Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Thank you jjorge, I appreciate knowing you can understand what I'm trying to say.

PDiddie,

George and I have different needs in this, I think. He doesn't see the need to defend his position. He's comfortable with it. Or that's my reading of it. And thank you as well. It's nice to be taken seriously, whether one agrees with me or not.

george,

My complaint with you has to do with my perception that you do not take me seriously. Your response to me reads like, "there, there, deary, you're just all worked about about nothing." Can you not see how condescending this is? If's fine if you don't want to try to take me seriously. That simply tells us where we both stand in relation to each other. But I do wish, I must admit, that you would simply say so, rather than behaving as if you have some God given ability to know truth and that my perceptions or concerns are simply "rants."

Can you not see that my arguments speak to yours and take yours into consideration and that your response to me is nothing other than a dismissal? Perhaps we could do it this way. Pretend, if you will for a moment, that I know something substantive and that it's true. Can you imagine that? That from my experience, I have something to tell you that you have no other way of knowing without researching it. If this were the case, would you be worried? These fanatics don't care about your religious faith anymore than they care about my beliefs or values. You stand to lose as much as I do.

I think Blatham is right. It doesn't matter if all the 40% are equally fanatical. There is a fanatical core driving this with an radical, coercive agenda and the rest of the 40% are people like you, happy to go along for the ride, wanting to be seduced, because it seems like it's the direction they want to be headed. But when you turn into a donkey, don't say I didn't try to warn you.

And as an addendum........please site for me george where I called you a fool. I think you are blind to something you should be willing to look at, but you are not a fool. This is what bothers me so much about your self imposed blinders.

Lola,

If I have appeared condescending it was unintended. Please accept my apologies. I do take you seriously and that is a part of the problem.

While in your last post you carefully restricted your criticisms to what you styled as Christian fanatics (and not mere conservatives), in other posts you have claimed these people comprise 40% of the electorate. Which is it? Are you alleging that 40% of the electorate behaves as you described earlier and is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy our freedoms? Frankly you are frequently rather sweeping in your anti Christian criticisms and accusations - it would be rather difficult to accuse you of any particular sensitivity to ideas that some non fanatic, serious, well-educated, and intelligent people take quite seriously.

I also believe it is literally true that you are every bit as fixed on this topic as are those unnamed individuals you accuse of obsession with Clinton/Monica. Moreover your own brand of intolerance, though differently directed, is no less intolerant than is that of those whom you criticize so avidly.

I have, without much success, been attempting to make the point with you and Blatham that those you criticize for their religious beliefs have the same political rights as you. Moreover the fact of a religious motivation for their ideas and political goals does not in any way make them invalid. Their ideas, just like those of everyone else, must be evaluated based on their intrinsic merit, or lack thereof.

The fool reference was to a remark by Blatham in a post above.

Jusat got back from a wonderful hike over the Dipsea trail to Stinson Beach. A clear brisk day - beautiful. Couldn't be sore at anyone, even if I tried.

From what little I know, a jackass is no fool.

george, george, george, what am I going to do with you? I don't think you read what I write. It seems to me that I have explained this so many times, I feel like I'm making everyone bored with one more explanation.

The 40% to which Blatham referred is, I believe 40% of Bush's supporters. A good percentage of that 40% of people who vote for Bush are Christian fanatics. The other percentage, of which you may count yourself, or you may not, I don't know, are people like you. These are people like you who find comfort in their faith. Their religious experience has been a positive one and they have never encountered the type of people I'm talking about. Or if they have, like you, they think of them as being in very small numbers and probably harmless. Now I hope we're clear on the 40% thing, although it was Blatham who brought the figure up again. I remember it from some other thread some time back, maybe Blatham will help us with this.

