quote:

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It's just easier to turn off your brain and go "Hurr hurr, he like the man in the picture! Look!"

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I has been fun playing three card monty with my goat.

By the way, an OOOOOOld friend of mine died recently. He was from the old school of republicanism - back when the ruling body of republican's still seemed to put democracy before personal gain.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Basically: Old enough to have voted before the Kennedy assassinations?

That seems to be the cut point for American ethics.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

Bunner you said that person was my spokesman. I don't know how much more straightforward you can get. And you still keep saying he's the spokesperson of "Republicans" when I'm sure not all Republicans support the war, just as all Democrats are not against the war.

The picture definitely supports people that do not like open dialogues and hearing other people's points of view, I will agree with that.

Though I don't know who you are talking to really, I don't think you read or understood what I said regarding all of this based on what you just typed. And that remark about academics was from another discussion all together about American faux-apologists, and was as tongue-in-cheek as the post that brought it up.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

No.

I said "You may not like that that quasi-literate, sign waving dumbass in the photograph, but be that as it may; he is the epitome of the front man for your team."

He is the stereotype that pops into the mind's eye view of people who no not rabidly support Bush, when they are trying to visualise people who do.

I stand by that statement.

Then again, like I said.... I'm reasonably sure that your whole investment into this debate is goat-getting. It is you, in my opinion, who does not address the tone and timbre of the statements made by others in response to what you write, you merely attack it out of hand. And you do so -ironically- by repeatedly asserting that they are the ones who are failing to address your statements.

The only thing I can be certain about concerning your position in this ongoing discussion is that you are bound and determined to have the last word. I don't actually think that the topic or the content is of any importance to you. Just the process of argument.

Then again, I could be wrong.

And so on...

Volley and serve, ad nauseum. It seems to be pretty much classic trolling, to me, but at least you're being civil. One cannot ask for much more, can one?

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

That's my point (except I'm talking about the support for the war). That's what pops into your head, not someone who has thought through the issues, but someone who must be illiterate and brain-washed.

I don't know how you can wax philisophical and conclude an argument based on a photoshopped picture of a redneck, and then call me a troll.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

To my utter dismay, I do not belive that that photograph was photoshopped.

The reasons that the poor, grammatically challenged fellow in that photgraph epitomises the pro-Bush front for most of us out-of-touch leftists are that:

a): This sort of "If you don't love Bush, git outta mah country!" mindset, so aptly framed in that photo, has been the core statement of pro Attack-Iraq types since day one. It is excused by stating that only a Goddamn, no good, bleeding heart sonofabitch would not back our fearless leader, whoever he attacks, after the horror of 9/11. The fact that Iraq had fuck all to do with 9/11 is of no interest to them.

I offer a couple of posts, and my replies to them - from another forum altogether - about the Bush administration to give a sample of what sort of mindset the rah rah jingo crew proffered in their defense of our president, the turnip:

_______________________________________________________
[i]>I LONG FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN AMERICANS HAD RESPECT FOR THE PRESIDENT. I
>LONG FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS BEFORE BILL CLINTON ALLOWED TERRORIST TO RUN FREE.
>DON'T BLAME MY PRESIDENT FOR ANYTHING BAD.[/i]

Aside from the thing about Clinton being a load of moose waffles, I have a hot flash. No matter what bags you people put over your heads, what rose coloured glasses you put on, what Saturday Evening Post Norman Rockwell magazine cover you try to squeeze into, IT IS NEVER GOING TO BE 1942 AGAIN. Never. Ever. The genie is out of the bottle, the crap has hit the fan and people - mostly for the worse - have changed. And the CRAP that your golden boy, oh so respectable president has pulled to get us where we are now, is proof of just how little regard he has for the values that you insist that we subscribe to in our great respect for him.

We can only be what we were by returning to looking ahead.

Looking ahead with this guy makes me put my hands over my face and hope that the tree that we're heading for miraculously moves. Step away from the butter churn and the gossip fence, take the Tommy Dorsey records off of "endless repeat" and start looking at the world that supplied you with the computer that you used to type that hogwash.
_______________________________________________________
>LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER

Maybe you can talk Bush into building a couple of gulags to ship us off to. That's what they did in Russia, you know. When it was a communist country. Anybody who disagreed publicly with the communist party line was classified as "mentally ill".

They shipped them off to where they couldn't be heard anymore.

In Russia.
_______________________________________________________

[i]>You obviously are a dangerous anomily and I suggest you have a labotomy done
>as soon as possible[/i]

It's true. This is it. This is the creme de la creme of the civilian Bush camp.

*sigh*

Blithering, quasi literates with no sense of spelling, grammar, syntax or even coherent content.
_______________________________________________________
>Praise the Lord that George W Bush was elected to clean up the mess that billy boob clintoon could not.

