Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

No, but it does refute the puppet argument. Please explain why you think he is a US puppet, given that he was chosen by Iraqis among choices blessed by the UN. Or do you mean that anyone who was in charge in Iraq is a US puppet because they exist at our leisure?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

I'm not Club. And I didn't write it to compliment Kerry. I wrote it to insult Dim Son. The plain truth is that both candidates are mediocre. I'm just backing the guy I think is less dangerous and whom I know is less stupid.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Did he? You suffer from the same dream that Clinton did.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

meant wonk

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Way to rebut yourself.

You - 1
You - 0

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

My theory is based on the same principle that keeps me from maxing out all my credit cards at once on the theory that it's no problem because I'll be making much more money when it comestime to pay the interest and pay off the balances.

But you just keep on spending Sebby. After all, Bush is ramming bankruptcy reform legislation through Congress, too.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Hey man, it's your kid. I'm childness. But if you don't vote for Kerry, your kid(s) will die immediately.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Making the initial selection is indicative, but not determinative.

As for later events, there's been a good bit of past discussion on this board about Allawi's lack of independence, real and/or perceived.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

That bankruptcy bill is being gutted. Its been fucked with so much it'll be a shell of what it was the first time around. And the thrust of the bill - to preclude people from avoiding credit card debt - doesn't affect me. I never use the plastic. Learned my lesson many long years ago.

No car payments. Just the mortgage and insurance. I could lose this gig tomorrow and live just fine for a long time. In fact, I ponder just walking a lot, but I'd have to give up a lot of entertainment spending.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

The development of the car had nothing to do with it, either.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Bush wouldn't be nearly as dangerous with a Democratic Congress.

Might as well use this place for networking
 

Does anyone have any contacts at the ACLU? I'm looking on behalf of an arts organization that's having a show on free speech/art next year, and they're looking for a sponsor. They asked me to ask under the theory that I'm a liberal lawyer, so hey, I should know all other liberal lawyers on the planet. I actually do feel kind of bad that I don't know anyone at the ACLU.

Also, speaking of environmental stuff, same organization is doing a show on Brownfields that will probably turn into a reclamation project in Houston, so if you know anyone who would be interested in donating to/sponsoring/seeing that, I'd love their information also.

Feel free to PM me for more info if you need it before passing on your contacts.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Don't give me this shit. Statistics are not perfect, but only a fool disregards them completely. Have you picked Arizona in any of your office pools so far this season? Why or why not?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

2. All the bad flows from complete control.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Have you ever toyed with something called "Relative Risk" in your work? Its an amazingly misleading representation of data which, for reasons I still don't get, remains in use in the medical community. Doctors I know don't even like it, but it remains in use because, well, everyone's just grown accustomed to having it around, regardless of its useless prognostic capabilities.

Football handicapping is a bit different. The data has very few variables compared to health statistics of economic factors.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Are you forgetting that the puppet comment was made about Allawi's appearance on behalf of the admin?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Do you realize this is our whole point, and is why Kerry is so vile for being associated with the statement?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Your whole point is that Kerry is vile for pointing out that Allawi was allowing himself to be used to promote George Bush's electoral agenda, and yet you claim he isn't a puppet?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

You know how the car relates to this? It allowed people to move farther away from *Democrats and still make it into work by 9:00 AM each day. You can fill in the "*" 50 different ways (really, just 1 big one), and its always going to translate back to a Democratic constituency.

You want to see the end of suburbs (and the end of your "car" theory or any other secondary theory)? Implement my section 8 dispersion onto Sebby, Not_Me and Clubby and tell them they couldn't run anywhere in the country where section 8 won't exist, if it exists anywhere at all.

Well, maybe do that and give it 20 years.

Or just raise gas taxes by $5.00 per gallon. That would work too.

Hello

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Allawi came to Congress to thank the US for liberating the people of Iraq and to describe to the joint houses of Congress the status on the ground. He spoke of the victories and the long road ahead. Contrary to some, he did not lie about the conditions on the ground and make up some stories of a "kite-flying paradise" like FatMoore. He also asked the US to stand firm in its resolve and mission.

Rather than perform his Senatorial duties (i.e. show up), Kerry chose instead to mock Allawi from afar. Kerry then sent out his "puppet" Joe Lockhart to further condemn the man.

Since Kerry's explicit agenda is to now turn-tail and run, and to get UN approval for any future defensive actions, I guess one could read Allawi's comments as "promoting Bush's agenda".

Tell me, why wasn't Allawi merely promoting the IRAQI agenda?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

In engineering school the people with better graphs typically had lesser content. No offense.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Way to recognize an honest question from a flame.

