Thank you all very much for these kind words. I sincerely appreciate the support.

I sure didn't mean for such a shitstorm to be kicked up around here. I certainly could have ignored him and not allowed the insanity to go on so long. But truth be told, one of the reasons I came looking for you guys again is because the other forum I've been on doesn't allow you to defend against personal attacks or tell a person what you really think of their stupidity. All you can do is report an "offending" post to a moderator and hope they agree with you that it's an attack and delete it. If you engage at all, you get an "infraction" and I've reached my breaking point of having to sit back and let all the stupidity go unchallenged.

At least here I can tell an idiot they're an idiot without fear of getting "spanked" by a moderator. So for that, this forum is a bit of a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately my new-found freedom tasted a little too good to me, and by not letting it go, it slid from fresh into putrid yesterday.

I could have put a stop to it instead of feeding it, so for my part in allowing it to get out of hand, I understand those who were trying to be neutral and just suggest that the "bickering" stop. And after all, they know one of the parties better and would rather remain friendly than create a divide with them, which I totally get. They may have seen that that one party was being more offensive than the other, but the other (me) was keeping it going. For that I offer apologies. I'm sure you guys don't like seeing the forum dissolve into that kind of mess, regardless of who's more right and who's more wrong.

So, today's a new day. Let's go forward with a new 'tude! :)

Jill for President! :)

I'd buy that for a dollar!

@ TW - No, they were looking for him the whole time. They just didn't tell you apparently.
Frankly, I was surprised he was still alive - I thought he bought the farm awhile ago.

That is the first reference to bickering in that thread. Merc quoted it, and then today you both jumped in.

Care to try again?

glatt was right. I was being a cock. I was wrong. Oh, and I was pissed off and took it out the wrong way. That is all.

:)

We're all human, and all wrong sometimes. That right there was classy.

I think Merc's just angling for the VP ticket now we've nominated jill for Prez.....

Are you accusing me of lying to you Classic?

I was not referring to anybody specifically, but I did have Ali's intervention in mind ( though clearly it was meant in good humour and taken as such by Jill).

This is a seventeen page thread. Do you really think I have kept track of everybody's contributions?

@ Merc: good man.


[eta] I just went back and read that bickering comment. I do recall now noticing it as the humorous comment you intended. Seriously, that one just went by. Maybe the word stuck in Infi's mind, but I am pretty sure it was Ali's peacemaking that she was referring to. It's certainly what came to mind for me.

Specifically this:



As i said, it wasn't a terrible comment. It was a peacemaking post. Well-intended and well-received. But that's what I was referring to, and am pretty sure Infi was also.

Nope and nope. YOU and I are fine, Dana.

You're right Dana. The 'bickering' word was just more concise and I honestly didn't pick it out of a line-up, looking for classic.

It was the tone. I know it was joking on c's part, and for Ali's part I felt she was just trying to be peacemaker, as you said. I just wanted to point out that the slinging was very one-sided.

You may now go back to being the center of your own lives. ;)

Oh, I'm hurt. And all this time I just kept thinking about you and you and you and every word you say.

You keep bringing me back to bite you. You miss me. You love me and want to have like ten thousand of my babies. :lol:

Thank you for that. I was wrong to egg you on. ::extends hand::

However, I cannot give you the V.P. nod, I'm afraid. A cross-party alliance is actually too progressive, even for me. ;)

Party on!

Oh, have you met our new moderator?

I'm not sure. Should I be scared?

Yes, I was trying to deflect the venom with humour. I was trying to engage both parties but mostly failed cause someone had his knickers in a knot. It was actually an interesting discussion at some points so that was worthwhile but I think the biggest issue was that merc didn't want to inform Jill of his personal involvement with some aspects of the recent events and instead gave her a hard time for arguing the point without said knowledge.

There is some truth to what Merc said about Jill wading in at full speed from the start (no disrespect intended to Jill in any way), without prior knowledge of the resident posters. Most of the rest of us would have known merc's background enough to at least give his views credit, even if we didn't happen to agree, whereas Jill was probably not privy to this information and so his insistance of his point of view just seemed like sheer bloody mindedness.

I'm not saying merc was right to treat Jill that way. It would have been better for all of us if he'd just explained why he holds a particular opinion about things, but he decided to be a dick instead. I'm sure we've all had days like that before.

Anyway, I think it's time to move on to the next conflict. Someone else can try and mediate next time! :rolleyes:

So, Aliantha, Hot or Not?



P.S. Just as a small reminder; I'm not really new around here, even though I've been gone a while.