The only thing that Bush has cleaned up is the multi-trillion dollars of budget surplus that Clinton left him. Pissing that away is no small feat, but... cleaning up a mess? More like hoovering out our wallets.

>The economy was in the toilet, under Clinton

And how!! Can you believe all of the massive unemployment during Clinton's administration?? Oh, wait... that was Reagan and Bush, Sr.

>Bush inherited is mess!

Yeah! How DARE Clinton leave him such a small budget surplus to piss away!!

>The whold dot.com bubble reflected Clintons liberal , do anything to make a buck attitude

I still recoil in horror when I recall Clinton walking into the offices of all of those bullshit dot.com startup's and shouting "You don't NEED a product! Soak venture capitalists and then evicerate the whole corporation! Free money for all!" Oh, wait... I think that was Reagan saying "Greed is good." My mistake... sorry.

>now Mr Bush is straighting it out!

You bet he is! By effectively ignoring the constitution, splitting the country in half as
only a "uniter" could and stuffing the entire economy into the pockets of corporate America
and it's lawyers, nobody will ever have to think about the economy again. They'll either be satin pyjamas rich or pigshit poor and LIKE it!

>Thank God!

The supreme court may be able to rig an election, but they are not God.
_______________________________________________________
(These were the more decipherable and coherant ones, by the way. And in case you are wondering, those people were, sadly, incredibly serious.)

The other reason is:

b): It is the general consensus of the preponderance of us out-of-touch-leftists that nobody who has objectively thought through the issues surrounding this war would POSSIBLY support this war, or the administration that was installed -as far as we leftist types can tell - specifically to create it.

Then again, it was nothing more than a rather witty response to your statement that: "Equating people that support the war with people who take joy in war is a convenient way of painting complex people and ideas in a color one can fit into his "I am right and you are wrong" mentality." - by a very easily-accomplished slipping of that shoe on the other foot.

And, yeah... I still think that your entire goal in this entire exchange is to simply have the last word.

That being said, I think it is time to deliver on my broken promise to retire from this shopworn debate and allow you that last word.

Thank you for your participation.

I remain,

bunner

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

I can't really argue for what other people say in forums, especially when I've said several time I don't agree with what Bush did. So again I just say I don't think you are listening to me, and I guess you are arguing with the imaginary guy in the picture.

I am for this war and have laid out my arguments for it. No they aren't objective because they are built out of a bias for weighing America more heavily then some other nations in the international community.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

quote:

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Basically: Old enough to have voted before the Kennedy assassinations?

That seems to be the cut point for American ethics.

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And therein lies the most ironic twist of man's mortality. Youth is wasted on the young and wisdom is wasted on the old.

I am sorry you lost a friend, Spank. A friend who, I might add, seems to have been an honest and thoughtful man.

Lord knows we need more of them.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

Makk, I thought you were trolling at first, but not anymore. The goat-getting thing struck me as what we call "kidding on the square," not a sign of bad faith.

I think you're right that thoughtful persons on both sides of the aisle have articulated some pro-war arguments that are much more nuanced that "GET A BRAIN, MORANS." Still, much of it appears to me to originate from some other planet. I saved the Washpost editorial page from the day after Colin Powell's big show of bogus "evidence" at the Security Council because that shit was surreal. You're correct that portraying pro-war interests as simply stupid glosses over some significant facts. Educated, intelligent people are backing this war; we both recognize this, although I think we may draw radically different conclusions from it.

You're also correct that some on the Right are against the war, and the neocons' agenda in general. Pick up Pat Buchanan's rag The American Conservative for tart criticism of the Right from the Right. Sadly, much of the tone is racist and homophobic, but the war criticism can't be beat.

The current Wilson Quarterly is devoted to the question "what good is international law?" I'm going to read it, even though I think the moral relativism I've glimpsed therein is going to give me indigestion.

And so on.

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What others say about boorite!

Tell me the best way to get a copy of that and I'll read it also.

Yeah I can't believe Powell went out on a limb to get us into this war. Aren't generals supposed to keep us out of wars? (rib rib POKE rib) eh boorite (rib) eh eh (rib rib rib) you know like you said Clark will do (poke nudge rib poke). Powell doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would let himself be knowingly used. I think what might be good to come of this is a nice big hard look at the CIA vis a vie its authority on "the facts". Some of these problems date back to the Cold War, when the CIA wasn't giving enough evidence for the hardliners to act on, a competing intelligence group (of retired agents and other hardliners) was formed to offer, you know, "another point of view so that the most complete picture of the facts was given" and thusly "we could justify the production of many more long range bombers than was at all necessary given what was known about the state of the USSR's military". I think there is enough room to argue this sort of action as either working around red tape to make decisive action or also as political fakery to rubber stamp otherwise uncalled for actions.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Yeah, I think it's along the lines you were headed in. WQ is one of those things that turns up in odd places. I get it at B. Dalton, but it's the B. Dalton in Union Station, which has all kinda titles. Borders, Barnes, places like that might have it, especially urban ones.

