Saturday, July 10, 2004
POLITICAL DEBATE IS ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA
Forum discussion. Doucheboy gets slammed to the mat:
"Posted by: (Liberals_Are_Douches @ Jul 8 2004, 09:38 PM)
You don't seem to see the extent of Saddam's violations. Okay, let's use the neighbor example. I gas pets, keep children under abuse, keep a couple of bombs in my garage, and buy spray paint for gangs around the neighborhood. Am I a bad neighbor? Will anybody do anything to stop me? The United Neighbors aren't going to do crap. Who can? Only the US.
And you talk about alienating nations, and them not helping us later on. True, we have alienated them to a small extent. But c'mon. We have fought against each other before. We sure forgave each other after that. I'm sure people learn that the past is the past."
"The extent of Saddam's violations"? Get a fucking grip - on a scale of modern dictators, the clown is mediocre at best. Even the White House, while it was politically convenient to take that stance, insisted he was hemmed in and not a threat to anyone, no bombs, no nothing. The White House kept saying that until after 9/11, after which, one must assume, Hussein pulled thousands of missiles out of his ass. EVEN NOW THE WHITE HOUSE ITSELF SAYS NO WMDS. It was all bullshit, that whole WMD scare was a pack of lies.
We currently support, directly or indirectly, covertly and/or tacitly, any number of scumbags whose bestial crimes would make you lose your lunch and tear your hair out in despair. We wink and nod and allow genocide when it suits us. We are outraged at the same exact people and behavior when it suits us. Notice the pattern, it's been going on for decades.
If anyone else in the world had done what we did, we would be first in line to denounce such blatant unilateral imperialsm. We would be the first to ask "who the hell elected you world cop?". Imagine if China had done what we did. Hoo-hah!
Your argument assumes several things as its foundation:
1 - The United States has the right to act unilaterally and preemptorily anywhere in the world for any reason of its own choosing, regardless of world circumstances, allies, etc. In short, the USA can damned well do whatever it fucking wants.
2 - Despite all the rhetoric and arguments and statements coming from the White House, Hussein was a world threat not because he had a deadly arsenal that he was going to launch at the USA in 45 minutes, not because he was building said arsenal, not because he planned to build this arsenal, not because he wished that someday he might be able to build this arsenal, but because his evil is more evil than other evil.
3 - Hussein's evil is so evil that it is totally worth it to spend a trillion dollars of United States taxpayer money, bomb the shit out of his people (killing at least 15,000 of them), getting 1,000 soldiers killed, piss off everyone in the world, stretch our troop strength so thin that we are having to recall people who have already served and are retired, and give all the juicy reconstruction contracts to BushCo fatcat buddies in no-bid sealed grants, otherwise known as war profiteering.
4 - No one else's evil is so evil that it requires this kind of unilateral USA action with it's accompanying staggering debt, loss of life, and blatant profiteering. Other evildoers are perfectly welcome to continue their evildoing. Even Osama bin Laden, the guy who actually did attack the US and bomb the WTC and which even the White House admits has no ties to Iraq, is not as evil or worthy of attention as Hussein.
5 - Anyone who does not agree with 1 through 4 is an unpatriotic looney liberal. Especially the allies we've pissed off, which is okay, we'll be kissing and making up shortly and they'll be sucking our cocks again in no time at all, as is the natural order of things.
-----
Your argument, from beginning to end, has holes you can drive a 757 through. Your blind adherence to the lies put forward by this administration makes me question your mental competency.
You are arguing the same distortions and lies that have been the company line for the last few years. You've bought into the whole Orwellian 'black is white, night is day, war is peace' package.
You've been assimilated, Douche.
--------------------
"There never was a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin, letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773
"When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree." - William Blake
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power." - Benito MussoliniFriday, July 09, 2004
1984
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
THE REAL ENEMIES OF THE STATE ARE THE MEN IN POWER WITH BLINDERS ON
Free Pass From Congress
By Rep. Henry A. Waxman
In the past four years there has been an abrupt reversal in Congress's approach to oversight.
During the Clinton administration, Congress spent millions of tax dollars probing alleged White House wrongdoing. There was no accusation too minor to explore, no demand on the administration too intrusive to make.
Republicans investigated whether the Clinton administration sold burial plots in Arlington National Cemetery for campaign contributions. They examined whether the White House doctored videotapes of coffees attended by President Clinton. They spent two years investigating who hired Craig Livingstone, the former director of the White House security office. And they looked at whether President Clinton designated coal-rich land in Utah as a national monument because political donors with Indonesian coal interests might benefit from reductions in U.S. coal production.
Committees requested and received communications between Clinton and his close advisers, notes of conversations between Clinton and a foreign head of state, internal e-mails from the office of the vice president, and more than 100 sets of FBI interview summaries. Dozens of top Clinton officials, including several White House chiefs of staff and White House counsels, testified before Congress. The Clinton administration provided to Congress more than a million pages of documents in response to investigative inquiries.
