Tartarin wrote:Like most Iraqis, most Americans want to see an end to the looting."
Amen... good idea -- maybe how best Congress could tax the war profiteering?
Glad to hear that Snood says he's not a pacifist. Someone encouraging me to go to the meeting told me he was and all I could think of was, "Oh no, he'll never get elected."
What I was edging towards, Snood, is that we need to cut out the militarism (not military, but militarism) in the US. I grew up in the pacifist tradition and can tell you that for every pacifist there's a "what if"! Some (many, I think) believe that a very clear and present danger to one's family and/or country justifies defense and most in that category choose to help in medical and other support fields. (Note: This doesn't include saluting a president who's idea of fun is to call everyone in sight "evil" and declare war on them!)
Now, as for Dr. Dean, yet another email:
Quote: Senator Rick Santorum and President Bush provided a painful reminder this week of the chasm that still must be crossed to reach the dream of equal rights for all American.
By equating homosexuality with acts such as child molestation, incest, bigamy, polygamy, and adultery, Senator Santorum wounded all Americans who believe in equal rights, not just gays and lesbians. His attempt to sanitize his repugnant remarks as "legitimate public policy discussion" was disingenuous at best.
When President Bush supported Senator Santorum and called him "an inclusive man," he further betrayed the ideal of equality.
Ironically, yesterday was the third anniversary of the signing of the Civil Union Law in Vermont. That groundbreaking law guaranteed gay and lesbian Vermonters the rights attached to marriage, such as inheritance and hospital visitation. I signed that bill despite strong opposition because I believed then, as I do now, that leadership means standing steadfastly for equal rights for everyone.
This election is about a simple choice - it's about what kind of country we want to live in. I want to live in a country that is united, a country in which everyone is guaranteed equal rights under the law regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
Reaching that dream of equality for all is the personal responsibility of every American. We must stand together against the continued assault on our civil rights from the extreme right. And we must demand moral leadership.
If you agree with me, please stand with me today. You can do that in two ways:
First, add your name to a petition that condemns Senator Santorum and calls for his resignation from his leadership post. You can sign that petition on my web site at www.deanforamerica.com/petition.
How are y'all doing with the reality that, unless the economy absolutely tanks, we're going to have boy george for 4 more years?
Much too early to call that reality, brother.
PDiddie wrote:Much too early to call that reality, brother.
If the election were held tomorrow, the idiot son would win. That's reality.
Barring something like the economy nosediving, he'll win in 18 months. Yes, that's a guess, but it's based on reality.
This was just posted in the Guardian and it cuts Kerry off my list:
Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Divisions between rival Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Howard Dean over the strength of the nation's military broke out in the open Monday, signaling escalating tensions between the two campaigns in the party's race for the White House.
The debate began over Dean's comments in an article posted Monday on Time.com. ``We have to take a different approach'' to diplomacy, the former Vermont governor was quoted as saying during a campaign stop in New Hampshire. ``We won't always have the strongest military.''
Kerry spokesman Chris Lehane issued a statement expressing incredulity over Dean's remarks and saying that Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, would ``guarantee that America has the strongest, best trained, most well-equipped military in history.''
``Howard Dean's stated belief that the United States won't always have the strongest military raises serious questions about his capacity to serve as commander in chief,'' Lehane said. ``No serious candidate for the presidency has ever before suggested that he would compromise or tolerate an erosion of America's military supremacy.'' [...]
"...guarantee that America has the strongest, best trained, most well-equipped military in history..." is a real cop-out.
Yeah, but that was a bone-headed comment Dean made, practically speaking.
Why do we have to be the biggest?
Not saying that - just saying strategically Dean could have left that tidbit about "not always being the most powerful" unsaid.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean your comment, Snood, I meant in general.
But you're right that Dean shouldn't have made the comment. I think he may be catering to his strongest supporters, even though it is pulling him far from the center. Or maybe that's the way he really thinks. It won't get him the job in the White House, though.
However it is a perfectly good question... why is this country so paranoid that it has to have the biggest military force? It is neither the biggest country nor has the largest population, and has always boasted that it is protected by two large oceans PLUS there are benevolent neighbors north and south. It is very odd.
I think it has something to do with the basic psyche of the WASP American Male. Sorry.
I wanted to ask a woman at the gas station today what the heck her bumper sticker "God Bless John Wayne" is supposed to mean. Once draft-dodger Francis, drunk and strapped to his horse in reel 3, is stuck in the American mentality as a "hero," that's it, I guess. Men are so much more romantic and less realistic than women -- well, some men, Snood!
Maybe the question isn't so much how can we get someone like Dean elected; maybe it's how to we scrape the thick coat of self-delusion from the American psyche.
We don't have such a stupendous military. We have a very expensive military, a very elaborate military, a military in which the guys who put their lives on the line are paid sh*t and the suppliers make out like bandits, a defense industry which has a close, close relationship with defense policy makers.... But strength? Not without the delusional Viagra the American public invests in it. Not without lasciviously "embedding" the press in order to make sure it comes out lookin' good...
I hear ya, but don't make the mistake of thinking our military isn't the baddest on the planet - it most indubitably is.
But I'll stand by my opinion that no creature on earth has ever lived by the sword (and yes, self-delusion) like the WASP American Male.
Well, hello.
That's a racist statement.
Okay, maybe.
White men have waged more war, studied more war, profited more from war, than anyone else. If that's racist, a thousand pardons. But furthermore (while I'm throwing out questionable ideas), who hasn't heard the hypothetical that we'd be much more civilized, much less warlike, if women had been the ruling class? Just a thought.
I think we're really talking about the inherent support for the male point of view as being more "realistic." If you look at the trouble men have gotten us into, their "realism" gets a bitter laugh, at best.
But there's something else at work here, not unlike the tradition in old British upper-middle and aristocratic families where the eldest son gets the property, the youngest the church, and the middle son the military. Excuse me, all you military folk, but the military in the US (excluding draftees) would seem to made up largely of those for whom there was little or no alternative. Before you reject that thought, give it some time. Look at our culture. Look at how we embrace the Idea of military but treat them like the disenfranchised in illness, disability and retirement. Has anyone done a study of the military in American life -- quite apart from the huge, huge bucks made off of them at the top end of the profession?
PS -- I don't exempt women from responsibility for this. Many of them, too, are in the military, take an unrealistic view of it. So I don't think it's about white male bellicosity within the military, but that power group makes use of the military, makes money off it. Like motorcycles and John Wayne and other male cultural symbols, the military is, for many men, a penile implant in otherwise uncertain, drifting lives.
I love it when you talk dirty.
Robin Williams had a bead on women in charge of the world--
We would no longer suffer the horrors of war, but we would enter intense negotiations every twenty-eight days...
