Why do I love George Bush?
 

How come this dude is still around? Shouldn't one of his secret service agents have pushed him down a stairwell by now? Jeez!

Because the majority of Americans believe George is right and you're a whacko. :smack:

I am longing to save energy up here in northern Idaho. If the Law of the Conservation of Matter won't work, I'm certain that remaining on daylight saving's time will.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to catch a few photons on the steps to the Science Building before enduring the last round of my class on "Science for Humanities Majors" before the weekend.

Much as i do hate georgie-porgie, it's not really him doing all this stuff. It's the man behind the curtain---CHENEY. And his cronies. Bush is simply a mouthpiece and I'm beginning to suspect that he is figuring out his GOP will leave him to drown in his own stew. They don't care about him, and he's finally 'getting' it. That's why he looks so weird lately. Well, that and they put a new chip in his neck...

I love George Bush's wrinkled forehead always suspended on a moment of incomprehension.

US president hurt and sent to hospital because of a pretzel !
Endless imagination to find new weapons !

I vote to call them "freedom pretzel" :)

the majority is half wrong about that.

:lol2:

Because, next to him, I'm a good actor.

Have you heard the audio (real media only, look for "Hear the rehearsal" under picture) of the prep for this? It's understandable that this kind of thing has to be arranged. I have to make conference calls from time to time and it takes some planning. You can't just ring'em up and start chatting. And clearly the White House staff went to considerable effort to get this thing together, he's the freakin' President fer cryin out loud. Understandable.

But to claim that it's not scripted, which is exactly the term the (I'm sure now former) staffer uses, is just not believable. To say "the President just wants to chat" is completely bullsh*t. The whole thing is stage managed from soup to nuts and any other characterization is just delusional self denial. Not. So. This was a total public relations effort. Now quit wasting my oxygen.

edit: wrestled with links, won at last

Marichiko, your poll is AFU. It's because not one of your answers is right.

But should I expect something different from someone as stupidly resentful as yourself?

Rhetorical question.

I like my man George enough to vote for him both times because he treats tyrannies the way they ought to be treated -- as test ranges for new weapons systems, new strategies, new stratagems, and new modes of warfare upon tyrannies. Stomping out tyrannies is always good. Making democracies grow from the ashes is even better. Your AFU poll, Mari, included none of this, which leaves it lame -- it doesn't have legs. This is because you can't credit these ideas as real. Your view is too narrow, too parochial.

I like the so-called "neocon agenda." It's more of a disparately-aimed general tendency of mind than an organized, prioritized agenda. The revenge of the West upon the totalitarian oppressors is both awesome and salutary. It's even good for Mari, though she will neither understand nor admit this.

You know, UG, I'm sure you've been asked before, but where in the hell inthe Constitution does it say we have to fight other people's wars for them? We managed to overthrow British rule, how come other countries just don't do the same or else be left to rot? :eyebrow:

Well, Marichiko: put up with the rampant evil of totalitarianism much? :eyebrow: You can bet both cheeks of your ass that you do, you who glory in your miserable shame! I, on the other hand, do not, even while acknowledging that foreign policy decisions involve trying somehow to reconcile diametrically opposed imperatives -- as in Azerbaijan.

That, dear Marichiko, is why I'm a better human being than you are. You're not going to rise to my level until you start thinking more like me. For an instance, I'm not selfish about good governance; it need not be the exclusive property of the United States of America. I've been around the world and I've seen bad governance and I've seen what it does to the human spirit. The human world needs less of that, and more democracy.

As for just leaving them to rot, have you considered what happens when the resulting abscess in the global body politic breaks? General war, as a rule. Have you not railed against the expenses of war? Your policy would engender a great many extra wars.

This kind of myopia is why I keep telling you, and expect to keep telling you for the next forty years, by which time I'll be ninety and you may be dead, that you're old enough to know better than this.

