Didn’t he play middle linebacker for the Packers in the 1960’s?

You mean “All Hail The Puppet”. This guy is nothing but a frontman for those who rule from the shadows. If GW really decided to do something on his own, he would be out of office or just like Saddam or Slobo.

He is just following orders and making deals, just like ole Great-Grandpa and Grandpa did during their wartime experiences.

Do you really think a guy like him could become president on his own? Just listen to those speeches and public exchanges. As one of my heroes, Moe Howard of the 3 Stooges once said, “Whatta brain…..belongs up there on the meat rack!”

I think this is accurate as to where we are now:

THE BIG EVENT: A Pearl Harbor event is arranged or allowed to happen (9/11).

THE PRETEXT: A pretext for setting up a beach-head in the Mideast is now in place by invading Iraq.

THE BIG STALL: Stall tactics for withdrawal in Iraq allow us to set the stage for us to invade Iran and/or Syria to escalate the war. No intention of ever leaving which is why we build permanent bases.

THE DRAFT: We need more cannon-fodder as our defenses have been deleted in Iraq. Destruction of a generation of our finest young men and women. Another unstated reason for “open borders”?

THE FUTURE: Economic devastation, loss of liberty, conveniently placed terror threats, total govenment control.

Did I miss anything?

Swastika anyone?

Badr (SCIRI) wants to “cleanse” Baghgdad of Sunnis and then leave them to create their own mini-state in alliance with Iran. They’ll settle for the kind of federalism where the Sunni get nothing and have no power over Shia and the Shia still have power over them.

Da’wa – Jaafari and Maliki’s party – has little real power because they rely on the armies of Sadr and Badr. (Bush is now trying to get Da’wa and Badr to finish Sadr – good luck with that.)

The Sunni – Ba’athist and local religious types want a strong central government so that they can steal all the oil wealth from the Kurds and Shia – if they fail to acheive this goal they are completely screwed and dependent on the kindness of the Saudis and Egyptians. That is why they fight.

Bush is right that Zarqawi and the foreign jihadists want(ed in Zarqawi’s case) to exacerbate the sectarian differences because a multi-ethnic state at peace is no kind of training and recruiting ground for a new generation of crazies, which is what they want: to repeat the success of the 1980’s in Afghanistan. He’s wrong to place all the blame on them for the success of their plan. The neocons have wished to “expedite the chaotic collapse” in Iraq for quite some time and the process for creating the new state guaranteed more strife. Again Bush and bin Laden have the same goals for different reasons.

The Kurdish factions are split and basically biding their time to see whether to secede or not. If they do, they will have to go to war with the Sunni Arabs (Most Kurds are Sunni too) for the same reasons listed above for the Sunni Arabs’ war against the Shia. Also, Turkey, Iran and Syria may have to deal with secessionist Kurds in their states as well.

More than a hundred Iraqis are killed in sectarian violence in Iraq every day. The world’s papers are full of the men involved explaining their motivations. Fisk himself, since that piece last spring, has written quite a bit about the ethnic cleansing taking place all over the country.

It ain’t quite Blue versus Grey, but then America’s wasn’t really a civil war anyway.

They don

The topic itself is a disingenuous circular Micro-political argument that is used to distract us from Macro issues such as Constitutional issues and unnecessary warfare. Sort of like going on TV and talking about a “troop surge in Iraq” while planning to provoke an attack Iran?

Redrum, I don’t have time, but I’ll try to remember to address natural rights my way on the kaos report Tuesday.

The worst thing about abortion: discussion of it.

I believe rights are a bit more complicated then that.

I don’t buy the state of equality in nature either– we aren’t all equal in nature. But… I do believe we should all be equal before the law, by this I mean, subjected to the same law. Because of mans nature we need a social contract, or we come to this inevitable conclusion. The thing about limited government, is, it is the closest thing to a moral form of government, moral presupposes choice, and in a limited government one is free to choose to be moral, and in coming to the social contract, one grants others the freedom to be moral as long as they grant him the same. The only real compulsions (besides the ones nature pushes on us) is to leave other free to be moral. (As a side note, does this mean a religous person isn’t really moral because they fear the rath of a god?)

I think, that our rights are derived from our nature as human beings and it’s relation to reality. What we are, what a human being is. One could say it is because man is a rational creature, a value choosing entity, a conceptual being… and I would agree, this is what makes us different, and this is emperical.

I often wonder what the heck it is that gives us what we call “free willl”. Is it because we are conceptual, able to form words and numbers, and with this, the words, for instance, able to basically turn back and act on our own mind? Like a computer, maybe we add to our programming…. and complete our genetics? One could say animals are value “choosing” entities, but I don’t know if that is true. Do they really choose, or is their thinking limited to a very narrow context guided by their genetics? There is something very different about humans, when was the last time you saw an animal commit suicide or starve itself for a higher cause, or resist the tempation of sex, or have sex for pleasure, or have sex facing each other, or create art? It seems that we are the part of the universe that is self-aware, and in being so, we know about the the fundamental difference between life and death, and what this entails. This rational facualty that allows us to be “self aware”, also allows us to chart a direction for ourself in a very long range fashion that is unlike anything in the universe. Strangely, we seem to be an entity that is making decisions or choices in a void. We are able to create meaning, and we need this meaning or all our decisions are in vain and we realize this void.

Now, if I was only going to say that the rational creature is able to claim rights, what about those who’s rational faculty does not work properly, like the mentally handicapped?

I think if the mentally handicapped have rights, (and I think they do) you must also give it to the fetus, the potential for the human creature is there. So I can group these all together, and say as Aristotle says, that they are true for the most part. I would not say that because a few go through the red light, that it invalidates the purpose of the green. I would not say, that something that has been shown to sustain human life on a high statistical level, would be invalidated by the few ones that it does not sustain.

By the way, as for my religous pick near the beginning, as I am getting older, I am finding that most religous people are usually nicer and happier to be around then the unreligious. I also don’t find religion to be irrational, nor do I find it rational though. So if it’s the rath of god in their hearts, or it’s the realization of limits of ones reason, so be it.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12137.htm

Ya mean all those Supreme Court Justices were negligent from 1789 to 1973 until Harry Blackmun & Co. discovered abortion in the Bill of Rights.

I do believe in sovereignty of adult individuals to make decisions regarding all areas that do not have a direct effect on others. I oppose drug prohibition as well as prohibition of prostitution. Clearly aborting is having a direct effect on the other party. Linguistically abort is a verb. If someone is having an abortion it follows (as a logical corallary) that someone then is being aborted (ie death of the fetus) which disqualifies it as being an act of autonomy (unlike prostitution and drug use).

Pro – choicers frequently invoke that a woman is soverign over her own body. I don’t disagree – but seen abortion as outside of this issue – however I do think a woman being sovereign would include her right to sell (or rent) it. Can you name a single NOW or NARAL leader who has ever said “while I don’t endorse prostitution I certainly think it is within the right of each woman to decide for herself whether to rent her body and not mine or the states busines…….. No – they don’t. Because they are a bunch of liars and hypocrites.

Its a digression, but one of there great heroes, Margaret Sanger, loved abortion and eugenics – but only for minorities. I think there is a closet racism behind much of this. But who do we have on my side…..a bunch of crazy dispensationalist bible thumpers who blow their loads over killing Arabs? Damn that sucks. Oh well, at least I have Ron Paul, Nat Hentoff, and Andrew Neopolitano.