Matt Welch Criticizes Chris Christie's Anti-Libertarian Slap and the 'Sick' Habit of Using 9/11 Emotionalism to Stifle Debate

This afternoon I was on Fox News' Your World with guest host Eric Bolling talking about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's contention that libertarianism in the context of national security is a "a very dangerous thought." Fellow panelist Lisa Daftari did not agree. The exchange, covering the Constitution and our national culture of policy debate, was rather, ah, robust:

Comments

[Warrren]

Beard...no beard..pick a style already!

[Stormy Dragon]

Is it just me, or does shaving the beard make him look like a younger version of D-FENS from Falling Down?

[Hugh Akston]

Wait, when did Matt have a beard? I didn't think he was old enough to grow one of those yet.

Our little Matty is growing up.

[GILMORE]

matt also seems to have found some more ties. I blame his newfound mercurial nature on some kind of brooklyn-hipster allergic reaction.

[Matt Welch]

I've been wearing that tie on TV for a half-decade at least.

[GILMORE]

in the last 6 years I've been busting your chops about your ties, I think the cyan jobby and the candy-cane purple-yellow have dominated to almost exclusive status. call me ridiculous - it is. You say Red Tie has a track record?. Links or it didn't happen, Welch. Plus, whatever you produce, i'll cite that instance of your black-shirt-yellow-tie combo that made you look like a pimp-magician-apprentice. It was unforgettable.

That said = welcome to Brooklyn, you beautiful bastard.

[Matt Welch]

http://cloudfront-assets.reaso.....979193.jpg

[Matt Welch]

http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/.....60x195.jpg

[Copernicus]

I didn't watch the video, but from looking at the vid capture, I am wondering why you blokes are commenting on Matt's appearance. All I can think of is money-shotting that gorgeous lady.

[sam the man]

Bolling has gotten a lot better on this stuff. Used to be a total "fuck the 4th amendment" Kristol-esque type. Still kind of one, but not nearly as bad.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Bolling is the idiot who called Warren Buffett a "socialist".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/be.....ludicrous/

....Perfect for Fox Fake News.

[Libertymike]

Well, shriek, Buffet is.

Is the estate and gift tax regime a free market concept?

Those who support death taxes are socialists.

Guess how Warren made a lot of his money?

[Palin's Buttplug]

Buffett made his fortune as the greatest investor of all time. Berkshire owns hundreds of companies in all types of industries.

I know, Republicans don't want to admit the great capitalist of our time is a liberal.

But in reality - almost all the great capitalists/entrepreneurs are liberal. Gates, Jobs, Soros, Brin, Page, Bezos, Allen, Ellison, etc.

[CharlesWT]

Bezos calls himself a libertarian.

[Palin's Buttplug]

I have heard that too. He is probably a liberaltarian based on his FEC report.

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/qind/

[C. Anacreon]

You forgot Henry Ford and Walt Disney.

[Invisible Finger]

You left out the Koch brothers.

[Palin's Buttplug]

They inherited their money.

[Eitan]

So did Buffet.

[OldMexican]

Re: Palin's Buttwipe,

Buffett made his fortune as the greatest investor of all time.

That does not mean he's not a socialist. But Bolling made a huge mistake by calling Buffet a Socialist. In actuallity, Buffet is a Fascist - he believes in the notion of Business-State partnerships.

But in reality - almost all the great capitalists/entrepreneurs are liberal. Gates, Jobs, Soros, Brin, Page, Bezos, Allen, Ellison, etc.

Just goes to prove that the free market will make millionares of even those that don't believe in free markets. Such is the power of the market.

[Palin's Buttplug]

All Team Red lies.

You can't stand the fact liberalism and markets are our future.

[OldMexican]

Re: Palin's Buttwipe,

All Team Red lies.

HA ha ha!! Nice comeback there, bud!

You can't stand the fact liberalism and markets are our future

Depends on what you mean by "liberalism". Either way, what you say is no counterargument to the point that Warren is a Fascist or that even liberals can be millionaires in a free market despite their liberalism.

[CE]

They're more creative.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Besides, is there a more painless tax than the death tax? Of course not.

Those who oppose the death tax tend to be opportunistic no-talent freeloaders holding their hand out waiting for Grandpa to die.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Yeah, we wouldn't want that money going to freeloaders...I know, let's give it to the people in the federal government!

