There IS no question...

The terminology is NOT appropriate in any way, shape or form.

Are reasonable people terrified at the economic collapse that would follow if the United States arbitrarily decided to stop paying its bills? Yes. Was it the intention of Tea fanatics to elicit such terror? Yes.

And, exactly, what are your facts that support the claim that reasonable people are "terrified" of the economic collapse of the US in the same context that they would be "terrified" that themselves or their loved ones would be brutally butchered???

Further, what are your facts that support the claim that "terrifying" people is the intent of the Tea Party??

Further, how exactly would you define "terrorism"??

And, please don't fall back on that tired old cliche that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. That is the BIGGEST pile of crap of ALL the piles of crap there are in the world..

Michale.....

Are reasonable people terrified at the economic collapse that would follow if the United States arbitrarily decided to stop paying its bills? Yes. Was it the intention of Tea fanatics to elicit such terror? Yes. Are they generally similar to any of the categories of people canonically known as terrorists? That can only be answered case-by-case, but not really.

Are they generally similar to the Jacobins who perpetrated "the Terror" in the French Revolution? No, they pretend their "second-amendment remedies" are mere rhetoric, and dissociate themselves from the likes of Jared Lee Loughner, whereas the original Terrorists passed off the Terror as legal executions.

Are they generally similar to the weaker force in situations of "asymmetrical conflict", or insurgency? No, they control the more powerful of the two parties. Rationally, they should be using more conservative tactics (in the sense of what "conservative" meant a generation or two ago), rather than going for nothing-to-lose tactics analogous to unconventional warfare. Their willingness to bring on collapse, if even the slightest of their demands go unmet, flows not from tactical position but from temperament and internal dynamics.

Are they generally similar to fanatics who seek martyrdom? No. They're fully as fanatical as any religious nut, but the harm they seek is to others, not to themselves.

Michale

I think the debate is framed as "is such terminology appropriate in the political arena"..

Which is a very good way to frame the discussion...

Especially in light of the fact that Democrats really have a problem with calling REAL terrorists "terrorists"...

Remember "man-made disasters"?? :^/

Michale.....

Was that "Christian Terrorism"???

I didn't catch that connection, but you (of ALL people :D) know how I feel about terrorists..

A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist...

I don't care WHAT the cause is.....

On the other hand, I *DID* make a comment about how, in Left-Wing LaLa Land Norway, the MOST this scumbag terrorist is looking at is 21 years in jail...

THAT deserves condemnation from EVERY living breathing rational human being....

Three words: wait until Friday.

Fair enough... Didn't mean to piss on yer wedding cake... :D

Michale.....

Three words: wait until Friday.

I denounced the Bush cabinet member (SecEdu, I believe) when he called teachers' unions "terrorists" (this was only a few years after 9/11, mind you) and I am polishing up a MDDOTW this week for Biden's use of it to describe Tea Partiers (sorry, Liz). This should be the modern equivalent of the absolute ban on calling people "Nazis" (unless, of course, they were actual Nazis back in WWII) -- don't use "terrorist" unless it is appropriate.

Related topic for you, Michale -- why hasn't the Right denounced "Christian terrorism" (in the same way they denounce "Islamic terrorism") after the Norway attack, hmmm?

-CW

Why is it that the Left has a real problem with calling REAL terrorists, "terrorists" yet doesn't have a problem with referring to Republicans as "terrorists" simply because of political disagreements???

Further, where is the indignation from the Left when people like Biden and media pundits refer to political opponents as "terrorists"???

This takes "demonizing" to a whole new level and should be called out and decried by ANY reasonable-thinking American..

Of which a good portion of that crowd is represented here....

Michale.....

Naww, I try to be fair when I criticize.. I know I don't rag on the GOP much here. But hay.. That's YA'ALLs job! :D

I think NYpoet said it best. (Or maybe it was Bashi or David..)

I really don't like Republicans. But I really REALLY don't like Democrats... :D

But, one good turn deserves another...

