I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
When will Bush take responsibility for the failures of *his* administration?
(crickets chirping...)
Christ, I'd settle for garden variety buffoonery at this point.
I simply cannot believe that Jay Rockefeller and his fellow Democrats voted for that buck passing report blaming the CIA for intellegence failures.
Moral at Langley must be at an all time low. Not one member of the intelligence committee was willing to say the obvious, that having lied us into war the Busheviki are trying to shift the blame.
"We based our decisions on good, sound intelligence, and the -- our people are going to find out the truth. And the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind." -- Bush, July 17, 2003.
That's a nice speech and all, except, just as Howard Dean said, America isn't safer since Bush smoked Saddam out of his hole.
To wit:
State Dept. to Release Revised Terror Report
Associated Press
Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page A02
The State Department is prepared to announce a sharp increase last year in terrorism victims worldwide as it corrects findings that were used to boost one of President Bush's chief foreign policy claims -- success in countering terrorism.
(click homepage for link)
This is post-"Mission Accomplished."
This is total bullshit.
Listen, unlike the fucking US media, I REMEMBER late 2002. And I remember thinking what bullshit the so-called evidence was AT THAT TIME. Let's not all pretend that some sort of fucking problem at the CIA is what got us into Iraq. As I recall, Rumsfeld had Doug Feith open up an intelligence unit inside the Pentagon because the CIA intelligence was not agressive enough.
And I for one DO NOT KNOW that Hussein hated America. Maybe he didn't give twelve shits about America. This "Hussein hated America" meme is silly. What the fuck did they do, read his diary?
"April 23
It rained today. My breakfast milk was sour and gave me gas. Still hate America. Thought I'd grow a beard but changed my mind. Did I mention that I still hate America????"
Here's one of my personal favorites:
• "We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that would be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using the UAVs for missions targeting the United States." -- Bush, Oct. 7, 2002.
And, yes, he said this with a straight face, IIRC.
Funny that No Pundits have mentioned the Plame Affair in light of the Senate Findings. Whoever comes up w/ hard evidence on Plame, that is direct Evidence that the Executive deliberately Manipulated intelligence to justify the war.
Once the media gets done sifting through the 500+ page report, I think the circumstantial case will become readily apparant. I see the words "Credibility Gap" in the immediate future. Once this happens, Im thinkin they will finally boot Cheney off the ticket.
suiciders - Boy, that was a hard one knowing who said that without going to the link.
Never underestimate George Bush. You'll be proved wrong again.
Maybe my previous post wasn't the clearest possible. I meant that we should never try to underestimate Bush as it's not possible to do so.
Gah.
thanks for putting that mess of a quote in it's verbatim original form, H, when you read the unaltered words it really brings home how much of a hollow gourd with ears it comes from. kinda sad really...that vacant stare, that sideways smirk, good lord, how did we get outselves into this mess??
Whoever comes up w/ hard evidence on Plame, that is direct Evidence that the Executive deliberately Manipulated intelligence to justify the war.
We'll find out it was just a fraternity prank.
Hey, everyone! I knocked that hornet's nest to the ground! We're much safer now, so make sure to vote for me in N-- say, what's that buzzing sound?
Colin Powell had some guy do some shitty Photoshop work to make a case to the American people. And even that was just a formality.
We can mock him, but what the hell else explains his continued support, other than statements like that? Kerry better have a fast, short answer when Bush or one of the debate whore moderators asks him, do you agree we are safer without Saddam?
Is this a parody?
I can't even tell anymore.....
"They haven't found the stockpiles, but we do know he could make them."
Wow, thirteen words all in one sentence. His intelligence is, indeed, improving.
I thought so; the Congress thought so; the U.N. thought so.
But only Nero sent people to kill and die for what he thought.
"You'll be proved wrong again."
Again ?
ROFLMAO ! Still can't accept you were fooled by the village-idiot-in-chief ?
never try to underestimate Bush
I thought it was "never try to misunderestimate Bush"? 
Has anybody definitively figured out why the media and the lawmakers (hah!) are so cowed by this administration? I know the obvious reasons given are they need to suck up to the power, and also that we have a minority in Congress and Senate, but they weren't cowed by Clinton. They were rough (in varying degrees) with other administrations, even Bush Sr. got a going over at times. I can't figure out the evil magnetic force... Help me out!
*
The 'anonymous' at 10:48 above is me. Long-time reader.
We can mock him, but what the hell else explains his continued support, other than statements like that? Kerry better have a fast, short answer when Bush or one of the debate whore moderators asks him, do you agree we are safer without Saddam?
Short answer? "NO." And then lay out his plan for actually making us safer. (Hint: Making us not universally hated around the globe will be a nice start. So will doing the right thing by Afghanistan - a legitmate war, IMO, but a horrible 'victory'.)
Actually heard the "acting" director of the CIA claim that CIA agents now had to learn to be more skeptical, to question assumptions and not take anything at face value.
Which was as damning an indictment of the CIA as could be imagined. Were they really that stuipd? Were they really so dense as to not examine every piece of evidence they received? Hell, any professional, from nurses to doctors to lawyers to engineers to architects, know to question their assumptions and examine evidence for mistakes of subjectivity (what you thought you saw may not have been there. Did you check again?).
And yet...apparently no one laughed, gasped, exclaimed, told him his services would no longer be necessary, or otherwise showed amazement.
Either our intelligence services are a complete farce, or the hopes of reformation of our government are completely baseless.
Excuse me, now...this time, I am retiring to Bedlam....
Greater human intelligence. Feh.
This from the man who makes my cat look like a genius.
I heard part of that speech today... he started making that, "I saw a threat" bullshit again. I wish he'd figure out that he shouldn't have seen a threat.
But really I just wish he'd go the fuck away.
I'll add this: I heard that Bush statement on NPR. He was more petulant than usual, with that thin reedy voice of his, and his "see?" routine. God I despise that human turd. And tonight, I referred to my Kerry yard sign out front of my house, and the neighbors were unanimous: "I don't like either of them -- they're both liars!" This in Pa., by the way. And there are so many just like them. But I'm helping to register one of the idiots' daughters and she is a definite Kerry voter.
aww, Jenny, look at the cute village idiot! he funny! He not mean any harm . He make me laugh he so cute. is that a halo i see over his head? he so cute...i jess wanna hug him up and vote for him. He'll keep me safe from the evildoers! Republicans are the grown ups that know what to do for us, aren't they? Hes so cute with his cute little smile...it's not HIS fault! awww.....
But I'm helping to register one of the idiots' daughters and she is a definite Kerry voter.
Nick
Registering... is that what they call it these days?
I kid! I kid!
But I'm helping to register one of the idiots' daughters and she is a definite Kerry voter.
heh, heh, we'll take what we can get.
S in Mich: I'd like to hear it, but no way John Kerry does that. It's not in his nature. Plus, can you imagine the shitstorm coverage he'd get? "Kerry Defends Saddam" would be for starters. "Gaffe Dooms Democrat". I bow to no one in my hatred for Bush, but my disdain for the press is a close second.
Jake - Beat me by seconds, go fuck yourself (or Cheney yourself).
19 and a babe. But I'm 52. I hate that.
Echidne, you scared me there for a minute.
S in Mich: I'd like to hear it, but no way John Kerry does that.
Unfortunately, by November, I think it'll be stating the obvious (even moreso than it is right now).
Greater human intelligence? Like Chalabi, right? No thanks.
Sorry, Riesz. I've been writing too much today. And nothing on George Bush's reading level.
Holden- if we have to look at that pic can't you at least put up a matching chimp photo?
and by this point I'd be happy for someone in the administration to have an IQ over room temperature
chris/tx: It's my youthful quick reflexes and sharp mind. Or I just hit refresh more often. Something like that.
19 and a babe. But I'm 52. I hate that.
Nick
Speaking as a 20-year-old, I find a sudden wish to be in Pennsylvania. Funny, that.
OT-
CNN Breaking News: "Courtney Love Hospitalized... It's a gynecological medical condition"
*
Sorry Echidne, I didn't see your second post, I saw to much red.
peace.
"They are smart, we are not strong." (cf., http://www.eskimo.com/~bpentium/...ntium/pakleds/)
On a random note, Frat boys talk politics with CNN. Amusing.
On another random note: a bit from the Dean/Nader debate...
Howard Dean wasted little time getting to the point in a debate with third-party presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Friday. After listening to Nader's standard posturing about how only he can save the Democratic Party and the nation from the "corporate interests" that have consumed politics and government, the former Vermont governor struck hard: "Ralph, I think you're being disingenuous about your candidacy this year."
In his rapid-fire delivery, the onetime Democratic presidential front-runner rattled off all the ways he saw Nader as a hypocrite: Nearly half the signatures Nader gathered in a failed attempt to get on the Arizona ballot were from Republicans. A significant amount of his campaign kitty comes from Bush-Cheney donors. And, said Dean, "you accepted the support of a right-wing, fanatic Republican group that is antigay in order to help you get on the ballot in Oregon" -- a reference to the Oregon Family Council, which produces a "Christian Voter Guide" and campaigns against gay marriage.
"This is not going to help the progressive cause in America," Dean continued. "The thing that upsets me so much about this is, you have the right to ... get in bed with whoever you want to, but don't call the Democratic Party full of corporate interests. They have their problems, we all have ours, none of us are pure. And this campaign of yours is far from pure."
Sounds like a fun time.
*
Will Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Energize Black Voters?
Does Your Voice Provoke Racism? Vocal Profiling on the Rise
John Edwards Gets High Marks From Black Leaders
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Dean's riff was greeted with gleeful applause, and Nader appeared momentarily shaken by its ferocity. Dean insisted, "My purpose here is not to smear Ralph Nader," which prompted Nader to respond sarcastically, "Oh, no. Not at all!"
Let's see.
1. Had the capacity to make weapons
2. He had the intent.
3. He hated America
4. He was paying the families of suiciders.
5. He tortured his own people
Let's review....
1. Had the capacity to make weapons:
--So does the United States of Bush/Cheney
2. He had the intent:
--We know this administration supports new policy changes towards the creation of mini-nukes that can be used to dig deep underground and strike at bunkers.
3. He hated America:
--Many, if not most conservatives are either open or closeted bigots. They have also expressed desires to see liberals suffer. There are no doubt many would shed no tears if every liberal in the country suddenly died a painful death. No doubt in the same manner of which they would stand by in some backwater Mississippi town watching some african american man swing from a tree with his body on fire.
4. He was paying the families of suiciders:
--We have supported petty dictators before who oppressed and murdered their people. Members of this administration allowed Saddam to suckle at their teets.
5. He tortured his own people:
--We torture other country's people. We have been torturing people for centuries.
Sounds like Bush was talking about America.
And yes, I do hate America. How can any man love a country that allows people to murder, rape, and torture in our names?
Where I come from Death is preferable to dishoner. Better to die with dignity than live in shame.
MYOB'
.
Oh, sorry, sorry, sorrry! bad cut & paste!!!
*
Damn! Did you see all of those fucking lemmings in the audience? Where's the cliff? Where's the cliff? Where's the cliff? C'mon Georgie lead us!!!
Gawd what fucking retard morons to still applaud anything this asshole says.
The Chimpster is so fucking smart
He can take a banana apart.
Mere humans like we,
Have to agree,
Who gives better head than a tart?
Gawd what fucking retard morons to still applaud anything this asshole says.
Ever wonder why "Fear Factor" is hit TV?
George Bush today....."yeah, yeah I would have done it anyway, Saddam still had a corrupt soul."
Ignoranus. Stupid asshole. Great, from stupidgit I think.
Or it may have been from all hat...
Bush has shit for brains. The quoted passage tells it all.
"See, he had the ability to make them. He had the intent."
Jeez, he drives me crazy with that one!
If you have the intent to do something, and you have the abilty to do something, THEN YOU GO AHEAD AND DO IT!!!
Saddam didn't have the weapons. Therefore he either DID NOT have the intent, or he DID NOT have the abilty.
It is just that simple.
Drum is Down.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Bush has shit for brains. The quoted passage tells it all.
No no no. It's not like that at all.
Actually, the UN did not think so, by the end.
Nor, for that matter, did the State Department's INR.
I think I am hitting the saturation point this week. I read the whole of Bush's remarks and I think I need a night's sleep and a re-read to figure out exactly what he was saying. Or is it possible?
His statements were of course a repeat of his comments in the past, not budging an inch, just twisting a bit. But he actually stated he had not read the report? Not only is he the type of guy who would say the dog ate his homework, he is also the guy willing to wing it on an oral report for a book he never read. I really am of the belief he is at the stage in which all he does is take a set of provided talking points and then glitzes them up. He never actually has studied or acquired the detail material behind them.
Saddam Hussein had the capacity to make weapons. See, he had the ability to make them.
