Democracy Has Prevailed.

November 22, 2006

From Reg Henry

In today's P-G. He declares upfront that he's not a Bush "hater" but a Bush "Can't stander."
I will further admit that my skin creeps every time I watch Mr. Bush on TV, but that merely indicates a very fastidious epidermis. It's not like I have an insane hatred of the president. Just because you can't stand a person doesn't mean you are sufficiently bothered to hate him.
See? And:
My attitude to Mr. Bush is that hate is a very strong emotion and it shouldn't be wasted on politicians. When it comes to hate, I have my standards.
Good Advice.

But then he gets down to it:
Yes, his administration has made this nation reviled by much of the world, it has spent money like a drunken sailor, led the vital pursuit of terrorists into a cul-de-sac called Iraq, ridden roughshod over constitutional protections and been contemptuous of the environment, but I agree with my critics that it would be awfully picky and irrational to hate the president for this.

After all, we all know that it's not his fault. He comes from a privileged family and went to some of the most exclusive schools in the country. No wonder he has no grasp of reality.
Point one: No grasp on reality.
As a Vietnam veteran myself, I am not here to tell you that it was about time. If I had been given the opportunity to fly jets in Texas during the time of the Vietnam War, as Mr. Bush did, I would have jumped at the chance.

I don't reproach Mr. Bush at all. As the old saying has it, they also serve who but stand and wait. The young Mr. Bush stood at attention, he waited, then he waited some more, and finally he got tired of waiting and sort of wandered off without a word being said. In the meantime, he saved Texas from the Reds and presumably flew over some fields and woke up some cattle.
Point two: "Wandered off" refers, I understand, to Bush's failure to complete his military service.
While Mr. Bush sought to avoid comparisons between the Iraq morass and the Vietnam quagmire on his visit, he managed a few inanities for the sake of his fans. He said that Vietnam's progress gave him hope for Iraq and that the lasting lesson of America's defeat more than three decades was that now "we'll succeed unless we quit." Actually, Vietnam succeeded after we quit, but hey! Can't hate a man just because he is historically confused.
Point three: Historically confused.
In the picture run by The New York Times, Mr. Bush is whispering something to Russian President Vladmir Putin, both of them looking fetching in blue. In front, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in pink with a traditional hat, looking apprehensive, as if some clown is about to descend and give her a back rub. For all the world, it could be the family picture at a gay wedding.
Point four: A clown.

With that I'd like to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. I'll be off-line for a few days.

Be excellent to each other and don't let the trolls bother you. They're just so filled with "anti-Democrat" hate that they clearly can't think clearly.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the evidence I've gathered during my short tenure blogging here, it seems to me that your last statement reverses cause and effect, David.

Anonymous said...

David just cannot help himself. He cannot move forward. He keeps on saying the same things, over and over, and over, and over again.

Hey David, you ever going to talk about that big change for America your Democrats promised? How about Charles Rangel's wish to bring back the draft? I thought Bush was bringing back the draft! The only thing I hear from you regarding that is silence. How about how the Democrats want to cut and run from Iraq, even though your own counterpart Maria complained and accused Bush of it. Again, silence.

You keep on saying the same nonsense. Can't you come up with something else?

Are you that sour over the last two elections, David? You're starting to sound more and more like a spoiled rotten kid who is throwing a temper tantrum over someone who won't buy him his favorite toy for Christmas.

It's getting old, dude. Real old. Can you please become more creative here?

But rest assured, your "bloggyguard" John Sh*thead will come to your rescue, I'm sure.

Anonymous said...

That's Schmuck Shithead to you, Anon.

