Bush supporters' aftermath thread

It would be a grand thing indeed if you folks got your noggins around what constitutes the differences between a "smear" and a relevant indication of political bias or questionable connections.

For example, should I go back and find what you two have written about Ronnie Earl?

And then we could research to find out whether he has "labored as a (dem) fundraiser, organizer and activist".

If so, it would be clearly relevant, would it not?

thankee, JW...there it is on TownHall. What a surprise.

thankee, JW...there it is on TownHall. What a surprise.

blatham wrote:

It would be a grand thing indeed if you folks got your noggins around what constitutes the differences between a "smear" and a relevant indication of political bias or questionable connections.

Oh, I understand the difference: If we do it it's a "smear," but if you do it it's "a relevant indication of political bias or questionable connections."

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For example, should I go back and find what you two have written about Ronnie Earl?

Please do.

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And then we could research to find out whether he has "labored as a (dem) fundraiser, organizer and activist".

As a matter of fact, he did fundraising for the Democrats. Using his DeLay prosecution to sell the tickets, too.

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If so, it would be clearly relevant, would it not?

To me, it was relevant because he was stumping for the democrats and talking about how he was going to take down DeLay. What was most relevant about Earle was his conduct and the things he said, not his past political affiliations.

blatham wrote:

thankee, JW...there it is on TownHall. What a surprise.

Tell you what. When salon.com decides to examine the Clinton administration's covering up a coverup (and the politicalization of the IRS, no less), I'll be sure to use them as a source.

How's that for a deal?

In the meantime, I'm writing to my congressman that we just may need a "leak" of those redacted pages. Inquiring minds want to know...even if Congress does not.

In a different context or under other circumstances, I'm quite sure I'd like you guys and would enjoy spending time with you and tossing ideas back and forth - on faith, on governance, on compassion and suffering, on football. That's sincere, not a rhetorical deception. But I don't like you now. I am deeply angry and dismayed at the moral and intellectual positions your partisan or nationalist loyalties have led you to.

You accept, with almost no reflection, nearly anything and everything this adminstration you support tells you from the small details to the large "mottos".

Abramoff was an "equal money dispenser", said Bush. It was a lie. You bought it, or at least excused it. How many more such inaccuracies and deceptions have I seen you swallow and parrot?

"They want to destroy our way of life and Western Civilization", says Cheney. You guys suck that in and it gives you meaning and purpose even while that consequence from that cause is so nearly impossible as to be laughable. There are how many of these guys on camels with rifles? The combination of Germany, Italy and Japan - highly technically and militarily advanced nations with millions of trained soldiers and huge military machines didn't pose the threat described above, though they posed something real but much smaller. In fact, it is our modern culture and militarism which poses that threat to the cultures of the desert arabs. Perhaps it ought to, but at least you should get the whole picture right side up in your thinking.

You argue that the media doesn't tell the good news about the war. But the media has been almost completely sterile and devoid of the realities of this war. Have any of you seen even a single picture of a blown apart innocent Iraqi child? Have any of you heard them screaming for the two days it took for their burned bodies to expire? I don't want to witness this either, but we should be forced to witness exactly this.

You justify and excuse torture, though you define what has happened as something else even when if your parents of siblings suffered these acts, you would consider it nothing other than inhuman. Or you justify it as necessary and think "turn the other cheeck" and "let him who has no sin throw the first stone" are notions as quaint as the international rules on torture. Do you imagine Christ committing such acts? Do you imagine Christ condoning such acts? Do you imagine Christ dropping a cluster bomb?

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And then we could research to find out whether he has "labored as a (dem) fundraiser, organizer and activist".


As a matter of fact, he did fundraising for the Democrats. Using his DeLay prosecution to sell the tickets, too.

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If so, it would be clearly relevant, would it not?


To me, it was relevant because he was stumping for the democrats and talking about how he was going to take down DeLay. What was most relevant about Earle was his conduct and the things he said, not his past political affiliations.

In a different context or under other circumstances, I'm quite sure I'd like you guys and would enjoy spending time with you and tossing ideas back and forth - on faith, on governance, on compassion and suffering, on football. That's sincere, not a rhetorical deception. But I don't like you now. I am deeply angry and dismayed at the moral and intellectual positions your partisan or nationalist loyalties have led you to.

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And then we could research to find out whether he has "labored as a (dem) fundraiser, organizer and activist".


As a matter of fact, he did fundraising for the Democrats. Using his DeLay prosecution to sell the tickets, too.

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If so, it would be clearly relevant, would it not?


To me, it was relevant because he was stumping for the democrats and talking about how he was going to take down DeLay. What was most relevant about Earle was his conduct and the things he said, not his past political affiliations.

