Kitchener

Confident though I am in the Dems' ability to blow absolutely any lead through incompetence and pointless pandering to folks who won't vote for them no matter what... I don't think any of the Repubs can win against any of the likely Dem winners. See, McCain and Giuliani just aren't crazy-fundie enough to mobilize the mega-church vote. Also: The southern racists driven off of McCain in 2000 by the Bush campaign unknown campaign's flyers claiming that he had a love child with a black woman -- those folks aren't going to turn out to vote for him in November. Also: photos of Rudy in a dress? The uncontested record of his spending public money on his then-mistress, now-billionth-wife? Nope. Won't happen. The mega-church vote won't go to the Dems, but they'll stay home. On the other hand, you have Huckabee. He clearly appeals to the hardcore religious right, since he seems to actually be what they thought Bush was: a creationist, theocratic fundamentalist. He'll get the church vote out, but I get the feeling that the more libertarian, competence-oriented, fiscally conservative Repub voters are frankly sick to death of that wing of the party, are happy that Bush has stopped catering to them quite so pathetically, and don't want Chuck "I are a World Nut writer man!" Norris for Secretary of State. So they won't donate or volunteer or vote in quite the same numbers, either -- in fact, they might even vote for a Dem. Who's left over? Romney. And I just don't think the guy makes anybody happy. He's swapped his principles on the key conservative issues so explicitly and completely that he can't possibly evade the charge of being unprincipled. He's a Mormon, from Massachusetts, so the religious base won't like him. And he's a fee-raising flip-flopper on a scale to make Kerry look like Edmund Burke, so the corporate/libertarian/fiscal sides of the party won't be enamored of him. Through no obvious virtues of their own, and owing primarily to the nearly unenumerable screw-ups and corruptions of the Bush regime, the Dems seem likely to win it no matter what, is my guess.

More than once, too. It would be ridiculous to point out the astonishing number of felony convictions among the Conservative cabinet of Grant Devine, and conclude that Conservatives have demonstrated a general incompetence or dishonesty that bars them from serious consideration. Fortunately, owing to the predominant biases hereabouts, few people will make such a silly argument... about Conservatives. Equally silly arguments about the NDP, however...

Virtually 100% of those competent with English and possessing an attention span of 8 seconds or greater. I'm sure you're right. What happened in the meantime to change that response was Harris-Eves, and then McGuinty. So what does that say about a blinkered, ideological focus on the flaws of the Rae government even now? It's a very simple point, and I have a feeling you're on the cusp of grasping it.

Of course the various hysterical Cassandras of the coming Islamo-Invasions will now jump up to point out that this is basically what the torturers were doing in the article linked in the OP. Right? <Cue the crickets...> When they do it, it's barbarism. But we'd do it because we're against barbarism! It looks identical from the outside, of course, but if only the purity of our secret heart of hearts were known, it would be clear that one is barbaric and the other is just standing up for what's right.

Ignorant of the standards of basic competent communication. According to which it is foolish and self-humiliating to introduce irrelevant material as an evasion, upon having your crass violations of logic and decency pointed out.

And charter.rights, seriously, now. kengs333's burbling about human sacrifice was sufficiently ignorant on its own terms. There's no need even for good examples of Christians who commit degenerate acts, never mind strained or bad examples like yours. Let it go.

I don't know that a paragraph from the Catholic Encyclopedia is the most reliable source for a sympathetic description of all the hundreds of non-Catholic Christian sects. From Quakers to Mennonites, millions of non-Catholics have insisted that their faith must inform their works -- indeed, must inform the way they live their lives. But this is not really germane to the point under discussion.

Right. But that's not so much false as confused, since penance, in the Catholic sense, includes repentance -- or at least attrition. A bit too sweeping for my tastes. I certainly know plenty of protestants who hold the importance of works, and plenty of Catholics who seem content to go through the motions.

