edgarblythe wrote:Any idiot could have predicted these things well before Operation Conquer Iraq began.
Obviously not "any" idiot, the ones in the white house didn't.
hobitbob .... they are still trying to deal with the 'any key'
i don't really think we are dealing with idiots in the WH, I am more inclined to think we are dealing with extreme political corruption.
Dys -- No one seems to have picked up on a bit of corruption in the Times today -- I've posted it in the "Electricity Blackout" thread. FYI.
Hobitbot wrote:
Pronounce "nuclear?"
Now just a minute----everybody knows it's " Nukqular"! :wink:
Besides he's not the first president having trouble with that word----Jimmy Carter made the same mistake and he was a "NuKQular" engineer.
BTW Hobit---I'm just about finished with "Hatred's Kingdom"---fascinating read---why didn't you tell me all that good stuff about Wahhabism?
Monday August 18 2003
Now do you get it?
By Hassan Fattah
The heat radiates off buildings like a hot oven, the humidity turns you into a puddle of sweat. The air is still and you feel like gasping for air. It's impossible to sleep and in the back of your mind, you're wondering whether somebody, anybody, can walk in and rob you. All you keep mumbling is, "when are the lights coming back on?"
It was New York in 1991, and power in a large section of upper Manhattan went out for three days. It was my first brush with unreliable electricity and I got a full taste of what it meant. Computers don't work; laptop batteries die. Cell phones go dead. You're hot, you're angry and all you can do is blame the authorities for it. Back then outraged New Yorkers demanded an answer and the local power company and city commissioners squirmed in their seats. On Thursday, it happened again in a big way. One of the largest power outages in decades crippled the Northeastern US and parts of Canada, leaving millions of residents in the dark. Newspapers watched as the financial markets and subways came to a halt, traffic snarled up and life became generally miserable.
Hospitals struggled to treat patients, and telephones and automated teller machines went dead. According to the New York Times at least four deaths, two in New York City, and two in Canada, were blamed on the power failure. President Bush pronounced the outage "a wakeup call" to modernise the nation's power grid.
The irony, of course, has not been lost on most Baghdadis. We understand power outages, you know, and we could have taught New Yorkers a thing or two about surviving them. We understand, you're angry. Fuming. And you just want to complain to the authorities, loudly, and make them listen. You may even start to believe conspiracy theories like "they're doing this on purpose becauseĀ
."
We also think we'll know what the authorities will tell you. "It takes time to fix the system, but be sure we are doing everything we can to fix it," they will say. Commissions and investigations will look into it, and much will be done to mollify the masses.
We can also give you some recommendations about dealing with the blackouts and brownouts that follow. First step, calm down. Then, roll your beds outside at night. It's far more comfortable, unless, of course, if army helicopters hover overhead in search of someone. Make sure to wash your clothes by hand and not in the washer. Avoid all elevators. Try to keep bottles of water around and avoid opening the fridge looking for snacks. And most important of all, make sure to buy a hand-held fan. And when it's all over, just think, it only lasted a day. Now, try it for four months. Do you get it?
perception wrote:
BTW Hobit---I'm just about finished with "Hatred's Kingdom"---fascinating read---why didn't you tell me all that good stuff about Wahhabism?
As I like to tell my students: There are two ways we can do this: I can simply tell you the answer, which will lead to a lifetime of taking the easy way out,and eventually becomeing a drone for corporate america, or you can do the reading and find the answer out yourself,and have a great sense of accomplishment.
Carter's mispronunciation:
even worse: Nookieyerr.
Arrgh!
LOL, hobitbob. I can hear him saying it as I read your transliteration.
Hobitbob Wrote:
As I like to tell my students: There are two ways we can do this: I can simply tell you the answer, which will lead to a lifetime of taking the easy way out,and eventually becomeing a drone for corporate america, or you can do the reading and find the answer out yourself,and have a great sense of accomplishment.
Do you really have students? After your foul mouthed tirade of the other night I took you for a pimply faced geek hiding behind a computer thinking he could abuse the old folks with impunity. I don't know any professors who must resort to vulgar language in a feeble attempt at abuse. I could be wrong---the jury is still out.
Inshalala inshalala hey hey hey goodbye
Gosh ----have I stepped into a nest of al Queda?
That stink coming from something you stepped in? No, I think that's your own sh... stuff, Perc.
Is the United States back into an era of Mc Carthyism, where anyone who disagrees with the political propaganda will be labelled a traitor and will be orally or administratively harassed by gestapist robots? (Yes)
The interrogation the other day of Tartarin by Craven 'lost child' de Kere was another good example of this new troubling withhunt ("do you believe 9/11 was a setup?" - answer me! - where were you the 7th of August at 2am ? - <applies electro shocks>).
Those who are so quick to associate the UN or communism with fascism better look how their country has become the travesty of what was supposed to be a free world, and how they have no causal explanation for this except their own lack of self-development towards responsible human beings.
In Spanish and Portuguese there's a word - "ojala." It looks like it is related to inshala.
Adios, perception...ojala.
mama, what does ojala mean in Portugese? I think inshala means "It is the will of Allah"...?
It's one of those words with different but similar meanings depending on where they're used. "Oh, that it would be." "If only...", sort of loosely connected to "will of.....". Used in such different ways as "If I win the lottery...ojala". Pronounced oh-ha-la in Spanish, and oh-ja-la in Portuguese.
So, adios, ojala, would loosely mean goodbye (may it be so).