Politics: J'accuse!

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
Had he put more troops on the ground, the Loyal Opposition would have been sqawking even louder.

I don't believe that.

Shinseki famously said how many troops he thought it would've required, and he's being proved right. What makes you think that opponents would've yelled louder because the invasion force was larger? Or that the occupying force was larger? As I recall, those who opposed it, opposed it because the US was going, not because of how many went.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by bilmore
Hmmm. Bush said, from the beginning, that it would be a long, hard struggle. He said it repeatedly.

During the runup to war admin officials talked frequently about how we'd be able to draw our troops down to 30,000 within a few months after Baghdad fell, and silenced Shinseki for saying otherwise. Admin operatives like Paul Wolfowitz and SEF emphasized that Iraq's oil revenues would be able to pay for reconstruction withoin a short time after invasion. Last summer, even after the "major combat" was over, the admin stalled as long as possible before presenting the bill to the american people, prompting criticism from commentarors on both sides of the aisle, not just the L.O.

But if you want to stick to Bush's "exact words", you got me there. It's the equivalent of him sending his attack dogs to assail Clarke's credibility while he sits back and remains "presidential". It's quite a strategy. At least it appears to keep the true believers believing.

Had he put more troops on the ground, the Loyal Opposition would have been sqawking even louder. So, great call for them now.

Those of us in the LO who agreed with Shinseki's testimony before Congress would dispute your characterization of what the LO would do. But that's not unusual.

He never called anyone unpatriotic - this is another one of the canards that always end with "well, he implied it, or at least I interpreted it that way."

So you're saying "sends the wrong message to the troops and the wrong message to the enemy" is qualitatively different from unpatriotic. OK. I can agree with that, actually.

And, he explained fairly carefully how he was going to do this, through taking the land, fixing the place, and turning it over to them to run. He didn't say, last year, which building would be re-painted this coming Thursday? ooooo . . . .

Yes, that's exactly what Dionne was saying. Well played.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Bush is not a man for diplomatic ambiguity. He famously prefers to see things in simpler, black-or-white terms. In particular, he tends to view the world through the narrow and sometimes distorting prism of the war on terrorism. Asked Wednesday whether Israeli settlements are an impediment to the peace process (which is the position taken by his predecessors for the past 20 years) Bush answered: "The problem is, is that there's terrorists who will kill people in order to stop the process."

This distaste for subtleties is probably part of what many Americans like about Bush -- he's not some fancy-pants diplomat talking all the time about "nuances." But the public should understand that however satisfying Bush's plain talk may be, it can be harmful to the nation's security.

That quote is why I think I Ignatius is wrong. I think that pretending is harmful to our nation's security, far more than calling a spade a spade. We've been being polite and cheerful to the Palestinians for years, and look at the great progress we've made. I agree with Bush that this is the time to simply state reality, tell them to get their heads out of their butts, 'cuz this is really how it's going to be, and tell them to make an offer.

Iglesias has a different approach. But it's the same one that's failed over twenty years.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
So you at least concede that the rest were a result of worldwide events. I'm proud of you.

Nice try. I concede changed circumstances dictate the flipflop on nation building. The others, not so much (except the steel tariffs, see below).

The ratrionale is that it was a temporary move which allowed the US companies to restructure. By most accounts, it worked.

I guess your argument here is that the change in circumstance was the WTO ruling? Concur.

I fihd it sort of odd, though, that the left ever brings this up, seeing that they were the ones in favor of the tarriffs

No odder than that the right never criticized him for it at the time. But since I concede the WTO ruling as a change in circumstance...

As evident by the circus in town, the last thing we need is yet another federal security agency.

I'm confused - are you saying the federal level HSD is unnecessary?

Someone is confusing 41 with 43.

No, I'm not. In 1978, Bush, a 31-year-old oilman, was seeking the Republican nomination in Texas' 19th Congressional District. Days before the primary runoff, Bush was interviewed by a reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. His opponent had attacked Bush for being cozy with liberal Rockefeller Republicans. In response, Bush listed conservative positions he held. "I'm not for the extension of the time to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment," he told the paper. "I feel the ERA is unnecessary. I'm not for the federal funding of abortions. I've done nothing to promote homosexuality in our society." But he went on to explain his view on abortion. The Avalanche-Journal reported: "Bush said he opposes the pro-life amendment favored by Reese and favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question."