Nothing you wrote or quoted was inconsistent with anything I wrote. Contrary to the only words of yours to which I responded, the sacrament of penance is sufficient for forgiveness, because it refers to the entire process -- including genuine absolution. The conditions necessary for genuine absolution are a distinct question. That penance, in the sacramental sense, does indeed include the forgiveness of sins is utterly straightforward. I guess you'll have to show me where I denied any of this. I did point out that fear of punishment counts as sufficient grounds for the forgiveness of sin, provided that one undergoes the sacrament of penance; but in my defense, that is perfectly correct according to Catholic doctrine, and has been perfectly correct since 1563 at the latest.

I make no claims about how things can sound to you; only about the facts. The facts about provincial governments in Canada are far less damning regarding the NDP than silly trawling through the data for confirmations might suggest to anti-NDP dogmatists.

Of course it does; the term "penance" strictly denotes the sacrament of confession and absolution in its entirety. In the more popular sense of non-ritual acts that one performs as a sort of punishment or learning opportunity, in order to be forgiven, well, the Church has never generally set the bar that high for forgiveness. Confession and the Act of Contrition followed by the priest's absolution are entirely sufficient for the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church, even if the confession is motivated merely by the fear of Hell.

Oh, don't be so quick to overlook the possibilities of corruption in Ontario's NDP government and incompetence in BC's, too. Governments are sprawling things, after all, and problems can be found with any of them. What makes the whining about the NDP into meaningless childish boilerplate is the way it grimly ignores the corruption and incompetence found also in Liberal and Conservative provincial governments. If you were to ask a hundred randomly chosen Ontarians to say which provincial government was most deeply flawed with corruption, short-sightedness, cozy lobbyist-government sweetheart deals, general incompetence, dishonesty, contempt for democracy, and hidebound ideological dogma, I very much doubt that most people would point to the Rae government...

Pshaw. Facts are a leftist conspiracy. Let's just recite boilerplate drivel about the incompetence of the NDP, eh?

What do you think prejudice and bias are, if not the unthinking criticism of one thing while similar things are given a free pass? You didn't make some arbitrary "comment" about the woman's spiritual beliefs; you ridiculed them because of their supernatural content. (And, of course, made a crass and foolish generalization about an entire community being shit-eaters. Let's not forget that charming and entirely non-religious aspect of your post.) And I pointed out (and you've happily confirmed) that if she'd believed that your dead guy was watching her garden instead of her dead guys, you'd be just hunky-dory with that. It wasn't meant to make you feel bad. It was meant to point out the provincial thinking and unprincipled standards produced by your hostility to first nations people. There are differences between any two forms of supernatural conviction. They just aren't differences that matter to whether their various devotees have supernatural convictions.

There's a lot not to like about Harper, IMO. But the fact that he's changed his stance in light of better information, in this case, is not something to hold against him, is it?

At this point a retraction, apology, and commitment to rethink your attitudes would make more sense than such an Orwellian attempt to rewrite your posting history. Look again at what you wrote. (I mean, actually wrote, as opposed to what you now wish you had written -- talk about beliefs undermining reality!)

Of course millions of Christians do pray for help with their finances, but you did not see fit to single them out for ridicule rather than native spirituality; and even in your case, you purport to have faith in a long-dead man named Jesus. My point is not that you're somehow ill-suited for modern life due to your supernatural beliefs, but that parity of reason demolishes any significant distinction between you and the woman whose beliefs you were ridiculing, on that front. You'd have to think so, wouldn't you? It's not "how I put" so much as basic Catholic doctrine of the transubstantiation. Yet you managed not to single out Catholics as maladapted from modern life. Curious, huh? More to the point, unless the woman of whom you wrote (and actual First Nations people in recent history) "literally drink blood and eat human flesh", then this is a particularly bizarre red herring. Impugning Canadian First Nations people by hysterically citing things they don't do is a pretty amazingly weird way of trying to defend your claims.

