(CORRECTION) Not sick of informative good blogs like Larry's and Emptywheel, just the additional blah blah afterwards instead of action. And the stupid talk shows on it, and the tv shows on it. Happy Holidays.

Posted at September 14, 2007 12:50 AM in response to Dave Petraeus and Iraq Kabuki

Just wish we could stop blogging about all this and throw the son of a bitch into the stockade. All of them, Bush, Cheney, Petraeus, Pelosi, Reed, ...don't get me started...

Sick of blogs, time for change.

Keep blogging if you wish of course...just sayin...

Posted at September 14, 2007 12:48 AM in response to Dave Petraeus and Iraq Kabuki

Terry,

You are not reading what I wrote, you are parsing and reemphasizing what you want to.

The first evidence of your miscue is when I said to the previous writer:
"I do disagree with you only on a small matter."

I was commenting on disagreement with the previous poster that said:
""Also, your article reads like you think it is somehow worse to discriminate against people of color than it is to discriminate against homosexuals. It isn't."

But what you tried to turn that disagreement into was:
"Racial bigotry is a small matter, csampson?"

And to be real frank, this comment pissed me off because racism is something I'm very intolerant of. It hits buttons with me you might never understand and for you to twist my words to imply it is disgusting.

But you didn't stop there and even in this posting you continue to project your own thoughts into other's comments.

Copying doesn't mean you read what is said. You are not displaying comprehension of what is written and then are emphasizing distractions as their assertions. I know people who can repeat what I say but can't provide the comprehension of what was said unless they were actually listening not simply having an audio sensation but processing it. As the great Kabir once wrote, "a parrot can gavel the name God but knows not its meaning".

You are bordering on trolling with your responses.

Then you up the ante with calling the assertion that I don't believe in race as 'nonsense' and spouted out "facts" to support your conclusion. Unfortunately for your "facts" I don't take snapshots of places to determine race, because there are over 6 billion of our species.

And this is simply an incomplete sentence (which I do sometimes when I type real fast too)
"So is the blind racism which insists on what is not true through determined ignorance"

Let me answer it with the philosophical wisdom of the ancient Chinese Master Kung who said,
"a man who sees five colors is blind and a man who hears five tones is deaf."

This describes what I think about "race" because when you meet enough people who don't fit so nicely in your this-that divisions you see the blends of human beings as they have evolved from a central ancestor.

You want to use some sort of rhetorical fallacy game of selected cities to emphasize your point when you say, if you go to Stockholm, Tokyo and Lagos, but this is as if you snapshot people there and say, "SEE LOOK...DISTINCTIONS"...but then you must not have been in caravan across these regions from one town to the next as you see the people blend, the cultures blend, the distinctions become so complex that you miss the forest for picking out trees.

Human beings are not divided into the convenient "caucasiod, mongoloid, africanoid", and maybe you don't believe that, but these concepts are now outdated and considered bad anthropological categorization.

The concept of Caucasian race by Blumenbach in his writing De generis humani varietate nativa may have made sense in the 19th Century, but it has been scientifically debunked.

And your assessment that the FDA may want to warn "Asians" of some potential side effects, or an example you didn't use, Native Americans and alcohol, doesn't conclude there is such a thing as "race". These warning might be, and i'm going to claim expert status here any more than cyou can, based on other factors related to diet and physical construct based on diet, region, and development in these cultures.

I do believe in cultural distinctions but again, the more you look they disappear. Go from village to village in some countries and you can say...This is different from That. This is very easy to do, but it often ignores the "sameness" of the people in question and isn't a very precise science. It doesn't account for those things that stay fixed and those things that migrate. It is narrow view thinking.

You know, much of what you want to support here as science was debunked by UNESCO
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001282/128291eo.pdf

What saddens me about your comments as a whole is that you periodically support my view on the matter then take a 180 in the same post and say the apparent opposite. I believe you abhor racism, homophobia, sexism, classism too, no? I don't need to accuse you of supporting these vile bigotries to make my point.