UG, where is the US military presence in Rwanda, in N. Korea, in China, in the "K-stan" republics that are lapsing back into dictatorship and totalitarism? Where is the US military in Sri Lanka, site of what has got to be one of the most unjust and deadly civil wars in recent history? What about the "disappeared" in Argentina? What about the "killing fields" of Cambodia? Where were we, then? The US cannot go to war on behalf of every oppressed people on the face of the planet. Your argument holds no merit.

Even if the US could engage in endless military actions, it is a well known fact that people don't appreciate the things that are handed to them on a silver platter. If your theory were correct, then I would submit to you that the rest of the world's people needs to grow up and stop acting like spoiled teenagers who want someone else to do their homework. The US needs to stop worrying about everyone else's freedom and watch dog its own.

Calling your opponents names will not win them over to your side. I sir, am an ass, and will remain so, call me however many perjoratives you wish, until your fingers grow stiff from carpel tunnel syndrome.

Why wonder, when it is clear that the problems presented by these four-plus trouble spots could be solved by the application of infinite manpower and infinite funds?

We have neither, therefore strategy is necessary. I understand this, even if you pretend you don't. Think, woman, think.

You sympathize with the views of the likes of Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall, for... Jay-zus. (The one being to all intents and purposes a dilute version of the other, and every bit as actually funny.)

My overriding and I believe permanently standing point, you vis-à-vis me, is that you could be something better than an ass. Your reluctance to be so constitutes no deficiency on my part. Who does that leave, the Dalai Lama??

Who is Ted Rall? I am always interested to hear of potential sympathizers to my decidedly iconoclastic and largely irreverent philosophy re politics and life in general.

The last person who mentioned His Holiness, the Dali Lama, to me was an unrepentant criminal. Why are you bringing the Dali Lama into your reply? Are you suggesting that you emulate him or are you requesting of me that I do so? The Dali Lama is unashamedly pacifist, by the way.

In the case of Iraq, for example, the strategy is something along the lines of "We can kick their asses pretty easy, and we won't get nuked in the process, so let's go do them first. We'll talk about really dangerous regeimes later, m'kay..."

Then, the hope is that places like North Korea will see us over there in Iraq doing a great job of kicking ass and setting things right, and subsequently give up their Evil Axis Membership Cards and start singing Kumbaya so we won't come do the same to them.

I know it sounds dicey, but it *is* strategy. Time will tell if it was *good* strategy.

In the case of Iraq, for example, the strategy is something along the lines of "We can kick their asses pretty easy, and we won't get nuked in the process, so let's go do them first. We'll talk about really dangerous regeimes later, m'kay..."

Then, the hope is that places like North Korea will see us over there in Iraq doing a great job of kicking ass and setting things right, and subsequently give up their Evil Axis Membership Cards and start singing Kumbaya so we won't come do the same to them. In the meantime, the strategy would be a lot more effective if all the damn peaceniks and hippies would shut the hell up and get with the program. They're all making us look weak and ineffective. You remember what happened the last time, don't you? We lost the war, and Vietnam became a no-good Commie country. All because a bunch of damn dirty dopehead, free-love peacenik hippies messed with the strategy!

I know this all sounds dicey, but it *is* a form of strategy. Time will tell if it was *good* strategy.

I would also like everyone to take note how the fall of S. Vietnam ushered in world wide communism, along with lots of stuff made by the communist Chinese pretending to be capitalists, now available at your local Walmart. :eyebrow:

Well, at least she has something to aspire to. I'm afraid you have reached your evolutionary plateau and will remain homo posterior.

This is the funny bit here. While you fantasize about blowing the budget and getting American kids killed in your favorite hell-hole, you crack down on another stupid idea that comes from the same kind of world redemptive Wilsonian thinking you are guilty of.

