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dogbert
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210
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 Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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Buchanan is not a member of the "Right".
Because he thought he stood a better chance of gaining the Republican nomination, he chose that route. |
Please excuse me for a moment while I take some aspirin for this headache you are giving me. Let me get this straight...Pat ain't a conservative, he just thought more conservatives than liberals would vote for him. Is that what you said? Is it because he could fool more conservatives into voting for someone they don't agree with? I'm not sure what you are saying. |
It's easy to get a headache if you see things beyond a simple "right/left" or "conservative/liberal" dichotomy, as many of us do.
Anyhow, voting across party lines is not at all uncommon in the U.S., as several presidential elections have shown. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| dogbert wrote: |
| It's easy to get a headache if you see things beyond a simple "right/left" or "conservative/liberal" dichotomy, as many of us do. |
One of the great frustrations of American politics. Most of the things in both parties have such highly controversial dichotimies within themselves.
Wealthy liberals and redneck conservatives.. although supposedly the dems are for poor and republicans for the rich, etc. The list goes on and on, that could almost be a thread to itself.
Then there is the whole fiscal conversatives vs moral conservatives. I'm all for fiscal conservatives, but totally against moral conversatives. Its always shocking to me to see how they can be of the same party with so many contradictions. |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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I've always thought Pat Buchanan was pretty loopy (I have him to thank for my "Canuckistan" ID) but a lot of what he's saying about this isn't so crazy.
Friends of our family went to Beirut 10 days before all of this started. Then they rented an apt in the mountains to get away from the heat this summer. The wife is 6 months pregnant. They couldn't get to the evacuation points because key roads are destroyed. Now, no one knows how they're doing.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51164
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No, this is not 'our war'
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Posted: July 20, 2006
8:36 p.m. Eastern
� 2006
My country has been "torn to shreds," said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless.
Israel must pay for the "barbaric destruction," said Siniora.
To the contrary, says columnist Lawrence Kudlow, "Israel is doing the Lord's work."
On American TV, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says the ruination of Lebanon is Hezbollah's doing. But is it Hezbollah that is using U.S.-built F-16s, with precision-guided bombs and 155-mm artillery pieces to wreak death and devastation on Lebanon?
No, Israel is doing this, with the blessing and without a peep of protest from President Bush. And we wonder why they hate us.
"Today, we are all Israelis!" brayed Ken Mehlman of the Republican National Committee to a gathering of Christians United for Israel.
One wonders if these Christians care about what is happening to our Christian brethren in Lebanon and Gaza, who have had all power cut off by Israeli airstrikes, an outlawed form of collective punishment, that has left them with no sanitation, rotting food, impure water and days without light or electricity in the horrible heat of July.
When summer power outrages occur in America, it means a rising rate of death among our sick and elderly, and women and infants. One can only imagine what a hell it must be today in Gaza City and Beirut.
But all this carnage and destruction has only piqued the blood lust of the hairy-chested warriors at the Weekly Standard. In a signed editorial, "It's Our War," William Kristol calls for America to play her rightful role in this war by "countering this act of aggression by Iran with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?"
"Why wait?" Well, one reason is that the United States has not been attacked. A second is a small thing called the Constitution. Where does George W. Bush get the authority to launch a war on Iran? When did Congress declare war or authorize a war on Iran?
Answer: It never did. But these neoconservatives care no more about the Constitution than they cared about the truth when they lied into war in Iraq.
"Why wait?" How about thinking of the fate of those 25,000 Americans in Lebanon if we launch an unprovoked war on Iran. How many would wind up dead or hostages of Hezbollah if Iran gave the order to retaliate for the slaughter of their citizens by U.S. bombs? What would happen to the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, if Shiites and Iranian "volunteers" joined forces to exact revenge on our soldiers?
What about America? Richard Armitage, who did four tours in Nam and knows a bit about war, says that, in its ability to attack Western targets, al-Qaida is the B Team, Hezbollah the A Team. If Bush bombs Iran, what prevents Hezbollah from launching retaliatory attacks inside the United States?
None of this is written in defense of Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.
