criticalviewer

I can't abide more than 30 seconds of President Sock Puppet on the telly, so thanks for the summary! Saves me the upset stomach...

Wow. I didn't understand him before, but it all makes perfect sense now. You have made the world a better place.

the

That was the worst example of someone absolutely refusing to answer questions that I've ever seen!

Bush failed to answer almost every question he was asked. He simply changed the subject and then did a little rant then asked for the next I-will-ignore-your-question-with-a-rant-to-diflect-attention-from-your-question.

That was the weirdest news conference I have ever seen. Bush often comes off as arrogant, with his precious smirk, so when he didn't smirk during his prepared speech, I thought he was doing well, but then the questions came. I have seldom seen anyone unravel on live television before. Still, the really shocking thing was hearing analyst after analyst acting as if it hadn't happened. I don't know whether they are afraid of being called the "liberal media", but the huge elephant in the room that no analyst seemed to want to see was Bush's unbelievable meltdown. Did he answer a single question?

What's even more distressing is that your "summary" is virtually word-for-word how he answered, minus the stumbles and gaffes. I know four-year-olds who are more articulate and have a larger vocabulary than that man! Literally!

Great shorter version. The thing that stands out for me is Bush was so afraid. He wanted his Mommy. He was sweating bullets. The guy is fucking scared shitless.

Shorter Bush Press Conference:

Q: Sir -- what exactly in God's name have you been doing for 3 years?

A: 9-11 ! 9-11 ! Scary Terror Evil Bad! Osama Bin Bad Bad Men Terror! Terror! Steely-Leaderness-Eyed From-Gut in face of Evil Bad Evil Bad!

God bless America and its Sun President, goodnight.

Holy cow Batman, they hate us!

Bush seems incapable of speaking in anyway way other than comic-book terms. Endless references to "evil" people vs "Good, freedom loving" ones etc, etc.
His administration should go down as the "PEZ Presidency". Whenever Rove et al feel some more lip service is in order, they just seem to trot out the old Bush-headed dispenser, snap the head back a few times and lob out some more sugar-pills to pacify the hoi-polloi.
When will the non-idealogue members of the GOP stand up and demand some sort of pragmatic policy, based in reality, rather than this steaming heap that is being served up?

It's like Bush was giving a Press Conference for some alternate reality... some America where he *isn't* a screw-up, and the Iraqis *do* love the USA, and it *is* just a choice between evil freedom-haters and Western Civilization.

::rolls eyes::

His replies were pretty bewildering to try to wade through, so thanks for the condensed version!

I personally would like to see it happen again... Soon...

Cheers,

PK sends...

BRILLIANT!! Superb and insisive "shorter" Bush.
Great job of displaying just how utterly incoherant, dishonest, incompetent, and frankly, evil, this blot on American history truly is.

Thanks!

One more snippet:

"We are an instrument of God to deliver freedom to the people of the world."

That was in response to a question about the FBI.

Little more nuance than that. Something like "Freedom isn't our gift to the world, it's the Almighty's."

But point taken, Mark, and I doubt it reassures the Shi'a community. Also think the "Some people say darkies aren't ready for self government. I think they're wrong" bit comes off poorly and condescendingly.

froz gobo: Good catch on that. I thought his people had scrapped that line about Arabs and brown-skinned people long ago.

What's worse:

a. George Bush

b. The people who voted for George Bush

c. The electoral college, which will put into office a person who loses the popular vote?

d. Can't decide; they're all too awful to be true

Definately b).

The negotiotion with the 911 Comission about whether Bush and Cheney could answer questions together, came down to a matter of depth.

Cheney, citing Executive Privilige, initially insisted that his arm had to be in Bush's ass up to the elbow, as this was their standard relationship

Intense negotiations with the Comission resulted in a compromise that will limit Cheney's anal insertion to the depth of his wrist. The White House noted that the VP has "unusually long and supple fingers", and said both men are "eagerly anticipating" the experience.

The Comission issued a Press Briefing lauding it's bipartisanship.

lmao. that's the most accurate transcript i've read of that joke that was the press conference.

Thanks for the briefing. Terrorists Bad. Bush Good. Repeat x infinity

Excellent summary of the Bush "news conference." I plan to send it to all my friends.

You missed one!

Q: I asked why you're appearing together, instead of separately as they requested?

A: Because we can both answer this way. They told me I should go to this next guy if I need an easy question.

Ah! Now I understand what he was saying. That is, absolutely nothing. He did not answer one question. The man is a spineless moron! And he is leading our country? Be afraid!

In the multiple choice question on "What's Worse", you forgot (e)

(e) The Supreme Court that stopped all recounts for this bozo.

Chas -- I thought this was a cool service for those of us without the stomach to watch these things and i'd like to forward it to the usual suspects, but Duane just bought us a fancy new eMac, and despite towering stacks of instruction manuals I haven't figured out yet how to forward one of these on-line things to more than one person at a time. Pass it on if you want. --p9

If that had been a job interview, he couldn't have gotten hired for an entry-level white-collar position.

>>If that had been a job interview, he couldn't have gotten hired for an entry-level white-collar position. <<

I've always said he'd make a good hardware store clerk.

I cannot stomach mr. george or george the lesser ... I even voted for the idiot and although I was a college/young republican I think the 1st amendment defines what the US should be .... I cannot stomach watching the puppet ....

Edmund, I certainly applaud your newly-found ability to see GWB as the imbecile he is. My question to all those who voted for Bush but now somehow see clearer is this: What's so different? The Bush I see is every bit the dolt he was on the campaign trail. Or put another way: What made you think, in your active imaginations, that a person of his intellectual capacity could lead the most powerful country on earth without totally ******* things up?