Where you have the facts right here, it would be relevant. Where are your facts noted or documented?

blatham wrote:

thankee, JW...there it is on TownHall. What a surprise.

Tell you what. When salon.com decides to examine the Clinton administration's covering up a coverup (and the politicalization of the IRS, no less), I'll be sure to use them as a source.

How's that for a deal?

In the meantime, I'm writing to my congressman that we just may need a "leak" of those redacted pages. Inquiring minds want to know...even if Congress does not.

Well I like you, Bernie. I like you even though you are a granola-eating liberal with illusions of grandeur, who -- although obviously wrong -- is convinced of his own moral superiority. I like you even after all the many times you -- with your usual flair for the dramatic -- have posted a harsh critique of my position that is quite obviously fueled by your own partisan opinions and closely-held beliefs. I like you even though you cannot see that much of what you complain about me are characteristics and things which you yourself have or do. I like you because I believe you are a good person and I don't hold all of your shortcomings against you.

No, the fact that there are terrorists in the world who would like nothing better than to kill you, and your entire family, does make me want to rid the world of these terrorists

You remain a member of the "blame America first," crowd. In your view, the problem is with us, not with them. I reject that.

I do not believe that our "culture" poses a threat to the "desert arabs,"

they hate us for who we are.

Nothing about our culture is causing wanton death and destruction to them.

You would prefer we ignore the terrorists, or appease them. What you advocate translates into weakness in the terrorist's culture.

The US demonstrated weakness in response to the hostages being taken in Iran. They saw weakness in our responses to the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, to the first WTC bombing, to the embassy bombings, and the bombing of the Cole. They believed the US was weak and that it would not defend itself. The weakness shown by President Clinton in Somalia was particularly identified by OBL. In any event, they have declared war on us, and now the battle has been joined.

Isn't it great? When Novak is featured on CNN or in the NY Times criticizing a Republican, Bernie thinks he is just wonderful. But let something of his show up on Townhall and he's scum.

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Well I like you, Bernie. I like you even though you are a granola-eating liberal with illusions of grandeur, who -- although obviously wrong -- is convinced of his own moral superiority. I like you even after all the many times you -- with your usual flair for the dramatic -- have posted a harsh critique of my position that is quite obviously fueled by your own partisan opinions and closely-held beliefs. I like you even though you cannot see that much of what you complain about me are characteristics and things which you yourself have or do. I like you because I believe you are a good person and I don't hold all of your shortcomings against you.

Hippy peace sign.

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No, the fact that there are terrorists in the world who would like nothing better than to kill you, and your entire family, does make me want to rid the world of these terrorists

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I have absolutely no reason to think your thesis here has any merit whatsoever. Your apparent thesis: there are some people (we will call them 'terrorists') and the thing they want most of all is the death of a family (all families) from Vancouver (or Adelaide or Bonn or Dublin or Prague or Portland or Brussels or Phnom Penh or Copenhagen or Stockholm - in your thesis, all those cities). That is not even moderately comprehensible or sane. How could you come to believe anything remotely like this might be so?

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You remain a member of the "blame America first," crowd. In your view, the problem is with us, not with them. I reject that.

So do I. I never said it. The "problem" is with both of you. To the degree that you don't get right what role "you" play in this equation (and by "you" here I mean not just the US but more generally the modern western world) then you are going to keep setting yourself up for further attacks, just as the Brits did in Israel and India. If, for example, the US were to launch an attack now on Iran, the number of new anti-West/anti-US recruits for terrorism in the broad Muslim world would increase by god-knows what factor. This is all partly a clash of cultures (lots of historical examples of this) but it is also more than that. To the degree that US and other industrial states use the middle east for purposes related to self-interest while at the same time ignoring negative consequences to local populations (see the continued support of the Saudi government or the Egyptian government, with all attendent negatives for the oppressed people there) to that degree you/we are setting ourselves up to be hated. And that is an understandable hatred.

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I do not believe that our "culture" poses a threat to the "desert arabs,"

Attend now. My reference there was to the specific notion or claim that "they wish to destroy our way of life". "They" are probably less numerous (or little more so) than the membership of the Hell's Angels in your country and mine. They are absolutely incapable of getting anywhere near achieving such a goal, even if they had that goal. The degree of threat claimed or promoted is in the realm of insanity. Aside from the earlier example of WW2, consider Japan which suffered two nuclear bombs (not some piddly three-block radius 'dirty suitcase bomb' event) and which still remains Japan. But to ignore the "threat" to small and impoverished and unsophisticated cultures from the steamroller of western culture is to have the blindness to damage of an elephant in a cage with mice. Why wouldn't they bite the elephant's ankles? You may not conceive there is any real threat by us to them, but that is a cultural prejudice - our culture is better and they should jump at the chance to get in on it. When the brain-eating, dog-fukking, oxygen-mining folks from Tau Ceti arrive here on earth, we can discuss this further.

