FlaSoxxJim

QUOTE(Jim Spencer @ May 26, 2006 -> 09:11 AM) As a Rookie this was my 1st visit to " Sex, Lies, and Music" Hope we didn't scare you away. Fair warning, you'll need at leeast 1,000 posts under your belt before you're ready for the Filibuster. . .

Wow, you guys just missed having the coolest birthday day of all time by JUST ONE DAY! But a mighty fine birthday to you all just the same!

QUOTE(IggyD @ May 26, 2006 -> 07:04 AM) This was their plan before GW took office...whats the argument or surprise here? (PNAC - NeoCon Agenda) You've hit it on the head there. PNAC strategists have called for an enduring presence in the Middle East (a Middle East reshaped in our image, no less) starting several years before the GWB presidency. Rummy, the man who has most fallen over himself to deny plans for permanent bases, is a signatory to their 1997 Statement of Principles. So, too, are Cheney, Libby, and Wolfowitz for that matter. So when Rummy is on record as part of a group who for years have argued for a permanent Middle East presence, and is telling the public they have no plans to do the same, it is a spurious statement at best. As far as the parsed-words justification as to how that can not be seen as lying – that "no plans" for bases maybe literally means the architects hadn't finished plans at the time the statement was made or some similar definition of 'what is is.' – I would hope that is unlikely in the 2004/2005 statements. Otherwise we were pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the construction of "enduring"/"consolidating"/"long-term"/"pick-your-euphemism-but-don't-call-em-permanent" bases without even having the construction plans. On the other hand, that sounds like about the level of forethought that has gone into the rest of the war.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ May 25, 2006 -> 10:12 PM) Rob's best Matrix impression right there. Matrix? I thought he was doing a Joe Cocker impression.

QUOTE(samclemens @ May 25, 2006 -> 08:41 PM) oh my god did you just admit that?! Yeah. I feel so dirty. . .

QUOTE(jasonxctf @ May 25, 2006 -> 05:54 PM) i was wondering why he was pretty quick to protect that (D) congressman from Louisana after the FBI sting caught him. Hastert quickly went to Bush to complain about the investigation and Bush quickly sealed the documents today. Now why would the lead Congressional Republican come to such a quick defense of a Democrat when the Republican party is struggling to keep control of the house this fall??? Well, the strange bedfellows notions aside, it comes down to it being apparently unprecidented, and two Constitutionally separate branches of government colliding. That's my 4th-grade level understanding of it anyway.

For the two or three who care. . . maybe our best insights into the fabricated justifications for the Iraq invasion are going to come from across the Pond. DKos Diary Link – Wingers Need Not Click.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ May 25, 2006 -> 05:20 PM) Her. (This one is so damn mean I'm just linking to it, not putting it in the post)

QUOTE(Soxy @ May 25, 2006 -> 04:44 PM) Is it better to be passive aggressive or aggressive? I'm going to go with aggressive. I *hate* passive aggressive people. I also hate passive-aggressives. But I do it secretly and in a sniping sort of way.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5012268.stm

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ May 25, 2006 -> 03:20 PM) "Bush Orders FBI-Congress Documents Sealed..." drudgereport.com I dunno, maybe this is the right thing to do here.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ May 25, 2006 -> 11:40 AM) What the hell are those!?! They sound slightly disgusting. I'm taking a wild leap and guessing they are fries cooked in duck fat. You want seemingly disgusting, try hanging out with my high college buddy's Polish family on keeshka or czarnina night. Keeshka is, of course, blood sausage, and czarnina is duck's blood soup. I had to say seemingly disgusting because, dammit, that stuff is actually pretty good once you get up the nerve to try it.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ May 25, 2006 -> 01:42 PM) Murray Waas of the national Journal is now running with saying that Rove and Novak may have conspired together to create a story not implicating Rove in the CIA leak (which would be obstruction of justice if true). TIFWIW, but this guy has been doing some pretty good work on this case. Huzzah! I just saw the Raw Story link on that. Wouldn't that be something, if true? What was it Bush said about dealing harshly with anyone who had any awareness of wrongdoing? This would have included Ashcroft then, too, after Rove and Novak came clean with him. True, this is still a TIFWIW, but Waas' Plamegate stuff has been mostly on the money. Excerpts:

I'll get this thing rolling with the DEFINITIVE statement on bases: ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO US!!!

