Really, Bush is digging his own grave on the China thing. Politically, bombing darker-skinned nations won't hurt Bush's popularity--the people who support him like to see the military's shiny new weapons in action, so long as we're killing "lesser" people.

But what Bush is doing right now will FUCK up the core of his support in the Midwest. He could have ended this thing as soon as it started by apologizing quickly and quietly. The media wouldn't have cared, and it would have gotten our servicemen home. Now, however, he's backed himself into a catch 22. China is not going to relent in their demands--why should they? So Bush has to either bite the bullet and appear weak by apologizing, or he leaves 20-some kids as hostages in a foreign country. Either way, he appears incompetent in foreign policy and insensitive to real human needs. It becomes obvious he doesn't care about "real people," or he'd get them back. It's equally obvious he's dangerously incompetent in foreign affairs, because why would he pick a battle he can't win?

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bshelly: railing against the Industrial Revolution since 1999. Even Adam Smith recognizes:

"The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occassion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become." That's my word.