Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 15 October 2006

Thanks MNJ, and congratulations to everyone else too.

You guys who do this really deserve something special as well.

Excellent job MNJ you really picked the thread apart.

OK, I'm still at post 300. I'm really screwing up this week!

Nicely done, MNJ!

3. YaYa123. #22 You said it exactly right: ".....President Bush is the least partisan president we've ever had. He has remained civil, non partisan, reaching out time and again only to get stomped on by the demonrats. How come the beltway jackasses never mention that!" That's what is so disturbing! Democrats were determined from the git-go to punish Bush for Clinton's impeachment. Bush wasn't even in Washington back then!! This hatred from the left is totally responsible for the divisiveness in Washington.

#281 Something else....all last week the MSM tried to portray McCain's criticism of the Clinton North Korea policy as something new. The MSM didn't want to have to say Hillary started the war of words, by blaming the NK nukes on Bush, so they declared this was the beginning of Clinton v McCain 08 presidential race. BS alert!! McCain has been on Bill Clinton's NK policy going back years and he wasn't about to let Hillary get away with ignoring his long held position. We might have taken comfort in McCain rushing to the defense of Bush, but in truth, McCain was defending himself. Read the following eye opener written by McCain in 2003: Click here

Also, 9, 24, 119, 209, 229, 245, 279 and 386

2. Phsstpok. Always a thoughtful contributor. You should read all his posts.

#394 It could be fun to watch Kerry get between Hillary and the nomination. Talk about roadkill. She will flatten John. Kristol on Fox was talking about Gore having a shot in '08 of going at Hillary and anyone else from the left. He talked about a debate moment that he predicted would happen where Gore insists that everyone who was in the Senate, which would likely include all of his erstwhile opponents and certainly includes Hillary, were guilty of having voted for the Iraq war while he opposed it. He said that would carry the day with the Democratic primary voters. Oh, joy. Another election with Al Gore, this time blown up to Orson Welles like physical proportions, with the ego to match but, sadly for him, lacking even the slightest hint of Welles' talent.

#483. How is the tone of the calls going, Phsstpok? My fingers are crossed for Corker. It's 90% no answer or leaving a message on an answering machine. It is the weekend, after all, and people are out enjoying relatively good weather, particularly yesterday. I've gotten several "you don't have to convince me" folks and one who wanted to argue about Social Security ("I've lived in this country 50 years and been a citizen for 30 but I can't speak English and they make it hard for me and they don't pay for my teeth anymore"). Thank goodness I've only gotten one where "that person has died" number so far. And that one sounded like it was recent. I felt really bad and had nothing good to offer. There are a bunch of folks who are voting not for Corker but for "The Republican," which is my motivation as well. I was a Bryant supporter but Corker won the primary. There is no way in hell that I want Majority Leader Reid, however. There was one lady who was voting that way but wanted me to promise that I'd tell Corker (who I haven't met) that he can't lower himself to their level with his ads. Okey dokey.

Also #'s: 531, 497, 494, 489, 483, 478, 470, 457, 454, 451, 447, 440, 431, 426, 417, 409, 399, 394, 385, 373, 370, and 324 2

