The Spine - All Comments

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:38:03 GMT

Well then, noga, feel gratified that I hold you in contempt. You have earned it.

The very fact that you are unable to distinguish between defeating political opponents in an open, democratic election and "liquidating" them tells us everything we need to know about you.

Whatever your politics, you behave like a fascist, loudly and insistently accusing others of your own execrable behavior. You are simply appalling, surely the worst that Israel has to offer. If there are many more like you, the future of that nation is not bright.

Should anyone is interested in sorting out this brawl, although I doubt it, they are welcome to re-read this thread. I have, and nothing here is as you claim it to be. You are a liar.

re: While I’m Gone …

ironyroad — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:58:46 GMT

I don't think the contents of the posts reflect particularly well on anyone at this stage. I'm inclined to echo basman's proposition on thread-death a few entries back.

re: War All The Time

iambiguous — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:45:07 GMT

I just wanted to point out that Marty Peretz and George Will are the only pundits who have not weighed in on the Sarah Palin frenzy.

re: While I’m Gone …

noga1 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:02:32 GMT

"And it is rapidly growing into contempt"

You actually believe this to be an insult, coming from you?

I'm sure after your much vaunted success at liquidating Republicans from your town many people did not mind your contempt.

The more abusive you get, the more defensive you appear. Fortunately, the thread is here, the comments remain and all your shouts cannot erase your words, about thugs, knives and fascists and what not. These are your words. You cannot make them belong to others. But do continue to try.

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:17:37 GMT

I'm certainly sneering at you, noga. And it is rapidly growing into contempt. What is admittedly difficult to discern in a medium such as this is whether the disassociation between reality and your declared perceptions is the result of deliberate dissembling for rhetorical effect -- propaganda -- or of an unbalanced mind. Maybe it is both.

I'm not trying to be funny, noga. I will let you know when I am. But, rest assured, there is nothing amusing about you. Perhaps your increasing hysterical and offensive language is meant to provoke just the behavior you wish to accuse me of. I don't know. I do know this -- your ugliness as a human and your dishonesty are not concealed in the slightest by the veneer of literary sophistication. You are deserving of much worse than anything said about you here.

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:01:38 GMT

Just to be sure, I re-read every post on this thread of mine and of yours, noga. And you are officially nuts. You get frustrated that you make arguments that are both aggressive yet weak, easily shredded, and then resort to attacking other posters. When it comes back at you, you then complain bitterly about ad hominem attacks, even though the language is milder than yours and more firmly tied to specifics. This is precisely why I compared your style of argument to fascist propaganda; you engage in offensive and disreputable conduct while simultaneously loudly and falsely accusing others of doing just what you are doing. As you will see, if you bother to re-read, it is not I who threw the first stone, or even the first two or three stones, at anyone here. But, at some point, when people like you insist on making things personal, I am not going to abstain. And, of course, your instant response to a little bit of well-deserved discipline is to portray yourself as a martyr. Yuck.

re: While I’m Gone …

noga1 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:57:48 GMT

Roi:

You latest comment was fully expected. I know people like you take special pleasure in thumping their chests, gorilla fashion, as if a sneering at others is a skill to cultivate and be proud of. But, to paraphrase Disraeli, your petulance is not sarcastic but childish, and your tantrums are not invective; you lack the subtlety to make them so. You are just not funny and I suspect incapable of saying anything funny, ever. It is a handicap that goes well with that imponderable self-importance of yours, with the inclination for verbal violence.

In ancient Greek comedy there were three archetypes: the eiron, the alazon, the buffoon.

Generally, your behaviour fits that of the alazon, basically a braggart, who believes he is greater than everyonee else, only he isn't. His main function in the comedy is to block humor, civility, love. in other words, whatever may lead to greater understanding among people and a finer sense of harmony. You have made a consistent effort in this thread to block any possibility of getting to the bottom of Obama's statements about the settlements. You don't argue. You bludgeon (in that you are a little like the buffoon, only not funny).

__________________

In the meantime, some news had gone unnoticed in all this manufactured storm:

" Obama had requested $45.8 million for David's Sling, which received $72.9 million in 2009. David's Sling has been a project of Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the U.S. firm Raytheon.

The sources said they do not expect the administration to battle the congressional decision to restore U.S. aid to Israel. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, in an amendment to the foreign aid bill, expressed support for "complete accelerated co-production of Arrow missiles."

"It is the sense of Congress that Israel has the inalienable right to defend itself in the face of an imminent nuclear or military threat from Iran, terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor them," Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, said.

