Here's my wish for 2010: we stop being such a nation of pants-wetting wussies, and start using our fucking brains in how we treat terrorism and terrorists.

The greatest gift one could give Terrorists is to fulfill their supreme wish: to treat them (i.e., venerate them) as warriors -- enemy combatants -- rather than as what they are: criminals. To understand how true that is, consider this exchange at the Sentencing Hearing of Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber, between Reid and Federal Judge William Young, who sentenced him to life in prison:

MR. REID: I further admit my allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah. Okay? With regards to what you said about killing innocent people, I will say one thing. Your government has killed two million children in Iraq. Okay? If you want to think about something, 20 against two million, I don't see no comparison. Okay?

Your government has sponsored the rape and torture of Muslims in the prisons of Egypt and Turkey and Syria and Jordan with their money and with their weapons. Okay? I don't know, see what I done as being equal to rape and to torture, or to the deaths of the two million children in Iraq. Okay?

Thirdly. So, for this reason, I think I ought not apologize for my actions. I am at war with your country. I'm at war with them not for personal reasons but because they have murdered more than, so many children and they have oppressed my religion and they have oppressed people for no reason except that they say we believe in Allah.

This is the only reason that America sponsors Egypt. It's the only reason they sponsor Turkey. It's the only reason they back Israel. Okay? . . . .

THE COURT: There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

...
Nothing plays more right into the hands of Al Qaeda than glorifying them as some sort of special and unique class of warriors -- enemy combatants -- rather than treating them as the lowly, common, murderous criminals they are. When we deny them due process and imprison them without charges because they're something stronger and scarier than mere criminals -- when we pronounce that they are our enemies waging holy war on America -- we do more to elevate their stature and, in the eyes of their followers, justify their violence than anything they could hope to do themselves. The more fearful and extreme our reaction to them is, the better their cause is served. Is there anything they can do or say to make that clearer?

dajafi wrote:Here's my wish for 2010: we stop being such a nation of pants-wetting wussies, and start using our $#@! brains in how we treat terrorism and terrorists.

The greatest gift one could give Terrorists is to fulfill their supreme wish: to treat them (i.e., venerate them) as warriors --

In a curious way, this also provides a method for resolving Dick Cheney.

not bad smoothie. not bad

Limbaugh said the healthcare system is great and there is 'not one thing wrong with it'. OK, that's settles it everyone, scrap everything.


What an insufferable prick.

pacino wrote:Limbaugh said the healthcare system is great and there is 'not one thing wrong with it'. OK, that's settles it everyone, scrap everything.


What an insufferable prick.

He's right of course; there's not one thing wrong with it....

pacino wrote:Limbaugh said the healthcare system is great and there is 'not one thing wrong with it'. OK, that's settles it everyone, scrap everything.

What an insufferable prick.

You had him dead on the last page of this thread, and there he was yesterday holding a press conference. Pretty damn effective system we have in America.

Wishful thinking I guess.


IM JOKING

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXfnjkxBTrk[/youtube]
Ignoring the fact that this is pretty morally repugnant and without any legal basis, how exactly would he accomplish this? Anyone that 'looks' Muslim gets in a separate line? Ridiculous. When fear prevails, idiocy reigns.

I was patted down on Dec 22. Not as fun as you might think.

who is doing the strip searching? hot college co-eds?

i get patted down every time i travel. it's annoying

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:Limbaugh said the healthcare system is great and there is 'not one thing wrong with it'. OK, that's settles it everyone, scrap everything.

What an insufferable prick.

You had him dead on the last page of this thread, and there he was yesterday holding a press conference. Pretty damn effective system we have in America.

If he has health insurance (given his wealth, it would almost certainly be foolish for him to; but that's another subject), a lot of people are paying dearly for the rescue care he needed mostly because of his lifetime of poor health habits.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:Limbaugh said the healthcare system is great and there is 'not one thing wrong with it'. OK, that's settles it everyone, scrap everything.

What an insufferable prick.

You had him dead on the last page of this thread, and there he was yesterday holding a press conference. Pretty damn effective system we have in America.

If he has health insurance (given his wealth, it would almost certainly be foolish for him to; but that's another subject), a lot of people are paying dearly for the rescue care he needed mostly because of his lifetime of poor health habits.

Exactly: it's the best system in the world.

I will someday punch Rush Limbaugh in the face.

Jersey, I have nothing but love for you. You're conservative, you're allowed to be, that's fine, just as I'm allowed to be whatever it is I am. But I have to ask you- you really want to root on an assclown like Rush Limbaugh? Regardless of his politics, the guy is a self-promoting jackass who panders to people who already agree with him. I was once one of them back in high school, and after listening him for a few years, hearing him spout off, well, he's nothing but a hate monger in my opinion.

Can't we get something done in this country that is a consensus builder, and can't we have either party willing to say, "okay, on this issue, our part line is not the consensus?"

I mean, I was in seminary and I had kidney stones. Went to the hospital, had an 80/20 plan, and got racked with a $13,000 bill. I tried to talk to the hospital, they wouldn't listen, and this was the plan that the seminary had for its students. Admittedly, I wasn't really all that concerned when I enrolled because I was in my early twenties, and let's be honest, most of us at that age don't care about big picture stuff like health insurance.

It affected my life big time. Actually, I'm still paying it off through a debt collector. But the kidney stone thing is something that has run in my family that first hit me at a younger age than it did most. I just happen to be a stone former, and didn't know that up until then. Now, I don't drink tea, stay away from milk, and most dark colored drinks.

The situation wasn't one in which I felt that I had any control, and I had a bigger bill than any time in my life (or since, for that matter). I had the health insurance I had because it was the norm for nonmarried straight out of college seminary students, and I was no longer allowed to be covered under my mother's plan (even though they still took out of her paycheck for me for months later, but that's another horrible story).

The system is broke. We need to fix it.

Well in this scenario rooting on Rush Limbaugh appears to mean hoping that he's not dead and keeping his radio show going. I don't want him to be president or anything.

I like Limbaugh quite a bit even though I don't agree with him on a lot of issues. He's an entertainer, not a politician. He doesn't run the country, and he didn't give you your medical bills.

I don't agree with him if he actually believes there are no problems with American health care. I don't think he actually believes that, and more likely was saying it as a sarcastic dig. I didn't see the press conference or read the full transcript so I'm not really sure what he meant by it.

Understood- I certainly don't want the guy dead.

Yeah, I know he didn't give me my medical bills. And mine are far cheaper than others I know of (as a pastor, I get calls about this stuff quite often). But there seems no real way to fix it, and I don't know that a guy like Rush really wants to fix it.

But yeah, I get where you're coming from. Good deal.

EDIT- and I get that you mostly consider him an entertainer, but I know good people who are largely influenced by the things that he says. And I go back to that South Park episode from last season when Cartman was Glenn Beck.

He runs republicans.

The man has more power than Oprah. We're all just lucky he lets us live.

jerseyhoya wrote:Well in this scenario rooting on Rush Limbaugh appears to mean hoping that he's not dead and keeping his radio show going.

not to hijack a vibrant thread or anything, but what of the alternative scenario - Rush retires for the sake of his health to his pickle garden, and his show goes off the air for good?

Are the nation's self-absorbed reactionaries so berift of self-direction, so lacking in a self-generated worldview, that they would spiral into a slough of despond if they never heard another word from the oaf? (Throw Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly in the mix if you like).