Those Christian fanatics who have organized this movement are not harmless. They have a specific agenda to dominate the private lives of the population of this United States. They are dangerous because they have systematically taken over local political organizations. They are the delegates to the Republican convention and have undue influence over the platform. In 1992, they went too far and lost the election for Bush the Senior because they were too public about their extreme ideas. Remember Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan speaking at the Repub convention? Remember that is when the tide turned toward Clinton?

Since that time, they have been led and advised by people like Ralph Reed and Karl Rove who have taught them to be more covert in their techniques. They had taught them when to be quiet and how to market their ideas so they seem to fit with a more mainstream Christian perspective. So reasonable people like you are not alarmed by them at all.

Am I making myself clear? I am not talking out of ignorance, george. I know these people and I know what they have been doing for a long time now. They have systematically taken over as local precinct chairs. They are dominate in many local Republican organizations because there is so little vigilance on this level. They started with school boards and have moved up from there. If you will look back at some of the articles I have posted, you can read about their techniques.

I'm not a raving nut. I am a reasonable person who is worried. Tonight, for instance, I had dinner with a few people like myself who have been raised or involved in these groups in the past. When I tell them how hard it is for some people to believe this is taking place, they all laugh and shake their heads. They don't laugh because it's funny, but rather that is seems to be such an impossibility to so many like you.

Take for instance this sentence from your post above:



You have repeated this point to me many, many times. And I have just as many times told you that I agree with you. They do have the same rights as anyone else. My point, and please don't make me write this in capital letters, is that they intend to take away our (including your) freedoms. I suggest that we try to stop them. You can try to stop them by working to defeat them within your party. Democrats can try to defeat them by voting the Democratic ticket. But however it's done, they should be defeated, because if they are not, you will not like the result.

Can you please tell me, if you will, what it is in what I've just written that prompts you to repeat the above sentence to me in spite of my clear agreement with you that they have their rights? They do have their rights and we have ours. I am suggesting, and here I go with the caps, sorry, THAT WE USE OUR RIGHTS TO EXPOSE THEIR ANTI-DEMOCRATIC INTENTIONS AND PREVENT THEM FROM CARRYING OUT THEIR POLITICAL AGENDA.

What is it, george about this that you do not understand? You may be correct that I am intolerant of these fanatical Christians. I am as intolerant of them as I am of the Taliban or of Saddam. You are equally intolerant of fanatics. What you don't seem to want to believe is that these folks are dangerous to your freedom. And it is this that I feel so annoyed with you about. I'm telling you that they are. And you could at least do me the courtesy to try to understand what I'm talking about rather than simply repeat back to me what you've already said, as if you haven't read what I wrote to you.

I haven't been on a nice walk, so I'm not is such a pleasant mood as you. But I'm glad you had an enjoyable afternoon.

P.S.

Unintentional condescension simply indicates how ego syntonic your condescending attitude is. I would be happier if you were aware of it and made a bit uncomfortable by it. I do believe you don't recognize it. (wink, wink)

Come on over here and I'll give you a little slap on the fanny and I'll change your mind with something that will be for your own good. :wink:

Every man needs a little slapping around from time to time to keep him in line.

antibush peeps, i need your help on this...

i compiled a list of things that bush did that i think should piss off most people including conservatives here...

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16736

IF YOU'RE DEDICATED TO BUSH LOSING, it would be worthwhile for a second person (one who isn't biased to all the issues and is pretty in tune with how american people think - a claim i wish i could make) to narrow the issues brought up here to the issues that are most likely to piss off most americans including conservatives, and list them including lots of supporting data for them. then i'll help design a series of posters, one highlighting each issue.

through help of insiders like jjorge, i think we can post copies of the posters on sites like blogforamerica so that people can print them out and put them up all over their neighborhood. this is the very essence of a grassroots movements.

as long as the issues brought up really do matter to the american people, and there is plenty of specific information on how bush opposes these issues, A LOT OF PEOPLE WILL BE TURNED AWAY FROM REELECTING BUSH.

Well Lola I do like you, mostly because you have spirit, character, and are what in Spanish is known as embra, (a bit quirky too, but who, worth knowing, isn't?).