So, he opposed the pro-life amendment, now he supports it. He favored leaving the decision to the woman and her doctor, now he wants to inject the federal government into the decision.

As I recall, they had the necessary votes for an override. Why bother vetoing.

Then what would he have to lose by vetoing it??

Have you ever heard him actually support it?

Why, yes.
http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry022102.shtml

eta: disregard the last url. It doesn't in fact support that he supported McC/F. My bad. Never mind.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda

In 1978, Bush,.....So, he opposed the pro-life amendment, now he supports it.

My Kerry flip flops were from within a year. If ground rulea are we can go back to the 70's I'll need extra time to work on it.

Maybe you can tag Bush for adultry if you find who he was screwing in HS.

[SlaveNoMore]

Sexual Harassment Panda
No odder than that the right never criticized him for [steel tarrifs] at the time.

Unless the WSJ, Weekly Standard, TAS, George Will, Safire, Billmore, Club and myself have all now moved to the left... I have no idea how you can say this.

Do pandas hibernate?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
You then made what I could fairly charecterize as an over generalization about Korean kids. I was trying to show that the fact that you meant it as a compliment didn't make it any less a race-based generaliztion as my statement about girl's education.

Sigh. I repeatedly told you that I was talking about a particular character in a particular TV show. That character's ethnicity was part of who he was, but not the entirety of who he was. Based on the entirety -- the individual character's work ethic, the work ethic and perceptions of what constitutes success among Korean immigrants that he himself referenced in the show in question, and several other points -- I drew a conclusion about the path his daughter was most likely to follow.

And you responded about how I was denigrating her career choices because of my stereotypes about Koreans.

What caused you to say "anti-Italian" is an utter mystery; I can only guess that you read "I watch the Sopranos" as "I think it is indicative of all Italians", at least when the statement comes from me. That view is even more a mystery to me than your refusal to acknowledge that I might appropriately consider a character's stated perceptions about what his ethnicity means (and express my admiration for several other people of that ethnicity whom I have known personally who maintain and express similar perceptions) without constituting a stereotype.

Whatever. Keep talking about this for years to come. I've got better things to worry about.


I thank you for the kind wishes you offered regarding my friend.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Sigh. I repeatedly told you that I was talking about a particular character in a particular TV show. That character's ethnicity was part of who he was, but not the entirety of who he was. Based on the entirety -- the individual character's work ethic, the work ethic and perceptions of what constitutes success among Korean immigrants that he himself referenced in the show in question, and several other points -- I drew a conclusion about the path his daughter was most likely to follow.

And you responded about how I was denigrating her career choices because of my stereotypes about Koreans.

What caused you to say "anti-Italian" is an utter mystery; I can only guess that you read "I watch the Sopranos" as "I think it is indicative of all Italians", at least when the statement comes from me. That view is even more a mystery to me than your refusal to acknowledge that I might appropriately consider a character's stated perceptions about what his ethnicity means (and express my admiration for several other people of that ethnicity whom I have known personally who maintain and express similar perceptions) without constituting a stereotype.

Whatever. Keep talking about this for years to come. I've got better things to worry about.


I thank you for the kind wishes you offered regarding my friend.

oh. so your not a racist. gee, now i feel bad. We should move on to other topics, this was boring to everyone else 30 minutes after it started.

[Not Me]

Apparently the military has confirmed this is a soldier that has been missing since April 9th.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html
http://www.channelcincinnati.com/new...22/detail.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Wo...er_040416.html

He is a 20 year old reservist from Ohio:

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Unless the WSJ, Weekly Standard, TAS, George Will, Safire, Billmore, Club and myself have all now moved to the left... I have no idea how you can say this.

Do pandas hibernate?

Yes, we do. I had $250 on the Jets to go all the way - what happened?

