To the degree that "wanton asocial criminality" is wrong on both counts, I gotta agree with timber on this one. They should always be labeled "evil, reprehensible, and sad." I don't find them "invisible" by any means; I understand the difference between the destruction of property and the killing of a human. I could still label each incident as "evil, reprehensible, and sad."
GW's goose is cooked........counting the days
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/
The new Pentagon papers
A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.
Lola, That "news" has been out for quite awhile now. GW's goose isn't "cooked," because it won't get coverage in the 'regular' media. Sad, but true.
Quote:Not at all. Its simply wrong ... niether more wrong nor less wrong, one way or the other, just absolutely wrong. Wanton asocial criminality is wanton asocial criminality, period, end of comparison, regardless the motivation, zeal, or ideology of the perpetrator. Nothing about it is invisible, nothing about is just peachy. Its evil. reprehensible, and a sad, chilling commentary on what passes among some folk for activism, whatever the cause.
Well, you've just equated graffiti with 9-11. And the French Revolution with the Holocaust. And an oval office blow job with the numerous deceits leading to war in Iraq and a LOT of people blown to hell. That's the problem with your formulation. And you've used it exactly as george frequently does...to excuse some entity to which you or he holds allegiance.
This is the sort of idiocy which emanates out of the deep partisanship in your country, and out of the 'us versus them' framework which too many of you fall to far too easily. As my mother used to say to me, 'you are your own worst enemy'.
You use the term 'absolute wrong' above. It's not a valuable nor coherent idea. Blowing up people with a suitcase bomb takes on a different ethical coloration when those people include Adolph Hitler. Shooting someone between the eyes...is it ethically irrelevant that the person holding the rifle was an American patriot and the target a redcoat?
This argument began because I made the claim that the 'religious right' has gained too much power within the republican party, and in the nation, and that this constitutes a danger to your liberties. It's not a bizarre idea...your founders were smarter about this than you are. And if you consider that somehow your Republic is now fully insulated against those same social and political tendencies which your founders sought to minimize and eradicate, then again, they were smarter than you are being.
There is a marked and noticeable degree of evil in the difference between shooting out SUV windows and blowing up family clinics.
And between vandalism and assassination, as blatham has more eloquently stated.
It's the same degree of difference as a misdemeanor and a felony.
Timber, that is without a doubt the weakest argument you have ever offered in this forum.
In fact, it is so weak that I cannot believe that you believe it yourself.
End of comparison.
Last rant today...perhaps.
Timber and I are friends, as are PDiddie and I. My post above is angry because I am angry. Let me share...
Pretty clearly, the temptation to totalitarianism is always present in human affairs. Liberty depends upon an often exhausting alertness to the means by which those who tend towards authoritarianism might gain significant power. Our institutions are the main societal bulwark against authoritarianism. Institutions such as the constitution and it's understanding of why church and state MUST remain separate. That IS under threat presently. Or our courts, which are to separate from the administration, to balance it. That IS under threat presently.
And very worrisome to me is the tempation towards authoritarian governance that may arise with increasing unsettled political matters in the world. The Patriot Act is an example.
Couple that with the mind-boggling potentialities of modern technologies, and we sitting on the edge of what could be the most pervasive and effective police state apparatus any culture has ever known.
Nothing in here is guaranteed, neither the negative outcomes nor the positive ones. But SOMETHING is going to evolve. It's no time to be sloppy in our thinking, and it's no time to hold allegiances to anything but liberty and the ideals your founders represented and voiced.
c.i. wrote:
Quote:Lola, That "news" has been out for quite awhile now. GW's goose isn't "cooked," because it won't get coverage in the 'regular' media. Sad, but true.
We shall see, c.i. But I'm not pessismistic. Not yet ready to bet on it, but I'm still thinking he's a goner.
Lola, Even "smarties" like timber, I'm sure, have read that piece, and come out with a different interpretation. That's another 'fact' that cannot be denied. Depending on party affiliation, we have a tendency to slant our reading in favor of what we want to hear, and not what the actual article says. I always wonder how people can actually see the same article differently, but it happens all the time.
cicerone imposter wrote:Lola, Even "smarties" like timber, I'm sure, have read that piece, and come out with a different interpretation. That's another 'fact' that cannot be denied. Depending on party affiliation, we have a tendency to slant our reading in favor of what we want to hear, and not what the actual article says. I always wonder how people can actually see the same article differently, but it happens all the time.
