crwtom

you forgot an obvious choice in your poll ... * The news media is biased against guns. * The news media treats the gun issue fairly. * The news media is biased pro guns. ... sorry, couldn't vote. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

if you have to go to prison for this sh*t you don't have much of an option but to resign. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

this has more to do with the 2006 landslide loss for the GOP - the two big reasons were Iraq and the corruption & scandal. The party is still under shell shock overlapping with a very early presidential campaign. GOP are already trying to put some distance between themselves and the GWB handling of Iraq. On the corruption & scandal the sliding slope continued even after the elections with revelations and resignations -- so the vows to change the party culture didn't look credible and people got really desperate. The stall flamenco of Craig was the very last thing the GOP needed and that's why GOP people reacted downright violent against him. The motivation is much more party self preservation than some moral high ground. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

I'd say at least half of the GOP was freaked out about this and wanted him to go away ASAP. Pretty sure he got some very stern phone calls to resign immediately from several big elephants. As to "non-issue" - some gay rights people are pretty concerned and angry that this guy perpetuated a public conception that toilet-pick-ups are the normal way for gays to find partners. This isn't helping them in the gay marriage discussion at all. So -involuntarily- Craig may have helped his party's side of the debate with his antics. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Another one through the GOP revolving door out of DC: CNN .. this is fun.

AP Three days to the Labor Day deadline - who else will drop out? Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

aied on Al Jazeera Thought I add this ... quite forceful (and she's not speaking from the safe distance of western residence or wester media). ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

The population of roads by SUV sets a new standard of what is "safe". It deprives people of choices of what they can safely drive and thus infringes on my freedoms as well. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

a sturdy station wagon does the same job. And the reason you (feel) you need more metal around you is because all those other SUV diver have more metal that they can slam into your car. (kind of like an arms race) I developed a real hatred for SUVs when I was driving a low lying sports car. SUV bumpers where at the hight of my head - a simple "fender bender" (for the SUV driver) could have crushed my skull. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

In 1780 this nation didn't really exist yet and people had just began to settle in resource rich areas with no time to build an industry on it. Give them 85 more years and the story is a whole different one. The man powers, technology, and strategies that came together in the civil war would have been a serious threat to any European nation at the time - if that had ever become an issue. (e.g., armored warships and submarines were a first and many battle fields looked like those of WWI) In fact some historians credit Grant as an inventor of the "battle of materiel" as a winning strategy. The north had won before the war started because of its access to coal, steel, an industry built on these, control of greater ports and trade routes, as well as the larger man power. You just couldn't beat that with cotton and whiskey. Grant exploited that, and aimed to maximize damage to the enemies resources, human or supply, and relentlessly wear them down over time. The sentiments, morals, idea, etc involved are mere footnotes in this dynamics, and had at best marginal net impact. The US was thus 50 years ahead of the rest of the world in warfare until the next battles of materiel took place in Verdun etc. It didn't really matter what "Wunderwaffe" they could come up towards the end of the war. If you had no gasoline to fly those things they were no good to anyone. (Not to mention no factories to build them in any useful quantities, few trained pilots that were still alive, etc) The grounding of the German air force was largely due to lack of gasoline, especially after the easter front and supply lines collapsed, and, further on, the deterioration of most other infrastructure needed to sustain an air fleet. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

There is really only one thing that decides large wars like WWII - and that is availability and allocation of RESOURCES. In terms of man power resources the Axis powers were no match to what Russia put into it - incurring 20 Mio death. This despite the fact that their war technology was mostly behind. Lack of oil resources grounded most of German air force after eastern access broke down. Moreover, the US was geographically protected against attacks on their home territory, and could go undisturbedly about producing weapons and other supplies. Compare this to European nations where bombing each other factories was daily routine. Similar for war R&D. The Manhatten people were in a cosy desert removed from all action, with all the needed resources, and prominent refugees that fled the war and the Nazi's on staff. The few that stayed in Germany had to work in bunkers with little access to plutonium etc. Geography is one of the big factors allowed the US to become the superpower it is over the course of history. The geographic protection by oceans allowed population growth, industrial development, and scientific advanced to be essentially unperturbed by wars for the last 142 years. Additionally geography provided for essentially no limits in living space and natural resources. There are only very few nations that had this kind of luxury. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

good point: A lie is at its minimum a grammatically complete sentence. (not necessarily grammatically correct) and vaguely comprehensible. No one could accuse this AG ever of lying. (Or, in the word of Wolfgang Pauli: This is so bad, it's not even wrong) Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

The dog is 8 year's old - life expectancy of Maltese is 12-15. Might just be a 4-7 year delay until someone more sane makes decisions. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

So these all lies spread by a government conspiracy Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

IMO the Vick case has little to do with what animals are OK to kill and which are not in what "cultures". This was about blatan cruelty for personal entertainment - no matter against what life form. This wouldn't have been half the story if these had been race dogs that they put to sleep by a vetenarian after they didn't perform anymore. OTOH many pork eaters, who are well aware of where their meat comes from, are still disgusted by the games where an attack dog and a pig are put together in a small fenced area and people bet on how much damage the dog can do to the pig in how little time. I would conjecture that people get disturbed by the "cruelty for entertainment" aspect since that is often taken as a red flag and indication of lowered barriers for cruel behavior against humans. The other aspect of the Vick case is, of course, the gambling. As far as I understand a big No-No in the NFL - so I'm surprised they are leaving him a back door open and haven't banned him for life yet. BTW, pony and ostrich meat is really good - had that a few times when I lived in Switzerland. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

just curious ... in what culture would it be a tradition or ancient custom to electrocute and suffocate dogs? Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Also from NYT "Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

almost didn't believe it anymore ... NYT WP CNN Is Chertoff gonna fly? Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

perhaps they're scared of more terror attacks in the UK after the UK made itself a a target with the ill conceived Iraq involvement. Also the bulk of destinations (after Australia for the romantics) are EU countries, despite the fact they have different languages (and not the US). This is likely also due to economical reasons and how the UK economy relates to the rest of the EU. It certainly has nothing to do with UK gun laws as those are not very different from other EU laws. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Apparently they're not so familiar with it in Kentucky Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

choosing truck-bomings as a single indicator is cherry picking as well ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

leaving ship ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

Look at how much US Census is struggling with definitions to see how "cloudy" this can get. As already mentioned Hispanic is not a race but an ethnicity. Most, but not all, are white - there are about 1.7 Mio black hispanics in the US, for example. How many ethnicities are there according to US Census? Two: Hispanic and not-Hispanic. Also someone from Spain can claim this minority status but not someone from Italy - two totally comparable countries. But with xenophobia on the rise again in the US who knows - perhaps they will reintroduce the old "Mulatto" category used in previous censuses (censi?). The 2000 the US Census allowed several race declarations, and about 7Mio declared themselves as mixed - not counting the "Other" category which will be abolished in 2010. I suppose in future year Census will have to allow percentage declarations beyond the check marks, at which point this all becomes a ridiculous exercise. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

still a tad higher than the 1995 congress Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

perhaps because Americans are generally clueless about the civilian death toll that any war inflicts and what they mean. 9/11 was the only attack on Americam mainland with significant civilian casualties since 1865. In the world wars 3000 civilian deaths per day was for most large countries a regular day at work. Not knowing better, you'd say "What bliss, this ignorance", but this ignorance also makes it so much more easy for this country to start wars, drop bombs, and inflict destruction on civilian populations. Cheers, T ******************************************************************* Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true