1. Seattle Conservative. SC is back and better then ever!

#331 Posted by Seattle Conservative to rodguy911 On News/Activism 10/15/2006 10:14:26 AM CDT · 331 of 559 "I would give anything if our candidates were allowed to run segments of the path to 911 as commercials for our side, but I guess that's too much to ask." Hitlery is already having a fit over John McCain basically calling her a liar about what she said about Bubba and NK. It got really ugly - -I don't think she would've apologized by the outcry made her. It's definitely going to get uglier and uglier before Nov 7 and the '08 elections will be reallly bad. Hillary Aide Mocks McCain POW Past, Dowd: George 'n Jong - Couple Of 'Immature' Guys, NY Times-Maureen Dowd/NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein Posted on 10/14/2006 6:40:01 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest For Maureen Dowd, politics are mainly personal. This morning she managed to reduce the current Korean conflict to an image of two boys behaving badly. Also, is mocking John McCain's POW past a smart move for the Hillary camp? Dowd offered a stunning insight into the Hillary campaign that suggests it might not be the ready-for-presidential-primetime operation some might imagine. The main topic of Maureen Dowd's subscription-required column of this morning, Is Chivalry Shivved?, is the war of words between Hillary and John McCain, as the two top presidential contenders recently fired some early shots over the other's bow on the topic of responsibility for the N. Korean nuclear mess. Dowd managed to work in the DNC talking point of the week: the need for direct talks between the Bush administration and N. Korea. [Former Clinton UN Ambassador Bill Richardson was all over the morning shows today pushing the idea, by the way.] In any case, viewing the N. Korean nuke situation through her politics-of-the-personal lens, Dowd saw things thusly: "It’s clear, after all, that the North Koreans are acting immaturely in response to W. acting immaturely. They want attention because the Bush administration inexplicably refuses to talk to them. And they know, in the pre-emptive world ordained by nutty Dick Cheney, that the best way to protect themselves from the fate of Saddam Hussein is to actually go nuclear, rather than merely fantasizing and boasting about it." Just a couple of wild 'n immature guys, that George and Jong. Nice moral equivalence, Maureen. As for the pro-pre-emption Dick Cheney ["nutty" - this is what passes for serious criticism at the Times nowadays?], wouldn't Dowd agree that the world would be a much better place if Bill Clinton had permanently pre-empted OBL when he was handed the chance? Aside: I was fascinated by this nugget Dowd reports from inside Hillary Central: Privately, Hillary’s camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates.” If Hillary and her advisers think it's smart to attack McCain by making snide comments that invoke his five years as a POW, then she's not the smartest-woman-in-the-world political juggernaut some make her out to be.

Click here

1. Seattle Conservative. SC is back and better then ever!

#331 Posted by Seattle Conservative to rodguy911 On News/Activism 10/15/2006 10:14:26 AM CDT · 331 of 559 "I would give anything if our candidates were allowed to run segments of the path to 911 as commercials for our side, but I guess that's too much to ask." Hitlery is already having a fit over John McCain basically calling her a liar about what she said about Bubba and NK. It got really ugly - -I don't think she would've apologized by the outcry made her. It's definitely going to get uglier and uglier before Nov 7 and the '08 elections will be reallly bad. Hillary Aide Mocks McCain POW Past, Dowd: George 'n Jong - Couple Of 'Immature' Guys, NY Times-Maureen Dowd/NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein Posted on 10/14/2006 6:40:01 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest For Maureen Dowd, politics are mainly personal. This morning she managed to reduce the current Korean conflict to an image of two boys behaving badly. Also, is mocking John McCain's POW past a smart move for the Hillary camp? Dowd offered a stunning insight into the Hillary campaign that suggests it might not be the ready-for-presidential-primetime operation some might imagine. The main topic of Maureen Dowd's subscription-required column of this morning, Is Chivalry Shivved?, is the war of words between Hillary and John McCain, as the two top presidential contenders recently fired some early shots over the other's bow on the topic of responsibility for the N. Korean nuclear mess. Dowd managed to work in the DNC talking point of the week: the need for direct talks between the Bush administration and N. Korea. [Former Clinton UN Ambassador Bill Richardson was all over the morning shows today pushing the idea, by the way.] In any case, viewing the N. Korean nuke situation through her politics-of-the-personal lens, Dowd saw things thusly: "It’s clear, after all, that the North Koreans are acting immaturely in response to W. acting immaturely. They want attention because the Bush administration inexplicably refuses to talk to them. And they know, in the pre-emptive world ordained by nutty Dick Cheney, that the best way to protect themselves from the fate of Saddam Hussein is to actually go nuclear, rather than merely fantasizing and boasting about it." Just a couple of wild 'n immature guys, that George and Jong. Nice moral equivalence, Maureen. As for the pro-pre-emption Dick Cheney ["nutty" - this is what passes for serious criticism at the Times nowadays?], wouldn't Dowd agree that the world would be a much better place if Bill Clinton had permanently pre-empted OBL when he was handed the chance? Aside: I was fascinated by this nugget Dowd reports from inside Hillary Central: Privately, Hillary’s camp was not overly upset by the McCain swipe because it suspected he was doing the bidding of the White House and that he ended up, as one adviser put it, “looking similar to the way he did on those captive tapes from Hanoi, where he recited the names of his crew mates.” If Hillary and her advisers think it's smart to attack McCain by making snide comments that invoke his five years as a POW, then she's not the smartest-woman-in-the-world political juggernaut some make her out to be. Click here