Well, yeah, we all know that ol' Saddy-Boy had the capacity and ability to make weapons. That region is the historical hotbed of the smite-him-with-the-jawbone-of-an-ass armament industry. (Readers are invited to contribute their own ass/armaments/Pentagon jokes.) No doubt that Hussein could also muster up lots of relatively high-tech go-boom devices. Even so, no one ever even pretended that he had anything close to what the U.S. of A. could find in the sofa cushions. The point is: Despite all bug-eyed assertions to the contrary, Saddam Hussein had no capacity or ability to produce biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. So remind me — why did we invade?
Fourlegsgood, maybe your cat really is a genius. Cats can be, you know. (Or so they'd like us to think.) So let's say you do indeed have a genius cat. My dog is sub-genius caliber but she has the whole resolute decisiveness thing going on. (She's decided, resolutely, that life = fetch.) She's got lots of hair, which seems politically significant for some reason, and she doesn't hesitate to share the wealth; I'm assuming your cat concurs with both policies. My dog has zero gravitas but I assume your cat has plenty, gravitas being the feline stock-in-trade. My dog also is an indefatigable and irresistibly charming campaigner (as long as she thinks that the campaign is all about getting someone to throw something for her to fetch); this takes a lot of pressure off your cat, who'd probably rather not deal with all those annoying bipeds.
I think we've got a winning ticket here.
Did somebody decide "suiciders" polls well? He's been saying it an awful lot lately; and it looks like Karl or some other handler would make him stop.
Richard Cohen feels sorry for George Bush.
Of all the chimpanzees in the vast Universe, why, oh why, oh why this one?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Chimpanzees are generally quite intelligent. Sensitive. Wise.
Why this one?
Is it just me, or is anyone else so discouraged by the existence of such venality and so many people still buying into it? I do believe now that Kerry/Edwards will win in November (I might have to shoot myself if I didn't). It reminds me of "Morning in America", which made me furious at the time but which now sounds awfully good. But oh my God, what a mess there will be to clean up. It will absolutely be better with Kerry in charge, but I can hear the SCLM carping already.
God, what a stupid chimp.
I'm referring to Glenn Reynolds, not Bush.
So remind me — why did we invade?
Saddam tried to a-kill my daddy! I ain't skeert of no terrorist!
Kind of reminds me of Carl Spakler, the groundskeeper in Caddyshack, "To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint..."
Gloria the tool Borger spouted the latest of the Reeper talking points
that Edwards and Kerry haven't "regretted" their votes as Sen. Rockefeller has. And what will this division mean to the Democrats
She is such a f------- tool
I know some of you doubt the veracity of my comments on Ralph Reed being a key strategist on Nader's campaign. But, check out this San Francisco Chronical story.
Let's see. If this were a criminal charge, and Bush as prosecutor (I know, I know, it's making your heads explode to even imagine that, but go with me for a minute) said, "The defendant is bad. He had the ability to shoot someone. He had the intent to shoot that person," and that was the whole damn case, is there any jury in the world that would even hear the case? I mean, even for your garden variety criminal, there has to be more than intent and ability. There has to be an action. Intent plus ability is nothing!
Sorry to shout there; this just drives me crazy. Where's the Jameson's?
Bush/Cheney '04: Obsessive Vendetta
...honestly, he just put the next 500 years of world history into motion because of a damned family feud!
Dean vs. Nader on C-Span right now.
Dean is much more the grownup.
This shit isn't even funny. People have died over these lies. George "pusspuss" Bush was in my town today spewing this pile of prevarication and the (registered Republicans allowed only) crowd ate it up. Sheesh. Didn't know there were that many sheep around here who could stand on two legs and clap. There was also a lot of folks protesting and giving him the "single finger salute", which warmed my heart. But, really, how long will he get away with such obvious bullshit?
MisterX -
It's incredibly disheartening. Makes me think we're in some bubble of like minds and are in for a crash in Nov.
*
But, really, how long will he get away with such obvious bullshit?
Not much longer, I think. It took the NYT less than 24 hours to basically call bullshit on the Senate CIA report, which speaks volumes. The pundoids and pundettes on cable teevee seem skeptical and are getting tired of the Bush finger-pointing charade. I think we're coming to the end of the road.
Above post was me.
someone should blare the themesong from "Benny Hill" at the Nitwit's campaign stops, while he gives these speeches.
It's incredibly disheartening. Makes me think we're in some bubble of like minds and are in for a crash in Nov. - Jenny from the Blog
The hell with that noise. We're gonna win in November; it just amazes me how many thinking adults can't see through Bush's brand of obvious backpedalling, blame-throwing, dissembling horseshit.
Oooh, Nader said the "Democrat party."
Ooh, Nader just went after Dean, telling him to tell Kerry to give back the money he raised from "corporate criminals."
Dean said OK, then told him to give back the money he got from Egan, wingnut tool Bushite ambassador to Ireland. Nader replied, "Republicans are prople too."
Ralph is not liking being pressed on the ties between his campaign and right wingers.
Ralph is not doing well in his battle with reality.
Two points:
1.) As sweetpea said upthread, I'd also settle for a garden-variety buffoon at this point as well. Thank goodness we've got Kerry/Edwards, who are light years beyond that. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're at least capable of leading the country. Edwards and Kerry both have histories of being good at what they do. I can't say the same thing for Bush and Cheney.
2.) As Brillig pointed out, Saddam _did not_ have the capability to build these weapons. He had some scientists with a bit of know-how around, but hardly the industrial capacity to produce anything in large quantities. One of the Administration's claims was that Hussein could produce a nuclear weapon within a year. Hogwash, and so is the claim that he could produce chemical/biological weapons if he so chose in a short time period. I could make chemical weapons, too (and quite quickly -- Ammonia and Chlorine will produce one), but it'd take quite some time before I had the ability to kill huge numbers of people with them, not to mention several million dollar's worth of industrial infrastructure.
This administration has a real problem with grasping science and how the real world works. Can we please get some adults in the White House?
Wow. I didn't realize that Nader had morphed into such a twitchy, creepy old fart.
Seriously.
Bush's morning routine
Stands in front of the mirror, pulls out his index cards, and practices for the day:
"He was a dangerous man."
"The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."
"America is safer."
"Thugs and murderers."
"Evil-doers."
(repeat...)
"The hell with that noise. We're gonna win in November"
This is what I think most days too. I guess I can't believe they even turn a microphone on for him anymore. He should be speaking to empty rooms. He's so over.
*
I have this picture once again of Charles Durning singing "Dance a little two step" and dancing in the Rotunda. The gleeful look on Durning's face must apply here to Bush as well.
OT: I saw in the local morning paper an AP report on the estimated number of insurgents being 'way off'. I have not seen it elsewhere. Anyone see this online?
I think we're coming to the end of the road. - Old Hat
Man, it just can't happen soon enough for me. I sit here sometimes and try to imagine how things would be if the major media we even NEAR to being balanced in their reporting... Ol' "pusspuss" wouldn't be getting away with ANY of this shit.
One can only dream. For fucking now.
Central Scrutinizer
Strange, I thought he was being assimilated by the ravening hardline party speak Republican.
Oops sorry, same difference...
Wow. I didn't realize that Nader had morphed into such a twitchy, creepy old fart. Seriously.
Welcome to 1996.
I'm exhausted, fed up, sick and tired, pooped, worn down and out, gonna go to Mexico and make pottery or something.
Hmmm... hates America.
Has the capability to make weapons.
Had intent.
Paid suiciders.
Tortured his people.
Ok, where in there does it say that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the safety of America? The USSR was all these things (except the suiciders) and they actually HAD weapons, but we never invaded them!
Ill bet the bleating after every applause line was overwhelming.
Adam 4-4-2
Because we knew we could beat him up.
Just like that valiant battle for Grenada. (No disprespect to the troops on that by the way).
He should be speaking to empty rooms. - Jenny from the Blog
Someday he will. Just him and the barred window, a toilet and sink, and a cot bolted to the floor. Just him and his memories of what he's done to this country and the world...
If you've got Diane Feinstein, who's essentially a Republican hawk who's pro-choice and doesn't like the idea of machine guns being sold over the counter, saying shit like this:
Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said on Friday that the administration could be faulted for the C.I.A.'s mistakes on Iraq. "The committee's report does not acknowledge that the intelligence estimate were shaped by the administration," she said. "In my view, this remains an open question that needs more careful scrutiny"
...that bodes well for our side.
Old Hat
Has anyone been mentioning D. Feith and his crew at all?
Ooh, Howard Dean is so good in this debate. He's got to have a place in the new administration. So much energy and intelligence to contribute. Nader's a total crank.
*
I read the whole of Bush's remarks and I think I need a night's sleep and a re-read to figure out exactly what he was saying. Or is it possible?
No. It's not. But more importantly, why even try?
brillig, it sounds like your dog and my cat would make a winning team. Unfortunately my cat is old and really would rather sleep all the time. He also might beat up your dog (for some reason he's taken to chasing dogs). There's the further problem that fundies might see a dog and cat together and conclude that the end of the world was nigh.
Welcome to 1996.
Old Hat
HA!
By agreement between Republicans and Democrats on the committee, the issue of how the administration used the C.I.A.'s information has been deferred to a second phase of the inquiry, which is not expected to be completed until after the presidential election in November.
I'll bet that every draft of this second report will leak like the S.S. Minnow.
I want to see Chimpy locked in a room and not allowed to come out until he can master basic subject-verb agreement.
Has anyone been mentioning D. Feith and his crew at all?
No, not from what I've read but I think that's the elephant in the room. Josh Marshall is on it so I hope that some journalists will get a head's up on that. Office of Special Plans and the super mysterious "White House Group" need to get a full airing.
Kate, "by rights [he] should be taken out and hung for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue."
EkCenTrik, your link:
Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Originally Thought
An interesting article, especially since the main source talks about how he mostly liked the members of the insurgency that he met. Funny, that, liking people who are just fighting for their country...
I'll bet that every draft of this second report will leak like the S.S. Minnow.
Juuuuuuuust sit right back
And you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from some tropic isle
Aboard a tiny ship ...
I'll bet that every draft of this second report will leak like the S.S. Minnow. - Old Hat
Yes, that report will be mighty tasty. Bring it on.
ho-ho, holden make funnee puns! holden realize that "intelligence" has more than one meaning! holden use pun again and again and again! holden subtle as shit on a blanket!
Can we pleeeeeeze get rid of this moron and have "atrios" back?
Dean: referendum is the tyranny of the majority. go howard.
*
I'll ignore the troll if you do.
Who farted?
*euughhh* What the hell's that smell? Did someone shit in their hat?
...kinda reminds me of the point in the new King Arthur movie where Arthur realizes that "hey, these Brits aren't so bad after all" (after 15 years of killing 'em for the Romans). As to intelligence, I've got just one thing to say:
Stovepipe!
Sorry,
I promise to be good.
It's usually a one hit wonder anyway.
BTW, where's Backslider?
I had to rush to Trolls after hearing the Dean - Nader debate. Isn't anyone listening?
How could the Demos do such a foolish thing as debate Nader and give him all that free publicity??!?
This can only take votes from Kerry. It's comparable to Disney refusing to show F911 and giving Moore cartloads of publicity.
Oh Dean, can't you see the light? Or the Right? The SF Chronicle today exposed how the GOP is giving money to Nader...
Oh why us?
Rog - It's okay. Nobody watching 'cept us chickens. It's probably Ralphie's last hurrah.
*
Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist.
Hello, I must be going!
Bill Moyers had an interesting segment on NOW tonight. He discussed the determination of most blue collar workers to put cultural interests (pro life, pro gun, anti gay) ahead of their economic interests. As a result, their standard of living is tanking and the Republicans they elect have no serious interest in advancing their cultural agenda. Dean was right: the confederate flag wavers would be far better off voting D instead or R. But, so far, they won't. Maybe John Edwards will be able to get through to them.
How could the Demos do such a foolish thing as debate Nader and give him all that free publicity??!?
And let him look like an unlikeable old crank on TV?
This can only take votes from Kerry. It's comparable to Disney refusing to show F911 and giving Moore cartloads of publicity.
No. It's not. From the five minutes I watched of the debate, Dean mopped the fucking floor with Nader.
Oh Dean, can't you see the light? Or the Right? The SF Chronicle today exposed how the GOP is giving money to Nader...
Gee, I remember Dean mentioning time and time again how much money Nader was taking from rightwing groups.
Are you trolling? Because I think you are.
I know EkCentric 
If we invaded the USSR, they would have destroyed us, we would have destroyed them and both of us would have destroyed the world. Our leaders back then understood that, and realized a wrong step meant a population that glowed in the dark.
I shudder to think what would have happened if this administration was in power in 1963.
Rog,
Dean made Nader look like the doddering, narcissistic old fool that he is.
Take a deep breath and relax.....
Those dumbfucks ain't got the brains God gave a fork. They can't see past their own fucking noses, concictently voting against their own best interests.
Are you trolling? Because I think you are. - Old Hat
Heeyyyyyy, no fair, you said no feeding! Heh heh.
Jenny from the Blog wrote: Has anybody definitively figured out why the media and the lawmakers (hah!) are so cowed by this administration? I know the obvious reasons given are they need to suck up to the power, and also that we have a minority in Congress and Senate, but they weren't cowed by Clinton. They were rough (in varying degrees) with other administrations, even Bush Sr. got a going over at times. I can't figure out the evil magnetic force... Help me out!
