Re: VT Shooting

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:50:44 -0400, Neil Harrington wrote:

Yet when one of the known "facts" concerning Gen. Butler was
mentioned, one which you were unfamiliar with, your knee-jerk
reaction was to not only discount it, but to equate it to conspiracy
theorist nonsense and Rosie O'Donnell's views on 9/11 :

I never even heard of Maj. Gen. Butler before. I don't know anything about
him except what you've said and linked to. Ergo, I have no opinion of him
one way or the other. You implied that since he'd been a high-ranking
officer his perceptions and opinions must be accepted as factual. That does
not compute.

It doesn't compute since I insisted no such thing. I don't own
and haven't read his book, but I've heard it mentioned from time to
time. You stretch the limits of credulity by saying that you have
"no opinion of him one way or the other" after tagging him or his
book as conspiracy theory nonsense.


Never heard that one, no. <guffaw!> Conspiracy theorists do come up
with all sorts of amazing nonsense though. Look at Rosie O'Donnell
and her ideas about 9/11.

Congratulations on being the poster boy for close mindedness.

Are you saying Rosie O'Donnell's conspiracy theories are so persuasive that
anyone not accepting them must be "close minded"?

Obviously not. It was all about your attempts to smear Butler
with the brush you and your fellow travelers (get it?) often use to
dismiss that which you don't want to hear.


The kind of "plot" you've said Butler revealed has been done to death in
movies and other fiction. Maybe that's where he got the idea in the first
place. Maybe not. But from the article you linked to, it appears that
Congress didn't put any more stock in it than I have, and they had all the
information (?) given to them, which I have not.

Nonsense, of the pure and utter type. There are many that want to
impeach Bush, but it's unlikely to get of the ground, not because
it's felt that he doesn't deserve to be impeached, but that
practical considerations make it not particularly compelling.
Because Congress did little doesn't mean that they put no stock in
what happened. Many of them probably felt as you do about FDR and
might have welcomed a successful plot to overthrow him. Once again,
despite knowing virtually nothing of the events in question, you are
able to dismiss it. I'll wager that if a far more fantastic event
was fabricated, claiming that FDR did something truly awful, you'd
have a much more open minded position about it, and would wait to
see what other scholars had to say. Such as Ann Coulter. <g>


Read the book. THEN criticize.

I would never recommend Ann Coulter to you as her books would
undoubtedly cause you to have a seizure of some sort.

The same kind of seizures that she induces in reasonable
Republicans?



I did read parts of Olson's book, and yes she is very mild by
comparison, but if you think that Coulter hits the nail on the head
in whatever way you care to choose, you have a very tenuous grasp of
reality. But then that's been coming across quite strongly in
recent days. I'm sure that your beliefs would be fascinating if you
didn't hold back. <g>

If you want "fascinating," keep reading all that stuff about alleged dark
plots by fiendish wealthy industrialists and traitorous military people to
overthrow the government. I can't give you anything comparable to that. The
fact that no such coup against FDR ever materialized evidently has not
shaken your belief in the story. Enjoy!

I can't say whether there was anything to it or not, but the claim
is that the coup didn't materialize because Butler refused to take
part in it and spilled the beans. By your logic none of the accused
terrorists that are being held in prisons (or worse) should be
detained if their plots didn't materialize due to being uncovered by
leaks, moles, etc. There are probably thousands of interesting
historical events that occurred that most people have ever heard
about. Most of them are innocent omissions, since most people
aren't historians and have reason to delve into the past if it's not
handed to them on a TV platter. But a small percentage is
intentionally not discussed, and this isn't unique to the USA.
Japan's citizens for many years knew little or nothing about their
"comfort girls". It's rare for the subject of the Armenian Genocide
to be mentioned in Turkey, although I'd say that most Turks have
heard of it. They're more likely to discount those tales as being
coming from the mouths of your "conspiracy theorists".


. . . battleship Maine in Cuba, we invaded successfully,
threw out the Spaniards, and now look at Cuba.
Only a communist could love the end result.

No more so than the ultra-extreme anti-communists. Remember Elian
Gonzalez? Unless I'm wide off the mark, you probably think he
should have remained in Miami,

Yep.

Color me shocked. Not! :)


used for photo ops by the rabid anti-Castro fanatics rather

Oh, now you're a Castro apologist too? Dang, I didn't even see that coming.
I thought all our adoring Castro enthusiasts were in Hollywood.

Come on, try to think logically. I said nowhere whether I thought
that Castro was good or bad. I referred only to "rabid anti-Castro
fanatics", and Miami has them in spades. Miami also has many people
that dislike Castro but that don't qualify as nut jobs. It's too
soon for me to be sure if you really are unable to think logically,
or if you're just using Coulter's technique of twisting words
(logical loopholes, as it were) to attack ideas that you don't want
to hear. And you not only made a baseless accusation (that I might
be an adoring Castro enthusiast) but had to tack on an association
with Hollywood, nemesis of the loony far right. As was once asked
of Joseph McCarthy, another virulent anti-communist, also fond of
using baseless smears, "Have you no shame?"


Wow, we've discovered common ground! I just wonder, though, if
they had your support in the months leading up to Iraq II and few
months following, or if you noticed flaws in their method (madness)
from the beginning? I assume that you're aware that one of their
major plans was to invade Iraq, and that preceded Shrub's occupancy
of the WH by a good number of years.