The most succinct summary of Bush's performance last night comes from the one book we know he's read:

Jesus Christ--the same yesterday, and today, and forever.
Hebrews 13:8.

Amen. [also the punchline to an old, old joke about the boarding house guests who always got cabbage for dinner, but that's for another time].

I absolutely cannot believe that he's allowed to answer questions on live television! His "Meet the Press" performance looked like a guy trying to b.s. his way through a job interview, and this was worse. He repeats the same mantra to every question!!!

Phew! Smell the Bushit!

Oh I see you're acting like a boy in school who likes a girl and pulls her piggy tail. You know you like Bush. Hey let the force take you. Don't reject it. Join it.

Absolutely spot on! I watched most of it and read the rest this morning. I wish I had just read your summary instead. Same content without all of the "ummms," "hmmms," and looking at the ceiling. Nice.

I still can't get my jaw off the ground. GWB is better as a court jester than our President.

I loved last night's press conference! It was priceless performance art, a timeless demonstration of streaming wordplay that belied no inspiration, passion, or coherent thought whatsoever. Classic parody! Who was the guy playing Bush, anyway?

I tuned in late about a minute before the "what's your biggest mistake since 9/11?" question was asked. After about 15s of Bush shaking his head as he hemmed and hawed, I had to turn it off. Watching GW Bush speak extemporaneously is like watching a man try to get out of hole by digging.

Something struck me while listening to Bush "answer" questions last night. He mentioned something called the "Greater Middle East Reform Initiative." I have never heard about this before. Has anyone else? What is it?
Thanks.

Further to my post above, this was his quote:

"That’s why I’m pressing the Greater Middle East Reform Initiative to work to spread freedom, and we will continue on that. So long as I’m the president, I will press for freedom. I believe so strongly in the power of freedom."

The Arabs won't quit fighting. They will be shooting at us until the day we leave.

thanks a lot for this great coverage of a speech i could not watch. my first vote was for jfk and can't wait to cast a vote for the new jfk. keep up the good work.

martha

You're all idiots.
Every last one of you.
Bush is terrible...absolutely terrible.
But so is Kerry...and so WOULD have been Gore.
And so was Clinton, and Reagan, Carter, Ford.
They are all the same, people.
This is what you are all failing to understand.
The entire government is a farce, and instead of helping to overthrowing it, people like you just sit
around and crack wise over it in the name of "democracy" and the Democratic Party.
Really funny.
'Getting so much accomplished...
So what? Bush is not a highly intelligent individual.
Everybody knows this.
But let's consider the reporters asking the questions.
These are people who sit around in their hotel rooms and contrive TRAP questions to spring on the
president of YOUR country...(yes...he's the president, wither you choose to accept it or not...)
during a LIVE news conference viewed around the WORLD...viewed by our enemies.
"Do you feel guilty for 9/11?"
Please...
There is no way to answer a question like that.
If you say "yes", you're considered weak, and you discredit the entirety of the US government,
if you say "no" you're considered an arrogant tyrant, so the only possible and viable solution to that problem is to flounder like a fish and talk out of your ass.
You'd all do it.
Every single last one of you, if you were bound by protocol, would do the same thing.
And if you think the reporter didn't know that she was going cause that reaction upon asking that question you are laying to yourself.
She did it on purpose to demonize our president in front of the very people we are fighting against.
That is TREASON.
She should be hanged.

Did bush handle the news conference well?
No, of course not.
Are Americans dying in Iraq?
Yes, of course they are.
Do questions like that further endanger those people?
Yes, of course they do, just like every single democratically-leaned political talk show and every
single sign wielded by a shortsighted new-school hippy does, just like the rhetoric on this website does.
Just like the anti-Vietnam protestors were themselves responsible for deaths in Vietnam.
(I've heard North Vietnamese former soldiers testify to this fact, that they took strength in listening to the
political division among Americans in radio broadcasts, that knowing that Americans themselves
were rioting in the streets gave them the courage to forge on..."forge on" in this case of course meaning, "forge on killing Americans."...)

You people sicken me.
Only when you choose to open your eyes to the FACT that government itself, our government,
the way it is currently configured, is antiquated and fundamentally flawed will you gain the
reason and fortitude necessary to properly begin to understand the situation.

Don't be duped into siding with a political party.
Democrats...republicans...green...all useless and inherently unable to handle to problems we
face if America is to continue on as a world power in the centuries to come.
Shit like this just further damages our country in the world view.

America will be destroyed, not by "terrorists" or similar boogie men, but by the ignorance and the arrogance of those who populate it.
Thanks for nothing, ingrates.

So... Brandon, your solution is to murder people who ask questions. Thanks a lot, ya freakin' lunatic! Clearly, you are the sick one.

I just want to go on the record as saying, "George W. Bush is a nitwit." Is it just me, or is he beginning to resemble Alfred E. Newman more and more each day? If his presidency were a children's fairy tale, it would be called: "Pinocchio Asleep at the Switch." While Mr. Bush's nose doesn't grow when he is lying or c.y.a.'ing, his voice rises in pitch a whole step. By the end of the speech it sounded like he was on helium to me. Between the fumbles and the foibles, it sounded like someone was behind that podium giving his little presidential package a squeeze. There is something called "obviousness" people: Today's question is: "How much more obvious did the warning signs have to be?" Of course the enemy isn't going to tell us when or where. It's the FBI's job to figure it out, based on the huge clues we had. The signs were all there, and, according to the female FBI whistleblower, were being shared with plenty of people in plenty of time to do smoething about it. When Mr. Bush received the memo, he ignored it, and went to play cowboy on his ranch for a couple of weeks. Perhaps we should all be grateful he didn't enter the medical profession or something important like that.

