Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, but that doesn't make it either right or smart.
That's a very GQ-cover photo of him.
He was never going to tell his tales anyway - he was either going to die in office, or die in the coup that overthrew him. A US Grant-style "Personal Memoirs" was never in the cards.
Not a memoir, but facts that would have implicated the US in subsequent trials.
Implicated the US of what? I say this in sincere ignorance of what the scuttlebutt is. Supporting him during the Iran-Iraq war? Illicit military support/funding?
Providing him with the chemical weapons he's being executed for using?
baa's feigned ignorance is charming.
This is a weird juxtaposition -- from the news coverage the past few days, I got the impression that Allawi probably should've just granted Saddam a full pardon in order to promote "national healing," but now it turns out that a former head of state can not only be tried, but also be executed. Is it that nations' wounds are only prolonged if a democratically elected leader is held accountable for his actions?
5: Ah but remember, he's not being executed for the crimes against the Kurds. Those haven't come to trial yet. He's being executed for later crimes against Shi'a, which happened after he moved onto our enemies list.
The basic story, as I understand it, is that Saddam committed a string of crimes against Kurds while we supported him, including the chemical weapons strikes. During any such trial, the degree of US complicity, although already known, will become well publicized. Fortunately for those actively working with Saddam at the time, including Rummsfeld these charges don't go to trial for a while, because the Shi'a run the show now, and get first dibs on him. If he is executed now, there will be no motivation to investigate the details of the crimes against the Kurds, and all the publicity that brings with it.
pwned. Mostly by Sausagely, who provides the whole video that I only gave a still of.
But you provide the motivation, which as I understand it is not the revelation of new information, but rather publicity of old information. Because I thought the collaboration during the Iran-Iraq war was well known.
That's right. The only thing that would come out now are details about what has already been established. However, the media would be able to package these as "new revelations" in the "trial of the century" which means that the Rumsfeld footage would get more time on TV.
Not so much "dead men tell no tales" as "dead men don't stoke the publicity machine for tales that are well established for the small minority of people who actually pay attention." Doesn't have the same ring to it.
Right, I didn't mean that any new information would come out (although something new would surely come out), but that the old info would get a more complete airing. What did Rumsfeld say to him in private? etc.
Would anything Saddam said matter, though? I bet, Ogged, that you would find yourself dubious about the reliability of his claims, and it's not as if someone like Rummy would come forward to collaborate them, and you'd probably be more willing to listen that most.
10: baa, one of the frustrating things for us liberals and Democrats is that a lot of the information on the basis of which we form our opinions is well known to well-informed people, but not to the average voter. So we're always hoping for the electorate to learn about these things, even if years after the fact.
See, the truth is like an indie band, and we're like snotty hipsters sneering at uncool people who listen to the Britney Spears / George Bush versions of music-product and truthiness. It's no wonder people hate us.
I thought they just hated us for being smarter and better-looking than they are.
one of the frustrating things for us __________ is that a lot of the information on the basis of which we form our opinions is well known to well-informed people, but not to the average voter.
reminds me of
The sexist connotations of the word _____ is well-documented in feminist literature.
So the al Hurra nest of propagandists is reporting Mr. Hussein dead by hanging. Not that this means so much, since if they reported that Saudi Arabia contained a lot of sand, I'd wait for independent confirmation by an international team of geologists. But assuming it is true, and we haven't spirited the old Ba'athist away for some kind of Boys From Brazil action, I sure hope it's worth all the murdered, tortured people. Now that he's out of the way, I guess the Repugs will be calling for us to work our way through all the rest of them, from Islam Karimov, all the way down to Than Shwe and Paul Biya. Good for them!
IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!!!!! SADDAM IS DEAD, DEAD, DEEAAAADDDDD!!!!! EAT THAT, ISLAMOFASCISTS!!!!11111!!
I know celebrity deaths are supposed to come in groups of three, but this is kind of forcing it, isn't it?
[Yes, yes, I know. MAE is banned.]
Michael, your comment sounds like all kinds of lame, disgusting bullshit which I will refrain from specifying.
To spell out my point in terms accessible to your small mind, some of us have never believed that Saddam had WMD, and people despised us for that, but we were right. Same for the supposed connection between al Qaeda and Saddam. Same (in reverse) for American implication in Saddam's use of poison gas on the Kurds. Same for the supposed progress in Iraq we've been reading about since the beginning. Same for the graft and incompetence that have been characteristic of the occupation from day one. And so on.