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006 Democrats, McCain & North Korea Many Americans probably view Sen. McCain's statement that the Clinton administration's 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea was a “failure” as an obvious point. McCain’s comment came after Sen. Hillary Clinton and other senior Democrats were all over the media touting the ’94 agreement as a model for how to deal with the North Korean dictatorship. McCain’s point is a simple one: if we are going to effectively deal with the North’s nuclear weapons program, we have to acknowledge how we got to this point and not make the same mistakes again. But senior Democrats -- Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Richardson, Madeleine Albright, and John Kerry, etc. – won’t admit the ’94 deal was a mistake. Quite the contrary, as Bill Richardson argued last night on CNN: “The reality is, had we not had the agreed framework with North Korea on nuclear weapons, they would maybe have 50 nuclear weapons today. For eight years they didn't enrich uranium.” Richardson is arguing as if the administration had no other policy options. But that isn’t true. The Clinton administration chose the path of meeting the North’s hostile behavior and violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with further concessions – a path McCain and others vigorously argued against at the time. In May 1994, McCain catalogued all the North Korean threats and treaty violations, along with the US concessions, that led to the Agreed Framework -- an agreement advertised as freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear program. It didn’t. The North began a secret uranium enrichment program after 1995 and never gave up working on nuclear weapons. Democrats now argue that at least the deal put the fuel rods under the eye of international inspectors before they were kicked out in 2002 on Bush’s watch. Of course, they fail to note that this happened just after the North confirmed U.S. intelligence reports that it had a clandestine enrichment program – one that violated the NPT (they later withdrew from the treaty) and the Agreed Framework. In any event, the failure to demand the speedy removal of the rods from the North was a major strategic flaw in the ’94 deal. Back then, McCain argued that leaving them in place would allow the dictatorship to kick the inspectors out and reprocess the rods at a time of its choosing. Here’s what he wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1994: Using sticks such as their threatened expulsion of IAEA inspectors, North Korea has consistently intimidated Administration diplomacy. To divert the United States from punishing his violations of the NPT, Kim Il Sung has raised, then withdrawn his stick, masking his forbearance in the disguise of a carrot…. In fact, North Korea has offered no real concession. The fuel rods that it would use to make weapons-grade plutonium cannot be used until they are less radioactive. The reactor cannot be refueled until the rods have cooled. North Korea's nuclear program is, of physical necessity, frozen…. Although the Administration may attempt to obscure a failure, we will reach a moment when it is apparent to all. That will be when North Korea begins reprocessing the fuel now in cooling ponds into weapons-grade plutonium. And here we are today. Despite the apparent nuclear test, the missile launches, the proliferation, the secret enrichment program, and all the other history going back over a decade, many Democrats still embrace the '94 deal and still argue for more carrots. Posted by Daniel McKivergan at 03:13 PM Click here

