] Locations marked show total or near-total destruction of
] structures and do not convey lesser damage not visible
] from satellite images of this resolution. While there is
] reported extensive damage to the city and its inhabitants
] the 26 locations marked appear to indicate that major
] devastation is limited. A more complete and accurate
] account awaits the availability of comprehensive ground
] level images and reports.

Be sure to check out Cryptome's Fallujah coverage. This is one example. There are many, many others.

Eyeballing the Fallujah Kill Zone - 7

Elonka wrote:
] Decius wrote:
] ] The voice of moderation is gone. The baby boomers now
] ] completely control the country. Hold on to your hats.
]
] Um, just exactly what entire age range are you
] tar-and-feathering now?

Wish you hadn't asked that privately. I'm going to post this publically. I hope you don't mind.

"Tar-and-feathering" is open to interpretation.

I have tremendous respect for Mr. Powell. I know that you have as well. I think he has done tremendous things for this country. More then I could ever hope to achieve. I hope you won't argue that he wasn't a voice of moderation in this administration. I would further add that in doing so he represented the present elder Generation, who were too young to fight in WWII. That generation has played a pivitol role in our history. His resignation symbolizes the loss of their voice in our affairs as they grow old and retire. It is a loss that I lement, because it is their temperance that has on many occasions given us peace.

As they fade away, the nature of our country's character is changing. The future will be bold and hard, and so I said "hold on to your hats."

I'm a fan of a series of books by authors Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, who have argued that there is a pattern in American history that relates to generations. Generations fit into archtypes, and there is a repeating cycle of 4. Particular generations grow up in certain circumstances, and it gives them a particular character. That character impacts how they treat the world, and also how they raise their children, repeating the cycle. Furthermore, when certain kinds of generations are in certain places within their lives history tends to have certain characteristics.

Wikipedia has a short summary of the idea here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Howe

Whats key is that Baby Boomers fit their "Prophet" archtype spiritually driven, moralistic, focused on self, and willing to fight to the death for what they believe in.

Gen Xers fit their "Nomad" archtype, ratty, tough, unwanted, diverse, adventurous and extremely cynical.

Times in our history when a Prophet generation was in it's elder years and a Nomad generation was middle aged tended to be typified by a serious crisis, such as the Great Depression/WWII, or the American Revolution.

Quoting them from the USA-Today in 2001:

"The generations alive today have much in common with the generations alive in the USA around 1929. Elder veterans of the last total war -- the Civil War, that is -- were passing away. A moralistic generation born after the Civil War was deep in middle age. The free-agent barnstormers of the Lost Generation were wearing out, their Gen X-like pragmatism now a tired subject. A new generation of protected, special, scoutlike children was filling high schools and colleges.

That is why the 1990s bore so many similarities to the 1920s. What we are experiencing now, post-Sept. 11, resembles no year as much as 1930, whose mood shift historian Frederick Lewis Allen described as "bewilderingly rapid," as "an old order was giving place to the new," reflecting an "aching disillusionment of the hard-boiled era, its oily scandals, its spiritual paralysis, the harshness of its gaiety."

...

In 1770, did colonists expect a revolution? No.

In 1855, did Americans, North and South, expect a bloody civil war? No.

In 1925, did a roaring nation expect a stock collapse, depression and global war? No."

-=-=-=-

What do you expect?

] Secretary of State Colin Powell, who enjoyed enormous
] respect around the world, has resigned but will stay on
] until his replacement is named as Washington makes a new
] push for Middle East peace, officials said on Monday.

The voice of moderation is gone. The baby boomers now completely control the country. Hold on to your hats.

Powell Resigns!!

] If we lived in a primitive age, the ground at Langley
] would be laid waste and salted, and there would be heads
] on spikes. As it is, the answer to the C.I.A.
] insubordination is not just to move a few boxes on the
] office flow chart.

So, the "tabloid" version of the story is that Bush is clearing people out of the CIA who disagree with him. I have a hard time believing its true, but it really seems to be the case, at least on some level.

The New York Times - Op-Ed Columnist: The C.I.A. Versus Bush

Via Drudge Report. An impressive collection of battle shots.

Btw, does anyone know any details about the visual head gear the troops are wearing these days?

Raw Video Captures of The Battle of Fallujah

] As a squad from India Company passes by a way with a
] spray painted rocket propelled grenade launcher -- a real
] RPG round explodes against it. One Marines' face is
] burned by the powder and hot gas -- another has caught
] shrapnel in the leg, a third has been shot in the finger
] by the small arms fire that followed. The Marines are
] outraged. They turn their M-16's on the building to the
] west where they believe the shooter is hiding. But that's
] just an appetizer.

Kevin Sites Blog: Fallujah Street by Street

Elonka wrote:
] It pains me when I hear liberals refer to the
] religious right as "evil".

Hrm. I feel like I ought to respond to this again. Because it came up in our early discussion. And here it is again. And its not directed at me anymore, but when first presented you were twisting a position that I had expressed, and you still seem to be twisting that position.