I understand that you have agendas which make you indifferent to the fact that the American people have been lied to continuously for six years now. (The Clenis, the semen-stained dress, etc.) But I really don't think that anyone here wants to hear your point of view about this. At least I hope not.
Oh John, it was hilarious. Don't be a sour lemon.
John's just upset that Michael implicitly accused him of femifascism.
Baa, that was crap. Michael seems to think that a pointless jokey reference to feminism, in and of itself, has some kind of point. Is there a punch line in there I missed?
He apparently has a social circle where his joke is funny, and I think that he should stay within that circle.
SADDAM IS FUKKEN DEAD. I AM SO TOTALLY GOING TO RIDE MY MOUNTAIN BIKE TOMORROW.
Comments are supposed to have points now? Uh-oh.
J, my only point was that one could substitute just about any group for "liberals and Democrats" and find the same *true* complaint. The reason should be obvious: most people have limited time and interest and politics, and are not going to store a lot of politcal info, such as the complicated and cloudy history of the US and Iraq in the last 50 years. (which was the info at issue, not WMD in 2003) Instead of pedantically stating this, i chose to make a joke.
and I think that he should stay within that circle.
"stay within that circle" s/b "get off my lawn"
That was a load of crap, Michael. This whole war is a lie, the facts about it are readily available to people who are willing to make any effort at all, but the major media are wholesaling lying bullshit.
We're not talking about anything obscure. The basic facts about the most important political issue today have been consistently and systematically misrepresented in the media, and my point was that this bothers most people who know these facts (except for you and yours, apparently).
And since I was already pissed off and was posting specifically for the purpose of explaining why I was pissed off, your silly little joke didn't seem the least goddamn bit funny.
John, I know that I am the last person on this blog to give you well-intentioned advice, and have it credited as such. That said, I am going to try anyway.
You're clearly an intelligent, passionate guy, but you should take some of the hard edge off of your comments. This isn't because you need to to fit in or make people like you. You are clearly doing fine on that score. Rather, it's because your nastiness and the quickness with which you take offense are unworthy of you. "To spell out my point in terms accessible to your small mind" is just not someething a person like you should be writing. There's no way for me to say this without sounding like -- and probably, being -- a lecturing dick, but at least it's the action of a sincere lecturing dick.
Does no one agree that Michael's statement was crap? I found it trivializing, insulting, and lacking in content. Even the premise -- feminists are morons -- was shit. I had a pretty serious point to make: war opponents have watching the war unfold, knowing it was all a lie, and we have also been watching it increasingly descend into disaster, but have been unable to do anything because of a.) the media and b.) the conventional wisdom, as represented by Michael, which dismisses the truth with cheesy oneliners like his.
And that was the basic point of my thread. It was not a good time to come in with a cheesy oneliner.
You sure you're at the right blog? The consensus here is pretty much in line with your 14, I think.
Well I generally give people (not in general, but here at Unfogged) the benefit of the doubt and figure if their comment comes off as trivializing (say) opposition to the war in Iraq, that it was probably just a flip one-liner that didn't quite work, and don't get bent out of shape about it.
("Well" will do in place of "So", in a pinch.)
I didn't take Michael to be trivializing opposition to the war in Iraq. But rather just making a comment (I thought a funny one) on the way that one of John's sentences came out.
I'm not even sure what the point of that comment was. Was it that liberals/Democrats are like feminists in that they exist in an isolated milieu that makes up things to be angry about out of whole cloth? That was all I could get out of it. If that was the gist, and it was meant ironically, then John might be overreacting. But it didn't seem to drip with irony to me. It just seemed like weird, unwelcome, ditto-head style Red-baiting. But then I'm not a liberal or a Democrat, so maybe I'm not in the best position to comment.
35 -- That's what I was getting at.
I don't get all the confusion about Michael's comment. He's been commenting here for a very long time (longer than almost anyone else) and that comment seemed pretty typical of his style to me.
To me Michael was just telling me that what I said was subject to the same knee-jerk dismissal as feminist arguments. But I knew that; that's what I was posting angrily about. I did not take his joke ironically; I took it straight. Based on what I remember of Michael's earlier posts, and if I'm wrong I'm wrong, I think that was a reasonable take.
I'm not saying I agree with the gist of 16, but I think there are ways of reading Michael's comment that (a) aren't dependent on "irony" and (b) aren't simply dismissal-by-knee-jerk-comparison with some caricature of feminism.
