Country Joe McDonald (and the Fish) Woodstock, 1968. Really broke 'em up. But hey: probably ALL the "moderates" who voted for Reagan twice use that spelling, right? I'm not calling this guy a douchebag, but running into his posts seems to give me a vague "fresh" feeling.
He puts "F+++ off NSA" in his emails, fer criminy sakes. Scratch the surface and it will be Chimpy McHitler feeding us arsenic. This is easier than predicting a scandal for Courtney Love. Douchebag is a little too colorful an insult for this guy beerman. I would just call him a simple clod.
I almost see that. Since both sides think they own Israel, there will never be peace in that region. Perhaps it will work, time will tell. Do you think we should have paid the price? I don't. What were the repurcussions of just ignoring Sadaam? Why Iraq when there are so many other targets? True, but there was never much of a plan. Those that dared to the tell the administration things other then what they wanted to hear were ushered out. So the blame falls on the administration. They weren't near ready and only made things worse. Maybe they have it right this time. But no one, no one knew. And suspecting is not enough. They had better get it right and they didn't. If this axiom holds true, why aren't we in Iran and NK, they admit they are building them. I guess it's diplomacy this time? Probably not. Right after 9/11, I think Cheney and Rumsfeld sold it to him. IMO Iraq was going down before we went to Afghanistan. I'm on the fence here, I partially agree with you. I just feel it's too ripe for abuse of power. Protecting the environment. Not caving into big business at the cost of the environment. Funding and protecting our national parks. Tight regulations on industry regardin pollutants. There has to be a line between pillaging the land and providing jobs. I could spend hours, just go here to read Bush's record. Yes I know what deficit means. The article you provide shows slightly good news. It also says if the economy doesn't sustain it's pace we're in trouble. Recession is still quite possible. The problems are long range. I'm not an economist, but the traders all around me are. None of them think we are out of the woods. How many military spending surprises are still out there? Bush won't make any unpopular decisions about reducing the deficit with elections looming, it's only going to keep increasing. Raw story cites a WSJ article that sort of refutes that Washington Post article. Hate is a very strong word. From my viewpoint this administration has Fubar'd this country. Hate may be too mild for them. Anway, thank you for your enlightened response. I do really respect your views .Perhaps you could explain further why the deficit doesn't bother you. I doubt I'll be posting here anymore. Thanks for your letting me smell up your board Bill. Now I need to take a shower.
Spoken like a true moderate. This sort of childish, immature, meaningless blather about someone with whom you have political differences is exactly what's wrong with American politics, and the American left. When your baseline position is that your opponent is satan, the discussion has no place to go. "Swift boated"? You mean a bunch of guys who served with McCain in Vietnam turned up and told a story about his Vietnam service which differed markedly from his own self-serving and demonstrably false tale of heroism? And when did McCain go to Paris to coordinate their efforts to bring about a Communist victory in South Vietnam? Was that in between the torture sessions in the Hanoi Hilton, where they hung him by his thumbs and forced him to listen to John Kerry's false, libelous and outrageous testimony before a Senate committee? And you say you don't do humor well. It was absolutely the right thing to do, and I'm more convinced of it than ever. Among the many reasons why, one need look no further than what's going on in the ME right now. With Iraq out of the equation, the Saudis, Jordan and Egypt are surprisingly quiescent with regard to what Israel is doing, and Syria is in a disturbingly (for them) vulnerable position without the support of their fellow Baathist-Nazi regime next door. It was a bold geopolitical masterstroke. Define "cherry pick" This is a nonsense concept, a leftist buzz-word, and has no relevance. (And I'll leave aside the "neo-con" idiocy as well - you're not remotely qualified to define that word either) When the duly elected