Comments Posted By Tano
Displaying 81 To 90 Of 92 Comments
CIA VS. THE WHITE HOUSE: GOOD LEAKS OR BAD?
Oh, and BTW, on a different topic - this is the exact same attitude the Bushies have toward other issues - like science. They are not interested in assessing the state of the science on any matter upon which they need to make a decision. They make the decision first, on political or ideological grounds, then they mine the scientific literature to find morsels of evidence that can support their agenda. Any other evidence that might lead one to a different conclusion is ignored, even if it represents the overwhelming majority opinion in the scientific community.
It is the attitude of the lawyer, mixed with the ideologue - lawyers have no interest in presenting the truth - their interest is in presenting the strongest case for thier client. Let the other side find the contrary evidence, if they can. Apply this to science, or to intellegence, and you get the results we see.
Yes there is enormous disgust with this administration in the eyes of professionals of all stripes - for this administration is ideological, thoroughly dishonest, and has no interest in, or regard for the truth of any situation.
If you had any respect for honesty and the right of the people to know the truth, you would stand with those who attempt to tell the truth, and to do their jobs with integrity, rather than to participate in these attempts to bully people into submitting to ideological agendas.
Comment Posted By Tano On 22.04.2006 @ 22:55
Wow, this is crazy stuff.
"In their overarching hubris, believing themselves to be the gatekeepers of information to the American public as well as the watchdogs of the republic,"
Gatekeepers of information? What nonsense is that? Gatekeepers keep information inside the gates. Your whole beef with the media is that they are disseminating information that the government is trying to keep inside the gates. As for watchdogs, well they are.
"they constantly forget that they are first, last, and always citizens of the United States and that when the President takes the country to war, it should be he that decides war policy not them."
What bullshit. We the people decide everything. Its our country, not the presidents. He works for us. What kind of an authoritarian attiutude have you developed in your old age?
"in actuality, they were usually acting on what they believed were the summary beliefs of our intelligence community"
Get real. You can't really beleive that, can you? These people made it very plain that they wanted a war with Iraq years before they even took office. After 9/11, it is dead obvious that they decided to use that situation to convince the country to go to war. The intellegence was mined specifically for any thing of value that could be used to support their case. They had no interest whatsoever in evidence that could undermine their case. Because they had no interest whatsoever in making a wise, informed decision - their decision had been already made.
If you can't understand that, you must be playing with far less than half a deck.
"that’s what the war between the White House and the CIA is all about; the belief by some at the CIA that the wrong man is President of the United States"
Yeah right. Lets try and guess the partisan makeup of the intellegence community (80% of which is in DOD). The Bush administration war on the intellegence community has always been about the simple fact that the intel mission is to provide accurate intellegence, and the Bush administration wanted only evidence to support their agenda.
Comment Posted By Tano On 22.04.2006 @ 22:43
ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL? DON'T TELL THE DEMS THAT
"I daresay not too many people are willing to vote for a party that called Republican voters after the 2004 election “ignorant mouthbreathers,†or threatened to secede from the Union because they did not want to co-exist with people from the other party."
This contradicts your underlying point - that partisan percentages may be stable - i.e probably 48-49% (at minimum) of people are willing to vote for a party....
Comment Posted By Tano On 17.04.2006 @ 14:22
And is it "a party" that called Republican voters ignorant mouthbreathers, or one convenient person that you choose to highlight and pretend that they are the voice of an entire party?
IRAN: EVERYBODY PLEASE RELAX AND TAKE A DEEP BREATH
Damn Rick, you do it again. Is it just some oozing pustule in some quarter of your brain that just needs to seep out and infect the rest of your work?
Lots of good stuff here. But ya just have to start it all off with this nonsense:
"The blame for jacking up domestic tensions falls entirely and without question on the rabid dog left."
This of course while RW "news" sources are hyping "16 days for Iran to have nukes" and all of the rightwing blogosphere is salivating over the prospect of making a really big bang somewhere.
Or, here is a hypothesis. Maybe your real mission is to raise the game of the right wing. But before you can even be heard by them, you have to assure them that they are in their comfort zone (a nut house), and then feed them their red meat nonsense for starters. Then perhaps, they will listen to the rest of what you have to say. Is that it? (sorry if I've been a little slow catching on....)
The downside of course, is that you valdiate their craziness on a deep level even as you inject some measured doses of sanity into their thinking.
Comment Posted By Tano On 13.04.2006 @ 10:31
Hey Rick,
First off, I disagree that I am an idiot for visiting sites that I have a problem with. To me, it is a function of the fact that I don't think that I know it all, and am willing to learn things, even from people that I have lots of disagreement with. Thats why I come here - and my criticisms of you arise from disappointment that you so often offer only stupid ranting and name-calling types of critiques of us libs. I would love to have more substance, which you do, occasionally provide.
Secondly, it seems you blew the call again. No split government.