Also, when did the memo get sent out about how there are certain posts at Unfogged when cheesy one-liners are unwelcome? Aren't those posts written in a different color or something?
haha, wow. Ok, the second part of my comment was a paraphrasing of a really funny comment by Apo. It shared a commonality with my reply to JE in pointing out that a specific claim was really more general than the author realized.
If authorial intention counts for anything, my comment had nothing to do with the Iraq War.
and almost nothing to do with feminism, either.
I didn't know how it was meant, but I had a similar reaction to JE....Yes, everyone thinks they're right and that the people who disagree with them are misinformed, but sometimes it's true.
Ogged has written a post that will surely be the number one result when people google "Saddam Hussein's taint."
See a sarcastic visual of George Bush playing a round of "Hangman"...here:
44. i read it as "underinformed" and then, under the construction of the meaning of "underinformed", it's *always* true. And thus not a distinguishing feature of liberals or democrats.
I feel bad having taken away so much blogging material from Standpipe.
Why are people so unnerved by a simple and appropriate act of revenge? Tonight, the dictators of the world will sleep a bit more uneasily than they did the night before.
Especially in Tehran.
And yeah, the whole idea of, "Let's keep a genocidal tyrant alive in hopes that his testimony might embarrass Republicans"....enjoy your two years of control of Congress, liberals.
Especially in Tehran.
That might be the dumbest thing you've said yet.
I think it's pathetic that we can't even apparently run a proper show trial any more. Although maybe modern news dissemination technology makes it a little harder.
By which I mean, you want to kill the guy out of revenge, no problem. Drop a grenade in the hole in which you find him. You want to run a show trial? Do so. Want to make a mockery of him for the rest of his life? Maybe a little excessive, but he might deserve it. But this "we will try him and convict him of his crimes! Oh wait, this is not going as we'd hoped. Let's make the rest of the proceedings secret, then announce we hung him" just manages to make everyone involved look like idiots, with the ironic exception of Saddam Hussein.
Okay I apologize for getting 26: from 16: at 16: without needing elaboration. Continue with the intellectual circle-jerk.
Emerson, no need to cool off. I don't make a point of noting this all that often, but rest assured that your opinion of Michael as a boring asshole is shared.
(And baa? I wouldn't have felt the need to point my opinion of Michael out this time, either, if you hadn't started lining up in support of him, and telling Emerson to cool it. I like having you around here generally -- without some conservatives to talk to, it just sounds like a whole bunch of us telling each other how right we are. But your estimation of what's a reasonable reaction to a politically loaded asshole remark like Michael's is unlikely to be broadly shared around here.)
Caladad, ca. 2003: "Why do we need to prove that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction? Don't we still have the receipts?"
I've got to say, I've never formed any opinion of Michael. It's not that I'm actively ignoring his comments -- just that none of them have ever stood out to me as useful.
really - I've got some negative opinions of people around here, LB, and some darn true ones of you, but i'm mature enough to keep them to myself.
and i still fail to understand why you think 16 was so politically loaded. To beat a beaten, dead horse, JE made a claim that X was a distinguishing feature of liberals, and I pointed out that no, it was not.
59: and i still fail to understand why you think 16 was so politically loaded.
Well, it certainly wasn't funny.
One cool thing about 16 is that it repeats the constant gesture of our political discourse, positing an equivalancy between the various "sides." In this case, you make the fairly obvious point that people of every political persuasion think that they recognize certain facts that the general public doesn't, and that they would derive satisfaction from the general public becoming aware of them -- but you make no reference to the truth-values underlying these claims.
The facts that Emerson referred to are actual facts. The equivalent on the right might be something like "Saddam had WMDs and sent them to Syria" or "If we just show enough will power, we can still win in Iraq" -- i.e., they do not count as "facts." You can counter that conservatives can just say that of course liberals are the really delusional ones -- yet actual facts do exist and can be compared to the claims being proferred.
(The fact that conservatives will never accept this as an accurate description of themselves is irrelevant.)
adam, the average conservative politcal wonk will know a lot of actual facts that the average voter doesn't. they may not be as numerous or important as the info a liberal wonk possesses, but this is beside the point, i think.
Do conservatives lose their capitalization when incensed, like CAPS OF RAGE in reverse? Or is this a submission gesture?
63. one of the several things that's puzzled me in this thread are JE's accusations of my political beliefs. Those struck me as especially weird. I think it's because I don't constantly reaffirm my beliefs in the accepted manner. But, since it seems to have become a point of confusion, my political positions are all liberal, as far as I'm aware. I'm actually more liberal than JE and LB in certain respects.
