Larry Craig: Don’t Let Foreign Countries “Jerk Us Around By The Gas Nozzle”

July 18th, 2008, 11:19 AM EDT

Does that mean our stance on this should be narrow?

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=4vqANJCATrE]

Posted in Liberaland by Alan
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Responses to this post...

  1. He should know about getting jerked around by his “gas nozzle”

    Posted by LV Lives
    July 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am

  2. lol, LV. the funniest thing about this vid is that the guy in the background was able to keep a straight face. he must not have been able to hear Craig speaking.

    do you guys have any opinions on the resusal to parole Susan Atkins, the Charles Manson follower who killed Sharon Tate? she is now dying of brain cancer, and was seeking compassionate release. her release was denied. she cut Sharon Tate’s pregnant belly open to shut her the hell up, as Tate was pleaing for the life of her unborn baby. then Atkins tasted her blood and wrote pig on the wall. she was supposedly on LSD at the time.

    so what do you think- should the parole board have been more compassionate?

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080715/ap_on_re_us/manson_follower

    Posted by Cheryl Carroll
    July 18th, 2008 at 11:54 am

  3. Hahah Cheryl, I like the way you put it. She can die in prison. That whole group can. We’ll at least pay for her medical care and she’s guarenteed a bed and 3 meals. She was sentenced to life. Welllllllll

    Posted by LV Lives
    July 18th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

  4. So Alan, by how large of a margin are the Republicans going to outnumber the Democrats on H&C tonight? Three to one, four to one, or five to one?

    Anyone want to place any bets. I’m betting two segments with Karl Rove, one with Dick Morris, one with a Republican pundit, and then one with a Democrat and a Republican. So four to one.

    Posted by Tom
    July 18th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

  5. This Larry Craig stuff is one constant train wreck. I Love it!

    And Cheryl, I say let the bitch rot.

    Posted by Dave from Kentucky
    July 18th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

  6. Atkins should be shown all the compassion she extended to Tate and the other victims, and she should die in prison.

    Posted by RC from Smithtown
    July 18th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

  7. Nice post, Alan…I appreciate the humor. I actually wish Senator Craig would take a *strong* stance morally and resign. Again, not about being gay, but about SOLICITING BATHROOM SEX.

    Cheryl, that seems kind of difficult. It’s been 40 years but punishment is punishment, especially for such a heinous crime. I remember when Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted killer, was asking for clemency from the death penalty because she became a Christian. George W., governor at the time, denied it. Obviously the legitimacy of the death penalty can be questioned but I think he was right to maintain the punishment. It’s punishment more than reform. Same goes for this person. When we can resurrect Sharon Tate (and her unborn child) then perhaps Atkins should be let go. Hard to show compassion towards such brutality, even after 40 years and in this situation. Perhaps I’m not compassionate enough.

    Tom, by how large of a margin are the media and journalists going to stay liberal? 10 to 1? 9 to 1? I’m guessing it’s about 9 to 1.

    Posted by flap
    July 18th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

  8. Hey everyone, check this page out and pass it on

    http://capwiz.com/cfif/issues/alert/?alertid=11107251

    Posted by LV Lives
    July 18th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

  9. I agree with Alan, gay people like larry craig are a disgrace.
      
    Everyone knows the real gay people pledge their allegiance to the democrat party.
      
    I like the outrage about a gay looking for sex in a public bathroom. It’s about time gays looking for sex in bathrooms be subject to the hate of the democrats.

    Posted by Brandon Wolner
    July 18th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

  10. Alan, post this one

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg

    Posted by LV Lives
    July 18th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

  11. Well then Brandon, why are there more republican gays than democratic gays. You know, being that republicans have that “family values” thing going.
    http://www.badmouth.net/top-five-republican-gay-sex-scandals/

    Posted by TDro
    July 18th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

  12. LV- as i said last night while we were blogging live, i don’t have any opinions on capital punishment. however, i think that if the argument is that capital punishment is cruel, then life in prison MUST mean life in prison. if a criminal does something that is not heinous enough to warrant a life sentence w/out parole, then they won’t get it. they’ll just get life, or 25 years, etc.

    dave- she’s not even rotting. she’s in jail and receiving much better medical care than i am. as LV said, she’s getting 3 meals a day, guaranteed. i have to sit, write, and plan out my meals to make sure that there’s enough to last.

    rc- as far as compassion goes… i think that we’re doing our job as a society by providing her with basic life necessities. she’s not going hungry, her brain cancer is not going untreated. she’s able to receive visits from her husband and other family members. her husband built her a website here:

    http://www.susanatkins.org/

    it’s interesting to look at.