Well, that's an interesting bit of autobiography about you. I've known plenty of Baptists, and would make a different choice than yours. But the fact is, nobody had seen fit to point to non-First-Nations supernatural obsessions as evidence that they are ill-suited for modern life. Which suggests something selectively anti-native about the comment to which I responded.

Yeah, that's crazy. Why can't they believe instead that they have personal, private conversations with someone who died a couple thousand years ago, in which they ask an omnipotent spirit to intercede in their diet, personal finances, and football games, and then maybe go to elaborate services where they purport to eat the dead guy's magically incarnated flesh and drink his blood? Then they'd be respectable members of modern society instead of muddled myth-mongers.

How you managed to reach this remarkable conclusion from what I wrote is beyond me.

Yes. Dang.

If I've misrepresented you, I do apologize. I couldn't see any non-twitting way of understanding the line "Perhaps he just took a guess, just as you are." It's still not clear on the face of it, but I'll take your word for it.

No, just uninformed. What's arguably foolish is twitting someone who simply assumes that the governing party would be monitoring Canadian public opinion about the most significant issue in the world at the time. Of course it isn't. You said "I can't recall Chretien polling Canadians about their opinion regarding a possible commitment. Perhaps he just took a guess, just as you are." And I pointed out that your ignorance of the commonality of internal-use polling is hardly grounds to conclude either that Chretien was guessing about public opinion, or that jdobbin is guessing about Chretien's being informed about the matter: "major political parties monitor public opinion on major issues... I doubt that they make a point of informing you personally every time they do it." Those aren't the same claim.

You don't know that major political parties monitor public opinion on major issues? "The Liberal, Progressive Conservative and New Democratic parties all regularly commission surveys for their private use." (Canadian Encyclopedia) I doubt that they make a point of informing you personally every time they do it.

Right. Well, spambots aside, back to the live action. capricorn linked to a useful document, the Afghanistan Compact. It is important reading, but does not fully answer the questions I had asked. That's not to say it's irrelevant! The benchmarks and deadlines section in particular is very significant. But there are two key points to note: first, and most importantly, it does not give details on how the actions of ISAF will foreseeably lead to the attainment of the stated objectives. And second, it is mainly split between stating goals that are precisely specified yet trivially achievable "on paper" -- e.g., the establishment of a "clear and transparent national appointments mechanism" -- and stating goals that more substantive but far less concretely achievable: e.g., "Government machinery (including the number of ministries) will be restructured and rationalised to ensure a fiscally sustainable public administration; the civil service commission will be strengthened; and civil service functions will be reformed to reflect core functions and responsibilities." There's no quarreling with the spirit of the thing, I'd say. The problem is much more the "Hooray for Everything!" sense of unreality that permeates it. To wit, the organizing principles... That'd all be great. Exactly how, though, is our military presence making each of those things happen? The most plausible line, repeated thoughout the document, is that ISAF is "promoting security and stability" in the areas tasked to them, which is easy enough to believe. (Though hardly certain, since they might also function as lightning rods for attacks as well.) But other claims are almost outlandish. As in, First, what history is being invoked with the language of "rebuilding", here? Afghanistan was most politically stable as a monarchy with power distributed through a quasi-feudal system; it had only very briefly, thirty years ago, the trappings of democracy. There is no trust in democratic institutions to be "rebuilt" in Afghanistan, no more than there is a nationwide history of a "shared sense of citizenship and a culture of tolerance, pluralism and observance of the rule of law" to be rebuilt. If these things come to Afghanistan, they will be coming there for the very first time -- especially in the countryside. Who on earth has the recipe for instilling a culture of tolerance and pluralism in a deeply clannish culture split along ethnic, sectarian and regional lines? This is pure confabulation, IMO, and is nothing that Canadian troops or God herself could accomplish by deliberate steps in any short number of years. (Leading me to muse, btw, on whether it isn't largely the same political conservatives who complain about the hubris of small scale "social engineering" here at home who are the ones committed to the idea that vastly more ambitious social engineering in war-torn and unstable Afghanistan is a perfectly good bet.)