Open Thread (11/21/2008)

The AP is reporting that Attorney General Mukasey collapsed at a speaking event last night.  Last update, he was alert and conscious this morning.

HG

I will get right on that.

Read the article again. She was buying school supplies for OTHER kids (presumably to distribute).  Her "two babies" are her dogs, the ones that survived.  Sure, dogs get tumors, but... still it'd be better for that dog if its last days while being sick weren't ALSO spent hungry in a neglected pee-filled house, y'know?

If she knew the person she allowed to live in the house and supposedly care for the dogs, I wonder if she can possibly take him to court and sue for damages?   Those companies that clean disaster houses don't come cheap.

Her "two babies" are her dogs, the ones that survived.  Sure, dogs get tumors, but... still it'd be better for that dog if its last days while being sick weren't ALSO spent hungry in a neglected pee-filled house, y'know?

Definitely.  I'm on some dog-related mailing lists, and most owners really care about their dogs' last days being good ones.

My avatar is actually a symbol of the gun rights movement used for the last two to three decades.  The legendary figure who is famous for his rallying cry for his outnumbered army that refused to lay down arms and face subjugation.  But your reputation for being way off the mark continues to astound.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

while leaving animals uncared for and then expecting our sympathy for material losses resulting from her irresponsible behaviour is a bit ridiculous.

1) Animals were not left uncared for. She found someone to take care of the dogs, but that person failed to do so. She didn't just lock the door and leave the dogs alone.

2) Sympathy was not for material losses, but rather for the health of her pets and her tragic R&R. The dogs were starving and sick, and one was put down.

And by the way, I know it's ridiculous to point at war protesters and call them "unpatriotic" and "anti-troops." In my experience, war protesters are anything but that - in fact, they're frequently more patriotic and care about the troops more than most people.

However, your feelings towards our troops are just disgusting.

I feel no qualms whatsoever in criticizing the troops voluntarily participating in aggressive preemptive imperialistic war and wasting our money and resources that we need to be using here at home.

For those who supported McCain, Molon Labe is spoken not in defiance but as a weak, passive, and sheeplike offer of surrendering arms, and the only lion they embrace is the lyin' that they do to themselves.

Regnad-That is the most twisted thinking I have ever seen. You want to blame the Generals, Military leaders, Congress or Bush that’s fine go ahead. The Troops are following orders they don't make the decisions you listed. The troops and their families are sacrificing a great deal for our country. So I suggest you apologize and retract your post or I would suggest we stay on opposing sides of the room because I agree with the others you have a problem.

The troops and their families are sacrificing a great deal for our country.

"The troops and their families are sacrificing a great deal.

Most of them are doing so in the name of a falsehood."

A true Rortyian perspectivist with no means of discrimination of right and wrong would give his all for his courageous notion that 2+2=3 for smallish values of 2. "1, 2, 3 what are we fighting, 4?" is still a reasonable question for the patriot to ask.

Zeal is no measure of being in the right.  The prophets of Baal flayed themselves with knives in their zeal.  The Calvinists baptised their victims to death in their flawed fervor.  Should we applaud the troops for being zombies?

The winter soldier should consider what he is fighting for.  There is a just role for the military man and there are just causes leading a nation to war.  The Revolutionary War is unquestionable, while WWII qualifies well as a just cause war.  But there is no just cause for our recent adventures into Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan...  Further, it is incoherent on one hand to say that one believes in small government and on the other hand to support a quasi-global military empire that expends more than a trillion dollars per year of money that we dont have.  It is a similar non-sequitur to say that we care about people particularly the down-trodden and mistreated innocents of the world yet we ignore their needs and send them brutal authority instead of understanding.  For their cries for warmth we send them napalm and explosives, we clothe them with their own blood and that of their family members, and for nourishment we give them embargos and economic sanctions, and dare to say that the snuffing of their expendible lives was somehow "worth it".

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Now your new Prez will send your brave troops to Afghanistan.   "Heh." 

When are you people sheep ever going to Wake Up? 

Jimmy Carter clobbered the American Farmer while swinging at Russia in the fiasco of Afghanistan in 79-80...

...American intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.  Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting U.S. policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled:

    We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.

Additionally, on July 3, 1979, U.S. President Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan.  As a part of the Central Intelligence Agency program Operation Cyclone, the massive arming of Afghanistan's mujahideen was started.

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I do want you to get mad.  Get mad at me if you want, but better yet direct your anger at the puppet masters who are playing you like a flute, right and left.

As with a child throwing a tantrum, if you ignore him he eventually stops or goes away.