"Hairpiece?" "No, Herpes."
 

I am all over it. You would think that if someone was dumb enough to hook up with a Thai Hooker they would at least use a condom. That is like having sex with a petri dish. Hell, someone with a Yale education should use at least two.

This is no more racist or bigotted than assuming that everyone must want the system we have.

Alexis de Toqueville visited the United States in the early 1800s and observed that Americans had a passion for liberty and equality -- two different principles sometimes in tension with each other. Liberty may lead you to democracy; equality may lead you to, for example, some sort of socialist dictatorship. A country's culture can be a complicated thing. Attempting to describe it is not necessarily racism or bigotry.

Conservatives are usually intolerant of those who throw around these terms lightly.

I don't think the author of that e-mail said Yemenis are "not capable of democracy." Maybe you should re-read it.

Mussolini made the trains run on time. Does this mean we should prefer that the trains are late?

Perhaps it was correct about Spain and Portugal for a while longer than it was true about Germany, for example. Germany had a democracy in the 1920s, and turned away. Spain and Portugal were ruled by dictators long after the rest of Western Europe had turned to democracy. Do you deny that these things had anything to do with the culture, politics and history of these respective countries?

Many Turks would be bothered by what you said here, but I, for one, do not think it makes you a racist or a bigot.

What you seem to be ignoring here is that people care about other things in life besides their form of government. A chance for democracy seems to have been missed in Russia, in part because people cared about things like the economy and Russia's place in the world order.

This person is actually living in Yemen, and is reporting that Yemenis don't seem to want democracy much. I would find your rebuttal of that account more persuasive if I thought you knew something about Yemen.

[/QUOTE]
Like the Taliban. Members of the Taliban are against democracy because they know in a Taliban regime what they think is right for the government will prevail. A lot of them sure voted in Iraq. Those people don't want democracy? Or is it possibly the insurgency is a minority, like the Taliban, that thinks that they know what is good for everyone else.

See the problem with the people that are against the war is that they will throw out any argument that is against the war. The problem th some of these arguments are not only weak but are racist and bigoted. If you want to argue - not in our strategic interest - fine - If you want to argue that the country may divide up - fine. But the arguments that Arabs don't want democracy or don't have a culture amenable to democracy, or that the people were better off with Saddam Hussein does not strengthen your argument and reflects much more negatively on the person making the argument than it does on the war. [/QUOTE]

Please note that the e-mail came from Yemen, not Iraq. You're spending a lot of time responding to things the author did not say.

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

Keep your eye on the ball. There's either a perjury case, a charge arising from some Admin/Rove cover up, or there's nothing. Middle man or not, Rove didn't violate the statute. The action here is in what he and the admin did AFTER the leak.

My guess is there won't be charges, but the political fallout will be bad enough that Rove will resign.

Yes in a moraless vacuum. In a moraless vacuum being bigoted or racist wouldn't be a bad thing either. But in a world of right and wrong I stand by my comment. So is it racist to assume that black people in Africa should get human rights? Or is that me imposing my "western values" on Africans. Is it racist or bigoted of me to say that Nazism was bad for Germany. Democracy is not just a system. It is a belief that it is a human right to have a say in how your own government is run. Just like it is a human right to not be tortured. To say that Arabs don't want or need democracy is like saying African Americans don't want or need an education.

Do you belive in Human rights. Then Arabs deserve live in Democratic governments. If you don't, then the Arabs don't want or need democracy and slavery is OK. In which camp are you?

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

And this must be true, since it's what Rove's lawyers seems to have anonymously told major newspapers. End of story!

She can no longer travel as a NOC, and the firm she and others used for cover (Brewster Jennings?) is blown. Who knows what else was blown? The CIA, which may be why they referred the matter to the DOJ. You're willing to trust the CIA's say-so that there were good reasons to believe there were WMD, but not that this was important? Funny, that.

2

"Hairpiece?" "No, Herpes."
 

What do you think is in Jeb's closet that kept him from running? They say he's got some filthy shit in his past. Oh, and the old Man, "Poppy," allegedly lived with his mistress in NYC for several months at one point in the 50s. Ya think Kitty Carlisle just made all that shit up out of thin air? The Bushes and Clintons are uniquely qualified to keep succeeding one another. Garbage in; garbage out.*

* I don't consider tham garbage for enjoying their lives. I consdier them garbage for pretending to be pious and actually expecting us to believe it.

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

The fuss this week was because it became clear that Rove was misleading people ("I didn't leak her name"), that Scott McClellan was misinforming reporters ("ridiculous"), either because he was lying to them or because Rove was letting him spread untruths in ignorance, and that Rove had done something that Bush had said would get him fired (see my sig line), and yet he was still coming to work every day.

You just have all these Republicans pretending like the only thing that matters is whether Rove can be convicted. Restoring honor and decency to the White House!

It this sort of smug self-superiority that causes many in the Arab world to turn away from Western democracy. They're not rejecting democracy so much as they're rejecting us.

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

Yet Rove's, and the WH's, immediate reaction was to declare loudly from the mountaintops that they didn't know anything about it. And from the more and more that comes out, that explanation appears to be shit.

"Look -- Vanity Fair!"


Yes. He's a bad, bad man. And should be punished. And was. Though not stringently enough in the eyes of some, even in the absence of dead bodies.


Recall, NotBob's original question posited that even if Rove's done nothing illegal, was this conduct troublesome. My point, similarly, is fine with positing that it's only alleged that he violated the law. Regardless, is this acceptable conduct?

Your response - there and here -- is, far as I can tell, either (a) hey - no harm, no foul, or (b) c'mon, everyone knew that she was CIA! Shit, I bet she did the photo shoot before the Novak article!

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

Say Rove resigns. What does it matter? Do the dems get to put call-blocking on the WH phones to his number? Does he get to visit the WHonly if he gets the tour ticket?

Sure, there are some access disadvantages, but does it really matter?

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

Hey, I'd just like to see somebody in this Adminstration take responsibility for something.

I always enjoy the "You're a [racist/bigot/nazi/pedophile/goatfucker] if you don't agree with me" argument. Its a close second to my favorite - the "You're robbing me of my freedom of religion by forcing me to be tolerant of others' moral choices I don't like and preventing me from putting my religious code into law to stop them from acting in a way I don't like."

Karl would be proud, if he weren't busy setting up his new office on K Street.

"Hack" Wilson keeps talking
 

Its funny, really. Bush wanted to be Reagan's successor, but history will place him next to Nixon. Recall, Nixon was a brilliant foreign policy president and began relations with China. If Bush's Iraq policy works, he'll be considered a brilliant forward thinker... who ran a secretive, vindictive, probably criminal administration. Just like Nixon.