Hard to know how many real secrets Saddam took to the grave with him. If he did, funny how his ego kept them bottled up -- I would imagine that he saw no self-aggradizement in detailing his past diry dealings with the US. It would be kind of inconsistent with his Sunni martyr image.
It's a little unfair to Saddam to paint him as a US stooge. He was definitely a self made man in that third world dictator sort of way, and most of what he did was pursuant to his own inner Stalin. He was playing the third world game during the Cold War of playing US against USSR for his own ends. He was more the patron of the USSR than ever the US. What he does represent is yet another example of blowback from the amoral policy of scratching the back of such killers because for some brief moment of time, some right wing nutjob thought it also served their demented view of US interests.
And during the only period that happened, it was because of his own blowback from the opportunistic war against Iran. 1980s US policy toward Iraq reflected containment of Iran and the opportunity to peal away a primarily Soviet client (plus the usual oil interests).
Saddam did not need US aid, approval or encouragement to gas Kurds and Iranians and murder Shia. He was more than capable of doing it on his own. What he wanted was to know was could he do it without blowing his deal with us, which Rumsfeld supplied.
And these morons were then surprised that once freed from his Iranian entanglement, he turned his attention on Kuwait?
Fair enough.
Although for the sake of pedantry, I find 16 pretty annoying, too. As analogy, it didn't really make the point you wanted it to, and as humor, it wasn't. The category error of "real actual facts vs Limbaugh-esque caricature of feminist literature" probably does a lot to fuel people's perceptions of you as conservative, because that's exactly the kind of bogus equivication the mainstream conservative discourse is full of.
The equivalent on the right might be something like "Saddam had WMDs and sent them to Syria" or "If we just show enough will power, we can still win in Iraq" -- i.e., they do not count as "facts."
All too true, and the key to understanding wingnuttery.
"Congress lost Viet Nam when it cut off funding in 1975." "The Republicn Congress, not Clinton, balanced the budget in the 90s." "Bush tax cuts did not cause the deficit."
There is a new one every day for every issue.
Limbaugh-esque caricature of feminist literature
I really should have looked for that link, I guess. I tried to mention this upthread, but the "feminist" reference was really a reference to a comment of Apo's, which was funny in the context of that thread. Neither I, nor Apo I think, actually believes that statement - it's exaggeration for humor. Of course, if you don't have 12 hours a day of free time to read all the comments here, I can see how the in-joke might have been missed.
I've always always had trouble with the application of Unfogged banter to fateful, weighty issues. To me Unfogged just doesn't seem like a good venue for discussion of this kind of thing. Perhaps I should butt out for this reason, but I am a regular here now and these topics do come up.
I still think that Michael's comment to which I responded was extremely annoying and quite unuseful. i don't know about Michael's politics but I seem to remember a pattern of similiar comments. Perhaps he's a skeptic, contrarian, or devil's advocate rather than Republican, but I disliked the comment in itself without regard to its motives. My own comment to which Michael was responding was actually intended to say something, but that's been lost now.
In a few hours I'll be off the internet until Monday at the earliest -- non-responses of mine during that period should not be interpreted.
Now, see, while I'm willing to credit Apo with generally being pretty funny and having the requisite Enlightened Liberal(tm) credentials, I don't think that's all that funny, and what funny it had was entirely contextual to that particular discussion.
Most feminist jokes just kinda suck, the same way that the kind of witless Bush jokes made by the Chimpeach the Chimperor crowd aren't really funny, either.
All of which is to say, unlike JE I'm totally cool with Unfogged banter being applied to subjects of great weight and seriousness, as long as it's actually funny.
Well, in this case the witty banter was identical to winger bullshit, with no way of knowing whether it was ironic. And it succeeded in neutralizing a comment which I actually meant to be taken seriously.
People are actually getting worked up over this? Michael's 16 just seems like a comment on John's particular phrasing, not on the accuracy of what he's talking about. What John said likewise bears a rhetorical resemblance to Tom Cruise's "do you know the history of psychiatry?!?!" spiel, despite being not at all absurd. Which is the point, I gather.
And it succeeded in neutralizing
oh don't dare blame me for that. My comment was about a identifying feature more than anything - it was barely even political. That aside, what succeeded in neutralizing any point you were trying to make was your rage. If you'd ignored my comment, everyone else would have, too.
73: What do you mean by "worked up"? Eh, I think that even in a joking context, 16 is a reasonable statement on which to base an assessment of a person's creepitude. That is, it's kind of a sleazy, creepy remark (when devoid of context) and gives a creepy, sleazy, winger-tronic impression.
