"....he sounds like the smartest guy in an empty room."

Either that or the biggest asshole in Guinness World Records Jack.  But enough about the asshole, I'm more interested in the size of that measuring device.  Hmmmm,  maybe Modern Marvels on the History Channel.....

You’re my hero.  Really.  You have shown me the light.  I am going to come over to your side.  It’s easier than putting together a fact based argument.

Have you volunteered to put that intellect to good use and help your party put together the alternate plan for Iraq that they duped the gullible liberal voters in this country with?  How's that 100 day plan treating you?

Damn right about Bush getting elected as President.  If he hadn’t, nothing would have been done after 9/11 (so we wouldn’t be able to blame a non existent war on Kerry).  And if Kerry hadn’t done anything, many more Americans would be dead right here at home.  So yes, I’m glad President Bush won. 

Why do you think the Democrats wouldn’t have won back congress if Kerry won?  Because Kerry would have been a do nothing President perhaps?

You say President Bush is not able to pass the buck on Iraq.  Hello!  President Bush refuses to pass the buck on Iraq… you silly SOB!  But now that the Democrats are in control of congress…. Guess what… it’s buck passing time!!

And if you think for one second that the Democrats have an electable candidate in 2008, you are going to be very disappointed for another 4 years my friend.  But somehow, I get pleasure from that thought.

Now – can someone please call the Democratic National Headquarters and have them sent the van over?  Another one of their loons got past security again!

What is unbecoming is calling an argumental technique called "reduction to absurdity" a straw man because you are too much a lightweight to understand it.  I merely took your whine "WAAAHHH!!! We are making more terrorists!" to its very logical conclusion.  If that is true, why aren't we dismantling our military to make them go away?

Have you ever heard a mayor say that to reduce crime the police department has to be gutted?

Or the same mayor say that a smaller fire department will lead to fewer fires?   

Now, go eat your lunch and bawl over the fact that the United States is the most powerful nation on earth and the most advanced economy ever, and that you hate that, even as you suck its tit. 

"HAV3 TH3 BRIDG3S OF INSANITY B33N CROSS3D AND FOR3V3R R3TRACT3D???."  - Meshuggah, "3ntrapm3nt", from Catch Thirty Thr33 (2005)

Keep crying about my logical fallacies.  It is MUCH easier than answering questions.

Your argument has been reduced to absurdity (a valid and genius form of argumentation), and you can't handle that simple fact.  If we are in fact creating more terrorists by being in the Middle East:

1) Why aren't the membership rolls in the Korean Worker's Party swelling, and why don't they have a good-sized number of seats in the South Korean National Assembly?

2) Why is it, after 6/6/1944, there wasn't a massive upswing in membership in the Nazi party?

3) Why is it I had NO problems visiting the island of Honshu?

4) Why didn't nations in Western Europe start turning Communist after 1983, when Reagan deployed the GLCMs and Pershing 2s to Europe? 

5) Why is the Soviet Union no longer with us? 

6) Why do I have yet to hear a single mayor say "To combat this increase in crime, I am removing our police officers from high crime areas and reducing the size of our police department.  This way, the criminals will all know that we, in the city government, are really super-nice people."

7) Why do I have yet to hear a mayor say that to reduce the number of fires, we need a smaller fire department?

8) If violence is not a proven solution to all sorts of problems, perhaps you would be willing to join me on a trip to Carthage.  Are you in?  I'll even spring for it (hat tip to Heinlein).

I am going to do a few things right quick that are pressing, like powering the American economy with evil consumer spending, but in the meantime, there's your homework.  And no, I don't intend to raid another site for a cut-and-paste job in response to a post.  You will just have to be patient while I work my magic. 

And about this "mess" you want to "fix": how much money do you intend to steal from me in order to do that?

"HAV3 TH3 BRIDG3S OF INSANITY B33N CROSS3D AND FOR3V3R R3TRACT3D???."  - Meshuggah, "3ntrapm3nt", from Catch Thirty Thr33 (2005)

You asked me, within the context of my claim that Bush was doing nothing about NK, “So why did I spend 13 months in Korea?”. By that “logic”, Clinton was also effectively dealing with NK by virtue of the fact we had U.S. forces there. And if you reject that claim, then you are by logical necessity rejecting your own argument. As for those talks you mention, can you explain why NK still tested a Nuke on Bush’s watch? And can you explain why they were enriching plutonium on Bush’s watch? ‘Cause I don’t believe for once second that if these events happened on Clinton’s watch, you’d be giving him the free pass you’re giving Bush. In fact, I’m sure you wouldn’t. (And this is part of the overall credibility problem on the right. If Clinton did half the things Bush has done, people like you on the right would be screaming bloody murder.) You conveniently miss my other questions, of course. Instead of me repeating them, you go back and read them. As for Clinton’s “effective dealing with North Korea”: can’t say I agree. Sure, he didn’t do anything like yanking the troops outright as Carter wanted to (South Korea, he said, has a problem with recognizing human rights, but he sure loved the Shah of Iran!), but he still wanted to give away the damn store to the North. Why the hell would any sane person GIVE them nuclear reactors when they cannot even feed their people? And why did a nuke get tested on Bush’s watch? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because it was ready, they wanted to, and the scientists that designed it really didn’t want to get shot or imprisoned in some North Korean gulag? Besides, I’d rather have Bush dealing with them as he is now, and not giving them everything they want like you seem to want. Say, why aren’t you screaming for our troops to be pulled from South Korea? It is an obvious provocation to the North, isn’t it? As for Bush not listening, it’s funny you say “I’m very wrong” right after he decided on a troop surge that his military commanders said was a bad idea. Clearly, Bush is not listening to them, or to many in his own party. And that’s one reason his approval rating is in the toilet. How you can say something so patently absurd is beyond me. You apparently recognize no difference between listening and acting on their recommendation. You can tell me to take a long walk off a short cliff, and I will listen to you, but that doesn’t mean I have to act on it. Bush heard the advice, he listened to everyone, and then he made a decision that may or may not have lined up with what others have told him. That is LEADERSHIP. Deal with it. You also said, “No one is saying you can’t criticize the president”. Well in fact, jimbo did say exactly that! Am I jimbo? In fact, over the last few years I’ve heard numerous right-wingers claim that criticizing the President during war should result in criminal charges being filed. (This is the fascist wing of the GOP, of which there are too many members. Just like jimbo.) I hope you at least have enough sense to know that this viewpoint on your side of the isle is an extremist one, and only hurts overall conservative credibility. You lost the argument right here. Calling someone “fascist!” means you cannot argue rationally. By the way, you make the mistake (shocker) of claiming I belong to the GOP. Oh, I am a hard-line, obsidian hearted conservative, but not a GOP member. There is a difference. Also, I really don’t care what others say; I do not belong to a Borg Collective of Rightists. If you cannot see that difference, not even I, with my limited powers, can help you.Now, I have not advanced any argument to disarm. Instead, you are relying on the logical fallacy that because I don’t approve of the way Bush has handled terrorism, the only other option left is to disarm. Like many others on the right, you don’t seem to understand that there are smart ways to fight terrorism, and dumb ways to fight it. And Bush is fighting terrorism the dumb way, and with the ensuing, predictable results. First, we invaded Iraq, destabilized that country and turned it into a terrorist Disneyland. Second, we fed RIGHT into bin Laden’s propaganda. He has been telling Muslims for the last decade that the U.S. just wanted to invade and occupy the Middle East. So what does Bush do? He invades the Middle East on false pretense (thereby fulfilling OBL’s prediction), and turns bin Laden into a hero among Muslims! Of course, there were many, many other mistakes made due to the incompetence of Bush himself and those with whom he surrounds himself. What we SHOULD have done is secured Afghanistan by force (in case you didn’t know, it was never secured, and now the Taliban is becoming resurgent there), and spread out from there with the world, and with moral authority, on our side. And notice: not once did I just suggest we disarm, your silly conclusion to the contrary. In fact, I understand perfectly well we have to fight. But we have to fight smart, not dumb. Your red herring that I’d like to just disarm us saves you from having to admit that this entire war has been royally botched, and saves you from having to admit that the current approach is not likely to work. And there are some pretty smart, CONSEVATIVE people who are saying as much! Unfortunately, people like you who apparently like mediocrity placed a “C-” student in the White House, and the rest is history. This is the third time you cried about logical fallacies. Instead of wasting more of my time with intellectual vacuity such as yours, I suggest you turn to my list of questions, and familiarize yourself with reductio ad absurdum, and quit bitching. Spankings are SUPPOSED to hurt. Now, repeat after me: “FOREIGN POLICY IS NOT A HIGH SCHOOL POPULARITY CONTEST”. Now say that about 10,000 times or so. Then address the following:

My first point is a simple one. We aren't looking for OBL? I'll be sure to tell some friends of mine currently deployed to Bagram, Kandahar, and Bishkek this. They sure would be surprised to hear this.

Second point: what specifically will finding OBL SOLVE beyond bloodlust? You DO realize that someone else who hates America as much as he does WILL take his place, correct? No, you don't. You want OBL caught so that you and your Leftist fellow travelers can loudly declare "WORLD PEACE! Rose gardens are spontaneously bloming EVERYWHERE! I guess we don't need a military now! Let's build the biggest, nicest Nanny State the world has ever known!!!"

Third point: Where were all you Leftists in the 1980s when Abu Nidal was out and about? Were you guys all demanding we stop the Cold War, withdraw from Europe, and invade the Middle East to find Abu Nidal? (Nah. But you WERE demanding we unilaterally withdraw from Europe to show the Soviets just how super-nice we were in the United States.)

I wait with baited breath as you address these issues.

 It’s interesting that you trace the ills in this country to leftist “group think”. This coming from a person whose political philosophy preaches that we all need to get behind the President and just shut up (the very definition of group think). But you know, I think people like you have caused enough damage for awhile. In six years, you’ve grown the federal debt by $3,000,000,000,000 dollars (because THAT’s a responsible, patriotic and American thing to do), and in the process sold our hides off to China and Japan without even realizing what you’ve done. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go pick up an economic textbook). And instead of choosing to fight a smart war against terrorism, you’ve backed an approach that amounts to peeling a banana with a sledgehammer…and with predictable results. You have no idea how to pay for this war; you want to nation build in Iraq, while demanding personal tax cuts at home…because after all, “Freedom isn’t free!”, right wacko? And you want to claim that YOU (and apparently not me) and millions of other presumably conservative people are doing the heavy economic lifting in this country. Never mind the fact that the majority of welfare in this country is passed out to so-called “red states”, and that the majority of wealth in this country is created in “blue states”. Heck, people of your ilk are never ones to let little facts like that get in the way of a good rant! I really wish you would study economics sometime. By the way, I’m not a Representative, a Senator, and sure as hell not President. How did I run up that debt? Besides, if that debt was run up to coddle you and your ilk in a Nanny State, I bet you wouldn’t be bitching about the debt. But because we are doing things like ensuring you are free to choose your leadership and free not to learn Arabic if you don’t want, you are screaming like a baby. I sure would love to know how are hides are being sold to China and Japan when our debt is only one-third of our debt is foreign owned. I have outlined how to settle the debt issue in other posts but I am leaving it up to you to research it because it is obvious to me that you are too lazy to and I am tired of doing the heavy lifting for you. It is time for you to learn something for a change.

Personal tax cuts DO increase revenue, not stealing from the successful. Please consult the Laffer curve sometime.

This “smart war” you speak of, reducing your arguments to absurdity, would, I suppose, consist of crying, begging the big bad terrorists not to perform another 9/11/01 ever again, and paying them an ransom, I suppose. After all, we shouldn’t PROVOKE them by sending troops after them, should we?

As to your stupid “red states have all the welfare recipients” smack, explain the following:

Why is the American industrial base leaving the “blue states” and heading to the “red states”, as it has all my life?

Why are the blue states losing population, political power, and electoral votes every census?

Why does the U.S. population center continue to shift south and west?  

Unsane, people like you had a shot at convincing America you were worthy of being listened to. In fact, you had six years in which all the cards were in your favor. But you became everything you hated in your political enemies, and then some. And now, you’ve just discredited yourself. Not as bad as you discredited yourself by vomiting what you THINK you know versus what is actually true. Now, maybe when you are all grown up, you can actually answer my simple questions without resorting to redundant whines.

My personal reading list: A Quick And Dirty Guide To War, The Millionaire Next Door, The Millionaire Mind, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Basic Economics, Small Wars, The Prince, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership, and The Black Book of Communism. I can lead the horse (you) to water, but I can’t force you to drink. For that you are on your own. So sit back, relax and shut-up. The rest of us will try to bail you out and fix your mess for you. Translation: “Unsane, if you EVER DARE OPPOSE ME and I get to power, I will personally pistol-whip and beat you senseless so you learn to NEVER oppose me because I know what’s best for you.” What the hell am I thinking? That I am living in a democracy?

Sorry. I remain in effective political opposition to you and will until I take my dirt nap. I love the country too much for you to import ROT into it. Oh, and before you self-coronate yourself for 2008: let me remind you that we still are going to have to hold the election, just to make sure.  Just like Ohio State could not be handed the championship; they actually had to play the game against Florida to double check if they really were champions.  Well..they weren't.

"HAV3 TH3 BRIDG3S OF INSANITY B33N CROSS3D AND FOR3V3R R3TRACT3D???."  - Meshuggah, "3ntrapm3nt", from Catch Thirty Thr33 (2005)

This may cause you to cry hysterically, but guess where Iraq's arms came from?  The Soviet Union and France.  Guess who built their Osirak ractor?  France.  A French techinician was killed there on 7 June 1981 when the Israelis were busy doing the world a favor.  And according to what I believe is a NYT report - surprise, surprise - the ingredients for the WMD came from all over the world - Europe even - but not the United States, oddly. 

Looks like someone is going to have to go back and read their history.  Unless of course you can prove that T-72s, MiGs and Mirages are manufactured in the United States, somehow.

Perhaps before you whine about how horrible and evil our foreign policy is, you should carefully read a little book from the sixteenth century called The Prince, written by some Florentine named Niccolo Machiavelli.  I would suggest it should be required reading for anyone who ventures into that very adult game.

"HAV3 TH3 BRIDG3S OF INSANITY B33N CROSS3D AND FOR3V3R R3TRACT3D???."  - Meshuggah, "3ntrapm3nt", from Catch Thirty Thr33 (2005)