Liberal Bracelet Slogans

"trite" adj. trit·er, trit·est

1. Lacking power to evoke interest through overuse or repetition; hackneyed.
2. Archaic. Frayed or worn out by use.

Just so there is no confusion... my previous comment was directed at DeoDuce's proposed liberal slogans... not MW's post about them.

Ha. I like how you comment on MW's site about my site. You sound bitter, lonely, and resentful.

Don't hate me because I'm brilliant!

Bitter? No. Lonely? Not really. Resentful? There'd have to be something to be resentful about.

I'd probably laugh at your slogans... if they weren't stuff I heard time and time again from other conservatives. That's why what you came up with is trite.

Be original.

By the same token, there are many trite remarks made about conservatives by liberals.

Because clearly, there's no shortage of people who sound like broken records.. on both sides.

You're in denial. It's ok, I don't mind you going around other people's sites and degrading my material. It amuses me and gives me publicity.

Why you have been commenting double for each of my comments?

Wow, you spent 6 whole minutes coming up with your last comment. How nice.

Actually no. I spent about a minute typing my last comment. During the other 5 minutes I was doing other things.

What's your favorite color?

It depends on the application.

Just in general. What's your favorite color? I personally like blues and greens. You strike me as someone who wouldn't like blue or green, though. That's why I'm asking.

In general I, too, like blues and greens.. but blue more than green. Teals as well.

My favorite combination of colors is any of the darker blues and black.

What's your favorite number?

We agree on something. I'll be...

DD: For christ's sake girl give it a rest!

Why is it that every time someone states facts about Bush all you can say is "liberals are poopypants"?

Seriously, WMD?? your little diversion is done! There were no friggin WMDs! Why the war? Did you, personally, believe there were WMD? How can you defend that lying, greedy SOB? Fabulous war you got going there, Dubya. Don't pin this on Iraq wanting democracy. It's just the excuse of the week. Yeah if the Iraqis want it they can fight for it themselves but no we have OUR soldiers down there. How many of our guys have to die? Why is democracy in less oil-rich parts of the world less urgent? How do you justify our huge debt and falling economic standing in the world? You're gonna call me a poopypants again? God, you're clever.

BTW, if you want to talk IQs (as if it's at all pertinent), don't you know that liberals have higher IQs than repubes? Don't you know that more liberals than repubs go to college? Liberals are the more informed, more likely to read a newspaper, population.

Seriously, I bet you're short. You're the reason I don't like short people. They tend to talk like you "Don't hate me because I'm brilliant!" Overcompensating, shrill things.

I don't have a favorite number.

You have to choose one. I like 5 or 7.

You sound like someone who would like 1 or 10 or 78 or something.

6, 9, and 11

michelle: Everyone thought there were WMD there, including France, the UN, and even Saddam Hussein, apparently. Even the New York Times! Gasp.

The point was never WMD anyway, the point is to start removing the Islamofascist threat to America and the world. Iraq is the lynchpin to the Middle East, and the low-hanging fruit. The reason we went isn't oil, it's terror. So democracy in non-terror-exporting countries is less important to us right now. There probably is a connection between oil and terror though, but we didn't cause it.

More likley to read a newspaper hardly translates into being more informed, alas. And IQ seems like a silly thing to measure success by, since it's mostly a product of chance. Shouldn't we measure success by wealth? At least most wealth is a product of something a person actually does rather than mere genetics.

And DD is actually pretty tall.

Actually, Iraq wasn't the greatest threat in the Middle East. Iran was.. and still is.

Mark: I didn't say "greatest threat", I said lynchpin. Between Afghanistan and Iraq we now have Iran surrounded. They'll be a much tougher nut to crack, because they have more people and a better non-Arab army.

I don't even think Iraq could be considered a lynchpin. Middle East stability didn't hinge upon Iraq before the invasion and it doesn't now.

Mark: Ah, but the key isn't stability. The Middle East was too stable, and stable in a way that fomented terrorism and hurt America and our interests. We're trying to shake it up, and hopefully it'll turn out better than it was. Nothing is guaranteed, of course.

Iran was.. and is.. more friendly to terrorists than Saddam's Iraq was.

Most of the people we're fighting in Iraq are not outsiders. It's a mix of former Saddam loyalists and those unhappy with the occupation.

So no.. I don't buy the notion that Iraq was the place we had to do what we did when we did it.

"And IQ seems like a silly thing to measure success by, since it's mostly a product of chance." Did you read the slogans DD posted? Two of them harped on about IQ. My comment was a response to those.