As does this part of 59: really - I've got some negative opinions of people around here, LB, and some darn true ones of you, but i'm mature enough to keep them to myself. There's a mental grossness to the phrasing ("darn true", wtf?) that's different, to me, than LB's straight up calling him a boring asshole, and that's what Emerson is reacting to, I think.
Not that I'm saying that I think Michael is a creepy, sleazy winger, or a boring asshole or anything (sample size too small and skewed!), but that I agree with LB and Emerson's assessment of the overall skeevy impression of those comments.
and one last clarification to 72 - it wasn't ironic. There was no irony. see the last sentence of 59.
Michael: It's perfectly possible that you're more of a liberal than I am, I've got no idea. I just know that conversations where I've noticed your participation get unpleasant in a dull kind of way. I'm not all that interested in the reasons. If people get unfairly irate with you all the time in a manner that misrepresents your true politics and personal qualities, there's a good shot that you aren't communicating them well, and it might be worthwhile adjusting the manner in which you communicate, or learning to enjoy annoying people.
I wouldn't have piped up about it, but I didn't approve of Baa's 29, and wanted to make it clear that his opinions weren't shared by everyone here.
Meanwhile, back on the ostensible topic, did anyone watch the official video? 'Twas inspiring to see the solemnity and majesty of justice being done! It's too bad we can't even get our thugs up to the sartorial splendor of al-Zaqawi performing a beheading.
If people get unfairly irate with you all the time in a manner that misrepresents your true politics and personal qualities,
Just where are you getting this from? This is the first time here that I can remember people mistaking my politics - and as for personal qualities, I don't even know what you're referring to. Take a step off your high horse there. And, really, unpleasant in a dull kind of way? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, at best. I refer to the endless, angry discussions of sexism, which I think I've mostly eschewed.
79: It was kind of scruffy looking, wasn't it. I can't believe we're managing executions following show trials at all, but given that we are managing them, surely the event should look a bit more official.
The official NYTimes play-by-play analysis is really creepy, if what's reported therein is true:
The room was quiet as everyone began to pray, including Mr. Hussein. "Peace be upon Mohammed and his holy family."
Two guards added, "Supporting his son Moktada, Moktada, Moktada."
Yeah, that's a real good sign.
And, LB, you and JE are the chief proponents here of the insult-the-other-guy-enough-and-i'll-win-the-argument school of thought. I will not be taking any lessons from you in how to *not* be an asshole.
That's a really odd tone for the NYT -- it reads like someone very emotionally involved in the execution.
"Hanging writing," after Orwell and Capote, has a familiar quality, and I saw echoes of both in this. Plus general disgust, which many of us feel.
65: True, but I think Rumsfeld and the administration at the time *knew* he was going to use the weapons against the Iranians, and probably sold them to him for the same reasons. I think they are also culpable in such of his crimes. Which is why I personally never thought that Messrs Rumsfeld/Cheney were credible on this matter even before the Iraq war. In some sense they enabled and encouraged Saddam to act on his natural thuggish impulses. I also got the impression that Saddam invaded Kuwait after he was convinced that the US would not oppose/do anything about it. Given what he got away with earlier, I dont think this expectation on his part was completely illogical.
This information is not just wonkery, and wonks are not usually the people who die in such conflicts. So, implying that maintaining that the public being kept ignorant about this is ok, is a pretty lousy and disingenuous line of argument. So, my reaction is in line with John Emerson on this.
Well, note the "reporting by" bit at the end: Ali Adeeb and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad. I assume they're Iraqi, in which case I guess it stands to reason.
But yeah: I was struck by how much it just seemed like an Islamic (but subtextually pro-US) version of their general policy of de-scare-quotification of highly contextual religious language in recent years.
Although I guess "and the Persians" is more political than religious, but still. Same thing. It's weird to see what's obviously a very Iraqi conception of things creep in without being "translated" into the context of the average NYTimes reader.
LB, I emailed you, so check your email, if you like.
For what little it is worth, LB, I don't think John's comments are considered inappropriate by many people here, or are beyond the norms of unfogged, or anything like that. Rather, I thought they were below standard for him. He's too smart a guy to be on such a hair trigger. If I can again descend to lecturing pomposity, this is a mistake you sometimes make as well -- you'll rapidly move from a comment that can at a stretch be read as offensive (which, I guess maybe Michael's can be) to pretty nasty statements. Maybe you feel the political situation is such that nastiness is called for, or indulge in nastiness strategically, or whatever. But it's still nasty behavior.