"Ego syntonic condescension" -- is it fatal? How much time do I have? I'll confess that some who haven't liked me have found me a bit condescending and overbearing. Those are the usual criticisms, but I have made a lifetime of ignoring them. At the core I am a sweet and caring guy. And I am just as proficient in connecting to the janitor, as to the vice presidents at work. (Indeed sometimes better with the janitor.)

I can't and won't argue with the description you have given above concerning your position, as long as you will confine your opposition to the normal political process, and recognize that nutty Christians are not the only group of nutty people who would do away with our freedoms. I find the modern priesthood of political correctitude and university speech codes, and the like, every bit as threatening and obnoxious. I'm not sure I would put Ralph Reed in your nutty category either, but I won't fight over that issue.

I do note that evangelical Protestantism has been a part of American life for at least two centuries, and it hasn't taken over yet. Certainly the 'Know Nothings' of the 1870s appeared to be a threat, but just a few decades later the Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants had displaced them from political power. I think you are afraid of a paper tiger. I will admit I haven't had much direct contact with what concerns you so - I may be wrong, and I will make allowance for that. (How's that? Am I not truly the very model of a modern major generalist?)

I also believe that in other, perhaps less carefully phrased, posts you have left me the strong impression that your opposition and willingness to act on it went much farther than you described above. Now that I am better informed, I will remember.

Watch what you say about Pat Buchannan - we went to the same high school (Gonzaga in Washington) and his younger brothers were in my class. (By the way, he was an aggressive jerk then.)

I do like your spirit, but the slapping bit isn't my cup of tea - don't try it. I don't need it and I don't do it. But I will let you fool with my cigar!

george,

Sometimes, I'm too subtle. The fanny slapping bit was a reference to the Tailhook thing. I have agreed with you about this incident, and I was making a joke, intending to illustrate my point. I think I missed the target. But I still think it was funny. And no cigar........

As if we needed another reason to replace Bush.