After weeks of acrimony, the US Senate votes Tuesday on a compromise measure to raise the country's debt ceiling. The bill has drawn criticism from members of both parties, but it will likely pass just in time to save the US from default. German commentators on Tuesday express their frustration over the brinksmanship.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,777961,00.html

I guess it's official.. "BrinkSmanship" it is.. :D

Michale.....

I'm just so (sniff) Gosh-darned proud of you! (chokes up...)

Ragging on Republicans, for the same reason you previously ragged on Democrats. Well done! That's the spirit!

It's the one major point we both agree on -- when it comes to politician-itis, both parties are equally as susceptible. It's just that I don't usually hear it quite so much from you.

Heh. Just kidding, but I was impressed. I thought I'd have to be the one to point it out to you!

-CW

What did I tell ya?

When it comes down to it, Democrats and Republicans are just the same.....

Michale.....

If not this post will look silly...

Okay, I exaggerated, and will feel terrible if I don't correct it. It should read "earned enough to help pay her way through..."

Oh well, ya'all will just have to enjoy it w/o the visual...

:(

Michale.....

CW, apologies in advance if this causes you more work...

On the other hand, if it DOES work, could you kindly delete post #35?? :D

"Hold onto yer butts.."
Samuel L Jackson, JURASSIC PARK

How the Tea Party ‘hobbits’ won the debt fight
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-tea-party-hobbits-won-the-debt-fight/2011/07/31/gIQALMrCmI_story.html

OK, cross yer fingers... :D

Michale.......

A family member was a photogenic piece of clip art. She got paid around $500 for the photo shoot, and was used literally hundreds of times in on-line and print advertising. But she got the last laugh; she later got a gig in a union-royaltied soda commercial, and earned enough to pay her way through an Ivy League school. Not to mention getting SAG health insurance, and, with her looks and personality, a rich husband.

That's not the real reason for the post. That is: it looks like it's going to pass. That, and an opportunity to exercise my new italics skill, even as you all push the frontiers in Fun With Markup Languages.

I remember the one with your cat, but I couldn't find the original post...

I'll put the pic on my own server, just in case it causes you hassles with it's current location.

Michale.....

Um... I think you can actually link to images (or use them as part of links, if you're that good with HTML) into comments. I did it once with a photo of my real cat (the one at the top is not mine, just a photogenic piece of clip art). As far as I remember, it's possible.

You've got to have the picture hosted on a server somewhere else, though, I think. I dunno, it's been awhile since I've done it.

-CW

For this "Mordor" commentary, this graphic and accompanying article are most appropriate... :D

http://tinyurl.com/3fj8xox
How the Tea Party ‘hobbits’ won the debt fight
washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-tea-party-hobbits-won-the-debt-fight/2011/07/31/gIQALMrCmI_story.html

Aside to Management: Any way you can make that tinyURL actually display the graphic, instead of just showing the link?? Would be way kewl and a lot more effective.. :D Thanx

Michale.....

You don't like the previous missive from Progressives??

How about the bastion of Obama Love, the NY TIMES??

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Keep in mind, people.. These aren't far Right Wing rags or Hysterical "Racists" that are saying these things.

These are your fellow progressives...

What are the chances that ALL of them are wrong?? :D

Michale.....

With this "grand" deal, he's a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize for economics, eh?? :D

Michale......

Thanx for the HTML lesson. :D Being so early in the AM, I think you fried a few brain cells.. :D

Seriously, thanx.. Really good info...

NYpoet,

heyyyyy, i'm a special character :)

".... and then some.."
-Bruce Willis, THE LAST BOY SCOUT

:D

As far as the deal goes, CW called it...

But ya gotta admit. If it was a plan all along to play it down to the wire, they done did REAL good, eh?? :D

Michale.....

Hah! We're all special here at CW.com. Heh heh....

:-)

-CW

Ooo! Good point! I'm kicking myself at how obvious that should have been...