Since "the media" is plural, there is no one explanation.
But several factors have combined to make the coverage of this administration the worst job by the national press since probably the late 1960s.
None of this is an attempt to request pardons for the press. Only to point out that it has been an unusually difficult time to be a national-level reporter and get it right.
1. The Bush administration, right from the beginning, played meaner than anybody. Ask a question they didn't like and they might not give you a chance to ask another one -- for months, or longer. Sometimes that reduced reporters to just standing there and listening to other reporters' questions at press conferences. Reporters were loath to make an issue out of that kind of treatment, generally thinking (it seems) that the public wouldn't be all that sympathetic.
2. A decade of GOP assaults on the press, from the grassroots to the White House, has left the national media overly sensitive to allegations of being elitist Republican haters.
3. 9/11 put immense popular support behind Bush. Reporters didn't want to challenge the White House on many issues, for fear (not entirely unfounded) of being labeled traitors offering aid to the enemy.
Many reporters and editors and producers did their jobs well in these times. It seems that many more did not. There are some signs the media has begun to learn its lessons from this Waterloo for the profession. I hope that's the case, because in today's America, we need good reporters more than ever.
(... in my opinion, etc.)
Old Hat: Thanks for the great Tom Tomorrow post. It says it all in so few words.
OT: anyone else not able to access Kevin Drum's blog?
I shudder to think what would have happened if this administration was in power in 1963.
Yes the My Pet Goat book probably wasn't written yet.
Are you trolling? Because I think you are.
The "Oh why us" pretty much gives it away. Should have read the whole speil.
Heeyyyyyy, no fair, you said no feeding! Heh heh.
I can't tell if he was trolling or not. I've never seen him/her post here.
Central Scrutinizer
Not sure, but I always blame the cats.
Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said on Friday that the administration could be faulted for the C.I.A.'s mistakes on Iraq. "The committee's report does not acknowledge that the intelligence estimate were shaped by the administration," she said. "In my view, this remains an open question that needs more careful scrutiny
...that bodes well for our side."
Well, here's a bit of anti-Di-Fi that does bode well for our side:
On the eve of the report's release today, Levin, Michigan's senior senator and the ranking Democratic on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters the report by a Republican-controlled investigative panel will do little to answer questions about whether President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney misled the nation on the Iraq invasion.
Levin told a Washington news conference that the report will be "intensely and extensively critical" of the CIA for producing a key 2002 assessment that wrongly claimed that Iraq was hiding illegal weapons programs.
But the report, he said, will "paint only half the picture" because it doesn't "examine the central issue of the administration's exaggerations of the intelligence that was provided to them."
"As the Intelligence Committee report will indicate, the CIA intelligence was way off, full of exaggerations and errors, mainly on weapons of mass destruction," Levin said. "But it was Vice President Cheney, along with other policymakers, who exaggerated the Iraq-Al Qaeda relationship."
Click on my homepage for the link in today's Detroit Free Press. Kiss my corn-fed Midwestern ass, all you coasters (east and west) who say there is no enlightenment in the "fly over zone."
OT: anyone else not able to access Kevin Drum's blog?
Been down all day for me but some other people have been able to see it. Some weird DNS thing.
(Stupid close italics tag...)
Adam 4-4-2
we would have been deciding if we should take our copy of 'Alas Babylon' or 'On the Beach' with us. I suppose the latter would have been appropriate but ya know 'Alas Babylon' had a happier ending.
OT: Food for thought. Don't agree with the guy on some of his major points but it's an interesting article.
Adam 4-4-2
that should have been
we should take our copy of 'Alas Babylon' or 'On the Beach' with us on the way to the bomb shelter.
So-called Liberal Reporter -
Thanks for your thoughtful response. On your points 1 & 2, yes. On your point 3, that 9/11 put immense popular support behind Bush, I differ, because the media (plural) beat the drumroll for him. They weren't responding to popular opinion, they were opinion shapers. And I speak mostly of television (network & cable). They were negligent and irresponsible and, yes, corrupt. they did not follow, they led. Sadly I do not think that any mainstream reporters, editors and producers did even a modicum of a respectable job. Some print, yes, but that's it. In my opinion, etc.
Hope you really are a reporter. You are one of the good guys.
*
Kiss my corn-fed Midwestern ass, all you coasters (east and west) who say there is no enlightenment in the "fly over zone."
Amen, brother/sister! Testify!
"We were hoodwinked by the CIA"
I'm exhausted, fed up, sick and tired, pooped, worn down and out, gonna go to Mexico and make pottery or something.
I may join you. I'm fed up too.
Jenny from the Blog wrote: Has anybody definitively figured out why the media and the lawmakers (hah!) are so cowed
And I never see the suggestion that it goes even darker than we might imagine. I have thought about this and made a few remarks, but my little mind itch keeps going "Jeez they got to them".
But this is real life and not a movie. Isn't it? Just say Yes, a lie would be best now.
I differ, because the media (plural) beat the drumroll for him.
Jenny, So-Called Liberal Reporter, there's an interesting bit in the East Bay Express article I just linked to that talks about how the media tend to defer to Washington during the run-up to war.
Call me crazy, but shouldn't the exact opposite happen? Isn't waging war the most serious decision politicians can make? People will die because of it. Doesn't that mean that media should be extra super-skeptical of the case for war instead of deferring to Washington?
I'm exhausted, fed up, sick and tired, pooped, worn down and out, gonna go to Mexico and make pottery or something.
Stop by and pick me up on you way south. We can go to Casa Grande and learn from the master, Juan Quesada.
What makes this election, this moment, so unique and so threatening in American history is the very fact that the White House would publish this illiterate gibberish, direct from the president's mouth to the world's ears.
Threatening, further, because there is not a hint of embarrassment from the White House in publishing this speech verbatim, nor concern in the throes of a general election that this syntax and dissembling would not be considered prima facie evidence for the president's disqualification for office.
This is why we wear tinfoil. And why tinfoil may not be enough.
Ceramics Major, sorry.
Geez what happened to the thread.
I said : But this is real life and not a movie. Isn't it? Just say Yes, a lie would be best now.
and things seemed to stop.
I was waiting for the knock on the front door.
Kiss my corn-fed Midwestern ass, all you coasters (east and west) who say there is no enlightenment in the "fly over zone."
Amen, brother/sister! Testify!
Central Scrutinizer
Indeed, from the state that DIDN'T go for Reagan in '84, I concur!
"Call me crazy, but shouldn't the exact opposite happen?"
Old Hat - Yes. We all know that the media has conducted itself shamefully. I don't watch anymore. It's total crap. They're even spinning the party line on the CIA today. And we knew about the bullshit report and the back room deals and the deception two days ago. Talked about it right here on the blog. On the day Reagan died I reached my limit. Now it's only C-span and what I read.
*
BTW, here was the headline of the article in today's Detroit Free Press regarding Senator Levin and the Intelligence Committee Report:
Levin says report lets Bush team off too easy
He wants role in faulty Iraq info to be examined
WTF is Di-Fi's prob? Michigan is a swing state. California is supposed to be a liberal stronghold. What am I missing?
"I was waiting for the knock on the front door."
"Knock Knock"
"Who's There?"
"Land Shark"
*
SCL reporter: thank you for that interesting response. I don't think that's the whole story, though, as Jenny above said, y'all were opinion leaders. I do believe your remorse, though.
Research from the Pew Trust finds that members of the media increasingly are forming a bad opinion of their own work, as I wrote a few weeks ago.
Here is an interesting tidbit: "Where only 24% of the general public thinks the press went too easy on El Presidente, 55% of the national press thinks this."
Jenny,
I will not fall for that Candygram thing again...
"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."
-Dr. Joseph Mengele
Central, I don't really want to make pottery. How bout this: you 'n 4legs make pottery and I'll just smoke pot.
Jenny from the Blog wrote: On your point 3, thate 9/11 put immense popular support behind Bush, I differ, because the media (plural) beat the drumroll for him. They weren't responding to popular opinion, they were opinion shapers. And I speak mostly of television (network & cable). They were negligent and irresponsible and, yes, corrupt.
All you have to do is look at the polls from back then to see a huge mandate for the president to fight terrorism, as he defined it. The Bush administration Hummer rolled right over the (too few, too weak) attempts by responsible media to challenge its definition.
Then TV got its hormones going, with Fox the leader and no one wanted to be out-patrioted, and it was a race to the bottom. But look at the polls again: They were playing to the crowd. Did they fan the flames? Perhaps. But where I lived mean I did not know were telling me how glad they were to be killin' more terra-ists.
During this period of gung-ho bullshit and boosterism, the only TV I could bear was The Daily Show.
Corrupt? To me that means they knowingly betrayed their standards. Brainwashed, high on war, would seem more appropriate. But on the bottom line I agree with you: They abandoned they responsibility and horribly betrayed their nation.
I have to be honest: If I was a TV guy, and I had kids and a mortgage, I might have gone along with it too. Hated myself, perhaps. But who quits a $100,000 a year job because they think their network's reporting should be more critical of White House claims?
Group-think, to use today's vocabulary word, can be incredibly persuasive and patch over all sorts of things that are glaring to outsiders.
Man, you guys should read the whole speech. I wish I had a dollar for every fucking grammatical error this moron utters. Here are some examples:
"I will remind them that there has been some failures -- listen, we thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons."
" So this is really a ideological struggle ....."
These are supposed to be the words of the President of the United States?? The Chimp comes off as some fucking third grader giving an oral report on what he did during his summer vacation. This goes beyond embarassing! I hope every newspaper in Europe runs the text of this "speech" - let the rest of the world see firsthand what a fucking retard the Americans selected as a "leader".
I may join you. I'm fed up too.
fourlegsgood
I'm physically and emotionally exhausted.
I don't really want to make pottery. How bout this: you 'n 4legs make pottery and I'll just smoke pot.
Just so long as you share.....
EkCenTrik -
I underestimated you. Have to find a new disguise...
*
gene214
Look a bit farther up thread for my comments. We are too far off on our view points.
Old hat:
Re. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said on Friday that the administration could be faulted for the C.I.A.'s mistakes on Iraq.
Feinstein and other neo-cons like her will never fault any policy that they perceive to be pro-Israel. Dems would be well advised to have a sensible foreign/mid-east policy as part of their platform...and boot out Feinstein, Zell Miller, etc. if they insist on sticking with their Likudnik positions.
I think Bush's success is symptomatic of the ongoing decline in the work ethic in the US. Seriously.
Many -- most? -- people nowadays seem to think that neither intelligence nor political expertise is needed in order to govern competently. The right instincts are what matters.
This is related to the whole business school syndrome, where lazy jackasses with MBAs insist that they don't have to know anything about what a company does in order to run it properly. They just plug the numbers into a spreadsheet (that someone else set up for them) and decide how many people to fire.
I meant to say
Look a bit farther up thread for my comments. We are **not** too far off on our view points.
I have been dropping a lot of words when typing lately. Must be advancing age.
Jenny,
Try the Compassionate Conservative one.
It's worked for the Prez so far with a lot of people.
Many commentators viewed the end of the dot com bubble quite cheerfully, because the techies -- people who actually knew how to do something useful -- who had gotten so uppity were now being restored to their rightful place under the boot of management.
I cringe everytime he opens his mouth...
The first part of the post is most interesting;
'[W]e need to bolster human intelligence. In other words, one of the best ways to figure out what the enemy is thinking is to get to know the enemy firsthand, I guess is the best way to put it -- is to have as much human intelligence as possible. Good quality intelligence and enough human intelligence agents, assets out there so that we can cover the globe.
That means Bush is saying we need to have infiltrators that are willing to do what terrorist will do ie; assasinate politicos, bomb civilians etc. They have to prove themselves, right?
Are we cool with that?
I will not fall for that Candygram thing again...
"Jehova's Witness."
"Corrupt? To me that means they knowingly betrayed their standards. Brainwashed, high on war, would seem more appropriate. But on the bottom line I agree with you: They abandoned they responsibility and horribly betrayed their nation."
I know the reasons for the media collusion are varied and understandable from the viewpoint that they are human beings. However, it wasn't rocket science. It was a bogus run-up to war from the get-go. The first rumblings I heard about invading Iraq were mind-blowing and laughable. And then my derision turned to horror and disbelief when the media joined the fray. Not to sound too harsh, but I do think corrupt is the right term, because they knew better, and I guess it was all about the paycheck.
*
How many impeachments, how many special prosecutors, how many grand juries would there be if any one of these unforgiviable atrocities had happened during Clinton's time?
And this argument that America is safer would be scorned universally for the steaming pile of obvious shit that it is.
I just with W would have read the fucking memo, the one titled Osama Is Going To Hijack Planes And Crash Them.
VietNam--AWOL
2001 -- Dereliction of Duty
2004 - Treason
Go republicans!
OT -- After last night's merriment I'll take this for the open thread green zone mortar invitational...
