The rule normally is "closest without goin over".

A job well done, Rice, Bush, et al. Freedom is on the march. Hey, the preznit "won" with a minority too. We engage in torture, they engage in torture. We should rejoice in this rousing success.

But didn't they get purple fingers? That proves freedom is on the march.

Oh, wait -- that would show how many people didn't vote, wouldn't it?

Never mind.

Talk about spreading Democracy! That sounds like what Karl would like to have Ohio working like.

I notice you still didn't answer my question: what do I win?

I want free access to your blog, Kevin, delivered to my home computer daily. And your voice on my home answering machine.

Kevin,

When making a guess about a percentage, never say something like "80%" because then everybody knows you spend only a half a second thinking about it. Instead, make up a precise percentage like "76.7%" because then - even though you spent no extra time - it'll be treated as if coming from an Oracle. The Egyptian government knows this trick. Uh huh, "75.9%" must be accurate, Jeebus, to the tenth of a percent! Wow!

Did GWB fire the USAttys in Egypt too?

Turnout of 1% to 8%?

Let's all give a really big hand to America's largest "democratic" ally in the Middle East.

I have missed the condemnation of this by all those promoting democracy in the Middle East. Where are those voices when the freedom loving Egyptian people need them the most?

That makes sense. You want over 3/4 majority for symbolic reasons but anything over 80% would just be showy. 75.9% is downright modest.

You people don't get it. This is exactly what Bush expected. He called for a wave of freance and peance across all freedom-loving Mideast nations. And that's just what they got. Freance and peance.

Where are those voices when the freedom loving Egyptian people need them the most?
Posted by: Mike on March 27, 2007 at 3:56 PM | PERMALINK

We decided to stand down so they could stand up?

The real number, he says, was between 1% and 8%, "and that, by the way, would include all of the government employees ordered to vote and the women ordered 'to go vote for the President.'"

In other words, Karl Rove's idea of the perfect election.

Foreign policy moves slowly. We've been engaged with Egypt for decades and they've never been much of a prize. But, for most of all that time, they either didn't bother with elections or have any concern whatsoever with the turnout.

So, who should be snarked at, the past presidents who simply ignored Egyptian elections, or the one who expressed concern about them, however small?

A truly democratic election in Egypt will put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. And this is a good thing why?

Did GWB fire the USAttys in Egypt too?

I wish you wingers would keep your talking points straight. Is GWB trying to make democracy flourish in the ME, or is he trying to prevent it from flourishing in the ME?

hawk, when you can't even troll coherently-- time to take a break. get some cardio in today, bro.

A truly democratic election in Egypt will put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. And this is a good thing why?

Posted by: shams on March 27, 2007 at 5:12 PM

Perhaps because it's A truly democratic election in Egypt?

Let's stop being afraid of Muslims, shall we?

Good to know that democracy is spreading like, well, old dates in the desert. If the wingnuts really want to find the Blame America First crowd (and they don't), they should check out Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where the local oligarchs encourage young hotheads to take out their frustrations on the US and Israel.

Of course, we subsidize all that--while giving them plenty of new reasons to hate us. The onlçy question remaining is: When does Hosni Mubarek get the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

So, anyway, Josh over at TPM broke the story that MZM's contract for "furniture" at the White House, was actually a contract for screening mail for anthrax, for Shooter.

The circumstances around this contract, of course, are as skanky as anything surrounding MZM. But the real interesting thing here is: here's a connection now, between the Carol Lam firing, and Shooter.

Someone didn't want anyone digging any deeper here.

They were willing to let Cunningham go to jail. But when they started moving on to the broader investigation, strings got pulled.

Hmmmmm.

This is a conspiracy theorist's wet dream!

This from TPM is quite hilarious:

Wilkes' idea was to have all Capitol Hill mail rerouted to a site in the Midwest, where ADCS employees wearing protective suits would scan it into computers and then e-mail it back to Washington.

ok bigcat. I deserved that.

A truly democratic election in Egypt will put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. And this is a good thing why?]

Exactly! So true. And I'd just like to add:

A truly democratic election in the US will put the Democratic Party in power. And this is a good thing, why?

wqdqdw

Georgia Police Hunt for Missing 911 Dispatcher

Liberals: Don't cry in your beer over Egypt.
We control the government.
Better than them controlling us... eh?

Even better: the poverty there helps supply the black market for organs.

So shut up.
You never know... when you too might need a new ticker.

What happened to all the liberals who were condemning Bush for removing a nice, stable secular dictatorship and replacing it with a democracy riddled with sectarian violence and radical Islamic terrorism?

Will Bush support the troops?