Congress also ordered an early transfer of U.S. military aid to Israel as part of the supplemental budget, signed by Obama on June 24. Under the bill, Israel would receive $555 million meant for fiscal 2010. "

www.worldtribune.com/.../me_israel0520_06_30.asp

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:12:48 GMT

Noga, you are really, seriously full of crap. Go back and re-read this thread why don't you, see who is shouting down whom, and come back when you have your wits about you.

"Knife" is a metaphor for the behavior of the likes of Elliott Abrams and you. He is a bureaucratic and verbal knife-fighter and so are you, at least as far as the verbal goes. Your pretensions to civility are risible, truly.

Should you have the urge to lampoon me, well, go right ahead and give it your best shot. I know from past experience that you are not up to the job. You, on the other hand, are a very easy mark, so much so that I mostly refrain from going after you when you deserve it. It makes me feel guilty to pick on someone as wildly self-contradictory and intellectually vulnerable as you are. It is sort of like trading jibes with an adolescent. Unseemly.

re: While I’m Gone …

noga1 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:57:49 GMT

You employ the language of violence and overkill to shOut down your rivals.

re: While I’m Gone …

noga1 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:22:49 GMT

Roi, it is becoming rapidly clear that you are the one not getting it. You just don't get that when you resort, repeatedly and stubbornly and hermetically, to language such as "I proceed to rip out the throat of the attacker" you have forfeited any pretension to being taken seriously. You invite scorn. You deserve to be lampooned.

It is actually pretty obvious who has fascist inclinations. You probably believe that all is fair in politics, and proceed accordingly to smash everything that does not align itself with your strict vision of how things should be. You employ the language of violence and overkill to shut down your rivals. If they are not easily amenable to your "persuasion" out comes the hammer.

I believe I noted before how like a Gorgias you are; wining the argument is everything, and to hell with the truth and basic civility. Your demeanour and mode of engagement in this thread convince me I was wrong. You are much worse than Gorgias. I don'tt hink her esorted to this kind of boundless demonization.

If your kind of discourse had come with a whole different set of convictions , Conservative ones, everyone here would have been down on you like a ton of bricks. You are fortunate that most posters in this thread at least share your politics which is what makes them tolerate your verbal violence, as long as it serves their side of the story.

Yu are actually an anti-Obama. You make a mockery of eveything that Cass Sunstein had claimed on his behalf. I'd like to believe Obama would not thank anyone who supported him so actively with these kind of tactics.

And you never explained why you resorted to mentioning knives twice in this thread. What's that all about?

re: 150 Years And Not One Day More

P.E.Overbrook — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:19:50 GMT

Madoff is the big fish - the scapegoat.

Where are the crooked hedge funds and the shorts who manipulated the market and looted 401Ks

Madoff didn't do that.

The crooked hedge funds did.

Where's the investigation?

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:32:45 GMT

No, I don't think you are getting it at all, noga.

There are no more Republican officeholders of any consequence in my town. They were all defeated. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Actually, I'm sure it was clear from the context, but it serves your ends to twist anything I say beyond recognition.

I don't know whether you are a fascist, I rather doubt it, but you do employ some of their favorite propaganda techniques as your preferred style of argument -- this rather twisted reply is a good, but minor, example. What, other that hysteria, would make you think that I have designs on your existence or wish you ill? That I respond to your insulting behavior in kind? Like I said, if you want to be nasty, grow a thick skin. Otherwise, you are constantly going to feel your existence is threatened.

re: Postscript To "He Hit Me..."

liberal reformer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:15:16 GMT

Enough with the Hitler analogies. Boneill, you are dead on in your refutation. Further, I did not argue for quietism, I merely opined that open US involvement in Iran's affairs would be counterproductive. I am all for civil society getting exercised over the repression by the Iranian regime. The above post is further evidence - as if we need any more - that reading and thinking skills are in short supply.

re: While I’m Gone …

noga1 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:32:55 GMT

"Your problem, noga, is that you like to stick the knife in and then run and hide from the response. Typical of right wing bullies who like to pick fights but don't know how to fight them if their targets are not cowed into submission."

"There are no more Republicans."

So let's see how well I understand your grasp of reality: I am a Republican and a fascist, whose style of engagement in a discussion is to to stick the knife and then run away and hide in fear of your righteous rage. And your aim is to eliminate me from existence. Am I more or less getting you correctly, roi?

That's the second time you mention knives in this thread. Are you all right?

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:55:40 GMT

Oh my, noga. If you bothered to read what I said, or quoted in context, I only "go for the throat" when I am personally the target. If someone wants to play rough, I don't mind what with being a professional and all. But I'm much happier to engage in a civil discourse because, as I said, its just more interesting.