Would someone please paraphrase what Brandon just said? *Laffs.*

Brandon just said:

Idiots. Bush terrible. Everyone terrible. Really funny. 9/11. Fish. Ass. Treason. Bush bad. We're all gonna die. Thanks for nothing.

I had the distinct pleasure of listening to the first half of President Bush's address on the radio as I drove home from work and I was able to catch the second half on TV. I have to say, there's a real difference between listening to him sweat through the questions on the radio and watching him do it on TV. The glaringly obvious constant is that he uses a lot of words to say nothing at all, which this site demonstrates remarkably well. I couldn't watch him for more than five minutes without having to switch channels or leave the room. That being said, it was still a pleasure to watch overall and one that I hope will repeat many times leading up to the election. And as for disillusioned Brandon, my advice is not to take Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity's words about treason to heart. Democracy demands that we question and, in some cases, correct our government. It's government for the people and BY THE PEOPLE. Look at it this way: You're on a bus (America) and you discover that the driver (GWB) has been snorting cocaine and drinking gin. Do you say "Hey, he's the driver, it ain't my concern?" Of course not. Everyone on the bus (America)is in danger, and so are the other motorists. (The rest of the world). Hopefully, we'll at least get a sober bus driver in November, even if he doesn't have a very good map. Hell of a lot better than driving off a cliff, if you ask me.

I´m a mexican and i have something to say: we in Mexico know how to flim flam, ask "Cantinflas".

But Bush beat Cantinflas and Fox(our prez) at the same time... Most masterful delivery of nonsense for comical relief i have heard from somebody in a position of power.
Sorry to say, i couldn´t watch the whole performance. I started to feel terribly embarrassed for the guy. I do not think it is polite to laugh at an adult soiling himself in public.
Having the "Busy Person's Guide to the Bush Press Conference" at hand makes me able to look at the mess without feeling guilty...

Actually, Brandon just said

"Master tricked us!!!!! Yessss my precious......"

Brandon, Brandon, Brandon. To admit that you've made a mistake is not a sign of weakness. One day perhaps you'll learn that it is, in fact, part of being a man, rather than a child.

And do you have a better idea for getting our soldiers back here, other than keeping the pressure piled on this administration? Because I'd really, really, really like for my 19 year old younger brother, whom I love dearly, back here in the good old U.S. of A., instead of being stuck in harm's way in a war that was instigated by liars and scum - yes, I'm talking about our fine monkey of a president and his evil handlers. I guess that makes me treasonous? Oh fucking well; come hang me.

By the way, great summary of the press conference. It makes it so much easier to have stomached watching it when you can clear your mind and bring it all into focus with a well-done transcript like this. :)

People, give him some credit! It's not easy to be out there answering stupid questions that everyone knows answers to anyhow.

Feels like I just crapped out a president.

i think there's a perfectly fine way for the sitting president to apologize for 9/11.

"i am the president. ultimately every decision made by the executive branch is my responsibility, though not all cross my desk.

"i was the president on september 10, 2001, on september 11, and on september 12. i was president when we began the invasion of afghanistan, in our first major effort to defend against al-qaida.

"if it will help us recover our balance, if it will help us to prevent future attacks, if it will help make our people, and all the people of the world, safer, i will accept responsibility for every single mistake that was made that helped the assassins on that day. i think it will help. so:

"i am, and i was, responsible.

"but it is not my place to apologize. it's too weak a gesture. there is nothing that i can do now to prevent that destruction, that loss of life. i can't bring the victims back. i don't need to tell you how that makes me feel.

"what i need to tell you, what you need to know and hear, is something else. i regret the death of americans, afghanis, iraqis, and all others since that day, but this chain of events has started and it must be finished if we are to prevent future attacks.

"because if there is any way that it can be said that i, as president, allowed 9/11 to happen, let me tell you very clearly: i will never allow anything like that to happen again, not while i am president, and as much as i can help it, never after that."

of course somebody who would give a speech like that would probably not have been neck deep trying to unravel the last 8 years of public policy in the first 9 months of his administration, and would probably not have aimed the guns at iraq with the same haste and arrogance, ya know?

HA!
I'm actually laughing aloud right now.
Nice responses, all of you...truly.

However, it still does not change the fact that spending time and money trying to place blame like a bunch of 12 year-old school children will reverse what happened on 9/11, nor will it make it less likely to happen again in the future.
It matters not at all WHO'S fault it is.
Who cares?
I'd rather our "fearless leaders" spend their time learning to PREVENT attacks.
And no, finding out "who's fault it is" is not the first point on that learning curve.
We all KNOW why nothing was done.
If our governmet, on, let's say 05.01.2001, told the public that we were invading foreign countries to stamp out terrorism, americans would be picketing on the white house lawn and all over the rest of country and holding "make love not war" signs.
Americans are reactive, not proactive.
nothing has changed in this regard since 12.07.41
The general American public would never have ALLOWED preemptive strikes and we all know this, so what's the point of spending time finding the 9/11 sacrificial lamb?