When I read a piece the starts out with biased rhetoric like this:
Quote:Our new Washington bureau brings you this report from within the belly of the Bush administration beast -- an eyewitness account of how radical ideologues hijacked the American government along the road to war in Iraq.
I lose any confidence that what I'm getting will be a balanced, factual account.
Lantern-jawed Kerry ( a synthetic Irishman) has peaked too early. His warts are now showing more clearly, and he will fade. G.W. will win - a fairly close election, but he will win.
Perhaps there will be gnashing of teeth in Lolaland, but what the hell! (I'll console her with a cigar.)
Blatham's litany of the proximate dangers of totalitarianism, has (like most of his pronouncements) a strong element of truth, but it is far from complete. We should also add the continuing advance of government into legislating new elements of morality, while it casts out old ones in the name of freedom and equality.
He also exaggerates our internal divisions. Even Canada in its serene perfection has multiple political parties.
Amusing to see the former strident advocates of campaign finance reform and McCain Feingold now outraged that the law they eagerly spawned might also apply to 'Move On' and George Soros.
That's a funny piece, Pdiddie ... thanks. I get a real chuckle out of Maher.
Glad you liked it, Big Bird; he is
so rolling these days. Last night he had George Carlin on his panel.
I laughed 'til I nearly wet my shorts.
Maher doesn't let Senator Kerry slide, either, FTR:
Quote:...and by the way, that also goes for John Forbes Kerry, the other white meat. Two Skull and Bones preppies, these guys are, from Nantucket and Kennebunkport, who use the word "summer" as a verb and probably had monogrammed beer bongs in college.
Please, John Kerry: Stop rolling up your sleeves at campaign rallies like you're about to man a register at Costco. You're a Boston Brahmin who married not one but two eccentric heiresses -- you're not Joe Sixpack, you're Claus von Bulow. I think your current wife is great, but hello, she inherited the Heinz fortune! She's the ketchup lady! --
which explains why sometimes he's gotta smack her on the bottom to get her to come. 
Look, fellas, we've got almost eight months till the election. That's a long time to hold in your gut. To pretend you're something you're not. Let's just be real and admit that finally, and unfortunately, true class warfare has come to America:
Yale class of '66 vs. Yale class of '68.
PD
And with Carlin was, as you know, Kim Cambell, Canada's first and only female Prime Minister. I'm very fond of the lady, but she was unlucky enough to take over leadership of the Conservative government when Brian Mulroney left office and he was SO hated that his party was decimated in the following election and Kim never had the opportunity to lead the country. Great pity.
george mumbled...
Quote:Blatham's litany of the proximate dangers of totalitarianism, has (like most of his pronouncements) a strong element of truth, but it is far from complete. We should also add the continuing advance of government into legislating new elements of morality, while it casts out old ones in the name of freedom and equality.
Horse dumplings! George, you will, it is quite certain, pass on to the next life without having grasped that there is something here you do not grasp (clue: insisting upon the continued adherence by your neighbors to your traditional ideas and values is not really an example of 'liberty').
then he haranguified...
Quote:He also exaggerates our internal divisions. Even Canada in its serene perfection has multiple political parties.
I'm exaggerating the partisanship presently on display in the US of A? You gotta be joking. And you really must must must cease assuming that I think Canada is superior to the US, although of course we are way bigger. Multiple parties? You'd benefit. At the very least, it would go some small distance to ameliorating the simplistic us/them, good/evil dichotomies so emollient to the American mind. With luck, Roy Moore or Ralph Reed will take the reigns of this vital new third way or, almost as happy an occasion, they'll share the sacred bonds of matrimony in a DC public washroom and live happily in a garrot above a Paris brothel until tragically cut down at the very height of their sexual prime by a evangelical Texan who ought to have been looking ahead at the road instead of reading his Left Behind novella.
The Politics of Self-Pity
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 14, 2004
WASHINGTON
Republicans relished their philosophy of personal responsibility last week with John Belushi's famous mantra: Cheeseburgercheeseburgercheeseburger.
When the House passed the "cheeseburger bill" to bar people from suing fast food joints for making them obese, Republican backers of the legislation scolded Americans, saying the fault lies not in their fries, but in themselves.
"Look in the mirror, because you're the one to blame," said F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, home of brats and beer bellies.
So it comes as something of a disappointment that the leader of the Republican Party, the man who epitomizes the conservative ideal, is playing the victim. President Bush has made the theme of his re-election campaign a whiny "not my fault."