BS, Rich, as I expect to tell you very frequently. Your sneers, my dear, readily patronizable fellow, are invalid because your model is wrong, and an attempt -- not for the first time -- to bolster your ego by assailing mine is the mark of an immature mind. You suffer overmuch from fatuity, though I don't think you're actually stupid, unlike a few I could name -- just a bit ignorant and maybe prejudiced by your environment, to borrow a phrase from Heinlein.

"Fantasize about blowing the budget"? That is what I'm cautioning against. And you actually missed that?

Hellhole? Is it not a reliable bet that hells on earth are made in places with totalitarian regimes? -- places that are not libertarian enough and thus poor and oppressed?

Wilsonian? There are two fundamental choices here: either passively accept the badness of the world and do nothing about the kind of people who displease themselves so much with us as to fly our airplanes into our buildings -- an action widely understood to be unjust -- or get proactive, excise these tumors from the body politic, global and local (the only real difference between the two is how long you have to journey to get there) and get a better world thereby. Personally, I've had enough of being the longsuffering target of every planarian fucker with a bomb and a grudge, and of putting up with the world's badness, and I'm of the view it needs a pretty dramatic reduction.

I am at bottom an optimist, Griff. You are fundamentally a pessimist, and you want everyone who claims libertarian beliefs to be the same kind of passivist pessimist you are. You cannot get this sick miserable thing you want. I advise you, for the sake of your own good mental hygiene, to stop wanting it.

You cannot, Griff, now or ever, persuade me of the rightness of your pessimist view. Friendly advice: the next time you get the urge to convert me to your pessimism, and I've read enough of your posts to expect there will be a next time, remember that that is where you get off, where you fuck off, where you stay fucked off, and really far off. About eleven parsecs will do, I suppose. (I've been reading Barnett's Celestial Handbook [3 vols] and am likely to sprinkle astronomical references through my posts for a while yet.) I'm not going to hear it; stop uttering it and say something constructive instead.

Your view's misplaced, Mari. It ushered in two and a half million unnecessary deaths and a dozen years of systemic poverty. Stupid waste on either count, and something the practice of Communism causes. Vietnam only began to come out of its induced poverty and stagnated economy when it abandoned the general practice of Communism. This abandonment will be complete when Hanoi no longer calls for it as a sort of state religion. Laos, another fallen domino, AFAIK, is still bogged down in Communism. Heroin's probably their only growth sector.

Time may cure people of the malady of collectivist totalitarianism, since in an evolutionary paradigm, Communists survive less well, have shorter average lifespans, and make poorer use of earthly resources and in the end get out-bred by the capitalists with their better resource use and longer lifespans -- but eliminating the regimes that enforce Communism would get the job done far quicker. And how much of the world's misery will be forestalled?

I see you remain unable to get the point. Pitiful. Ever heard of a rhetorical question? (I know what the answer to that one is.)

And I do not encourage the spread of Ted Rall's kind of "thinking." He's a very nasty piece of work. Try a Google search, you lazy hemipygian ass. Your want of initiative and intellectual curiosity is truly spectacular.

I missed that in your unnuanced support for the Bush regime and its war of choice.

You prescribe the disease to treat it.

I remain a pessimist about government action (force) and an optimist about human action.

An optimistic thought: Someday America's government will limit itself to the borders of the Constitution and will no longer be the tool of every half-baked utopian.

I am no fan of death and poverty, but the reasons given for the war at the time was to prevent the fall of all of Asia to Communism, NOT a humanitarian concern for the people of S. Vietnam. Yes, a couple of "domino's" fell, but it was not the colossal collapse that great Republican minds were predicting at the time.

BTW, your habit of making multiple posts all at once is confusing. Its easy to address several issues in one post.

See?

Sorry, I still don't get the point about the Dali Lama.

Ooooh, and I love Ted Rall! Thank you! I finally looked him up!

Two and a half million unnecessary deaths seem sufficiently colossal. And that's for Vietnam alone. Add two-plus million unnecessarily dead Khmers to the butcher's bill for Cambodia... Laos... we should have made taking North Vietnam our objective, along with tying Red China's dick in a knot and telling them to like it. Limited wars are losing wars...

