Steve Schacher

quote:In September, the grand jury indicted three political operatives associated with DeLay and eight companies, alleging campaign finance violations related to corporate money spent in the 2002 legislative races. The corporate donations were made to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee created with help from DeLay. This strikes me as a similar tactic used against Newt Gingrich when they questioned his PAC money. What you all need to consider is that this has been going back and forth for a long time, since after Tip O'Neil stepped down. Republicans went after Democrat Speaker Jim Wright over his allegedly laundering campaign funds through mass book purchases that nobody would read. The people of Washington State voted out Democrat Speaker Tom Foley after he came out against term limits. Democrats went after Newt Gingrich over his PAC, allegedly used to fund college courses. Democrats then went after Bob Livingston for past sexual affairs before he even took the Speakership. In the Senate, it started with the Democrats attack against Republican John Tower, when he was nominated to be Secretary of Defense. Democrats also went after Bob Packwood so Republicans went after Robert Torricelli. This attack against Tom DeLay is about Democrats using Republican rules against them in order to get back at him for the Texas redistricting. Republicans are innoculating DeLay from this attack. It's funny that the only Representative to actually get ousted from the House recently was Jim Traficant, and it was the Democrats who tossed out one of their own.

quote:My head just exploded!It's all very simple, when you look at it the right way. Think of New England as Gammulan space and Texas as Galcom. California is the insurgency and Florida is the independent mercenary force. Illinois and Pennsylvania are the criminals and raiders. Does that help?

Here are the final exit poll numbers, now that the complete untainted set is in: http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/06/weekinreview/nwr_ELECTORATE_041107.gif> http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/06/weekinreview/nwr_HIGHLIGHTS_INLINE.gif>

Here's an interesting map that I found on the internets. It proportionalizes the Red/Blue map by electoral vote in order to eliminate the exaggeration of sparsely populated areas. The links below the maps contain descriptions and methodologies. http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/us_map_electoral_prop.jpg> The US, Electoral Map (proportional) Additional maps along the same lines: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/us_map_pop_density.jpg> Popular Vote, Population Density http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/purpleusa.jpg> Purple America http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/election2004textured_small.gif> County-by-County vote, with Population http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/where.jpg> Where did their votes come from? http://newsimages.synacor.com/ap_photos/NYET26311051453.jpeg>

Welcome back, stranger.

quote:The first phrase of your post is unusually arrogantSorry, I was tired and then went to bed. quote:For ex. any country mastering nuclear energy may build high-quality aluminium compounds and employ them from civil reactors to aeronautics & space technology passing by scientific instrumentation. I have not seen any occurrence of US complains against Japan, Germany, France, etc... for internal use. And I haven't seen any examples of Iraq using their components for these purposes, unlike Japan, Germany, France, etc. All I see is Iraq storing them in bunkers with other weapons. If they were truly for industrial/commercial use, I'd expect to see them stored in industrial warehouses close to where the need is. Still, there is the question of the dual use in Iraq. It's one thing to say that what we find has alternate uses. It's another to say that the alternate use was the intended use. I don't think that it was, and in all your words you don't give any indication either.

quote:Dual use items ? If you guys want to go after each country who has dual use items, better declare WW3 immediately...I don't want to hear anymore about theoretical dual uses unless you can show an actual dual use. Iraq was a country in dire straits. Can you show show me such a robust industrial/commercial base in Iraq that can justify all the dual (civilian) uses for these items? If not, then I have to assume that the use was of the "other" kind. We're hearing that the power grid was in disarray, the water system was fouled up, there was no economy to speak of (unless you were in the business of building palaces), so what is the proof of the civilian use?

quote:Steve Schacher: If I am not mistaken, Israel has an even worse UN record. They also have OPERATIVE nukes. I do not see the US bombing them...Did Israel invade another country unprovoked? Did Israel gas its own people? Have mass graves been discovered in Israel? India has nukes. Britain has nukes. China has nukes. Other countries have nukes. It's not the having of nukes that makes one an outlaw nation. It's not even what one does with nukes that makes them an outlaw nation, considering that the USA is the only nation that has ever deployed a nuke in a hostile way. It's how a nation behaves relative to other nations. Iraq invaded Iran, which is what began their war on Sept. 22, 1980. Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq gassed its own people. Iraq has all the mass graves. You're trying to change the subject rather than address the issue.

You don't recall Bush ever mentioning the 17 resolutions over 11 years? Don't you remember Bush's own speech to the UN where he called their own credibility into question because of their lack of action on their own resolutions? Why do you think Bush sent Colin Powell to the UN to give his now infamous speech?

John Kerry wants a multi-national coalition. John Kerry wants United Nations involvement. What are 17 United Nations resolutions, if not a multinational statement, 17 times, over the course of a decade? Either the UN is a toothless giant that talks a good talk but is powerless to act, or, the UN made a statement and the United States finally said "enough is enough." It reminds me of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs and Elmer Fudd (or was it Yosemite Sam?) are fighting, and Bugs draws a line in the sand and says "I dare you to cross this line!" Elmer/Sam crosses the line, so Bugs draws another line and says "Oh yeah? Well, cross THIS line!" When Elmer/Sam crosses the second line, Bugs says "Now cross this line. Now this line. Now this line..." until finally, Elmer/Sam falls off of the cliff.

quote:I really want to understand what the reason was.17 UN resolutions over 11 years.

