MR. BFRY BREAKS DOWN YOUR WORLD

Ok, so I've been playing this game since December 2004. I don't mean in general, I mena the specific campaign that I am on. About 3/4 of a century have passed, and I have been controlling one of three major Roman families, the Julii... (Caesar's family in case it sounded familiar but you're unsure) All three factions take orders form the Senate, but I got sick of the senate and decided to overthrow it. So here is a view of Rome under control of the Julii, newly liberated from the corrupt Senators...



CLICK ON PIC TO ZOOM

A Look at U.S. Troops Dying in Iraq

By The Associated Press August 6th, 2005

More than 1,820 American troops have died in
Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Here's a look at how they died, based on
Department of Defense figures complied by The Associated Press:

_From March 2003 through August 2005:

Accident — 19.5 percent.

Bomb — 31.9 percent.

Combat — 48.5 percent.

___

A more detailed look in three-month time periods:

_March-May 2003:

Accident — 33 percent.

Bomb — 6.3 percent.

Combat — 60.8 percent.

_June-August 2003:

Accident — 46.9 percent.

Bomb — 16.8 percent.

Combat — 36.3 percent.

_September-November 2003:

Accident — 21.8 percent.

Bomb — 29.5 percent.

Combat — 48.7 percent.

_December 2003-February 2004:

Accident — 23.4 percent.

Bomb — 45.8 percent.

Combat — 30.8 percent.

_March-May 2004:

Accident — 16.6 percent.

Bomb — 27.9 percent.

Combat — 55.5 percent.

_June-August 2004:

Accident — 15.5 percent.

Bomb — 21.1 percent.

Combat — 63.4 percent.

_September-November 2004:

Accident — 10.3 percent.

Bomb — 26.0 percent.

Combat — 63.7 percent.

_December 2004-February 2005:

Accident — 20.3 percent.

Bomb — 35.2 percent.

Combat — 44.5 percent.

_March-May 2005:

Accident — 11.9 percent.

Bomb — 54.8 percent.

Combat — 33.3 percent.

_June-August 2005:

Accident — 12 percent.

Bomb — 65.3 percent.

Combat — 22.7 percent.

___

NOTE: Accident deaths include vehicle crashes and illnesses not directly attributed to combat. Some combat deaths include aircraft crashes in non-hostile action.

The Redskins coach said Dallas fans are the ugliest peeps in the world... WOW

Mike tyson is probably going to star in a porno with Jenna Jameson. yeah...

Thanks to BEAR BEAR for this one!

Looks like the Jets and Giants got into it during a practice session after only TWO PLAYS! Looks like Shockey is upset that he's on the inferior New York City football team...


Also- looks like the J-E-T-S JETS! JETS! JETS! are going to get Ty Law to help bolster the D. LOOK OUT PATS!

fuck the patriots I hate them...

U.S. Marine Sgt. Dennis Osborne of Cincinnati, Ohio, from the 3rd Platoon from Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment from Ohio, pauses during operations in Parwana, near Haditha, Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 6, 2005. A roadside bomb nearby killed 14 Marines, many from this platoon, and a civilian interpreter, in the deadliest roadside bombing suffered by American forces in the Iraq war. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

Start with this...

August 6, 2005 New York Times
Threat to Divest Is Church Tool in Israeli Fight
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. announced Friday that it would press four American corporations to stop providing military equipment and technology to Israel for use in the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that if the companies did not comply, the church would take a vote to divest its stock in them.

The companies - Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries and United Technologies - were selected from a list of several dozen possibilities by a church investment committee that met Friday in Seattle. The Presbyterians accused these companies of selling helicopters, cellphones, night vision equipment and other items Israel uses to enforce its occupation.

In an effort to appear even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the church committee also included Citigroup on its list of targets, alleging it had a connection to a bank accused of having a role in funneling money from Islamic charities to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The church said it included Citigroup because it was mentioned in an article in The Wall Street Journal.