Let me try to be as clear as possible about this. References that I make to Conservative Christians are a misnomer. I'm not actually referring to Conservative Christians. I am referring to the Conservative Christian political movement. To the extent that Conservative Christians feel that they want to practice their beleifs, and express their beliefs, and advocate their beleifs, without forcing others to conform to said beleifs against their will, they are not evil, and in fact I strongly defend their right to do these things.

However, this does not characterize the Conservative Christian political movement. When people talk about the "religious right" they aren't talking about Amish people. They're talking about the politically active religious right.

And when I say that this movement is evil, I am quite confident, and what I mean is not that it's intentions are bad. However, I'm quite confident that Al'Q beleives that its intentions are good as well. What I will say is that the radical fringes of this movement have blood on their hands, and that the political leadership of this movement is engaged in widespread deception, and that the ultimate goal of this movement is an outcome which has been proven, over and over again in history, to result in tremendous human suffering, and there can be no clearer definition of evil then that.

One can look directly to organizations, connected to this movement, which advocate and participate in terrorist attacks, such as in the 1996 Summer Olympics, in murders of physicians and lyncings of homosexuals, but it is not approriate to look at a political movement based on on the actions of it's radical fringe.

One must also look to the leadership, and see the deception that leadership engages in. At its heart that deception is the attitude that when someone engages in a behavior which you disapprove, they are forcing their beliefs on you, and that legislation is required to stop that behavior, so that you can be protected from it.

It is quite a straight forward matter of common sense that if someone is engaged in behavior that you don't like, but which has absolutely no effect on you in any way, that the beliefs of said people cannot be said to be forced upon you through such an action. It is quite a straight forward matter of common sense that by banning such behavior you are not protecting yourself from anything, in the case where such behavior has no effect on you, but rather you are forcing your beleifs upon others. To consider this otherwise is to engage in deception.

Bu... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

RE: MSNBC - Rove tells conservatives to chill out

] MR. RUSSERT: The last time you were on in January of '01
] after the president had been elected, we had this
] exchange. Let me show it to you:
]
] (Videotape, January 21, 2001):
]
] MR. RUSSERT: You're heading over to the national
] cathedral for a prayer service with our new president.
] What are you gonna pray for?
]
] MR. ROVE: Wisdom and patience. Humility. That's
] important, I think, for people who come here to realize
] that we are here for only a time and we have an
] obligation of service and we need to keep things in
] perspective.
]
] (End videotape)
]
] MR. RUSSERT: Wisdom, patience, and humility, the
] watchwords for the second term?
]
] MR. ROVE: Yes. Those that the Gods destroy they first
] make prideful. So, absolutely.

MSNBC - Rove tells reds to chill out

] Iran and European nations reached a preliminary agreement
] about Iran's nuclear program at talks hoped to avoid a
] U.N. showdown, but all countries involved still must
] approve it, Iran's chief negotiator said Sunday.

You can probably chalk this up as President Bush's first foreign policy win in his second term. The Iranians were probably holding out to see if a Kerry win would bring the United States to the table on this. A Bush Presidency means same old story, and the Iranians took what they could get from Europe and dropped the matter.

ABC News: Preliminary Pact Reached on Iran Nukes

noteworthy wrote:
] David Brooks takes a crack at debunking the Dems.

Thats what he does for a living, isn't it?

] There was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote
] this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the
] electorate this year as they did in 2000.

WRONG. The following story was linked from Pew's website:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/politics/campaign/05religion.html

"What this suggests is that the Bush coalition wasn't just evangelicals," said John C. Green, a professor of political science and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "It included a much larger group of more traditional religious people, many of them outside of the evangelical tradition. What they have in common is that all of these groups tend to hold traditional views on sexual behavior."

Voters who identified themselves as white born-again or evangelical Christians made up 23 percent of voters this year. Seventy-eight percent of them voted for the president - clearly an increase over the 2000 election (but it is unclear by how much, since the question used to identify evangelicals in surveys of voters leaving the polls was asked differently four years ago, making a direct comparison impossible). Professor Green said his polling showed an increase in the evangelical vote for President Bush from 71 percent in 2000 to 76 percent this year.

] If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.

I agree, but problems with the data so far are not a license to fill in the blanks with your own favorite explanation.

The fact is that Kerry sucked. I said at the time of the Dem's convention that the focus on the economy was stupid and that the number one issue would be terrorism. I was right and wrong. The number one issue was "moral values" (and I'm going to continue to put that in quotes because I think its an oxymoron), but the number two issue was Terrorism. Where Kerry failed was by not focusing on Terrorism.

Having said that, I would feel much much better about this election if it seemed like the American people were saying what a few of my more educated friends are saying: "We agree with you, Tom, that that there are significant problems with the way Bush is handling things (Enemy combatants, Iraq war justification/timing/diplomacy), but we feel that Kerry sucks, and so we couldn't vote for him." I can respect that. The American people know better then I do whats best for them.

Thats not what I'm hearing. Kerry did better in the debates! This wasn't about him. This was about Terrorism and Moral Values, and I cannot escape the conclusion that the election seemed to reach to some of the ugliest aspects of this nation's character. I'm not angry because Kerry lost. I expected that. I'm angry because of what seems to have won.

I'm angry because Gay Marriage has taken center stage in the Moral Values disc... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: The Values-Vote Myth