And while you are trying to establish some sort of 'scientific' support of your position through discussions of "gypsies" or "dna", you are engaged in so many logical fallacies that I cannot take you seriously. But more to the point, you inserted ideas into comments that I don't hold, didn't change my mind about etc, and tried to ascribe those to me. You then called my view that race doesn't exist, "nonsense" which...don't know where you come from but...where I'm from this is an insult of such dismissive arrogance as to be nothing but provocation.

I'd suggest toning down your projection a bit and quit parsing comments to distract yourself.

Further reading is suggested on "strawman", "affirming the consequent", "biased sample", "begging the question", "half-truths","data-snooping bias" and "proof by example"...the list goes on.

The majority of your comments in these two posts reflect very little of what I said, and assert your views as the truth, and mine as belief. Unfortunately this isn't a topic I started digging into last week, but over 20 years ago and modern science supports that race does not exist outside of falsely asserted distinctions that disappear upon real scientific examination.

As UNESCO said it, "Scientists have reached general agreements in recognizing that mankind is one."

Posted at September 3, 2007 10:26 AM in response to Meet the New Hypocrite...

"Racial bigotry is a small matter, csampson?"

No, I didn't say that.

And yes, I know racism is still a current poison in the body of our country, and never said it expired. I was emphasising that the country's history is steeped in racism.

Most of the rest of what you wrote seems almost like a red-herring to the comments I responded two which were comparing racism with homophobia, not different types of racism.

To me racism, homophobia, sexism, classism, and many other isms which divide us are false, poisonous and unfortunately ubiquitous.

But I'd mainly like to ask you to not read into what others write and simply read what they write. To ascribe sentiments to people that they do not feel is to dilute what they state.

And the comments about "discrimination" within the African-American community are not as much my concern about the discrimination towards the African-American community by Anglos or others. The famous "Willie Lynch" letter preached division within the slave populations in order to keep control in the hands of the masters. He recommended pitting young against old and light against dark, men against women, and any other divisions. He especially noted that jealousy and envy were more productive to the master than unity and such divisions would keep the masters in control for perhaps up to 300 years.

I don't worry on describing "race" because I don't believe in race. I do believe that there is "racism" though. I define it as the systematic oppression of a people based on their physical and cultural distinctions as defined by outsiders, with the most notable example being the European subjegation and enslavement of Africans both in the US and abroad. The writings of many Europeans clearly reflect ignorant pictures of people as savages and uncivilized. Today US citizens write all the time with the same tone of condescention towards Black Americans, Latinos, and others.

But again, before I go on too long with your red-herring strawman game here for a second,...the original comment from the above poster was:

"your article reads like you think it is somehow worse to discriminate against people of color than it is to discriminate against homosexuals. It isn't."

not, what is racism, race, and do I ignore this or that about race....

So I compared racism with homophobia, not racism with racism with racism.

and your closing comment, "Or is that so impossible" is simply provacative and something you can go wrestle with. I've already wrestled with it.

Posted at September 3, 2007 2:29 AM in response to Meet the New Hypocrite...

Nailed it again Larry.

I wish the charts you provide would display here like on the great site, http://www.noquarterusa.net.

What many miss is the amount of injured soldiers we have now. It is staggering to see those numbers and realize they aren't being recognized because they aren't dead. If they were dead then they'd be noticed. That is SICK.

O'Hanlon and Pollak aren't the worst case scenario though they make me puke. The new campaign by Ari Fleischer's little group really raises the level of sickness this administration and their lackeys will go to. Now they will feature mothers being concerned saying, "no more attacks" while making sure you don't forget some date in September where something happened....it gets foggy about what...but something big happened in September or something.

Goebbels couldn't have done a better job in his day, but what would he do with the Internet, Television commercials, CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, ABCBSNBC. Pay close attention as these ads roll out.