A spokeswoman for Citigroup called the church's assertion "an outrage," a reaction echoed at several of the other corporations.

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is in the forefront of a campaign now spreading to other mainline Protestant churches to use corporate divestment as a tactic in the Middle East conflict, a tactic that is roiling relations with Jewish groups.

The Episcopal Church U.S.A., the United Church of Christ, two regions of the United Methodist Church, as well as international groups like the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Consultative Council have all urged consideration of divestment or economic pressure in recent months, though the tone and emphasis of each resolution varies. The Disciples of Christ passed a resolution last month calling on Israel to tear down the barrier it has built to wall off the occupied territories, and other churches are considering similar resolutions.

Some Jewish groups accuse the churches of singling out Israel for blame and failing to address the Palestinians' role in perpetuating the violence. Several have even said they see anti-Semitism behind the churches' moves.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., said in an interview: "It's not a campaign to divest from the state of Israel. We're fully committed to the state of Israel. But it is a campaign to divest from particular activities that are doing damage and creating injustice and violence, whether that's the building of the separation barrier, construction related to the occupation, or weapons and materials that lead to suicide bombings."

Many American churches used divestment in the 1980's to pressure the South African government to end apartheid. But applying the tactic to Israel has alarmed many American Jewish groups and caused a breach in what has been a long-term alliance between Jews and mainline Protestant churches, like the Presbyterians, that have leaned politically liberal. In decades past, Jewish and Protestant groups have worked together on a range of social issues, from racism to global poverty to women's rights.

"This is a brilliantly organized political campaign to hurt Israel, and it's not going to help a single Palestinian," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish watchdog group based in Los Angeles. "When you look at the list of companies, this is basically a recipe for Israel to disarm."

Rabbi Cooper said the Protestant churches were ignoring the current "reality on the ground" - that Israel is preparing to withdraw this month from Gaza and remove settlements there. "Instead of divesting, these churches should be investing," he said. "There is so much humanitarian need on the ground in the Holy Land. We're not telling them: 'Stay out of it. It's not your business.' There's a ton of work to be done."

He called the churches' actions "functionally anti-Semitic." But he said that after attending the conventions of the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ this year, he concluded that the resolutions were being "rammed through" by denominational leaders and were not reflective of the churches' grassroots membership.

However, David Elcott, director of interreligious affairs in the United States for the American Jewish Committee, said that he made a distinction between the different church resolutions. He said he found the Presbyterian Church's resolution "morally reprehensible" because it singled out Israel for blame, but that the United Church of Christ had been more evenhanded, condemning violence in the Middle East no matter the source.

The Presbyterian Church owns hundreds of thousands of shares of stock in the five companies through its pension fund for retired church workers and through church foundations. It did not say how much money it has invested in these companies, but judging by the numbers of shares it said it owns, the church's investment in the companies totals about $60 million in holdings.

The Presbyterian Church's committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment has brought similar economic pressure against other companies accused of abetting human rights abuses in countries like China, the Sudan, Myanmar, Nigeria and Guatemala. But church staff members said this was the first time it had focused on companies doing business in Israel.

The Presbyterians gave a variety of reasons for choosing these five companies. It accused Caterpillar of selling Israel heavy equipment used for demolishing Palestinian homes, and of constructing roads and infrastructure in the occupied territories and Israeli settlements.

The company released a statement saying: "For the past four years, activists have wrongly included Caterpillar in a publicity campaign aimed at advancing their much larger political agendas. Over that same period of time we've repeatedly evaluated our position, as have our shareholders, and determined that while the protests occasionally succeed in getting headlines, they neither change the facts nor our position."

The Presbyterian committee said in its announcement that it included United Technologies Corporation, a military contractor, because a subsidiary provides helicopters used by the Israeli military "in attacks in the occupied territories against suspected Palestinian terrorists."

A company spokesman, Paul Jackson, responded by e-mail: "UTC has been widely recognized as an ethical and responsible corporation. Work on military programs is stringently regulated by the U.S. government, and UTC complies wholly with all policies and related regulations."

