peacefuljeffrey

Do you work for a company that has stockholders? I think that would make this "fraud." Did your boss send you home early because he wanted you to freshen up after doin' it on his desk? That might be a reason to feel guilty... - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No, you're right, we have every reason to believe that diesel fuel doesn't burn. (Or maybe I misinterpreted what "promotes fires" means.) - Yes you did. The rest of your post is, therefore, irrelevant. And my point is made, that NH4NO3 is, all by itself, plenty dangerous. Your point seemed to be that huge industrial quantities of NH4NO3 are dangerous. But we are talking about individual and/or farm use of the stuff -- since the proposed legislation to require background checks to purchase the stuff is about that, not factory stockpiles of it. How cleverly disingenous of you to try to reframe the discussion and digress to a different subject altogether, unrelated to Schumer's call for added "security." And are you saying that diesel fuel does not burn?! What goes up when a tractor trailer crashes, pray tell? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

This nice guy has been smitten with you ever since he first saw that avatar picture!

Be careful. Not every case is the same but Yes, it is true that some guys behave gentlemanly and politely and generously because they are trying to get you to like them. Some are doing it as a "scheme," while others do it because they are genuinely good natured, friendly, caring, "sweet," etc. It's hard to draw a line between a guy who uses "niceness" in a way that is calculated and scheming, and a guy who really wants to show in a condensed and efficient way how good a boyfriend he would make for you. It's rather like the show of strength that male animals perform in order to woo a female for mating. I don't see how this is wrong, actually. A guy might offer you help with something, like moving your possessions into a new home, as a means of showing you in a quick and efficient way that he'd be good to you, generous, selfless. What other way of attracting a mate is better? Women go home with guys who flash cash, a hot smile, bedroom eyes, and a cheap line at a bar! Is doing nice things for a woman any less respectable than that? What may have happened in your case is that he did act this way, hoped it would attract you to him as a good man who is worth getting romantically involved with. When rebuffed, he got insulted and felt he had wasted his time and his niceness. Maybe he got off-put by your not recognizing his "offer." Maybe he felt that you surely had to have known he was putting himself on the table, and all you did was accept ("use") his kindness. (I've been there.) It is hard to fault a guy for this, although ideally a person should be willing to accept that simply being a nice person to somebody is not a guarantee that they will "like you like you" -- if attraction is not there. It's not fair to the woman to expect that just because you're nice to her, she'll "fall for you." Shouldn't she be allowed to find, or not find, you attractive, with your kindness being a separate issue? A guy should be a nice guy because being nice is its own reward. He should then hope that he will also find a woman who values it and wants him -- in part -- for those qualities that make him a "nice guy." I'm still waiting for mine. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm not interested so much in that as I am in what they will say when so-called "assault weapon" use does not appreciably increase after we get back our right to have flash suppressors, pistol grips, bayonet mounts, and 15-round magazines. These liberal idiots better get ready with some quick excuses, because they're about to look reeeeally reeeeally stupid all over again. Amazing how they never seem to mind that. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Is this what you're saying Kerry was doing at the times he admits he committed war crimes and atrocities? Is it not the same thing you now decry our troops were doing in Iraq? Don't worry, I really don't expect you to issue a clear, unambiguous, and non-obfuscatory answer. I was pretty much being rhetorical. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Don't presume to speak for me, especially when the lines you try to put in my mouth are unadulterated drivel. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