#416 For those who haven't seen it, penelopesire did some HUGH investigative work: FOLEYGATE RESEARCH(vanity) research | 10/12/06 | penelopesire Posted on 10/12/2006 7:02:12 PM PDT by penelopesire here goes nothing: I wrote this to you all last week(just didn't send it)....since then, much has come to light! My stuff has been sent to the FBI and Hastert's office from a (you'll love this).....KINKOS....lol. However..the FBI has my real name and all relevant info, should they ever give a damn. But this much I have ready to go tonight. Please excuse the typos, the somewhat disjointed format, etc.: Dear Fellow Freepers, Many of you have written and asked me to let you know what my research into the whole Foleygate has revealed and I think it is time to put it out there and let you folks decide. Whether or not it is later to be discovered as a piece of this Foley Scandal, IT IS STILL EXTREMELY DISTURBING! When several Freepers brought up blogactive.com the first day the scandal broke, I went there to see what it was all about. It disgusted me the minute the first page opened and it was obvious this man was a vicious little gay blackmailer and extortionist! After reading through the site and doing some googling around with his name, MR. MIKE ROGERS could be nothing but the prime ‘suspect’ in this whole affair. As most of you know by now, he admitted as much. So while the really good freeper’s were getting to the bottom of the immediate questions, like who were the actors, who sent the emails and instant message and who knew what and when, I was still trying to google Mike Rogers into the bottomless pit of the internet….lol. A fellow freeper( who doesn’t want to be named) sent me a link to Mike Rogers resume online and that was what really got the ball moving in a more focused direction. Here is what I discovered: More here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718486/posts Here's the Cliff Notes version: Some FoleyGate Detective Work (Investigative Leg Work by Freeper Penelopesire) Flopping Aces ^ | 10-12-06 | Curt Posted on 10/13/2006 6:03:09 PM PDT by jrooney Bill Pinyon (gay) and Ferrell Ard (gay) own/run Badpuppy.com, a multimillion dollar per year gay hardcore porn site. Bill Pinyon and Ferrell Ard also own/run Softec Systems, which is the server for Politics1.com (left/liberal), Gunzburger.com, HillZoo.com (Congressional Staffers), and the Congressional Club website (for Congressional spouses). Could the owners/operators of Softec Systems, both openly gay men making megabucks selling hardcore porn on their internet enterprise, BadPuppy.com, have access to their clients’ (at either site) private information and/or communications? (Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ... Click here

#443 This isn't what you were looking for, but it's too bad this doesn't come out in the press more (but then Bubba was our '1st black President). I've heard the President mention it from time to time along w the fact that more black and minority citizens now own their own homes than ever before. I remember him talking about wanting to make that happen in his campaign speeches (2000 IIRC). Black business owners on rise post-gazette.com ^ | 4/18/2006 | Elwin Green Posted on 04/18/2006 11:37:02 AM PDT by CAWats "It's encouraging to see not just the number but the sales and receipts of black-owned businesses are growing at such a robust rate, confirming that these firms are among the fastest growing segments of our economy," said Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon. Slated for release today, the report also shows a significant if not quite as dramatic increase in local black business ownership. It found 4,363 black-owned firms in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area as of 2002, up 38.8 percent from 3,142 in 1997. Revenue figures for the metro area, which includes Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties, were not available. (Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ... Click here

Also #'s: 193, 214, 221, 277, 287, 292, 334, 347, 349, 353, 358, 359, 393, 401, 402, 406, 410, 416, 420, 421, 427, 433, 436, 437 and 438.

OK, I am totally overwhelmed. I haven't even finished reading all of the posts yet! I'm trying, really I am! (OK, I'm lazy/slow and stopped in the low 500s... late on Thursday... really)

Seriously, thank you very much. I was totally surprised by this.

I was realy impressed this week with the level of analysis and truly thoughtful criticism. There was more "there there" in the posts, even with fewer posts than we got during the feeding frenzy over Billy Jeff Clinton's melt down on Fox. To be included in the top 10 this week, let alone the top 3, is truly an honor.

I want to say that I am more convinced than ever that we, the folks who participate on Alas Babylon!'s Sunday thread, are having an important affect on the "world outside," maybe even a significant affect on the DBM and the rest of the "old media" types who think that they own "reality" for the unenlightend. I have gone well beyond viewing this as a dream. I see more and more evidence that we are having exactly that effect.

Thanks everyone for all of your hard work. This thread again proves to be one of the best on FR. So many great posts and thoughts. It's truly humbling and a great pleasure to spend this time with so many super, thoughtful, inbsightful and fun people!