And Ted Rall is as much a walking embodiment of wrongness as Michael Crook. Emetic, the both of them.

Well, I'm not going to refight the Vietnam War with you, UG. I won't argue that the number of deaths in that part of the world, Cambodia's killing fields, included, has not been a great human tragedy. However, Pol Pot might never have siezed power but for the US invasion which destabilized the country.

Rall is a walking embodiment of violent opinion. When he's right he's devastating, and when he's wrong he's disgusting.

It's my war too, Griff. I also consider that an array of choices came to an end on 9/11, or earlier. Finally, after decades of ineffectuality, we have a President who does what's supposed to be done. It is also fortunate that he is the second such President in recent times.

Democratization is a disease? Progression towards libertarian social orders is a disease? Removing the evil of totalitarianism is a disease?

Griff, I'm willing myself not to explode. I want action taken; you don't, and will give singularly bad and unwise counsel to achieve that -- passivism. End of story.

Nice line of Libertarian rabblerousing -- but it doesn't duly credit the indisputable fact that government is a human thing also, and staffed by humans moreover. Our foes oppress us with what? -- righteous indignation, or force? Countervailing force is not wrong.

HM, it's the disgusting that leaves the lasting taste. Ptui!

Our foes don't oppress us at all.

HM, I'd call three thousand dead of a Tuesday morning sufficiently oppressive,wouldn't you? They're trying to coerce us with murders. Let us kill them instead.

UG, I disagree.

Although 9/11 was tragic, and killed a lot of people in a manner that is very rare in America (hostile, dramatic, large-scale, and relatively sudden), people here die all the time to other causes. <A href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8792158/">Some 42,636 people died on the nation’s highways in 2004</a>.

What has been oppressive, however, are the actions afterwards. The PATRIOT Act is a very clear-cut case of oppressive legislation, threatening as it does freedom of speech, of the press, & simple privacy. There are other, more debatable examples: Iraq. (I have done no research.)

Oppression in my mind is something more omnipresent than one Tuesday morning. A regime, a way of life. A single act of terrorism is oppressive only if its shock value is milked for fear and, in turn, one allows him or herself to be oppressed & controlled by it--to <i>live</i> in fear of it. One is, I believe, still under the control of someone else if, regardless of how long after the fact, they act only for revenge & retribution.

The best way to fight terrorism is not to be afraid: to continue to live.

We're killing a lot more than "them".

The Patriot Act is peanuts. Nothing. Zip.

Don't worry, the Patriot Act will be used to boost those drug arrests, too.

The government has not revealed the total number of people detained by the Department of Justice since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but immigration advocates believe that it is between three and five thousand. It is known, however, that this group is almost entirely Arab, South Asian, or Muslim and most have been deported or allowed to leave the country. None of the detainees has been charged with any terrorism-related crime. These secret detentions exemplify the dramatic erosion of constitutional rights under the Bush administration.

No, 3,000 or so arrests in comparison to all those drugs arrests ain't much, but the arrests of 3,000 who were NEVER charged with a crime is NOT "Nothing."

Let's summarize a few of the fun things the government can now do:

Conduct “sneak and peek” searches, which allow law enforcement to enter people’s homes and search their belongings without informing them until long after;

Direct a library, bookstore or newspaper to produce “tangible things,” e.g, the titles of books an individual has purchased or borrowed or the identity of individuals who have purchased or borrowed certain books;

Authorize the use of devices to trace the telephone calls or e-mails of people who are not suspected of any crime;

Investigate American citizens and permanent legal residents and seek information on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment (e.g., writing a letter to the editor or attending a rally).

The government’s investigative powers extend to people not suspected of any terrorist activities and those ordered to provide information are barred from mentioning the investigation to anyone.