I'm not going to argue with anybody the fact that Bush couldn't talk his way out of a wet paper sack.
He's a redneck hillbilly.
He always was and he always will be.
So what?!
He's not even the one in charge!
He's just a talking head on TV who can't even talk on TV!!!
But to slam him in internationally televised press conferences with impossible questions intended to make him flipflop WILL NOT HELP THE SITUATION!
I know, I know...all of you dems out there are fucking PISSED OFF!!!!
Fear not, you will have your chance as well...soon...very soon, when your "any-body-but-bush" candidate gets in there.
It will be interesting to say the least, and like always, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

And "fwump".
That's just the most inane speech I've ever heard.
Really.
I'm sure you're a cool guy and all that, but come on...
If a sappy speech with that many holes in it could sway the american public into suddenly forgiving the whole 9/11 ordeal...we're in more trouble than i originally thought.

"chris"...my brother's an F-16 pilot, he's had iraqi missles fired at him, i grew up all over the world and i've seen lots of shit, good and bad.
I want your brother back here too.
That's why this disrepect of our government has to stop.
Put pressure on the administration...go nuts.
But don't do it in the demeaning way that these people seem to love.
It's 2004...information travels quickly, insults even quicker, and each one chips away at our safety and our credibility as a cohesive nation, here and abroad.
We are becoming a laughing stock, partly because of Bush, and partly because of the anti-Bush rhetoric.

so, we're all supposed to pretend he's not an imbecile?

we're supposed to be all cohesive behind him? rah rah

we don't want them to ask him why he has to have dick hold his hand while he testifies?

we don't want them to ask him why he calls it a coalition when it's really only us?

if we don't expose him we deserve to be a laughing stock, brandon.

in reality, the only saving grace is that so many of us commiserate with the rest of the world, who hates him too.

Two things:

1) I read the original transcript (laughing hysterically at huge parts of it, because Bush is truly a comic genius) and then read your summary, fully expecting that it would be inaccurate and angled for humor's/bias' sake (only because I don't know your writing). I was utterly wrong - you did a lovely job getting the main points accurately, and *still* making it funny.

2) Brandon, I'm confused about where you stand. On the one hand, you seem to say that anyone who engages in party politics (or follows it) is a moron, because all parties are equally unskilled in running the country, and the current governmental structure is so flawed and antiquated as to be laughable.

But on the other hand you say that the media is thoroughly evil, should be hanged for doing their jobs (because their jobs are inherently treasonous), and you exhort us to show unquestioning loyalty to the prez-du-jour simply because he *is* the prez. "Loyalty" being here defined as not questioning or joking about anything the guy does or says, because it is not only mean, but a waste of time (back to "government sucks" argument above...rinse...repeat).

So, which is it: derisive anarchy or knee-jerk totalitarianism?

Helga
-who advocates neither

brandon, uh, i'm sure you're a cool guy and all, but, if nothing but reaganesque reverence for american domination makes you happy, everything else is gonna be pretty sappy huh

you said there was no way to apologize. you said,

There is no way to answer a question like that.
... the only possible and viable solution to that problem is to flounder like a fish and talk out of your ass.
You'd all do it.
Every single last one of you, if you were bound by protocol, would do the same thing.

if i'd known it was your BS day i'd have bought you a present bro! okay fine, my speech was a POS. the point is there are many approaches.

i think eisenhower would have accepted responsibility - especially when it was determined that the threat had been detected but not adequately defended against. he might not have gone into detail about where things went wrong. OTOH his staff would have understood they'd blown it, and in defense of freedom, they'd have killed themselves to fix the hole.

funny that you believe a right wing president is worried not to "discredit the government" - yeah the credibility of gummint staff is real close to their hearts.

g'night "tough guy"

My point is so very simple.

1.) Yes, I believe Bush to be largely incompetent, just like the rest of you do.

2.) Aiming blame and incensed criticism at a world leader while people who want to kill you are watching LIVE and celebrating the fact that America is not a cohesive unit will not help your cause,
rather, it will undoubtedly harm your cause.
It is an equally unintelligent endeavor.

My point is that our behavior as a nation is shameful.
My point is that what we do, the world watches.
Lives hang in the balance.

I agree that the media should ask these questions, and pose hypothetical situations, and that we should strive to gain information and knowledge for the purpose of IMPROVEMENT, not DEBASEMENT.
But these things should not happen in the middle of an international press conference.
It's just not the place for it.

There are people who hate you, and who hate your sons and daughters, and your fathers and mothers, crouching in the desert with loaded weapons and a big grudge even as I write these words...and they are taking heart by what they witnessed in that press conference.
How we act as a nation is viewed with great interest the world over.
I know...I've been there.
We are a nation divided, and it's manifesting itself in so very many disgusting and disappointing ways.
I am not proud to call myself an American right now, tainted by the lack of restraint shown by others as I am.
If I were among our enemy I would be drunk with elation right now.
First divide.
Then conquer.
Genghis Kahn would be proud.

As easy as it is for you to label me as such, I don't advocate a "derisive anarchy", nor totalitarianism, as those are systems that have also failed.
Our government has ceased to be functional, or it is in the process becoming dysfunctional.
And that's what all of this is really about.
Dysfunctional government.
Not dysfunctional bush, not dysfunctional dem or rep, not 9/11, not Osama Bin Laden, not Afghanistan, not Pakistan, not Iraq...
Dysfunctional government.
The root cause of all of the above.
It has become top-heavy to an extreme degree the likes of which have never before been witnessed in human history.
None of you can deny this, as, like all facts, it is irrefutable.
None of you can sit there and try to argue that American politics is in tip-top shape, a smoothly-running and self-sufficient machine,
not when the INS posthumunously awards citizenship status to a known terrorist, not when the federal bureau of investigation and the central intelligence agency, two of the world's best intelligence-gathering bureaucracies are unable to work closely enough together to stop an event like 9/11, not when the IRS fails its own tax audit, not when foreign opinion of us is so low that tombs of our soldiers who died fighting for the liberation of the country they are buried in are vandalized by descendants of those who they died FOR, not when health care...blah blah blah...I could go on for hours.
You seemingly assume that swapping out monkeys (GW for kerry, rep for dem...) would suddenly solve the problem.
I'm fairly certain that it would not.