The church said it identified Motorola because the company has a contract to develop wireless encrypted communications for the Israeli military in the territories and is a "majority investor in one of Israel's four cell phone companies."

Norman Sandler, a manager for Motorola on global issues, said the church's action "came completely out of the blue." He said the company supplies radio products to Israel, as well as to many Arab countries.

ITT also made the church's list because, the committee said, it supplies the Israeli military with "communications, electronic and night vision equipment used by its forces in the occupied territories." A spokesman for ITT did not respond to a message left on Friday afternoon.

Leah Johnson, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, said: "Any assertion that Citigroup supports terrorism in any way is an outrage. We take all possible measures to ensure that our institution is not used by criminals or as a conduit to fund terrorist activities."

Despite the bitterness the divestment moves have evoked among Jewish organizations, Christian and Jewish leaders alike said these developments had prompted intensive and productive dialogue sessions both at the national level and between "hundreds" of churches and synagogues nationwide.

A delegation of prominent Jewish and Christian leaders is set to travel to Jerusalem in September.

wow... come on, someone put me in charge of a newspaper!

August 5, 2005
latimes.com

Jonathan Chait:
How Bush thinks: intuition over intellect
AS SOMEBODY WHO doesn't have the slightest feeling one way or another about baseball star Rafael Palmeiro, I have to say that it seems pretty clear Palmeiro has used steroids. Palmeiro recently tested positive for steroid use. And then there's former teammate Jose Canseco's allegation that he and Palmeiro both used steroids, which is impossible to verify but would seem to explain why Palmeiro's annual home run total nearly doubled after Canseco joined him on the Texas Rangers. None of this is ironclad proof, but it seems the simplest way to reconcile the available data.

President Bush, though, doesn't see it this way at all. When asked about Palmeiro's positive steroid test, Bush — who knew Palmeiro when the president owned the Rangers — replied, "Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him. He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the Klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him."

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This statement perfectly crystallizes Bush's thinking. Facts don't matter to him. What matters is how he feels about the person in question. In 2001, for instance, Bush met with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, and the two hit it off. As Bush later told Peggy Noonan, Putin recounted to him a story involving a cross given to him by his mother.

"I said to him, 'You know, I found that story very interesting. You see, President Putin, I think you judge a person on something other than just politics. I think it's important for me and for you to look for the depth of a person's soul and character. I was touched by the fact your mother gave you the cross.' " Bush publicly testified of Putin, "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

Personally, I put less weight on the fact that Putin got a cross from his mother, and more on the fact that Putin has smothered Russian democracy by outlawing opposition parties, shut down any remotely skeptical media outlet and subjected his critics to political show trials. Yet this sort of evidence has had barely any effect on Bush. Two years later, he was still praising Putin's desire for "a country in which democracy and freedom and rule of law thrive."

Bush is even apt to apply this particular brand of illogic to his own character. In one of the 2000 presidential debates, Al Gore pointed out that Bush as governor of Texas opposed a measure to expand children's healthcare and instead used the money for a tax cut. The debate moderator then asked Bush, "Are those numbers correct? Are his charges correct?" To which Bush replied, "If he's trying to allege that I'm a hardhearted person and I don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."

The style of Bush's reply is telling. Gore was trying to make a point about Bush's moral priorities by establishing a series of facts about Bush's behavior. Rather than deny having chosen tax cuts over children's healthcare, or explain his rationale for having done so, Bush changed the subject to more comfortable ground: judging people's hearts. He asked the audience to intuit, based on the way he carries himself, that he is a warmhearted person, and thus to reject out of hand any facts that might clash with this impression.

The point isn't just that Bush refuses to engage with facts he finds inconvenient. (Many fail that test.) It's that Bush rejects reason itself. Reason is a process by which we draw our broader conclusions from an accumulation of specific evidence. When the evidence changes ("Hey, this Putin guy seems to be squelching dissent"), our conclusions can also ("Perhaps he doesn't love democracy as much as he said he did!"). Bush, on the other hand, arrives at his beliefs through intuition. His supporters marvel at the unshakeable certainty of his convictions. Well, no wonder.

