Firestarter

I'm sorry, when was John Kerry put in charge of Americans Coming Together? Oh, please.

There's a difference between convicted felons WALKING or DRIVING PAST someone and BEING SENT by a PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE'S CAMPAIGN into SOMEONE'S HOUSE to collect their PERSONAL INFORMATION, you complete fucking moron.

Only person who brought up murder in this thread was you. And the original AP report the article was based on. And countless other reports, editorials, and columns in this rapidly growing story. - Political Group to Run Background Checks on Employees

I'm not employed by the CIA, idiot.

I don't think assault, rape, and murder sound like "nonviolent" either, but maybe that's just me. The willful blindness in this thread simply astounds me.

They didn't even perform background checks. How carefully do you think they went over their records? How much are you willing to bet that ACT's character judgements about the convicted criminals they hired were accurate? Do you have any sisters? How about their lives? How about a mother, do you have a mother? How about hers? So, feeding the hungry is morally equivalent to sending rapists, child abusers, murderers and professional thieves into unsuspecting communities, and giving these convicted criminals a license to knock on doors, enter homes, and ask for personal information, including names, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, and driver's licenses. Huh. And I'm sorry, but don't you see anything even slightly wrong with this? I have nothing against giving jobs to people who've paid their debt to society. Based on the double whammy principle, I even think we should consider allowing them to vote. But for Christ's sake. You don't give a professional burglar the opportunity to case half a hundred houses a day. You don't send a child rapist to collate demographics. You don't send out murderers to visit a family and get their personal information. "Oh, by the way, there's a fund-raiser for John Kerry in two days! I know you said you work out of town, but can I sign you up for that?" "No, I'm sorry, we'll be out of the house that day. We're still trying to find a baby-sitter." "Oh, what a pity..." This isn't rocket science. Give them jobs? Sure. Turn them loose with what (for some Democrats, at least) practically amounts to a mandate to inquire into the personal lives of entire communities? How fucking thick are you, really, Jobber? How fucking stupid? And you're comparing rapists and murderers to white-collar criminals now? I'll tell you something, I hate George Soros and I think he's an unprincipled piece of shit, but I'd rather have him in my living room than Charles Manson. I'd rather George Soros knew where my wife went to school than Jeffery Dahmer. You honestly don't see a difference?

Shut your fucking yap, you fucking Canuck. I'm sick of you. I'm sick of you all. And I'm sick of all the killing and all the dying and I'm sick to death of all your apologetics. No more words. I'm so sick of words it's amazing I could even stand to read that one last simpering hypocritical sentence of yours with its requisite illiteracy. No more. It's over. No more talking and no more reading, no more writing and no more arguments. The time for arguments is over. They want to behave like rabid animals, fine. It's time to treat them like rabid animals. I won't apologise for it, I won't rationalise it, and I won't try to explain it any more. It's time to die. They brought it on themselves, and now may God have mercy on their souls. I'm done.

Frankly, I'm so fucking sick of all this I could puke. I want to see some of those hostages and some of their families showing more guts. Instead of the standard "He didn't do anything wrong, he loves Arabs and he has a deep and abiding respect for Islam, please send him home and we'll let you fuck our mother in the ass" bullshit, let's see someone say "Fuck you, you Arab towel-heads. Fuck you ALL. Go ahead and kill my dad. We're going to turn your entire fucking country into radioactive glass and piss on the smoking ruins of Mecca. You want a fucking war? You fucking got one." I want the hostages to look into the camera and say, "Tell them to go to hell," like hostages do in every Highlander episode ever broadcast, every melodramatic direct-to-Lifetime TV movie ever filmed, and every Harlequin romance ever published. And I want our fucking government to live up to those expectations. Our armed forces are the clenched right hand of God Almighty. NOW LET'S USE THEM. I want to rain fire and lead on those motherfuckers until there's nothing left but brittle ashes. I want Americans to stop hiding their passports. I want our countrymen to be able to stand up and say "Civis Americanus sum," confident that the most powerful military ever to dominate the world will utterly exterminate not only any terrorists who dare to touch a hair on their heads, but also the terrorists' friends, their families, and their entire countries. Fuck compassion and fuck justice. The rules just went out the window my friend, and you undid the latch. We didn't start this but by God we'll finish it. This is war. These are terrorists. We're looking into the face of evil. Take your "root causes" and shove them up your goddamned ass. You want a war? You got a FUCKING war.

I do. Our embassies alone get 600-800 individual threats per day.