[Palin's Buttplug]

No, do what Buffett, Ellsion, and Gates are doing - donate it to your humanistic interests.

Why leave it to ungrateful brats OR the government?

[Eduard van Haalen]

"Why leave it to ungrateful brats OR the government?"

How about this - try to persuade the rich not to leave money to their relatives, but to leave it to "humanistic interests." Tell them that they should emulate socially conscious rich people like Gates, et. al. and avoid the bad example of the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, who left their wealth to their worthless liberal offspring.

But if the rich guy is unpersuaded and tells you to f off, why should you be able to take at gunpoint the money they would leave to their children, not for revenue, but to encourage donations to nonprofits?

And why would you deny the right of rich people like the Kennedys, Roosevelts and Rockefellers to transmit their wealth intergenerationally so that the scions of these public-spirited families can give us the benefit of their leadership skills?

[Bam!]

"Tell them that they should emulate socially conscious rich people like Gates, et. al. and avoid the bad example of the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, who left their wealth to their worthless liberal offspring."

Most of the foundations setup by rich people past were taken over by worthless liberals eventually.

See, the Ford foundation.

[OldMexican]

Re: Palin's Buttwipe,

No, do what Buffett, Ellsion, and Gates are doing - donate it to your humanistic interests.

That is, giving it to someone else's ungrateful brats instead of their own.

Why leave it to ungrateful brats OR the government?

Gee, are we at that time where we have to face false dichotomies?

How about letting the person who accumulated those savings to leave them to whoever the FUCK he or she wants?

[Rights-Minimalist Autocrat]

No, do what Buffett, Ellsion, and Gates are doing - donate it to your humanistic interests.

Why leave it to ungrateful brats OR the government?

Shut up, fucktard.

[Invisible Finger]

The gasoline tax is way more painless.

[Knarf Yenrab (prev. An0nB0t)]

Shut the fuck up, Donny.

[OldMexican]

Re: Palin's Buttwipe,

Those who oppose the death tax tend to be opportunistic no-talent freeloaders holding their hand out waiting for Grandpa to die.

Aww, how quaint! The "they don't deserve it" justification for the Death Tax!

I haven't seen such fallacy since the times of MNG.

[Palin's Buttplug]

You support monarchy and call yourself a libertarian?

[OldMexican]

Re: Palin's Buttwipe,

You support monarchy [???] and call yourself a libertarian?

It's time for your Thorazine, Buttwipey-wipey.

Those voices in your head are starting to flare up again.

[ant1sthenes]

I believe he supports property rights. Obviously a socialist like you wouldn't, on principle, and a Nazi like Soros or a fascist like Buffett wouldn't out of personal interest.

[Jordan]

Meanwhile, those who support the notion that they should get a cut of somebody's estate because they had the gall to die are totally selfless entrepreneurs.

Fuck off, Stalin's Buttboy.

[Tman]

Why does anyone still argue with this twerp?

He's just doing it to get a rise out of everyone.

Why step down to his pathetic measly existence?

Don't argue with idiots like him, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

[sam the man]

Also, big props for this Matt. Glad you didn't let her emotional fallacies slip through like she wanted.

[PH2050]

She's fucking stupid. If she didn't have a pretty face she wouldn't be on Fox News.

[Hyperion]

We have to go after it with a tweezer, not an axe

How did we get off the subject of the 4th amendment and start talking about Christies weeny teeny weiner, that he hasn't been able to see for 20 years?

Focus woman!, Welch is taking your flimsy argument apart! Although we'd still rather see Kennedy nekked on a bike, than Welch. Sorry, Matt...

[Night Elf Mohawk]

That was an ass-whipping, even taking into account she had nothing but appeals to emotion.

"They abuse the system." Her answer, "More system." Idiot.

[Eduard van Haalen]

The cute dumb chick said there was no terrorism at the time of the Constitution. Allow me to disagree. Many of the British troops and their Indian allies at the time of the Revolution were terrorists by any reasonable definition - killing prisoners and civilians. And the guerrilla warfare in the South, I would expect, probably involved what we would now call terrorism.

After the Constitution was adopted, the French Revolution gave us the term "terrorism."

The US was founded at a time when they had recent memories of foreign troops marching up and down the country, fifth-columnists acting against the revolution, the above-mentioned attacks on prisoners and civilians, etc. The country was surrounded by two major empires - Britain and Spain (well, Spain was pretty lame as a great power, but it could cut off Western trade and promote secession movements in the West, and put an American general on its payroll).