This is brilliant... form the LA times!

August 5, 2005
latimes.com : Opinion : Commentary

The myths of Hiroshima
By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, KAI BIRD and MARTIN J. SHERWIN are coauthors of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer," published earlier this year by Knopf.

SIXTY YEARS ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate.

The magnitude of death was enormous, but on Aug. 14, 1945 — just five days after the Nagasaki bombing — Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan.

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This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act in a just war.

But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target."

Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" — and many other historians have long argued — it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.

The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.

The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.

These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished.

Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong in a democracy's arsenal. But if, as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons?

Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these weapons would ultimately threaten our very survival.

Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our worst national nightmare — and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced dream — an atomic suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city: "Of course it could be done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee, "and people could destroy New York."

Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our enemies to attack us with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden repeatedly refers to Hiroshima in his rambling speeches. It was, he believes, the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender — and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on the U.S. that will similarly shock us into retreating from the Mideast.

Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of omnipotence." He observed that "if you approach the problem and say, 'We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,' then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed…. You will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster."

Great article about Hillary and Elecability... not sure if I agree, I'm still thinking about her... but good food for thought!

This PAGE 2 Gives us a Ron Burgundy take on sports...

Wow! check this

HAHAHAHAHAAAAA THE YANKS DIRTY LAUNDRY IS HANGING OUT TO DRY :-p


From the one and only Daily News


the story: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/334625p-285906c.html

I wrote this piece a few months back, but I think its damn relevant now

Information War- Brian E. Frydenborg

Friday, May 6th^th, Boston-

It’s time to declare war. No, not on Syria, North Korea, or Iran. I’m talking Fox. And MSNBC. And CNN. For that matter, throw in ABC, CBS, and NBC, and everyone from Chris Matthews and Katie Couric to Sean Hannity and Wolf Blitzer. For all the glee many liberals take in ridiculing Fox—and if you don’t know that there is plenty to ridicule there, you probably will “miss” this article as it flies over your head—they and the entire country need to take a much harder look at the presentation and format of all TV news. There’s little to give any informed citizen comfort. But there’s plenty to entertain and distract. And that’s the whole problem.

Over 270 people have been killed in Iraq since the new Iraqi government was formed on April 28th; this does not include the wounded, wounded like the boy in the picture above, one of three brothers, all young boys, who were wounded in the same attack. Multiply this picture by thousands and thousands. In fact, I dare you to picture a room, filled with 10,000 or so young children in there, wounded, who may have a foot blown off, like young Mr. Haidar Qasem in the picture, or a nose, a hand, an arm blown off, or scars all over their faces. Picture it long and hard. You may find it difficult, because these are images which are rarely seen on American television sets during newscasts. For some reason, gruesome violence is OK in movies and TV entertainment, even on network TV, but, gee golly, if it’s happening in real life, and if its happening, say because of the gross (even criminal) negligence and incompetence of our government in its prosecution of a war and the subsequent occupation/rebuilding effort, don’t show that. Making Americans feel bad about their country’s actions is bad for ratings. Yet war is not G or PG, and when it’s our government and tax dollars feeding this bloodbath, we should have our eyes held open with our head shoved into the screen, a screen that does not edit out the unpleasantries, and if makes us uncomfortable, it’s supposed to.

Whether it is the Michael Jackson Trial, the “Runaway Bride,” the hostage who used her faith in Jesus to save herself and get the guy who murdered the judge in the courtroom to give himself up, the Terry Schiavo saga, or steroids in pro-sports, nobody is better than the American news media at latching onto an interesting yet isolated and insignificant story, filled with wackos and drama but playing little or no significant role in the wider world and affecting few people outside those featured in the story itself. The horror which has developed in today’s journalism isn’t so much the fact that these stories are being covered, but that they take up the majority of the newscasts at the expense of major stories that affects the lives of thousands. These glossed-over stories are downers that make our own leaders look bad, and our nation’s actions look bad. If you depended on television news for your coverage of the Iraq war, you have no idea what is going on there.