Administration made the case for taking military action against Iraq, they paid out the reasons why they felt it was the right course of action. It's what a government does. Every governemnt, in every situation. Was there some conflicting opinion? Of course. There always is, in every situation. It is unreasonable to demand, after the fact, that any administration lay out both sides of every equation. It has never been done, by any administration of any government on Earth. They looked at the situation, decided what needed to be done and then explained what elements went into making the decision. That's not picking cherries or apples or mangos. That's called making your case. Also referred to as "leadership". Undoubtedly. Well let's see: three national elections, a fully representative government, a brutal thugocracy dismantled, 200,000 trained police and soldiers gradually taking control over the country (two provinces in the last week have become fully self-policing), a foreign-terrorist threat well on it's way to being crushed, hundreds of thousands of children now in school (and learning something other than 1) Hate America 2) Kill Jews and 3) Saddam Hussein is God), control over oil revenues now in the hands of the people themselves instead of in the hands of a paranoid lunatic butcher and his kids, and a multi-religion central government now in place which is negotiating the stand down of the various holdover Sunni killers. You tell me. What "wire-tapping" are you referring to? If you're referring to the electronic interception of over-the-air communications between overseas entities identified as terror-related and similar entities inside the USA, I'm all for it. More please. No one's "wires" have been "tapped" without a warrant. Show me otherwise and we;ll talk more. As for "possible" invasion of my personal life, neither I nor anyone in my immediate family takes phone calls from Islamfacist murderers in Pakistan, so no, I'm not concerned at all. You start with a statment of facts not in evidence and then ask me to agree and defend it. Not a law school grad I take it? 1) Who is Bush & Co? Are they listed on the NYSE? Based on how well the economy is doing, I'll buy some shares. 2) "Justifiable" is an irrelevant construct. Governemnt spending is out of control. Congress - and the Democrats are every bit as guilty as the Republicans - have taken the discretionary spending bit between their teeth and are riding the earmarks train at 200 miles per hour. The larger question is: What is the damage you see this deficit, which you blame on the administration, as doing, and what is the alternative? Tell me what your concern is and maybe I can answer your question. Act like a dimwit and scream DEFICIT DEFICIT like a parrot on acid and there's really nothing to say. Not much since Craig Kilbourne left. He leaned decidedly liberal, but he was intellligent, had an understanding of how the country operates and was a genuinely funny guy with a very dry wit. Jon Daily is a sophomoric, dull-witted comedian who panders to his sophomoric audience with easy, cheap-shot "jokes" which rely entirely on the shared assumption that the President is a jerk. Which is where you fit in, I'm sure. It's hard to take a show seriously when all it takes to get a rousing, cheering, three minute ovation fro your audience is the say "Hey, wokka, wokka, wokka, Bush is an idiot" Deep stuff. Ann Coulter graduated with honors from Cornell and then from Michigan Law, where she edited the Law review.She worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee on crime and immigration issues, and then became a litigator for the Center for Individual rights in Washington DC, specializing in freedom of speech and civil rights issues. She also clerked for a US Court of Appeals judge and was an attorney for the US Dept of Justice Honors Program for outstanding law school graduates. Michael Moore is a high school dropout who drifted into filmmaking after he couldn't cut it as an assembly line worker at GM. To compare the knowledge of history, the understanding of the constitution, the thought process or intellectual reasoning capacity of these two people is like comparing a 67 Biscayne to a Lambourghini Diablo. You just seem to have a real difficulty giving any valid reason for it. Right. The Patriot Act. Designed to try and prevent terrorist attacks on US citizens. I can see why that would bother you. I doubt it.