The idea that "oh, no, we're facing horrible threats worse than our Founders could have imagined, let's go into a state of knee-knocking fear," is silly. Of course there's the problem of nukes, which are a tad scarier than the threats of the Founding era, but we had nuclear threats during the Cold War, and cute-dumb chick still dates the new dangers to the country from 9/11, after the Cold War. How can the post-9/11 era be unprecedentedly horrible, in a way that the confrontation with nuclear-armed communist powers wasn't?

[Hyperion]

I noticed that also. It's a totally ridiculous argument. We're probably safer right now, from enemies, than we have even been, or even that any country has even been in the history of civilization.

Yet, we have to now take everyones rights away and expose them to abusive levels of privacy invasion, to protect them from our enemies?

[Eduard van Haalen]

I think that nukes make us less safe than in the Founding era, but again, that's been going on for half a century. Nor did 9/11 invent anti-American terrorism. Many terrorists, some of them sponsored by the commies, were running around during the Cold War, with the difference that the jacked off to Marx instead of Mohammad.

So where's the unprecedented threat?

[entropy]

Less people have died of nukes than have been eaten by wolves, and they had wolves.

[CE]

You sure about that? Are you including Japan in your totals?

[Virginian]

Over the entirety of human history? Wolves. Always amuses me when some hippie swears that wolves have never attacked people.

Hell I bet you the Maxim gun is first, with the gladius second on the weapon rankings.

[GILMORE]

Also, i was raised by wolves. They're good people. Moose on the other hand... dont ask. Bastards.

[Eitan]

Moose stuff

[Harlequin]

A M??se once bit my sister

[GroundTruth]

Nukes are pretty tough to do. It's taking everything that Iran and North Korea can muster from their entire countries, and they can't get it together. Unlikely that a bunch of religious fanatics can put together a nuke program while on the run around north Africa or Pak/Afganistan, unless they can just buy them. And that would take big a big money backer like bin Laden. Oh wait, he's dead.

[Libertymike]

She's not cute. She is a clover, though.

Clovers emote that they have a right to be safe.

Anarchists ratiocinate otherwise.

[Atanarjuat]

She's not cute.

+infinity. She looked cute for half a second, before my brain said "what the fuck is wrong with your face?".

And yeah, "there was no terrorism at the time the constitution was written" is idiotic. Violence was invented 15 years ago, you see.

[Spiny Norman]

Also, stupid is a buzzkill.

[juris imprudent]

She had all the intellectual heft of a candy raver.

[CE]

This is an argument that needs to be made more often.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Also, several parts of the Constitution were adopted out of fear of foreign influence. The Presidential electors are dispersed among the states (among other reasons) so a foreign power can't go among them with bribes. There are waiting periods before a naturalized citizen can be a Congressman or Senator. The President has to be a "natural born citizen." You can't accept gifts or honors from foreign states without Congressional approval.

Yet they were naive and failed to appreciate the horrible foreign threats we would face. Sure.

[CE]

If the Founders had envisioned The McCainian, they probably would have barred long-term POWs from becoming President too.

Of course, McCain was already barred by the Constitution, since he was born in the Panama Canal zone, 2 years before the rules were changed to consider that "natural born".

[Heroic Mulatto]

The cute dumb chick said there was no terrorism at the time of the Constitution.

I know. For fuck's sake, the Marines started fighting Islamic terrorists in 1801. not that the dumb bitch could find Tripoli on a map, much less its shores.

[GILMORE]

or the halls of montezuma

[R C Dean]

So, back when we had no-fooling limited government, we had no terrorism.

Now, we are building a Total State as fast as we can, and we have terrorism.

Somehow, the obvious implication of this correlation got completely turned around.

[CE]

Many of the British troops and their Indian allies at the time of the Revolution were terrorists by any reasonable definition...

Ummm... by "any reasonable definition", the American rebels were clearly terrorists. Conservatives/Tories/Royalists always call those in open rebellion against the established order terrorists.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Eh, that's stretching it. American revolutionaries didn't target civilian populations or engage in random acts of terror to get what they wanted -- we're not talking about a Northern Irish or ETA situation, here.

[GroundTruth]

Maybe not civilian populations, but being a tory in some towns could get you a nice tar and feathering (which by the way, was not a cute little punishment... it could indeed be a quite horrible way to die).