Thirdly, you play silly games regarding the WA governors race. No doubt there are conservatives who advised Rossi to back down. But it is also the case that the overwhelming majority of liberals (even Kossites) were telling the Ohio-we-wuz-robbed people to shut up already. In other words, you troll for the worst of the libs and pretend that they represent all libs. You ignore the worst of the wingnuts and focus only on the best - and pretend that they are representative. Why can't you accept the obvious? There are brilliant people, honorable people, mediocre people, nutty people and evil people on all sides of any political spectrum. Why keep us this silly pretense that you guys are somehow intellectually or morally superior. At least we dont have people like Savage or Coulter (ok, we have some, but fewer).
Finally, you gonna start calling Berlusconi (and while you are at it, all conservatives everywhere) a bunch of 5 year old girls? - given that it looks like he is going to contest the election. Or does that only apply if Prodi had done so?
Comment Posted By Tano On 11.04.2006 @ 16:18
So c'mon Rick, step up and be a man about it.
You blew the call, and (surprise surprise!!) the guy that came in second is demanding a recount.
Seems that this recount instinct kicks in whenever someone comes close, be that liberal or conservative. As if we didnt see that already in Washington State last year, or as if we didnt know that already because people are people.
Y'know, I've said it before, I'll say it again. You seem obssessed by acting far nuttier than you really are with these silly rants. And y'know what - you aint even really very good or creative when you are in rant mode. I mean,,,"ChimpyMcBushyhitler" ! How trite is that?
Comment Posted By Tano On 11.04.2006 @ 09:08
Gee Rick,
A little premature ejaculation, no? Seems like Prodi did win after all.
And what are all those nasty comments about loony ideas, crappy candidates etc. You wouldn't be referring to the guy who won the popular vote a few years back, would you? I mean, what would that make the guy who actually "won"?
Comment Posted By Tano On 10.04.2006 @ 23:10
THE MEDIA AND THE LEFT GO NUCLEAR
Rick,
As someone who disagrees with many of your positions, but who is also deeply respectful of the notion of a free-market competition of ideas, and who has no inclination to doubt the underlying motivations of my political opponents, may I make a simple request?
Lose this incredibly boring, and self-defeating tendency to lace all your comments with the standard junior-high school-level insults to those of us on the other side of the issues. They serve no purpose other than to make you sound juvenile, and unserious, when in fact you often have some interesting ideas. Who is going to bother picking through the sewage to find your pearls of wisdom?
You are a strange character. You clearly have the capacity to operate on a fairly high level, but you establish a site called the "nut house", and seem deeply motivated to live up to that name. Whats up with that? Nut jobs are a dime a dozen, and the last thing that this country needs is more useless noise in our political discourse. And when smart people seem to actually aspire to be dumber than they actually are,,,, well, I just don't understand what you are trying to accomplish.
Comment Posted By Tano On 9.04.2006 @ 12:31
LOST: THE TRUTH ABOUT SADDAM AND NIGER URANIUM
For the mentally challenged among you, let me sum up: 1) a document is passed to the British government from the French authenticating claims that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger, 2) This is exactly what Bush said. 3) It was not true.
Comment Posted By Tano On 9.04.2006 @ 12:51
INCOMPETENCE PILED ON TOP OF INCOHERENCE
Sorry, but it seems to me that you are the one that is pretty incoherent here. How about dealing with the real issue?
There has been a continuing influx of illegals because the ECONOMY NEEDS THE WORKERS. The Reagen-era amnesty was a great success, because it integrated workers into the mainstream of American life. The fact that it failed to stem the tide is not a problem with the amnesty but a function of the underlying problem of how we regulate immigration. Malkin is her typically idiotic self when she pretends that the amnesty should have somehow stopped illegals coming - failing to deal with the obvious fact that the illegals come because there is work that needs doing.
We need immigrants as a function of the growth of the economy. We regulate immigrants in a POLITICAL context - we have congresscritters vote on how many people to allow into the country. This combination is extremely inefficient. Wise political leaders would establish quotas that match the needs of the economy. If they let too many in, there would be widespread unemployment amongst immigrants, and hopefully that would then lead to restriction. If they let in too few, then either the economy suffers from lack of workers, or you get a lot of illegals. Clearly that is the situation that we have today.
Any commentary on the immigration situation that fails to take, as a point of departure, the fact that the problem is caused by absurd quota-levels, is simply avoiding the obvious point.
The GOP plans to criminalize needed workers, or to continue to leave them in legal limbo is a triumph of ideological stupidity over a common-sense concern for the ongoing health of the economy.
The illegals that are here now are needed for our continued prosperity. Yes, they have broken the law. But the law as written is totally out of touch with the needs of the nation. Its like putting a 40mph speed limit on the interstates. You can rant and rave all you want about punishing the speeders, but a serious approach would be to accept that the underlying problem is with the idiots who wrote the law.
The McCain-Kennedy approach is a sensible way to deal with reality, in a manner that doesnt endanger our economy. It allows / forces NEEDED workers to be integrated into the mainstream where they can function as normal human beings, and we can know who they are and what they are doing.
Comment Posted By Tano On 7.04.2006 @ 13:36