    Posted by Cheryl Carroll
    July 18th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

  13. Yeah Atkins is being treated humanely, I presume, which is more than she extended to her victims, so I don’t see why anyone would think she’s deserving of clemency.

    And, frankly, I don’t know where we came up with the legal basis for governors and presidents having the power to overrule juries and judges, but by and large I think it’s a crock–and in the case of presidents it too often seems to be used to immunize people committing criminal acts on behalf of the political party in the White House.

    Posted by RC from Smithtown
    July 18th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

  14. true rc…and proof of that is how border patrol agents Ramos and Compean are still sitting in federal prisons for doing their jobs and everyone but 3 congressmen and over a million citizens are ignoring their situation.

    Posted by LV Lives
    July 18th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

  15. “Tom, by how large of a margin are the media and journalists going to stay liberal? 10 to 1? 9 to 1? I’m guessing it’s about 9 to 1.”

    –flap.

    I don’t know flap, but I don’t care. Since we were discussing Fox, and you could only dodge the fact that Fox is blatantly in the tank for the Republican Party. It’s not surprising that so many right-wing degenerates lurk on the blog of the Fox News Channel’s designated “liberal”.

    Posted by John
    July 18th, 2008 at 5:40 pm

  16. Its too bad larry missed the bus when it comes to “drill here drill now” larry must have been under somebodys desk or in a bathroom stall???

    Posted by Dazed & confused
    July 18th, 2008 at 5:40 pm

  17. Craig should have resigned when he pled guilty. We don’t need criminals in the Senate.. they’re enough semi-criminals in there already.

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 18th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

  18. I think Larry’s just lonely.

    Posted by Epiphany
    July 18th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

  19. “The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.”
    - Mark Twain in Eruption

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 18th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

  20. Hey John, why are you posting on the blog of Fox’s “designated liberal” then? Doesn’t that make you an accomplice to being a sellout? I can say that the moon is made of green cheese or Obama is a Muslim or a lot of other untruths and conspiracy theories. Fox tilts conservative. That’s pretty clear, just as most other media tilts liberal. To say that “Fox is blatantly in the tank for the Republican Party” is another one of those conspiracy theories.

    Vince, I don’t get Larry Craig…he has no shame, apparently.

    Posted by flap
    July 19th, 2008 at 1:14 am

  21. Gotta go to the restroom Larry ? LOL!
    Wave em in baby !!!! LOL !
    Oh; a faggot is a hot dog look it up in the websters ! LOL !

    Posted by Rev Two Cents.blogspot.com
    July 19th, 2008 at 2:06 am

  22. We’ve been jerked around by the gas nozzle for years, and he and his coworkers have allowed it and will continue to allow it.

    Posted by The Conservative
    July 19th, 2008 at 7:05 am

  23. What is amazes me is when conservatives talk as though it is a FACT that the media is biased towards the left.

    Conservatives who I know personally are aghast when you say the media gives the benefit of the doubt to Republicans.

    It REALLY seems that they are so shocked because THEIR sources repeat ‘liberal media, liberal media’ endlessly so that they just assume that EVERYONE knows THAT, when in reality, 45%-55% of the people paying ANY attention think it is just the opposite.

    Without even seeing much MSM, one would assume that these HUGE corporate entities, would love the party that would deregulate their industry.
    Once you see what passes for news, it becomes even MORE clear.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 7:56 am

  24. I love it how the hardcore Lefties are the only people on earth who want to entertain the fiction that the press doesn’t overwhelmingly have a left-leaning bias in general.

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 8:43 am

  25. Here’s your liberal media…(For the “hardcore” right.):

    < Sumner Redstone, CEO of CBS ’s parent company Viacom, made an unusual political statement at a gathering of corporate leaders in Hong Kong (Asian Wall Street Journal, 9/24/04):
    I don’t want to denigrate Kerry… but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people…. But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company.

    Redstone repeated these sentiments in an interview with Time (10/4/04):
    There has been comment upon my contribution to Democrats like Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry is a good man. I’ve known him for many years. But it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.

    < Conservatives admit it among themselves:

    ~ Richard Bonn, former RNC chair said,
    “There is some strategy to bashing the liberal media…if you watch any great coach,what they do is try to ‘work the refs’. Maybe the ref will cut you some slack the next time”.

    ~ Bruce Bartlett said in NRO: “the idea that the media tilts towards liberals is absurd.”

