"Mari: All you need to know is here , Rummy is a member."

Yuck to the nth degree! Really? Blech, sorry I asked. It seems like the more I know these days, the more I feel I have to apologize to the rest of the world for being American. It wasn't me, I swear! I demonstrated against them in the streets, I wrote endless arguments against them, I sure as hell didn't vote for them, but one day I woke up and there they were. I did my best and I failed. I'm sorry, you guys. (slinks off to spend the rest of her life in a cave, refusing to ever speak to another American again).

You're just trying to get my hopes up, aren't you?:p

No.:(

Well perhaps if Israel would stop conducting reprisals against the civilian population of West Bank other Arab nations might not feel so angered by them

More than that. Check out the signatures on the various letters on this page.

Some highlights:

Elliott Abrams (National Security Council, Reagan's Ast. Sec. State)
Richard L. Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State)
Gary Bauer ( Moralist, Former Pres. Candidate, held several posts under Reagan )
William J. Bennett ( Sec. Ed. and head of NEH under Reagan)
Jeb Bush (President's brother, Governer of Florida)
Dick Cheney ( Head of Bush's Vice Presidential selection committee, Bush's Vice President. )
Steve Forbes (Former Pres. Candidate )
Charles Krauthammer ( pundit )
William Kristol ( Chief of Staff to Dan Quayle and William J. Bennett)
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby ( Assistant to Bush, Chief of Staff to Cheney)
Richard Perle (Former Pentagon and Likud policy advisor, pundit)
Dan Quayle ( Elder Bush's veep. )
Donald Rumsfeld ( Bush's Sec. Defense )
Paul Wolfowitz ( Deputy Sec. Defense )

So...more tit-for-tat, eh? That's part of the reason why there is no peace.

Well, the Supreme Court back in the 1940's defined the concept of 'fighting words', words which were considered almost a physical assault. Of course the test case involved a person yelling at a police officer, who's obviously tender feelings were hurt.

Fighting words doctrine


As far as Ms. Bardot is concerned, she is now married to an executive of the French National Front part, a sort of John Birch Society ultra-nationalist group. Ms. Bardot's story appears to be another sad story of an individual living a wild and libertine lifestyle who seems to have an epiphany, decides to straighten up, and proceeds to overcompensate to the point where he or she becomes a tiresome ultraconservative dogmatist denouncing free love, free thought, free expression, or any kind of liberalism.

Maybe she and GWB can form a club.


Here are two pictures of her

Then

http://www.biosstars.com/b/bardot/photos/4.jpg


and now


http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...lt-261x384.jpg

At least she hasn't appeared to have changed her eyeliner.

You find a look that works for you, you stay with it.

oh sweet jesus. if she looked that good then, and looks that bad now......i'm doomed.

i'd be bitter too. yuk!

What have any of those groups really given their people though? Not much. Hizbollah comes close to doing something useful for their peeps, but they're still terrorists.

A job would be nice, sure. AC could help. Flat screen TVs? Put the Kool-Aid down. :)

But seriously...what has the Q really done for Muslims, other than making them an unfortunate target?

Agreed.

I think the first thing that needs to happen is that Allah needs to be removed from the situation. The chances of that happening are about as likely as the US pulling every single soldier out of Iraq tomorrow morning, but Allah/God is the fuel for the flames.

The peace there seems rather uneasy though. As I understand it, Muslims make up 2/3 of the population, yet only get half the seats in parliament. But the government won't do a census b/c they fear another uprising.

They used to call Beirut the Paris of the Middle East, and from what I heard about it a few months ago, its comeback is nothing short of a miracle.

Syc, I'm not saying that acutally help people, Hitler certainly didn't do much for the Germans in the end but they offer the illusion of hope and it works.

Not really, that's my point. Remove the other factors and it's not such an issue. Of course if turkish soldiers 'regime changed' the vatican there might be some pissed catholics around - that's basically what's going on in Iraq right now.

As for Lebanon, the fact there is any peace after that war (literally carved the city up into blocks on religious grounds and sniped at each other for a decade) is pretty incredible, the fact there is a functioning democratic system is a miricle.

I dig what you're saying, Jag. But in order to diffuse the situation as it stands right now, you do have to remove the God issue so that you can talk about those other factors.

Agreed. But I suspect that it will only be a matter of time before the Muslims detest the status quo...and the Christians will fight as bitterly as they did the last go-round.

I have a little more hope for Lebanon but time will tell.

But how do you suggest that happens? The only way you can really deal with it is to ignore is as much as you can while you right the situation.

We're all doomed, LJ. Its either die young and be a pretty corpse or grow older. Live with it as long as you can, big guy.

Originally, "republicans" were "liberal" and "democrats" were "conservative." Nowadays, it's reversed.