Uzi I have heard that sort of notion expressed. I am curious whether it applies to Persians in the same way that it applies to Arabs. I am assuming your friend is an Arab. The Persians have always had a much more robust technical culture. Being an electronics producer isn’t something that would make a Persian feel demasculated. It seems to me that Arab culture has a very difficult time seeing value in anything other than being warrior-poets. Though if Dubai is anything to go by, I’d say that the Arab street and the Arab elite have two very different agendas. The reality is that a single nuke in Qom would take out the religious authority in Iran leaving the secular minority largely intact.
Little Nemo Maybe the NPT can be revitalized. The reality though, is that Iran and NK are going to have Atomics, and there isn’t much we can do about that, so a deterrance model has to come into effect. Wishing them not to have nukes isn’t going to do much good, and if we want to stop them from having nukes we are going to have to go in and root out their capacity. Both nations have built a network of underground bunkers, so that would be quite difficult. North Korea is a lost cause for the time being, while Iran I think has a very good chance at becoming one of the pillars in a multipolar world order.
focusonz That’s all well and good, but I don’t think what you would rather have has much impact on the reality of the situation. Both nations have access to Atomics at this point.
Kevin James will end up on CNN as his intelligence is on par with theirs.
And of course Matthews has to find a newbie that he can throw a softball to to make it look like hardball.
Added to the fact that Barack Obama is so damn popular that he’d be booed off any stage in the US that wasn’t hand-picked from the 28 percent. Its really quite sad when you think about it. Bush is such a joke.
You know what really gets me about this guy? He’s a two-term president…Two term presidents are supposed to be influential figures. They are supposed to have some kind of cachet. Think about what I’m saying for a second here. When you think two-term president after WWII you think of someone who defines a decade. Think, Reagan, or Clinton. Those were important presidencies. Yet Bush’s presidency is like one long nightmare. I know a lot of people here hated Reagan, and I wasn’t really old enough to understand much when he was President, but really he didn’t seem to be that bad. He didn’t make an embarrassment out of himself and the nation on a regular basis, and he sure as hell didn’t start any wars like Bush did in Iraq. I don’t think he was a fucking Saint either, but the point is I think he’s worthy of being a two-termer. And then you have Clinton. Also worthy of it. I’m not a big WJC fan either, but it was a good decade. And now we have Bush. Started off innocuously enough, then 9-11 hits and we’re in Iraq. The motherfucker walks around threatening everyone. I’m just glad he’s not any crazier. Easily the worst President in a very long time. Nixon was better because he was stupid enough to get caught. Bush has people to cover his tracks.
Man, I really hope that this means the end of the GOP. Is it just me or does it feel like they have jumped the shark? It feels like the end. They are getting increasingly out-of-touch and show absolutely no signs of changing.
It won’t be the end of the GOP, but it will be the end of the grand alliance that Reagan forged between big business, libertarians, and evangelicals. The talking points are twenty years out of date, the Karl Rove playbook doesn’t work anymore, and all the energy, momentum and excitement are on the Democratic side.
I can remember the election of 1980 when the shoe was on the other foot. The Democrats felt tired, despondent and played out. The Republicans were bursting with patriotism and enthusiasm. It was morning in America! That 1980 election set the tone for almost 30 years of Republican dominance.
But now they’ve been dictating the agenda for so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to play defense. The GOP will lose big in Congress this fall. They’ll almost certainly lose the Presidency. And then the long knives will come out. The evangelicals will blame the libertarians. Big business will blame the evangelicals. The libertarians will blame big business. Everyone will blame the neocons. The fight will be on to determine what the soul of the Republican Party of the 21st century will be. But it won’t be the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan. That beast is dead.
It’s funny to think that just four years ago Rove was talking about the “permanent Republican majority” … . What a pipe dream!
I just saw a short clip of it on television, and it looked like a pretty somber crowd watching. On guy was leaning forward with his arms on his knees with a pretty serious look on his face. Maybe I’m misreading the visual, but they didn’t seem very enthusiastic. I’m wondering, though, about the man on the street reaction (if there was any).
Heh, Republicans generally think the speech was great. It’s interesting that in our society it is very rare that someone has the capacity to judge the merits of a speech outside of whether or not it conforms to their opinion.
It is equally interesting that people who cite the bible as an irrefutable source can always find some biblical passage that justifies what they are already set on doing.
Yeah, a lot of the reaction I’ve read on that side of the aisle was, “Gee, Bush didn’t even mention Obama’s name. How innnnnteresting that he automatically assumed that, isn’t it??”
I don’t think so. People on both sides of the aisle tend to think there is something dishonest about seeing something in a vastly different light. I don’t think it’s disingenuous. I think people honestly see something else. It’s almost like holding up a quarter and arguing about whether or not it has a head or an eagle on it. I’ve seen enough of that in politics this election for me to realize that there is a genuine cognitive separation in the way people of different ideologies interpret information.
Just today I was talking to someone from Singapore who sees and affinity with the American right wing, and due to the fact that their authoritarian capitalist system has brought them great prosperity, he thinks that we should emulate them more. This is someone who has seen real communism and real Islam much more up close and personal than we see it here. So he has a perspective that tells him that those forces are pernicious based on his own experience. To me it is baffling that anyone would think that Singapore is more successful than the United States. In my mind, other than maybe say cleanliness and some technological amenities, the United States is superior to Singapore in every metric, and I told him so. I talked about how we are not dependent upon a single strong-arm dictator like that are upon Lee Kwan Yew. He sees American leftists as traitors, and I tried to explain to him that the strength of this nation comes directly from the fact that we can have that kind of ideological conflict internally and survive it through our Democratic process. The notion that expressing what you think is best for the nation, whether it conflicts with the prevailing notions at the time, is Patriotic here in America, is absolutely foreign to him. He wants to be an Amero-phile, but he doesn’t understand that singular and simple concept that defines the very soul of our nation.
I find it fascinating how two people can look at the same thing and see something wildly different.
Do John McCain (R - Metamucil) and his advisers really think that it is a winning strategy to attach themselves at the hip to the utterly failed and discredited policies of George W Bush? Look at how this story played out. Bush says something incredibly stupid and McCain cannot wait to say “me too”. He really is running to serve the 3rd term of President Bush.
