Political news, yo.

[Big Swami]

I take it you were a fan of the Shah of Iran?

Compared to the Ayatollahs? Meh, I'd probably say it's a wash. The Shah brought holy hell down on rebels and anyone connected with rebels. But the Ayatollahs have brought down hell on everyone.

One person I like quite a lot is Ataturk. And so does Musharraf.

[Big Swami]

Trent Lott is retiring at the end of the year. Should have retired some time ago, but the GOP always provides for a graceful exit for racists.

And it looks like Musharraf has announced his resignation from the Army. He'll still run the country, though.

[Tahoe]

I think for Dems the R coming just after the name (Trent Lott (R)) means racist. lol

[Uncle Mxy]

I thought it stood for Retiring.

[Big Swami]

Anyone dealing with the Council of Conservative Citizens should know that they're making a deal with the devil. That group is not just your average everyday conservative grass-roots lobbying committee - they are a political front for the Klan and are openly opposed to racial integration.

[Tahoe]

I don't doubt that, TBS, but the only known Klansmen I know of is Byrd (D).

(R) also retard

[Big Swami]

Yeah, Byrd's for sure an ex-Klansman. He's one of the few Southern D's around who stayed with the D's after they left their pro-segregation platform behind in the days of Lyndon Johnson. Most ended up jumping ship - Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, for example.

He's also so incredibly old, and he's been in Washington so long that I'm not really sure anything he knows is relevant anymore.

[Tahoe]

Trent Lott is retiring at the end of the year. Should have retired some time ago, but the GOP always provides for a graceful exit for racists.

And it looks like Musharraf has announced his resignation from the Army. He'll still run the country, though.

I was thinking about this a lil more. IMO, Your first paragraph is ridiculous, but roll with that.

But I'm glad the guy came back and won. First the comments were innocuous as hell, iirc. If they came from a Dem, nothing would have been done, secondly, Bush threw him under the bus. He didn't give the ol "good job brownie' treatment. He let him fry. So this is a lot like what Lieberman did to the Dems when they threw him under the bus. Lott ran again and got the whip job. Lieberman ran again and won too.

Bush doesn't control who gets elected and niether do the Dems.

[Big Swami]

Right and wrong are not a matter of public vote. H.L. Mencken is kind of a crotchety bastard, but I cannot deny that there's some truth in what he says:

...the great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.

Such immortal vermin, true enough, get their share of the fruits of human progress, and so they may be said, in a way to have their part in it. .... He has at hand a thousand devices for making life less wearisome and more tolerable: the telephone, railroads, bichloride tablets, newspapers, sewers, correspondence schools, delicatessen. But he had no more to do with bringing these things into the world than the horned cattle in the fields, and he does no more to increase them today than the birds of the air.

On the contrary, he is generally against them, and sometimes with immense violence. Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men.

[Big Swami]

More rioting in the Paris suburbs. Apparently it's exactly the opposite of how it is here in Detroit - only the rich get to live in Paris, all the poor are relegated to the suburbs. This time, though, gunshots have been fired. The new French President Nicholas Sarkozy tells everyone "So zat sings are vewy cleah: What has happened is absolutely unasseptaahbluh," You're doing an excellent job, Nicko. Keep up the good work.