But, gee, the government would NEVER mis-use these powers, now would it? This is the US of A, after all and every single civil servent, elected official, FBI agent, cop, CIA operative, etc. is a pure, shining angel from heaven.

Oh, ye of little faith!

Its inspiring to read your posts sometimes, UT. Your child-like innocence is so - refreshing. :rolleyes:

Please point to a non-moonbat site with proof of the 3-5000 detainees.

Is the ACLU a moonbat outfit? :worried: If not, I'll give the link.

Not. And by the way, if they were merely deported for visa violations or overstays, that will not count.

More information than you ever wanted to wade through is available on ACLU's site. The problem UT, is that these were CLOSED hearings. No one and I mean NO ONE was allowed to know what was going on. These people were held without have access to legal counsel; many times even their own families didn't know what had happened to them, and many were subject to the most brutal and inhumane treatment possible. And these people were NOT terrorists.

Not good enough, right? I know you know what you need for a cite.

An indicriminate number treated to closed-door hearings in which there was brutal treatment ought to generate at least one link clearly explaining what happened, if someone has a story or case. I went through the information and all I could find in numbers was 700 deportees in the month post-9/11. Boo fucking hoo. Knowing how weak the visa system was at the time, and the sort of people permitted in and forgotten about, I would have hoped that number would be higher.

Oh, come on, UT! You are an intelligent man. I didn't think I'd have to spoonfeed you. There is more information than you can shake a stick at just by clicking on the links in the site I gave above. Should keep you busy the rest of the evening reading it all. Here's the legal brief :eyebrow:

Nice try, but after the strike is called you can stop swinging.

Well, if you're too lazy to read, I can't help you out. I read or glanced over 4 or 5 of their supporting legal documents and press releases. This is the one that impressed me the most. But if you want to call the game on account of rain, that's fine by me. I have a legal matter myself that's coming up in the morning that I need to prepare for, anyhow. :p

Several of the documents ( just picked a few at random) mention hundreds of detainees in New Jersey alone.

Troublesome, but unrelated; they were detained before the Patriot Act was even passed.

In fact one could make an argument that the Patriot Act relieves the conditions that might require such broad brush behavior by the authorities.

Another swing perhaps?

OK, here's the exact page that gave the 3,000 - 5,000 number. Sorry that I didn't point you directly to it before. There's a lot of stuff on that site and I'm pretty tired at the moment. Now I really AM going to go do my own legal preparations. :dead:

Yes.

The few shreds of credibility they retained fluttered away in the wind generated by their defense of the child molesters.

They defended child molesters?!? Really? What was THAT all about? YUCK! I can't believe the ACLU would do that. Tell me more about the case. :worried:

Look at those names.......they must be guilty. :lol:

They defend rights. Other parts of society are most likely to let rights slide in the case of scum like child molesters, but if you let them slide in one place, that becomes precedent.

When the ACLU takes a case, it's not about the individual, but the point of law.

They defend rights. Other parts of society are most likely to let rights slide in the case of scum like child molesters, but if you let them slide in one place, that becomes our President. ;)

That too...

They certainly defend rights in general, but no one has the right to harm a child. Details, please. :eyebrow:

The story.

ACLU's statement where they say "defending child molesters doesn't mean we support child molesting."

Hmmmm... Yeah, so they are not actually defending child molester's per se. I think they bring up a very good point in their statement about each individual being accountable for his own actions. A person can't push responsibility off on Hostess Cup-cakes or the deranged writings of someone else and say "the devil made me do it."

I have a difficult time with the legitimacy of child porn in writing or pictures, however I do understand the slippery slope problem. Its not an easy question, but the ACLU was not defending people's right to molest children, Wolf.

Which is so obvious, it shouldn't need to be repeated for every case they take. But the fact that it shouldn't need to be repeated doesn't mean it doesn't need to be repeated.

Someone does X.
The government does Y, in response to X.

If the ACLU believes that Y is wrong, they take the case. X is irrelevant.

:lol: :lol: :lol: