Liam

I wrote a response to this earlier today, but opted to remove it... I have since thought about what I wrote and am back to post my initial thoughts... I am a liberal person (by US standards), but I can't help but think that there is something sinisterly dark and deeply regressive about Islam, at least as it is represented by the major voices of their faith. Is there a single moderate out there? How about a progressive? Will no one stand up to such language about women deserving rape? The entire purpose of the burqa is to hide women, to make them invisible, to reduce them to nothing but a fungible commodity. There is nothing liberating about a burqa. It is entirely designed to hide the emotions, the expression, the character of the individual. It suffocates the soul. And the burqa is insulting to men. The requirement of a burqa reinforces the notion that men are incapable of being rational around women and that we lack free will. It is the ultimate symbol of a society at odds with western thought, for it defines women as demonic temptresses and men as hormone-driven satyrs. There is another thread somewhere about whether certain societies are superior to others. Even as a liberal, I can honestly and unaplogetically say that I think western, secular societies are FAR better than anything available elsewhere.

So, you advocate the excution of (or at least, physical harm to) gay people? I wish you luck with your moral bedfellows. You had a choice between secualr, rational, western thought, yet you chose to align with the narrowest representatives of a faith that aims to undermine freedom and individuality. From this point on, I will continue to remind you in whose league you have chosen to reside. If you had one scintilla of a conscience, you'd be ashamed of yourself.

It was London, not Ireland. They're not complaining about the money they've made. They complain about the limits media consolidation puts on artists. They've made lots of money, to be sure.

I always marvel at how right wingers take joy in wasting resources. I am failry liberal, but am also a capitalist and, while I see the market as the ultimate arbiter, also cannot help but notice how much waste (and lost profits) there are in a society that spreads itself to the outer limits. Think of how much more affordable shipping and trucking and manufacturing would be if people cut down their energy consumption by 20%. Think of the added profits to manufacturers, the better wages, subsequent home ownership, investment in stocks and mutual funds by everyday people. Think of the shorter commute times (meaning people could work more hours!), the preservation of open spaces for farmers and ranchers, and the better use of land that isn't supporting one home per acre of sprawl. Think of the money municipalities could save (and the lower tax burden on individuals) by not having to pave, plow, repair and expand thousands of miles of asphalt-covered toads. Happiness at waste is just reactionary and stupid, if you ask me.

I'm a Chix fan (and was before the whole controversy). I saw them on "Hardball" last night and the three of them are most certainly standing by one another. And they are not at all apologetic about what has happened and stand by the words Natalie said. Their complaint about being silenced has nothing to do with not getting interviews or not being able to put on shows. I am sure they recognize that they've got a megaphone considerably larger than most. What they complain about is the unprecedented amount of media consolidation that has taken place in US radio over the past several years. Media consolidation takes away from individual radio stations' ability to select the programming for their own market. Several large conservative organizations threatened the small handful of country music conglomerates with a boycott if they ever played the Chix again. The problem is that the Chix's music AND politics are popular in many areas of the country music belt (Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, Little Rock, Memphis, Raleigh) that are considerably more progressive than the south as a whole. The Chix, since they are essentially shut out of every market, can't get a song on the radio -- even in the cities where people want to hear it. But they're not at all feeling sorry for themselves or whining. If anything, I got the impression that they see Bush's repeated failures as vindicating Natalie's statement.

(edited response)

Does anyone else see the irony here? All of you, on both sides of the border and in each direction, have lived up to the title of this thread.

The best way for me to respond is to reiterate that such statements are outside my experience. I don't doubt that among some people in the US (I'd say it's much more common among Southern/conservative Americans) who would insult Canadians or Canada ("socialized medicine?! why don't you go back to Russia!" *LOL), but I have never had something like that said within earshot of me -- at least not meant as anything more than a playful jab. My sense is that the feelings of anti-[neighboring country] and the willingness to express it are assymetrical and tilting more heavily in the direction of Canada. You are right that the online world provides a platform for cowards and yahoos (on both sides of the border) to make stupid and/or rude statements.

I had the pleasure of meeting Lou Dobbs a few years ago (not just in a meet and great, I mean that we chatted over dinner at a business function for close to an hour) and I can say that he is one of the smartest people I have ever met. I don't always agree with his political opinions, but I completely respect his intellect. He is extremely impressive.

I have lived my entire life in areas of the US that are both physically and economically close to Canada. Other than the odd (and privately expressed) snipe by friends who worked a lot with Canadian tourists, I have *never* personally heard a single negative comment by an American about a Canadian or Canadians. Never. I am not talking about comedians' jokes or statements by political talking heads on TV or talk radio. I'm talking about real, everyday people. Never. There is simply no animus against Canadians among Americans -- at least not in my part of the country and within my experience. There are casual, harmless jokes, but never anything beyond casual ribbing. On the other hand, it seems that there is a certain percentage of Canadians who harbor (harbour?) and express deep hatred of the US or Americans, and a greater percentage who hold on to and express a softer bigotry or disdain for things and people south of the border. To me, it seems almost universal among Canadians to have something negative to say about the US or Americans.

To answer your questions, I would say that embarrassed isn't quite all I feel about having Bush and the GOP in leadership. There's a degree of incredulity that someone as unqualified as Bush got elected twice, an element of anger at the administration's domestic policies (conflating secular and religious spheres, playing to the narrowest segments of his party's base, ballooning deficits, demonizing gay people during elections, etc.), frustration is absolutely there (i.e., knowing what are the right things to do globally yet taking the opposite course -- unilateralism, prolonging the Iraq problem), disappointment that our nation will not strive for better than Rumsfeld or Cheney or the neocons. Darkest hour in our history? There were worse hours (the Civil War, for one), but these days definitely have a twilight feel to them. Why do you need to apologize? Your question isn't anti-American at all.

If Iraq is so important, why didn't Bush doing everything he ought to have done to assure victory? If it was so central to the war on terror, shouldn't they have planned better prior to waging the battle? Iraq was a war fought on enormous leaps faith: faith that the justification (WMD) would be uncovered, faith that the people in the West Wing knew more about Iraq than the tribes and factions who have lived there for centuries, faith that the war would be quick and easy, and faith that the American public would congratulate their leadership for the quick victory. Unfortunately for Bush, each and every assumption about the war and about Iraq, every one of those leaps of faith, turned out to be false.

Cabinet?? Churchill wouldn't have allowed Bush in his kitchen.

... that he'll be leaving office in 2 years.

Among the many horrible things about this legislation, I have to agree that this aspect (how will anyone know that the US has even detained you?) is the most alarming. When person X fails to come home from the grocery store one afternoon, will his family ever know what happened to him? For all they know, person X was kidnapped or decided to become a deadbeat dad or ran away with some cocktail waitress. He simply disappears. They won't even know to hire an attorney -- whatever good that will do as it seems the law strips suspects (*SUSPECTS!*) of all constitutional rights and freedoms. The government decides who is a threat and who should disappear and the families at home are left with no recourse, with no indication of where their father, son or brother went. Even if they suspect he's been detained, where he is being physically held and whether or not there is any chance to obtain a fair trial or fair determination of his status as a threat. This sounds way too much like 1970's Buenos Aires or 1950's Leningrad to me where people simply disappeared off the streets. Bush has opened up the door to our own potential "dirty war".

The law allows torture and refusal of habaes corpus for persons deemed unlawful enemy combatants. Who decides who is an unlawful enemy combatant? Bush (or his proxy). So Bush (or any president) can now declare *anyone* an unlawful enemy combatant, hold them in perpetuity without trial, can torture them and can deny them habeas corpus. Anyone. All based on one person's subjective decision that the person is an unlawful enemy combatant. The person held has no guaranteed right to challenge his classification as an unlawful enemy combatant. A less honorable president than Bush *cough*gag*choke* could now, effetively, have someone disappear from the street and that individual could, conceivably, be shuttled through some shadow legal system, denied rights, denied legal representation and never be heard from again. That is not only scary, but indecent, immoral and, frankly, un-American.

I took the liberty of numbering your points so I didn't have to

I would agree if it was the right kind of political unity. Are we talking about a political unity that comes about after an open and fair debate and which embraces real ideas, or more post-9/11 "with me or with the terrorists" absolutist political unity where dissent is discouraged?

I wouldn't generalize that only uneducated southerners use "y'all". An Ivy League-educated friend of mine, a woman from Alabama, uses "y'all" all the time. It's a southern thing, definitely, but not necessarily an uneducated southern thing. North of somewhere between central Virginia/Washington DC (y'all is strictly a southeastern thing), NO ONE says "y'all". Unless they're originally from the southeast, that is.

Interesting article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175633/site/newsweek/

Here's a link to a Time magazine article about this deployment. Evidently, they shipped out Oct. 1. http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/magazine/a...5817,00%20.html

I read on msnbc several weeks ago that Rove was promising congressional campaign workers an October surprise. It quickly got pushed into the back of the news when "PageGate" bubbled up out of nowhere. The guy who wrote the article I referred to (I wish I could find that link), seemed pretty certain about where this particular collection of ships would be going based on the type of work they were designed for and approximately when they'd get there. About North Korea, I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA recognized the steps NK was taking to detonate a bomb (spy satellites seeing equipment moved, etc.) and held it to give Bush a chance to appear presidential in a crisis. Who knows?

I read somewhere last week (andrewsullivan.com, maybe, but it was a link to a reputable news source) that the US Navy dispatched a bunch of ships out of Newport News, VA a week or so ago and that part of the group included mine sweepers. the analyst who wrote the article indicated that the only place such ships would be of much value was the Straits of Hormuz off the southern coast of Iran and that they should arrive there around October 21, just two weeks shy of the election. Could this be Rove's promised October surprise?

I live in an area of the US frequented by many Canadian tourists. I have several friends who worked in service industries that cater to tourists and I can tell you that the reputation of the Canadian tourist is not as stellar as you'd like to believe. I'd be shocked, though, if anyone allowed cultural differences or misunderstandings to foster a sense of anti-Canadianism here.

I voted to destroy the nuclear facility provided it is a global effort. I think it would be disastrous for the US to take it upon itself to do it. If China wants to go that one alone, fine with me. None of this will impact Iran. US bugling in both Afghanistan and Iraq have Tehran fairly insulated from almost all forms of military intervention in Iran.