against liberal values than Christianity. Both books are kind of kooky, and both religions have liberals and rabid fundamentalist wack jobs who support the use of violence. What IS against liberal values is attempting to restrain the freedom of thought and religion, particularly when one religion is singled out, en masse. What is also against liberal values is to create a silver bullet model, as you have, that blames what a) only one side and b) the least relevant aspect of what has been and continues to be a tit for tat political, economic, and social conflict. If you're argument is that the world would be better off without God, I'd be inclined to agree with you, although that would be highly speculative, but we have a world where humans are evolutionarily predisposed to believe in God, so let's all pretend that we actually live in that world, shall we? But your problem isn't with God in general, although you're apparently not a believer either. You have an oft stated problem with Islam per se. You believe that Islam is uniquely and inherently violent in nature. I believe this stems from your gross ignorance on the topic, but whatev. OK. What's your call to action?

Let's just make sure we keep that market unfettered while we're crushing Islam.

Personally, I think Scientology is to blame.

Welcome to post-modern fascism, Yuppy style. Latte anyone?

We just can't be everywhere at once, not that we don't try, so guys like Mubarak have proven invaluable at, you know, keeping the lid on things. But...how to crush Islam itself? Hmmmm......that's gonna require the Best and the Brightest, fo shizz....