"Freedom fighters" are almost always "terrorists" when they first get started, it's only after they have won that they are "patriots". I'm NOT supporting the current crop of terrorists, and am damn glad that the colonies gave George Rex III the heave-ho, but let's be honest about words.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Tarring and feathering and the other aspects of colonial resistance have been dramatically overplayed. In general the colonies were not a very violent place to be outside of some isolated and deplorable incidents. Pro-independence regions were economically difficult places for the Tories (which is why many of them left for Canada after the war) but there is little historical evidence to indicate that there was a level or endorsement of violence against civilian populations anywhere close to the level of, say, Revolutionary France, the ETA, Marxist revolutionary movements, etc.

All of the major figures in the revolution, from Sam Adams to Thomas Paine, condemned violence against civilians and random acts of terror; there was no institutionally terroristic aspect to the central leadership of American independence. It is not honest to call them "terrorists" and such is mostly done by revisionist historians with something to prove about their own favored causes.

[GILMORE]

I totally think the first thing a country should do when facing even the *prospect* of terrorism by ideological foes is to immediately throw out any funding national documents, individual rights held sacred for hundreds of years, and submit to a vast, faceless security-state which immediately begins to turn on its own citizens as a source of potential Threats to the State.

That way, no constitutional republic can survive past the first moment some jackass decides to put a pipe bomb on a bus. Seems Legit.

/Lord of Derp

[Killazontherun]

And the guerrilla warfare in the South, I would expect, probably involved what we would now call terrorism.

Absolutely. We are quite proud of our history of terrorizing the shit out the British and her supporters.

[Hugh Akston]

Cut her some slack you guys. It's not easy to appear on TV with nothing more than a bloody shirt and a pile of bodies to stand on.

[Hyperion]

Sure it is, our Prez does it all of the time, and he doesn't have any skills, at all.

[entropy]

If I had a son, he'd look like the people who died on 9/11.

[OldMexican]

Very good debate, Matt! Normally, you see guests duking it out by blandishing their well-worn platitudes and talking points. You, on the other hand, blew her out of the water with a well-placed "don't make appeals to emotions" amidships.

[Dibbler]

I've gained a lot of respect for Bolling. He's by no means perfect, but he's started using his head instead of jerking his knee reflexively.

With the cacophony of missteps from every facet of government currently and recently occurring (along with the GOP blundering about aimlessly), many people, pundits, and polititicians are abandoning their holdfast positions and showing their true selves. They have to decide between the principles America was founded on and their sycophanticism. Staying on the reservation doesn't make since once cannibalism begins in earnest.

Aside from maybe the low information left; thoughtless ideology worship is a powerful and unwavering force.

[Suthenboy]

Got too rushed for time and competing to be heard. That cute chick tried to bring up the Boston bombing. Would have been great if Matt could have let her and then asked her why the total surveillance state was unable to stop them.

[John C. Randolph]

Well, she was cute until she opened her damn fool mouth. The wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead.

-jcr

[CE]

Libertarian approach to national security: stop kicking sand in people's faces, stop murdering people with drones, respect the sovereignty of other nations, reduce barriers to free trade....

...with a policy like that, maybe we wouldn't need to spend so much on spying and arming and bombing and TSA groping....

[The Immaculate Trouser]

respect the sovereignty of other nations

Dunno about that one. Letters of marquee are effectively a grant to allow privateers to operate violently on foreign soil without US sanction, and it's what I keep hearing libertarians prattle on about whenever they bother to provide ideas regarding GWoT.

Regardless, Westphalian sovereignty doesn't really correspond to reality that well in the parts of the world that we've adopted as Our Poor Brothers, heh.

[GroundTruth]

letters of marque, thought those were for the open sea, as opposed to territory itself. Just asking, not saying. Anyone know for sure?

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Historically yes, but Ron Paul and several other prominent libertarians have suggested them as alternatives to the war on terror for dealing with terrorists.

[Harlequin]

Letters of marque are historically only good for the nation that issued them, or their allies. Anyone else catches you, you're dancing the hemp fandango regardless.

[GroundTruth]

Makes sense to me. Wasn't there some dead white guy who suggested that in 1796? Warshingtan, or something like that? 'engagements with all, but entanglements with none' to paraphrase.

