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I just couldn't resist

Started by antelope19, November 03, 2006, 08:59:09 AM

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Hicks

Quote from: susep73 on November 03, 2006, 03:32:47 PM
Quote from: ikki on November 03, 2006, 03:28:58 PM
Quote from: susep73 on November 03, 2006, 03:23:42 PM
Quote from: phan003 on November 03, 2006, 03:20:10 PM
:-o
no Hillary ? 



I'd disagree susep73. 



I wouldn't want kerry in office ever.  I'd rather have bush than kerry any day of the week(even with what we all know now). 

Nader would have been a great president.

Disagree, Nader was too much of an outsider and wouldn't have been able to work with Dems to accomplish anything. 

Not that it matters, Nader never even got 5% of the national vote.

I disagree, Nader would have been the perfect shakedown for what this country needs.  His ideas/policies cut through partisan thinking. 

We can agree to disagee, but I think that viewpoint is pretty naive considering the realities of Washington politics. 

Nader is way too detail oriented to be an effective leader, IMO.  90% of the President's job is dealing with abstracts and not the actual nitty gritty of problems.
Quote from: Trey Anastasio
But, I don't think our fans do happily lap it up, I think they go online and talk about how it was a bad show.

sophist

yes. 9/11 was the result of terrorists not the bush white house
Can we talk about the Dead?  I'd love to talk about the fucking Grateful Dead, for once, can we please discuss the Grateful FUCKING Dead!?!?!?!

susep

Quote from: ikki on November 03, 2006, 03:35:38 PM
We can agree to disagee, but I think that viewpoint is pretty naive considering the realities of Washington politics. 

Nader is way too detail oriented to be an effective leader, IMO.  90% of the President's job is dealing with abstracts and not the actual nitty gritty of problems.

wrong, being an effective leader is having the ability to simultaneously see large, small and, the unseen.  The presidents job is to execute.  A privledge Bush has abused too much.

sophist

Can we talk about the Dead?  I'd love to talk about the fucking Grateful Dead, for once, can we please discuss the Grateful FUCKING Dead!?!?!?!

Hicks

Quote from: Trey Anastasio
But, I don't think our fans do happily lap it up, I think they go online and talk about how it was a bad show.

Guyute

Quote from: phan003 on November 03, 2006, 03:20:10 PM
:-o
no Hillary ? 



I'd disagree susep73. 



I wouldn't want kerry in office ever.  I'd rather have bush than kerry any day of the week(even with what we all know now). 

I really believe that Kerry would have been even worse than the sorry execuse that is there now as well.
Good decisions come from experience;
Experience comes from bad decisions.

About to open a bottle of Macallan.  There's my foreign policy; I support Scotland.

Guyute

Quote from: ikki on November 03, 2006, 03:44:13 PM
Quote from: phan003 on November 03, 2006, 03:43:24 PM
^agreed

So you think Nader would've been a great President?

Of what, the alfalfa eating society?  He is such a nutjob.  He doesn't have a grasp of what it takes to lead a nation, only how to point out flaws in what is being done.
Good decisions come from experience;
Experience comes from bad decisions.

About to open a bottle of Macallan.  There's my foreign policy; I support Scotland.

mattstick

November 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you're stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, "They must think I'm stupid." Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team's real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry's mangled gibe at the president.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men — to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that?

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld's response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you've got — get over it.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military histories — from "Cobra II" to "Fiasco" to "State of Denial" — all of which contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we've been making it up — and paying the price — ever since.

And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people they're fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we're addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing — demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation — to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases.

Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His "genius" is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.

And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country's health, prove him wrong this time.

Let Karl know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.

Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.

It means we're as stupid as Karl thinks we are.

I, for one, don't think we're that stupid. Next Tuesday we'll see.

Hicks

Great column by Friedman, but I still find it hard to forgive him for beating the Iraq war drum in 02-03, and I think he may have supported it as recently as 2005.
Quote from: Trey Anastasio
But, I don't think our fans do happily lap it up, I think they go online and talk about how it was a bad show.

August

just want to post once in this thread.
politix aint my thing.

a

sls.stormyrider

interesting thread.

QuoteGreat column by Friedman, but I still find it hard to forgive him for beating the Iraq war drum in 02-03, and I think he may have supported it as recently as 2005.

great column, and interesting point ikki. I remember even Joel Klein said that Saddam's got to go on the Larry King show in the run up to the war. Of course, he was being fed the same lies by the administration that we all were.

BTW - Stat of Denial is a great read, although get prepared to get very angry ( even angrier than you already are) at the current admin.
"toss away stuff you don't need in the end
but keep what's important, and know who's your friend"
"It's a 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."

sophist

Quote from: ikki on November 03, 2006, 03:44:13 PM
Quote from: phan003 on November 03, 2006, 03:43:24 PM
^agreed

So you think Nader would've been a great President?
I was agreeing with susep73.  I honestly couldn't tell you if Nader would of been a great president.  He could of gone either way in terms of success or failure.
Can we talk about the Dead?  I'd love to talk about the fucking Grateful Dead, for once, can we please discuss the Grateful FUCKING Dead!?!?!?!

sophist

QuoteLet Karl know that you're not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.

:clap:  :clap:
Can we talk about the Dead?  I'd love to talk about the fucking Grateful Dead, for once, can we please discuss the Grateful FUCKING Dead!?!?!?!

cactusfan

that's the best column friedman has ever written.
in the thrilling land of the political blogosphere there's actually a term now that denotes a period of time, six months, a 'friedman.'
based on the number of times over the years the iraq war has dragged on that friedman has written that within six months we'll know if it's time to get out/time to stay/time to have elections/whatever. everything is always six months away for that guy.

as to whether 9/11 would have happend with gore in office, possibly not. the bush admin totally dismantled and distrusted the clinton's anti-terrorism team. bushco didn't even get started on dealing with those issues until the summer-- late summer, post-vacation. with gore acting as a continuation of the previous admin, and not being so painfully blindered to reality as was (is) bushco, it's entirely possible that assessments with titles like 'bin laden determined to strike inside US' (sorry for paraphrase) might have not been summarily dismissed. of course we'll never know...

as for the kerry flap-- what can be said? kerry's always been a dope, he made a dumb joke at the expense of the president but fucked up the wording. and as the repugs see everything slipping away a week before the election, they act as they always act: ignore the issues and attack anyone available. it's desperate and sad.

i think the damage done to our country by this admin cannot yet be fathomed. the justification for, acceptance of, and ultimately legalization of torture may be the most appalling act of violence ever committed against what this unique country used to stand for. truly, it sickens me.

sls.stormyrider

Obviously, we'll neven know if 9/11 would've happened if Gore was elected, but we do know that Bush didn't really even know who bin Laden was until late that summer. Many didn't know who he was until after 9/11. They were blaming Iraq.

Quotethe bush admin totally dismantled and distrusted the clinton's anti-terrorism team.
yep
We have all heard of the famous security briefing from 8/01 that was ignored. One month before that, 7/01, the CIA was picking up a lot of traffic. Tenet went to meet with Rice and told her he was afraid something was gonna happen-this was like the traffic they were picking up before the millenium. He thought something should be done. She essentially blew  him off (paraphrased from -Woodward, state of denial).

the same people who criticized Clinton for letting this happen were the same people who thought his bombing of Kenya and Afghanistan to go after Bin Laden in response to the USS Cole and embassy incidents  was merely deflecting attention from Monicagate (wag the dog). Obviosusly, Clinton was not making this up-he may have been able to do more if he didn't politically hurt himself with Monica
"toss away stuff you don't need in the end
but keep what's important, and know who's your friend"
"It's a 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."