What I think you're failing to fully appreciate, baa, is that it's vastly condescending and unpleasant to tell someone that they're not living up to your expectations of them. If Emerson annoys you, go ahead and be annoyed; go ahead and tell him he annoys you. But telling him that his nastiness is unworthy of him is, indeed, to use your own words, the action of a pompous, lecturing, dick. That's something you tell close friends privately, you don't tell distant acquaintances in public.
As I said, I like having you around. But we're not particularly close, and I'm not working on living up to your image of me -- I understand that there are things about me that you disapprove of, and I'm fine with that. I don't speak for Emerson, but I would surmise that he is also not strongly motivated to change his behavior to make you think well of him. Under those circumstances, your rhetoric is misplaced and counterproductive.
Now, can we all (metaphorically) shake hands and drop this?
The new Unfogged procedure is to have monkey drunken sex, then drop it.
You think Emerson and Michael are up for that?
I agree that there's a spurious intimacy generated by blog discussion, and it's always a tough call about what to say/let go in a forum like this, and what level of familiarity to assume. I was on the razor's edge whether or not to post that comment to John, likewise with the one directed to you. But what do you do when you think someone in a public forum like this has made a bad mistake? One can, of course, let it go. But since I'm kind of an earnest guy, I tried to address it in the most tactful way I could. Maybe an email would have been better, but it's a public forum, so I thought it was a reasonable comment to make publically.
And while I am pleased to let this thread drop, I can't agree to never to make comments like these. In this way, a thread here is like any other conversation in which I take part; if someone says something I think is unfair to another participant -- whether it's mild like reading uncharitably or responding over-aggressively, or really unpleasant, like swearing or bullying -- I simply can't agree not to do anything.
Also, I'll just note that at no point did I write that anyone is "not living up to my standards." That wording is a creation of yours. That said, I suppose I can see the chain of interpretation that gets you there, so if I gave that impression to John, I apologize. My goal was only to convey my concerns in a way that was respectful and had a chance of being heard. Any 'rhetoric' I employed was towards that purpose.
Hmm, I missed most of this thread the first time around. Michael's comment was simply playing with language, and not insulting any particular political point of view (since the gist of it was that every political group thinks the opposition has the facts wrong which, you know, duh). The speed with which people jump to offense here is pretty staggering sometimes. I mean really, we made fun of Ogged's cancer when he had cancer.
It is my humble lofty opinion that everybody's best interests would be served to resolve to lighten up a bit in 2007.
This thread goes a long way toward explaining my increasing frustration with this site.
I'm off the train.
Regarding my character, Unfogged is one of four non-left-wing sites I comment on. I like it here on non-political topics. I try to remain temperate on these sites but occasionally fail. My true self is the intemperate self.
I don't think that the Unfogged banter paradigm can handle intense issues. I still think that Michael's comment was highly annoying -- not much more than a PJ O'Rourke feminist joke, and not illuminating at all.
The reason I am so intemperate is that I think that since 1994 (Gingrich) and especially 2001 (Bush) the US has been in the grip of a semi-criminal organization (the Republican Party). I also think that it's quite likely that the Iraq situation could get much worse. In the context of that I thought Michael's comment was insulting, as I explained in my response to him.
I'm off the train.
Regarding my character, Unfogged is one of four non-left-wing sites I comment on. I like it here on non-political topics. I try to remain temperate on these sites but occasionally fail. My true self is the intemperate self.
I don't think that the Unfogged banter paradigm can handle intense issues. I still think that Michael's comment was highly annoying -- not much more than a PJ O'Rourke feminist joke, and not illuminating at all.
The reason I am so intemperate is that I think that since 1994 (Gingrich) and especially 2001 (Bush) the US has been in the grip of a semi-criminal organization (the Republican Party). I also think that it's quite likely that the Iraq situation could get much worse. In the context of that I thought Michael's comment was insulting, as I explained in my response to him.
Hi John -- Happy New Year, and I hope your travel went smoothly.
Geez. Lightening up is a fine goal, but can we also lighten up about requiring it? People getting pissed at each other doesn't bother me nearly as much as people getting sanctimonious about what a terrible terrible thing it is to get pissed.
There's no way I can possibly lighten up about the Iraq War. If it gets discussed, I'll be unlight about it.
Not me. I entered only once. [Prior duplicate comments edited for esthetics. LB.]
