Ahoy,
I'm here late for this conversation.
Pardon me.
On Jul 23, 2006, at 4:00 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
only the party in
power has been this corrupt and this cynical.
Where have you gone Dan Rostenkowski?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you!
;-)
I do hope your not equating Rostenkowski kiting postage in the same
realm of nastiness as these Abramoff/Reed/Delay/Republican
mega-kleptos?
Really?!?
Those staunch defenders of Family and American Way were eager to hide
slavery and prostitution in the Marrianis {sp?} Islands for big bucks
to turn tariff inspectors' eyes away even as Made In America was
stamped on tainted goods unduty-bound for the States.
Remember when a blue collar manufacturing job could support a family?
Sure, both parties have corruption. Big discovery, Perry Mason defense
for the bleeding obvious offers Exhibit A. What's truly graph-able now
is the 10x rate so-called Republicans plunder our public "common"
resources for their privateer gigs. By my thumbnail guesstimate
they've done as much in this last 10 years as Democrats did in three
decades... not adjusting for inflation. This administration used up
the Clinton-Gore "surplus" cash they came in with and have gone on to
use the family credit card to dig this country deeper into debt than
all previous leadership combined - that's all our presidents, all our
wars, all our debts from two hundred plus years ago to now, surpassed
in a few short no-bid tax-haven years.
Seen the wreckage over at "die Heimat-Sicherheit" yesterday? According
to a bipartisan congressional investigation some $34.3 b-b-billion in
contract spending alone is missing, misspent & boondoggled ... with
over half those Homeland Security contracts no-bid. Amazing what the
hidden hand of the un-Free Market hath wrought. Productivity is
absolutely smokin' {up in a puff} as privatization fever grips the body
politic - feel safer America?
Nick Arnett:
Our leaders are responsible to tell us the truth about all things,
but most of all when they're putting our troops in harm's way,
visiting death and destruction on another people. It doesn't
matter if their intent was the very best, there's
nothing "complex" about making statements that turn out to be
wrong. Call it an exaggeration,but it's not just a different
point of view, it's wrong.
False. Untrue.
For all your posturing, the word "mistake" somehow never entered
your lexicon. Or are you seriously suggesting that Bush, Rice,
Rumsfeld, Blair, Aznar, et al. honestly believed that Iraq did not
have WMD's?
I will.
It's one important reason our "betters" felt OK attacking Iraq, but not
North Korea, or Iran.
As a layman taking in the international news over the years I
distinctly recall the same Saddam son in-law defector that neo-con
Richard Pearle, etc, oft-quoted for WMD voracity had {in the very same
debrief} insisted Hussien had systemically destroyed all those weapons
to prevent an American pretext for trouble. This was not the only
report by any measure and corroborates what the UN inspectors relayed
before Bush had them running for cover from his impending Schlock &
Offal campaign. What we've seen is a fine example of feeding emotional
beasts red meat while we were already worried about Anthrax {wherever
did...} and shoe-bombers {LoL}.
> head shaking<
And so-called conservatives were so full of disdain when Clinton parsed
what "is" is.
I was a Defense Contractor when 9-11 occurred and by November 2001 I
had army officers telling me they were going to Iraq. Not Afghanistan.
Two months from WTC and these guys were overjoyed at the opps for rank
advancement and anxious to "stick it to anybody" ass-kicking with
occasional mention of warming up those '91 Gulf War leftovers to finish
them off. This Bush cabal had an overarching Iraq plan going into the
GwB's initial election and let Afghanistan fall over in a heap chasing
their dystopian wet-dreams of oil-igarchy. 9-11 was an emotional
cudgel they adroitly, repeatedly, consciously, delightfully whacked us
with as their buddies pick the pockets of the crowd - to this day.
Unlike Nick, I cannot extend these traitorous shadowmen the courtesy of
a benefit of doubt.
They have known all-too-well what they were doing and mesmerized by
their own echo-chamber chanting were certain that a few decade-old
stockpiles of "ponies" just HAD to be in there somewhere, if they just
kept digging... and killing.
Well, "we're waist-deep in the big muddy and the damn fool sez, 'Press
on'."
And, um, if you agree that they had disarmed, though not in
public, then
don't you agree that our leaders told us things that weren't true
in order to justify this war?
And I suppose that John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore *also* told
us those thing in order to justify the war too, huh Nick?
Wow, there's a real unique fall-back position: blame Clinton.
Isn't that hairshirt wearing thin yet?
I don't recall any but Kerry advocating a war over this, and even then
only voted for it IF GwB got that second UN resolution he had promised
{but which he never even tried}.