+
Scott Ritter
+
Listened to him speak (book tour) at the Union Club in NYC way back when he was merely being investigated for treason...
+
Consistently early -- still hits better than Ted Williams...
+
knocks the cover off the ball again and moves the analytics since some folks seem to still have it wrong...
+
apologies -- i'll figure the tags out another time...
+
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/19190/
+
fritz
#shelter
Orbitron
you said :where lazy jackasses with MBA
Note I do not think all MBAs fit that description.
But a lot buy into it.
I cannot count how many times I have tried to explain something critical to a director, president, VP or CEO and been cut off immediately with "Keep it brief, keep it brief!"
And because I did, I ended up having to go over it again after the damage was done because the idiot did not want to understand what he was about to make a decision on.
I tend to be stubborn about "Keeping it brief" lately. Doesn't win me points but at least I can say I told you so later.
Dems would be well advised to have a sensible foreign/mid-east policy as part of their platform
Like Bill Clinton's.
orbitron,
You mean the hot chick with the halter top, cowboy hat and the roller blades is working at Sonic again?
Yipeee!
A huge reason the cable channels beat the war drums so incessantly was RATINGS. Each one had banners and countdowns and breathless to dire daily hype about how close we were to invading Iraq.
With the exception of FOX, they have no ideology apart from making huge sums of money. Warmongering was good for their bottom line, so they promoted it for all they were $worth$ (Which, I guess, is quite a lot!)
Just logged on but Jesus fucking christ.
If any of the guest bloggers are still out there, an Friday Night open thread would be cool right now.
Random OT factoid I just learned today...
Remember Vance Security? The strikebreaking thugs on the B/C '04 payroll, aptly referred to by one commentor as the "Praetorian Mall Cop Brigade"?
The company's named after founder Charles Vance, ex-son-in-law of Gerald Ford.
Such a small world it is...
Does anyone know how much the average midlevel cable teevee reporter makes?
"As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large"
"Yesterday's report by the Senate intelligence committee left in shreds two of the Bush administration's main rationales for the war in Iraq: that Iraq had illicit weapons and that it cooperated with al Qaeda."
WaPo
A fairly balanced news story, which will give little comfort to BushCo, since balanced news is dangerous when you've been lying.
Old Hat wrote, re: media deference during march to war: Call me crazy, but shouldn't the exact opposite happen? Isn't waging war the most serious decision politicians can make? People will die because of it. Doesn't that mean that media should be extra super-skeptical of the case for war instead of deferring to Washington?
In the abstract, yes. But when reporters are being lied to about secret files that the president says proves the case, reporters options are limited.
You ask a question: But X says that evidence is complete garbage. The answer: X doesn't know what he's talking about, wew've had our top guys on this and they say it's 24-karat.
So now what? Reporters can't see the evidence themselves. Anybody who has seen the secret file literally risks a decade in federal prison to tell you that the emperor has no clothes, that evidence doesn't say what Bush, Rumsfeld, Condi says it does.
So you go back to your editor (after convincing an honest soul to risk a decade in prison by talking to you) and tell him you've got a story about the war dossier being rigged.
Your editor says: Says who? Who's your source? Because the paper can't print a story saying the president is a liar without a safety net -- someone to blame -- if the story turns out to be false. And if you're going to call the president a liar when he's just came out and made a big speech about the most important thing a president can do, most editors wouldn't risk going with one source.
Two, three, more, they'd say. Because if you fuck this story up, you're done. The paper might survive, but you're done in journalism.
So the reporter goes back out looking for another person willing to risk their career, freedom, mortgage and probably marriage to tell you the truth. All you have for them is a promise they're doing the right thing, but you know if you get subpoenaed it's jail or give them up.
And in the meantime the TV and cable channels are cranking out 24-7 red white and blue bullshit, all freshly shaved marines with Star Wars goggles and sexy F-16s blasting off aircraft carriers, just itching to fight the war on terror.
I will not fall for that Candygram thing again...
"Jehova's Witness."
Old Hat
Reminds me of a bumpersticker:
"Jehovah's Prosecutor"
Fritz LeChat - Love it.
*
Old Hat
The Jehovah Witness knocking on my door soon regrets doing so. I had an incident years ago and I am not a forgiving type. I will say anything I want when they show up, more like sport to me.
A couple of months ago I was watching a History Channel program on the Kennedy Administration. One of the most remarkable moments was the tape of JFK's speech to the nation after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He stood there before the cameras and said, in effect, "I'm the President, and this was my fault". The commentator went on to say how Kennedy's approval ratings went sky high after that public admission. Seeing that program made me think of the Chimp in Charge, whining about how he was misled by the CIA. It made me depressed; we have a fucking child in the White House now.
A couple of months ago I was watching a History Channel program on the Kennedy Administration. One of the most remarkable moments was the tape of JFK's speech to the nation after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He stood there before the cameras and said, in effect, "I'm the President, and this was my fault". The commentator went on to say how Kennedy's approval ratings went sky high after that public admission. Seeing that program made me think of the Chimp in Charge, whining about how he was misled by the CIA. It made me depressed; we have a fucking child in the White House now.
Interesting to see how it works from the inside, SCLR.
You ask a question: But X says that evidence is complete garbage. The answer: X doesn't know what he's talking about, wew've had our top guys on this and they say it's 24-karat. So now what?
Get an anonymous blog and blow the whistle on the mofos.
Old Hat: "Does anyone know how much the average midlevel cable teevee reporter makes?"
Hey guy, you'd wouldn't last in that job - the bullshit they'd tell you to write would make you deathly sick.
Now, if they offered a $1M a year, then you'd be dumb not to join the whores.
Sorry for the double post!
When the Jehovah Witness guys show up at my door, I open it naked.
"Kerry Defends Saddam" would be for starters. "Gaffe Dooms Democrat".
Yes, at this point, if Kerry attacks Bush on Iraq or the economy or the NG records, the story becomes not "Bush Cheneys Up" Iraq or the economy or the NG records, but "Kerry Defends Saddam," "Kerry Wrongly Pessimistic About Economy," or "Kerry Despises Service in National Guard."
Maybe SCLR can comment on this.
And, to add to SCLR's reasons for the media being easy on Bush:
4) Bush has his own amen corner in Faux News, the Moonie Times, WSJ, etc., and the admin. is very disciplined at sticking to its talking points. When something comes up which directly contradicts one of the talking points, they switch to another, and only bring up the first again when they think the public has forgotten it was shown up.
Gene214
Isn't replication an aspect of your handle?
Old Hat: "Does anyone know how much the average midlevel cable teevee reporter makes?"
Hey guy, you'd wouldn't last in that job - the bullshit they'd tell you to write would make you deathly sick.
Nah, I'd never want to be a droid but I'd like to know if they're in the top 1% income percentile. Because that would explain a whole hell of a lot about the way the reported Bush's tax cut plan.
And I'm guessing most of them easily make six figures which puts them in the top 1%.
Not to sound too harsh, but I do think corrupt is the right term, because they knew better, and I guess it was all about the paycheck.
But you can't write news stories on gut instinct. (Commentary? Fine, go ahead.)
What did they know beforehand that was proof Bush was lying? In hindsight, it's crystal clear: no WMD, no al-Qaeda cells in Baghdad, OK. The case for war was bullshit.
But beforehand, who were you going to quote who could conclusively say that Condi Rice's "mushroom cloud" imagery was pure political judo?
Again, I fault the press for not doing a better job of making sure skeptics were included in reports. That doubts were played up. There were many stories that had a shred of circumstantial evidence against the Bush drive to war, but no clincher.
I mean, Scott Ritter got to say his piece on the cover of the NY Times Sunday Magazine, pretty prime real estate. Unfortunately, Judith Miller's Chalabi stenography was on A1.
EkCenTrik,
I have a sign on my front door that says,
"Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying."
When the fundies hit my doorbell, I ask them if they read the bible. Of course, the answer is
invariably "Yes."
You can probably guess the rest.
By the way, everyone, please, please see this movie. Highly recommended. Not a polemic. Made me think twice about al Jazeera.
I am an attorney, and from time to time, I look at the transcripts of the depositons that I have taken...at times, a stutter or a silly comment is exposes on the record...yep, it is embarrassing.
But NOWHERE can I imagine such a bullshit, stuttering, nonsensical statement like I just read from the shrub. That is BAD!!! wtf? how do reporters not pick up on his idiocy?
Unfortunately, Judith Miller's Chalabi stenography was on A1.
SCLR, please explain how in the fuck she still has a job? I thought you said if you fuck up, that's it, you're out of there? Does she have a lot of office politics power in the NYT newsroom? Boggles the mind.
But NOWHERE can I imagine such a bullshit, stuttering, nonsensical statement like I just read from the shrub. That is BAD!!! wtf? how do reporters not pick up on his idiocy?
B-b-but, you've got it all wrong!
For more on Bush's idea of "reforming" the CIA, check out Justin Raimondo's latest at Antiwar.Com:
A Neocon Coup at the CIA?
Bush's proposed replacement for Tenet is a long-time close associate of Perle and Feith, going way back. Along with those two and some of the other usual suspects, he's got a background in all the neocon foreign policy cabals (er, think tanks). And he has a history of conflicts of interest involving Israeli arms dealers.
Sounds like an OSP/Defense Policy Review Board hijacking of the CIA.
"There is no no need to argue with the masses,
slogans are much more effective.
Slogans are like strong drinks to people.
The crowd doesn't react like men but like women,
who rely on their feelings,
rather than on intelligence if any.
Propaganda is a great, difficult and noble art,
therefore it calls for a genius.
-Joesph Goebbels
Here's the quick and easy response to the inevitable media-whore-debate-moderater question "Do you agree we're safer without Saddam?"
Kerry (or Edwards): I agree that Saddam was a brutal dictator, and Bush has claimed that he hates America. If that's the case, we have good hard evidence now that in the process of removing him from power, we've created thousands of Iraqis who hate America. Saddam never killed over 800 Americans but these people have. From that standpoint, I'd have to say no, we're not safer without Saddam. At the very least, the service men and women who have lost their lives in Iraq would have been much safer if we had just left Saddam in control.
"But you can't write news stories on gut instinct."
It's funny. You can't write news on gut instinct but you can go to war just fine on it. Not to be flippant, because your points are well taken. But just on the face of it there was much to question. Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi based in Afghanistan. The hijackers were mostly Saudis. The administration concocted a flimsy war rationale out of whole cloth and an ounce of research and skepticism would have gone a long way. Examination of our dismissal of the world community and the UN, based on past history and the importance of having a meaningful relationship would have been a good start. Criticism of "bring it on" would have been a good start. I don't think any analysis of the administration's precepts was conducted. The media was a miserable failure. I do hold them to a higher standard.
*
Bush sounds like a bumbling fool. So what? He's not the one running things. Don't care he sat reading My Pet Goat. What get's me is how it doesn't matter with the Amurcan people who do believe he's running things. We revel in our ignorance.
"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." - CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on
the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover
stories.
Old hat: here's Sommersby's (Daily Howeler) take on the media peeps:
(as part of a longer screed on media)
"...Our modern press is itself a high elite; despite pious tales about Buffalo boyhoods, its opinion leaders are all multimillionaires, and even hard-charging young elite scribes know they’re on the millionaire track—and they’re careful not to blow it by getting outside the narrow confines of their elders’ world view. Most of these upscale scribes have little class perspective to suppress in the first place. But beyond that, they have no incentive to challenge their group’s perspectives, and that helps explain the nasty treatment Moore’s film has received in the press. After all, is there any elite more phony and fake than the one that is currently trashing Moore’s film? And make no mistake—these overpaid and pampered poodles tend to identify, not with Moore, but with the powdered phonies he mocks...."
DailyHowler.com
another random OT factoid:
Google 'gubernatorial'.
The #1 result is Mary Carey's website.
I find this terribly amusing.
There were many stories that had a shred of circumstantial evidence against the Bush drive to war, but no clincher.
But the Bush case was itself circumstantial.
And isn't it the media's job to look critically at what they are being fed, especially when it comes to war? Aren't they supposed to play a critical role in our democracy, not jockey for "access"?
Frankly, Michael Massing's account of all this rings very true to me. A disgraceful performance, American media.
As Massing says in the NY Review:
"Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change—when, in short, it might have made a difference? Some maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's not true. Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it."
Eric
I keep thinking about the Tuesday night press conference Bush had. He read through his remarks okay and then went obviously solo on the Q&A. It was the first time I started thinking something is wrong with the man, not simply that he was all the nasty things we feel he is.
When I read this current spiel, I am beginning to get the impression that he has cut loose his handlers again and of course his flaws show through in a major fashion. Why would he, having to obviously know he is not good at winging it, walk away from the folks who can make him look good. Maybe the emperor is beginning to understand he has been owned and he is attempting to take his crown back. But alas the emperor has no clothes. I am angry at and distrustful of this man, but I keep dredging up a touch of useless compassion as well. How do you realize and then handle the fact that you are the biggest boob on the planet and you do not have the skills to make it right? I know what I would be thinking of doing and I hear it is a mortal sin for folks with a faith.
