"We didn't know precisely where it went."

(snip)"We got three thousand. . . . We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure.

Conflating that into blaming the miss of a single phone call for all of 9/11 is dishonest. Quite frankly, I'm real tired of it.

Curious to know what you think Mukasey meant by "to show for that," in the sentence you yourself quoted.

And as for Marines breaking fingers, I thought that in addition to breaking fingers, the Marines were shooting many of the enemy combatants that they encountered.

It seems like RWAs do this a lot... when you're talking about one thing, they start talking about another thing, and then act like it's all the same thing. I think it's something they teach in SERE... keep changing the subject, throw the person off. Call it a form of rhetorical waterboarding.

Among the many failings in fact and logic in that particular post, there's the notable assertion that anyone who happened to be in Abu Ghraib was, by definition, an "enemy combatant," and thus subject to waterboarding, finger-breaking and all the other "fraternity" hijinx that went on at that wacky, wacky place. No chance that, during an insurgency, when the occupying army knows little of the language and culture of the country they're occupying, that someone might get swept up at random?

It's remarkable enough that we have this new category - "enemy combatant" - that exempts us from treating people with any shred of respect for their essential humanity. It's made all the more interesting by including in that category anyone who ends up in the back of the Hummer after a 2am raid.

But, gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, I guess.

You don't seem to know fuck-all about liberals. I'd say that gives us an advantage.

Neither does he seem to know what proletariat means, let alone its spelling.

If there is hope, it lies in the proles.

I think you mean 'demonstrably'.

Well played, sir.

posts like the last bring a level of crassness to these pages that make us all look like feces-throwing chimps

"Us all"? To whom, may I ask?

Why can't Barry-O just say that it takes more than wearing a flag pin to make a patriot?

He did. Like a year ago:

"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest.

"Instead," he said, "I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

Google "obama flag pin" or click link at sig.

And you comment here why, again?

I just prowl around looking for the worst and most egregious excesses of the left.

I'd often suspected as much, but it's fascinating to see someone with as much self-awareness as to actually admit that he's not interested in testing his ideas with actual debate, just cherry-picking what he thinks of as "excessive."

I keep hoping against hope that a serious, principled conservative would show up and give a robust defense of his ideas. And, further, respond to one of the many here who would engage her/him in respectful, sharp debate -- rather than the few who would just shout her/him down.

Susan Jacoby wrote an interesting article in the LA Times this Sunday about our increasingly echo-chambery national dialogue.

http://tinyurl.com/4ax4ht and linked at my sig.

Did we used to actually debate each other in this country? Or 'twere ever thus?

And by one measure, a baseball bat is a toothpick.

Nice try though.

Thanks for the nuanced reply.

Glenn Greenwald is also "an opinion columnist and he is expressing his opinion."

Did you have a point to make? Or do you get paid by the comment?

I'm sorry, but did you just suggest that Derbig isn't really a Jew because he doesn't think what you think he should? Do you need a special pad on your seat with balls that big?

I'm sure there's some hidden 'go back to Crown Heights, kike' insult buried in there somewhere.

When you hear a constant ringing in your ears, Ockham's Razor would suggest tinnitus -- rather than everyone in the world shaking bells at you -- as a likely cause.

When did they start using the psychedelic lighting on the PA Capitol? Or was that something the Obama campaign had done and if so... why?

...but my name also wasn't in the subject line.

I guess we can only speak when spoken to.

As far as I know, Wilber has never "proclaimed" himself anything, he's just a wicked bright guy who has come up with a pretty clever view of reality that a lot of people have found useful.

In so doing, some people - including some otherwise-rational friends of mine - have glommed onto him in a way that I find rather embarrassing. But, I haven't seen Wilber go out of his way to attract such attention.

The fact that his chrome-dome sells books probably have more to do with the new-age marketing geniuses at Shambhala than any aspiration Wilber may have to guruhood (I have heard him refer to himself humourously as a pandit, which is the root word of "pundit" in modern parlance).

Like you, however, "I don't know enough about Ken Wilber the person." I'm more interested in the philosophy than the personality, though.