Wait, you mean an old white man with wealth and power wasn't held accountable for his transgressions?

If only we lived in a country that believed it was self-evident that all men are created equal...

Oh, I get it. Big loophole there. It only says they're created equal, after that they're free to be successful, and therefore insulated from the pesky laws that bind us little people.

^ I can see your point.

Playing by the rules, yes, I think things would have been worse.

But if we would have played by different rules, e.g. treat the banks and the bankers as we would treat anybody who was delinquent on their loans--repossessing their toys, to start with, and kicking them out of the system--that would have helped, too.

Had we punished them and relieved the debts of the people that they suckered into ARM loans, and then went around giving money to the little people instead of handing it over by the boatload to the one's who were already rich and who, coincidentally, were responsible for the problem to begin with....

Yeah, I see your point.

>> ^RedSky:
No Oompa Loompas? Are you SERIOUS?


No African Little People were harmed during the making of these candy canes.

I'm a solid #5 now.

The activists are pretty loudly saying we should be pushing the leftmost Senators to withhold their vote -- try to get concessions made back to the left. Hold the individual mandate hostage, since we know the health care industry is salivating over that more than anything. Make them give us little people some real concessions in return for it.

There's a huge amount of blaming Obama for being essentially silent and invisible on this topic since, oh, July. What little we've seen from him has been a diplomatically phrased STFU to the progressives about the public option, and most recently a very undiplomatic "shut the fuck up you stupid, crazy motherfucker" to Howard Dean, who really sparked this firestorm.

There's some pretty anemic arguments coming from our wonkier members, mostly saying #1 -- the status quo is so bad, we should eat crow on the public option just for the improvements in the existing bill, though they aren't pointing to something we hadn't really heard about before, they're just stoked about the mandate, subsidies, and the exchanges.

The problem with that is that it means that all political positives of the bill disappear. Maybe I shouldn't worry about that so much, but it seems to me that the Senate bill looks a lot more like the McCain health care plan (tax employer benefits, subsidize individual insurance, and enable national competition in the individual market) than what Obama talked about (which always included government negotiation of prices, which didn't make it out of any committee).

There's no clear road forward with the bill as it is now, other than we're going to set things up for a bigger crisis in the future, which will hopefully give us the clout to make things right later.

That too seems like the Republican modus operandi (i.e. run up deficits to create perpetual budget crises with the hope that people will empower Republicans to cut popular liberal programs), and I don't care for it one bit.

Normally I'm happy to play armchair quarterback, but I don't see a win in killing the bill, nor in passing it as is. We need more options, and quickly.

Awww. I love how they are sleeping under a blankey, just like little people!

You clearly didn't read my post. The site I listed discredits the video. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't hold it past Dick Cheney to knowingly allow this to happen. The flight hit the pentagon almost an hour after the flights hit the towers. Protocol is to scramble and shoot down any civilian flight off its flight path and that isn't responding to hails, particularly if it is headed towards a high valued military target. For Dick Cheney that should be an easy call. If it wasn't, I seriously question whether he was qualified to be in that position.
At the very least, the south side of the building should have been evacuated as the target was moving in, not after.
I agree the question you pulled out is bullshit, but questions about exactly what orders were given to whom, when, are not unreasonable questions. These are even more relevant if what we'd like to understand how to avoid this sort of thing in the future.
I'm not willfully ignorant as you imply. I won't entertain fantastic stories about fly overs, or detonation squads. I just wouldn't hold it past these particular assholes to allow something like this to happen. They didn't need to do anything active, just don't give the order to fire.
In my mind... the "truthers" are getting paid/encouraged/coverage in order to keep the heat off the real question of was the negligence criminal or plain vanilla incompetence?
FDNY and all that... but the chickenhawk, neocons can go to hell. The fact of the matter is we've spent more money investigating Bill Clinton's blow job than we have the largest attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor, accusations of human rights abuses, and unconstitutional expansions of executive power by the previous administration.
I ask you sir...
srsly?

I did read your post and yes, it does discredit the video, but it brings up other questions just as absurd.

The protocol was never been to shoot down any civilian aircraft that deviates from flight plans and doesn't respond to hails. That is absolutely false and you know it. That policy may have been tightened and changed since these events, but before 9/11 there is no way that the government would shoot down a commercial airliner for those reasons. The simple fact is that no one knew what was going on and where these planes were headed until it was too late.

Like I said before, things were absolutely chaotic that day and people were trying to use their best judgment based on what information they had, which was minimal at best. Watch any of the excellent Discovery Channel or National Geographic Channel documentaries about that day and you'll see how little people had to go on. It is easy to look with hindsight and second guess what people should have done, but in the moment, things are not that simple.

Dick Cheney had no say regarding shooting down anything, so I'm not sure why you are going after him, aside from your obvious anger. Belief in conspiracy theories are so dangerous because they essentially become like a religion: people believe what they believe because they believe it and nothing can persuade them otherwise once they have decided to believe. Even a "moderate" conspiracy theorist like yourself must realize that you have no real evidence to back up your claims, especially claims that the government was complicit, passively or otherwise.

I think this is a *quality idea, ponce. I've always said partisan politics is nothing more than pageantry at the Superbowl. Instead of O.J. Simpson vs. Refrigerator Perry (yeah, that's right, I don't watch football too often so my knowledge of the roster is limited to 1980s Pepsi commercials. So what?), we have Miss Arizona vs. Miss Illinois.

What your team is doing wrong or the other team is doing right is incidental; all that matters is the trophy and, of course, how your pageant contestant carries herself as a respectful lady.

Only the two teams with the most money will win, because only they can afford the best team roster for the payoffs... er, I meant playoffs! Playoffs!

Also, wouldn't it be an outrage to have a commoner compete in this pageant? Only the best, most beautiful, most groomed contestants should compete to sling pigskin for the two party system. Leave the spectating to the little people.

Very nifty! At times it looks as though a lot of little people are struggling over each other to crawl out of some forsaken pit.

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>> ^quantumushroom:
How is this guy still alive? How is Maher still alive?
bullshit


Lets hope none of our bullshit conspiracy stories are true. Amirite?

>> ^gwiz665:
I dream of a place where the artist would not fear the censor,
where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality,
where the great will not be constrained by the small.


Um, excuse me, your city has developed a number of small leaks and also a shitload of insanity.

>> ^entr0py:
chilaxe, yes you'd have to be naive to take this guy at his word without scrutinizing his evidence. But unfortunately I doubt any of us really care enough to put the time into it.


Either that or we don't trust conservative christian leaders to begin with, so regardless of the evidence it isn't changing our opinion of these scumbags anyway.

^ Thanks!

>> ^Lithic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr69bhccD-Q
Working one, but who knows for how long.

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