:-)

LeaningBlue -

I'm actually very curious to see the next week, and who is seen (by the public) as the "winner" and the "loser" in the negotiations. It really could go either way, I think, depending on whose spin works better.

We'll see... gonna be an interesting week, that's for sure...

-CW

The WH fact sheet alludes throughout to increasing revenue, tax reform, and a shared approach. All of those are red capes waved in the face of the TP bull. Beyond that, any win-through-intransigence strategy is precluded by holding 50% cuts in defense as the penalty for the committee's failure to act.

It's hard to see this as a political loss for the President, whether the public will see it that way or not. It's equally difficult to see it as a victory in any sense for the TP. If the fever swamp blogs are any indication, their public already has no trouble seeing it as a defeat. Having tasted power and victory, they don't like to lose.

If they can't spew their bile by impeaching the President from using the 14th amendment to circumvent their demands, the next logical target is the Speaker. Maybe Mr. Boehner should hope for the wheels to come of this train.

Heh.

heyyyyy, i'm a special character :)

The deal's out? Man, I gotta go check out some news and stop farting around with special characters here...

Heh.

:-)

-CW

The most-used special character (by me, at any rate) is what is called a "non-breaking space." This character is supposed to be used when you want a term to stay together and not get cut by the word-wrap at the end of a sentence, but which has a space in it. For instance, rather than making a link to a former column by typing "[FTP 156]" if I don't want the FTP and 156 to wind up separated on two lines (on some browser that puts it at the end of a sentence), then I type in the following: "[FTP&nbsp:156]" except, of course, that I type in a ; to make it work. Then the HTML software sees it as a complete word, and not two words with a space between them.

But &nbsp: (non-breaking space) has a more useful benefit, as well. Because while HTML largely ignores spaces, it cannot ignore a non-breaking space. And it's invisible. So you can use it to create an "invisible paragraph".

And you can control the horizontal way your text looks -- in an article, for instance, using it to separate out a photo or a block of text by giving it more horizontal space.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to do it in a comment, but for completeness' sake, I thought I should mention the most-used special character in my typecase.

-CW

This ain't over, I think.

Update before submit: This minute, noted a story where the Speaker has just said what I just said: the "d" word is on the table?!

I separated the examples with a "-" character. I wrote the code out, then a "-" and then what the code actually gives you. I just read it, and it looked a little weird, so I thought I should clarify that -- ignore the "-" character in the examples, it's just a separator.

-CW

I'll explain this because it's not on the "Commenting Tips" page (I didn't think anyone would ever want to do it). But it's related to the accented characters I was talking about for touché in another thread.

What you have to do, in essence, is let the HTML know that you want a special character to show, and not read it as HTML (this isn't a problem for an accented character like é but it is for > because it's part of the HTML code).

The way you do this is type in a & (ampersand, above the 7 key) then a special string of characters identifying the character you want displayed, and then an ; (semicolon). I'll use examples here with a : so you can see what I'm talking about (if you try to use them, use a semicolon to make them work in the place of the colon).

&eacute: - é
&Eacute: - É
&ouml: - ö
&gt: - >
&lt: - <

The little code inside looks impenetrable, but it's really not. "gt" is "greater than" and "lt" is "less than," for instance. For accents, type the character you want accented, and then "acute" for one that slants up. The other accent labels come from French and German:

&egrave: - è ("grave" in French)
&ecirc: - ê ("circonflex" in French, I think)
&ouml: - ö ("umlaut" in German)
&ntilde: - ñ ("tilde" in either French or maybe Spanish)

Anyway, change the first letter to change what you want the accent over. Capitalization counts -- if you want it lower case, type it in lower case, and vice versa.

Google, um, I dunno "special characters HTML" or maybe "accented characters HTML" and there's bound to be a full list of them out there (I get a list in Adobe GoLive, which I use for programming).

Anyway, try it out!

-CW

But why not listen to your fellow progressives???

As Obama Grasps Austerity, the Rich Get Off and the Middle Class Pays
http://tinyurl.com/3hd5fzu

So, who is right??