The whole point of this website is to poke fun at our president.
Think about that.
A public forum, where we can all get in here and bash our government.
My girlfriend's parents in china would be murdered for what we are doing here.
"A Busy Person's Guide to the Bush Press Conference".
That's actually very funny!
I found humor in it.
But at what point do you democrats (or republicans...it's all the same...) pause in your diatribes long enough to realize that you've been GIVEN the privilege to embark upon them in the first place?
No, I'm not suggesting that we are in Iraq because we are fighting to "save the world", but the America that most of you take for granted is in grave danger of expiring on the operating table before our very eyes.
Welcome to the top of the proverbial "slippery slope", enjoy your ride down...

So if it makes you feel good to bash me and call me politically derogatory names, feel free to do so.
I don’t matter; it will offend nobody, me least.
But step back from your rabid attack on GW for just long enough to put down the sticks with which you are beating your democratic wardrums, then look at the bigger picture.
We are all living on borrowed time and enjoying the fruits of borrowed wealth.
This 9.11/Iraq/Bush Pythagorean clusterfuck will pass, and when it does, we’ll still be riding that slippery slope.

The time to change is now, and quickly.

And don’t forget..."loose lips sink ships."

THANK YOU! I needed a belly laugh!

Bush supporters think he is singleminded, I think he is simpleminded!

Dick dick, donkey dick! Big honkey donkey dick!

I think Brandon is right when saying "Don't be duped into siding with a political party." Clinton did not do any better.

And I also think mass media are not doing their job, but not for the same reason of Brandon. Asking if he felt responsible was a good question, and he failed replying to it. He should have said yes. Simply because he was, as president. But mass media are not reporting the whole picture, that's for sure. Go to http://www.democracynow.com for better coverage, or do not watch TV, read blogs. It is still the "If you critizise the government, you are not supporting our troops" kind of mentality.

Brandon you are right, it is all a big slippery-sliding cluster-fucking mess. People have to stop being so petty and change needs to happen. To just support a party and not have your own views is destructive.

However I am still confused by part of your comment. You said that it is wrong for us to be this noncohessive unit. In China people would be killed for it, in the middle east people would be killed for it. Isn't the ability to not be killed for disagreing with government what separates "us" from "them"? This freedom and opportunity we enjoy is what America is based on. If we are frightened into backing or apperaing to back the government when we don't we are a little less free. Through out our history, no one group has entirly drowned out the opinions of others, this has kept us free. No one system that we have found has been perfect. However through the free flow of ideas and the balence that is achieved through democrasy we have found ways to improve our quality of life and become a better stronger nation. By losing our freedoms the terrorists win, not by our expressing how we feel.

Now I am not sure that you were stating the opposit of the above. I have taken this statment out of context..."the fact that America is not a cohesive unit will not help your cause,
rather, it will undoubtedly harm your cause".

ukdollars

I like the following two quotes, take what you will from the dead guys.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded patriotism will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
-- Julius Caesar

-Domestic terrorism is the cost of empire. Currently the US has military bases in 100+ countries and for over 500 billion in spending thats a damn fine deal.

-I think that the war on terrorism is a fabrication designed to support the countries economy. It's unwinnable by definition, provides lots of employment for americans and creates cohesion.

-if the US really wanted to get rid of terrorism we would withdraw 50% of our troops from around the globe and cut funding to israel. We would never see al-qaida again. We could use the difference in cash to say...repair our rotting infrastructure.

-Why invade and occupy countries? Lets sell them things instead. It makes everyone happy and prosperous.

You still haven't cleared up one thing, Brandon:

If you think the political system desperately needs to be scrapped, then why'd you say the reporter who 'demonized' our president should be hung for treason?

Hey Brandon, it is a bit difficult to tell where you're coming from, but one thing is for certain...we were not "given" anything! Freedom was fought for, against George III, and within the gatherings of the Founders. The common people are never "given" anything but lies and lip service, and only by exposing the emperor in his nakedness can we strengthen ourselves enough to keep our freedoms. If our enemies hear us protesting the lies of our government, so be it! By and large, they are enemies because we have killed and displaced so many of them in our greed and arrogance, not because they give a damn about our "freedoms", or hate our lifestyles. People do not strap bombs to their own bodies unless they are trying anything they can to get us to leave them alone. This kind of desperation is not borne of some high dudgeon; it is seeded by a will to survive. In three short years we have gone from a shining beacon of freedom to the most feared and hated people on Earth, because of a small group of psychopaths that stole an election and fomented a coup d'etat. We are better off if the world knows that many of us can indeed see the evil that has led us down this path. Treason is not in the asking of questions, even in a televised news conference. Treason is in giving false answers that continue to endanger the people of this land, and of the rest of the world. Reporters that don't ask those questions should at the very least lose their jobs, and the officials that lie to the people to kill other people should lose their jobs and freedom.