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
My Kerry flip flops were from within a year. If ground rulea are we can go back to the 70's I'll need extra time to work on it.

If you're talking about the web site that you linked to, not true. Many if not most of the Kerry statements listed in that web site were from the early-mid 90's. I'll grant that's not the late '70s, but let's try to be clear what time frame we're allowed to reference and why.

Maybe you can tag Bush for adultry if you find who he was screwing in HS.

Bush was married in HS? Who knew?

[SlaveNoMore]

Sexual Harassment Panda
Yes, we do. I had $250 on the Jets to go all the way - what happened?

The franchise moved to Phoenix and now has Gretzky as Director of Operations

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sexual Harassment Panda
Bush was married in HS? Who knew?

According to Kean, Rice.

[SlaveNoMore]

George Bush & John Kerry: Blood Brothers
By Victor Thorn

Feb 16, 2004

From: http://www.aljazeerah.info

Following the 2000 presidential race, with memories of Votescam, hanging chads, the debacle in Florida and a possible “stolen” election still fresh in our minds, many people are wondering if this fall’s contest will likewise be marred by some form of vote tampering or electronic ballot rigging. But in all honesty, the New World Order power brokers aren’t even concerned with such notions this year.

Why? Because if John Kerry gets the Democratic nomination and runs against George Bush, both candidates will already by bought, sold, and controlled. It won’t matter to the ruling elite who ultimately wins because both of these men have already surrendered their souls to the evil cabal years ago.

What makes me arrive at this conclusion? Well, for starters, George Bush and John Kerry are both graduates of Yale University – that long-heralded bastion of the Eastern establishment. In addition, each of these men were members of Skull & Bones, the most exclusive secret society/fraternity in America, and prime breeding ground for the CIA and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

But wait; there’s more. John Kerry’s wife, Teresa, was formerly married to Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz. Guess what college he attended. Answer: Yale. And guess what notorious fraternity he pledged to. Skull & Bones! Now ask yourself: what are the odds that both presidential candidates went to the same school, belonged to the same secret society, and that one of their wives was married to TWO different Skull & Bonesmen? It’s infinitesimal … off the charts.

To make matters even stranger, Teresa Kerry’s widowed husband also had direct ties to the Bush family. According to researcher Rodney Stich in Defrauding America, when George Bush Sr. and CIA Director William Casey engineered the October Surprise to bribe Iranian officials into retaining U.S. hostages until after the 1980 elections, two of the passengers on Bush’s BAC 111 flight to Paris were Senator John Heinz, along with Senator John Tower from Texas.

Even more intriguing is the fact that John Heinz chaired a three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-Contra affair and had in his possession all the damning documents from that sordid affair, while John Tower led the infamous Tower Commission that investigated a variety of different CIA criminal activities and dirty dealings. Coincidentally, both John Heinz and John Tower died in plane wrecks on successive days in 1991 – Tower in Georgia, and Heinz in Montgomery County, Pa. Once again I must ask: what are the odds of such an occurrence, especially when both men had close ties to George Bush Sr., who was a former CIA director in the mid-1970s? Did both of these men uncover information that they refused to keep silent about any longer?

Before you answer, consider that after Senator John Heinz died, his wife married Senator John Kerry, who was chairman of the 1988 Kerry Commission, described in the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy as “focusing on allegations of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with the Contra war against Nicaragua” in relation to the CIA, Department of Justice, the U.S. State Department, and the office of the President and Vice President. The testimony that took place during these trials (both in open and closed door sessions) was quite possibly the most damning ever against our federal government, yet mysteriously, nearly all of it was suppressed and not widely reported in the mainstream media. Why? Senator Kerry as a Democrat, had every opportunity to blast a Republican administration out of the water, yet he inexplicably remained silent and the status quo prevailed. Could it be that someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he played his cards right and kept these sordid matters hush-hush, he would be rewarded sometime in the future?

Well, here we are sixteen years later, and guess what. John Kerry, a Yale Skull & Bonesman (class of 1966) who kept his mouth shut about Yale Skull & Bonesman George Bush Sr. (class of 1948) is now running for the presidency against Yale Skull & Bonesman George W. Bush (class of 1968). Peculiar? You tell me.