Commentary > Opinion
from the January 06, 2004 edition

Politics in the lab hits US scientific integrity

By Barton Reppert

GAITHERSBURG, MD. – In theory, science is supposed to be cold, analytical, dispassionate - and studiously apolitical. But in the real world of competing demands for federal research dollars, savvy scientists of all disciplines - from cognitive psychologists running rats through mazes to nuclear physicists operating massive particle accelerators - recognize that a certain amount of political meddling in their research by policymakers in the executive branch and Congress is to be expected. However, there are limits - limits the Bush administration has frequently disregarded by imposing stringent political controls on a broad variety of federal scientific programs and activities. This has raised acute concern in the American scientific community that the administration's drive to stamp its conservative values on science isn't just affecting policy decisions, but undermining the integrity of the US research infrastructure itself.
Playing politics with science is nothing new in Washington, of course. President Nixon shut down his White House science office because he didn't like the advice he was getting on arms control and the supersonic transport. Nevertheless, several science-policy experts argue that no presidency has been more calculating and ideological than the Bush administration in setting political parameters for science. President Bush's blunt rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and his decision restricting stem-cell research are only the most obvious and widely publicized examples of what has become a broader pattern across the administration.
At the same time, the president's chief science adviser, atomic physicist John Marburger, who is largely well-regarded in the scientific community, reportedly has very little substantive access to Bush and his senior aides, and his office has been moved out of the White House complex.
Some examples of the Bush administration's interference with science include:
• The removal from a National Cancer Institute website of a scientific analysis concluding that abortions do not increase a woman's risk of breast cancer. That move, in November 2002, contradicted the broad medical consensus, and members of Congress protested the change. In response, the NCI updated its website to include the conclusion of a panel of experts that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.
• Dropping a leading addiction expert from the University of New Mexico, Dr. William Miller, from consideration for membership on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse after an administration aide quizzed him about whether he opposed abortion ("no") and had voted for Bush ("no").
• The elimination of the section on global warming in a comprehensive Environmental Protection Agency report on the environment last June. EPA officials decided to eliminate the section on climate change after an earlier draft prompted the White House to demand major revisions.
The politicization of US science has drawn close attention from leading scientific journals. Bush administration interference with federal scientific advisory committees as well as peer-review panels for research grants is an "epidemic of politics," editorialized Science, the influential weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "What is unusual about the current epidemic is not that the Bush administration examines candidates for compatibility with its 'values.' It's how deep the practice cuts, in particular, the way it now invades areas once immune to this kind of manipulation," wrote editor in chief Donald Kennedy.
Prominent Democrats in Congress have expressed frustration over the mixing of politics with science.
"I think what they've done is unprecedented," says Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California, ranking minority member of the House Government Reform Committee. "Even prominent Republicans who served under Presidents Reagan, Ford, and Nixon are alarmed.... Leading scientists both inside and outside the administration have said politics is getting into previously protected areas."
Mr. Waxman's committee issued a report in August concluding that the administration's political interference with science has led to "misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered websites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications, and the gagging of scientists."
The report - which can be seen at www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience - alleges abuses in 21 areas ranging from abstinence-only sex education to breast cancer, drinking water, food safety, global warming, prescription-drug advertising, stem-cell research, and workplace safety.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed the report as "riddled with distortions, inaccuracies, and omissions." And, he said, "This administration looks at the facts, and reviews the best available science based on what's right for the American people. The only one who is playing politics about science is Congressman Waxman."
Several senior-science policy specialists say that while the Waxman report has a partisan tone, most of its major points are well taken. Neal Lane, who served as director of the National Science Foundation and then as presidential science adviser during the Clinton administration, observed: "It's always the case in the White House ... that science is one of a number of sets of issues that a president, a political policymaker, has to consider when they're making decisions. Sometimes the decision goes in a way that the science would not suggest. But there's such a long list of egregious actions taken by this administration that I think it essentially gives a false impression of what the science really is and strongly suggests the administration simply doesn't care to find out."
Prof. Lewis Branscomb, a science policy expert at Harvard and former director of the National Bureau of Standards under Nixon, notes that on the question of stacking federal scientific advisory committees, "I'm not aware that [Nixon] ever hand-picked ideologues to serve on advisory committees, or dismissed from advisory committees very well-qualified people if he didn't like their views.... What's going on now is in many ways more insidious. It happens behind the curtain. I don't think we've had this kind of cynicism with respect to objective scientific advice since I've been watching government, which is quite a long time."
Perhaps the corrosive issue of political interference with science won't be crucial to Bush's reelection chances, but by undercutting the integrity of the scientific community, it may be crucial to the long-term quality of life not just in the US, but also in other countries around the world.

Poor Colin's out of the loop again:



-- Secretary of State Colin Powell, January 2004




-- RNC TV ad, 11/21/03

All this happened under Bush's watch:
"THINK ABOUT THIS FOR A MINUTE''

FREE MARKET

A car company can move its factories to Mexico and claim it's a free
market.

A toy company can out-source to a Chinese sub-contractor and claim it's
a free market.

A major bank can incorporate in Bermuda to avoid taxes and claim it's a
free market.

BUT, heaven help the elderly who dare to buy their prescription drugs
from a Canadian pharmacy.

CI - Yes, the administration is wrong on the prescription drug issue. What's that, 1 out of 4 of the things you listed? I assume their argument is that without Americans paying higher prices to prop up profits, drug research will suffer. Frankly, I don't buy it, and even if it is true, I don't believe in doing the wrong thing even for a good reason.

Competition from foreign pharmacies would likely force American drug prices to fall. That's the way free markets are supposed to work, and Republicans are supposed to be for free markets. They seem very much in the wrong on this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/politics/07CND-FUND.html?hp

I was watching Lou Dobbs on CNN tonight and listening to a whole lot of Republican gnashing-of-teeth about the proposed immigration legislation.