Me and those progressives??

Are ya'all?? :D

Michale.....

How in the hell were you able to do the attribute symbol???

Hurrumph..

Well, it's well known that I tend to make things more complicated then they have to be... :D

Michale....

Looks like yer down with it!! :D

Happy to hep....

Michale.....

Shaping up to be just another pleasant Sunday in July. Late July.

PS: I don't actually watch these shows, of course; listening to these people makes my skin crawl.

PPS: Thanks, Michale and dsws for the formatting tips! Now, if the word 'actually' is in italics, I'm down with it.

Now THAT was funny!!! :D

As far as Italics go, LB??

Use the common attribute 'I' but use the Greater Than/Less Than symbols instead of '[' and ']'.. Start the italised part with LESS THAN I GREATER THAN and end it with LESS THAN /I GREATER THAN'..

Hope this helps...

Michale.....

I'll believe it if I see it next November. Is there even one Republican, anywhere in the country, in office or not, who will admit to a trace of doubt that it's infinitely preferable to default on the debt than to tolerate one penny of tax increase on one billionaire -- even if that one-cent tax increase comes with every spending cut the Republicans have ever claimed to want?

The Republicans seem to have successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

I would put it differently: Obama made them an offer they couldn't accept. The president was free to offer the Republicans the moon on a silver platter, if only they would agree to a modest tax hike for millionaires.

WWJC?

"Whose picture is on it, and whose inscription?" Matthew 22:20

"Labrador met with Boehner late Thursday afternoon, when it had become clear Boehner lacked the votes to pass his bill as scheduled that night."

That's sweet. I used to have a Labrador. When I was facing professional humiliation, he would come up to me and lick my hand reassuringly. I'd scratch his ears, and softly sing the Martin Mull classic "In the Eyes of My Dog I'm a Man" to him. I wonder it that's how the Speaker's meeting went.

"None of us know, if they … choose to default, whether there is going to be a credit crunch, whether you might have some trouble accessing some of your credit, and you might even have some trouble with your money market funds. So none of us know. Make sure you have cash."

How in the world can they allow someone to get so far off the "no hay problema" message? Must be the weekend producers. If I were a Tea Party freshman, I'd be calling for somebody's head on a plate of melons.

But this Could make a good talking point, though. Get out grandpa's old silver coins, too, just in case.

And stock up on some food. Corn would be good. It stores well, and is very high in calories. Corn futures contracts are physically delivered in Peoria, IL, by the way. Corn is very important to that local economy, so this might play well to folks in Peoria.

Last night, President Obama chided the Republican House for passing a bill that was going to be DOA in the Senate anyways.. He ridiculed the GOP for wasting so many "valuable" hours..

Yet, today Reid and the Senate Democrats are forcing a bill thru that has *ALREADY* been voted down in the House! So Reid and Senate Democrats are **STILL** wasting "valuable" hours forcing a bill thru the Senate that HAS ALREADY BEEN VOTED DOWN!!

Can ya'all FINALLY understand why I claim that there is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between Democrats and Republicans???

AND have the *facts* to back it up.......

Michale.....

Enjoy.

I agree completely..

The Left has been saying for decades that the USA is nothing more than a 3rd World Banana Republic shithole...

NOW they get their wish...

The Left should be ECSTATIC at the current developments....

Michale.....

This is a very interesting approach since there's two very prominent constituencies of the GOP with extremely different philosophies.

The Ayn Rand'ers- who don't believe in God, altruism, or any type of religion other than money.

And the evangelicals.

I think this uneasy alliance largely exists because most people don't know much about Ayn Rand.

BTW- We're keeping the calls coming here in Ohio! It was virtually impossible to reach Mr. Boehner this week. But I did talk to a member of Steve Chabot's staff who did not sound pleased that his constituents were actually calling him.

LeaningBlue-
Appreciate the pointer to the Perry case. Very interesting indeed and the country may know a whole lot more about this shortly.

