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Please stay on topic. Please don't be asses.
Hilarious and brilliant!
Or should I say, "Elevator band reservior!"
To quote the great political philosopher Jello Biafra, "We gab a bayg. Er naberness klonk. But all I got was a flailing grood."
He'll be front and centre in the Reasonable Brigade[TM] in no time flat.
Well, there are bits of reality in the gibberish. There is certainly a connection between jihadist terrorism and oil-soaked dictatorships, and between our thirst for that oil and global warming. Something prevents Beinart from seeing that it's the oil part that's central.
Keep it short. DemocraticShortList.com
Yep that just about says it. I mean, wouldn't Ivory coast have more trouble with pandemics and global warming? Don't they, basically, already?
And maybe Canada and parts of Siberia are LESS threatened by all of this, true...so let's take over Canada and Siberia!!! Is that where this is going?
...unless we stop them, they are going to take over the planet and eat our children with a knife and fork!
Really, I like children, but I could never eat a whole one.
What about all them Meskins?
You know what? I have no fucking idea what he meant by that.
And I'm not even going to try.
There are those who think the detainees who killed themselves at Gitmo were brought to justice. True patriots recognize these suicides as an act of war by jihadists.
Suicide is the central front of the war on terra.
god digby, that was my laugh for the day. thank you.
aimai
meskins ... global warmin evil ... i cannot stop the tears from incoherent laughter ... thanks folks ... so gosh awful much
ohholychristonastick... I'm lucky I wasn't sipping coffee when he went jihadism --> globalization --> global warming / pandemic / financial contagion, powered by--My brain is boggling just trying to repeat that.
Suicide as PR stunt, as 'asymmetrical warfare'. Hmmm.
As I say on Bartcop forum --
is there some shortage of rope? Hath poison become dear? Are there lacking sufficiently high precipices? Are weapons scarce, or perhaps thy hands are too unsteady? What preventeth you from seeking thy vengeance in kind?, retaliaing in precise exchange, returning deed for deed? What hindereth thee from rendering unto the Enemy precisely as he hath rendered unto thee?
Play nice! Maybe he was off his meds that day. Or maybe he was on his meds. It happens you know.
Bienart is a panicky, scaredy cat girly man.
Digby, you are great at debunking popular, mainstream notions that often fall into the categories of myth, conventional wisdom, propaganda or urban legend. One that bothers me most is the idea that the terrorists threaten our freedom.
Last night I saw a documentary called "Patriot Act", about comedians going on a USO tour in Iraq. The filmmaker, comedian Jeffrey Ross, kept thanking the solders for "protecting our freedom". You hear this a lot from the war supporters. But I don't see how this war in any way is about protecting our freedoms. In fact, most of our wars haven't really been about that with the possible exceptions of the Revolutionary war, WWII and maybe the Cold War, the last being more an existential threat.
Saddam was never a threat to our freedoms, and now, neither are the insurgents. The greatest threat, as it was under McCarthyism, has been from our own government. Not to put us on the same level as the troops bravely fighting and dying abroad, but in terms of our purpose, it is those of us actively opposing the Bush administration at home who are engaged in protecting our freedoms and constitutional rights.
DOOD i almost lost my coffee. fantazmik.
Slobs that they are, terrists consider everything, our children included, to be finger-food.
George Orwell wrote an essay on the degeneration of language into this kind of gibberish, "Politics and the English Language", in which words are employed for effect and not for meaning.
Christ. "Globalization-related technologies" reads more like something you'd find in a third-rate "international business" student's resume. Perhaps Beinart can go on to leverage existing infrastructures and facilitate the employment of alternative methodologies in order dynamically to meet the challenges of these globalization-related threats with innovative leadership initiatives.
References available on request.
Crapulent, perhaps my favorite word.
OK, it's certified gibberish. No connect between words and reality.
Parsing, however, I think Beinart was trying to say terrorism and global warming threaten the US more than any particular country threatens the US.
That would be sane of him to think, actually.
