LowerCaseRepublican

Actually CK, Ashcroft recently said he is allowing the PATRIOT Act to be used against common criminals. Drugs like meth and stuff are now considered WMD. I'm not even joking about this. I wish I was. What about the hundreds of random people that were rounded up after 9/11 and detained indefinitely until they were found to be completely INNOCENT? They are now coming forward and telling their stories.

Keynes is the neo-con's best friend. They like the "invisible hand" when it suits them but they love regulations if it helps them out.

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. --Michael Parenti CK have you been watching a bit too much of the FOX News Channel?

I believe the Terrorist Cell that has plead guilty to the Govt. charges caught in Buffalo earlier this year was nabbed due, in part, to the Patriot Act. And dude, if you ain't planning on blowing up a govt building, a military target, a civilian target, or hijack a plane and/or fly it into a building..... you have nothing to worry about. You spew your propagandists drivel on this board and Bush's Gestapo hasn't come to your house and taken you away indefinitely for "questioning." So, CK you find nothing wrong with the PATRIOT Act and the new provisions Bush wants to add? If they all get added this is what it means: Subpoena power for cops Ability to search without warrants for cops on "suspicion" instead of probable cause If find out about the search, it's illegal to tell anybody Arrest and mandatory no bail Being held for an undisclosed amount of time without contact to family & lawyers Secret closed military tribunals with no lawyer for the defendent and Bush gets the decision on giving the death penalty [Oh yeah, the punishable crimes by death are also going to vastly increase] You don't find that the least bit antithetical to a free and open democracy?

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. --George Bernard Shaw The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. --Michael Parenti But we're America! We have manifest destiny!

Colombia's government kills thousands. We give them millions in aid. What is so special about this dictator when there are others that we do business with? Hell we just opened up trade relations with China even though they persecute, imprison and torture Falun Gong practitioners for no other reason than they practice Falun Gong. We spend a disproportionate amount of our nation's money on more and more weapons that we don't need. And as for invading every country there? Funny, because the last time I checked even Kuwait admitted that the Gulf War started because they slant drilled into the Iraqi oil supply and Iraq went to defend it's oil. And we stepped in because the Kuwaiti government paid a lot of money to US PR companies and they were friendly with the House of Saud. You liken Saddam to Hitler but Henry Ford admired Hitler, GM said he had great business practices. Hell, we knew was was going on in the concentration camps and didn't do jack and s*** there until Pearl Harbor. And about Osama and 9/11...there was a report written called "Terrorism 2000" and it came out after Clinton left office in late January, early Feb. The report is a conglomoration of INTERPOL, CIA, etc. etc. working together and in the report it says that terrorist organizations will likely use planes as bombs in national landmarks. Even after that, British intelligence warned over a month before 9/11 that Al Qaeda was planning something involving planes as bombs. Common sense dictates that since the WTC was targeted before in 1993, just maybe it might be targeted again. You know why something wasn't done? The report sat on Cheney's desk and he NEVER READ IT. Hell, in pre 9/11 2001 We GAVE THE TALIBAN OVER $100 MILLION IN AID! This doctrine of pre-emption is a slippery slope. India doesn't like something Pakistan does so they can nuke each other using this doctrine and get away with it. Hell, Hitler used this same idea and it was condemned in Nuremburg at the Nuremburg tribunals. He felt other nations threatened his "Lebensraum" and therefore had to annex/conquer them. It's the exact same damn thing now.

The vast majority of Iraqis are happy we're there? Look at the photos from the fall of Baghdad that had a few hundred people out there when the city has over 5 MILLION INHABITANTS. Also, look at the fact that the government wants to take control in the name of the people. They don't want the US there. Let's talk the 60,000 people that got tossed off the voter rolls in Florida by Catherine Harris for "felony committed in 2007" etc. Hmm? Or how about the GOP aides that went to Florida and said they were Florida voters to stop the recount? The "bourgeois rioters" that beat up several people in the Miami Dade Courthouse in order to stop the recount there have all been identified by the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc. They are all GOP Congressional aides or former GOP Congressional aides who were flown down to Florida, fed and housed at the expense of the Bush/Cheney campaign. After the riot, both Bush and Cheney called this group to congratulate them on a job well done. During the inauguration, they held a reunion with Katherine Harris, where they all got commemorative t-shirts and paperweights filled with chad. None of these "bourgeois rioters" has ever been questioned by the police, let alone charged with a crime they were videotaped committing. For the record, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, etc., those rioters are: 1. Tom Pyle, policy analyst, office of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). 2. Garry Malphrus, majority chief counsel and staff director, House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice. 3. Rory Cooper, political division staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee. 4. Kevin Smith, former House Republican conference analyst and more recently of Voter.com. 5. Steven Brophy, former aide to Sen. Fred D.Thompson (R-Tenn.), now working at the consulting firm KPMG. 6. Matt Schlapp, former chief of staff for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), now on the Bush campaign staff in Austin. 7. Roger Morse, aide to Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.). 8. Duane Gibson, aide to Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) of the House Resources Committee. 9. Chuck Royal, legislative assistant to Rep.Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). 10. Layna McConkey, former legislative assistant to former Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), now at Steelman Health Strategies

Success? Have you seen Bush's approval rating? It's at the lowest it's ever been in his Presidency. And how many terrorists has he caught with the PATRIOT Act? ZERO. Did he catch "Osama bin Laden dead or alive" like he said he would? NO. All he did do was put three countries' economies in the toilet, gave tax cuts to the rich and got a bunch of people killed for no reason.