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they hate us for who we are.

That is an absolutely meaningless and thoughtless cliche. Do they hate the Hutterites for who they are? How would you know this, tico? Your studies of Muslim culture (in all its manifestations in all the regions where it exists) is how deep? Would they hate at all were the US and western nations operating only in their home countries? If you got serious about these questions and said "They hate us for what we DO", then you'd maybe makes some moves into understanding what is going on.

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Nothing about our culture is causing wanton death and destruction to them.

Like the Aegis film of mercenaries in Iraq wantonly shooting out the back of their SUV arbitrarily at cars behind as Elvis boomed loud? Like all the dead innocent people in Iraq? Like the support for truly malicious tyrants in the middle east (for their oil) who tortured the political and religious dissidents who later would become the crazed extremists who turned people like Osama toward what we now know?

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This "perceived" threat is what they make of it. The real threat is the islamic fundamentalist philosophy that has spawned all of the terrorists who perceive our culture as this threat, and have mapped their course of action.

They ARE a threat. Now. But they didn't drop from the sky.

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You would prefer we ignore the terrorists, or appease them. What you advocate translates into weakness in the terrorist's culture.

Another swallowed cliche. What analyses of that culture supports your claim about perception of "weakness", the indicators of it and the proper response to it? What analyses are available that argue something else? I've been reading Bernard Lewis for two decades. You? I don't "prefer you ignore the terrorists". Ignoring the circumstances (and our part in that) which bred them got you/us into this mess. I don't prefer we "appease" them. Unless appease means acknowledging that they are not vermin to be extinguished along with their children for being vermin.

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The US demonstrated weakness in response to the hostages being taken in Iran. They saw weakness in our responses to the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, to the first WTC bombing, to the embassy bombings, and the bombing of the Cole. They believed the US was weak and that it would not defend itself. The weakness shown by President Clinton in Somalia was particularly identified by OBL. In any event, they have declared war on us, and now the battle has been joined.

That they (some small band of extremists, now much larger in number due to US actions) considered the west (mainly America) as the enemy is entirely understandable, if certainly partly twisted. If you come to gain an increasing sense of insecurity, it will surely be in part because the US has been as stupid as has Israel or Egypt or Saudi Arabia etc before. Each of those states has been complicit in their own situations through the arrogance of power and the desire to manipulate large populations for the gain of those in power and to the detriment of many others.

As I've mentioned before, Abe Lincoln's wisdom led him to the certainty that America would not fall due to any external source but rather from what she herself got up to and did to herself. That's the point.

And that same point leads me to point to how much you guys excuse regarding your own nation's actions. You are in danger of becoming something very ugly, if not nearly so ugly as the other.

January 06, 2006, 8:04 a.m.
A Letter to the Europeans
Cry the beloved continent.So, terrorists of the Middle East seem to have even less respect for you than for the United States, given they harbor a certain contempt for your weakness as relish to the generic hatred of our shared Western traditions.Victor Davis Hanson

blatham wrote:

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And then we could research to find out whether he has "labored as a (dem) fundraiser, organizer and activist".


As a matter of fact, he did fundraising for the Democrats. Using his DeLay prosecution to sell the tickets, too.

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If so, it would be clearly relevant, would it not?


To me, it was relevant because he was stumping for the democrats and talking about how he was going to take down DeLay. What was most relevant about Earle was his conduct and the things he said, not his past political affiliations.

Where you have the facts right here, it would be relevant. Where are your facts noted or documented?

Which facts do you dispute? You don't think Ronnie Earle attended one or more partisan fundraisers in order to speak openly about an ongoing grand jury investigation against an uncharged public official?

Most of my commentary on Earle/DeLay have been on these two threads: why 3 grand juries ... and ... Should DeLay resign

Here are two posts in particular:

LINK 1

LINK 2

The cause of terrorism is terrorists.

Ticomaya wrote:

blatham wrote:

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And then we could research to find out whether he has "labored as a (dem) fundraiser, organizer and activist".


As a matter of fact, he did fundraising for the Democrats. Using his DeLay prosecution to sell the tickets, too.

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If so, it would be clearly relevant, would it not?


To me, it was relevant because he was stumping for the democrats and talking about how he was going to take down DeLay. What was most relevant about Earle was his conduct and the things he said, not his past political affiliations.

Where you have the facts right here, it would be relevant. Where are your facts noted or documented?

Which facts do you dispute? You don't think Ronnie Earle attended one or more partisan fundraisers in order to speak openly about an ongoing grand jury investigation against an uncharged public official?

