You don't have to be a psycologist to understand that these people are carrying around a lot of buried guilt for the destruction they have wrought.  

Any reform needs to address that issue by eliminating unfunded bilingual education mandates.

A regular career retrospective.

Lets examine more closely pokerputz's less-than-junior-college-level historical acumen more closely, shall we?

The Contested Plains plains argument says, basically, that if some Indians had previously displaced other tribes as a consequence of warfare, then any degree of barbarism and treachery inflicted on those same Indians later on by whites is somehow excusable (meaningful discussions of morality never entering into it),i.e., committing rape and murder is o.k as long as you can prove that the victim's grandfather did the same thing.

So much for the deformed moral compass that accompanies the Bob Jones level scholarship.

Likewise, our resident (idiot) savant can bypass the the historical reality that the Vietnamese had been fighting for their independence (promised by Roosevelt) for decades, were battle-hardened after helping drive out the Japanese and defeating the French, and fixate on the Rush/Hannity school of historical analysis which has determined that the U.S's defeat was the result of the Left "emboldening the enemy".

Of course, if hell-bent-for-leather warriors like Jim had gone over there, instead of passively emboldening the enenemy, maybe things would've turned out differently, but probobly not.

And again, of course, any meaningful disussion of the moral component of the events under discussion dosnt merit any further attention. In this topsy-turvy, Talk Radio bizarro world, all wars involving the good ole U.S of A are basically the same and all you need to know is love it 'r leave it, dadgummit!

You condemned Durbin and other Dems' criticism of the war and acts committed by some troops, under the old "it gives aid and comfort to the enemy" canard, which I'm sure you know is right out of the part of the constitution that defines treason. You imply that by saying these things--which happen to be true, of course, not that that matters to your propagandistic and anti-democratic mind--they are being treasonous. That is how you despise free speech. I.e. you're all for it, except when you're against it.

Sorry, doesn't work that way. With certain obvious exceptions (yelling "fire" in a theater, libel, slander, revealing classified information), free speech is free speech, period, and just because some pantywaist believes that a couple of words criticizing some vicious thugs on our side somehow helps the other side--which is a rediculous assertion--doesn't make it any less so. You clearly don't believe in free speech, and all but said so yourself--your words. Parsing them differently doesn't make it not so.

Also, it's not Durbin's true words that are "giving aid and comfort to the enemy". It's our being in a war that has ZERO to do with national security, occupying a country that we have ZERO right to occupy, and killing its people whom we have ZERO right to kill, with a force that is woefully incapable of "winning" this war, that is "giving aid and comfort to the enemy". What a whiner you are. Let the soldiers fight, and let the politicians debate--it's what they're supposed to do.

Although I've asked you this repeatedly, you've yet to respond or even acknowledge the question, so I will assume that you stand by what happened at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere. I.e. you're ok with torture, and either believe it to be helpful, necessary and morally permissible, or else don't see the big deal since we're only doing it to bad people (i.e. people who are not white Christian Americans). This makes you a torture supporter at the very least, and probably a racist as well.

As for bombings in WWII and Vietnam, well, you conveniently forget Dresden, Cologne, Berline, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other cities, which had no appreciable military or industrial value. We knowingly and deliberately targeted civilians--killing hundreds of thousands of them--in order to demoralize the enemy. Not only didn't this work, it proved to be counterproductive. And, obviously, it was an evil thing to do either way. And no, I DO NOT support killing innocent civilians in order to theoretically save the lives of troops. Troops are supposed to be in harm's way, not civilians. You clearly reject the Geneva Convention (on multiple counts, obviously). Lovely.

As for your justification of our killing and displacing Indians because, hell, they killed and displaced each other, and hey, shit happens, and it was so long ago, and I didn't personally do it. Well, that says yet more about what a "social liberal" you are. Funny how you're so concerned with the lives of people killed by Nazis over 60 years ago, and Pol Pot over 30 years ago, in countries far away, yet feel so unconcerned about and disconnected with the lives of people killed by our own government on a mass scale just over a century ago in this country, and in other lands in our lifetimes. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands in Iraq.