But none of them has attacked our country, nor has Syria, whom Bush I made an ally in the Gulf War and to whom the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, Ehud Barak, offered 99 percent of the Golan Heights. If Nixon, Bush I and Clinton could deal with Hafez al-Assad, a tougher customer than son Bashar, what is the matter with George W. Bush?
The last superpower is impotent in this war because we have allowed Israel to dictate to whom we may and may not talk. Thus, Bush winds up cussing in frustration in St. Petersburg that somebody should tell the Syrians to stop it. Why not pick up the phone, Mr. President?
What is Kristol's moral and legal ground for a war on Iran? It is the "Iranian act of aggression" against Israel and that Iran is on the road to nuclear weapons � and we can't have that.
But there is no evidence Iran has any tighter control over Hezbollah than we have over Israel, whose response to the capture of two soldiers had all the spontaneity of the Schlieffen Plan. And, again, Hezbollah attacked Israel, not us. And there is no solid proof Iran is in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has signed, but Israel refuses to sign.
If Iran's nuclear program justifies war, why cannot the neocons make that case in the constitutional way, instead of prodding Bush to launch a Pearl Harbor attack? Do they fear they have no credibility left after pushing Bush into this bloody quagmire in Iraq that has cost almost 2,600 dead and 18,000 wounded Americans?
No, Kenny boy, we are not "all Israelis." Some of us still think of ourselves as Americans, first, last and always
And, no, Mr. Kristol, this is not "our war." It's your war.
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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| from Canuckistan's Buchanan article wrote: |
"Today, we are all Israelis!" brayed Ken Mehlman of the Republican National Committee to a gathering of Christians United for Israel.
One wonders if these Christians care about what is happening to our Christian brethren in Lebanon and Gaza |
It is ironic. Israel is 2% Christian and Lebanon is 40% Christian. |
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WorldWide
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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Ken Mehlman....
That guy needs a serious beating! |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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| I think around 20% of palestinians in the West Bank are Christian as well. |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 12:34 am Post subject: |
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| I think around 20% of palestinians in the West Bank are Christian as well. |
That number has been dropping steadily due to the rise of Islamic organisations like Hamas. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:38 am Post subject: |
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| bigverne wrote: |
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| I think around 20% of palestinians in the West Bank are Christian as well. |
That number has been dropping steadily due to the rise of Islamic organisations like Hamas. |
How do you figure?
Hamas even has Christians who run for political office within their party. Case in point:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ACC5E814-DB9A-4C8C-9C5C-D2F5795720BA.htm
Hamas is more about being pro-Palestinian and fighting Israeli occupation above anything else. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:19 am Post subject: |
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I think around 20% of palestinians in the West Bank are Christian as well.
That number has been dropping steadily due to the rise of Islamic organisations like Hamas. |
Obviously for Big Verne, everything = muslim causation . Just like with Joo it is all Iran's fault or Al Qaeda's. Tunnel vision.
There is a very vibrant and strong Christian and Palestinian community in the West Bank. One of the problems with so many who wish to polarize and make this all about ARABS vs the Christian world or MUSLIMS vs CHRIST or all such silly nonsense.
If the numbers of Christians are decreasing it is only because all groups, are fleeing Gaza or the West Bank and what you have left are the Muslims who tend to have a higher birth rate, all things being equal. Thus the change in percentage. It has nothing to do with Islamic fervour or whatever......
DD |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:00 am Post subject: |
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| I bow to Tiger Beer. He's expressing my point more articulately than I did. |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:21 am Post subject: |
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| It has nothing to do with Islamic fervour or whatever...... |
Becuase you know that categorically don't you? Just as you knew that the Bombay blasts could not possibly be the work of Kashmiri Islamists, because Kashmir was too far from Bombay. That was a good one.
No, the reduction in Christian numbers couldn't have anything to do with the growth in Islamic organisations, because Islam is a moderate religion and Muslims are tolerant, accepting people. Nothing to see here....