It seems like what Brandon and others are saying is that both pol. parties are corrupt and answer to the same globalist cabal, and I agree. Bush is a complete idiot but I see Kerry, who is much more of a militant, one-world-order globalist, as "Bush" with a brain which is far more dangerous than the idiot we have now. It will be much easier for a D to push for a draft and that's what Kerry intends to do because both he, Bush and the globalists' agenda include endless wars. All presidents in the last 40 years are picked by the globalists, international bankers and meet with Rockefeller, go to Bildeberg meetings and are members of the CFR, so we have nothing to say about it and our vote counts for naught! It looks like they've already picked Kerry to "wear the suit" so it's a done deal. Impeachment is impossible since the Congress and the military and the media are all puppets and as corrupt as any other OWO lackey. These bastards have been working on their fascist plans for 100 years or more. They always finance both sides of every war and 100 years ago they planned WW1 and 2 and also WW3 which is coming very soon. Electing any D or R just furthers their goals. We are pretty much phucked because having dumbed down the populace through media control and manipulation, it is like shooting fish in a barrel for them. The stupid, apathetic, lazy, complacent sheep see no evil, hear no evil and speak not. The American Union will be formed next year and make us the social, economic, and political equivilent of the poorest 3rd world nation. Good luck to us, one and all.

That quote of Julius Caesar was the best summary not only of Bush's awful speech, but of most of the comments in this thread. It should be posted on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Sometimes the past gives us the best and clearest picture of the present.

i find it ironic that 9/11 , afghanistan , iraq , sadam , osamma , and enron all have some sort of tie to each other.For a man who never actually was voted into office , deserted his country in time of war (national gaurd duty) , who's also had mutli million dollar buisness deals with saudi roayls , and the bin laden family themselves.how could terrorists live on an airforce base in pensecola , and be trained by a saudi pilot ? how do you explain setteling with 9/11 families after dragging things out for so long , then in a clause of the deal saying no further action can be taken against the government , no matter what eveidence is found. sounds like someone trying to cover their ass ? the bush' are an evil family , history has proved this , they will fuck everyone and anyone for money , Prescott Bush fined 1million dollars in 1942 under the "Trading with the Enemy Act" ,Brown Brothers, Harriman's affiliate Union Bank -- of which Prescott was director -- invested huge sums of money into Thyssen Steel, the backbone of Nazi steel production. George Sr ? James Baker, a member of Reagan's cabinet at the time, stated, "Bush is functioning much like a co-president." This after George Sr. aspired to become president by running against Reagan in the Republican primaries. Here is evidence of a desire for power, then a taste of power. On Monday, the 30th of March 1981, George Bush Sr. was in the Hotel where John F. Kennedy Jr. spent the final night of his life. Coincidence? Maybe George wanted to spend some time alone and reflect on the post-Kennedy years when he, Kissinger, and their fellow war-hawks were finally able to pass their agendas -- such as committing to war in Southeast Asia. Anyway, it was on this bizarre Monday in March that a fellow named John Hinckley Jr. shot President Reagan, lodging a bullet in his chest less than an inch from his heart. When there is an attempt to assassinate our President, isn't the Vice President the most likely suspect?

John Hinckley Jr.'s family donated substantial amounts of money to Bush during the 1980 primaries when he ran for President -- Neil Bush admitted this. Coincidence? On March 31st The Houston Post ran a story that read, "Scott Hinckley, the brother of John Hinckley Jr., who is charged with shooting President Reagan and three others, was to have been a dinner guest Tuesday night at the home of Neil Bush, son of Vice President George Bush, The Houston Chronicle has learned." As if this weren't enough evidence, Neil and John Hinckley both were proven to have lived in Lubbock, Texas in 1978 -- how many sons of energy barons just happened to live in that town? (It's appropriate to mention that Neil was implicated in the Silverado Savings and Loan scandal.) As the final touch to this surreal scenario, Bush, as leader of the cabinet, came to the decision that this was not part of a domestic conspiracy! It's just like Janet Reno's investigation of wrongdoings at Waco, when she was in charge of the murders committed there! Are we to believe that the Bush family was close with the bin Ladens and the Hinckleys and that both families had a rogue member whose violent acts just happened to help advance the political careers of Bushes?
http://members.aol.com/vtpa/bushcri.html
quite a tasty archive of info.
one more thing that puzzels me ,
hte arab community is vastly Musslim ,
what the fuck do we know about Musslim Freedom ?
We are different people , we have different ideals , so how can our system work for them ?

PS:

I also think that the CNN shots of cringing and frowning and pained Condi Rice during Bush's speech really told the tale. "Who is this jerk that I am killing myself for?" And stonefaced Rove? Is he human?

In Bizarro World; Dubya must be the best president ever.

Lil' Georgies syntax slaying @ his press conference brought to mind an adage expressed by none other than the Great Thinker, Mark Twain. (To paraphrase), "It is better for a man to be thought a fool, than to open his mouth and remove all doubt..."

Can anyone explain why my 58yr old brother who's in the Illinois National Guard has been sent to Baghad?
And unlike Bush he served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam 2 terms. There's something terribly wrong when Rummy sends grandpa's to war.

Dear Mary: I empathize with you and your brother. I, too, am a Viet Nam vet and my only explanation is this. While your brother & I were in Nam, George was protecting Texas & Alabama from having too much Jim Beam & cocaine for use by the lower classes. He thought he would help these unfortunates by using up as much of these insidious products as possible on his own. He calls it his 'No Rummy Left Behind" time.. In doing so, someone, (such as your brother), had to fill in for him. And now, (deja-vu), your brother has to do it again! I hope this is of some comfort.