Please keep this in mind when you respond:

-- I am very stupid, an idiot in fact. I was expelled in first grade after I took a shit on the teacher's desk, then ate it.
-- My emo glasses have cut off the circulation to my brain.
-- I am the queer, black, slant-eyed, nigger-loving son (?) of a whore mother who enjoyed getting knocked up by rag heads so that she could have multiple abortions. This all got worse after she turned 10.
-- I am extremely ugly. This deformity has has made me crazy, but they drafted me anyhow and I went to Canada where I pimped little Christian boys to kikes. I joined said sheenies in drinking the blood of the boys after we killed them. Some of them were killed by hitting them repeatedly with other little boys. Others we skinned alive and made them blow us while they bled to death.
-- I have attempted to plant nuclear dirty bombs in convents.
-- My father, Joseph Stalin, made me take him up the ass and I liked it.
-- I converted to Muslim and hate America with a burning rage.
-- I am congentally unable to understand any economic or political idea. In fact, no sentence more complex than, "I want your thing in my mouth" makes any sense to me at all.
-- I want the government to take all your money and give it to me so that I can buy more crack for me and the gang of perverted liberals that I associate with at the ACLU.

Did I leave anything out? If so, please post it here so that we can get on with the business of discussing ideas. Otherwise, I hope I have saved you, x, and Master Lie the trouble of pointing out these facts in the future.

Have a pleasant day and a happy Thanksgiving. The best to you and your family.

Anonymous said...

I love guys like anonymous here. They're actually happy because now they believe that the huge catastrophic mess their president created - the huge catastrophic mess that they supported whole heartedly, because they love their party and their president more than their country and its people - is somebody else's problem.

You see, people like anonymous here have blood on their hands, and they know it. They voted for King George twice and have typed away on their keyboards on rethug blog after rethug blog about how righteous the Iraq war is and how those crazy liberals hate the troops and hate their country. They HAVE to believe they were right, because if they were wrong, then they'll have to realize what they've done to all of those moms and dads and wives and husbands and little boys and girls who lost people in this lie of a war in Iraq.

Don't get me wrong. Every Democrat in Congress who voted to give our moron in chief the power to go to war in Iraq also has hands that are stained red. They were pathetic, scared of being called anti-patriotic. At least some of them are trying to make amends for it. I don't think they will ever be able to do that, but at least now they might - that's a big might, because they DO NOT control the executive branch, anonymous - be able to mitigate some of the damage they've done

But people like anonymous are just plain giddy. They just want to find yet another scapegoat to blame for this cluster-fuck they helped to create and support.

Keep it up, anonymous. We understand your pain. I, personally, hope you feel it every second of every minute of every day. You're subhuman and you're a coward. You don't care about protecting the country from terrorists. You don't care about the troops. You only care about finding some way to try to vindicate your blind support for a the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of civilized society.

Only, here's a little secret: that's not going to happen.

Anonymous said...

The thing that makes me despair about the Democrats is that they know better. You can fault the Rapepublican politicians for their hatefulness and incompetence (a nasty combination), but you know they lack anything resembling a conscience and have their ridiculous interpretation of their religion backing them up.

The Democrats (outside the Casey contingent) don't have those excuses, as a rule. When they pander, they do it with the full knowlege that they are pandering and selling out their principles.

One more thing, Whigs. Please don't fall for the wingnuts' tactic of name-calling and personal attack by responding in kind. It reflects badly on you (and me) when you do that. Attack their ideas, when (if) they finally present one, but not their person. Please respect their humanity and their right to present themselves here. You don't make your debating opponent look ridiculous by calling him a Poopy-Head, or a subhuman, or a coward. You just make it seem that you have no ideas to present and are forced to resort to mindless calumny.

The right-wingers actually do care about things like protecting the country, you know, in their own self-serving way. They just don't have many good ideas.

Anonymous said...

I'll admit that the name calling is overboard. But my anger has reached new levels and my ability to civily and tactfully engage with people who are so blinded by something I can't even describe because I don't really understand it has all but disappeared.

I actually don't agree that many of these people care about protecting the country. Some obviously do, but you can't read the comments on LFG or Malkin's blog or the like and come away thinking some of these people have a genuine interest in the safety of all Americans. You can call me a jerk or worse for saying that, but a lot of these people preach nothing but hate - and in turn it has brought me to the realization that they will always hate. I don't buy that they really do have admirable intentions, just poor execution. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I'm not counting on it.

'til then, however, I'll try to restrain myself on the name calling.

Anonymous said...

Attaboy, Whigs.