His ads, pilloried for the crass use of the images of a flag-draped body carried from ground zero and an Arab-looking everyman with the message, "We can fight against terrorists," actually have a more fundamental problem. They try to push off blame for anything that's gone wrong during Mr. Bush's tenure on bigger forces, supposedly beyond his control.
One ad cites "an economy in recession. A stock market in decline. A dot-com boom gone bust. Then a day of tragedy. A test for all Americans."
Mr. Bush's subtext is clear: If it weren't for all these awful things that happened, most of them hangovers from the Clinton era, I definitely could have fulfilled all my promises. I'm still great, but none of my programs worked because, well, stuff happens."
It's as if his inner fat boy is complaining that a classic triple cheeseburger from Wendy's (940 calories and 56 grams of fat, 25 of them saturated, and 2,140 milligrams of sodium) jumped out of its wrapper and forced its way down his unwilling throat, topped off by a pushy Frosty (540 calories and 13 grams of fat, 8 of them saturated).
Mr. Bush has been in office over three years. It's time to start accepting some responsibility.
Republicans have a bad habit of laying down rules for other people to follow while excluding themselves. Look how they beat up Bill Clinton for messing around with a young woman, while many top Republicans were doing the very same thing.
Mr. Bush's whingeing was infectious. The very House Republicans who greased the skids for the cheeseburger bill got in a huff over John Kerry's overheard comment to some supporters in Chicago that his Republican critics were "the most crooked, you know, lying group" he'd ever seen.
These tough-guy Republicans, who rule the House with an iron fist, were suddenly squealing like schoolgirls at being victimized by big, bad John Kerry. J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, said Mr. Kerry would have his "upcomeance coming." Tom DeLay sulked that the public was getting "a glimpse of the real John Kerry." The Hammer was talking like a nail.
Marc Racicot, Mr. Bush's campaign chairman, accused Mr. Kerry of "unbecoming" conduct and called on him to apologize.
Oh, the poor dears. The very Bush crowd that savaged John McCain in South Carolina, that bullied and antagonized the allies we need in the real war on terror, that is spending a hundred million dollars on ads that will turn Mr. Kerry into something akin to the Boston Strangler; these guys are suddenly such delicate flowers, such big bawling babies, that they can't bear to hear Mr. Kerry speak of them harshly.
Mr. Bush is not believable in the victim's role. He and Dick Cheney have audaciously imposed their will on Washington and the world.
We are not yet sure who is behind the horrendous bombings in Spain, but they have already underscored how vulnerable our trains and subways are. And they have reminded us that the administration diverted resources from the war on terror and the search for Osama to settle old scores in Iraq, building a case for war with hyped and phony claims on weapons.
In an interview with The Guardian, the weapons sleuth David Kay said it's time for Mr. Bush to take personal responsibility: "It's about confronting and coming clean with the American people. . . . He should say: `We were mistaken and I am determined to find out why.' "
In other words, Mr. Bush, look in the mirror.
MoDo is making me like her again.
WORLD
Bombs kill 6 US soldiers in Iraq
Posted: Sunday, March 14, 7:16am EST
Four American soldiers died in two bomb explosions in Baghdad, the coalition said Sunday, raising to six the number of US forces killed in roadside bombs this weekend. Hundreds of Iraqis, meanwhile, mourned the death of a Shiite politician's relative in a bomb blast in his shop the previous day. A roadside bomb killed three soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and wounded another during a patrol Saturday night in southeastern Baghdad, a spokeswoman for the US-led coalition spokeswoman said. That followed a similar attack in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit that killed two American soldiers and wounded three others. US forces responded by making several arrests and dispatching troops into the streets in a show of force on the same day that the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, took control of the restive Sunni Triangle town in a troop rotation. A sixth soldier died at a combat hospital from injuries suffered in a blast in the Iraqi capital Sunday morning, the spokeswoman said.
Again American youth pays the price in Bush's war.
Jimmy Breslin, national treasure:
Quote:For days now, the job at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers:
"The president's feet are not to touch the dirt."
So all yesterday, large crews drawn from all county parks worked to ensure that, as always in his life, George Bush's feet do not touch the ground when he appears in the big park today.
Bush arrives for a fund-raiser at a restaurant in the park. That is indoors and he doesn't have to worry about his feet there. But he has to go over ground to an administration building where he is to meet with families of 9/11 victims. After that, he has to go over more ground to get to the site of a memorial to the victims.
He doesn't want his feet on the ground and he will be at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Money in his coffers, but no dirt on his shoes
