Thursday, 2 February 2006 - 9:45 PM CST

But what happens when individuals choose a new system ---by means of the democratic process--- which cannot work with any of the other systems around it?

You must be referring to the Likud Party, right? You have described it perfectly. In fact, it's whole reason for being is to prevent anyone working with "the other systems around it." Likud's base left Sharon in the same heartbeat he began talking seriously about a two-state solution.

Israel as "occupying power" on lands seized through military invasion in 1967 is guilty of crimes against humanity on the Palestinians, thoroughly documented and of long-standing. They have flouted U.N. resolutions for years and years while hiding behind the money and power of the U.S., without which they could not survive for eight seconds. Withholding the tax revenues the Palestinians are legally entitled to and need because of ugly words they don't like? Why not? No atrocity is too great an abomination for Israel.

Friday, 3 February 2006 - 6:17 AM CST

Here's something you were concerned about:a woman's place under the new democratically-elected (U.N. certified) Hamas-majority government in Palestine.

Friday, 3 February 2006 - 10:52 AM CST

I'm thinking National Darwinism----let these countries fend for themselves or be erased.

I appreciate Carter's good intentions (road to hell and all that aside), but I have to say that the idea of funneling money through the UN is just as likely to come back to bite us as handing it directly to Hamas. The UN itself is bent on the destruction of our national sovreignty. Why hand money to the guy who's raping us so he can hand it to the guy who's threatening to blow us up? I think we should keep our borrowed money to ourselves.

The people of Palestine don't seem to be cohesive enough to defeat any enemy with any resounding success, anyway. I also would love to imagine (as Carter does) that the people who run the new ruling party might take this as an opportunity to inject a little sanity and rationality into their base, but I don't expect enough change fast enough to warrant putting our own country further in debt to help them out.

Israel, too. I think they chose to pick the most politically agitant locale for their country and no one should offer to help them protect it from their neighbors from whom they stole it. I admire many of the scholars that country has produced, but I know it is a nation-state ultimately built by people who profit from war and who knew full well it would generate war profits eternally just by being located in the "holy land". I pity anyone who is born into that country's legacy of invasion. They are right to defend their home, but their enemies have as much right to rail against their very existence in the region.

I must be one of those dangerous 'isolationists' the president was talking about in his State of the Union vaudeville show the other night. I just don't think we should be sending spare lifeboats to save a drowning rat when our own ship is sinking fast.

As much as I tend to like Carter for being a sensible man of peace (ineffective, perhaps, but not unwise), I think his ideas about where American dollars should go are wrong.
I'll be glad when Old Georgie is an ex-president, too. He's even less capable than Carter at making a good decision. Too bad our so-called republicans and so-called conservatives can't seem to tell him 'no'.

Sunday, 5 February 2006 - 9:57 AM CST

> Turning the other cheek means kissing my ass real pretty, moron.

Not on zee left side, not on zee right side, but right in zee middle...