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorism didn't exist when the Constitution was created.

Really? The Barbary Pirates would likely disagree with you. Hell, things that we would call "terrorism" today were closer to common practice in ye olden days of the 18th century, including wiping out civilian populations in order to send a message.

"Those old, white, slaveowners couldn't have possibly foreseen terrorism": And other idiotic sayings.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Or the raids of many of the Indian tribes.

Or the irregular warfare in parts of the South.

Or the anarchist bombers (yes, a bit later down the road but considering just how many world leaders and governments those bastards managed to bring down they are worth noting).

Or Marxist revolutionaries during the Cold War.

Besides that, 9/11 was completely new to us! Clearly we've never faced a threat the likes of a posse of bedraggled religious fanatics.

[GILMORE]

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is surprisingly little-discussed these days, despite all the douchehats wearing guy fawkes masks. Im quite certain the founders very much had terrorism in mind when guaranteeing Freedom of Religion, given that over the past few hundred years more people had been killed over religious oppression than any other cause.

[Swiss Servator - past LTC(ret)]

+30 (Years War)

[Dave Krueger]

Ok, let's get one thing straight. 9/11 is not a justification for secret government operations. 9/11 was a retaliation for decades of secret (and not so secret) government operations. The U.S. initiated 29 regime change actions since the end of WWII, with many middle eastern countries (Iraq, Syria, Iran, etc) being targeted multiple times. To think that the events of 9/11 were not a response to U.S. military and CIA operations in the middle east isn't evidence of ignorance. It's evidence of utter delusion.

That they finally retaliated should be no surprise. The surprise is that it took them so long.

U.S. government secrecy is not the answer to terrorism. It's the cause of terrorism.

[Virginian]

If it were Guatemalans or Panamanians or Iranians you'd have a point. But the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia (15), the UAE (2), Egypt
(1), and Lebanon (1).

The US government's meddling was not the cause of 9/11. Nothing was "the cause" of 9/11, because I'm sure each of those 19 savages had some kind of bullshit reason for why their actions were justified. Besides, the idea that religious nuts from Muslim countries give two shits about Patrice Lumumba or Salvador Allende is freaking retarded.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Amazingly, none of those countries saw regime change forced on them by the US.

[Virginian]

Crazy isn't it? Something I find hilarious is the constant idea some seem to have that people outside the US never have ideologies or agendas, they just shift around and respond to stimuli offered to them by the US government.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

The brown people are passive agents who never respond to anything but what they US government does. They have no initiative to come up with good and bad things on their own; they're just outputs of government policy.

To think otherwise is racist.

[Dave Krueger]

The one thing that united the terrorists was their religion. And the U.S. has been openly waging war on Muslim countries, supporting corrupt despotic governments, and otherwise interfering with their internal affairs for decades.

What is it about the American mind that makes it impossible to consider that those activities could spawn the events of 9/11? What is it about the American ego that they can't even begin to imagine that the U.S. isn't always the good guy even when they are drowning in the evidence that proves it?

[The Immaculate Trouser]

"Proves" what? Exactly what set of actions do you propose the US could have engaged in to avoid being attacked?

Free trade and good relations with those godless regimes that Muslims in the region hated?

Maintaining good relations with Israel, which Muslims also hated?

Allowing Coca-Cola and other "corrupting" influences to make it to the Middle East?

Maintaining Lebanon and Israel's right not to be wiped off the map?

Endorsing Western enlightenment thought for ourselves and providing advice for other regional governments looking to modernize?

The above list is libertarian-friendly, but not going to make us many friends with religious fanatics.

The fact of the matter is that the ME is perhaps the region of the world that we engaged in the least during the Cold War, and that it has in fact benefited in certain ways from US involvement. The "bad guy" is not usually begged by those resisting tyrants to invade their country, yet that is exactly what has happened in many parts of the ME.

[Virginian]

What's this "we" bullshit? There is no American mind. There are over 300 million Americans who have minds. But there is no American mind.

[Dave Krueger]

No. Of course they don't care about what we do in Latin American countries. Is that what you thought I was saying?

But, "religious nuts from Muslim countries" probably had a gripe with the U.S. stationing troops in what, to them, is their holy land. And, they said so repeatedly. But, we insist that their stated reasons are nonsense and then cook up our own set of bullshit reasons, like "they hate us for our freedom".

