Bush - Bad for the Country

[IDMclean]

Wait, did I just get called a dove? I think you need to look a little deeper.

 

Read my posts here.

 

Not to say being a dove isn't good, just that I don't think I qualify.

 

However I do see what you mean, and I am hoping that in the next few years we will see a movement, otherwise our country will not get back to a "healthy" status and will fall to it's own entropy.

[damocles]

Absolutely. Except for the fact that its not an issue of "technically possible to snoop" its an issue of "actually doing it when there are laws against it". Some will essentially claim that "we have to do some bad things to survive," but if you don't ask WWJD, and answer honestly, you're going to end up in a very unpleasant place. While riding into power on an image of moral superiority, the current administration has--by breaking every moral precept that this country has lived by in the name of "expediency" and "security"--completely retreated from the high moral ground that we have enjoyed even with the ups and downs of our foes. It will not be regained easily, and it has weakened our geopolitical position.

 

The issues you raise viz China are very important to understand, and unfortunately the ability of the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Al Qaeda, to tut-tut and say we are just as immoral as we claim they are makes us completely impotent except for our war making ability, and as you point out, that's a scary road to go down.

 

We have seen the enemy and he is us, :eek_big:

Buffy

 

There is an illusion of American history that we fostered on ourselves and on the world. Earlier I listed the great butchers of history. I forgot one;

 

The American people:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Wars

 

That estimate of 45,000 native Americans slaughtered in our wars is ridiculously low. 10x is a more realistic genocide, if you add up induced starvation, promulgated disease, bison depopulations, settler range infringements, and coercive population relocations. (Where did the British get their ideas for forced enemy population relocations in their Zulu and Boer Wars?)

 

As for the line of administrations, paying attention to the privacy rights guaranteed citizens under our laws, much less their civil rights being observed, [Derisive laughter at the very idea that ever happened in true fact!]

 

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=425

 

that never happened when it became "politically inconvenient".

 

http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj19n2/cj19n2-8.pdf

 

Our sad Republic is replete with hypocrisy, when it comes to the ideals by which we live. In our defense we can say we don't allow our government to blow up our citizens without due process....(Waco)....or bomb them.....(MOVE House, Philadelphia; nice going, Rizzo)......or monitor their sex lives.......(MLK, and the FBI).......and so forth.......

 

I just don't want anybody to think that George W. Bush is some new American political phenomenon, or that he is somehow unique in the magnitude of his incompetence and outright disregard for the Constitution. He is not unique. He is just the latest in a sorry line of malefactors.

 

We have been lucky as a nation that for every political pygmy, who abuses our laws for his political convenience, like a Wilson, a Kennedy, a Clinton, or a Bush, we get genuine patriots like Lincoln, the Roosevelts, or an Eisenhower, or a Reagan who bends the laws to the specific national need of the moment, but never loses sight of the fact that those laws are IMPORTANT, and tries in the end not to BREAK the laws too badly.

 

As always; the best of wishes.

[Michaelangelica]

Wait, did I just get called a dove?

 

Not to say being a dove isn't good, just that I don't think I qualify.

 

However I do see what you mean, .

 

Does being a sociopath mean that you have no empathy?

Empathy, unlike sympathy,(?), can be learned.

You qualify.

 

Does sociopathy happen because the individual is "sick" or the society is "sick" and the sociopathic individual is alienated from it?

The psychologist R. D. Laing seems to suggest that the latter may sometimes be the case.

'Sick' families, like sick societies, try to create 'sick' people so that they beter 'fit' into a sick system.:eek_big:

 

"There's good reason now-a-days that I am a pacifist."

Does that statement alone mean you might have the odd 'dovish' tendency?:doh:

Perhaps it is not 'black and white' and some, if not all, of us have both dovish and hawkish behaviours. Seems to me that despite your hawkish thoughts, you have made the decision to engage in 'dovish' behavior.(pacifism)

Behaviour, rather than thoughts, after all, is the more important for you and for your society. :eek:

 

P.S. I have already read your sociopathy posts - look to your reputation!

Michael

[Buffy]

I just don't want anybody to think that George W. Bush is some new American political phenomenon, or that he is somehow unique in the magnitude of his incompetence and outright disregard for the Constitution. He is not unique. He is just the latest in a sorry line of malefactors.