Old Hat wrote: Get an anonymous blog and blow the whistle on the mofos.
No, they'd get you. Anonymous blogs aren't a barrier to the Justice Dept. What you do is call Seymour Hersh, may his name be praised. Or a few other top folks.
Yes, at this point, if Kerry attacks Bush on Iraq or the economy or the NG records, the story becomes not "Bush Cheneys Up" Iraq or the economy or the NG records, but "Kerry Defends Saddam," "Kerry Wrongly Pessimistic About Economy," or "Kerry Despises Service in National Guard."
Only on Fox and the NY Post. The rest of the papers will mostly play it straight.
Now, sometimes headlines look like conspiracies. But in my experience usually the problem is much simpler: Headline writing is a bitch.
You've got to write the head to a 800 word story about some pretty complicated stuff. You get three stacks (a triple-decker of type), none of which can be longer than eight letters. You have 15 minutes. Oh, and make sure your results can't possibly be misinterpreted, while representing fairly every facet of the story.
Go.
So-called Liberal Reporter -
I guess I just have the cynicism of the failed romantic, as regards the media. Honestly I held them in the highest esteem in my younger days, and that is why I am so massively and bitterly disappointed.
Perhaps I will adjust my expectation levels way down, now that I know there is no heroism in the profession. A few, like Seymour Hersh, yes. But in general the love affair is over.
*
And here's Digby's take on a similar media topic (and quoting Daily Howler)
Digby
This debate is tired. You're all asking isn't the media supposed to do its job.
What you do is call Seymour Hersh, may his name be praised. Or a few other top folks.
Who are the other journalists you respect?
I don't knock the profession but the longview gets me down after a while. It's seems like it's not just a couple of honest mistakes, scattershot over a few years. The media problem in this country seems institutional at this point.
And I know it's hard to bust your ass day after day. I respect that and you sound like you have a good take on the reality of the situation.
"But beforehand, who were you going to quote who could conclusively say that Condi Rice's "mushroom cloud" imagery was pure political judo?"
Having just skimmed through Massing's article again, I have to say I'm a bit stunned by a comment like this....
Here is the URL, by the way.
http://tinyurl.com/2gm4x
OT: I live in NYC. Any suggestions for t-shirt designs to wear around town for the RNC fuckfest?
BTW: All Democrats should swamp the restaurants, etc. in the city so that the thugs can't get a seat.
SCLR, please explain how in the fuck she still has a job? I thought you said if you fuck up, that's it, you're out of there? Does she have a lot of office politics power in the NYT newsroom? Boggles the mind.
I don't work at the NY Times, but I know one woman who does. It's a puzzle inside the building as well, is her take. Best guess goes something like this: Newspapers only print what editors let reporters write.
So it was a shared mistake, which cannot be undone by firing a reporter who had done tremendous work for more than a decade before she helped the Bush administration build support for an optional war.
Or some thing like that.
If you haven't caught the New York profile of her, by the way, it's very mean. You might enjoy it.
Any suggestions for t-shirt designs to wear around town for the RNC fuckfest?
Here.
"All Democrats should swamp the restaurants, etc. in the city so that the thugs can't get a seat."
Hew, AlleyKat: What makes you think those 'publicans eat with the common folk?
They will be sequestered away eating high off the hog (at the expense of Fortune 100 companies) at 'private' parties. Pay for their food? Are you kidding?
Any suggestions for t-shirt designs to wear around town for the RNC fuckfest?
Yeah. The phone number for your attorney, kevlar for the schrapnel, and a wet towel to throw over your face when the tear gas hits.
Not that I'm cynical or anything...
If you haven't caught the New York profile of her, by the way, it's very mean. You might enjoy it.
Oooooh, link? If not, give me the issue number I'll go to the liberry and check it out.
AlleyKat
Get a T-shirt with an arrow pointing right. Mingle with crowded gatherings of Republicans. 'Crowded is important'. Make sure one of them is always close to you on the right.
The T-shirt would say
'I'm a Liberal, Unfortunately I am with STUPID --->'
I know, not original, but I like the dynamics and visual. Sort of like 'Dancing with Wolves in Sheep's Clothing'.
Examination of our dismissal of the world community and the UN, based on past history and the importance of having a meaningful relationship would have been a good start. Criticism of "bring it on" would have been a good start. I don't think any analysis of the administration's precepts was conducted. The media was a miserable failure.
Sure, it makes sense from your perspective. But another thing people don't get, after 10 years of the GOP noise machine, is that the media really, truly is not liberal. Especially the national media. I wouldn't be surprised if half of them thought invading Iraq was a good idea, once.
OT, but I've been out of town and surrounded by moron-Americans, so have to tell this story.
I had a very early flight Wed, had to get up at 4:30 am in order to be at the airport an hour before the flight. So I go in, and all over the place are these National Guardsmen in desert fatigues. I walk up to one and ask, "are they shipping you guys out?" "yeah" he says, and I'm momentarily speechless, literally don't know what to say. Finally I just said, "good luck to you and your unit - come home safely."
I go up and get in the line to go through security, and I'm still seeing these guys all over the place, and my eyes start going blurry, and before I get up to the checkpoint, I have tears rolling down my face. I'm not usually a weepy person, and lack of sleep probably played a role, but the whole time I couldn't stop thinking, "some of these guys may not make it back home alive or intact, there was no reason to ever put them in this kind of danger, and it's at least partially MY fault, for not doing more to oppose the criminals who did this." I finally realize that I'm crying for all of us and what's become of us in the past 4 years.
And the kicker is, the whole time I'm hoping no one will ask "what's wrong" because the odds are 50-50 that if anyone does and I tell them, they'll start berating me for being "un-American", which just makes more tears flow.
So I finally get myself under control and get to my meeting. At dinner that night, someone at the table mentions Farenheit 9/11 and asks if anyone else has seen it, I volunteer that I have and that it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. A shitstorm blows up all around me instantaneously. "Michael Moore is a LIAR!" "Have you seen the film?" I ask calmly. "NO! And I'm not going to because he just makes things up! It's all propaganda!" "I don't know how you can make that determination if you haven't seen it for yourself." "I don't HAVE to see it to know!" "Um...well, how can videotape of people saying things that they actually said be "lies" or "propaganda?"
Next they move on to the "liberal media", I say I don't find it to be particularly liberal, and one woman literally starts foaming at the mouth, going into full attack mode. "Give me an example of how they're liberal," I say. Silence. I go on by saying, "EVERYONE has an opinion or bias - we hope that the media will try to avoid letting that determine their coverage, but overall, I'd say the media is more lazy and sloppy than biased." "Well, where do you get YOUR news?" they challenge. "Lots of places, mostly foreign news agencies on the web. But I'll tell you where I DON'T get it. I DON'T get it from anyone who accuses fellow citizens who simply have a different opinion on matters of policy of being "sick", "evil", "traitorous",
"treasonous", "America-hating", "terrorist-sympathizing" or "Saddam-loving", because those people c
Old Hat:
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nyme.../features/9226/
I thought it was unbalanced, frankly. I ended up thinking, OK so why did they let her do all this if she was such a bitch on skates?
But she was a newsroom superstar, before this. The rules are bent quite a bit for the golden boys and girls, as in any organization.
Jennifer: "Give me an example of how they're liberal," I say. Silence.
I have had the same thing happen. Happily the provider of the silence is a believer now.
..."the media really, truly is not liberal. Especially the national media"
Bingo!
Ah. I just had a eureka moment reminiscent of Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck when she asks "why do men cheat?" and finally she gets her answer. because they fear death.
Yes. My gut tells me that this is the answer. They did believe the party line and were pro-war. It just never occurred to me that it could be so simple. Thank you.
*
By the way I think I stole this line from someone from a night or two past.
'Dancing with Wolves in Sheep's Clothing'.
I am not sure who, but I like to give credit where credit is due.
god, I was a young during Gulf War I and knew nothing, yet I knew not to leave a gapping whole in the middle of Iraq, I defended Bush I when ppl were asking why "they didn't get Saddam"
And I just shake my head in wonder when pundits ask "why is the country so divided and bitter?"---Duh! If you don't know, we are in a WAR! Our leader seems to be missing some vital parts. WAKE UP!
I remember after 911 a Backstreet Boy singer innocently asked, what have we done to make them so mad? He was shamed and made to apoligize. Those Ivy Leauge grads should not ask such stupid questions.
Kevin Drum is having DNS problems (I can explain what that means, if anyone's interested). To read his site, use:
http://64.62.196.6/
To read the comments, click on "Permalink". When the "not found" message comes up, go to the address bar of your browser and replace the "www.washingtonmonthly.com" with the number above.
Trust me, it works.
Now, I'm late to this thread, and don't have time to read it all...but to hhear Bush tell it, wasn't the problem with John Kerry the fact that he thinks fighting terrorism is largely a matter of gathering intelligence? Possibly even HUMAN intelligence?
Or did I just dream that?
I agree with Massing's article, with both of them. I've been writing here for a while tonight so you may not have seen some of my earliest overall disclaimers.
The national media has done an awful job with Bush, and especially the run-up to Iraq. They had the capabilties and information to be much much better. If the profession doesn't learn from this, I truly fear for American journalism as it has been known and respected in the past.
What I've been trying to do is explain some of the factors that make it harder than it looks, perhaps. You want to call bullshit on that, well, you're entitled.
By the way: I am not a member of the national media, I work for a regional concern. But I have friends in numerous papers and networks across the country, and we speak of these matters. So consider me a secondary source ... if you consider me at all.
whoops, to finish:
"because those people clearly have an agenda and it's not "what's good for the country as a whole", because otherwise they wouldn't be trying to set citizens at each other's throats simply to advance their political agenda. We're all in this together, and that type of demonizing and poisoning of the debate does nothing but harm the country as a whole. We can't survive or thrive as a country if half the people are fed and swallow the notion that the other half who have different opinions are "evil" and "hate America". People who would destroy the nation just to get their way aren't to be trusted. When I see one of them on the television, I turn the channel or turn off the TV, because I know I can't trust a thing they say."
No response to this other than subdued murmurs of general assent from folks with eyes lowered and heads bowed, and a quick change of subject. Which means, it's going to be my standard line from here on out.
It seems a very subtle and effective way to drape oneself in the flag, without throwing flames at those who, let's face it, are guilty of what I described. No need to name Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc., and a seemingly very effective "shaming" device. Give it a try the next time you find yourself pounced upon by a bunch of know-nothing Republican sympathizers.
All in all, it was a very draining trip. I'm happy to be back home.
'Kevin Drum is having DNS problems'
There's a cream for that sort of problem.
Actually.. oh.. that makes complete sense. Now for the great ISP and Registry shuffle of who did or did not do what.
Still reading the thread, but I noticed a lot of you are real tired of this administration.
If you're wanting to get away from it all, here's a little story you may relate to.
Sorry if you already saw it.
Onion
Next they move on to the "liberal media", I say I don't find it to be particularly liberal, and one woman literally starts foaming at the mouth, going into full attack mode.
I've had the same experience. That's why I think it will take about 4 million dead Americans before they wake up. And that might only make them stampede over the rest of us who have been trying to warn them for several years now when they do. I don't see any hope in this. The terrorists know it. They are calling us stupid Americans.
Jennifer:
Thanks!
Welcome home, Jennifer.
Jennifer's comments created a couple more thoughts for me...
1. How many folks who spout things like 'liberal media', 'unamerican', 'traitor' and all those nice buzz or code words actually have done their duty and voted? I realize there is no real way to answer. I know of one who has done so and I do not think he has ever voted. but he is willingly to toss this stuff about. We have him registered now but not sure if he will actually follow through.
2. As people turn off the tube and press for news, is that not a win for the neo's by compromising the common man's news source. Basically unless people have a clue on alternative sources, if they are jaded, they have no news feed. And for every person I know that can use the net and find the alternative, I know far more who cannot even find google.
Just a thought process...
The Republicans should be mad at the media, too. If the reporters had been doing their job, an obviously incompetent man would never have been nominated, let alone elected; and honest Republicans wouldn't be faced with the choice of being loyal to their party or being loyal to their country.
We're not going to dismantle the elitist corporate media infrastructure. Not the wing nut FOX and NEWSMAX et. al. infrastructure. Not the moron-American infrastructure. Nor the terrorist infrastructure.
I just got a creepy thought...what do you think they are really doing with that missing $2 trillion?
And now for something completely different.....
Completely, Undeniably, Unashamedly OT,
On June 23rd of this year, Michelle Malkin opened her "comments" on her blog.
The topic was "The Lost Patriots of Hollywood."
You have to scroll down to 11:56 AM before things start to get good, but if you've got a few minutes to spare, you won't regret it.
If you've been around for awhile, you'll recognize a lot of the names.(Mr. Smith is there too.)
It gets better as you go.......
Stefan, (wherever you are, I salute you.)
Trust me.
Whoops, link....
http://tinyurl.com/2ywn5
What I've been trying to do is explain some of the factors that make it harder than it looks, perhaps.