A two minute segment, with all the blood and gore of war edited out, is a convenient way for a major news organization to still be able to say they are “covering” the issue while in reality, deliberately or accidentally, the public is kept almost wholly ignorant of the actual conditions. TV news does nothing more than deceive people into thinking that they are informed.

The devil lies in the details, like an actual Captain of the Marines (they don’t mess around) complaining that they were never given the proper body armor despite many requests, and were never given enough troop support, and as a result, his men died, and died in larger numbers. This Captain—by the name of Kelly D. Royer—was later relieved from command for being too “authoritarian.” Perhaps “authoritarian” translates into “rocking the boat.” Because any reasonable, objective analysis shows how arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence has greatly increased the degree to which violence thrives and is perpetrated in Iraq at the cost of thousands of extra lives, American, Iraqi, and others: men, women; children, parents, sons, daughters.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what is missing from our TV news. Occasionally, and only occasionally, a U.S. newscast will do a quick piece on a veteran, bravely recovering from his wounds. The Iraqis’ suffering is barely covered at all, all you get is a 5-second clip with some woman screaming and smoke in the background, with an effeminate-British translator saying in English “This woman came and saw her son was lying in a pool of blood” or something like that. Then, right back to… the Jacko trial. Or how about hours and hours of Terry Schiavo?

Americans have no idea of the scope of the “collateral” damage done in Iraq because they are bombarded with these nonsense stories. The facts are simple: while our occupation of Iraq has uprooted the lives of millions and killed thousands and thousands of innocents, while our incompetent national leadership wished the Iraq problem would go away, never admitting we didn’t have enough troops to begin with and not even bothering to ensure our sons and daughters were armed with body armor or even given a simple Arabic-language primer card, while our tax dollars were paying people like Ahmed Chalabi for misinformation, the TV news media glossed over these issues as they were occurring, dealing only with a pointless left/right axis of debate on a general semantic level, with self proclaimed Middle East/Terrorism experts like Sean Hannity routinely making the absurd assertions that the “liberal” media was not reporting all the “good” things being done in Iraq. When all you get is wimpy Alan Combs responding by attempting to explain that a constitution is meaningless without law and order in 1/3 of the time Sean was jabbering his nonsense, and Sean gets to do the closing remark, the “facts” most people get in the news often depends on which talking head is more aggressive, loud, or flashy.

If ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption can have stat-boy take his anchors to task when they get their facts wrong, why the hell does TV news let its hosts and anchors make blatantly false, completely unresearched claims continually with no attempt to check the truth? It is the press’s responsibility to fact check our governments claims, but if no one fact-checks TV newscasts, (where, by far, the vast majority of Americans get their news) and if the only stories covered in any detail are nonsensical senasationals, how can any of the American public have any idea what is going on thousands of miles away? The only way to get credible information is to have someone on the ground where the story is taking place, who has a background in what they are covering and is therefore equipped to make intelligent comments and ask the right questions. Christiane Amanpour, one of the only people left in American TV news that does just that, was lamenting, on The Daily Show of all shows, how few journalists are like that, and how often she presses her superiors to make such in depth reporting less of a rare thing. It’s very sad how we can hear such criticism of the media only on Comedy Central, now the best TV news we have, because, from NBC to FOX, the rest of the news programming on TV is a joke.

If you don't know what is happening, watch this great feature from the NYTimes

or read this article



Here's where YOU can SAVE LIVES

Gary Wills, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America, had this to say about the wonderful progress our country made in reelecting DUBYA!!!! Or, as like to call him, Dippy Doo... see my earlier commentary...

Published on Thursday, November 4, 2004 by the New York Times
The Day the Enlightenment Went Out
by Gary Wills

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions - on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Mr. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).