-David

http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/07/why-defaulting-on-national-debt-will-be.html

Enjoy.

I thought we were seeing the END OF DAYS when the Left started invoking, conjuring and channeling Ronald Reagan.

Such a thought has been confirmed when we see the Left invoking Jesus... :D

"IT'S A MADHOUSE!!!! A MADHOUSE!!!!"
-Charleton Heston, PLANET OF THE APES

:D

Michale.....

One more thing... as long as you don't go berserk or anything, it's OK to use profanity when justified, without having to disguise it. If you start going "over the line" then you'll be warned, privately, in email.

But just typing in "hell" is OK. Just FYI...

:-)

-CW

I'm going to be taking a look at Perry this weekend, thanks for pointing it out.

As for your last question, it's the easiest to answer. Right below the "Leave a Reply" title over the comment entry box on any page is a link to "Commenting Tips."

It'll tell you (with examples) how to do italic, bold and all the rest of it. It's pretty easy, don't worry.

Personally, I just learned this week how to do superscripts from a commenter here, so I can properly write things like "E = Mc²"

:-)

-CW

RE: DOWNGRADE

It's already happened, ipso facto.

On Tuesday, the CME, the largest futures exchange in the world, did the following:

"The exchange will impose a 0.5 percent haircut on U.S. Treasury bills as collateral, compared with the current zero percent."

They also imposed haircuts (meaning: adjustments of collateral for risk) on other Treasury securities, as well as securities of agencies, and of course, Fannie and Freddy.

Next, here are some extracted points from Standard and Poors July 14th announcement of placing the USA on "Credit Watch."

"Today's CreditWatch placement signals our view that, owing to the dynamics of the political debate on the debt ceiling, there is at least a one-in-two likelihood that we could lower the long-term rating on the U.S. within the next 90 days.
...
Standard & Poor's still anticipates that lawmakers will raise the debt ceiling by the end of July ... However, if the government is forced to undergo a sudden, unplanned fiscal contraction--as a result of
Treasury efforts to conserve cash and avoid default absent an agreement to raise the debt ceiling--we think that the effect on consumer sentiment, market confidence, and, thus, economic growth will likely be detrimental and long lasting. If the government misses a scheduled debt payment, we believe the
effect would be even more significant and, under our criteria, would result in Standard & Poor's lowering the long-term and short-term ratings on the U.S.
...
We expect the debt trajectory to continue increasing in the medium term if a medium-term fiscal consolidation plan of $4 trillion is not agreed upon. If Congress and the Administration reach an agreement of about $4 trillion, and if we ... conclude that such an agreement would be enacted and maintained throughout the decade, we could, other things unchanged, affirm the 'AAA' long-term rating and A-1+ short-term ratings on the U.S.
...
Congress and the Administration might also settle for a smaller increase in the debt ceiling, or they might agree on a plan that, while avoiding a near-term default, might not, in our view, materially improve our base case expectation for the future path of the net general government debt-to-GDP
ratio.
...
We view an inability to timely agree and credibly implement medium-term fiscal consolidation policy as
inconsistent with a 'AAA' sovereign rating, given the expected government debt trajectory noted above. "

Every option realistically open now fails to meet one or more of S&P's requirements for maintaining the rating. Even the following option:

RE: THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

I don't know who the President's lawyers were, but here's one thing the Court has written with regard to the Amendment's language and applicability. In Perry v United States (1935), Chief Justice Hughes wrote in the Court's decision:

"The Fourteenth Amendment, in its fourth section ... indicates a broader connotation. We regard it as confirmatory of a fundamental principle ... Nor can we perceive any reason for not considering the expression "the validity of the public debt" as embracing whatever concerns the integrity of the public obligations."

Simple on its face, and with precedent for considering the language as "embracing whatever concerns the integrity." What's not to like? Maybe it's a shame that the President didn't spend more time with the brawlers down at City Hall, and a little more time in the courtroom rather than the law library...

PS: How in he11 do you put something in italics? L.B., aka Technologically Challenged.