OK, SCLR. I hope I didn't come off as mad at you personally.
A certain amount of righteous anger is at this point certainly justified, though.
Personally, though, I think the whole question of whether the media are liberal or conervative is misguided. The media are the media, they have their own set of rules of behavior, and their own highly idiosyncratic way of relting to political power and the public at large.
The obsession with the "scoop" proves this, to me. Generally a higher premium seems to placed on being first above fully informing the public. What most media outlets really seem to be experts on is what their competitors are doing.
This particular bit of idiocy is why I myself no longer even bother with TV news, read the headlines quick online, and then hang out on Eschaton and only read slow-news publications like thr NY Review.
For serious people, the mainstream media are already dead. Sorry.
liberal media.... I'm not sure I have enough perspective to really say much about changes in media over time, but I'm going to try.
I think they've always had the same motivation (in general) ratings.
What's changed? The fundies are in charge! Thes bung-holes can make a moderate Republican pro-life soccer mom feel like a member of the far left if she just questions in her mind as to whether or not Micheal Moore may have uncovered a point or two.
I've always thought myself a moderate. Compared to some of my friends, I may be a little conservative in the real sense (not the blow the budget and bomb developing countries sort of way). Well, this damn regime makes me out to be a "liberal-socialist-terrorist" of sorts.
I saw the Bush speech. Those sheep were bleating for that war-pig. I'm scared.
EkCenTrik - the "common man" would be better off with no source of news than he is drinking from a poisoned well. At least then he won't start to internalize the idea that his fellow citizens are evil for having opinions or ideas that vary from MiniTrue's official party line.
Incognito - you're probably right, we aren't going to dismantle it. But there are far more middle-of-the-road, basically sensible people who have been mislead into swallowing the bile due to a vacuum of opposing opinions than there are mouth-breathing true-believing wingnuts. Sensible people will basically agree that their fellow citizens aren't "evil" just for holding different opinions if the good of the country is the standard by which things are to be judged, and many can see that the demonization is a harmful thing for the good of the country if it's pointed out to them.
Philalethes and Central Scrutinizer - thank you.
Thanks for the Onion link, I needed that.
Thersites wrote: Personally, though, I think the whole question of whether the media are liberal or conervative is misguided. The media are the media, they have their own set of rules of behavior, and their own highly idiosyncratic way of relting to political power and the public at large.
I think the media's political attitudes matter quite a bit, actually. If you don't have any motivation whatsoever to challenge the adminstration spin, you'll be reduced to stenography instantly.
weblackey wrote: What's changed? The fundies are in charge! Thes bung-holes can make a moderate Republican pro-life soccer mom feel like a member of the far left if she just questions in her mind as to whether or not Micheal Moore may have uncovered a point or two.
It has become all-American to attack your neighbor's beliefs, fitness to hold citizenship and claim to happiness if they step outside the lines drawn by Rush Limbaugh, and company. Yet apparently most Americans are happy with things that way, or there would be some kind of backlash.
I remember when Ronald Reagan was president and it turned out that he lied when he said "We did not trade arms for hostages." The Republicans I knew then were sad, everybody was sad because the president lied and there were kids dying in Nicaragua, stepping on contra mines.
Today, I think, all we'd get is "There were no arms! The hostages were released because Hezbollah craves American freedom! It was Jimmy Carter's fault!"
Jennifer,
Thank you for being brave.
Darkness retreats from the light.
Bush has a new word
He says, "suiciders."
As E.B. White spins
I just heard this over the airamerica...Buch just told the NAACP to "Cheney off" on a speaking engagement. At first they said it was a scheduling confict, but then it was reported it was for anti-administration rhetoric.
Could it be that he won't be speaking to any crowds that aren't 100% registered Republicans?
Another thought process (Horrible ain't it?)
Blogs, Usenet and others. Internet Sources.
I keep thinking of Bruce Sterling and I think the book was "Islands in the stream". Been a long time, but the connected humanity aspect keeps coming to mind.
Think of it, if the Internet is becoming the best source of news (alternative sources), then it may have an almost heroic role in this schism if it has facilitated the truth and things actually work out.
The converations here are a bit discordant due to the frequency and ad hoc input, but in many respects we are all sharing and merging our streams of consciousness.
A news paper or Television new program can't do that.
"Could it be that he won't be speaking to any crowds that aren't 100% registered Republicans?" weblackey
It's kinda looking that way, isn't it? they're alienating interest groups, one by one, in a fairly up close and personal way. not too smart, is it?
*
I don't expect anybody to see this as it's so far down the thread, but I just read on msn.com, Ridge saying that al-Qaida is behind the lastest threats and will somehow disrupt the presidential election.
This nothing more than methodical,systematic pysops...These people are playing America like a fiddle. Like a slow motion train wreck it's going to happen I feel it in my bones.
Full dictatorship.
Bush has a new word
He says, "suiciders."
As E.B. White spins
Nigga, please!
so-called liberal reporter
you said :I think the media's political attitudes matter quite a bit, actually. If you don't have any motivation whatsoever to challenge the adminstration spin
But can't the media be agnostic and take the devil's advocate roll at least initially.
Years ago I did the BBS scene. One board has a group of young philosophers. As they posted their vieww, i realized all they did was regurgitate their favorite's words. Original thought was not there. If you challenged them, again, they backed themselves up by posting this quote or that. I am not well read in that area and maybe deliberately so. I took the tack of arguing in a completely irrational sense. It didn't matter what they said, I just had to discount what was an opinion and not fact. I could say almost anything and they were unable to defend themselves. And I was not welcomed back by the way.
The point is I tend to believe you can argue anything in a fashion that either proves or disproves within reason the stance. A particular view is not required if you simply are testing and reporting the veracity of the news.
I concur. Any intelligence would be nice. This whole whiny shit coming from the Whitehouse makes my skin crawl.
1) They claim that the CIA provided bad intelligence
2) They claim that Bush and Cheney were skeptical of the information provided by the CIA - "is that the best we've got?"
Yet they, BushCo, went ahead and pulled the trigger on the war. NOT the CIA. In essence, they fucked up big time and now all they do is whine about how everybody thought the same thing so it must be everybody elses fault. Pathetic snivelling whiners. THERE WERE VOICES TELLING YOU THAT YOU WERE WRONG YOU STUPID, SPINELESS, WHINEY, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS "FAUX PRESIDENT".
I don't know what's worse, their smug arrogant disregard for everything and everyone outside of their circle or their trying to pass the blame among everybody else outside of their circle. It's the BUCK you stupid shits.
Sorry for using foul language. I will report to a Falwell re-education camp first thing tomorrow morning.
The first part of the post is most interesting;
'[W]e need to bolster human intelligence. In other words, one of the best ways to figure out what the enemy is thinking is to get to know the enemy firsthand, I guess is the best way to put it -- is to have as much human intelligence as possible. Good quality intelligence and enough human intelligence agents, assets out there so that we can cover the globe."
That means Bush is saying we need to have infiltrators that are willing to do what terrorist will do ie; assasinate politicos, bomb civilians etc. They have to prove themselves, right?
Are we cool with that?
I think the media's political attitudes matter quite a bit, actually.
Of course. But that's a separate question from that of how the media as a whole does its job.
Remember that ideally, a reporter's personal politics shouldn't matter. There used to be an ideal called journalistic objectivity. Could this be fully realized? Of course not. But it could be shot for.
I think the most profound effect of the assault on the "liberal media" was to destroy the very idea of objectivity as a professional journalistic ideal. The media as a profession never did effectively defend itself as a profession. The charge that it could notbe independent and set its own rules was met with the acquiescence to the rules of self-interested political players.
In short, the question of an individual media subject's political allegiances is wholly subsidiary to the wider issue of, well, how we even came to a point where this quesion could even be asked in the first place.
We're not going to dismantle the elitist corporate media infrastructure. Not the wing nut FOX and NEWSMAX et. al. infrastructure. Not the moron-American infrastructure. Nor the terrorist infrastructure.
Bullshit.
There are more of us than there are of them. And by "us" I mean average working Joes and Jills, poor people, middle-class people worrying about how they're going to pay the rent or the month's mortgage, non-hateful religious people, all of us cross-bred members of the American melting pot, people who don't want to be despised by the world and all of us real, old-time American patriots who stand up for the Bill of Rights. The Silent Majority in a couple of words.
And by "them" I mean millionaire assholes who've never done an honest day's work in their lives.
We outnumber them.
Always remember that.
"The Force will be with you. Always." -Obi Wan Kenobi
Strike my last post. Thersites said it far better.
Thersites in all his eloquence.
*
We're not going to dismantle the elitist corporate media infrastructure. Not the wing nut FOX and NEWSMAX et. al. infrastructure. Not the moron-American infrastructure. Nor the terrorist infrastructure.
No matter how hard the rightwing tried to scares us, to divide us, to set us off against each other, always remember that we outnumber them.
1789 and the rest of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment and all of that other jazz. Pitchforks and torches. We are due for another intellectual revolution in this country. Imagine the 1960s times ten. Always. Keep the faith. Keep working.
Old Hat -
I thought you were sick of this thread an hour ago. And now you come up with all this great stuff. Kind of pushed past the boredom into a new frontier, huh? I like it.
*
I thought you were sick of this thread an hour ago.
Nah, that wasn't me, that was Incognito.
And here's my main man Mario Savio on the M-I-C:
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
Check out the Beastie Boys' latest album "To the Five Buroughs." Inspiring as hell.
I listened to the CIA rebuttal of the senate report. They conceeded that the summaries were not very critical of the WMD hypothesis. However, they also said that the full text of their reports did show weakness in the analysis of the evidence.
In addition, it was stated that probabaly only 4 people have ever read all of their intel. full text.
In other words...Bullets don't do the job.
in so many ways....
Nah, that wasn't me, that was Incognito.
Oh yeah. That's right. Well, here's an OT if you haven't heard the news...
ROCK king David Bowie suffered a heart attack during a concert, it emerged last night.
The star, 57, fell ill as he performed in Germany and doubled up in agony backstage.
He was rushed to hospital where surgeons performed an emergency operation on an acutely-blocked artery.
*
However, they also said that the full text of their reports did show weakness in the analysis of the evidence.
Translation: White House? That's all you.
Missed you lately, Old Hat.
Good to see you again.
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
Someone smarter or less drunk than me said that.
More on Bowie: ( I guess it's a cautionary tale...)
"In a recent TV interview he admitted: "By the mid-70s I was so out of my gourd that it was nigh on impossible for me to function in any rational way."
Bowie told how addiction had left his memory "like a Swiss cheese," adding: "I have unbelievable holes in my memory."
He revealed how he cannot remember the words to his hits and in concert has lyrics perched on a music stand.
Bowie, who also smoked heavily, finally weaned himself off drugs and booze in the mid-80s.
In a recent documentary the London-born star said he was thankful he escaped from his drug years relatively unscathed.
He added: "It's a dangerous thing to say, but it's true in my case. I crawled out of it all and got away with it."
But doctors now believe his heart attack may be a direct result of the hammering his body took during those years.
Sun doctor Carol Cooper said: "Drugs cause heart muscle to deteriorate and can bring on coronary disease at a younger age.
"Sadly there is nothing David Bowie can do now to reverse the effects of the drugs he took."
Bowie has told how he first dabbled with drugs during the '60s as he struggled to make a name for himself as a musician.
But he started to become hooked on cocaine after he found stardom with the albums Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.
His American wife Angie, who he had wed in 1970, also spiralled into addiction.
Bowie, dubbed rock's chameleon for the way he changed both musical and fashion styles, had soon moved on to heroin.
By 1976 his addiction had taking its toll on his looks - and his skeletal appearance earned him the nickname the Thin White Duke.
Around this time he told an interviewer: "I suppose I've been knocking on heaven's door for about 11 years now."
By the mid-1980s he was starting to clean-up.
He quit drugs and booze, although he chainsmoked for a further 20 years.
In 1992 he married Somalian model Iman. The couple have a three-year-old daughter.
*
How the fuck can their be "middle of the roaders" at this goddamn point??
I think I miscommunicated.
I meant to say that the CIA did give the full report...complete with some weaknesses in the "evidence" pointed out. (but not in the summaries)
As a result, the full text did tell the boy king and all his lackies that there were holes in their hypothesis.
Thus, if they had read all the reports...even the parts that didn't agree with them... (they would have gone to war anyway.)
Sorry, I'm not clear sometimes.
I think Bush will get in there in Nov. but after 3 months, those who voted for him are going to regret it.
scratch all that...I'm tired and I just misread
I should sleep now.
Sorry.
How the fuck can their be "middle of the roaders" at this goddamn point??
It's the machine: people are working too hard to have the time to pay attention, turned off to politics, getting spoonfed bullshit from the mass media.
Jenny,
I'm a huge Bowie fan too, since high school.
Couldn't get it up for him after "Scary Monsters", though.
I'm glad he's O.K.
He's an Icon.
Damn, I feel old.