The results bring to mind a visit the Dalai Lama made to Chicago not long ago. I was one of the people deputized to ask him questions on the stage at the Field Museum. He met with the interrogators beforehand and asked us to give him challenging questions, since he is too often greeted with deference or flattery.

The only one I could think of was: "If you could return to your country, what would you do to change it?" He said that he would disestablish his religion, since "America is the proper model." I later asked him if a pluralist society were possible without the Enlightenment. "Ah," he said. "That's the problem." He seemed to envy America its Enlightenment heritage.

Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

It is often observed that enemies come to resemble each other. We torture the torturers, we call our God better than theirs - as one American general put it, in words that the president has not repudiated.

President Bush promised in 2000 that he would lead a humble country, be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by being a divider, pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue nearly half of the nation. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences, here and abroad, with real respect.

In his victory speech yesterday, President Bush indicated that he would "reach out to the whole nation," including those who voted for John Kerry. But even if he wanted to be more conciliatory now, the constituency to which he owes his victory is not a yielding one. He must give them what they want on things like judicial appointments. His helpers are also his keepers.

The moral zealots will, I predict, give some cause for dismay even to nonfundamentalist Republicans. Jihads are scary things. It is not too early to start yearning back toward the Enlightenment.

Garry Wills, an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of "St. Augustine's Conversion."

© 2004 New York Times Co.

fucking mets!

YESSS Katherine harris is in the news again! YESSSS!!! WHat is it now? Somethign about makup being doctored in photos?

Katie, let me tell you somehting: with or without makup, you still suck, and no matter what you're ugly anyway. You have no chance with ME that's for sure!

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/04/harris.makeup.ap/index.html

OK kiddies, here's a little lesson for you all, so pay attention; when it comes to politics and world events, I generally know what the hell I am talking about.

Waaay back in the 17th Century, in his Treatises on Civil Government, John Locke postulated that ideas came from experience, from what we perceived with our senses. Our country was very much Lockean in its development under the founding fathers, and yet, in 2005, the oldest surviving republic in the world has a leader, elected twice now, that does not believe so much in ideas coming from experience, but operates on ideas that stem from what many would call a blind faith. Many of his supporters, fellow evangelical Christians, share this mode of thinking. Faith in a Divine Plan, or Predestination, or in Jesus and/or God the Heavenly father, will take care of problems, much moreso than planning or research.

Perhaps you say, I'm making quite a leap here. A leap of faith? No. I'll go back to Locke, and will use evidence to substantiate my claims, not just emotional bombast.

Presidents are always confronted by experts- people who have spent their entire lives studying a particular issue, covering all the angles and history and ANYTHING relevant to their issue. We find that in many of these fields, while there may be some dissension, there is a lot more consensus on many of the broad strokes. Global warming is occurring, stem cell research is highly beneficial, tax cuts targeted to the richest 1% of the population cannot be cited as the main reason for any kind of economic recovery, many people in Iraq and foreign terrorists will attack us there so we will need hundreds of thousands of troops to build the peace... Saddam wasn't trying to get uranium from Niger...

The list goes on an on. In ANY of these situations, a study of the empirical evidence available would have reached the respective aforementioned conclusions.

Yet, our fearless leader, George Dubya Bush, drew the opposite conclusion EVERY TIME.

Sure, politics can explain a lot of it. But a big part of that is what is Mr. Bush's core philosophy. In any situation, where experts have reached a consensus view, on any issue that does not agree with Bush and/or Cheney's and/or Rumsfeld's preexisting ideas or worldviews, they are simply ignored.

Early in 2002, a State Department report predicted most of the problems we are now having in Iraq, and said that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure Iraq after the fall of Saddam's regime. The report was delivered to Rumsfeld.

He didn't even open it. In fact, Gen. Erik. Shinseki, then the head of the Army, told Rumsfeld that we needed 400,000 troops or so to secure Iraq. Rumsfeld first publicly humiliated Shinseki in shouting matches and then forced him into early retirement.