From the Drudge article: Um, this atrocity that Kerry co-sponsored makes illegal "any other characteristic that can function as a grip"?! So the only guns that Kerry thinks should be legal are those that have nothing you can hold them by?? And this guy has no problem accepting, as a gift, a gun which under his own legislation would be illegal for its characteristics, and illegal to receive as a gift?! He really is a motherfucking piece of shit. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No, you're right, we have every reason to believe that diesel fuel doesn't burn. (Or maybe I misinterpreted what "promotes fires" means.) A five gallon jug of diesel fuel sits next to a five gallon jug of ammonium nitrate. Which is more dangerous, Professor? Which one, as it sits there could more readily be used as is to cause destruction? I'm not talking about "large stockpiles of the material can be a major fire risk due to their supporting oxidation, and may also detonate, as happened in the Texas City disaster of 1947." Nor am I talking about the explosion of 1921. Or in 2001. No, I'm not asking about factory-type quantities of the stuff. I'm talking about end-user levels, which are the levels likely to be used by, well, end users, whether for good or ill. Could you be intellectually honest enough to compare apples to apples for just one post? Address my example. Five gallons of each. Which poses the more immediate potential to be used destructively. And I'm talking USED destructively, unlike your example of stockpiles going up inadvertently. Come on, Prof. Level with us. We're imploring you. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

The same Democrats who along with Republicans voted to approve the first Patriot Act? You still don't seem to get it, bill. If the Democrats -- as opposed to the Republicans -- were such the defenders of liberty and the smiters of bad, intrusive, abusive laws, they would have stood up to the first Patriot Act and said, "This is ridiculous: it is a dangerous, knee-jerk reaction and we must not pass it." But they did not. And not having read the text of the law is no excuse for them any more than it is for Republicans. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

And "championing the passage" of it got it ratified? No. For that, your freedom-loving Democrat congresspeople had to comply and vote for it. Why did they, bill? They're the people you are claiming will save us from the second Patriot Act. They couldn't be counted on to read the first one, let alone stand in the way of its passage: as you said, only TWO of them out of all of them did not vote to pass that bill. You make it sound like Ashcroft's "pushing" the bill got it made into law, skipping neatly over the part where the Democrat politicians you champion as our saviors from further infringement via Patriot Act II had to vote FOR it in order for us to suffer under it. (You also have not really made a great case for how we're suffering under it, by the way, and I wish you would, so I can see if I agree. So far, I haven't felt a pinch from it that I know of.) So your glossing over the fact that your Democrats voted for the bill en masse does nothing for your case but make it smell like a stinking pile of horseshit. Why won't you face it, and treat the subject honestly? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

But you made it very clear that you were blaming the REPUBLICANS for it, specifically. What difference does it make if the writers of the bill were Republicans, when in the end the people who made it law were the Republicans and most of the Democrats? Why do you fail so conspicuously to hold them responsible for their part, bill? You again fail to answer my question. And you make it reeeeeally obvious. How did the Republicans gain control if the American people so disagree with them, bill? They took over both houses of Congress in '96, and took the presidency and kept both houses in 2000. How'd they do it, bill, when everyone knows the Republicans are so out-of-step with mainstream America? Why won't you answer direct questions? That's crap. The Democrat-driven "AWB II" will do far more damage to the RKBA than anything else, and you know it. They're looking to ban just about all semi-auto long guns, and ammunition as well. You just don't want to back away from your folly that the APA I and/or II are so dangerous to liberty. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Would you mind being intellectually honest with us for a moment and address the RELATIVE INHERENT DANGEROUSNESS of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate? Please specify at least four "silly regulations" that a) came from the asinine right specifically b) we are confronted with in our day-to-day lives - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Are you not aware that it is illegal to obey an illegal order, and that a soldier may refuse to obey an order he knows is illegal? Torture is illegal. If Kerry were worth having as president, and he were ordered to torture or kill illegally, he would be standing before us telling the (documentable) story of how he refused, and reported those ordering the torture to their superiors and had them court martialed. Kerry did not have the ethical or moral fortitude to refuse to obey these orders, if indeed they were orders. He came back from the war and told Congress that he and others were war criminals. You know, the kind we tried and executed after WWII? I can't say I myself would have had X amount of moral and ethical fortitude in war, but I am not putting myself forward as a person of the character that should be president of the most powerful nation on earth, and the most free. HE IS. So it is fair to question his integrity on these subjects! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