At one point the House even created a select committee to investigate whether the Clinton administration sold national security secrets to China, diverting attention from Osama bin Laden and other real threats facing our nation.
When President Clinton was in office, Congress exercised its oversight powers with no sense of proportionality. But oversight of the Bush administration has been even worse: With few exceptions, Congress has abdicated oversight responsibility altogether.
Republican Rep. Ray LaHood aptly characterized recent congressional oversight of the administration: "Our party controls the levers of government. We're not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."
Republican leaders in Congress have refused to investigate who exposed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claims that Iraq sought nuclear weapons. They have held virtually no public hearings on the hundreds of misleading claims made by administration officials about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.
They have failed to probe allegations that administration officials misled Congress about the costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill. And they have ignored the ethical lapses of administration officials, such as the senior Medicare official who negotiated future employment representing drug companies while drafting the prescription drug bill.
The House is even refusing to investigate the horrific Iraq prison abuses. One Republican chairman argued, "America's reputation has been dealt a serious blow around the world by the actions of a select few. The last thing our nation needs now is for others to enflame this hatred by providing fodder and sound bites for our enemies."
Compare the following: Republicans in the House took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees.
There is a simple but deplorable principle at work. In both the Clinton and Bush eras, oversight has been driven by raw partisanship. Congressional leaders have vacillated between the extremes of abusing their investigative powers and ignoring them, depending on the party affiliation of the president.
Our nation needs a more balanced approach. Congressional oversight is essential to our constitutional system of checks and balances. Excessive oversight distracts and diminishes the executive branch. But absence of oversight invites corruption and mistakes. The Founders correctly perceived that concentration of power leads to abuse of power if unchecked.
The congressional leadership is wrong to think that its current hands-off approach protects President Bush. In fact, it has backfired, causing even more harm than the overzealous pursuit of President Clinton. Lack of accountability has contributed to a series of phenomenal misjudgments that have damaged Bush, imperiled our international standing and saddled our nation with mounting debts.
Asking tough questions is never easy, especially if one party controls both Congress and the White House, but avoiding them is no answer. Evenhanded oversight is not unpatriotic; it's Congress's constitutional obligation.Wednesday, July 07, 2004
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES
Maj. Schmidt's reprimand
from Toronto Star
Following is the text of a letter of reprimand issued Tuesday by Lt.-Gen. Bruce Carlson of the United States 8th Air Force to fighter pilot Maj. Harry Schmidt, who dropped a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight others in April 2002 in Afghanistan:
"You are hereby reprimanded. You flagrantly disregarded a direct order from the controlling agency, exercised a total lack of basic flight discipline over your aircraft, and blatantly ignored the applicable rules of engagement and special instructions. Your wilful misconduct directly caused the most egregious consequences imaginable, the deaths of four coalition soldiers and injury to eight others. The victims of your callous misbehaviour were from one of our staunch allies in Operation Enduring Freedom and were your comrades-in-arms.
"You acted shamefully on 17 April 2002 over Tarnak Farms, Afghanistan, exhibiting arrogance and a lack of flight discipline. When your flight lead warned you to "make sure it's not friendlies" and the Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft controller directed you to "stand by" and later to "hold fire," you should have marked the location with your targeting pod. Thereafter, if you believed, as you stated, you and your leader were threatened, you should have taken a series of evasive actions and remained at a safe distance to await further instructions from AWACS. Instead, you closed on the target and blatantly disobeyed the direction to "hold fire." Your failure to follow that order is inexcusable. I do not believe you acted in defence of Maj. Umbach or yourself. Your actions indicate that you used your self-defence declaration as a pretext to strike a target, which you rashly decided was an enemy firing position, and about which you had exhausted your patience in waiting for clearance from the Combined Air Operations Center to engage. You used the inherent right of self-defence as an excuse to wage your own war.
"In your personal presentation before me on 1 July 2004, I was astounded that you portrayed yourself as a victim of the disciplinary process without expressing heartfelt remorse over the deaths and injuries you caused to the members of the Canadian Forces. In fact, you were obviously angry that the United States Air Force had dared to question your actions during the 17 April 2002 tragedy. Far from providing any defence for your actions, the written materials you presented to me at the hearing only served to illustrate the degree to which you lacked flight discipline as a wingman of COFFEE Flight on 17 April 2002.
"Through your arrogance, you undermined one of the most sophisticated weapons systems in the world, consisting of the Combined Air Operations Center, the Airborne Warning and Control System, and highly disciplined pilots, all of whom must work together in an integrated fashion to achieve combat goals. The United States Air Force is a major contributor to military victories over our nation's enemies because our pilots possess superior flight discipline. However, your actions on the night of 17 April 2002 demonstrate an astonishing lack of flight discipline. You were blessed with an aptitude for aviation, your nation provided you the best aviation training on the planet, and you acquired combat expertise in previous armed conflicts. However, by your gross poor judgment, you ignored your training and your duty to exercise flight discipline, and the result was tragic. I have no faith in your abilities to perform in a combat environment.