I am impertinent enough to wonder aloud why your not "over there"
expanding the Green Zone if you believe in all this so much... unless
you think others should die for beliefs you just can't be bothered to
actually fight for except online. It's not terribly Zen and all to
wish someone to stride into a field of shrapnel, but if your between 18
and 56 years old and have all your limbs, then you simply have no
excuse to make noise at those of us who weren't fooled by airbrushed
pictures of mobile WMD trucks, but are all-too ready to let others take
your place. I don't care if you served already, because they need
people to fill ranks and have already been making do giving sign-up
bonuses to neo-Nazis - can you spell H-a-d-i-t-h-a?
So, how many soldiers died fighting in the Balkans... oh, yeah, NONE.
Now that's leadership. I am an army brat sympathetic to the limited
notions that pass for politics {and humor} in the barracks and know all
too well our servicemen have become decoys protecting private mercenary
contractors. I disliked Clinton more than I expected, but he far
out-classes anything we've seen from this henhouse full of chickenhawks
looking for one more hit of salami-magic to stuff into flight suit
pants before jumping on the next swift-boat making an election-year
strafing run. Have republicans no shame?
So you understand, I'd be pointing out Democratic foibles if they were
in charge, supposedly responsible, and pretending to act the role of
"grown up" over there in DC even as the innocent blood rises around
them. But they aren't are they? There's no loyal opposition in their
bipolar minds as we must be "with'r, agin'us," and this divisiveness
deserves the low opinion polls our "mis-leadership" now receive.
From the fiasco of Iraqi occupation to Katrina ham-handedness this
Republican party has repeatedly demonstrated no interest in good
government because they don't believe We The People deserve it. How
can anybody expect them to put an effort into running things well
unless it lines their Greed Is Good pockets along the way? "Devil take
the hindmost," is how this used to be dismissed in an odd religious
embrace of social Darwinism.
I lived in New Orleans and have serious issues with the demonstrable
negligence of this troupe. As one old friend I have who worked in Bush
Sr's White House told me there is something seriously wrong with GwB
and what's going on in DC... and she made the point of describing it as
"dementia." She's an old blue-blood and this sure surprised me. When
you look at how articulate Bush was in 1998 and compare him now you
really do need to wonder what happened. Republicans appear willing to
have any ol' shill up on stage for them as long as their roadies
operate the lights, fog machine, concession stand, and sell tix... Oh,
and allow the pickpocket guild to walk the crowd as long as management
gets their tithing.
How much our parties and positions have shifted over the decades makes
it very difficult to trust even which political party people say they
identify with. Most people are in fact "liberal," as they believe in
universal health care, better wages, voter franchise, free/cheap
education, abortion rights, religious tolerance, etc, all in the
footsteps of the Enlightenment. In light of todays' political scene
one would have to declare Eisenhower and Nixon as lefty socialists in
comparison to how far Reich-wing our leadership has shoved the country.
I've been fascinated with the interviews Nixon-era lawyer John Dean
has been giving on his new book, Conservatives w/o a Conscious. He
started writing this with Barry Goldwater in the 1990's as they both
deeply mistrusted and wanted to understand just where the so-called
Republican party was headed. He's sieved through decades of surveys
and polls to glean what makes a real conservative and it's astonishing
how blind loyalty is held so dearly by these types. Some 23% of
Americans exhibit tribalist hard-core "do whatever the top-dog
daddy-type figure sez" {ironically, unless it's the opposition party in
charge} and forgive vast amounts of indiscretion for "their" guy, but
utterly caustic to the slightest murmur of dissent from the "traitorous
enemy within," as they call their fellow Americans - once known as the
Loyal Opposition. Shall we all brace for the impact of our imminent
Gangs of New York style life?
Now, this gets to the shaky ground our elections rest on and the topic
of this thread. Voting is an act of faith I find troublesome. I wish
it weren't so. All these Rapture-ready Christopaths have me driving
hard into agnostic land where I can feel, hear, taste and breath what's
real and not fantasyland wish-fulfillment. We shouldn't have to hope
our reps will do what they say, but this is how we operate. Our civics
is more faith-based than I care for and I'd like to find a solution.
I'd venture one thing that has kept people off the streets here {as
opposed to Mexico} is the belief our election system has been as fair
as possible. No longer. Loyalty is a two-edged sword and when people
feel betrayed the back-swing is going to take out a big swath... of
something. We must address the amazing discrepancies piled up around
the last few elections, e-voting or not, or we're facing industrial
feudalism right-quick. Trust is eroding and for good reasons.
Banana Republicanism is no virtue and appears ripe{r} with vice.
- Jonathan -
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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