quote:If the spirit of this text was to protect the moral integrity of human, then this only corresponds to impose an arbitrary opinion without any attempt to adress the causes of behavioral disorders and understand its implications & consequences in order to achieve tolerance. That's asking a lot from an ancient people. If you move onto Numbers and Deuteronomy, where the laws are repeated several times, I believe they also go into incestual relationships, e.g., sleeping with aunts, brothers' wives, mothers/fathers, etc. Also, Leviticus describes the Jewish dietary laws. All this leads me to agree with some of both of your points: 1) the Jewish dietary laws were certainly to protect the "physical human integrity" by documenting what was healthy to eat and what was not, and 2) the familial laws were meant to protect the "moral integrity of human" development. Today, people don't die from eating the foods that were forbidden in the Old Testament. I'd probably say that the foods described (pork, etc.) require thorough cooking in order to prevent salmonella, which may not have been known back then. Also, there were some ritual reasons for not eating certain foods, too. Regarding the laws on sexual activity (and they also include divorce and remarriage, inheritance, etc), one reason for having them in the Bible as forbidden activity is that they must have been rampant at the time and it was felt that there needed to be more structure in society in order to flourish. The biggest thing to consider when reading the old texts is that the total population was a fraction of what it is today, and the known territory was a fraction of today. Today's society can absorb alternate lifestyles in a way that the ancient societies could not. This is just my opinion.

The question of homosexuality in the Bible is first introduced by Moses' law in Leviticus. Read it for yourselves and then discuss what it says.

It's not you.

Can't we go back to a time when John Kerry was just a nuisance?

quote:Why didnt saddam use wmd's if he had them?My take... Remember when people were asking the same question of Saddam's air force? During the first days of the attack, people were asking why his air force wasn't attacking the advancing troops. Some thought that they didn't attack because they were smart enough to realize that they'd be blown out of the sky by the American air force. Others speculated that the air force refused, thinking that they'd need to save the planes for the future government. We found out later that the fighter jets were buried in the sand. It may be that Saddam had buried some of his WMDs in the sand to avoid detection by inspectors and overhead satellites. It may be that the American incursion went so fast that he couldn't deploy the buried weapons fast enough. Heck, Saddam himself was buried in the sand and look how long it took us to find him!!! (and we were lucky to do that) Of course, I believe that most of them were convoyed into Syria and Lebanon, and others were dumped into the Euphrates.

Oh, come on... The real reason that we don't use the Mother Of All Bombs is that the feminist lobby would protest associating a female monicker on the most destructive non-nuclear weapon in our arsenal, especially during an election. Don't you guys know anything...?

I guess there's only one thing left to say: "Mr. Putin, build back this wall!"

quote:Do you beat an unruly child into submission or attempt to educate them in order to change their behavior?My brother and my friend both had children within two days of each other. The children grew up playing together. When they were three, my niece was taking my friend's son's toys and hitting him with it. My brother would yell "Stop it, stop hitting him, put that down." My friend would rush over and pull the toy out of my niece's hand. While my brother was trying to coax my niece, my friend's son was still being hit. My brother's objective was to educate my niece. My friend's objective was to stop his son from being beaten.

According to CBS, planting evidence on someone you think is guilty, is justifiable.

quote:The problem I see however is that Putin has the bad habit of putting in place his ex-KGB friends at every possible significant position...That's almost like what happened here in the USA. Right after Bill Clinton was elected, he fired all of the US Attorneys and replaced them with people loyal to him. Then he systematically politicized every department in the Executive branch, starting with putting Janet Reno in charge of Justice.

quote:but i put an additional requirement to pass this bill, and lets say that requirement is something entirely opposite, in its values....but this is on line 1103, as an attachment to this bill.I understand that Kerry's argument with the bill was in the manner that it would be paid for. Kerry wanted it to be a loan on the Iraqi people, Bush wanted it to be a grant. But, this wasn't just some appropriations bill -- this was the extended funding for the war in Iraq. Kerry himself only weeks earlier said it would be irresponsible to vote against this bill. He only changed his mind because he felt Howard Dean breathing down his neck. Kerry's flip-flops in the piece weren't just comments taken out of context. They were positions that shifted depending on what his opposition was saying at the time. Also remember that during most of these clips he was reacting to fellow Democrats during the primaries, not Republicans and President Bush. Let me give you another example like the one you hypothesized -- take the Homeland Security Bill. Many people (including you, I believe) use it as an example of Bush being against something and later for it. Bush wanted more executive control over the department, as well as legal protections against companies providing security functions. He was against it until additional provisions were added. Yet another example was the TSA Airport Screeners. Republicans were against Democrat attempts to make the workers federalized. Bush wanted the right to fire workers who weren't performing, but Democrats wanted them unionized and protected. Republicans were charging Democrats of using the bill to increase union (and Democrat) rolls at the expense of national security -- Democrats were charging Republicans with opposing airport protections. When one side backs down from a conflict like this, does the other side get to call it a flip-flop? So, what's the difference between Kerry's "flip-flops" and Bush's "flip-flops?" Simple, Bush is president, and as president he gets to shape the argument when dealing with Congress, including taking hard lines on measures and negotiating from there. Kerry was a Senator who's responsibility was to legislate. He failed to do that. Instead, he showed no core beliefs and only took positions that advanced his candidacy against his Democrat rivals.

quote:If we are to believe that the Honorable Discharge bestowed on GW for his service is an indication of the military's appraisal of his performance then aren't we to believe that Kerry's Honorable Discharge and medals are indicative of the same high esteem?Conversely, if we are to believe that these documents are forgeries, can't we also believe that Kerry's thrice-changed Silver Star citation can also be a forgery?

Thanks, Gristle. You know, this was the first internet site (in an earlier incarnation) that I signed up for, before grasping the concept of "handles."

Here's a good site with animated gifs and overlayed documents. http://peterduncan.net/CBS_Documents.html