    This myth of a “liberal media” is just there to manipulate the people.

    < I saw a marine who was the liason between the military and the media, for Centcom, in Qater.

    He said that Fox News was just like al Jazeera: both tell their veiwers what they want to hear.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 8:57 am

  26. >Sumner Redstone, CEO of CBS ’s parent company Viacom

    Yeah.. all of a sudden MTV became the propaganda arm of the RNC. LOL,..

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 9:52 am

  27. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with MTV, any more than it has to do with the gasbags on Fox News, bloviating about the “moral decay”, while promoting that SAME moral decay on other Fox networks.

    It is about the fact that the bottom line of the big media moguls is better served with Republicans in power.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 10:06 am

  28. ooooh now I get it. Andrea Mitchell is now a mouthpiece of the RNC.

    Got it.

    It’s all so clear now.

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 10:32 am

  29. Iran rejects enrichment freeze at nuclear talks

    Tehran officials rule out possibility of halting uranium enrichment as world powers convene in Geneva to discuss contested nuclear program, first such meeting to be attended by high-ranking US diplomat. EU’s Solana continues to press Iran to accept ‘freeze-for-freeze’ proposal

    =====

    Oh uh.. that puts in a kink in the “appease Iran by going along with their false desire to negotiate” policy.

    Now what?

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 10:36 am

  30. You don’t have to be a “mouthpiece”, you just need to be less adversarial than you should be.

    This “You are either 100% or 0%” is a false dilemma frequently employed by the right.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 10:50 am

  31. You’re the one with the silly dilemna.

    It goes something like .. Corporations are evil. Republicans are evil. Sumner said one time that evil Republicans benefit his evil corporation, therefore all the news media is slanted to the right to benefit the evil corporations.

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 10:58 am

  32. If I lived in Iran, and I saw that:
    . The US has troops on two borders,
    . That THEY are the one who has invaded other countries,and are threatening to attack my country,
    . That they already OVERTHREW a popular leader and installed a brutal dictator in my country,
    . That they ONLY attack those countries who DON’T have nukes,
    . That they are the only country who ACTUALLY used nukes….

    I’d perhaps want my country to nuke up too.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 10:59 am

  33. If you lived in Iran, you’d be witnessing your family be crushed by the regime. You would have no freedom. You would be miserable,, your economy would be in shambles.

    Your life would be dicatated to by religious clergy.

    You would want nothing more than the restoration of your proud Persian heritage.

    You would want to see the dignity returned to the women in your family.

    You would want an end to the isolation caused by the government.

    You would resent the Left in America for having naively supported the subversion against the Shah by the Iranian Acedemic Left and the Clerics in the late 70s.

    And most of all, you would want the Left in America and Europe to stand up for the values the regimes attack every day, and for the Left to stop making excuses for the dictators who are brutalizing everyone in Iran.

    I know this because I actually read what Iranians in the Diaspora say.

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 11:24 am

  34. If you dont want to listen to me.. you should listen to the Iranian people… here is the voice of Amil Imani…

    This is what he wrote when that pathetic NIE came out regarding Iran’s nuclear program. It ijust as valid today:

    http://www.amilimani.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=87&Itemid=2

    The Bomb, Iran’s Mullahs and Doomsday
    Sunday, 16 December 2007
    It is the holiday season and we all have received this most welcome present: the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear problem. Since 2003 the mullahs running Iran have, on their own and through their own goodwill, have ceased all activities aimed at acquiring the bomb, so says the report.

    Superficial reading of the CIA’s presentation of the findings is the comfort pill that successfully sugar-coats swallowing even the most unpalatable news.

    A word of advice for President Bush: now you can also relax and give the celebratory mood a boost by ordering the armed forces to stand down. We have enough trouble in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots of the world. This huge worry about the mullahs’ bomb is a distraction and doesn’t rate anything. Why listen to the warmonger alarmist Dick Cheney and his Neo-cons and keep us all in a jittery mood about the men-of-Allah mullahs?

    Mr. President, in addition to the comforting NIE report (which was incidentally ordered by your adoring fans, Congress Democrats), you probably want to hear the dissenters and the skeptics before impulsively singing the praise of the mullahs, as Jimmy Carter did, or hastily launching a re-enactment of “ Shock and Awe,” this time on Iran.

    * Prudence demands that you, as our President, make your decision on the basis of facts, first and foremost, and then weigh the opinions, conjectures, and advice of others. You need to do the same with the report. Don’t let the medium, the clever packaging of the report, become or even obscure the message. Once you do that, you will find an awful lot of troubling issues. Let me summarize things as I see them.