Yes, and now they'd like us to invade Iran. As for my opinions at the time,
I had mixed feelings about invading Iraq from the get-go but assumed that
the experts, knowing more about the situation than a non-expert like me,
knew what they were doing. My main objection to it even believing that
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (as virtually everyone believed at
the time) was that he had no delivery system that could possibly threaten
us, and therefore we had no reason to invade. And clearly Saddam had no
serious connection with 9/11 -- that part of the given reason always stank.
And going to war with Iraq did distract us from finishing the legitimate
task of hunting down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, a task we should have
completed and now seem effectively to have abandoned. That's one thing the
Democrats (a few of 'em anyway) have gotten right.

It's misleading if not false to say that "virtually everyone
believed at the time". The insiders were far from unanimous, and
even the most fervent believers didn't "know", but subscribed to
Cheney's "1% theory", that if it there was a slim chance that it
might be true we should act as if it were 100% true. From what I've
read, the most knowledgeable analysts were ignored, and what was
told to the public was based on repeating weak theories as if they
were indisputable. "Virtually everyone believed" is true with
regards to the public, but they were lied to. Another way that
"Virtually everyone believed" is deceptive, is that it was used to
indicate that virtually all foreign governments also believed it.
Not so. Finding a handful of supporters in Britain, Spain and other
countries allows those countries to be added to the count of the
believers, but it doesn't make clear that those countries had more
informed people that believed the opposite. A larger list could be
made of countries that didn't believe Bush or statements by those in
his administration, so it would be just as easy, and a bit more
accurate to say that "Virtually nobody believed".



Moreover, despite having a number of liberal tendencies guaranteed
to vex ultra-conservative voters, Republican frontrunner Giuliani
owes some of his current popularity to traits shared with Il Duce.

Including . . . ?

I guess it would help if you had witnessed his *strong*
authoritarian streak. Somewhere near the beginning of his first
term IIRC, there's this image of him at a police rally, shouting
into a bullhorn "BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!". Soon after that
he made a fool of himself (and I don't recall names of those
involved which will make it difficult to look it up if you care to)
during an incident where a police officer accidentally died. There
was a domestic disturbance involving (again, IIRC, a husband
threatening his wife). At some point a large mirror was broken, and
when the police arrived, one of them slipped and died from wounds
suffered from the broken glass. Despite this having been mentioned
in the press more than once, Rudy loudly and repeatedly called for
death penalty for the husband. He never backtracked or apologized,
but a couple of days later never said anything else about the case.
This is only the tip of the tip of the Giuliani iceberg. I believe
that several biographies exist, but I haven't read any and don't
know their names, but I'm sure that you'll hear of some of them if
he advances in his quest for the presidency.

Probably so. What you've just mentioned is all news to me, but of
course I'm not a New Yorker and haven't had any reason to follow
Giuliani's fortunes (or otherwise). I do remember all that stuff
about his marital problems and his former wife refusing to leave
the mansion, etc., but not in detail.

Correction? You're a former New Yorker, right? Probably left
well before the rise of Giuliani though. I think that you're
mistaken about his former wife refusing to leave Gracie Mansion
though. She was still his wife at the time, living there with the
rest of their children. What Giuliani had the bad taste to do was
to bring his mistress (at the time, now his wife) to events held at
Gracie Mansion. And that former wife, Donna Hanover, wasn't his
first. That honor fell to one of his cousins. With a little pull,
he was able to get the church to have it annulled when (presumably)
he tired of her or fancied someone else. Then came another wife. I
don't recall her name but I think that she runs the Central Park
Conservancy (may not have the right title). Then came Donna. Then
Judy the IV. If I'm mistaken it would be that Wife I and Wife II
are one and the same, and if so, it's not IV, but Judy III.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html

Naomi Wolf?! You've gotta be kidding me! She's a left-wing ideologue.
I've seen enough of her on TV and don't need to read any of her columns,
thanks all the same.

Mmm. See no evil, hear no evil, and, uh, speak no evil? More
evidence that your mind is closed. I guess that's a tactic that can
pay dividends in preventing the pangs of cognitive dissonance.

Actually I did read her article, and it was just about as dumb as I expected
to be. I had opened that page, and then there were server problems at my
ISP, I couldn't do much else online so I read her piece. Refreshing to see
that some things never change, and Naomi still can't write two consecutive
sentences without misrepresenting something. She sees the world through
paranoid-pinko glasses, everything turns to shit in front of her eyes, and
that's about all there is for any intelligent person to say about Naomi
Wolf. There are many leftist-"liberals" who occasionally say something
that's accurate, appropriate and useful, but she does not. It's hard for me
to believe that even *you* think she makes any sense.

Come on now. There's far more truth in what she writes than the
Coulter fool that you seem to admire. That you share her opinions
is not in dispute, but she sure doesn't share the keen insight that
courts jesters and "king's fools" were often able to use. Despite
your opinion, Wolf is a respected, respectable journalist. Coulter
is not.


To perhaps move the direction of this thread back into rpd's
neighborhood I'll close with this. Given your strong views, how is
it that you didn't become one of rpd's most fervent Canonistas? :)

Who or what is rpd?

rpd == rec.photo.digital <g>


In any case, I'm a Nikon guy. :-)

Well, that's better than being a Nukem kind of a guy. :)

.

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