Now the GAO has leaked the documents that will be the basis of the "Patreus" report.

Goddman, I really wish the Art of War by Master Sun Tzu were required reading. It isn't the longest book in the world, and is so clear about when you don't lay out resource lines, when you wage war without the moral high ground, when you don't know the lay of the land, or as it was called, the nature of heaven and earth.

There were warnings about having politically minded civilians running wars, and even about the Emperor's own conflicts of interests. But those warnings go unheard during this war because more people know the name of the latest American Idol contestants than how this war is going.

Posted at September 1, 2007 1:18 AM in response to The Price of Progress

"Also, your article reads like you think it is somehow worse to discriminate against people of color than it is to discriminate against homosexuals. It isn't."

Uh...where did the author write such a thing or suggest it? I don't see that.

But I do disagree with you only on a small matter. Racial discrimination has a very obvious history in the US that has raised the stakes when it comes to racial bigotry. The "strange fruit" that hung from the Southern trees was solely based on racism. The attacks on homosexuals are much alike these racist attacks in that a person was picked for violence because of who they were.

However, it is impossible to hide my skin color, my hair, my face and it is not impossible to hide my gender or sexual preferences. In fact my personal angst about our society's hangup on homosexuals, is that I don't want to hear about your sexuality at all. I consider it a private issue all together regardless of preference.

But the differences in magnitude of consquences in the two seems vast to me. I could be wrong. The history of slavery, genocide of Native Americans, destruction of culture along the US Mexico border, jim crow laws, segregation, and the ongoing blatant racism in America far outweighs the bigotry against the GLBT community.

I will agree that bigotry is bigotry. But I don't agree that they manifest in the same damage as each other when comparing race and homosexuals. I don't believe homosexuality is a choice, though for some it is, and I don't believe people should discriminate against homosexuals. But race is clearly never a choice and more often the source of people's bigotry than their sexuality (in my experience).

I think his main point was that Jim Risch scoffed at the suffering of people who have no chance to get ahead and don't get to resist the building of dams and levees and other projects of the mighty industry yet face the consequences wwhen those systems fail and destroy their community.

I don't feel sorry for Larry Craig at all. It is what happens when you engage in delusion. I won't feel that for him so long as he continues his, "I'm not Gay" routine.

After hearing the police audio, it is clear he was guilty of the acts he's accused of, and it should reopen the Congressional investigations of impropriety with the young men who are left in their care. He has been accused for years of violations ala Mark Foley, and so far hasn't paid for them. Will we now hear the truth? Will we now hear who else is trying to molest our children while preaching moral values out the other side of their mouths?

Posted at September 1, 2007 1:10 AM in response to Meet the New Hypocrite...

Exactly my point. This is exactly why the impeachment clause was put in. Bless George Mason and crew who wrote impeachment into the constitution. We should honor their vision with action.

Posted at August 10, 2007 3:08 PM in response to An Alternative to Impeachment: Transitional Justice for the Bush-ites

People have turned these men and women into Kings, Lords and Ladies. The argument as it stands is all bases on a "submilinable" acceptance of plebian status, with little to no powers.

Can't do, can't do, can't do, never got much done.

The ignorance of impeachment mixed with dazzling ignorance of popular sovereignty killed lady liberty and extinguished her torch.

wake up people, they shit too, just like me and you.

well, except Dick Cheney who is a hologram now.

Posted at August 10, 2007 3:28 AM in response to An Alternative to Impeachment: Transitional Justice for the Bush-ites

I sadly report....I also had to teach my children of the use of asterisk for Barry Bonds too tonight. They've never heard of Hank Aaron.
2007, the year of the asterisk.

Posted at August 8, 2007 11:53 AM in response to Impeachment Pit

Democracy Now covered the story with Mayer today:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/08/1338248

I haven't tuned in just yet, but there ya go.

Posted at August 8, 2007 11:50 AM in response to Mayer Builds a Case Against Cheney and Addington