    * Iran, under the late shah, launched a plan to achieve “Surge Capacity:” A code word for getting all the ingredients and procedures down pat for making the bomb quickly, short of actually making it; a clever power-play.

    * A saint and revered man of God, according to none other than Jimmy Carter (who considers himself as another great man of God), the late Ayatollah Khomeini cancelled the nuclear program with the same saintly and prompt edict that he cancelled the life of thousands of Iranians for daring to disagree with his system of medieval Sharia rule.

    * After Khomeini’s demise, another mullah much more crafty and ambitious, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, became the president and re-activated the program secretly, while the IAEA watchdog snoozed contentedly on the job.

    * Decades later, some Iranians opposed to the rule of the murdering mullahs finally by-passed the watchdog and showed the world proof positive that the mullahs were racing tirelessly with their scheme of getting the ultimate weapon. This information greatly alarmed the United States of America and Israel. The revelation seemed to bother no European nation, the Russians, or the Chinese. Somehow these nations figured that they would let the U.S. do all the worrying about the looming menace while they focused on the lucrative business deals they had diligently worked out with the mullahs: something reminiscent of the cozy deal the French and the Russians had going with the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein.

    * As time went on, you, Mr. President vowed that Iran would never be allowed to achieve its goal during your watch. You kept using all kinds of threats and promises in order to persuade the mullahs to drop the project, to no avail. When a belligerent end-of-the-worlder, Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad, became the Islamic Republic of Iran’s president, things started heating up greatly. Time and again, the bellicose Ahmadinejad kept vilifying the Great Satan and its sidekick Israel for having the gall to demand Iran abandon its program while his two main adversaries had their own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad informed the world that what the Islamic Republic does is within its own national rights. He shored up his credibility cleverly by dispatching endless series of negotiators to meetings with the Europeans. He was successfully stalling for time, while working around the clock to get to the Surge Capacity.

    * The NIE report assures us that the IRI abandoned its nuclear weapon program some three years ago. So, there is really nothing to fear and even less reason to maintain the dangerous game of brinksmanship with the mullahs. Upon superficial reading of the report one may get the impression that the mullahs are not exactly the saints of Allah as Jimmy Carter had thought them and helped bring them to power. Yet, they neither are as scheming un-repenting villainous zanies that their enemies portray them.

    * Now we have something that no one could imagine was possible only weeks ago. The latest comprehensive NIE report has something in its sleigh to appease, if not please, all the quarrelling children. Ahmadinejad boasts to the world that it stood up to the Great Satan, embarrassed it and didn’t even blink. You, Mr. President, can meekly end your term without having to make good on the threat of using force to make the mullahs drop their bomb quest. The Democrats who hate you and the Republicans more than they dislike or fear the zany bomb-wielding mullahs can happily celebrate and have new ammunitions for their weapons to capture the White House. The IAEA can keep its plush job of trotting around the world and doing nothing to warrant its existence. The Europeans can keep on doing lucrative business with the gas station the mullahs operate. The U.N. Security Council can stall, water down, or completely abandon any new sanctions on the IRI. The Russians and the Chinese can delight at the U.S. humiliation and keep on making money from their nuclear and oil deals. See how great it is? Just one report and a huge problem is solved and everyone is happy.

    * But I hate to be the dissenting voice. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, particularly now that the West and much of the non-Islamic world is preparing for holiday festivities. Threats to my life by the Islamists have failed to silence me. I have not taken to remaining silent just to keep people in their comfortable deadly delusions. Here is my take on the whole thing.

    1. The best predictor of the future is the past. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been at the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, doubletalk, double-dealing and treachery. Hence, for the NIE’s report to be based primarily on supposed interception of secret conversations of high-ranking Iranian leaders is nothing more than a practice in gullibility. Prudence demands better proofs, much better proofs.

    2. The defected/abducted Iranian general Askari a while back was seen by some as a veritable trough of inside information about Iran’s nuclear program. Yet, this man may simply be a planted mole.

    3. If indeed the IRI has abandoned its entire program to achieve Surge Capacity, then why is it that it does not allow the IAEA unimpeded access to over some 30 known facilities? The IAEA is allowed to visit only a handful of them, and only with prior notice.