I don't know where the countries and media you listed get their info, but the people of the U.S. had one source, the podium-pounding president (that is if you could even watch him pound that thing while pausing emphatically every nine seconds without cracking up) and his fabulous team of experts telling them that the presence of WMD is certain. If the war was about terror, then they have said so. They shouldn't have called it WMD if they knew it was about terror, because you know what? It looks bad. If the president misleads you, risking the lives of so many of America's young people, shouldn't you be upset about it? You might say that it wasn't his fault, that he was just as clueless, but that's when you should question his competence as a president.

My apologies for calling DD short.

As for freeing the Middle East, do you really think they're ready for that? Are we? As you said, the Middle East is stable. As such, their theocratic governments are resistant to change, their religion and their government go hand in hand. Upheaving a stable system will be very costly to anyone who tries. This has become apparent in Iraq, where terrorism has burgeoned locally and we have delivered our soldiers as fodder. How many of our soldiers will we gamble to free the Middle East? You can't change the Middle East without changing Islam. When they are ready for it, they can figure out how much democracy is worth to them and they can start the fight. Only then should we throw our guys in to help.

Mark: Yes, Iran has always been more dangerous, but Iraq was the low-hanging fruit. To use an analogy, we began our involvement with WW2 by invading North Africa, not Japan and Germany directly.

michelle: Yes, our intelligence services screwed up on the WMD thing, no doubt about that. Maybe the president shouldn't have relied on them, is that what you're saying? They were the best information available at the time, and every other source agreed. Saddam refused to allow inspections, so now we've inspected for ourselves. I do agree that they should have stuck closer to the War on Terror angle and relied less on WMD, since they were only a peripheral casus belli.

As for your overall view on isolationist foreign policy, eh. I feel similarly in some ways, but in other ways I think it's worth the cost to try to free people from the shackles of oppression. In the case of the Middle East, we had two intersecting interests: draining the terrorist swamp and freeing the oppressed. We're being fairily successful at the first, and we've created an opportunity for the second. We may or may not ultimately succeed, but I think it's worth trying.

The problem, though, is that we already had our foot-in-the-door, though.... Afghanistan. We didn't need to invade Iraq and remove Saddam to effectively prosecute the War on Terror in the region.

I think we should've done our own search for WMD's without removing Saddam from power; the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don't. That way, when we're convinced he really doesn't have any, we could get out without this significant obligation to build a new Iraq; a process the Iraqi citizens should've undertaken by themselves, as michelle indicated.

Mark: Afghanistan is on the edge of the Middle East, and really in Asia. Iraq is next door to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iran. And yes, Iraq's citizens do need to take responsibility for their country, but they couldn't overthrow Saddam without outside help.

The geography is immaterial.

We could've helped the Iraqi citizens overthrow Saddam without doing it for them.

Mark: And it would have been easier to "help" them and pretend the armies of Iraqi civilians with pitchforks were actually being useful rather than just being in the way? They don't have a 2nd amendment there, and the only people with weapons were the Sunni thugs. There was an Iraqi resistance, but they were routinely imprisoned and dropped into plastic shredders and the like.

The bottom line is that the Iraqi people aren't going to take charge of their own destiny and the destiny of their country if someone else does the dirty work for them.

As Thomas Paine said, what we obtain too easily we esteem too lightly.

The Iraqi citizens really never had the chance to overthrow Saddam. Their attempts were thwarted by Saddam? Fine. Prevent their efforts from being thwarted.

They can't want it less than we do... or else it simply won't work.

If they elect another despot.. or if another dictator takes control.. everything we've done will be for nothing. In the end, the Iraqi's will always get exactly what they'll tolerate or put up with... regardless of anything we've done.

Mark: Time was sorta a factor here, you know. Sure, in an ideal world everyone will have the means (weapons) and will to preserve and attain their own freedom without imposing any cost on anyone other than their oppressor, but we don't live in such a world. We're tying to do the best we can in a messy situation.

The world is what we make of it... and the Middle East is no exception. The religious fanaticism, cultural and social oppression, and dictatorship governments of the Middle East are the result of what the people of the region have made... or, at the very least, put up with. We reap what we sow.

The effort is noble... we're trying to "sow" the "seeds" of democracy and freedom in the region... but it's naive to think that the "soil" is "fertile".. and that the seed will necessarily grow.... and be the beacon from which other seeds in the region receive the ability to grow.