If you have a thick skin, you can be as nasty as you like. If you don't have a thick skin, best to be polite. For example, you can dislike Obama all you want, but then be prepared if others don't think much of Netanyahu, Bush, Begin or the other stars of the reactionary firmament. Your problem, noga, is that you like to stick the knife in and then run and hide from the response. Typical of right wing bullies who like to pick fights but don't know how to fight them if their targets are not cowed into submission. So, by all means, keep away if that suits you, but don't imagine that you can be nasty and then run away or wring your hands over harsh words coming back at you. You get what you play for.

As far as whether it worked, we swept three elections in a row in a town with an equal D-R enrollment. There are no more Republicans. And we didn't have to initiate the rough play, we just had to be ready to punch back when they started in. They were so off-balance from not being met with the normal passivity of the left that they didn't know what to do with themselves.

re: While I’m Gone …

noga1 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:16:06 GMT

Choice quote from roi:

"I proceed to rip out the throat of the attacker. "

This kind of savage tactics used against the kind of posters here who are not emanoured with Obama seems a bit of an overkill. It makes me wonder how really successful were roi's tactics in the real world. People are not as stupid as he seems to think. It reminded me of a scene in Shrek (I):

"[while looking at Lord Farquaad's huge castle]

Shrek: Do you think he's maybe compensating for something? "

Lord Farquaad is the rather ferocious prince who invokes more amusement than fear because of the contrast between his diminutive stature and the delusion of grandeur of his ambitions.

Perhaps it's a snarl of fury from one who thinks his genius deserves greater recognition.

Whatever it is, better to keep away from someone as incontinent as that.

re: While I’m Gone …

roidubouloi — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:34:11 GMT

Hmm. Is route 443 now open to the Palestinians?

Seems to me that a bit more than a year ago I was a passenger in a car traveling on a highway in the West Bank that was divided between an Israeli side and a Palestinian side, but I was not paying that much attention and could be mistaken. I do recall being acutely uneasy, as I always am on those occasions when my brother-in-law takes the route from Jerusalem to the Arava that passes through the West Bank. Long time, however, since I have visited any town there and actually been in a car that was stopped let alone got out. Call it my vivid imagination, but to me the hostility seems palpable.

As far as invective from the left, that is no doubt commonplace in Israel. Not here. Here, the shrieking and imprecations are overwhelmingly from the right.

Shabbat shalom.

re: War All The Time

J. Dyer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:57:00 GMT

“But there is one very serious consequence to the decline of nation states, and it is the growing moral irrelevance of the United Nations which was premised precisely on the the model of such representative polities. Power in the U.N. now, however, is built on shady alliances among mostly illegitimate governments, many of which sit on top of actually warring factions, using the weapons and tactics of terror. So it is not surprising that there is no real power at all in the organization. It is an elaborate and costly charade, and it wouldn't even be a charade if it did not reside in New York.”

I agree that the Nation State is in decline, Marty.

I am not sure thought that the UN moral irrelevancy is a consequence of that. Till the 1990’s the UN was also built around an alliance of ideologically driven warring factions. The only difference is that the factions today as well as the ideologies are quite different. It’s the UN itself which while premised on the sovereignty of the Nation State has worked to undermine it ideologically if not actually.

“I do think Marty has his history wrong, many recent wars have been fought in imperfectly formed nations, where colonial powers drew borders as they saw fit, depriving some people of what should have been a nation (such as the Kurds) and giving others nations that really have no logic.”

Blackton, true in some cases, but in places like the Balkans the wars fought there antedate the drawing up of borders by colonial powers. The same is true in many other places around the globe. The Kurds for example are dispersed among a number of different States. It would have been impossible to place them in a single area since so many of them live in Turkey which would have fought any attempt to separate Kurdish territory which it controlled.

The nation State emerged in Europe (and in China) only after centuries of warfare and ethnic cleansing and it would have been impossible to use that model on peoples in places like southern Africa (south of the Sahara).

The US also offers a successful model of the nation State but we too worked very hard into assimilating disparate peoples into one nation by insisting that they adopt the Constitution as their own and to use only English as a public language. (This too took time.) This model is being revered here and we don’t know what the long term consequences will be.

re: While I’m Gone …

basman — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:22:22 GMT

It's offcial: this thread is dead.

I just said so.

re: War All The Time

basman — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:14:54 GMT

In America the men are so umanly (Michael Jackson as protoypical American man) and the women so manly (Martina Navratilova as prototypical American woman) that pants and pant suits are their unisexual common denominator. In Canada where men are men and women know their place it's a strict divide: pants and petticoats and nothing in between. And right now, for example, as a typical manly Canadian male I am wearing something frilly, pink and silly.

I'll put my beaver against your eagle any day.