    4. The bleeding heart liberals, otherwise known as the Useful Idiots, citing the NIE demand in chorus that we should immediately begin negotiating with the mullahs with no pre-conditions at all. We never had much leverage with the mullahs. What little leverage we had is wiped out by our own NIE. What these Useful Idiots don’t seem to understand is that one can only negotiate with a party who is indeed interested in negotiation.

    The extortion-high oil money has intoxicated the mullahs. They see themselves as the Tolooi (ascending like the rising sun) and non-Islamic world as the Ofooli (sinking like the descending sun). Why negotiate any live-and-let-live arrangement with a dying adversary, they reason. The mullahs are only interested in the eventual full surrender of the non-Islamic world. Any concession they make is either tactical or altogether worthless. These villains have a mile-long sheet of past broken promises and treachery. The Useful Idiots neglect to tell us how one negotiates with these inveterate connivers. They seem to think that throwing a couple of bones to the mullahs will keep them gnawing at the bones and leave their own flesh intact: a deadly delusional and wishful thinking.

    5. Some influential pundits pontificate that we can live with a nuclear Iran, if it comes to that. They say that Iran would never use the bomb. Because the mullahs, the fanatic zanies as they may be, are not going to risk Iran becoming a radioactive parking lot by the massive U.S. retaliation. Wrong. Once again, these well-healed arrogant know-it-all pundits are seeing things through their own spectacles.

    The civilized people cherish and celebrate life. The Islamists relish death as stated in their ideology and practiced daily. Recall what Hassan Nasrullah; the leader of Lebanon Hizbollah had to say about why his people would prevail in the war with Israel. He said, “Israelis love life. We Muslims love death.” These fanatics firmly believe in an incomparably magnificent pleasure-filled next world that awaits the faithful Muslim. To them, this world is nothing but a heap of dust, while the next is a paradise of eternal lust.

    6. It is fine for Hassan Nasrullah to claim the love of death by the faithful. But, do these soldiers of Allah actually walk the walk and actively seek death? The answer is indeed a resounding yes. It is a pillar of belief in Islam that whichever side is killed, Islam and Muslims are the beneficiaries of the death. Based on this horrific ideology of death, the Muslims have visited death on untold numbers of both Muslims as well as non-Muslims. The Khominist regime of the IRI sent tens of thousands of its own children to their death to clear minefields in its holy war with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Not limiting itself to this horrific act, the Khominists executed tens of thousands of political dissenters without the least due process. Islam wins, either when you kill or you get killed. That’s the motto of the religion of death.

    7. The killer Muslims joyfully strap on bomb vests and detonate them in a marketplace, in a wedding hall, in schools, in hospitals, in funeral processions, and even in mosques. These acts of killing and maiming innocent people happen daily. The bomber kills himself for the privilege of killing as many as possible in the process. The rewards that the killer is convinced awaiting him warrants the most hideous act. And there is an over-abundance of these murderers who vie with one another to kill and get killed.

    8. Suicide bombing that maims and kills dozens is often dismissed as an act of aberration by an individual deceived by ruthless conniving handlers. But, no one would ever contemplate using the nuclear bomb when it entails the certainty of his own destruction as well as his country, so goes the deterrence logic.

    Logic, what logic? Fanaticism generated by belief defies logic at every bend. A zealot end-of-the-worlder Ahmadinejad has already climbed to a position of great power. What if another Ahmadinejad-type gets to have his finger on the bomb’s trigger? Would he pull it, even if it is going to kill him and all his people? Only a fool would bet against it.

    My advice to the President and the people of my adopted country is: go ahead and make merry, enjoy the gift of life, but don’t let down your guard and make sure that no one lulls you into the deadly trap of complacency. Yes, if the mullahs get the bomb, they will make use of it in numerous ways. They will use it for blackmail, they will use it in small packages through untraceable proxies, and they might even launch it by their missiles in a homicide-suicide fashion which is their trademark. After all it is the mullahs’ deeply-held belief that their cataclysmic act will expedite the coming of the Saheb-ul-Zaman (the Lord of the Age), whence he would set the world on the righteous course while those who have hastened his coming will be immersed eternally in the joys of pleasure in Allah’s promised paradise

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

  35. I hate to tell you, but the theocracy in Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are the Persian version of the right wing here!

    All the Islamic extremists are right wingers.

    Actually, before Bush started his threats, Iran was moving towards a more pro American, pro democratic position.

    Since the revolution, what those
    third and fourth generations of Iranians have
    concluded is that they’ve had enough democracy
    to know that they want more of it, and
    they’ve had enough Islam crammed down their
    throats to know that they want less of it.

    This was the Iranian left!