You are such a hypocrite, displaying the most muddled and dishonest sort of thinking, to back up your muddled and frankly despicable racist and eliminiationist beliefs. "Social liberal". Hah!

As for 9/11, again with the "But it was Clinton's fault" idiocy. Does your side have this line tatooed to your foreheads or something, because whenever one of your boys is accused of anything, you come back with something about how Clinton did it to, or it was Clinton's fault. What is your obsession with the guy? Oh yeah, he was the only Democrat able to beat your side in 30 years, and that absolutely killed you. Ruined that whole St. Ronnie and his Liberal Slayers wet dream.

Anyway, Bin Laden might have planned and ordered 9/11, and provided resources for it. But last time I checked, the 19 guys who actually hijacked and crashed those planes were in the US at the time, and despite multiple signs that something was about to happen, Bush sat on it and refused to order the FBI, NSA and NSC to make it a priority to prevent it. Clark was running around like a madman trying to get someone to authorize an all-out effort to prevent the coming attack, but Bush just wanted to clear brush in Crawford, so nearly 3000 people died. And Bush also refused to do a damn thing about Cole (and spare me the nonsense about how it happened on Clinton's watch--it was a couple of weeks before the '00 election, and by the time the investigation ended, Bush was about to be inaugurated, and Clinton correctly handed it off to him, and he did NOTHING about it).

I get my facts from various news sources and books, written by actual experts, like Richard Clark, James Risen, Thomas Ricks and Ron Suskind--none of whom have been refuted to my knowledge--as opposed to the Drudge Report, Rush, and some fictional ABC miniseries made by a rabid Bushie. And they didn't teach us this in college because none of this happened 20 years ago. Where, incidentally, one of my history professors--hugely respected in his field--had once tought one of the key players in the current fiasco. I guess we learned very different lessons--one reality-based, the other not.

You also fail--for the umpteenth time--to explain how this war helped, or helps, protect us from those murderous hordes of militant jihadis who are supposedly out to kill us all and destroy western civilization utterly--or explain how this is in fact what they want to do or have the ability to do. Clearly, you're a racist who subscribes to Cheney's 1% theory that if there's even the slightest chance that any of this is true, we should kill as many of them as possible. It can't hurt, and they're only Muslims, so who cares if they die?

Like every other troll (funny how you project that label onto me--I am many things, but the only people to ever call me a troll are people who are clearly themselves trolls), you either make stuff up, distort the truth, conveniently leave facts out, refuse to answer or acknowledge key questions, or espouse a pretty vile racist ideology. Par for the course--fitting reality to match your racist, anti-democratic and fear-based worldview: America rules, yippekayay, mofo!

Still waiting for your reasoned explanation for why this war was necessary and justified, and protects our national security. Or for how our civilization and people face extinction if not for this war and the glorious GWOT. The saddest thing is that you refuse to realize that you've just been duped and used by people who've taken advantage of your gullibility, knee-jerk "patriotism", ignorance, fear and racism, to sell their imperialist war, that was, is and always will be about oil, power and empire, not protecting the US from jihadis, bringing democracy to the mideast, or 9/11. How dumb are you?

You only brought up the brooch thang to try and make some sort of contrast regarding Old Dems/New Dems, one that of course reflects badly on the post-Jesse Helms Dems.  Because we have a new Dem who no longer wears the brooch he used to wear.

I can't believe you would really, deep down, be so base as to think it's a transgression to take off a brooch.  You who profess to love America.

Because as far as I can tell, nobody who would write of removing the lapel pin as a transgression, has muich ground to stand on, exhorting someone else to think.

I have challenged you, by the way, to join me in condemning people who would exploit jewelry as a political tool.  That you will not do this speaks volumes.