Brandon --

I haven't decided if you're channeling Nietzsche or truly don't understand how a democracy works. Or perhaps you've bought the right-wing lie that says that any questioning of the administration (excuse me, the Bush administration... we certainly didn't hear any of this during the Clinton administration) is treason. As for the media "trapping" Bush with questions... Bush got himself into this mess by lying in the first place. I cheered when Clinton got caught, and if soldiers and civilians weren't dying daily for Bush's lies, I'd be cheering now.

To reiterate a point that Ron said above: freedom is not something that the government allows us to have. It's something we earned because we wanted it enough to kill and die for it. What that means, of course, is that reporters are allowed to ask those sorts of questions of the president, and you're allowed to disagree with them. If you want to revere the president, that's fine too. But calling it treason because people don't agree with you is the worst form of ignorance. Just because it's become a popular form of political speech among conservatives doesn't make it right, or intelligent.

Incidentally, it's impossible to say what Kerry would be like in office. You never really know what someone will do with power when they get it. Anything more moderate than what we have would be a relief, though. And I'd kinda like to see US soldiers stop dying for no good reason. I'd like to know, that if I have to die for my country, it's not because someone lied to put me there.

U.S. soldiers are dying for NOTHING! A right-wing fanatical coup has usurped power; our votes are null and void; our representatives are corrupt and paid off; stupid, brain-dead and brain-washed citizens still think Bush is fighting terrorism and that innocent, freedom-fighting Iraqi children and old people are the enemy. These Iraqis are fighting for their homeland which is what we'll soon be doing when Bush turns "his troops" on us. The troops DO NOT defend our so-called freedom; they DO NOT defend the Constitution and they sure as hell DON"T defend our homeland--witness 9/11. When some brain-dead G.I. breaks into your home and marches you off to the concentration camps that await us, then maybe the sheep will wake up but by then it will be too late. And that G.I. may be your son or daughter!

Brandon, you're absolutely correct; the dominant political parties are virtually identical and their control of the process is destroying democracy. However, I don't really give a fuck about your poor brother. You're obviously stretched pretty thin emotionally over his deployment. But face it, he's already been sacrificed for control of oil. If he makes it back alive (and in one functional piece) that'd be great, but if he doesn't its not because the ignoble truth of his deployment is exposed. Your support the troops no matter what and above all is sickening, and as equally evil as the liars that sent him to hell.

As for shrub's pernicious little smirk: did anyone else notice that the only time it graced his vacant mug was when he mentioned the oil revenues being better than projected?

Brandon, you're absolutely correct; the dominant political parties are virtually identical and their straglehold of the process is destroying democracy. However, I don't really give a fuck about your poor brother. You're obviously stretched pretty thin emotionally over his deployment. But face it, he's already been sacrificed for control of oil. If he makes it back alive (and in one functional piece) that'd be great, but if he doesn't its not because the ignoble truth of his deployment is exposed. Your support the troops no matter what and above all is sickeningly personal and hence as undemocratic and equally as evil as the liars that sent him to hell.

As for shrub's pernicious little smirk: did anyone else notice that the only time it graced his vacant mug was when he mentioned the oil revenues being better than projected?

If Saddam is evil, what does that mean for American forign policy in the 1980's. When Saddam was emptying his surpluss stockpiles of mustard gas on the Iranians and the Kurds, the US was supplying him with CIA support and investment. Political types like the whole, "me good, they bad line" but it does not work when the line changes based solely on political interest. Bush, Cheney, The Wolf Guy, Conde, and Colon are going to keep blowing smoke up are asses as long as we Americans retain the attention span of a gnat. Bush is dumb yes, but his advisors understand that when they trot him out to speak his lines, the Republican base is energized. The base feels protective of this guy. So as we cry and laugh (both at the same time) loyal Republicans wave their Made in China Wal Mart flags consume ungodly amounts of crap (that require us to fight in all of these terrible places)and reelect this president; don't be surprised if you see rich WASPS dancing in their country clubs and red-neck bars on November 5 yelling, "We Gots Four More Years, Thank You Jesus! "

Jesus...

Treason:
n.: Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by -->consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies<--

I never once said that simply posing questions to our president, which I will say one final time that I loathe as much as the rest of you do, is treason.
Not once did I say that.
I said if you read the entirety of all my posts, that there are times when certain behavior should be curtailed for the benefit of national safety.
Where am I wrong in that!?
Can somebody please stop throwing around clichés and tell me where that line of logic is flawed?
I've typed it before and I'll type it again:
The behavior of those reporters went beyond simple rudeness, what they did was purposefully crafted to take advantage of the well known fact that Bush is a horrible orator.
What was it...Like THREE reporters who basically asked him the same question?
"Can you please admit to the world and to our enemies that you are unfit to rule, that you're weak and stupid, and that everything you've done in this administration up to this point is inherently flawed?"
That's a legitimate question, I suppose, but not when we are at war, not when lives hang in the balance, and they of course do, not when the people we are at war WITH are listening, waiting to extract whatever miniscule tidbit of encouragement they can sift from it.
In that case it's treason, or at the very least borders on it.
And if it's not "consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies", if she was (the reporter) like the rest of you seem to be, unable to make the connection, the intuitive leap, between what we say and do in public, especially politically, and how those things affect world opinion, then I suggest that you all do your research about how the division of popular opinion in 1969 aided our enemies then. The American public lost that war, not the military, not the government...the public.

American's are a diversified people with diversified beliefs. Holding a culture such as ours together is becoming increasingly difficult as the world matures, and it will become even more so. This forum is a fun and harmless place to vent, as is blatantly obvious, and you people can call me whatever you want to call me and no harm will come of it.
Public ally debasing our president during a war is another, and gravely more serious, matter.
I'm sorry, I'm just not wrong about that.