Yeah I know. I was just giving my story since my name was mentioned a couple of times. ;)

Ahem. Hot or Not? Weigh in!

I did. :)

I thought his last message was only six months ago. Maybe longer. But his last message was something like a month after we had discussed this previously. Which means his last message was carried by a courier after his courier had been identified.

Apparently he was also using "Touch of Gray". A hair dye on his beard so that ladies swoon. It worked. His latest fling was a 29 year old. Maybe I should also use his high tech solutions. It kept him alive and sexually active for another 10 years. How many kids did he have? 15?

Anybody notice Viagra with those pictures of his medicines? Or was it his good religious life that made him so healthy and virile.

As others have noted, if UG and Merc could just be vanished from the politics forum, the atmosphere around here would improve stratospherically. I continue to be somewhat amazed that UG has never been banned. He attacks other posters in the nastiest possible way with little or no provocation, and his posts don't even make sense to anyone on either side. My theory is that he goes in and out of a mental institution somewhere. I guess he's kept around for entertainment value.

Merc is something else again. He's smart enough to know better, but he can't resist attacking certain people around here. Merc has spared me the worst of his cutting remarks and even did me a kindness once, so I know deep down there somewhere, there's a reasonable person just dying to come out. Too bad that we don't get to see that person more often.

BTW, Osama has been dead for a few days now. Do we really have to keep going on about it in two separate threads?

Funny coincidence. When I was a kid I had a dog named Trump. He was part Golden Retriever, so even the hair kind of matches.

Every time I see 'the Donald' I remember how great that dog was.;)

Is trump not a euphemism for fart over here, then?

I was just thinking about posting that! I guess SNL has sowed a lot of cultural memes about in it's 3 decades.

Ultimately, Bin Laden's death, like Franco's, will not shaped the world. He's a thug who got lucky once.

:lol:

ETA: God help me I'm a nerd.

Don't look IM

:lol: nirvana

:lol2:

Glad someone got that! I still think of when Garrett Morris had an inset on their news segment, for the deaf, and as (Chevy?) reported that Generallissimo Francisco Franco was still dead, Garrett was yelling it really loud in the inset.

And at least a decade and a half of SNL was actually FUNNY. ;)

Quote of whom?

:lol2:

I thought one of the reasons they went for this kind of assault, rather than a missile strike was because it gave the possibility of taking him prisoner?

My issue with this now is that the story continues to evolve. From what was initially reported, what is being told now is very different.
Griff said it best here

It is certainly starting to look that way.

Not that I'd shed a tear for the bastard, however he went, but killing an unarmed man, like killing a prisoner in your power, is not good karma.



[eta] on the subject of whether or not to show the pics, I heard an interesting analysis of that the other night. Personally, I don;t feel that we need to see it, but the analyst made a really good point that the whole mystique Bin Laden built around himself relied on his ability to fade in and out of the background at will. The disppearing man. He had control over his image at all times. Maybe an image of him defeated wuold serve to replace that image. As it is we are left with the mystique as an abiding feature.

The White House isn't handling this story well.

Well, that at least seems consistent across administrations :p

I heard it was to minimize civilian death/injury.

There is no chance they wanted him alive unless it was absolutely secret, so they could squeeze all the intell out of him. Obama got good advice on this. Shut him up completely with the brain buster and dump him at sea so the crazies can't make another "Holy Site".

What you need to know, in bold!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

The C.I.A. had Bin Laden’s compound under surveillance for months before American commandos killed him in an assault on Monday, watching and photographing residents and visitors from a rented house nearby, according to several officials briefed on the operation.

The good guys watched him for months! They recorded everybody who came and went!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...31F_story.html

The on-the-ground surveillance work was part of an intelligence-gathering push mobilized after the discovery of the suspicious complex in August that involved virtually every category of collection in the U.S. arsenal, ranging from satellite imagery to eavesdropping efforts aimed at recording voices inside the compound.

Not only that, but they recorded his conversations with these people!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...L2F_story.html

Documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound have yielded a bonanza of new intelligence, from names and locations of terrorist suspects to chilling details of al-Qaeda plots to attack targets in the United States and beyond, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Not only that, but from all the documents and laptops and stuff...

Among the files recovered from captured computers and flash drives were documents detailing a previously unknown plan to attack the U.S. commuter rail network, intelligence officials confirmed. The plan, which described a sabotage attack to occur on this year’s 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was being actively considered as recently as February 2010, Obama administration officials said.