Before Bush was elected, he presented global warming as an untested, unproved idea. He said we would need to "do more research." He recently said the same thing in 2005. More than 5 years later. Yeah... This is despite that fact that for over a decade there has been a large consensus among the scientific community that our fossil fuel emissions and other chemicals are having a substantially negative effect on global climate change, and that urgent action is needed.

Evolution is another of those liberal "unproven" theories.

With Iraq, postwar planning didn't matter. This was God's will. Get rid of Saddam, and the Iraqis will love us! Everything will just magically fall in place. Postwar planning? Reconstruction? Silly Liberals want to plan and plan and plan. But Bush, he's too good for that. The State Dept.? A left leaning think tank. The CIA and CIA officials questioning selective use and presentation of intelligent? They just didn't understand Saddam.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld relative to his Big Brass advisors like Shinseki, had little experience to make them understand the specifics of what they were talking about. Dick Cheney had never seriously studied Iraqi history or culture, yet he was completely confident in going on TV and saying he thought we would be greeted--and continually supported--as liberators.

Now I really can't stand Dick Cheney. But I believe he really believed that when he said it. Experience with Iraq's history? Not important. Just faith in the master plan.

The real science behind evolution or global warming? Not important. Cabinet members like Paul O'Neil talking about the fact that the nature of these top-heavy tax cuts specifically destroyed any real economic reason behind them? Not important.

Forget the experts. We've got true believers. They get their ideas from their faith in God or their own ability to achieve or in their political philosophy. They don't actually need to know about the specifics, or ask anyone who specializes in these areas, just stay the course. THIER course.

The evangelicals who don't want their kids to learn evolution and who make up about 1/3 of the country, they feel right at home with this guy. I guess that's why they voted for him. As Gary Wills posed the question in his day-after-the-election-lament of where our country was headed- "Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?"

John Kerry was Mr. Expert, Mr. I've studied this and been here and I'VE ACTUALLY FOUGHT A WAR, but nah. Don't need him. John Kerry may have been a cooler "smartest-kid-in-the-class" than Gore, but he was sill the "smartest-kid-in-the-class."

And boy, if there's one thing ANYBODY knows about Bush, is that he will go with his gut and let no qualified expert dissuade him from his foolishness; THAT'S what he got reelected with, to a degree at least. He will go with his Faith. His Faith in himself, his Faith in Dick Cheney, his Faith in God.

Like Bill Maher said, who clearly has a higher understanding of American tradition than Bush, "These are troubled times. We have to think our way out, we can't faith our way out. It's not a coincidence that so much of Bush's base are faith people, because Bush works in mysterious ways. It helps to have faith, it really does."

Well, Bush is probably the least Lockean President in modern times, espousing a leadership style that would have confounded the rational Deist founding fathers. He takes us away from reason toward a world of faith.

What's scarier, that, or the people that elect him?? (go nutz in the comment section here people, WORK WITH ME!)

I have full faith that Bush sucks (really, REALLY sucks) and God wants us to approach our problems with the brains HE gave us, not use an idea of faith to avoid taking a hard look at hard solutions to hard problems. As the president likes to say of Iraq, that would be "hard work." Too hard to think about, so just have faith in me. Sounds like MOSH; Slim Shady, would you agree?

you guys GOTTA see Mind of Mencia on Comedy Central... I'm sure if you take the time to go to http://www.comedycentral.com 's website and I'm sure they can help you from there, cuz, Frankly Scarlett, it's 12:55 AM right now, and... yeah

But as the great Carlos says: "BLACK OR WHITE, UZBEKI OR JEW, SOMEONE WILL MAKE FUN OF YOU!"