I just saw this moronic comment and had to respond. Let's get something straight on this: 1) Any prosecutor in the US, when conducting a criminal investigation of, say, bank robbers or counterfieters or any other criminal activity, can, in the course of their investigation, go to a judge and ask for a warrant to examine library records in a search for evidence of criminal behavior. Are you up in arms about this? Does this make you "hate" the government? The Patriot act gives federal prosecutors, in the course of an authorized investigation of terrorist activity, the right to go to a judge and ask for a warrant to examine library records in a search for evidence of criminal behavior. So what you're saying, and you cannot argue your way around it, is that you don't object to prosecutors looking at the library records of bank robbers, but you are absolutely outraged that prosecutors might look at the library records of people who want to urder you. Is this what you call being a "moderate"? Is this what you call "rational" Or is this just a bunch of left wing crap? 2) According to testimony given to the US Senate Intelligence committee during the hearings over the renewal of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security was asked how many times library records had been examined under the auspices of the Act. The response? None. Not one. Not a single time. So you are telling us, and there's no getting around it, that you decided to hate George Bush because of a single item in a massive bill, which extends to terror prosecutors the same ability to look at records which we extend to prosecutors investigating pickpockets, and which has, to this date, NEVER BEEN EXERCISED? And yet you come over here and expect to be taken seriously? Really? 3) As it happens, I can tell you for a fact exactly why this authority was included in the bill: Ten days after 9/11, a terror cell, which was proven to have been directly financed by Al Queda, was broken up in Detroit Michigan and several Moslem Arab men were arrested. It turns out that they had been living in Canton Ohio, about 12 miles from my home. Since they were unemployed, they spent a good deal of time in the Canton Public Library, where their only activity was reading about municipal water supply systems, biological disease agents and an extensive examination of the blueprints and descriptions of the Canton and Akron Ohio munici[al water treatment plants and distribution systems. Now frankly, if you cannot see that their activities might be of some passing interest in a legitimate, authorized federal investigation of mass murderers, and feel that no judge should be allowed to authorize them to investigate their choice of reading material, then you are every bit as naive, narrow minded, ignorant and blinded by politically-based mental illness as I already think you are. Good day.
I've been stewing about this all morning. The Swift Boaters may have uncovered one or two inconsistencies in Kerry's after-the-fact accounting of his service, but the overwhelming majority of his record has be held up to be true. The Swift Boaters, on the other hand, have been caught in lie after lie after lie, ranging from flat-out lies about their sources of funding, to accounts from people who "served" with Kerry who never actually served anywhere NEAR the man, to doctors who "treated" Kerry whose names don't appear on any official records. Nobody believes the Swifties anymore, except for some people on this board, apparently. The nonpartisan Factcheck.org utterly demolishes the Swifties charges. Look at how the Swifties constantly have to change their own stories! William Rood, from the conservative Chicago Tribune (one of the few big-city papers to endore Bush), was on Kerry's swift boat, and he destroyed some of the Swiftie's charges, too. John McCain attacked the Swifties. Even Bush himself tried (although in wimpy, wishy-washy way) to distance himself from them! Face it, Bill: you were blinded by partisan fury to the point that you believed a bunch of transparently phony, slanderous charges made by political operatives with axes to grind. There were hundreds of things that were wrong with Kerry, such that it's not necessary to believe this absolute bullshit.
Well you can stew all you want, bo. Stew away. First of all, the funding is completely immaterial. Of course some Republican donors gave them money to get their story out. Shall I give you a list of all the people George Soros is funding? Or is he just a "concerned patriot"? What utter hogwash. Their source of funding does not in any way, shape or form mean that their stories are made up. Wanna discuss where the funding comes from for Iraq Veterans Against the War? I bet not. Second, that piece you link, which I foolishly read, takes a great deal of time trying to create a chasm between a guy "making a mistake" and the same guy later calling it a "material error", and makes a great commotion about how the guy's word is worthless because he didn't witness the incident anyway. The authoer then goes on to quote, at great GREAT length, the statements of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Navy CincPac during Vietnam, and the Secretary of the Navy. Excuse me, ut which one of THEM were there? What tripe. But hey, I understand - the entire incident is seared SEARED in your mind, jus like that Christmas Eve trip up the Mekong into Cambodia that Kerry ....ooops, that's right - that was a lie. In any case bo, YOU are the one refusing to see the point here. The specific incidents of the war, like the bogus injuries for which he applied for Purple Hearts are a matter of debate. Like shoting the guy in the back and all that. The REAL issue which the Swift Boat veterans addressed, is that Kerry is a traitor. Their constant refrain is not about Kerry's bogus tales, it's about Kerry's activities after he came home. His shameless grandstanding with VVAW, his Senate testimony of atrocities gleaned from phony veterans, his lies and prevarications about giving back his medals and his treasonous cooperation with the Viet Cong while still in the Navy. Not to mention his dishonorable discharge, which was later upgraded by the Carter administration. It's John Kerry giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war that is their REAL message, bo. And all of it is absolutely undeniable. But you'd rather talk about the other stuff, right? The stuff that neither you or I were there to witness and thus can't testify to. Get a clue. Kerry is a piece of shit.