It's not a very clear sentence, but I'm not sure he's saying that we're more at risk than other countries from jihadism, global warming, etc. He could be saying that these things are more dangerous than other countries to the United States. Which is true.
As an Angry Liberal, I still think he's a dick.
Couldn't he just be saying that everything bad sits in the center rather than that terrorism somehow has "ties" to global warming?
It all sits there, violating laws of physics, occupying the same space at the same time...or a big quantum uncertaintly that will collapse into a coherent set of individual threats when observed? Shrodinger's Threats?
Here I have spent so much time and effort in determining an issue, lining up the relevant facts, drawing a conclusion, and explaining it (see Politics plus Stuff (blatant plug for my (mostly) political website)) and all I had to do was plug a dictionary into a word-randomizer program in order to be relevent and get multiple hits!
Shit! Why didn't anyone tell me?
It sounds like Beinart is reaching into the Big Bag of Friedman: these threats are "globalism-related" because they're stateless, decentered, networked, amorphous, horizontal, require international/transnational cooperation, etc.
fliyrwhig is right, but beinart is not correct in saying that they are a greater danger to the US than to other places--global warming is a greater threat to bangladesh and half the third world than it is to us in terms of real people deaths.
aimai
Parsing, however, I think Beinart was trying to say terrorism and global warming threaten the US more than any particular country threatens the US.
You know, I think you're right. I probably misread that (though to be far to me, it's unclear).
However, I disagree that's much more sane. The greatest threat to the U.S. remains nuclear weapons, specifically Russia's but possibly also China's. We should at the very least be trying to make sure there are no accidental launches, and stop militarizing space.
Global warming might one day be a threat on the same level -- i.e., something that actually could destroy us. The rest, no.
oh peter beinart, troll supreme. funny all roads seem to lead to same asshat factory. oh new haven, so much to answer for ...
grundig blaupunkt luger frug
watusi snarf wazoo
nixon, dirksen, nasahist
rebozo, boogaloo
sorry, that was from "bored of the rings"
(a major classic)
I'll bet a donut he can play Scrabble blindfolded....
Sorry, can't read past "Gerbil narcolepsy" without laughing my ass off. Thats awesome.
It harbors terrists.
I believe you are referring to The Terrish(TM).
Hilzoy noticed and pointed out on Obsidian Wings that Beinart graduated from college in 1993, and pointed out what seems to me an important thing: he has no experience of living with a real existential threat. He can know intellectually that we managed for decades with the threat of real conflagration from an enemy vastly more powerful and at least as evil as any modern wannabe, but it's not the same as having any practice living your life knowing that there are people fully prepared to kill you, whom you yourself can't stop or influence at all.
That made a lot of sense to me. I'm 40, and I know I don't know what it's like to be draft age during a draft. My older brothers were, and of course I can talk to them and read up on it and all, but it's not the same as living through it. It's just that I keep the limits of my own experience in mind when forming judgment, and Beinart seems not to have.
So what's the point of this post? Peter Beinart is not very articlate and it's funny to laugh at him? Not only is he speaking live, but the quoted passage is more of an offhand comment then a direct point in his answer. Cut him some slack, read the full Q&A, and you can find out that he's actually saying a couple interesting things. Jeebus, what a bunch of dicks.
I actually think Beinart's incoherent point is that these things threaten America's 'shining city on a hill' potential, and that they might tarnish our Joe Klein-y exceptionaliciousness by making us behave in bad ways.
I.e., great global disparities in wealth, jihadism, global warming, will undermine the ideals of American egalitarianism.
True enough, but so what?
Anon: Like you said, Peter Beinart is not very articulate. On top of which, he's representing the "liberal" side of the debate. As such, he's screwing over most liberals with his intellectual and verbal gibberish, however offhand. There needs to be a push for better representation and communication that's in line with actual liberalism. That is what we're doing.
On top of which, he burned his slack quota a good while ago.
What exactly is "financial contagion"? Maybe knowing that will make all the difference....
"Crapulent snurf machine? Crapulent snurf machine knob knobbler!" Isn't that a famous line from Peggy Noonan?
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