Lou has talked a lot also about issues real Republicans (not this weird neoconservative mutant kind we're plagued with lately) seem to be concerned about: the PATRIOT Act, huge budget deficits, etc.

Which made me wonder:

Why isn't one of these real Republicans challenging Bush for the nomination?

Absent that, why don't the Libertarians run a candidate on these issues? That person is certain to peel off thousands of Republicans, ones like Kevin Phillips:



Kevin Phillips ain't no lefty. He's a former Nixon staffer and authored "The Emerging Republican Majority" back then. He hasn't had any transformation that has turned him into a -- God forbid! -- Democrat. He voted for Reagan twice and would have eagerly voted for John McCain.

He hasn't stopped being Republican. It's just that he's appalled at what the Republican Party has become under the Bush dynasty.

In his latest book, "American Dynasty:Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" Phillips weaves evidence of the Bush family's dynastic sense of entitlement -- and corruption.

"Few have looked at the facts of the family's rise, but just as important, commentators have neglected the thread -- not the mere occasion -- of special interests, biases, scandals (especially those related to arms dealing), and blatant business cronyism" Phillips writes in the preface. "The evidence that accumulates over four generations [of the Bush family dynasty] is really quite damning."

"Three generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy...deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks."

Pretty harsh stuff, especially coming from a GOPer.

The crap sure seems to be piling up for Bush...

It would seem that what's piling up is Bush's approval and The Opposition's frustration..

timber, you're not a fire-and-brimstone born-again evangelical fundamentalist Republican.

Why did you let those freaks take over your party? :wink:

Bush is pandering to them as much as he's pandering to the CEO's who are raising millions for him. Since there's so much money involved, that at least makes a sort of sense...

I'm noticing, with the coverage of Bush's immigration reform proposal, that every report on it includes the line that it's being done with one eye on the Hispanic vote. "Hispandering", someone else called it.

Certainly a vote for the Republicans is a vote for cheap labor. No disguising that any more.

The New York Times reported that Bush's new budget is being formulated with key electoral states in mind (Ralph Hall, the Congress' oldest Representative and most conservative Democrat, changed parties this week because he said that Tom DeLay told him his district would be zero-summed).

The anticipated 'handoff' of sovereignty to Iraq by June (never mind the fact that troops have been put on another stop-loss program) has been reported as a means to avoid charges of 'quagmire in Iraq'.

These are political realities, but it seems a little crass to me that news outlets are reporting this stuff straight-up, with no hint of the cynicism that such moves indicate.

Sad thing is, the ADHD Americans reflected in the polls you cite ad nauseum won't even notice that they're being manipulated yet again.

The polls coming out tomorrow, and next week, and constantly until Election Day, will mean something entirely different to you and me and everybody else on both sides.

Bush is still the worst President in history and needs to be ejected from the White House (thus the topic of this thread).

I'm not looking for your agreement (and you certainly shouldn't expect that those who agree with me will stay home on Election Day because of some poll).

Yesterday I heard this report on All Things Considered:

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/

It said that while we're told, through the press, about the 400 service men and women who have been killed in the war, there is no information being released and therefore not reported about the 9,000 or so military men and women who have been so seriously injured they were shipped out. The reporter tells of his efforts to gather the statistics on this population of injured, but was thwarted on every turn. Rumsfeld's office's response was that there were no statistics on the injured. And of course there are those stats, but where are they? No one knows what percentage of those injured are injured for life. This story is hard to cover because the stats are being with held. I wonder why? If people knew these stats, if the figure were more widely known, the public would be less supportive of GW and his war mongering. And those polls that Timber is so proud of when they're in GW's favor and so dismissive of when they are not would look very different indeed. Yet again another reason to get rid or GW.

Listened to it on the way to karate last night. There was a similar report on NOW a few weeks ago.
NOW with Bill Moyers