Hagel-Webb Introduce Amendment to Protect Readiness of U.S. Troops and Limit Deployments

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced a bipartisan amendment today to the Iraq War supplemental spending bill. The amendment:

• ensures that units and individuals in the Armed Forces be certified as “fully mission capable” 15 days prior to deployment;

• limits the length of overseas deployments of the Army, Marine Corps, and National Guard;

• establishes a minimum time between deployments for the Army, Marine Corps and National Guard;

• provides additional appropriations totaling approximately $3.1 billion to reset Army National Guard and Reserve equipment and to address funding shortfalls for Army National Guard training, operations and maintenance; and to fund the acquisition of additional Mine Resistant Ambush Protection vehicles for the Marine Corps

Oh yeah and this too:

• and requires the President to report to Congress on the comprehensive diplomatic, political and economic strategy of the U.S. regarding Iraq.

Doesn't sound to like too much to ask for Bush has been held to account for ANYTHING. At least no until now.

David Stockman, the former budget director in the Reagan White House, was charged Monday with overseeing a sweeping fraud at a troubled auto parts supplier that he led before the company sought bankruptcy protection.

What's interesting here is that this is the company that bought Prince Corporation for $1.3 billion in the late 90s from Erik Prince who used the money create Blackwater USA.

Prince's sister Betsy is married to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_devos

So my question is,

was there a greater scheme involving Stockman to create this fraud at Collins & Aikman Corp in order to plant this large amount of cash on exactly the screwball who could make a thing like Blackwater?

Your comment has been received and held for approval by the blog owner.

If it isn't pretty enough I want it back.

Nothing so conspiratorial as all that - I've noticed that if I post a comment that has more than one link, I get that message.

I can deal with it - I certainly don't miss the Chinese spam.

We are talking about a region where people die in tsunamis of sewage and conservatives think that privatizing the oil industry and instituting a flat tax are going to cause democracy to flower like a tulip in the spring. The delusional bastards who run our country have no idea what they are doing in the Middle East. Impeach every last one of them!

Well, I guess that is my record for number of links in one comment.

But I thought the Chinese spam was kind of decorative.

Like a note from some nearby parallel universe that could almost but not quite communicate with us.

Like a ghost of the inexplicable.

Screeech!

No, it's not that retarded fellow from the television show who can't get the girl.

It's the sound of the brakes coming off this hayride through obscurity.

I love to argue Egyptian politics with cab drivers when I visit New York City, but I didn't anticipate getting the opportunity to chose not to do so here.

Norman Rogers, you sound like you're off your prescribed medications -- or else, you found yourself some new ones while riding with that Egyptian cab driver.

BGRS: "I can deal with it - I certainly don't miss the Chinese spam."

I was actually curious enough once to run it through the Babelfish e-translator.

It sounded like they just wanted to offer American men a few solutions to some of their most "private" problems -- knowhutahmeen?

Come to think of it, the literal translation from Chinese made their actual pitch sound so lyrical that they could just as well have been talking about capital investments.

As I write this from my office overlooking the Nile, in Cairo, it often seems to me that the US is becoming Egypt, and Egypt is becoming ever more frightening. The poverty here is deepening, the middle class becoming more and more disenfranchised; a society that seems pretty safe (certainly much safer than the US) shows signs of fraying. All of the leaders of all of the "churches" urged people to vote yesterday...and the people uniformly ignored them. The local papers guess that 3% voted.

Refugees pouring out of our Iraqi disaster, and the Sudan, are evident everywhere. I feel like I'm watching pre WWII Europe...or a pre WWII world. My guests from the States who are here now and are reading the local papers are startled by how little of what is going on is covered in papers in the US. And, also startled by what they are realizing about the denial of US travel visas...even to very educated people who have been to the US many times. I was in a meeting at American U. here with some faculty from Middle Eastern and US universities and listened to a stately, old professor of engineering who had been educated in the US and been there more than 20 times say he was recently refused a visa to present at a conference.

I'm past sad; I've now become a voyeur at an event that I can only wonder at.What will happen next?

By the way, the bombing of Iran begins on or about April 6th. Mark your calendars.

75.9% - Hmmm, not bad; not as solid as old Moscow, but as long as 24.1% voted for Isis, hope is nigh.

..."the women ordered 'to go vote for the President.'"

Because, I mean, if you send a woman to a secret ballot box and "order" her to vote a certain way, she will just do it. Because you "ordered" it, and, hey, it's not as though she has an opinion of her own, yes?

Sorry. I just hate seeing century-old arguments against women's suffrage recycled here, even third-hand.

re: moi, above,

typing too far past my bedtime, I would better state my question as,

was Stockman installed at Collins & Aikman Corp in order to plant this large amount of cash on exactly the screwball who could create a thing like Blackwater? And did this so screw up the company that it then led to the fraud in this present scandal?