I remember why I stopped arguing with you about this issue before. Believe what you want. Just don't ever accuse me of having Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Here's what I got from the Swifties vis-a-vis Kerry: 1) His first Purple Heart was an accident. He contradicts himself in his own biography that the next time he fired his weapon was 'the first time we met the enemy'. The fact that he did not release the after action report from this first encounter after he finally signed his SF 180 still does not resolve this issue. 2) Lt John Kerry is the ONLY swift boater that requested being taken out of combat after his third Purple Heart. From what I recall, there was an enlisted man and another officer that could have been, but they refused so that they could serve out their commitment. 3) It is more than likely that Kerry was dishonorably discharged because of his showing up at Paris 'Peace Talks' as a uniformed officer in the US military. The 'discharge papers' shown on his website are dated 1978--a full 6 years after his initial 6 year enlistment. Mysteriously, his official discharge papers were also not released after his filing of his SF 180. And don't start with the 'he was in the reserves' crap. 4) Bil touched on this too, his back-stabbing testimony in front of Congress while his comrades were in harms way. If he indeed did see the war crimes he described, he is bound by oath as a commisioned officer to report those actions to his superiors and bring those soldiers to justice. He failed to do so. 5) And don't forget his 'three hour tour' into Cambodia after president Nixon ordered him to take an agent on Christmas of 1968 to meet with the Khmer Rouge that was seared, SEARED into his memory. Kerry was back then, and is still now a guy that wants to have things both ways (As a Catholic, I cannt support abortion, but...) All that other stuff is mostly old men trying to remember confusing actions obscured by time. Of course individual details are going to be remembered a little differently. The points I have made above so far as I know, have not been 'proven false' and are really the most damaging to Kerry's legacy.
For one thing, Purple Hearts can be awarded to persons injured in friendly fire or by accident. Haven't read his bio and thus can't comment on any inconsistencies, other than "we met the enemy" could mean that they actually saw the enemy. Incidentally, much of the talk about Kerry's first PH came from Louis Letson, who has a hell of a time keeping his inconsistencies straight. Not sure what the point is here. I wouldn't have tried to stick around, either. At least he didn't have "other priorities" during the war. If you'd like to play the speculation game, I can tell you what Bush's national guard reports "more than likely" said. In both cases, it's just speculation. Really, this is the issue at hand: the Swift Boaters just find Kerry repellent, to the point that they believed any and every negative thing said about the guy. As far as I can tell, this is the only case where the Swifties may have actually found something. However, considering the flat-out untruths in their own ads and books, they're in no position to criticize Kerry on the matter. Furthermore, Kerry's campaign at least acknowledged that he was mistaken on the matter. Welcome to politics. Guliani is a pro-choice Catholic. President Bush just demonstrated that he considers stem cell research to be murder . . . but where is his condemnation of fertility treatment? Why do you give the Swifties a pass, then, and not Kerry for his Cambodia story?
Bo.. there is no such thing. Contrary to the Pat Leahy and John Kerry attempt, one cannot reconcile support for abortion with pro-Catholic bonafides. The Church is cracking down on this as they well should. Support for murder of the unborn cannot be accepted and excommunication should be exercised for those that think they can just ignore the dogma.
You seem to have reconciled your belief in the death penalty and support for the Iraq war with the Catholic position on both.