Me - 1
You - 0

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Because the admin insisted that he stick to the talking points.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

I thought you were just repeating GOP spin for fun, but then I got to this last paragraph, which is just plain ignorant. You guys betray a fear of Kerry and a deep concern about Bush when you insist on attributing to Kerry views he does not hold. On Kerry's "explicit agenda" for Iraq, he gave a speech a week ago at NYU* which prompted Bush to say that Kerry proposes "exactly what we're currently doing." The "UN approval" canard plays well with the black-helicopter crowd, but I would have thought you were above that.

* Fight ignorance: read it

eta: Oh, and spare some of your ire for Donald Rumsfeld why don't you?

IRAQ'd

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Kerry have given speeches that say lots of things. You can't point to any one speech to say that he didn't say something else a week earlier.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Ooooooo, low blow.

No fair, Hank. You don't see me observing that in liberal arts colleges, the free-verse afficianados were all stoned slackers, do you?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

OTOH, you're learning quickly.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Kerry's positions on Iraq have changed so much in the last month - since the Clinton people have apparently advised him to channel Dean - that I highly doubt the NYU speech is (1) what he even thinks today and (2) what he'll say during the debate.

The UN approval line is a nice mantra and perhaps partially untrue. However, you have to love it that (1) he parrots the words of Kofi Annan (begging the question, is one of these men a puppet?) and (2) he promises to get additional aid from France and Germany - which is immediately rebuffed.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

You guys like to say this, so I refer you back to the article cited here by me and (noted lefty) Less in which the SF Chronicle's Washington bureau chief, Marc Sandalow, actually looked at Kerry's position over time -- instead of the GOP talking points you've been sucking up somewhere -- and reported that's he's been consistent over time. Moderate, so he gets attacked from both sides, and maybe too nuanced to make an effective presidential candidated, but consistent:

• No argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq.
  
  * * * * *
  
  Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation.
  
  As foreign policy emerged as a dominant issue in the Democratic primaries and later in the general election, Kerry clung to a nuanced, middle-of-the road -- yet largely consistent -- approach to Iraq. Over and over, Kerry enthusiastically supported a confrontation with Saddam Hussein even as he aggressively criticized Bush for the manner in which he did so.
  
  Kerry repeatedly described Hussein as a dangerous menace who must be disarmed or eliminated, demanded that the U.S. build broad international support for any action in Iraq and insisted that the nation had better plan for the post-war peace.
  
  There were times when Kerry's emphasis shifted for what appear to be political reasons. In the fall of 2003, for example, when former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean surged to the top of Democratic polls based on an anti-war platform, Kerry's criticism of the president grew stronger. There are many instances in which clumsy phrases and tortuously long explanations make Kerry difficult to follow. And there are periods, such as last week, when the sharpness of Kerry's words restating old positions seem to suggest a change.
  
  Yet taken as a whole, Kerry has offered the same message ever since talk of attacking Iraq became a national conversation more than two years ago.

It's completely untrue. I cannot believe that any major Democrat or Republican who thought the country was truly threatened would decline to act because he or she lacked UN approval. The real point is that the UN is a force multiplier, and we are stronger in the long run when we use it well.

Thursday
 

Best description I've read of the 2000 Bush/Gore debates (from here) was that "Bush spoke English as if it were his second language and Gore spoke it as if it were your second language. The smirking jerk versus the condescending preppy." This characterization, Kerry absolutely must avoid.

Any thoughts on the upcoming debates? I haven't read too much about the expectations games going on, though I'm sure that they are.

It'll be interesting to see if they can get Kerry a personality injection, and what strategy they'll devise for Bush now that the "Caveman Lawyer" strategy is now inapplicable.

Thursday
 

"He used to be a caveman,
but now he's a lawyer.
Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer!"


"Thank you! Thank you very much, thank you! First of all, let me say how happy I am to be your nominee for the United States Senate! [ applause ] You know.. thank you.. I don't really understand your Congress, or your system of checks and balances.. because, as I said during the campaign - I'm just a caveman! I fell on some ice, and later got thawed out by scientists. But there is one thing I do know - we must do everything in our power to lower the Capital Gains Tax. Thank you!"

Communists, Islamists, and ex-Baathists. Oh, my!
 

The good news: There've already been some elections in Iraq!

The bad news: They guys we like are, uh, not doing too well.

• In the September balloting, the delegate from the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Jawad al-Maliki, came in first with 56 votes. This is a Shiite group that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld lambasted as a tool of Iran during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Another Iraqi even less attractive to Washington, the Secretary General of the Iraqi Communist Party (www.iraqcp.org), Hamid Majid Moussa, came in second with 55 votes. Meanwhile, Rasim al-Awadi, the delegate from the Iraqi National Accord--the group once backed by the CIA and whose leader, Iyad Allawi, who was supported by the Bush administration to become the Iraqi prime minister--came in third with 53 votes. Nasir A`if al-Ani--the delegate from the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group, sympathetic to the Ba’athist-based, anti-American resistance operating both west and north of Baghdad--came in fourth with 48 votes.
  
  By any count, getting only one ally elected out of four seats on this potentially all-important electoral oversight body does not bode well for the Bush administration. After the Iraqi National Council was formed, but before it voted, White House spokesman Scott McClellan, while at President Bush’s family ranch in Crawford, Texas, declared: “The selection of the council is a sign that the Iraqi people will not allow terrorist elements to stand in the way of their democratic future.”
  
  But what if elections in Iraq early next year lead to a government unlike anything ever expected by the Bush administration? The respected Arabist from the University of Michigan, Juan Cole, was among the first to report the Iraqi National Council election results on his blog, www.juancole.com. “So,” he quipped, “this list is further evidence that the U.S. invaded Iraq to install in power a coalition of Communists, Islamists and ex-Ba’athist nationalists. If you had said such a thing 3 years ago you would have been laughed at.”

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

duplicate post

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

From Newsmax:

• Among the more egregious of the tragicomic whoppers noted:
  
  
  Kerry now claims the "most important task" is to win the "war on terrorism." Yet Kerry, speaking to his pets at the New York Times in March, refused to call the war on terror a war, RNC recalled.
  Kerry then: "The final victory in the war on terror depends on a victory in the war of ideas, much more than the war on the battlefield. And the war - not the war, I don’t want to use that terminology."
  
  
  
  Kerry now claims Iraq was a "diversion from" the war on terror. On Dec. 15 he said: "Iraq may not be the war on terror itself, but it is critical to the outcome of the war on terror."
  
  Kerry now claims Saddam Hussein's evil was not enough to justify war. Here's what he said in a speech July 29, 2002:
  "I agree completely with this administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq – Saddam Hussein is a renegade and outlaw who turned his back on the tough conditions of his surrender put in place by the United Nations in 1991."
  
  
  
  Kerry now claims Saddam’s "downfall ... has left America less secure." Oopsy: Here's his anti-Dean, anti-Saddam stand in December 2003, according to Newsday:
  "Those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president."
  
  
  Kerry now claims the decision to go into Iraq was a "colossal" failure. Yet on Aug. 9, Kerry said that had he known then what he knew now, he would still have voted for the use-of-force resolution, according to CNN:
  "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it's the right authority for a president to have. But I would have used that authority, as I have said throughout this campaign, effectively."
  
  
  Kerry now claims Saddam was not a "threat to our security." Here's what he said in January 2003, according to the L.A. Times: "If you don't believe ... Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me."
  
  
  Kerry now claims Saddam's "capability to acquire weapons" was not reason enough for war. Yet according to the Congressional Record of Oct. 9, 2002, he called those who would leave the Iraqi dictator alone "naive to the point of grave danger."
  And so on and so forth.
  
  At least no one can say Kerry is two-faced. He has so many more faces than that.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...0/153604.shtml

eft

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

(AP) President Bush said Tuesday "we will win" the war on terror, seeking to quell controversy and Democratic criticism over his earlier remark that victory may not be possible.

In a speech to the national convention of the American Legion, Mr. Bush said, "We meet today in a time of war for our country, a war we did not start, yet one that we will win.

That statement differed from Mr. Bush's earlier comment, aired Monday in a pre-taped television interview, that "I don't think you can win" the war on terror. That had Democrats running for the cameras to criticize him for being defeatist and flip-flopping from previous predictions of victory.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in639576.shtml

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

This article has been flayed apart by both sides since its publication.

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

Interesting question. I suppose he probably wasn't given adequate time after hitting all the Bush campaign talking points.

And if he was going to address the Iraqi agenda in the US, why then did he not ask why, after giving over $20 million to Halliburton, there is no power for much of the day in most of the country?

Why was he not asking Congress why the American contractors they are throwing so much money at to get the Iraqi oil wells up and pumping why it is that the natural gas that could be used to provide fuel for utilities is being flared off at the wellhead?

Why was he not asking for doctors and teachers?

Tell me, why wasn't Allawi promoting the Iraqi agenda?

Bill Kristol must read my rants
 

An off-the-cuff comment to Matt Lauer on a train in specific context is hardly comparable to 6 months' worth of Kerry speeches.

But hey, run with what you got.