So, when people start mentioning Votescam and rigged elections in the November election, all I can say is: why should the Controllers bother? Both of their candidates are already in the bag and will carry out the aims of those who are pulling their strings from behind the scenes. It’s good to have friends in all the right places, don’t you think?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
George Bush & John Kerry: Blood Brothers
By Victor Thorn

Feb 16, 2004

From: http://www.aljazeerah.info

Following the 2000 presidential race, with memories of Votescam, hanging chads, the debacle in Florida and a possible “stolen” election still fresh in our minds, many people are wondering if this fall’s contest will likewise be marred by some form of vote tampering or electronic ballot rigging. But in all honesty, the New World Order power brokers aren’t even concerned with such notions this year.

Why? Because if John Kerry gets the Democratic nomination and runs against George Bush, both candidates will already by bought, sold, and controlled. It won’t matter to the ruling elite who ultimately wins because both of these men have already surrendered their souls to the evil cabal years ago.

What makes me arrive at this conclusion? Well, for starters, George Bush and John Kerry are both graduates of Yale University – that long-heralded bastion of the Eastern establishment. In addition, each of these men were members of Skull & Bones, the most exclusive secret society/fraternity in America, and prime breeding ground for the CIA and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

But wait; there’s more. John Kerry’s wife, Teresa, was formerly married to Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz. Guess what college he attended. Answer: Yale. And guess what notorious fraternity he pledged to. Skull & Bones! Now ask yourself: what are the odds that both presidential candidates went to the same school, belonged to the same secret society, and that one of their wives was married to TWO different Skull & Bonesmen? It’s infinitesimal … off the charts.

To make matters even stranger, Teresa Kerry’s widowed husband also had direct ties to the Bush family. According to researcher Rodney Stich in Defrauding America, when George Bush Sr. and CIA Director William Casey engineered the October Surprise to bribe Iranian officials into retaining U.S. hostages until after the 1980 elections, two of the passengers on Bush’s BAC 111 flight to Paris were Senator John Heinz, along with Senator John Tower from Texas.

Even more intriguing is the fact that John Heinz chaired a three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-Contra affair and had in his possession all the damning documents from that sordid affair, while John Tower led the infamous Tower Commission that investigated a variety of different CIA criminal activities and dirty dealings. Coincidentally, both John Heinz and John Tower died in plane wrecks on successive days in 1991 – Tower in Georgia, and Heinz in Montgomery County, Pa. Once again I must ask: what are the odds of such an occurrence, especially when both men had close ties to George Bush Sr., who was a former CIA director in the mid-1970s? Did both of these men uncover information that they refused to keep silent about any longer?

Before you answer, consider that after Senator John Heinz died, his wife married Senator John Kerry, who was chairman of the 1988 Kerry Commission, described in the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy as “focusing on allegations of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with the Contra war against Nicaragua” in relation to the CIA, Department of Justice, the U.S. State Department, and the office of the President and Vice President. The testimony that took place during these trials (both in open and closed door sessions) was quite possibly the most damning ever against our federal government, yet mysteriously, nearly all of it was suppressed and not widely reported in the mainstream media. Why? Senator Kerry as a Democrat, had every opportunity to blast a Republican administration out of the water, yet he inexplicably remained silent and the status quo prevailed. Could it be that someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he played his cards right and kept these sordid matters hush-hush, he would be rewarded sometime in the future?

Well, here we are sixteen years later, and guess what. John Kerry, a Yale Skull & Bonesman (class of 1966) who kept his mouth shut about Yale Skull & Bonesman George Bush Sr. (class of 1948) is now running for the presidency against Yale Skull & Bonesman George W. Bush (class of 1968). Peculiar? You tell me.

So, when people start mentioning Votescam and rigged elections in the November election, all I can say is: why should the Controllers bother? Both of their candidates are already in the bag and will carry out the aims of those who are pulling their strings from behind the scenes. It’s good to have friends in all the right places, don’t you think?

I heard the saudis warned Kerry about 9/11. Now who knows what the facts are....