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 25, 2006 -> 08:34 AM) Big picture here is the thing I don't get... 100 kids decide to get together and pray at a public school graduation and that equals government endorsement of religion. Whereas schools, federal, state and local governments get together, give classes, materials, videos, babysitting, and birth control out and they aren't endorsing teenage and/or premartial sex. First off, I do not agree that any of those actions "endorses" tenage/premarital sex. To the contrary, it recognizes the problem and tries to prevent or mitigate the potential negative consequences. More to the point, none of that has anything to do with the Constitutionality of endorsing a particular religious viewpoint.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 25, 2006 -> 12:08 PM) But it's not just Bush. It's ALL of them. They're all part of it. They're all in on it. They grandstand and throw accusations at each for the sake of distracting the public from what is really going on. Take your blinders off. Stop focusing on Bush and look at the big picture. The conversation is heading into new directions probably worthy of more than the catch-all Dem thread. But I think I am looking at the big picture, which is basically that the actions of this heavily NeoCon policy-influenced administration have caused us as a country to pretty much screw the pooch as far as our world position/power/alliances/economy for decades to come.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ May 25, 2006 -> 12:07 PM) Duh. No shock there. No, but a small measure of justice that has been a long time coming.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 25, 2006 -> 11:38 AM) Everything you listed is a bunch of grandstanding. Congress knew damn well how this was going to turn out. Mark my words. If we get Dem majority and a Dem president in '08, there WILL be strategic bases in Iraq. Book it. I don't doubt that one bit. We will be paying for the miscalculations of the GWB administration and the mistakes in Iraq for years to come.

Lee and Kucinich got a voice vote approval in March of a spending bill amendment that is trying to financially make sure a permanency that Congress never voted for is not funded with money granted through the 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act Biden's amendment is similar in its goals Sen. Biden's amendment barring spending in the bill to establish permanent military bases in Iraq or to exercise control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq.

Yes they can say it. But neither you or I or anybody who has been paying attention hase ever for one second believed it, despite the parsing and plausible deniability soundbytes. QUOTE(YASNY @ May 24, 2006 -> 11:20 AM) I, for one, never believed that wasn't part of the long range plans. You are not alone.

Sad indeed. And I didn't know that another Copeland brother was the founder of IRS records. To me as a teenager at the time, that was like pre-indie indie, and led me to a lot of stuff I wasn't hearinng anywhere else.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 25, 2006 -> 10:50 AM) It's not just Bush, it's been the m.o. of the English speaking peoples for centuries. At one point in time, 'the sun never set on the British empire'. England or the US controlled the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, the Straits of Gibralter ... in other words, the 'gates' of the world. It's always been that way and it will always be that way as long as we are militarily able to do so. When there is a 'hotspot' somewhere, there will be Enlgish speaking military there as well. I agree that is and has been the strategy long before this administration. The fact remains that it doesn't square with the words coming from the administration: And of course we've dressed our true designs up in euphemisms for a long tiime. Even bases in Germany are usually referred to as 'enduring' rather than permanent.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 25, 2006 -> 10:17 AM) Show me where Bush said that, and I'll believe you. If you accept that the Bush Administration is speaking with one voice then it has been said on several occassions, and implied as often as possible. Just after the Fall of Baghdad, a Shanker and Schmitt NYT piece nailed the truth of the matter, that. . . Any talk of permanent bases in the NeoCon "arc of instability" was, of course, completely at odds with our stated mission of liberating Iraq, so Rummy very quickly got down to quashing this storyline: There have been more administrations denials of the plans for permanent bases since then: Top military brass has said as much also: You are absolutely right of course, YAS, permanent bases have always been a cornerstone of the Bush Iraq "reconstruction" plan. As has the denial of such aims by the administration: Note: all of the included quotes are from an online column that ran in February on The Nation Institute website. Nation Institute has a "fundamental commitment to the values of free speech and open discourse."

I see Noam is going too be on a NY speaking bill with Democtacy Now's Amy Goodman here soon. That woulkd be good to see. Happy birthday both of youse.