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_060426wbank.shtml
A Roman Catholic parish school and a Protestant Bible-study centre in the West Bank have been fire-bombed twice since the Islamist Hamas movement won a legislative election in January 2006, according to Christian clerics in the region.
According to the Presbyterian Church USA News Service, a priest at the Roman Catholic Al-Ahliyya College in the West Bank city of Ramallah says that several fire-bombs were thrown into a school sports room in early March 2006, causing serious damage and destroying equipment stored there.
About a month earlier, said the same priest, several petrol bombs were thrown into an Al-Ahliyya classroom.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/103/42.0.html
Things must be getting really bad, because in the last couple months Palestinian Christians have come out aggressively in the media objecting to their continued imperiled existence. There were about three articles that I picked up having to do with a pogrom in the city of Taibe. Taibe is in the West Bank. It's an entirely Christian town. It's best known as the source of a microbrewery called Taibe Beer. Apparently there was some kind of romantic relationship between a Christian man and his secretary, who was a Muslim woman from a nearby village. When word got out in her village that she was seeing this guy, she was forced to drink poison. And the following day, men from the village went on a rampage in Taibe, beating people, burning some houses and cars, and raping a local woman. They didn't catch the guy who was in the relationship. He had apparently left town. But they messed Taibe up pretty good. About 1,500 Christians fled.
There is a Greek Orthodox Christian who was so tight with the Palestinian Liberation Organization that during the first intifada, Israel expelled him from the West Bank. Arafat brought him back to the West Bank after the Oslo process began. He ran a TV station that he built in Bethlehem. Despite that connection, he gradually got fed up with what was going on with the Christians. About two months ago, he went public with a dossier that he had previously delivered to Arafat and then Abu Mazen. The dossier gives 70 detailed examples of attacks on specific Christians�beatings, sexual harassment, all nature of theft, stealing land�and 140 cases of land theft where Muslim gangs in cahoots with the Palestinian Authority showed up, poured a slab of cement, built apartment houses, and sold them right under the nose of the land's Christian owners.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/09/wmid09.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/09/ixworld.html
But he said that the Christian community was faced with "very brutal" adversaries. "A criminal mafia and Islamic fundamentalists work together," he said. "Their interests met to take our land away." He said that one man had lost his finger in one land dispute which turned violent and that a group had attacked and injured a Greek orthodox monk at a 5th century monastery outside Bethlehem.
The dossier currently in Church hands details far worse allegations of violence, notably the torture and murder of two Christian girls in 2003 after they were deemed prostitutes. A post mortem examination reportedly proved they were virgins.
Some Christians note that land grabs are common in the growing lawlessness of the West Bank and are not necessarily motivated by sectarian rivalry.
They add that increasingly entrenched Islamic extremism has driven a wedge between the communities, especially over women's dress and freedom of expression. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:41 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
Joo wrote:
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Anyway Pat Buchanan is a hard core libertarian and libertarian's for the most part oppose gas taxes.
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Pat Buchanan is not a libertarian. He is a social conservative and an economic protectionist. |
that would describe many who call themselves libertarians/ or who are very popular in certain libertarian circles |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:05 am Post subject: |
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On the other hand wrote:
Joo wrote:
Quote:
Anyway Pat Buchanan is a hard core libertarian and libertarian's for the most part oppose gas taxes.
Pat Buchanan is not a libertarian. He is a social conservative and an economic protectionist.
that would describe many who call themselves libertarians/ or who are very popular in certain libertarian circles |
Buchanan has called for anti-flag burning legislation and higher tariffs. I don't know too many libertarians who would embrace these positions. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:53 am Post subject: |
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| bigverne wrote: |
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| I think around 20% of palestinians in the West Bank are Christian as well. |
That number has been dropping steadily due to the rise of Islamic organisations like Hamas. |
1. yes, it used to be higher (closer to Lebanon's 40%, which was around 50% xtian when France left).
2. The large-scale migration happend LONG before there was ever a Hamas. Primary reason was Xtians were better off than their Muslim brethern, so they could afford to get the f-out of dodge during the wars with Israel.
3. Muslim palestinians have a higher birth-rate and bigger families than christian ones as well. |
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