Here is a pic, to tantalize, from one of the best games ever....
ROME: TOTAL WAR









CLICK ON PIC TO ZOOM

The situation: The indepedent city of Byzantium on the Bosphorous, after bieng recently conqeured by an enterprising Roman Army. Unfortunately, the locals did not seem to recognize proprer Roman authority after part of the army moved on, and they and threw out the remaining garrison. Here, I have returned, and decided to burn down the entire front of the city in order to instill a sense of discipline among the locals, many of whom did not escape the fire...

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php

Oh yeah, all those Iraqis that have died... media has done an excellent job of covering this story... no wait a minute... the media haven't done an excelletn job on anything in a long ass time, WHOOPS

Yep. Get used to it. The Knicks are gonna start kicking ass again. BOOOYA! WELCOME HOME LARRY!

We all know that the new XBOX 360 is coming out relatively soon, which means new 1st generation XBOX games won't be in production for too much longer. This game, Star Wars: Battlefront II, comes out Novemeber 1st (the same day that Revenge of the Sith comes out on DVD), and will thus be one of the last big releases for our dear old XBOX. Since it will be a long time before I can afford XBOX 360, I'm sure this won't disappoint... Check the trailer 1st

http://lucasarts.com/games/swbattlefrontii/indexFlash.html#Home

Also Check out these Movies... http://media.xbox.gamespy.com/media/737/737698/vids_1.html

Yeah, yeah. Call it player hating. And yeah, yeah, we know manny is fucking great. But you know what? Personality-wise, he really, really sucks. And is mad obnoxious. How many other players refer to THEMSELVES routinely as "GREAT" players?



FUCK YOU MANNY!

2005 National League Standings
EAST	W	L	PCT	GB	HOME	ROAD	RS	RA	STRK	L10
Atlanta	62	45	.579	-	35-15	27-30	502	407	Won 1	8-2
Washington	56	50	.528	5.5	32-19	24-31	408	434	Lost 1	2-8
Florida	54	50	.519	6.5	29-24	25-26	480	454	Lost 1	7-3
Philadelphia	55	52	.514	7	33-23	22-29	498	502	Lost 2	5-5
NY Mets	54	52	.509	7.5	33-21	21-31	479	439	Won 2	5-5

2005 National League Wild Card Standings
NATIONAL	W	L	Pct	GB	HOME	ROAD	RS	RA	STRK	L10
Houston	58	48	.547	-	36-15	22-33	456	407	Won 1	8-2
Washington	56	50	.528	2	32-19	24-31	408	434	Lost 1	2-8
Florida	54	50	.519	3	29-24	25-26	480	454	Lost 1	7-3
Philadelphia	55	52	.514	3.5	33-23	22-29	498	502	Lost 2	5-5
Chicago Cubs	54	52	.509	4	27-26	27-26	481	471	Won 1	6-4
NY Mets	54	52	.509	4	33-21	21-31	479	439	Won 2	5-5
Milwaukee	52	55	.486	6.5	30-20	22-35	487	462	Lost 1	5-5
Arizona	52	56	.481	7	25-29	27-27	471	552	Lost 1	5-5
LA Dodgers	48	58	.453	10	26-27	22-31	458	507	Won 1	4-6
Cincinnati	47	59	.444	11	31-26	16-33	543	610	Lost 1	6-4
San Francisco	45	60	.429	12.5	22-31	23-29	454	536	Lost 3	3-7
Pittsburgh	45	62	.421	13.5	24-28	21-34	424	507	Lost 1	4-6
Colorado	38	67	.362	19.5	27-27	11-40	459	583	Won 2	4-6

don't think... just go with RAW EMOTION! Thinking is for LIBERALS!

Just so you know.... I really, really hate Bush. And in the coming days and months, you will know why. For now, just enjoy this INTEWRVIEW WITH AN IRAQ WHO JUST LOVES HIS NEW FREEDOM!

Well, here it is. My first post. I'm sure you have no idea what the hell I am doing and who the hell I am. But you will. YOU WILL!

Fromnews and politics to sports, from girls to movies, TV and video games, books... you name it, its here! (*or "WILL BE")

Keep checking for some fun shiznit

B