Most of my commentary on Earle/DeLay have been on these two threads: why 3 grand juries ... and ... Should DeLay resign

Here are two posts in particular:

LINK 1

LINK 2

He spoke, seems to be the charge, at a dem fundraiser and some aspects of the DeLay case formed part of the content. If that is it (noting that Earle wasn't removed for any ethical or judicial violation, merely criticised by Byron and others) doesn't appear to make these two cases comparable, given the accuracy of the WP data.

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The cause of terrorism is terrorists.

You are a believer, tico. Nothing I or anyone else might say will alter your viewpoint. But the sentence above is completely meaningless and you ought to have the sense to recognize at least that.

- the cause of theism is theists
- the cause of nationalism is nationalists
- the cause of capitalism is capitalists

'Chocolate City' Sprinkled With Nuts

By Ann Coulter

Jan 18, 2006

So Hillary Clinton thinks the House of Representatives is being "run like a plantation." And, she added, "you know what I'm talking about."

First of all: Think about what a weird coincidence it is that Hillary would have made these remarks in a black church in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day. What are the odds? Did she even know it was a holiday? Bravely spoken, Senator. I haven't been this surprised since finding out Hollywood likes a movie about gay cowboys.

As Hillary explained, the House "has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."

Yes, that's what was really missing on plantations during the slavery era: the opportunity to present a contrary view. Gosh, if only the slaves had been allowed to call for cloture votes. What a difference that would have made!

Madam Hillary also said the Bush administration "will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country." While Hillary is certainly qualified to comment on what the all-time worst presidential administrations were, having had firsthand experience in one of them, I think she might want to avoid the phrase "go down in history."

All I can say is: It's a good thing we had a stealth candidate like Harriet Miers to tiptoe past these powerful, scary Democrats! Sorry if that sounds churlish, but after Judge Samuel Alito's magnificent performance last week, I think Republicans can stop being afraid of their shadows when it comes to our judicial nominees.

Ever since Bork, Republicans have been terrified of nominating candidates with something in their background that might possibly suggest the nominee did not get down on his knees (another phrase Hillary should avoid) and thank God for Roe v. Wade every night. That's how we ended up with mediocrities like David Hackett Souter and Anthony "Third Choice" Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

Besides being stunningly qualified, the characteristics of the current stellar Supreme Court nominee include these:

His mother immediately told the press, "Of course he's against abortion."

He had expressed support for the Reagan administration's positions on abortion in a 1985 memo.

He refused to accede to the Democrats' endless browbeating and tell them that Roe was "settled law."

And the Democrats couldn't lay a finger on him. Sam Alito marks the final purging of the Bork experience.

All the Democrats could do was scream about his inactive membership -- back in the '70s -- in CAP, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which had a magazine called Prospect, which once ran an article, apparently satirical, complaining about Princeton admitting co-eds. In my mind, the only potentially disqualifying aspect of Alito's record was that he wasn't a more active member of CAP, a group opposed to quotas, set-asides and the lowering of academic standards at Princeton.

Then this week, we found out Sen. Teddy Kennedy still belongs to an organization that doesn't admit women. Oh -- also, he killed a girl.

I'm fairly certain I've mentioned that before -- I don't recall, Mr. Chairman -- but I don't understand why everyone doesn't mention it every time Senator Drunkennedy has the audacity to talk about how "troubled" and "concerned" he is about this or that nominee. I bet Mary Jo was "troubled" and "concerned" about the senator leaving her in trapped in a car under water while he went back to the hotel to create an alibi.

It's not as if Democrats can say: OK, OK! The man paid a price! Let it go! He didn't pay a price. The Kopechne family paid a price. Kennedy weaved away scot-free.

But the Democrats are "troubled" about Sam Alito's membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton 30 years ago. If they're "concerned" about lifetime appointments for people with memberships in "troubling" organizations, wait until they hear about Bob Byrd! (Former Kleagle, Ku Klux Klan.)

They're a rotten bunch, these Democrats, and I'm happy to see an end to their reign of terror.

Now that Zell Miller is out of office, the only office-holding Democrat I like anymore is Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans. I had never heard of him until Hurricane Katrina, but after his "gaffe" this week, he's my favorite Democrat. I like a politician who casually spouts off insanely politically incorrect remarks in front of large audiences and TV cameras.

Nagin cheerfully told a crowd gathered for a Martin Luther King Day celebration that New Orleans would soon be "Chocolate City" again. I don't know who's supposed to be offended by that. I'm not. Perhaps all the white mayors who know they couldn't have said it. True, life's unfair. Oh well.

When it comes to choice-of-word crimes, I'd prefer detente to mutually assured destruction. Lead us off the chocolate plantation, Mayor Nagin!