Of course it's impossible to argue that there are no wingers who don't care. And I wouldn't even try to ague that many -- or most -- of them aren't just using national security as an excuse for nefariousness.

But my point is this: You can say that without calling people names.

Believe me, my temper is just as short as yours. But it's actually more effective, and more fun, to eviscerate them by expressing your anger through logic, better ideas, factual contradiction, and satire. Most trolls just can't cope with that. It drives them nuts.

And when they try to respond the same way, guess what? No ammo in the gun. They're great at outrage and triumphalism, but debate? Not so much. It's a hoot to watch them try to meet you on a playing field of ideas, rather than "My manly appendage is bigger than yours." Usually they just declare victory and change the subject.

Here I am preaching again. Sorry. But my suggestion: Make a wingnut suffer -- treat her/his bluster with respect and gentle derision and wish him/her a nice day.

Anonymous said...

This has truly been a bizarre string. You certainly lead an interesting life, Shitrock.

The most telling theme, in my estimation, is the massive divide between both politcal sides. Starting with the little-known (or read) Reg Henry to Keith Olbermann (little watched), the vitirole on the left is as volatile as it was from the right during Clinton's years.

Now, it could be that only the most die-hard members of either side reside in the media, or blog for fun, but there certainly seems that there is no debate on ideas.

"Bush lied, people died" is tiresome, and nobody proves it, anyway. When the debate starts at that level, there is no civil discourse. Especially when both sides are absolutely certain they are correct, and anyone who disagrees is a moron.

Anonymous said...

You have no idea how interesting a liberal's life is, x. (:^)}

I must agree about your conflation of the level of left-vs.-right vitriole. However, the content of the the screaming is quite different. Clinton's opponents impeached him for getting a blow job, whereas Bush's opponents are in an ecstatic rage over things like his destroying our military and attempting to establish what he calls a "unitary executive" and what history books generally call an "unaccountable monarchy."

"Bush lied, people died" is tiresome, and nobody proves it, anyway.
I agree that this is tiresome. Unfortunately, it happens to be true. Remember Cheney saying "We know for a fact that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction," and that we even knew where they were? That's a proven lie, and many, many thousands of people have died from it.

When the debate starts at that level, there is no civil discourse.
Here I'll have to disagree. There can always be civil discourse about issues of fact, even when we disagree about the consequences of these facts. The trouble comes when one side or both sides insist that the argument revolve around matters of faith; and when people turn disagreements over policy into "the politics of personal destruction," which, I'm sorry to say, was raised to a new order of magnitude and applied with stupendous vigor and new technology by people on your side of the aisle.

Anonymous said...

Tell me how you can prove whether "Bush lied" if there is no congressional oversight? Remember the mobile weapons labs that weren't? The aluminum tubes that were, in Condi's words, "certainly only" for a centrifuge but that, most likely, weren't (wrong specs and all). Pat Roberts was supposedly leading an investigation on the pre-war use of intelligence, but where's that report? Not one hearing on the use of intelligence? It's easy to argue "no proof" when real investigations and oversight have been blocked. You know, the kind of oversight the Republicans loved about Clinton's shady land deals before he was president, or worse, allegedly using the Christmas card list to identify potential donors.

I suspect that some proof might be on the way, though...

Anonymous said...

John, and Whigsboy:

Seriously, you two need mental help.

What is even more surprising is the liberals always say conservatives project hate all of the time when people like John and Whigsboy consistently do it themselves constantly.

Just another example of the liberal Democrat hypocrisy engine at play.

And why do I get the feeling that John Sh*trock is really the offensive John Mcintire from KDKA.

I see a lot of similarities between Mcintire's writing pattern via his blog and John Schmuck's writing pattern. Especially give Schmuck's most current return comment to me and the most recent blog entry on MacYapper.

After all, David is in the AM radio bed with the dude because he's always on his talk show on a nearly weekly basis, talking about nothing as they snicker like spoiled little grade school children on the air. So why wouldn't David ask John to come to his defense on this site since he obviously cannot step up to plate and debate me?

It kind of makes sense when one puts two and two together.