EXACTLY. There is a huge difference -- which billvon and others are not granting -- between trying to put forth what you honestly believe is a factual, unbiased-as-possible film that depicts reality as it is, and an intentionally biased "factoid" film that uses deliberate misinformation in order to push an agenda or instill a particular viewpoint in the viewer. When you tell what you believe to be the truth, you are a documentarist. When you lie, you are a propagandist. It's really quite as simple as that. People say, "Oh, but it's impossible to not have your own bias in your documentary, even when you try to be objective. After all, you decide the overall subject of the film, i.e. "the mating habits of the blue-footed booby," versus "The American Military-Industrial Complex." After you pick a subject, you decide whom to interview, whom to quote, whom to discuss, what to discuss, and so on. If you decide to embellish facts, give overwhelming airtime to alleged facts and supporters of one side of an issue, and then selectively include the opposition in scenes where they make funny faces or fumble their words or otherwise cherry pick scenes in which they don't look believable, you are not being an unbiased documentarist, you are grinding an axe, forwarding an agenda, creating propaganda. THAT'S why Michael Moore is not a documentarist. I always thought of documentaries as the films where the guy with the British accent says stuff like, "As winter approaches, the bear gorges itself on as many fruits, berries and nuts as it can, in anticipation of the long sleep until springtime, when she will emerge to look for a mate." That kind of thing is what should win the documentary awards. It's informative, instructional, and what kind of fuckin' agenda could someone possibly have to advance in such a film?? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oh my god, bill, are you really going to focus on that when dozens of others who were Democrats voted FOR it?! That is really out there, bill, and I thought I was used to your attempts at misdirection! The Democrats are already trying to play on fears of terrorists acquiring stockpiles of guns at the so-called "unregulated" gun shows, bill. The pretend that no one remembers that terrorists often have state sponsorship from governments abroad and NO PROBLEM getting guns from sources well better supplied that gun shows. I have never seen offered at a gun show live RPGs and Stinger missiles, but terrorists have fired them at aircraft flying around airports in other countries. Who's playing on fears? The Democrats themselves. Besides, if the party that you say pushed the APA is returned to the presidency, knowing what they know now the Democrats could very easily -- and I would expect them to if they agree with you about the harm the APA has done -- reject it and fight its passage in Congress. Are you telling me that THAT is something they could not successfully filibuster, even without a majority in the house or senate? By the way, how DID those darned Republicans come off the peace and prosperity of Bill Clinton and end up winning a majority of BOTH HOUSES of Congress, bill, if their party's ideas are so out of step with those of the American public? Were all the races decided by the obviously biased United States Supreme Court, bill? Come on, bill, humor me and answer just two of my direct questions without obfuscation and I'll consider myself ahead of the game. So far your record for doing so is abysmal, and I'm very disappointed by your steadfast refusal. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Like I think I said previously, I don't have a complete answer and it is a matter of degrees. That said, you don't have to make it so easy that he can pull up a truck and buy 5,000 pounds at a time with complete anonymity. Somewhere between the two extremes is a reasonable amount and a reasonable solution. "You don't have to make it so easy... and making it a little harder will not do anything, in the end, to stop the destructive device being made eventually, so at least we'll have looked like we did something about it." That's essentially what Schumer and his ilk are trying to do. Put up a show of making it harder, even if your restrictions still allow it to get made. Will it really end up mattering if this type of law requires terrorists to devote a smidge more of their manpower to acquiring smaller bags of fertilizer? They were able to find 19 guys who were willing to DIE ABOARD AIRPLANES. It would be unthinkable that they could find 25 guys to each buy 200 lbs. of fertilizer over the course of a few months, inconspicuously? And what about the diesel fuel? A guy could go and fill a semi trailer with a few hundred gallons of that in one fell swoop, cash, check or charge thank-you-please. Why has no one mentioned my point about how the FUEL OIL (diesel) -- half of the ANFO bomb -- is READILY DANGEROUS IN ITS NATIVE STATE? You can't light houses on fire with ammonium nitrate, can you? Can you throw a bottle full of ammonium nitrate with a lit rag in the neck and have it erupt in flame? So why all the focus on something that actually is normally used in rather large quantities, and in and of itself is not particularly dangerous? Isn't that rather backward? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well why would we be cynical? After all, it's not like any one of us has ever had his heart crushed by a woman after we've fallen in love with her! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'll go see it, too. And then I'll claim to all the liberals that it doesn't matter that the source of it is biased against Kerry, or that they twisted facts or took speeches out of context, or edited and spliced disparate speeches to give a totally different impression. I'll tell the liberals that it doesn't matter that people will be wrongly swayed by the misrepresentations, or that the movie is manipulative, because the viewers are smart enough to make decisions about what is fact for themselves, which is why they needed to see a movie that purports to do that for them in the first place. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well come on, quade, is it really so unreasonable for me to infer that when I said, "They could just go buy smaller unregistered quantities," and you said, "The bomb was like 5,000 pounds," that you might have meant, "5,000 pounds is an awful lot to have to acquire piecemeal," in an attempt to contradict my assertion that the law would be something terrorists could get around? I think it was reasonable to surmise that is what you were implying. If I was wrong, and you say so, I stand corrected. But who agrees or disagrees? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