    They lost power once Bush started his saber rattling. They looked at Bush and said: THEY have a belligerent, warlike, religious wacko….WE need a belligerent, warlike, religious wacko!

    Bush and Ahmadinejad are too sides of the same coin.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

  36. I have to go out now, but Vince doesn’t know the voice of the Iranian people anymore than those who listened to Curveball and Screwall knew the voice of the Iraqis.

    These people voted for Ahmadinejad for the same reason that people here who bought into the fearmongering, voted for Bush.

    Just a word of warning:

    Robert Paxton wrote in The Anatomy Of Fascism….
    Emotional themes that fascist elites develop when moving toward an authoritanian system:

    .A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of normal solutions.

    .A sense of victimhood, a sentiment that justifies any actions without any moral or legal limits.

    .The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.

    These are the very sentiments that got Bush a second term, and Ahmadinejad elected in the first place.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

  37. Regarding the fictional “reformist” period of Iranian government.. this article should dispell the notion that it was geniune it is originally from Iran’s news service, FARS (in Farsi), published by National Review.

    Here we have the Iranians stating that the so-called reformist Khatami years , whereby Iran had given the appearance of having the potential to reform and moderate itself was simply a tactic Iran used so they could establish the foundations of thier nuclear weapons plan.

    The former spokesman of the President Mohammed Khatami’s government (1997-2005) acknowledges in a debate that a goal of the reformism was to lull the West into a false confidence so that Iran could pursue illicit nuclear activities:

    Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami-era government spokesman, on a panel with Mehdi Faza’eli, general secretary of the Muslim Journalist Association: “We did our outmost to prevent the case of Iran being sent to the Security Council, whose judge is the United States…. During the confidence building-era, we entered the nuclear club, and despite the suspension [of uranium enrichment] we imported all the materials needed for our nuclear activities of the country…We were not subjected to sanctions regime during the reform era, but today, even our ophthalmologists are not allowed to import laser products [needed for operations]… If we pursue the right to nuclear energy for bombs, it is clear that the world does not want this, and if we want it for electricity, they say ‘you don’t have nuclear power plants, what do you want nuclear fuel for?’ Just take a look at what the Russians have done to us in the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

    With the current speed of enrichment, it will take us 25 years before we reach enrichment self-sufficiency. And who knows where we want to find nuclear fuel? And our reserves are unknown… The solution is to prove to the entire world that we want the power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities… The peak of our goal is an honorable life for the people. Do we want to become another North Korea…?

    There are only two ways of coming through the current crisis. One is what Khatami did by winning the election of 1997, and the other what [he did] after September 11th, which both guarded the country against war. Today, the solution is to marginalize the Ahmadinejad government from political decision-making in the nuclear energy field, with decisions be taken elsewhere.

    As long as we were not subjected to sanctions, and during our negotiations we could import technology. We should have negotiated for so long, and benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent that we could import all the technology needed. The adversary wanted the negotiations to come to a dead end and initiate a new phase. But we wanted to continue negotiations until the U.S. would be gone from the circle of negotiations. We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities…

    We consider access to all sciences and technologies of the humankind a necessity, but we also prioritize confidence building. Today, in the field of confidence building, Japan is the most advanced country in the world, but Japan can produce a nuclear bomb in less than a week…We achieved to divide the Europeans from the Americans, but today it has come to a point that the Europeans and the Ameicans have harmonized their policies.

    Thanks to former Royal Danish Defence College analyst Ali Alfoneh for finding this story in his scan of the Iranian press and providing a pre-dawn translation.

    The Iranians are way to clever for the gullible Useful Idiots .

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

  38. If anyone wants to see a demented Iranian military parade, check out this video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZIp0BIRUJs

    It ranks right up there with those stadium shows they do in North Korea.

    Posted by Vince P - Chicago
    July 19th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

  39. So I guess in Iran, they must be showing video of Rev Hagee, saying “‘And they the hunters should hunt them,’ that will be the Jews. ‘From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.’ If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can’t see that.”

    Rod Parsley saying “we get off on war”
    ,
    And Rev Ted Haggard the crystal Methodist.

    Maybe a little Rev Phelps.

    Actually what they DO show around are photos from abu Ghraib.

    Posted by OldLefty
    July 19th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

  40. I found this site called http://URAjerk.com maybe you can use it. It seems to help get me through the issues of dealing with some of the jerks I know. At least I can vent about these jerks, plus I get a kick out of sending them some cards.

    Posted by Lina Smith
    July 24th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

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