But hey, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before.

Oh by the way, I wouldn't take that as a compliment if I am wrong, Mr. Schmuck. The last thing I would want is to be compared to the MacYapper himself.

Now, Have a Happy Thanksgiving Mr. Schmuck. You can now go back to DailyKOS.

Anonymous said...

For the last time, Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath in a civil trial. He was then disbarred because of it. If you or I had done that, we would have gone to prison.

Now then, my point about the Bush lied diatribe is that it is not proven that he did, indeed, lie. The facts, up to now, are that the intelligence agencies of Europe agreed with the CIA's assertions. The UN passed resolutions condemning Saddam due to this intelligence.

I welcome Congressional oversight into this war. Tne first attempt to look into the overall reasons for war was the 9/11 commission. Hearings into the pre-war intelligence mistakes should, at the very least, absolve or condemn Bush about the lies claim.

Either way, it will then allow us to move forward.

Anonymous said...

xranger is right. Clinton was impeached for lying under oath (about getting a blow job) and he is also right that we'll be able to move on once there is some actual, in-the-public-eye oversight of the intelligence that led us into Iraq.

Anonymous has proven he is in the same league as Democrats-Lie and is not deserving of any further key strokes.

Happy turkey day, y'all.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for confusing me with Mr. McIntyre. I've only listened to his show a couple of times, but I do admire it. I wish I had his youth and sense of humor. And man, I wish I made that kind of money.

Also thank you for your concern about my mental health. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am, in fact, crazy. I trust you won't find it necessary to mention it again. It wouldn't be politically correct, and I know how you love PC.

BTW, Anon, unlike you trolls, I'm not hiding my real name. I have made it quite public on this blog. Perhaps you can hire a friend to help you discover what it is. (Here's a hint.) As you seem to know, I only started using Schmuck Shitrock today because your two fellow trolls were kind enough and clever enough to come up with these high-brow monikers, and it amuses me to use them. (Don't be jealous. It amuses me to use you, too.)

But enough about me. Let's talk politics!

I shall have quite a lovely Thanksgiving, Anon, especially this year. You do the same.

Anonymous said...

Your post just fails to hold water in a number of ways, x.

For the last time, Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath in a civil trial.
Pardon me for doubting that this will be the last time you use this.

I don't excuse Clinton's behavior. As a person, he is nothing more than a charming boor. But your statement that you or I would go to jail for doing what he did is simply poppycock. Very, very few people go to jail for lying in a civil suit. Moreover, the case can easily be made that he rather tortured the language rather than lied. In any case, your right-wing Congress spent many, many times the amount money coming up with the charge (it started off as an investigation about a land deal on which he lost money, remember?) that they spent investigating the 9/11 attacks. They were determined to impeach him for something, and if it hadn't been for the cum stain, they would have impeached him for fishing out of season or insufficient postage.

OTOH, it's pretty hard to interpret Cheney's statement any other way than an outright lie. If we KNOW FOR CERTAIN that something is the case, and it turns out to be not the case, it really doesn't matter that the intelligence agency of Tajikistan is willing to back you up.

Then there's the famous State of the Union statement that the CIA begged him not to use about the Nigerian uranium. He certainly knew that what he was saying was at the very least highly doubtful, but he presented it as gospel.

Then there's the aluminum tubes that Whigs mentions. But there's no probably about it. They knew at the time that those tubes were totally unusable for the purpose that they claimed.

These statements made by the Administration, are not particularly interpretable as anything but deliberate misinformation. There were many more where an objective observer could easily draw the conclusion that the Bushies were being quite disingenous without necessarily lying outright.

No, I'm afraid it's true no matter how tiresome it is. Bush lied, tens of thousands died.

Anonymous said...

Correction: It wasn't Nigerian uranium. It was yellowcake uranium from Niger. My bad. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused. Call me for a full refund.

But you have to admit, that crack I made about insufficient postage was a good one, wasn't it. Tee hee hee. I really amuse me.

Anonymous said...