...US Intel knows more than bin Laden could ever even remember to tell us!

And part of what it knows is that he was still fully operational, still in charge, and still planning attacks!

Hats off to US intelligence!

The WH is bungling the PR side of this. This could and should have been a resounding positive. Unfortunately they are letting the story evolve. They should have known what their story was going to be and rehearsed it and then not deviated from it. Opening the door to questions of how it was done, how it could have been done differently, and should it have happened at all is just ridiculous. I'd have more respect for them if they handled like they had some spine.

Reporter: There are reports OBL was unarmed...
WH: Fuck you, he was an enemy, now he's dead.

Reporter: There are reports he could have been captured...
WH: Fuck you, we didn't need him alive.

Reporter: The international community has concerns...
WH: Fuck the international community, this was a matter of US concern.

Instead we have waffling about the facts which appears to be weakness of conviction. BHO could take some serious lessons from Bill Clinton. That man could take something that he and everyone knew to be false and actually convince you that he really did believe it.

I also, don't need to see dead bodies in general. But here in the US, or at least in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it is the norm to have open casket funerals to give "closure", and I have heard at least three friends from entirely different groups of people and backgrounds/religions say they want to see officialy released pics to be sure. Sure, they could be faked too, but this seems to be the line they need to draw to truly believe.

This is correct. If "the whole world is watching", that is the time to make your point.

Wow, they must have waterboarded the shit out of those documents and laptops and stuff, to get results so quickly!

There are those who can only make excuses for not crediting good ideas when they are exposed to them. Some folks are only clinically sane. They contend with me bitterly. And they tend to come apart. So be what your handle claims you are, and go read Graham -- assuming you have both the integrity and the courage, for so many leftward folks think they are supposed to live without either. Annoys the hell out of them when somebody they know does.

Read the man and figure out for yourself if he has worthy ideas. After all, how is secondhand trash from you going to persuade anyone you think needs persuading of the rightness of your way? I definitely recommend That's No Angry Mob, That's My Mom to your attention. Not every idea he's got is going to be worthy, but so what? One can certainly understand a certain -- frustration, directed at Islam and its societies, yes? And what else has Michael Graham come up with? You don't have to take the gun with the cannoli, do you?

Now for your off-kilter remark about "fearmongering," I say to you righteous indignation is not fear. Egg on your face is what you will end up with -- as you generally have. It comes of having to lie to yourself to stay on the Left. Believe me, it ain't worth it. That's why I'm on the right.

That's not an improvement of the atmosphere around here, that is the establishment of an echo chamber, undisturbed by the yes-buts and the ideas of better value. That's the sort of crap the Left ardently desires, that their sorry religion may be imagined The One True Way. One hundred and twenty million untimely deaths say the Left's way is not the True Way. Disbelieve it though you will, there are people who know better than you do. They're over on the Right.

While it does me scant honor to pick on nutbars like tw, his views are altogether too toxic and too prejudicial to leave unchallenged. I don't keep people on Ignore around here either.

But if you insist upon idiocy, you catch hell from me, a non-idiot. If you have nothing visible in the way of values, you catch hell from me, a man of virtue. If you prove by your words that you don't know any better and never did, I spank. Should you dislike the consequences of not thinking well and bleat at me about it, I spank more, until the agonies -- well, grow too great.

Would you like to catch hell from me, Sam-I-Am? Is someone forming a club? The Left usually is not right.

Personally, I do better than that. The hint here is that you can do the same.

I thought April was more entertaining. UG is simply reposting reruns.

Is this a sweeps week?

Ha! It would explain a lot.

He is not dead.

I saw it on the Interweebe. You are all fools.

How do we really know he is dead? Can anyone prove it? Have independent laboratories validated the DNA comparison? Why is everyone so quick to take it at face value he is dead when so many inconsistancies in the initial reports of events are cropping up?

It wouldn't surprise me if he was captured and is being held at Gitmo

Let's send GW bush to hell. He can recon and get back to us (hopefully?). You'd believe old W, wouldn't you?

From a policing point of view, Sarge has a point. A story that changes that much :eyebrow:

I reckon the old rat is dead, though. Not you Sarge. :D

I doubt this. It would be disastrous politically, were the secret ever to get out, and why lie in the first place?

"America has Bin Laden, and he's going to be taking part in interesting conversations for the next 30 years" will flush out more terrorists than "They killed him".

Now that bin Laden's gone, would anyone mind too terribly much if the US just gave Afghanistan to India?

Does anyone think that Jill would come back for a Klondike bar?