"I am concerned about more than your poor airmanship; I am also greatly concerned about your officership and judgment. Our Air Force core values stress "integrity first." Following the engagement in question, you lied about the reasons why you engaged the target after you were directed to hold fire and then you sought to blame others. You had the right to remain silent, but not the right to lie. In short, the final casualty of the engagement over Kandahar on 17 April 2002 was your integrity."
-------
Schmidt's fine of $5,672 will be made in two monthly payments of $2,836.
He will no longer be permitted to fly Air Force aircraft, but will continue to serve in the Illinois Air National Guard in Springfield.
A 1987 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Schmidt flew FA-18s in two fighter squadrons and taught at the elite Naval Fighter Weapons School, more famously known as "Top Gun" school.
While flying for the Navy, Schmidt earned the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal twice, the Navy Achievement Medal twice and the Air Medal three times.
----------
You really think he would have known better, been professional, but it looks like he was just another overhyped macho jock. A fine and fighter jet privileges revoked? This arrogant asshole killed four comrades and injured many more, all because he ran out of patience! He should be rotting in jail, not walking around free and still in an officer's uniform.Monday, July 05, 2004
F911 IS GIVING CONSERVATIVES A REASON TO VOTE AGAINST BUSH
Fahrenheit 9/11: A Conservative Critique
by William Norman Grigg
I just returned from viewing Fahrenheit 9/11 here in Appleton, WI. I went to the 1:30 PM showing, which was – astonishingly – sold out. The crowd was overwhelmingly white and middle-class (this IS Wisconsin, remember), ranging in age from early teens to retirees. The people were polite, friendly, well-mannered (something we shouldn't take for granted on the part of contemporary theater crowds). There was tumultuous applause at the end, punctuated by a moment of reflective silence as we read the dedication card invoking those murdered by terrorists on 9/11, and those murdered through state terrorism in the aftermath.
The film itself very much reflects its creator: It's shaggy, flabby, occasionally witty, and frequently infuriating. It will have a HUGE impact because Moore – his facile leftist economics notwithstanding – has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool – and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.
The most powerful moments in the film are those that humanize U.S. troops, several of whom are shown on-screen criticizing the regime. A major arc of the film is devoted to a Flint, Michigan housewife from a military family whose son, just prior to being killed in Iraq, wrote a letter condemning "George 'I wanna be like my Daddy' Bush" for staging this useless, unjust war. Moore himself, who narrates the film (and makes himself too much a part of the story, incidentally) observes that the largest immorality of this entire enterprise is the actions of a dishonest president lying our country into war and forcing decent young men (and women) to do immoral things.
It should be pointed out as well that the film – despite being lambasted as an exercise in unalloyed Bush-bashing – doesn't spare Democrats who acquiesced in Bush the Lesser's power grabs and his criminal war against Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle comes off particularly poorly, which in his case merely requires a recording device of some kind.
An interesting encounter immediately after seeing the film underscores its fundamentally non-partisan nature. Some poor schlep had positioned himself outside the theater with a clipboard soliciting signatures on a nominating position for a would-be Democrat congressional candidate. A couple of people seized the petition and started to sign. Impertinent sort that I am, I asked, "What's this fellow's position on the war?"
The scribbling stopped, and several sets of eyes focused intently on the hapless volunteer. "Well, um, ah, he thinks we should do something," he began, stammeringly. "Ah, he just thinks we should be more careful." On hearing this, a lady looked at her husband, who had signed the petition, and snapped, "Scratch off your name." I told the volunteer that I'm what most people would regard as an "ultra-conservative – not just a `conservative' – but if your guy came out against the war I'd vote for him, and knock on doors." "Well, I can't really address all the details of his positions," the increasingly flustered guy responded. "Just let him know what I said," I suggested, telling him that there are a lot of people who have the same point of view.
I chatted with several other people as they left the theater, all of them roughly my age (early 40s) and of similar economic and cultural background. Each of them indicated that he or she would urge friends to see the film – which means that it will have "legs" even if the GOP and FEC were to choke off advertising somehow.
There were no screaming Bolsheviks (one viewer had an anti-animal rights T-shirt) or marijuana-scented bohemians in the crowd. This wasn't the sort of crowd you'd see at a Phish concert, or storming McDonald's at an anti-WTO rally. There were Wal-Mart customers, people who probably listen to country music (even Toby Keith), and even vote Republican. And they were PISSED – quietly, but palpably. A would-be political prisoner Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing. And well overdue.