Central S -
How old do you think he is now? I'm thinking around 59?
*
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but I believe that we should have better intelligence. I also believe that education is the key. I also believe that immorality is wrong. See, I have beliefs and morals.
Jenny,
I believe around 57 or so, but that's a guess.
Central S -
and he has a 3 year old daughter. men are lucky like that.
*
Jenny,
Or damned liked that.....
Thersites in all his eloquence.
Thanks!
In all honesty, though, I got this critique from Pierre Bourdieu.
His main point in On Television is that journalism can no longer claim to be an independent field.
Unfortunately, he's right.
Here's a theory:
Some years ago, a couple of senior Skull & Boners decided to pull of the greates prank of all time. At least they would try.
They would take the least qualified among their members, one who had slid into Yale and S&B on his father's coat tails, and position him to become president of the USA.
Simply to demonstrate that the US electoral process is pure idiocy, and that pure idiocy deserves an idiot at the helm.
Must have been something like this. Damn, the administration fired a lot of its Arab speaking HUMINT assets because they couldn't be trusted. Heck, some of them were Muslim, and a few were even homosexual. The fact that they spoke Arabic and knew the culture was tertiary.
How the fuck can their be "middle of the roaders" at this goddamn point??
Incognito
How the fuck could I write "their" and not "there"??
Central -
you have a great smile. picasso had a child in his 90's, i believe, which is pretty ridiculous, but still he did what he wanted and the rest of the world be damned.
*
Damn, the administration fired a lot of its Arab speaking HUMINT assets because they couldn't be trusted. Heck, some of them were Muslim, and a few were even homosexual. The fact that they spoke Arabic and knew the culture was tertiary.
They were fired because they were queers. Tinfoil hat off here.
How the fuck could I write "their" and not "there"??
It's Clinton's fault.
How the fuck can their be "middle of the roaders" at this goddamn point??
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
We'll be in Iran soon after Bush gets back in there. North Korea will break loose. Syria will probably hang back. Terrorists will take out a few million of us so we'll be under martial law and the Internet will be shut down and we'll be in the dark about what's going on.
Thersites -
you're very funny. what's your day job? (forgive me if that's too personal, i'm just wondering...)
*
...picasso had a child in his 90's...
I guess they were both crawling around the floor in diapers, then.
Whatever works, I guess.
At 44, I can't even imagine rugrats.
Incognito -
and our cities will look like the rubble of terminator I. rats will be crawling everywhere. i'll be the mother of the future and change my name to sarah connor.
*
I think you'd make a fine Sarah Connor, Jenny, based on the 'tude you show here!
rorschach, you're back! just as i'm getting ready to drift off into the future...
goodnight!
*
And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in inches in temperance building
High on poacher’s hill
And red mutant eyes gaze down on hunger city
No more big wheels
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of love-me avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
Any day now
The year of the diamond dogs
Good night, Jenny. Sleep well.
Nice work, Jennifer! I had the floor briefly during a visit with some friends when I was asked why I was so against Bush. My head nearly exploded with the rush to say everything I could and the end result was rather a mangled explanation.
Your method works much better, even though I still want to take the FIST of DOOM to those who said to me that Bush was just trying his best.
Jenny,
I teach at a community college. I dropped out halfway from academia because I met too many assholes but I still didn't want to work in an office, and nobody would trust me with a backhoe.
In the summertime I play with my kids in the daytime and hang out on blogs at night.
What's your gig?
The Republicans should be mad at the media, too. If the reporters had been doing their job, an obviously incompetent man would never have been nominated, let alone elected; and honest Republicans wouldn't be faced with the choice of being loyal to their party or being loyal to their country.
They didn't care if he was incompetent when they nominated him. They just thought he could win. I heard that from quite a few republicans at the time- they knew he wasn't the best man. They didn't care.
I don't think we can count on any of them to come to their senses. Or many of them anyway.
It's the machine: people are working too hard to have the time to pay attention, turned off to politics, getting spoonfed bullshit from the mass media.
Old Hat
That's why I'm saying it's not looking too good. It's not trending well for America until maybe a major cataclysm if even that. And the fundies having wet dreams behind the scenes instigating Armageddon.
I teach at a community college.
What do you teach? just curious. I'm going to guess.... history.
But way back then in 2000, I told myself I would hang in there and I have done that until this coming election. I've done all I know to do. I have another 4 months and I'll be moving on.
That's why F911 is such a depth charge in this election. It has hit even those millions and millions of Americans who are too swamped with work and kids and everything to follow the day to day political events tracked by media and pundits and blogs.
It's a movie, and people are watching it, and it will change minds, i think.
That's why I'm saying it's not looking too good. It's not trending well for America until maybe a major cataclysm if even that.
How the fuck could I write "cataclysm" and not something like "catastrophe"??
I try.
How the fuck could I write "cataclysm" and not something like "catastrophe"??
I think you've reached my state of mental burnout.
For me it's the daily evidence that my fellow americans intend to ignore the evidence that's right in front of their beady little eyes.
four legs, I know.
Incognito,
Where are you going to go?
I suppose we could escape temporarily, but unless you've got access to a wormhole to a parallel universe, I feel that I have to stay and fight the good fight. And that sucks, because I just want to live my life without all this fucking bullshit.
Jeebus Fuckin' Khrist.
We all know and I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I'm pretty good at seeing the big picture and trending things. The future looks terrible.
Central Scrutinizer, I have an ability to see things you can't. I'm not a down person. And I'm not, now. I'm just seeing things a little differently than most. I've already listed the trends that wont change as far as infrastructure goes. See up-thread. That's undeniable.
Incognito,
Lyrics from a TMBG song comes to mind:
I love the world,
and if I have to sue for custody,
then I will sue for custody.
Anyone know where I can get a GOOD lawyer?
And hoping for some reasonableness and common sense from "middle of the roaders" at this point? One terrorist attack and they'll vote for Bush.
I will remind them that there has been some failures... ...in power. America is safer.
Holden
I'd just like to say that the entirety of this quote (I've shortened Holden's original post; this part falls under the photo, so I couldn't tell if it was quote or commentary), when I was reading it, struck me as an excellent parody of the preznit.
Imagine my surprise when I realized that the excellent parody of the preznit was performed by the preznit.
Nah, not history. But close. I'm a lit guy, actually. In my particular area I ended up doing a lot of research and original thinking (in one obscure subfield I am an Authority and occasionally get phone calls because of it), only to learn that I was, ultimately, Unfashionable.
Oh well. I dropped out and now make enough to be OK, raise tomatoes, play with my kids all day in the summers, and hate Bush.
I love the world,
and if I have to sue for custody,
then I will sue for custody.
I see a lot of hope and wishful thinking from the left but that's all it is. Bush should be polling in the single digits. He shouldn't even be close to Kerry/Edwards to steal the election. Oh they'll finally regret it after Bush is back in there for another four years. Just like right now: It will give us no satisfaction for being right all along.
Incognito,
I see the shitstorm headed our way, and I feel fucking enraged that there is very little I can do to stop it. It would take a collective effort, and unfortunately, the collective is busy watching American Idol.
I hope that i'm just a fucking pessimist, and that tomorrow will be a better day.
I ain't buying tickets.
G'night all,
I've got to get up and do it all again in 4 hours.
I've been re-reading Seymour Hersh's "The Stovepipe" article, and in it he does fault the CIA for bad intelligence. However, that's only part of the story (we all know that, I know, but it wasn't _just_ the Wolfowitzes of the world...). The White House took away the intermediary steps in "vetting" intelligence. That doesn't sound very sexy, but it did have some major consequences. And while CIA intelligence wasn't very good, at least it went past some knowing eyes before it got sent up or typed into intelligence reports. The Bush Administration, however, decided that they needed their "fresh perspective" and that was that. Anyway, the part about "stovepiping" intelligence is the part that I suspect we'll hear about when the second half of the inquiry happens later this year.
On a completely unrelated note, I think the Republican Party is about to try and coopt all the Dem's talking points. The roster for their convention is very odd, part of a snow job on the American public, perhaps? I can't believe they'd actually try to play Bush as a centrist, but I think that might be their, um, "strategery". Anyway, I hope folks have long enough attention spans to see such efforts as the somkescreen they really are.
Here's a worthwhile bit on how the press corps behaves;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ameri...cas/
3881795.stm
Pessimism these days is no different from realism. Which, I suppose is why Bush is openly attacking bright smiling Edwards as a pessimist because he speaks the truth.
Rorschach: I think it's more of the Orwellian thing this Administration likes to pull. Up is down. Black is white. Optimism is pessimism.
Christ, I hope I spelled those ok. Still reeling from those Margaritas.
LJ--You did. Glad to hear you are having a good night.
And I think you are right. It's all about the subversion of the English language, to the extent that "the most fucked up administration ever" is "great for America!"
Oy.
@Jenny from the Blog @ 07.09 10:50 pm -- Great Question
Besides the fact that they ride rough shod over all the laws, national and international, they carry themselves (esp. Cheney) like gangsters and way stupid too.
Wonder why the FBI hasn't found any good leads on the anthrax letters. . .
It's still a good question. Threats of imminent violence, monetary as well as character assassinations.
Well. those are my guesses for why the media, etc are cowed into conformity. US state-sponsored states-side terrorism.
Oh BTW, speaking of moronic imbeciles, it appears that nobody's taking the Senate Report Snake Oil Up on the Hill (See NYTimes, 7/10).
Bush's credibility is in such tatters that he's as naked as a jaybird for all the world to see, along with more and Moore repunklicans, especially with the hearty assist from Farenheit 9/11.
Thanks too Holden (and Atrios) -- Bush's verbal excrement surely is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The Senate Report pretty much confirms that the White House made sure that they got what they most desired (see pp. 404-415, courtesy of Josh Marshall): Make-Believe Intelligence
Yeah, the Plame thing too. What a fucking stink must be emanating from the White House!
Personally, i have decided that George "the Weasel" has earned a new, more fitting apellation. Since his credibility is in such tatters -- blown to the wind, he can no longer be considered a "weasel."
Once it became nauseatingly clear to me that his administration has been attempting to pass off the blame on those (militarily deluded) young men and women soldiers for his International Torture Policy, he has been newly knighted
George "the Worm" Bush, Ignominious Coward
Enjoy your hell worm, you earned it!
Oh well. I dropped out and now make enough to be OK, raise tomatoes, play with my kids all day in the summers, and hate Bush.
Thersites, that sounds like a noble calling to me.
I love tomatoes too. They grow amazingly tasty in your part of the country.
JOTB--yes, media ==miserable failure II
correction JFTB
He did manage to destroy his military pay records. Bush is good at eliminating evidence. His life long record of being arrested and then getting away with crimes insures that he can cover up crimes really really good.
Even more embarrassing - Bush spells all the words in his garbled "intelligence speech".
"there has been some failures"
I'd settle at this point for a president who could speak English.
"I thought so; the Congress thought so . . . ."
Course,
Congress thought so because you told them it was so and you're supposed to know.
you need to look in the mirror
what you are doing will destroy this country
If that stupid mutt Bush says "everyone else thought so, too" one more time I will explode. Everyone did not think so. The UN weapons inspecters said our intel was bullshit! Chimp can go cheney himself. Stupid, stupid man.
And just who started this horrid war, Bu$h? You or *everyone else*? Chimpy has great faith in the stupidity of his followers. They think he's "plainspoken." HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Pretending that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and was going to attack America is getting sooooo old.
how would you do in such a position of responsibility?
It will be so nice to have the John-Johns in office. Not a moment too soon. Reality will soon make a comeback.
and tell me one thing... would you protect america at all costs?
and tell me one thing... would you protect america at all costs?
an american - 8:59 am
Pre-emptively from an imaginary threat?
Ooops fed the Troll.
The NYT op-ed page is justifiably scathing over the Intel committee's passing on Bush/Cheney responsibility for this nightmare. Only a fool could miss the obvious. Unka Dick leaned hard on the CIA to get what he wanted.
NYT also reported about a year ago that agents interviewed by congress were sent to testify with *minders*. I am not making this up.
The NYT op-ed page is justifiably scathing over the Intel committee's passing on Bush/Cheney responsibility for this nightmare. Only a fool could miss the obvious. Unka Dick leaned hard on the CIA to get what he wanted.
NYT also reported about a year ago that agents interviewed by congress were sent to testify with *minders*. I am not making this up.
again, I ask what would you do?
The NYT op-ed page is justifiably scathing over the Intel committee's passing on Bush/Cheney responsibility for this nightmare. Only a fool could miss the obvious. Unka Dick leaned hard on the CIA to get what he wanted.
NYT also reported about a year ago that agents interviewed by congress were sent to testify with *minders*. I am not making this up.
bigvic - 9:08 am
The media at least is expressing outrage. Why isn't the "loyal" opposition in Congress whose job it is to read legislation and act as our voice in these matters, debunking what is happening?
is this really a nightmare?
is this really a nightmare?
What was that rule Colin Powell is so fond of quoting: "You break it, you pay for it"? Looks to me like the current administration broke the CIA....