I'll agree with that! :)

...for every political pygmy...like a Wilson, a Kennedy, a Clinton, or a Bush, we get genuine patriots like Lincoln, the Roosevelts, or an Eisenhower, or a Reagan who bends the laws to the specific national need of the moment...

Interesting choices of examples! :)

 

Wilson? Hmmm

 

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits, ;)

Buffy

[Buffy]

It would appear that polls are agreeing with the subject of this thread. For a visual update, take a look at these maps of recent poll results. Its really hard to live in a red state anymore, but heck its getting hard to live in a red county even...

 

Good thing ya don't pay attention to polls,

Buffy

[damocles]

I'll agree with that! :)

Interesting choices of examples! B)

 

Wilson? Hmmm

 

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits, :)

Buffy

 

Wilson was a racist, a bigot, and a naive fool. What he did to whip this nation into a war frenzy during WW I makes GWB's antics seem positively juvenile. Never before or since have we ever had such a heavy handed propaganda machine seeking to mold public opinion. You do know that Goebels used it as a model for his own attempts to mold public opinion? On top of that, if you look at the sorry performance Wilson turned in at Versailles when Lloyd George and Georges Clemanceau frankly rolled him, you have to shake your head.

 

Buffy, the reason that the American people turned fiercely isolationist in the 20's and 30's and turned their back on the League, you can lay at the feet of that imbecile, Wilson. He took an idealistic people into a horrible war, and when the American people woke up and smelled the stinking truth; they turned away from the inane internationalism that Wilson tried to ram down their throats.

 

The American people went into WW I thinking they were saving the world for democracy and saw their sons and husbands murdered so that the Entente winners could carve up the losers' colonial possessions, and get a little revenge in at the same time. If the stench of the hypocrisy still offends me 88 years after the fact, can you imagine what the people of the time must have thought of the debacle that was WW I?

 

It took pragmatists and realists to smash that European colonialist house of cards and set up a workable international system.

 

You guessed it, Buffy, Roosevelt.

 

He had to clean up Wilson's mess.

 

I do not apologize for calling Wilson a pygmy. He was a very short man among a generation of very short men. It was the sunset of a foolish age and as is the case in sunsets, those pygies cast long shadows.

 

No sarcasm, just a 1=1, which is backstopped by a lot of real history.

 

A conservative conserves. He works hard at it. No time to sit still. But you are right he, the conservative, does measure outcomes before he acts.

 

Wilson should have taken a few lessons from H.C Lodge before going to France.

 

:eek2:

 

Somebody has to drive!

 

As always, the best wishes.

[Loricybin]

i do not know at ALL what to think of politics.

 

mother=liberal

father=conservative.

 

i'm more of a liberal than anything, but honestly, i feel extremely unsafe making any kind of judgements on who to believe.

 

humans themselves can be SO easily corrupt that i have trouble feeeling safe in making decisions regarding ones with that much power.

 

i'd rather just keep drawing and painting, right on through whatever political changes occur. ;)

[Buffy]

i'd rather just keep drawing and painting, right on through whatever political changes occur. ;)

You'd do well in China! There's something to be said for keeping one's head below the trenchline...

 

Survival of the careful,

Buffy

[IDMclean]

The solution to your problem of chosing such individuals is not to chose them at all.

 

I don't like our current system due to it's antiquation and corruptability also, hence I would like to see a more representative goverment, closer to a true democracy. A parliment system perhaps. Rather than having a Republican or Democratic President have a few people with Excutive power each a representative of the major sects.

 

That may not be the best solution but I'm confident that if we as a nation were to undertake a new system, as painful as it would be, we would develop a better system. The only problem with changing politics and Socio-Economic Systems is apathy on part of the majority.

 

I personally feel that as a country we are well over due for another Revolt and Revolution. A major change to the system.

 

You put down the hammer to scratch your nose.

 

One of the main issues that is evadent to me is that to much power is allocated into various parts of the system, it no longer needs to be a heirarchy so much as an anarchy.

 

Then again I am a heretical free thinker whom believes in that our system could be more egalitarian.

