I rarely encounter lawyers that have any practical sense at all. Lawyers, like academics, often live in an Ivory tower where concerns like a cost benefit analysis, requirements for results, and a need to fight inertia, which are so important for most people that live in the real world, often don't enter into their thinking. As a result, lawyers often lack practical sense.

Case in point, the people on this board thinking they can criticize a policy without offering another option and thinking their criticisms have an ounce of credibility. Anyone with any business sense would know immediately how absurd a notion that is. But a bunch of lawyers don't immediately see the absurdity.

On an MBA chat board I wouldn't have even had to make that argument, it would have just been assumed.

In an effourt to showcase my lawyerly bi-partisanship with business people, I agree with Spanky on this one.

Me too. Kumbaya!

Spanky,

I think we are making progress.

Best regards,

P

eta: time for some wine.

Mylar lining? Or am I behind the times?

Yes, and they would immediately have seen the shift in paradigm that requires us to better incentivize our troops to focus on their tasks with greater granularity and requires our military commanders to think outside the box to ensure that those under their command are properly actualized.

I agree - it's kind of like people who call PR moves with no clearly specified goals or any identified way of achieving those goals a "plan" and who don't listen to or respond to substantive criticism or concrete proprosals from knowledgable people.

I'm pretty sure James Baker agrees with us as well.

I would imagine MBAs would be go-getter enough to not bother with such little chit chats as arguing with the Tys of this world:

• How are things in your little world, I hope they're going well and you are too.
  Do you still see the same old crowd, the ones who used to meet every Friday.
  I'm really sorry that I can't be there but work comes first, I'm sure you'll understand.
  Things are really taking off for me business is thriving and I'm showing a profit and.
  And in any case it wouldn't be the same, 'cause we've all grown up and we've got our lives
  and the values that we had once upon a time, seem stupid now 'cause the rent must be paid
  and some bonds severed and others made.
  Now I don't want you to get me wrong, ideals are fine when you are young and I must admit
  we had a laugh, but that's all it was and ever will be, 'cause the Burning Sky keeps
  burning bright. And as long as it does (and it always will), there's no time for dreams
  when commerce calls. And the taxman's shouting 'cause he wants his dough and the wheels of
  finance won't begin to slow.

http://www.lyricsdirectory.com/index...Y%20lyrics.htm

Worse yet, some lawyers on this Board think being a Republican fundraiser qualifies you to opine that the commission appointed by the President to study and provide recommendations about the Iraq war is a bunch of hacks.

Where's Osama?
 

Why would you even bother asking that question, when the answer is so obvious?

Though I have a few questions of my own -- things I wonder about, like:

-- who was the first Wahhabi Republican brilliant enough to realize that, no only does "Obama" sound kinda like "Osama", but that if you put a beard and turban on a light-skinned African-American, he looks just like an Ay-rab?

-- when he announced this insight to his Republican circle-jerk gang, did they all titter and chuckle?

-- could he hear the titters and chuckles, or did the hoods get in the way?


(Cue Penske the Predictable to post a Photoshop of Byrd in Klan-robes -- as if that picture was taken in this decade, or the last one.)

Note: The Iraq Study Group was created by Congress, its chair and vice chair appointed by Congress, and its other members selected by the chair and vice chair.

Oh, well in that case a Republican fundraiser is certainly qualified to dismiss everything they say out-of-hand.

It's a fairly important point, because the Iraq Study Group was appointed by the Republican Congressional leadership under pressure from members who honestly wanted a careful, nonpartisan review (they were sick of trying to mindlessly defend White House "policy" however stupid, getting labelled traitors, RINOs or whatever if they didn't, and taking the heat with the electorate).

So Bush's rejection of the initiatives proposed by the Iraq Study Group just increases the likelihood that more and more Republicans go their own way on these issues. But Spanky's sticking with the talking points.

That's because the Iraq Study Group -- like all Democrats and other traitors and defeatists -- have only criticized Bush, without offering alternatives.*


In Spanky-land, "not offering alternatives" means "not telling me that what I believe is right".

And what were the qualifications of these board members? Specifically, where did the expertise on Middle Eastern and Military matters derive from?

And what recommendations did they make that:

1) The Bush administration is not adopting in least in part

and

2) You think would be effective in significantly changing things in Iraq for the better