Open Letter to Bubba

All politics are pendulum, edgar - the swing will peak, reverse, and head the other way eventually, but the appogee of the current swing is a ways off yet.

Timber, just reading the heat eminating from your responses, ie., regarding "the loony left", I must say that I detect more than a little fear and let me say hatred. The people that now are against this war are no longer in the minority and to call all of us the loony left is just, well, loony. I feel empathy for you and your son because I believe you are deluding yourselves, just as those still do about Vietnam. My favorite line was I think from a politician, perhaps Barry Goldwater, "Why don't we just bomb the blankety blank out of it and make it a parking lot!" Kill all the people and declare victory. Because that is what this would take. We didn't go over there to nation build and that is what the marines are being asked to do. unfortunately many of them are dying for the lie. We went for a lie, just as we went for a lie and hubris in the 60's. The loony left may not be able to pick up the pieces that the right wing nuts have left us. It may be too late for anything.

And don't call me a loony lefty. I may be a Democrat but not loony. (Democrats didn't invent lunacy; it is shared equally in the government at present.)

Read into it whatchya want, VNN - its hyperbole of course, just from the right, not the left. The intent is to demonstrate the silliness of both sides. No argument that idiocy knows no ideology. Its only fair the idiocy of both camps gets equal play.

Looks like timber has had an overdose of his Rush Limbaugh cookoo puff cereal today. Try some meat timber.

Doncha know? Everyone who disgarees with him is a fool.

How much longer do we have to hear these people gloating about garnering exactly one national mandate of the last four? Believing that the extreme right views held by the likes of TL are in the majority borders on the delusional.

Not so many years ago, any pronouncement by a conservative was greeted by derision, no matter how well thought out or delivered. That didn't make a person necessarily wrong being conservative; just put him against the popular flow. Many liberal positions now being derided will in the future be like the gospel to the voters. Which is why a liberal cannot despair or lose sight of the prize. Anyone who becomes a conservative or liberal only because it's popular will adopt any fad that comes along and is not to be trusted.

Yep Edgar, most of the current pendulum momentum today is due to the success of the right in making political gain from the religio-popular hot button issues of abortion,church/state separation, and same sex marriage.

Silliness ... is that what it is?

I never considered war as silly.
I never considered being lied to as silly.
I never considered my 11 operations as silly.
I've never considered being disabled as silly.
I never considered the 5 out of 9 in my group that were shredded to pieces as silly.

I could go on Timber, but in your mind, it's just silly.

Anon

I have plenty of meat, mesquite; the looney left loser leadership of the Democratic Party sees to that. And while I personally happen to be no fan of Rush - don't even listen to him, or, apart from straight news and finance, any talk radio for that matter, as a rule - its interesting to note that by a wide margin, Rush is the most-listened-to talk radio host on the American airwaves, with the most expensive (and consistently fully subscribed) advertising rate card in the genre, and that while FOX News dominates the cable news ratings just as conservative talk dominates the radio dial, struggling wannabees Air America and Al Gore-zeera TV languish, both scandal-ridden, cash-strapped, and teetering on the brink of oblivion.


I do not believe you will be able to demonstrate that such is my position or ever has been my practice. While you will find I from time to time single out some statement, position, assertion, or allegation posted by a member as being foolish, and ridicule same, when I am in opposition to a member, I disagree civilly, and, in contrast to some others, I do not engage in personal invective. Deriding an argument and/or a demographic and/or its public leadership is not at all equivalent to personally attacking the presenter of that argument or any individual private member of that demographic.


Only so long as the the delusional looney left losers who control the Democratic Party persist in denying their half-century-plus dominance of American politics ended a decade ago.

Perhaps, but if so, its on the right side of the border, and much further from that border than are the delusional looney left losers who's leadership is responsible for the decline of the Democratic Party. I fully expect those who wish to see the fortunes of the Democratic Party improve will have even more reason for dismay come November 8 2006.


Such still is the case on A2K; the conservative POV is not well met here at all. Many would prefer it be unevidenced.



The liberal positions most subject to derision, and most deserving of it, as well as being the most evident, are "We wuz robbed", "Bush is a moron", "Neocons are evil incarnate", "The Republicans are seeking to impose a theocracy on The Nation", and "We wuz lied to". So long as such comprise the chief rallying cries of the Democratic Party, The Electorate may be expected to continue handing that party defeat at the polls.


Untill the Democratic Party realizes "The Prize" is not control of The Government, but rather is participation in the work of government, there is no reason to expect their electoral fortunes will improve.


