Arkansas Blog

Ha ha !

Democrats in control ! You got what you asked for. All the posturing and hurling of insults at Bush and the Libs cant even tell who we are fighting. Nice going Nancy !
how are you going to defend America if you dont know who we are defending it from.

ARKBLOG: Don't be so smug. If you read the Jeff Stein op-ed we linked to in this item, you'll see he interviewed two GOP members of Congress in key intelligence posts who were just as ignorant as Reyes.

I would venture in World War II if members of Congress were asked the differences between fascism and communism the anwers would be similar to today's congressional responses.

A little late for righteous indignation guys. 3 years and this has sunk into chaos and civil war and NOW we begin to wonder what the issues are. (and, no its not like the repubs could answer any of these questions, or care to for that matter. The is not a Democrat/Republican problem)

How arrogant, how pathetic is this to kill 60,000 iraqis and leave America with the referee role in a civil war that is going to smolder for another 10 years and now act surprised that we don't know what we are doing.

Congress voted to give W the authority to do this. Hillary voted for it. We re-elected W as the 'war president'. We elected these boobs to congress for that matter but, now we are shocked, Shocked, I tell you.

You do gotta be kiddin me!!

We still don't realize that an understanding of history and culture of the Middle East are relevant to misfortunes of our own making.

Every time some politician says "The American People are too smart to [....]" it reminds me that it was the same American People who voted without ever asking important basic questions.

The American People thought the most important "basic questions" were about sound bites on wedge issues.

After seeing Jon Stewart's first interview with the bright, personable writer Reza Aslan* last year I bought and read his book, No god but God. It's an excellent source of education on the different groups in Islam, their origins, and why they don't get along.

It's not a big book. It should be required reading for every member of congress. I think if I read it one more time I might BEGIN to understand Islam.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan

It doesn't matter what political party Reyes belongs to. This kind of ignorance is horrifying. But the truth is, if you put most members of Congress on the spot, they probably couldn't correctly answer those questions, either.-WS
********
Kinda makes you wonder - If Mr. Reyes was a Republican, would you soft-pedal his ignorance as you did here by saying the other Congressmen are just as ignorant?

Or instead, would you, with righteous indignation, fan the partisan rhetorical flames and expand on what an outrageous mistake it is for this buffoon to be in office?

"Kinda makes you wonder - If
Mr. Reyes was a Republican...
Posted by: Don Keyhotay"

Didn't make me wonder, but I understand how DonKey is looking at things from a different perspective.

Yes, I'd say that if a top Republican, one who's "been in charge" through this whole war, had been this ignorant of the basics in the Middle East, the Times might indeed have mentioned that Democrats in congress have been shown to be just as ignorant on the subject.

The Times criticizes Democrats all the time. DonKey is just missing that the way I miss things he sees from his own point of view.

In my mind, it's worse for the party who's been in charge to be ignorant on these issues, but that doesn't mean Democrats shouldn't be up on these things too.

Don't see any soft-pedalling there, DK. "Horrifying" says it all.

Here's one guy that can answer any question on the Middle East. Empty desk to match you-know-what.
Click on Caton

I see ya point DonKey. I think comments like "the rest of Congress is just as ignorant" definitely has a partisan bite to it. Im a Dem, but I don't care whether this moron is a Dem, Repug, or Indie, he SHOULD not be allowed to be in a position of that influence without being pretty damned educated on issues such as this. I don't think party politics should even enter the discussion, and i would have said the same thing had this been two months ago and a repug had done the same thing.

I doubt most have any idea of the differences which separate Mennonite and Amish; Hard Shell Baptists, Anabaptists and Southern Baptists; Lutherans and Presbyterians; Unitarians and Universalists; Quakers and Puritans and so forth.

I don't fully understand the differences between Shiites and Sunnis, other than it goes back to disagreements over the legal/lawful/religious decendents of Mohammed after the first two or three.

The voters don't care and the media doesn't ask. My God look at our Arkansas politicians - how many of our Constitutional officers failed out of college? Let's see Daniels, Shoffner, Wood, Wingfield, (Did Wilcox go to college?)

Yea, and how many times did our homegrown DeLay go bankrupt?
The best pile of worms 42% swallowed was that Jesus Jim's family of 11 survived on his $15K salary.
Whew! The man never held a job since leaving the Army and was a hero to the Pary of values.

I heard several people off the street being interviewed on NPR this afternoon and some of them popped up gleefully saying the war for oil in Iraq was going pretty well and victory was right around the corner.

My wife said, what news are they watching. Normally right here I'd say Fox News, but actually I'd have to say these ignorant people watch NO news, read NO newspapers and listen to NO radio. Maybe, just maybe if you avoided all news and worked alone in a hole in the ground you might still be thinking that the war for oil in Iraq was going well.

Americans are stupid, humans are stupid. Funny how all the improvements in communication and education has delivered dumber adults. Makes no sense. For example:

Senator Ted Stevens, (R) of Alaska, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee explains the Internet, if you'll be kind enough to scroll down. Click on my name to hear Tubular Teddy...it's sounds worse than it reads.

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [ø]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [ø]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

DBI,
I read your post quickly and thought to myself, ok, DBI has totally lost his marbles.
I re-read it and realized you were quoting Stevens.
Whew!
Isn't it amazing how such stupid people get elected to public office?

Don't see any soft-pedalling there, DK. "Horrifying" says it all.-Posted by: widj
********
Widget: I agree that "horrifying" says it all- but that's where the editorializing should have stopped.

All of our congressmen should understand the basics of the Sunni-Shiite-Hezbollah positions. My point was that Mr. Reyes is the CHAIRMAN OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE and he doesn't have a clue!! If he isn't known for his grasp of intelligence issues, why is he elevated to this position? Is this a FEMA deja vu? Heck of a job, Brownie . . .

And if WS is correct, that our other congressmen are no better informed than this, then we are in truly deep s***

Don,
For once I agree with you. We are in deep s***, and have been for the past six years.
I'm guessing that 99% of the American public has no understanding of Islam, and paint all Muslims with the same brush.
I do agree that members of Congress, Reyes included, better get some education.

"Mr. Reyes is the CHAIRMAN OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE "

He will be in January, will be....not there yet. And I hope this gaff causes him to wake up before he gets behind the wheel.

Last thing we need is what today's news is full of...stories saying President Bush has finally woke up and started paying attention to the war for oil in Iraq.

HELLO! Where has he been for 4 years? Why did he think 2937 black body bags hit our shores...bad tuna salad? Welcome to YOUR WAR Mr. President, Mr. 75% disapproval rating!

If Rep. Reyes hits office as dumb as the W crowd, I hope they drown him in the Tidal Basin. A bad Democrat is only slightly better than a bad Republican and I want neither.