[InfiniteNow]

Lots of folks are frustrated and angry, and many are talking revolution. That's all well and good, but there also needs to be a better system ready to replace the old. Start thinking about what you'd do differently and your rants will blossom into ideas and change.

 

 

Cheers. :eek_big:

[CraigD]

I personally feel that as a country we are well over due for another Revolt and Revolution. A major change to the system.

Though another American revolution may be approaching, I doubt that it would be a revolution against corruption, the division of powers, or representational vs. direct democracy. Too few people are severely and directly impacted by any of these factors, I think, to oppose them, while the system-as-it-is is providing so well for the common good.

 

In nearly all strata of American society, the risk of untimely death by disease or misadventure is at an unprecedented low. Access to pleasant activities, from education to television to recreation or reproductive sex, is nearly unlimited. By any historical measure, people in such a state don’t engage in revolution.

 

Factors with which a large number of Americans are potentially sufficiently impacted to exert political force, tend at present, I think, to be ideological: a startling number of Americans are willing to engage in risky behavior to oppose happenings with strong religious overtones, such as homosexuality, promiscuity, and abortion.

 

I fear that, rather than from the usual direction of the political left, a new American revolution may instead come from the right, and rather than being disorderly and in violation of law, may be very orderly and lawful, and in the form of efforts on local, state, and the federal level to undermining and repeal many Constitutionally protected liberties – in short, a first-world religious Jihad to put in place an American theocracy.

 

I hope my fears are unfounded.

[Freddy]

Though another American revolution may be approaching, I doubt that it would be a revolution against corruption, the division of powers, or representational vs. direct democracy. Too few people are severely and directly impacted by any of these factors, I think, to oppose them, while the system-as-it-is is providing so well for the common good.

 

In nearly all strata of American society, the risk of untimely death by disease or misadventure is at an unprecedented low. Access to pleasant activities, from education to television to recreation or reproductive sex, is nearly unlimited. By any historical measure, people in such a state don’t engage in revolution.

 

Factors with which a large number of Americans are potentially sufficiently impacted to exert political force, tend at present, I think, to be ideological: a startling number of Americans are willing to engage in risky behavior to oppose happenings with strong religious overtones, such as homosexuality, promiscuity, and abortion.

 

I fear that, rather than from the usual direction of the political left, a new American revolution may instead come from the right, and rather than being disorderly and in violation of law, may be very orderly and lawful, and in the form of efforts on local, state, and the federal level to undermining and repeal many Constitutionally protected liberties – in short, a first-world religious Jihad to put in place an American theocracy.

 

I hope my fears are unfounded.

 

You may be right, the fundies are a danger to the Constitution.

[IDMclean]

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/presaddress.html

 

Just thought I would post this here as it's interesting.

[damocles]

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/presaddress.html

 

Just thought I would post this here as it's interesting.

 

As propaganda and comedy it was fairly amusing.

 

As always, the best of wishes.

[Michaelangelica]

Is Bush responsible for this?

 

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:

 

* 29 have been accused of spousal abuse

* 7 have been arrested for fraud

* 19 have been accused of writing bad checks

* 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

* 3 have done time for assault

* 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

* 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting

* 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

* 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

 

Can you guess which organization this is?

 

Give up yet?

 

 

 

It's the 535 members of the United States Congress.

 

 

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I fear that, rather than from the usual direction of the political left, a new American revolution may instead come from the right, and rather than being disorderly and in violation of law, may be very orderly and lawful, and in the form of efforts on local, state, and the federal level to undermining and repeal many Constitutionally protected liberties – in short, a first-world religious Jihad to put in place an American theocracy.

 

You mean like these guys? Tim LaHaye is one of them.

 

The facists nowadays are not identified by their jack-boots, but by their crescents and crosses.

 

TFS

[Mercedes Benzene]

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:

 

* 29 have been accused of spousal abuse

* 7 have been arrested for fraud

* 19 have been accused of writing bad checks

* 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

* 3 have done time for assault

* 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

* 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting

* 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

* 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

 

Can you guess which organization this is?

 

Are you serious?!?!?!:hyper:

That is soo unbelievable! Wow.

I guess the only thing one could say is, "Welcome to the world of politics!".

::shakes head::