Lotta holes in your arguments:

1. Very few people can prove the purjury in a civil suit, and thus do not go to jail. DNA proved Clinton's guilt.

From The Senate Intelligence Committee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_of_Pre-war_Intelligence_on_Iraq#Niger_and_the_Iraqi_nuclear_program

2. "The report concludes that prior to October, 2002, it was reasonable for the intelligence community to assess Iraq may have been attempting to obtain uranium from Africa."

3. "It focuses a significant amount of attention on the intelligence process that took place in the spring of 2001 regarding Iraq's attempts to purchase 60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes. The CIA concluded that the tubes could be intended for constructing centrifuges for a uranium-enrichment program (i.e., for a restarted Iraqi nuclear weapons program)"

4. Despite this, the Committee concluded that "[m]uch of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for inclusion in Secretary Powell’s speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect."

Now, my point here, as it was before, was that the intelligence and information at that time was considered gospel, and the Senate report supports that.

This is my assertion that the Bush lied theme is incorrect and, at the least, a political stretch.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, slammer...

Anonymous said...

1) The stain proved his conduct, not that he lied.

Look, it was right for Clinton to be disbarred. It was right for him to be shamed. It was wrong for him to be impeached, and many Senators on your own side of the aisle agreed, which is why he was acquitted. An extremely partisan, rabidly anti-Clinton, Republican-controlled Senate was unable to round up even a majority to convict, and they needed two thirds. The House knew this would happen when they impeached him. It was a pure political circus, and Clinton was criminally stupid to play the part of the clown.

But my original point still holds: Your guys had to invent a "crime" to stir up that kind of vitriol. The anger at Bush is based on real, major, long-lasting screwups, whether criminal or not. The American public recognized and validated that view in this month's elections, and I trust you are man enough to admit it.

2) The key words here are "prior to October, 2002." The State of the Union speech was made in 2003. That would, I believe, be after October, 2002, not prior to.

2 and 3) From your own source, about one paragraph lower, "The Committee's report concluded that this view [that is, the NIE you refer to] was not supported by the underlying intelligence, and the report agreed with the opinion of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, expressed as an "alternative view" in the NIE, that the available intelligence did not make "a compelling case for reconstitution" of the Iraqi nuclear program." Note that Mr. Bush had access to both sides of the story and deliberately chose the "unsupported" side.

He lied, all right.

4) This seems to bolster my point, not yours. Am I misunderstanding you?

The holes you see in my post are as hard to find as Iraqi WMDs.

Further, as the your source reports (in its first paragraph), "A second phase of the investigation, which was to have addressed the way senior policymakers used the intelligence, has not yet been completed." Any thoughts why not?

Dayvoe said...

Ladies and Gentlemen;

I wish you all (even the trolls) a happy thanksgiving.

David

EdHeath said...

I have to say it appears to be very difficult to be objective about either Clinton or Bush, though several of you are making admirable efforts. Would Clinton’s crime(s) have been swept under the rug if there had been a democratic majority in Congress? Probably. Doesn’t make it (them) any less real, it just demonstrates the ebb and flow of partisan politics.

I’ve noticed the tendency of conservatives to focus on specifics when looking at the impetus for the Iraq war. For my part, I’m really impressed with how the couple of entries in the Wikipedia that I have looked at in any depth really strike a balanced tone. In this particular case, I would point to the early parts of the entry xranger cited. Iraq had seven years of UN inspections after 1991, and a dozen years of sanctions and embargos. Iraq absolutely would have started up their weapons program again once the sanctions were lifted. But that was their intention, not an actual threat.

I think of some of the general things that have been said about the impetus for that war, and how they form a general picture.

I think of Paul O’Neill, no liberal, who reports that Bush was interested from the first month of his presidency in regime change in Iraq. Maybe O’Neill is not credible, but it would be interesting for the democrats to hold hearings on that.

Xranger, when you say that intelligence services of Europe agreed with the apparently overstated case from the CIA, are you saying the Brits, French, Italians, Germans, etc were also overstating?

I think of the bit from (I believe) the Woodward book, where, after a briefing on WMD’s from George Tenet, an incredulous Bush asked “Is that it?” Of course Tenet gave the slam dunk line.

