The American people voted in the Democrats because of 'Republican corruption'.

Its an ugly parallel.

Lemme get this straight; I'm supposed to be upset because one group of Islamist lunatics decides to wipe out another?

Shit, they can go at it hammer and tongs, for all I care; the more of them that end up dead at each other's hands, the less available to blow up Israelis, blow up Americans, or breed. Here's hoping about eleventy-zillion of those assclowns get kakked during the new bloodshed.

"ugly parallel"

Yeah, about six million miles apart. Remember that saying: The Democrats are the opposition, not the enemy.

Hamas and Fatah in a death match?

Damn, you could get some good Pay-Per-View specials off that!

Pass the popcorn!

(BTW, JPM100, it'll only be a parallel when the Dems and Repubs start shooting at each other, setting off car-bombs and beheading each other and putting the videos up on the internet. Till then, your attempt to draw a parallel just doesn't cut it.)

My parallel had more to do with the populace picking the worse of two evils to punish the previous government, than how the parties treat each other.

But in that respect, with reports of gunshots into party headquarters (more than one), tires to vehicles slashed, people harassed going to polls, are we so sure we're always going to be better than that?

And then there is The Hamas Consequence, the U.S. MSM refuse to address or report in any significant way.

'Cause after all, they're just "freedom fighters," it says so on a bumper sticker somewhere.

jpm100 -

I hope we will be - but there's getting to be an almost unsanely strong partisan/ideological bent to politics these days and it worries me greatly.

Such eagerness to grab all of the pie without compromising is in the finest tradition of third-world countries where the long-term good of the people is sacrificed for cash-in-hand today.

And I don't give much of a damn what your ideological bent is - screwing each other over for a temporary political advantage and ignoring the long term is stupid in the extreme. We've got problems we HAVE to face, but stalling off any consideration of them due to the "Ain't my party bringing it up, so screw 'em" effect isn't doing any long-term good. And neither is a "It's their solution, so we aren't going to do a damn thing to help fix it!" sort of attitude.

Something's gotta give - or we WILL go the Hamas/Fatah route.

I'm shocked, shocked that shooting is going on here.

You'll just never get over the fact that they won the elections in the Palestinian territory fair-and-square.

For all their problems, they don't sound nearly as bad as the death squads that have infiltrated the Iraqi police and are torturing and murdering dozens of Sunnis every night. We need to keep things in perspective here. This IS the Middle East after all.

sanssoucy,

You are my heart. You are my soul. Lead us not into fire, and I will follow. Or fire some lead, and I'll follow that. "Eleventy-zillion", "assclowns", my friend, you made my day. Truth is a dish best served as steaming piles of funny. Thanks again, and keep it coming, you'll lossen up these starched shirts yet...

Larkin:

You'll just never get over the fact that they won the elections in the Palestinian territory fair-and-square.

Being channeling Jimmah Carter have you?

Whatever.

Maybe you can explain why when faced with charges of election fraud Hamas promptly said it would boycott the partial re-runs scheduled for the disputed areas after the charges were leveled.

At best no one will ever know hoe fair the elections were unless some one starts sining like a bird.

At worst they were crooked as hell and Hamas had to boycott the re-runs to prevent the fraud from being uncovered.

Hamas elected "fair-and-square"? And we'll never get over it? You could have stopped right there and spared us all the other crap. The difference, in case you haven't noticed, is that the "death squads" in Iraq are not sanctioned and they at least try to catch and stop them. In the Palestinian territory the death squads ARE the government.

Any government that shoots it's way into power is never a good government. Look at Cuba for example. Castro made broad promises including holding elections within 6 months back in 1959 after the revolution. So far those elections and other promises have never happened.