That I endorse ... and have endorsed since before Chicago's Daily Machine pulled off its last-minute manipulation of the 1960 Presidential contest. With the possible, and if so grudging, exception of JFK, the last Democratic Presidential Candidate worthy of consideration was Adlai Stevenson, and the last Democratic President not an embarrassment to The Nation and The Office was Harry Truman.

A sidebar: The Left of the time warned that a vote for Goldwater was a vote for war. Well, I voted for Goldwater, and sure enough, we wound up at war.


Totally straw man, Anon - and in that, yet more silliness. What in my mind not only is silly but pathetic is that you would imply I consider war silly, or that I consider lying or being lied to silly (though I do consider the "We wuz lied to" mantra silly and unfounded), or that I consider your experience and the sacrifices rendered by you and those with whom you served silly. What is silly, and demonstratedly futile and counterproductive, is the course The Democratic Party has set for itself. As has been observed, to persist with a consistently failed course of action in expectation of improved result through repetition is insane.

Great response, Anon, coming from a guy who's been there and isn't deluding himself, like TL.

Remember what Abe Lincoln said: "You can fool most of the people some of the time, some of the people most of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time". Also, who said 'if you tell a lie big enough........'???

Hear ya go Timber!

Moment of Truth
Neocons jump ship

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8606

Anon

Just because some conservative talk shows and Fox have a ratings lead doesn't mean for an instant that they are providing any sort of constructive commentary. Sensationalism sells and it usually sells to the lowest common denominator.

Clear thinking liberals/progressives do not need to rush to radio programs to get a daily brain fix of trash, the way the wingnuts clamor for right wing radio/TV.

The only reason for the success of these rightwingnut radio shows is that they provide feed for the large number of empty heads that exist in every population, the dittoheads.

Good post, JTT.

I remember an old saying about Rush L. -something like If Rush is Right, I'm Left

Ask you a question, Timber: who do you think owns the media?
Answer: corporations. And who owns the corps?
The neocons and technocrats.

You're sure to get a balanced view listening to them.

Dittoheads - great word.

Did Rush L. finally kick his drug habit? I heard he was doing Vicodine.

So Air America and Al Gore's new network are actually owned by corporations,and they are owned by noecons?
Tell me,is PBS also owned by neocons?

Here's a poll; the first done whereby the actual SOLDIERS are asked about pulling out of Iraq:

Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 by the Financial Times

Most Troops Want Swift US Pull-Out from Iraq

by Demetri Sevastopulo and Edward Alden

Most American troops in Iraq believe that the US should withdraw within the next year, according to the first poll of US military personnel in Iraq.
President George W. Bush, whose overall approval rating fell to a new low of 34 per cent this week, has repeatedly said the US would finish the mission in Iraq. But a Zogby International/Le Moyne College poll found that only 23 per cent of US troops believed that they should stay "as long as they are needed".

Seventy-two per cent of troops said the US should withdraw within 12 months; 29 per cent said they should pull out immediately.

Meanwhile a CBS News poll recorded another record low for the president this week: only 30 per cent of respondents approved of Mr Bush's handling of Iraq.

John Zogby, the president of Zogby International, said US commanders in Iraq unofficially approved the poll of 944 respondents, which was conducted before the escalation in violence that followed last week's bombing of the Golden Mosque.

Bryan Whitman, the deputy Pentagon spokesman, said the poll figures were "certainly not borne out in our recruiting and retention statistics".

Mr Bush said on Tuesday that the Iraqi people and their leaders must choose between "a free society and evil people who kill innocents".

"There are some who are trying to sow the seeds of sectarian violence,'' he said following a meeting with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, who is withdrawing Italian troops from Iraq this year.

Ninety-three per cent of US troops polled said the removal of weapons of mass destruction was not the main US mission in Iraq. Instead, 68 per cent said the mission was actually the removal of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president.

Despite the fact that Mr Bush has acknowledged that Iraq played no role in the September 2001 attacks, 85 per cent of troops said the US mission was mainly "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks", a result that Mr Zogby described as "bewildering".

While Mr Bush insists that progress is being made in Iraq, US intelligence and military officials frequently acknowledge that a full-scale civil war could erupt.

"I think we should take heart in the leaders who have come forward at this point but we're also in a very tenuous situation right now," Gen Michael Maples, the director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, told a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

"I think that more violence, were it to occur, were it to be stimulated by al-Qaeda in Iraq, would have a very significant impact on the situation in Iraq." He gave warning that political progress would not necessarily reduce the conflict. "Even moderate Sunni Arab leaders see violence as a complement to their political platforms," he said.

A separate study on Tuesday from Globespan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 33 of 35 countries polled believe the war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks around the world.

© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2006