Wait, so it's right for the US to look out for it's national interest [i.e. cheap Iraqi oil] but it was wrong for France to look out for it's national interest [getting payment for pipelines etc.?] The war on terror, you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror. --George W. Bush Yes, I can distinguish between the two. One of them is a group of radical fundamentalist Islamic believers in the Wahabbi sect of Islam and the other is a secular Baath party dictator of a 3rd world country in Iraq. Wow, now that wasn't too hard to do. The fact is that the Bush administration fed us a steady stream of bulls*** to get people behind the war: 1) nuclear material from Africa = Lie 2) WMD program that was ready to work= Lie [Hussein Kamal, the man that the US relied on for much of the intelligence on the weapons program told them that the programs were dismantled after Gulf War I but they refused to listen] 3) Al Qaeda and Saddam were linked = Lie [they said it a bunch of times and now Rummy has said he has no reason to believe that it's true There are so many others. It's just sad that even Bush doesn't know the reason we went in and invaded and now that it's backfiring he is looking for the UN liferaft after telling them they are irrelevent and doing what he wanted to anyway despite little things like FACTS justifying military action.

Only problem is that the US won't allow a theocracy to be elected. Hence, why we picked Ahmed Chalabi to lead the Council in Iraq. The War on Terror is a joke. There is no way that you can go in and end up saying "We killed all the bad guys. Everybody loves us again." It's like having a war on Jealousy. It's an unwinnable war and an endless war.

The current de-classified records only go up until the late 1960s/early 1970s. So the links of de-stabilizing governments are a little bit harder to make. But I was speaking more along the lines of the history of the United States [Chile, Guatemala, etc. etc. etc.] I was also thinking about our bi-weekly bombings of Iraq since 1991. The most UN officials ever left in protest over the UK and US doing this by themselves with no authority. I was thinking about how we shot missiles into a Sudanese factory we thought was producing VX gas but it was really making medicine. http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle0902.html is about US war crimes during Gulf War I. There are a lot more examples of stuff I can think of, I just have to get to a class in a few minutes so I'm a bit strapped for time. It's just a very hard pill to swallow being told that the US is a force for democracy and all that, when you look at our history of intervention and it's absolutely not the case.

HAMAS officially declared against us, CK. And one quick question CK. When we overthrow democratically elected governments, funnel money illegally into foreign election campaigns, drop cluster bombs etc. etc. etc. why is that not considered terrorism?

Make that the world isn't too happy with the Unelected Chimp at the moment.

Arianna schooled Arnold. She made him look like a total idiot although thats not something incredibly hard to do.

Happy B-day!

Yossarian, did you get the PM that I sent you?

Well, we supported the terrorist Moujhadeen in the 1980s [Hell, we even trained bin Laden and provided him with everything he needed]. We supported Pinochet in Chile. We supported the Shah of Iran and helped to polarize the country enough to where the Ayatollah was able to take power. [uS endorsed the Shah murdering moderates and the Ayatollah did the same thing] We sold weapons to Saddam and the Ayatollah during the Iran-Iraq war, we gave the Taliban $100+ million in pre 9/11 2001 in "aid" and there are many other cases of the US embracing human rights abusing terror groups when it is politcally convenient in our short-sighted US foreign policy move of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". I don't feel safer with the war on terror. We haven't caught any terrorist with the PATRIOT Act. We haven't caught Osama bin Laden. There has been a spiked increase in membership in Al Qaeda since our invasion of Iraq. Hell, we haven't even caught the Anthrax killer...but we have time to put Tommy Chong in prison for 9 months for selling bongs. Also, we as Americans can look past a lot of this cleric's statements, but people that ascribe to Wahhabi fundamentalist Islam won't...and that's what makes all the difference. The Osama Clock 737 Days and Counting

Yes, it's just Loaiza's fault. I guess the other 24 people on the staff didn't play a role in us not clinching the division. :finger

Yes, and your boy Mark B's 2-10 start didn't factor into anything. Last time I checked, a loss is a loss. We pick up some of those one run games E-Lo lost and he wins more games. He pitched gems and the offense didn't help him at all. We pick up even some of those 14 losses Mark has and we could be in the playoffs right now. Our "ace" pitched 14-14 but you don't b**** about him blowing games for us that we should have won. Yet it all falls on E-Lo's shoulders because he blew a game against the Twins when he was sick. Yeah, that makes sense, Roman.

Re-Elect? How about he just wins the vote the first time?

UIUC is such a party school. And the kid quoted there is right. The weekend starts Thursday night.

Hey Roman, I did a little searching for more of your E-Lo bashing and found this.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...bush_hamas_dc_1 Great, all we need is MORE suicide bombers angry at us. Way to go George! "Taking out Saddam will make us safe from terrorism." Yeah, sure, right George. :fyou

Turnabout. Fair. Play.

The preliminary test scores mean nothing. Just take an assistance class on what the directions are and test taking tips and you'll be set. I had to take the ACT in high school. The prelim test I just bulls***ted because I wanted to get out early [we had it where we could finish, leave and go home whenever we did] So, I finished ASAP since the test didn't matter and I got a 20. I took the real one and got a 27. I could have done a little bit better but I got lazy near the end.