Admiral Stansfield Turner was on the Today show talking about the unusual number of administation visits with the CIA and stated that there clearly was undue influence by the administration but NothingButCrap network then went on to say as their news conclusion that the report lets Bush off the hook.
Pile of crap why not just turn the news over to the Reepers at least it would be the honest approach instead of fake news on every channel.
I understand the inertia of the status quo but what happened to the free press...
you're right
the CIA couldn't have made a mistake by it's self... it was commanded to by this administration...
you're right
the CIA couldn't have made a mistake by it's self... it was commanded to by this administration...
Congress bears a great deal of blame, but whether or not Bu$h accepts it, HE started this invasion and HE fed Congress phoney, cooked up intel. It doesn't get worse than that.
you're right
the CIA couldn't have made a mistake by it's self... it was commanded to by this administration...
again, I ask what would you do?
Employ adults. Employ people who have experience, who have read books, who have been to places, who can understand complicated ideas, who have real ethics rather than predigested slogans which mean nothing, who know how to delegate, who don't lie, who can think, who are willing to take responsibility.
Employ people who can cooperate with other countries, who respect human rights, who respect the simple fact that we are stuck on this planet and it's sick because of what we are doing.
Employ people who use force only to protect the country, and who use it wisely in the form that actually hits the people who attacked us, not some random collection of people who happen to look like the people who attacked us.
And so on. It's really very simple.
Sorry for feeding the troll. Trolls get frozen into rocks at sunrise, and I'm trying to lure it/him/her to stay out until it's too late.
STOP FUCKIN' FEEDING PEOPLE THIS LINE OF BULLSHIT!!!!!
STOP FUCKIN' FEEDING PEOPLE THIS LINE OF BULLSHIT!!!!!
I've got some Fair and Ballanced for the media: Just tell the unvarnished truth! There's a novle concept.
STOP FUCKIN' FEEDING PEOPLE THIS LINE OF BULLSHIT!!!!!
STOP FUCKIN' FEEDING PEOPLE THIS LINE OF BULLSHIT!!!!!
I simply do NOT understand how Bush can be continuing to run neck and neck with Kerry at this point. I mean it. I do not understand it.
How on earth can Americans anywhere in the country say to themselves that this moron should be leading our nation? Even if you believe that homosexuals are incredibly evil and that abortion is murder, how can you look at or listen to this man and want him to be in charge of our future?
Way back at the Million Mom March, I bought a button that says: George Bush Could Not Run a Laundromat. I am sorry to say that I am wearing it today.
Sometimes, I just despair.
Am reading Dr. Justin Frank's "Bush on the Couch". He raises the possibility of organic brain damage from 20 years of alcohol abuse. At best, Bush is an untreated, alcoholic abstainer. Compelling reading.
Don't worry, Hecate. He'll be gone soon. I mean it. Nobody seems to know Kerry yet so folks tell polsters they'll vote for the one name they know. Kerry/Edwards will win big.
and tell me one thing... would you protect america at all costs?
Or would you join the TANG?
STOP FUCKIN' FEEDING PEOPLE THIS LINE OF BULLSHIT!!!!!
another true american
Why don't you come over and give me a spankin'. I been a baaaaad boy.
bigvic,
Boy I sure do hope that you're right. Because I sincerely do not know if this country can withstand another four years of this. And, I know for sure I can't.
I understand that folks may not know Kerry yet, but they've had 3 1/2 yers to get to know Bush and to listen to his grammatically innane bullshit and the fact that approximately 50% of the country is still saying that they'll vote for him amazes me.
"alcoholic abstainer"
I sincerely do not believe that he is still "abstaining." He shows many signs of being a man on a daily diet of alcohol.
Hecate, it amazes me too and leaves me shaking my head. It's also saddening and embarrassing; unnerving and worrying. Stupefying and angering.
Incognito,
And when you add to it the fact, as pointed out upthread, that he's actually harmed the interests of many working-class people, I'm at even more of a loss. It's fine to be anti-whoever and anti-whatever in good economic times, but I'd really think that as people watch their jobs disappear, their 401ks vanish, their medical insurance evaporate, and, as a cab driver said to me last night, as fees for every little service go up and up in order to make up for tax cuts, I'd just think the tide would start to turn and people would vote their own economic interest.
I suppose the problem is that I underestimate the value of hatred as a political tool. The Saudis seem to have used it to stay in power for years in spite of a very repressive culture and a very uneven distribution of wealth and opportunity, so I guess it's not surprising that Shrub is doing as well with similar tactics here in the US. Somehow, I just never expected it to work as well here in the Land of the Free.
Oh, well, sometimes I just worry that we're all talking to each other and getting ourselves convinced that everyone is ready for regime change and that it may not happen.
Coffe and a bagel will probably improve my outlook!
BTW, I ordered Kerry signs for my yard and they came without any kind of a post to put them on. Unless anyone has any better suggestions, I guess a trip to Home Depot for stakes and staple gun is in order, but I wish they'd sent some kind of post or stake along w/ the signs.
I, too, cannot understand how even 1 person in the US could vote for Chimp, but partisianship is very strong on the right. The powers of self-deception are too. However, I have no doubt that *real* America (us), not the mean, petty, arrogant version Bu$h embodies, will win. Kerry.
The more I become confident that Kerry/Edwards is going to win this race, the more Bush strikes me as a pathetic man. He's a poseur in so far above his head, it makes the mind reel - mine and, obviously, his.
Here's my Pridiction: Kerry/Edwards wins big in November, and the Chimp goes on to star in his own reality tv series on the Fox Network where he plays a bumbling, illiterate, alcoholic President. To borrow a line from an old country song: "The biggest fool to ever hit the bigtime, and all he has to do is act naturally:.
Also, the national polls had shrub up 5% to 13% points in the last election and he lost. Zogby was the only one who got it right. Also notice how galvanized Dems are and how put off moderate Repugs are. Voila! We win!
I hnest to God thought I had a parody site.
No president talks like this. At the end he sounds like a drunk, half-mad Ross Perot.
What part was the best, *suiciders* or "there has been som failures here"? What a sorry Preznit-wit.
Hecate...buy your stuff from somewhere other than Home Depot. GOP backers
make that *some**
Good morning -- A couple of points. One is that when Bush talks "human intelligence" he's not just talking about the Valerie Plames, he's talking about the Jonathan Idema's, dogs unleashed to do anything -- like hang captives by their heals in private torture chambers, kidnap and torture family members, anything -- to gain "intelligence." And we know this doesn't work -- anywhere. Yes, it occassionally keeps the lid on things but underneath the waters continue to boil . . . Another is that we're in this Post-Modern stage where the various strands of the cultural tapestry are frayed and undone. I think that's why there are people who still support Bush who make no sense to the rest of us. We really are speaking separate ideological languages without a common narrative thread. I think Kerry/Edwards are trying to re-articulate that over arching narrative. They're using a lot of Clinton's imagery -- hope, optimisim, work hard and play by rules -- but they're also adding some heft to working-class/middle-class themes, which I think is good . . . My point is that we need to listen hard to how they're doing this and help in the effort to reframe American values as a secular, rather than religious theme -- i.e., "let America be America again."
Here's the quick and easy response to the inevitable media-whore-debate-moderater question "Do you agree we're safer without Saddam?"
The quick and easy answer to this is:
Did we need to take out Saddam? Yes, he was a horrible, brutal dictator. But what price have we paid for dealing with him the way that the Bush Adminstration chose? Bush's decisions about Iraq have made America, and the rest of the world, less safe than we were before the war.
It could probably use some stuff thrown in about the terrible toll of young American lives, the innocent civilians, destruction of our credibility. But this is a short answer.
Amen to secular America! Bush uses all the Christian talk and completely makes a mockery of the Jesus I grew up admiring.
"God I despise that human turd."
Amen brother. The asshole has absolutely no shame, as he piles one lie on top of the last.
Is that the mark of a sociopath?
Yossarian,
Damn! OK, the little local hardware store it is, but I know the mean old man who runs it won't like helping me find stakes to put Kerry signs up!
BTW, what ever came of that Josh Marshall bomb that was going to be dropped?
We really are speaking separate ideological languages without a common narrative thread.
That's an interesting post. It really is like they're saying something or like the trolls, they're writing something and I don't know what the fuck they're saying. It's gibberish and nonsense like Bush-speak. How do you connect with that crap and find common themes? They're anti-intelligence and they revel in it.
How do you find common themes with crap?
They're dumb so they've been manipulated. They're now misguided and wrongly self-righteous. A group that has never experienced a split second of bigotry in their entire lives believes they've been mistreated as they push the anti-gay Amendment. How do you reach common ground with that?
I saw Bush's speech live on CNN yesterday. I tried to listen, but I became so enraged, over and over again, that I blocked it out.
Then I saw a snip of it on the news last night, and I remembered back to the Woodward book ( yes, I have problems with him). Woodward portrayed Bush as *seemingly* rational (ha), but when I heard the soundbites last night, the word that popped out of my mouth was "sociopath."
Bush has no conscience. His version of *charm* is pretending to be all "down-home" while speaking to people as if they are five years old and haven't learned their ABC's yet.
He lies to get what he wants. And when lies don't work, he strong-arms, bullies,and shames to achieve his goals.
He's irresponsible, arrogant, and vindictive. He is never wrong. He never makes mistakes. It's never his fault, it's always the "other guys" fault.
He cares for noone and nothing except his own *vision* and the people who follow and promote it. He's a user, no pun intended...or maybe so!
I hate and fear him all at the same time.
I've had *discussions* with wingers on other non-political sites. I am beginning to believe the theory, often stated here, that many in Bush's base are secretly (and now more openly) bigoted and full of hate for anyone unlike themselves. Bush and the current version of the Republican party allow them to feel good about this.
They rarely have any facts or logical reasons for supporting Bush. Anything said againt Bush is deemed traiterous ,and any person who dares to "speak truth to power" is considered unpatriotic. These Bush supporters are illogical and hyporcritical. "Oh, don't talk against a President, it's disloyal." Unless the President is, of course, Carter or Clinton, etc.
I so look forward to a Kerry-Edwards victory in November. And yet, I fear that the level of hate and disdain for anyone or anything perceived as "liberal" will continue to grow.
I saw the PBS program "Now" last night, as others have. What an amazing interview with the author of "What's Wrong With Kansas." And how frightening. Why are so many people so willing to be so cynically manipulated against their own best interests?
I thought that quote was a parody until I checked the link.
Here's another clip:
You see, we believe that you're as big a patriot if you worship the Almighty as if you don't.
Unbelievable.
a man who is barely literate talking about intelligence failures. priceless if pitiful.
They rarely have any facts or logical reasons for supporting Bush. Anything said againt Bush is deemed traiterous ,and any person who dares to "speak truth to power" is considered unpatriotic. These Bush supporters are illogical and hyporcritical. "Oh, don't talk against a President, it's disloyal." Unless the President is, of course, Carter or Clinton, etc.
SelenaP:
Reading your post, I realized, this group is a cult.
"Are we safer without Saddam?"
"No. Not if we leave Kim Jong Il in power to do it."
Boy, they REALLY don't know how to answer that one.
See, he had the ability to make them. He had the intent. We knew he hated America.
I love it when he gets all Edward G. Robinson on us: "Muggsy's gonna rub you out, see? nyah."
"Damn! OK, the little local hardware store it is, but I know the mean old man who runs it won't like helping me find stakes to put Kerry signs up!"
Hecate 07.10.04 - 10:54 am
Good time to engage. Let him know why you've chosen to shop his "mom & pop" store and that you'd rather support him and his employees than the nameless & faceless Home Despot. Depite his obvious rhetoric, in Bush's world the mega store Home Despot rules. A Kerry presidency is likely in the mean old guys best interests.
Move on, people. It's about values now. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES. VALUES.
picasso had a child in his 90's, i believe, which is pretty ridiculous, but still he did what he wanted and the rest of the world be damned.
And no-one ever called him an asshole ....
The illiterate-in-chief admits he hasn't even seen the report (he probably still hasn't read it and I doubt he ever will - too many big words like "covert" and "data").
And somebody please tell me what a "suicider" is?
That's pretty funny coming from the first retarded pResident.
"They haven't found the stockpiles, but we do know he could make them."
If we knew they had the stockpiles--and they didn't, is it reasonable to claim we know he could make them?
If they didn't make any, then how do we know he could make them?
I'm foncused.
Look out!
That's the look they get just before they fling their poo!
"someone should blare the themesong from "Benny Hill" at the Nitwit's campaign stops, while he gives these speeches."
"Yakety Sax" by Boots Randolph.
Forget trying to make him look statesmanlike; shoot for human.
Bought and paid for...
They discredited all intelligence and the intelligence community but kept the administration blame free.
They went to the trouble of NOT disproving the most obviously false document: the Niger yellowcake.
They smeared Wilson saying "his wife asked for him" and that he wasn't qualified to say what he said.
Must be nice to be Bush's friend nowadays...
campaign question:
When is a lack of intelligence due to a lack of intelligence?
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