First of all, they weren't running for president and using every opportunity to brag about some brief experience in Vietnam. Second, I took pleasure in the whole episode because it is a perfect example of how the liberals think they can dish it out and are somehow immune from taking it. They spent 4 tiresome years on Bush in the National Guard, saying he was AWOL, etc. and then Kerry tries to capitalize on it by playing the war hero. What did they expect? The caterwauling of the libs when it came back to bite them was priceless. I'm surprised that they didn't have more dirt on Kerry from the VVAW. I went to a few of their meetings back then, I was in one of the last draft groups, and got a summary-level education in marxism, anarchism, etc. from them. And when they asked me to sign a paper to join them, at the bottom was an oath that I was not an agent of the FBI or the police or anything like that. Needless to say, they couldn't explain the iron curtain to me sufficiently to convince me that the USSR was a worker's paradise, so I didn't join.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about, or have you become some mind-numbed leftie peacenik? How the hunger strike going? Cindy says she could use some extra cheese on that double pep, thanks. By "the Catholic position" I'm going ahead and guessing that you mean "the Christian position" since officially the Church heirarchy is against ALL wars, even when it's Bill Clinton sending F-16's to drop explosove munitions of schoolchildren. No really, even then. (And the current Vatican Secretariat is as blindly anti-American as even you might like him to be, so no worries there. But his opinion is, shall we say, not quite on a moral par with Moses, or the Lord our God. Just an old pedophile in a red suit. Not quite Santa, but in the same genre, certainly) As a noted scholar on the ancient world, I'm certain that if you look closely at the original Hebrew and/or Greek, you'll see that "Thou shalt not kill" is - in context - an invocation against "murder". Our Lord is opposed to us taking other people's lives for personal gain. Even a certified Christian-hating-but-curiously-Moslem-tolerant guy like my freind JoePak can agree that shooting the neighbor because you want his new John Deere lawntractor - even though it might be that 26 HP momma with the 52" deck - is a bad thing. But there is ample evidence that He does in fact heartily condone smiting the Philistines hip and thigh in a just cause. We are, to quote a more recent highly placed source than Moses, our brother's keeper. Now if your debate is with the latter case - and we all know that's really waht it is - well, we'll all have to take that up with the creator when we get the chance. Or not as the case may be. But there is no other inconsistency.
No, I specifically mean the Catholic position on the death penalty and the Iraq war: the Catholic church has condemned both. I'm perfectly aware of the wars in the Bible, etc. Those examples would be more germaine if we were discussing Christians in general or even Protestants, but with regard to the Catholic church? Not germaine. The Catholic church has more-or-less set positions on issues such as these.
Anyway, bo, this thread had turned into an opportunity to enjoy bashing some idiot's brains out. You've shamelessly hijacked it into a John Kerry and Iraq thread. But then he was too easy. SO I guess I don't mind. I just wish you'd once in a while give me a chance to talk about Leonides at Thermopaylae or almost anyone and the Cathaginians. Syphax would do. Or even Sempronius Longus. Anything.
Haven't you been paying attention? I wouldn't have any cheese to offer. I actually like this line. Incidentally, I'm married to a bona-fide Biblical scholar, and she has read the texts in Hebrew and Greek. (One of her editions of the OT is a Greek version with extensive footnotes in German. I feel like kind of a dummy when I see that on the shelf.) I'm sure that we'd all agree that shooting would be justified if he were mowing his lawn at 6:30 AM on a Sunday morning.
Didn’t Kerry throw those metals away? If all the Swifties lied, then why hasn’t Kerry sued them for slander. I mean he has plenty of reasons to, right?
You'd have to ask Nicephoras for that. I don't know shit about the ancient world. If you're interested in threads on Wallace Stevens, prosody, medical publishing and research, grunge, or Ulysses (the novel, not the hero), animal welfare issues, veganism, and fitness, then I'm your guy.
I'm more interested in Wllace Shawn than Wallace Stevens. Parody maybe, but not prosody. My house is so stuffed with medical publishing and research that I can barely squeeze my way to the can. I've been called grungy, but that's likely not the same thing. Ulysses real name was Sam, you know. Chuck says thanks! How many little baby soybeans had to die to make that tofu you just ate? Traci Lords had a great workout video. I mean, a GREAT workout video. And Paul Thomas wasn't even in it.
Sure it's speculation Bo. But Kerry could've answered that question once and for all by releasing his original discharge papers. He missed his chance. And no, I won't cut John 'seared, SEARED into my memory' Kerry some slack, just for that statement. He then went on to claim that those medals weren't his. As part of a dishonorable discharge, you are required to forfeit your medals.
All I know is that the terms Tracy Lords and "discharge' were mentioned in back to back posts. something has to be said for that. If nothing else impressive happens today, at least I have that to fall back on.