That once an emergency occurs, the President is given information by his officials and military advisors through a structured process. In the eleven minutes immediately following an attack of such a magnitude, the information is being collected and collated. The President of the United States does not make tactical decisions as a matter of course; these are delegated to lower levels of the chain of command. On 9/11 the President took strategic decisions once the necessary information was available. Before it became available he remained calm and didn't try to second-guess the people on the ground. He trusted them to do their jobs. To me, that's the definition of the word "presidential."

I'm just curious - have you ever heard of a chain of command?

"For the love of God, Montresor!" I'd pay to see that televised. Live. Oh, and expunge the murderers' names from all records after their executions - instead, just refer to them by the names of the people they murdered. "He said he killed him because he wanted to be remembered. Well, he was remembered all right - they hanged him, and put up a marker by his grave: Here lies the killer of Varey Shannow." - David Gemmell, Wolf in Shadow (paraphrased from memory)

SP Huntington wrote an excellent article on this problem in the March/April 2004 issue of Foreign Policy, Astro. Might want to look it up if you're interested.

That's why we have orbital interceptors.

Eh. I've always found manacles, M-16s, and Hellfire missiles to be pretty non-denominational. Oh, and fuck the "roots." Didn't care on 9/11, don't care today.

It's interesting that (unless the guys at the office forgot to tell me) we're not planning any such "demonstrations" at the Democrats' convention. And as far back as I can remember, as a party, we've never really gone in for this sort of thing. I guess that might be because Republicans tend to have, y'know, jobs and things? We don't really have time to inconvenience, frustrate, and trash entire cities just because one particular group of people there might be doing something we disapprove of. You wouldn't catch us wearing adult diapers so we could chain ourselves to lampposts, and we wouldn't force the police to close road after road so we could divert rush-hour traffic to already clogged lanes, while we used the asphalt the way God intended - to have a nice lie down and yell "Kerry lied, kids died" (Winter Soldier, anyone?), or to parade crude giant puppets in front of empty office buildings. We've never really understood how throwing paint at people's property, hurling rocks through windows, fighting with the police, or adding hours to ordinary people's commutes gets anyone on our side. Like I said, it's interesting. Democrats, despite their increasingly ironic party name, still confuse demagoguery for democracy.

Here's the public's uninformed and unsubstantiated opinion on the Iraq/Al Qaeda connexion. Note that the article contains no facts, no dates, and no evidence - just opinion and hearsay.

I'd say a jihadist's mentality would run in the opposite direction, and be rather inclined to brag about turning his enemies' own freely-given weapons, munitions, and funding against them, perhaps even characterising it as evidence of divine favour - "Though they think to use us, Allah guides our hands and instead we use them, and their treachery returns upon them, they shall reap sevenfold what they sow blah blah blah" or some such. I admit I'm just speculating here; it's not really my area of expertise, but that sounds more likely to me than your postulation of embarrassment.

You can't see the difference between an objective statement and a subjective one? Do you also disbelieve him when he says he wants to kill us all, or do you think he's just telling the "truth" when he says we're evil as well? Obviously, he's fairly honest (for a mass-murdering terrorist fuckhead) as far as objective truth is concerned; he's always been upfront about his desires, motives, and methods, even if he does justify them subjectively. When he says we're evil, he's wrong. When he says he wants to kill us, he's telling the truth. When he says we didn't help him, presumably he knows what he's talking about, and he has no reason to lie. Where's the contradiction?

Happy birthday, Mike.

Oh, shut up, you tired little hen. The thread had three replies before mine, it wasn't going anywhere, and I hadn't had my coffee. If you want to post something on topic kindly do so and stop whining.

I'd say something relevant and informative here, but I just read a smug, snarky interview (read "masturbation session") given by DW Bradley, pimping his upcoming game, and it reminded me forcibly that a few years ago, I actually paid good money for that unbelievably, unforgivably wretched pile of festering shit called Wizards & Warriors. What a godawful exercise in puerility, incompetence, preadolescent subhumour and completely unjustifiable overweening conceit. If there were any justice, the man would've had his fingers broken joint by slowly splintering joint so he'd never again inflict another line of reeking, gangrene-riddled code on an innocent and trusting world. ... I just remembered the voice acting. Holy Mary Mother of God, the voice acting. Oh, I'm going to cry. May he burn in hellfire for his sins, and may he get to it right speedily. Words can't express the seething hatred and loathing I feel for that revolting creature and his shrinkwrapped excrescences.

- Richard Miniter 09/23/03

And anyway, no, we did not.

We agreed that this thread made us both remember why you stopped "actively posting" in the CE folder. Not really a red-letter day in my book, but whatever.