[The Immaculate Trouser]

"religious nuts from Muslim countries" probably had a gripe with the U.S. stationing troops in what, to them, is their holy land.

...which has nothing to do with regime change or CIA secrecy. This was the result of a very well known agreement between our government and that of the Sauds (a monarchy which was not put into power by Americans).

[Dave Krueger]

As if the fact that we had troops in Saudi Arabia happened in a complete vacuum and independent of any Western involvement in the middle east up to that point. I'm pretty sure that there was already a strong (and well deserved) dislike for America before we ever got involved in that very worthy cause of rescuing one Arab dictatorship from another.

Luckily, the U.S. can prance around the world, disrupting the political systems of other countries, invading them, propping up oppressive governments and, magically, never inspire them to dislike us. And I guess I could beat the shit out of my next door neighbor very now and then and never have to worry that he might someday decide to fight back.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

I'm pretty sure that there was already a strong (and well deserved) dislike for America

You assume wrongly. The countries where the US is least popular are the ones where it has not engaged in regime change; it is relatively popular in Iran and Iraq compared to neighboring countries like Jordan, for instance.

Luckily, the U.S. can prance around the world, disrupting the political systems of other countries, invading them, propping up oppressive governments and, magically, never inspire them to dislike us.

Correct, at least to a degree. In fact, a whole bunch of them will want to immigrate to our country to make better lives for themselves (see Central America). Plenty of (partly-deserved) anti-American animus in Latin America, but somehow they never get the idea to strap bombs to their chests and blow up an American pizzeria.

[PH2050]

It strikes me as odd that you rant about government actions and policies you dislike but write "us" as if you voted for and endorsed said actions and policies.

Repeat to yourself 10 times:
"I am an individual."

[darius404]

"I am an individual."

"I'm not."

[Killazontherun]

Luckily, the U.S. can prance around the world, disrupting the political systems of other countries, invading them, propping up oppressive governments and, magically, never inspire them to dislike us.

When our CIA funded a coup in Cuba to replace one left populist dictator with another one they thought they could better control, the reaction of the Cubans was the opposite of what you suggest. Those most adversely effected by the coup immigrated here, and those that benefited from it hate us. It's not easy to predict the reactions of a populace, and their reactions can change from a initial positive or negative to the opposite. Sometimes, those you treat favorably start taking you for granted and those that you took for granted do something nasty to get your attention.

Of course, George Washington was right, and I favor only interventions where Americans are not directly threatened (Benghazi fire fight, SEALS taking out Somali pirates holding hostages are easy calls even where earlier events like overthrowing Gaddafi and supporting UN 'aid' drives got us there we still had real tangible interests at stake), and those where our interests are clearly defined. Arguing that the United States is a uniquely evil entity in the world is just a boneheaded way to convince people that we need an entire foreign policy overhaul.

When the US came on the international stage in the early twentieth century, the world was already a fucking mess.

[Killazontherun]

and I favor only interventions where Americans are not directly threatened

[hotsy totsy]

Some people DO hate us for our freedom.
Any country whose people stone to death women for adultery, proven or not, kill homosexuals by stoning while a whole stadium of people applaud, is NOT gonna be happy about same sex marriage.

Nor our "libertine" habits of women going around showing their arms and hair, gay couples kissing in public, big offenses in ME countries.

They are furious that not only can they not force their standards on us, but they have to depend on us while we thrive with our libertine habits.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Blah, blah, blah, woof, woof, woof.

OBL couldn't give two shits about the plight of Shi'ites in Iran. He did give several shits about Saudi Arabia (particularly our troops stationed there), a country where we didn't engage in regime change at all. While we're on the topic, we were far more involved in regime change in Latin America and the Far East. I have yet to see a Salvadorean terrorist attack our soil for the overthrow of popular governments in El Salvador; likewise France and the UK (despite being much more involved in shaping the politics and regimes of the Middle East) seem to be targeted much less than us.

But clearly, terrorism has only one cause and that is the US government. So Rockwell has said, and so it must be.

[The Late P Brooks]

Matt, you need to work on you Peter Lorre imitation, so you can refer to Christie as a "bloated idiot" at every opportune moment.

[juris imprudent]

So I just imagined Christie in a tan suit and a fez.

Excellent.

[anon]

The summary at the end was very accurate.

[Joe M]

Wow, she's embarrassing to listen to. She really has absolutely content to her thoughts.