hey, Paul? Can you link over where the Academy definition is? Surprisingly enough, I've never read the voting guidelines. Considering my Dad's a voting member and all (and has been for many years), and has sat on the Documentary selection committee (among other committees) in the past, and his opinion is that F-911 isn't a documentary, I'm wondering where he's gone wrong. And yes, Dad's a Dem. Ciels- Michele Michele, what did your dad have to say about Bowling for Columbine?? There are so many reasons that movie didn't qualify as a documentary, but I read something about how according to the Academy's own criteria, it failed because it wasn't shown at enough theaters for the right length or the right period of time or something arcane like that. And they let it into the competition despite the failure. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I guess then that all but the terrorists that are determined to destroy us will just give up then. Wahhh! It's just too troublesome to send a bunch of people to buy a large quantity of this stuff in relatively small amounts! What are you saying? That this would be an impediment that determined terrorists would simply not want to deal with? After getting fake passports, and all kinds of other difficult shit, they'd just turn back and give up the plan just because they couldn't buy all 5,000lbs. in one shot?? You gotta realize how dumb this sounds! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What do you propose we do about people who want to blow stuff up with ANFO who buy the fertilizer in small quantities without a background check? Your plan does not address the fact that 1000 pounds of ammonium nitrate is really just 100 ten pound bags. Duh! Is this the best liberals can do? I guess I should not be surprised that stupidity came from Schumer's mouth. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Bill, did you answer my question? Bill, why don't you stop pretending that you don't know it was ALL OF THEM -- DEMOCRAT AS WELL AS REPUBLICAN. HOW many votes against the USA Patriot Act were there? Wasn't it just like ONE or something? So it's a load of shit to say that the blame lies with Republicans specifically or exclusively or whatever it is you're sellin', because it couldn't have happened if "principled Democrats" (shyeah, whatever) had stood up and said, "This is wrong, and an erosion of liberty." I've never been suckered into believing that Democrats were so against curtailing liberty in the first place, but... In fact, it would have been nice if any of your liberty-championing Democrats had even READ the thing before voting to enact it. The Republicans might not have read it either -- the thing is supposed to be all long and shit -- but what excuse can a politician offer for voting to enact a bad law when he never checked to see that bad stuff was contained in it? It's putting a gun to your own head and pulling the trigger on the say-so of someone else that there's no ammunition in it. It's deplorable that any legislator would vote for something without knowing what it contained -- and even more deplorable for them to bitch about it once it's passed!! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Bill, how utterly disingenuous of you -- and I see this in a huge number of your posts and I have called you on it before. I am surprised you continue to think these things will slip by me or us. Do you mean to put blame for Patriot I on Republicans just because they have a majority in Congress? It was passed with tremendous bipartisan support. Your comments would be meaningful if only the Democrats had been staunchly aligned against the act, but they were not. They were not. And more of your disingenuousness: Where in my post did I say anything about voting Republican to prevent passage of Patriot II? I didn't mention it at all! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"