I think now we all agree going into Iraq was a mistake. The question that remains is how blame will be apportioned. I think the best Bush can hope for is to be shown to have wanted something so bad he focused on the wrong things. In light of the consequences, maybe that should be a crime. Another possibility is that we might find that Bush knew the truth, and thought that America would be better served by a democratic Iraq. That kind of speaks for itself.

Look, we all know (I think) that Johnson knew the Gulf of Tonkin thing was manufactured. Johnson’s fate was to decide not to run again and he lucked out in being followed by Nixon. I don’t think George Bush will ever be seen as skilled a politician as Lyndon Johnson, but in thirty years I think the people who will care the most about this war will be the Iraqis. There’s every chance that a lot of the blame for what is to come will be dropped on the incoming democratic congress and the next president. I’m sure Dubbya will have a fine time in his retirement, fishing and brush clearing.

Anonymous said...

I have quite a few problems with your post, EdHeath, but let me focus on just one of them for now.

Would Clinton’s crime(s) have been swept under the rug if there had been a democratic majority in Congress? Probably.

If there had been a Democratic majority in Congress, there would have been no rug. The Rapepublican Congress, given their very first opportunity for revenge against the Democrats for attempting to impeach Nixon, spent $70 million to weave that carpet. Remember the seemingly endless string of topics at which Mr. Starr and the Rapepublicans kept throwing money? The unsuccessful land deal that gave the debacle its name -- bust; a Christmas card list -- bust; Travelgate -- bust; what was it, pork bellies? -- bust; the suicide of Vince Foster -- bust; Paula Jones -- bust; cum stain -- BINGO! This was THE MOST EXPENSIVE investigation in American history; and at the end of it, Mr. Clinton was (not disbarred, as I mistakenly agreed before, but) assessed $25,000 for attorney fees in a case that had already been dismissed as being "without merit" and had his law license suspended for five years. Seventy million dollars. Contrast this to the cost of the 9/11 Commission's investigation: about $11 million.

BTW, I'm mostly ignoring that fact that you're calling receipt of a blowjob a crime -- if this be true, I wish all men the blessings of serial felony!

Anonymous said...

OK, EdHeath, due to overwhelming demand (:^)}, I'm going to address another statement in your post with which I strongly disagree:

I think now we all agree going into Iraq was a mistake.

Not the wingers I talk to. The more reasonable of them will say things like, "The idea of the invasion was good, but, yeah, we could have handled it better." The least reasonable still spout the White House line: "We rid the world of a brutal dictator, and the noble Iraqi people are better off for it."

Ya gotta remember, EdHeath, that these people are proud to call themselves "faith-based." Facts roll off them like Iran-Contra scandals off a Daddy Bush's back.

Anonymous said...

Interesting take. I still feel that the reasons, AT THAT TIME, were sound for the Iraq invasion? Do I wish we were there now? No.

The one problem I have with the potential for a never-ending witch hunt is that it will set a potentially dire precedent for future administrations. That is, in this generations-to-follow war on Islamic terror, future presidents may be dissuaded from doing what they feel is right to defend the country - especially if it means a pre-emtive strike. Specifically, if Bush is prosecuted.

BTW Rocky, Clinton was disbarred. The special prosecuter was assigned oversight into the Paula Jones case when the spectre of lying under oath surfaced.

I always felt that the Clinton witch hunt was payback for the eight years of Lawrence Welsh during the "80's as he dogged Reagan, not payback for Nixon.

Anonymous said...

So you would have to say that knowing what we know now, going into Iraq was wrong, correct? Well, Bush knew then (or could have, if he had wanted to know) what we know now, and he went in anyhow.

You are mostly correct, sir, about the Clinton disbarment. More correct than I was, let me hasten to say. The U.S. Supreme Court gave him 40 days to appeal his disbarment, and on the last day before his 40 days were up, he resigned from the high court bar rather than appeal or be disbarred. (And I like the "Rocky" thing. Clever.)

WRT Whitewater, we agree it was nothing but payback, whether for Nixon or Reagan.