When they're President. Obviously, I didn't mean active generals keep us out of wars. Every war has generals in it! Silly person!

There definitely is a split between the White House and the State Dept that is still visible despite attempts to play it down. This war is anathema to the Powell Doctrine, which states the need for a clear exit strategy before you even get started. Strangely, Bush II's unilateralism is also anathema to his father's policies, and there are rumors of splits within the family.

Well yes but... otherwise called for, but not for the reasons offered to the public. It's widely acknowledged in the business press (where they often don't bother to mince words about such things) that the Cold War was used to justify policies that the US would have pursued anyway, and that the fall of the Soviet Union leaves planners with a bothersome lack of excuses. Here was Steve Pearlstein, now editor of the Washpost business section, writing six years ago about the Asian monetary crisis:

[i]In the past, presidents and congressional
leaders could justify internationalist policies as
a necessary step to shore up the anticommunist
fire wall during the Cold War, said Pietro
Nivola, a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
"Now, however, that large strategic architecture
is gone, and things like free trade and support
for the IMF are casualties of that," he said.[/i]

I think the Bush administration thinks it has found its new cold war, which it will use to justify all sorts of "internationalist policies" that it would have pursued even if al Qaeda hadn't murdered 3000 of us. So the interesting question is, what are the real reasons?

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What others say about boorite!

Maybe the threat Al Qaeda (or such an international movement) is and always has been the real threat: a rebel groundswell against the United States' hegimony, only since curtailed by refocusing those human energies against other megalithic oppoenents (the USSR), local dictators, or regional antagonistic ethnicities. After all it doesn't really matter how much weaponry we possess, if the masses turn against us we are doomed.

Or maybe not. The concept of the war on terror smacks of Eric Blair's concept of the unending war in 1984. But I'm sure some people thought the Cold War might never end (short of nuclear or global war). Though much more political power has been gained in a short amount of time then I think was ever gained throughout the Cold War in the War on Terror. But perhaps this is because this war has many more real perceived consequences to the American people in contrast to the only hypothetical threat of a Soviet attack, and from this there is a temporary political mandate of silence and acceptance at what must be temporarily done for the long-term good.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Some commentators have said that the CIA identified Iraq as "The optimum contenders to replace the Warsaw pact" as chief US threat, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, back in the 80s and 90s.

Fuck. I could go on for pagesabout this shit. I'll leave it for now with the thought above - that attacking Iraq has been Republican policy for years regardless of actual threat posed by Saddam to Us interests.

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Please replace the handset, and try again.

Hey CONDI!!!

The Nazi Bush tie continued to at least 1951

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

quote:

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Maybe the threat Al Qaeda (or such an international movement) is and always has been the real threat: a rebel groundswell against the United States' hegimony, only since curtailed by refocusing those human energies against other megalithic oppoenents (the USSR), local dictators, or regional antagonistic ethnicities. After all it doesn't really matter how much weaponry we possess, if the masses turn against us we are doomed.

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Iraq 'faces severe health crisis'

The people of Iraq may have poorer health for generations as a result of the war, according to a report.

Story.

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What others say about boorite!

The wars we officially fought during the Cold War were under the banner of promoting freedom and democracy. Some of the dirtier dealings were more about the international status quo, but our dealings also didn't amount to the destructive influence of all-out war. Even in Iraq we are supposedly setting up a democracy. None of that really disheartens me about America. I do think however there's a good chance a democracy like we imagine will fail in Iraq and we are setting ourselves up for heartbreak.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Nobody believes the point of the war was to set up a democracy do they? Or is that just the justification of the day?

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

boorite said it was mournful that we were depriving other people of the right of self-determination. I was saying I don't think that's what we are doing in Iraq.

Achtung Spankling!

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

We gotta get him out of there.

From the Army Times: a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty. Happy Veteran's Day.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Nice propaga-I mean pictures.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

quote:

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boorite said it was mournful that we were depriving other people of the right of self-determination. I was saying I don't think that's what we are doing in Iraq.

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I'm not sure the Shiites would accept democracy, they seem to be chomping at the bit to enter into a xenophobic theocracy. Give them to Iran or let them run their own country. What can be done with such people? Maybe seperating the various factions to a degree is the only way anyone there will get closer to democracy.

Yeah I know what you were saying, I was responding to Spankling who I guess isn't paying close enough attention between searching the internet for hilarious politically-themed pictures.

Maybe he will post Bush bonking his head on the Marine One next.

"BONK! Me bump head. Vote Green Party"

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008