Now...

"channeling Nietzsche"...that's good stuff.
Thanks for the compliment.
Later we will discuss how the abolition of religion is the first step to a better America...

And as for other posts concerning the Islamic mindset, read some Bernard Lewis...he'll tell you all you need to know concerning it.

In a similar vein, the post "withdraw 50% of our troops from around the globe and cut funding to Israel. We would never see al-qaida again." is a blatant misunderstanding of the situation at hand. We are not suffering political terrorism, we are suffering religious terrorism, and unless all you psycho, whacked-out, right-wing Christians want to put down your bibles and pick up Korans we will ALWAYS suffer religious terrorism.
They don't hate us because we're Americans, people...they hate us because we are not Muslims.

"brian"...good post.

"dudeman"...was there a second shooter on the grassy knoll?...

"ukdollars"...great quotes, indeed.

"ron"...do you really think, that after reading my posts and gleaning some modicum of knowledge of my past and me upbringing, that I assume freedom was "given" to us?
That’s a very interesting assessment.
I say that freedom has been fought for by our warriors and given to our populace as a gift, just as it has with any past society, and watching Americans take advantage of that gift sickens me.
My family has a history of fighting for that freedom, spanning three fucking wars, so don't clump me into that category of those who think their freedom just "happened" somehow.

And your quote, "People do not strap bombs to their own bodies unless they are trying anything they can to get us to leave them alone" is quite possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever read.
You are actually condoning terrorism!
Nothing...NOTHING makes strapping C4 to your waist, strolling into and blowing up a pizza joint filled with civilians "ok".
I assume you're referring to the Palestinian ordeal.

First of all, allow me to cut directly to the chase by stating that any governmental entity that openly (or secretly) accepts
and embraces terrorist guerilla attacks on unsuspecting and widely innocent populaces as a means of achieving political ends
forfeits all claims of integrity, nationalism and self-defense (as defined by UN charter 51) and is therefore forfeit as an entity with
which to be dealt with on any rational level. These entities are not worthy of discretionary peace treaties,
nor should they be bargained with or catered to by the political regimes that they target.
The state of Palestine is not an ennobled and beleaguered nation struggling to regain territory stolen from it by Zionist infidels,
it is simply a set of coordinates on a map populated by a weak and cowardly people, “ruled” over by unfit leaders who are less
men of honor and more puppets on strings manipulated by the Arabian Boys Club. The Palestinian Authority, along with
the League Of Arab Nations and all of their combined constituents, being tunnel-visioned by their particular brand of religion,
suffer from a truncated perspective of global events and their consequences.

But I digress...

Oh yeah...
"nobody"...or "mg"...or whatever you want to call yourself, you itchy-trigger-finger-double-poster, you got the wrong guy, bro.
I said my brother's had Iraqi missles fired at him, I didn't say when, nor did I say he was there NOW.

You're thinking of someone else.
I'd refute your other statements, if only they made sense.
Learn to articulate, assface.

Brandon,

I quote you twice:

1)She did it on purpose to demonize our president in front of the very people we are fighting against.
That is TREASON.
2)I never once said that simply posing questions to our president, which I will say one final time that I loathe as much as the rest of you do, is treason.
Not once did I say that.

"gnaf"...

I also said, "...that there are times when certain behavior should be curtailed for the benefit of national safety..."

and "...The behavior of those reporters went beyond simple rudeness, what they did was purposefully crafted to take advantage of the well known fact that Bush is a horrible orator..."

and "...That's a legitimate question, I suppose, but not when we are at war, not when lives hang in the balance..."

SIMPLY posing questions is an entirely different issue than purposefully wordcrafting a question to cause public dischord.

Indeed I never DID say that simply posing questions is treasonous (nor that the profession of journalism is inherently treasonous, as another one of you so twisted my words...)

I simply said that, and again, I quote myself, "...that there are times when certain behavior should be curtailed for the benefit of national safety..."
If you purposefully breach that safety and cause harm to American interests then you are by definition a treasonist.

Why is that so hard for you to understand?

Ever hear of the Stern's Gang, if not you may be interested in researching them. The Stern's Gang was a Jewish terror group lead by men who would become future leaders of Israiel. One generations terror group is the next generations receipiant of mad amounts of Grade A US Cash. What would you call death squads in Central America; were those terror groups not supported by the US government, does that make our government illegitimate? The fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden during WWII were by our nation's own admission perpetrated to strike terror into our enemies. Acts of terror have been persistant throughout history and accross nations. Self-Interest is all the nation state and the corporation understand. To equate morality with a nation "we are good people" is done to sell fights were the populace has no dog involved. It is hard to sell dominance of oil as a reason to send people to die. Tell me I am good and moral and a liberator and I'll think about going, if you pay my tuition when I get home that is.

"Treason:
n.: Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by -->consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies<--
... I said if you read the entirety of all my posts, that there are times when certain behavior should be curtailed for the benefit of national safety.
Where am I wrong in that!?
Can somebody please stop throwing around clichés and tell me where that line of logic is flawed?"

too easy.

we don't agree on the nature of the enemy. there is a wide and deep internal disagreement on the nature of the enemy, and on the connection of the people now fighting against us in iraq with any "enemy" we had prior to the 2003 invasion.

the bushies didn't just fail to get international support for this activity, they blew right past the possibility of making a strong domestic case and domestic coalition in support of this activity. to the extent that they did not give the country the opportunity to assess the real risks and benefits of the iraq action, to the extent that they may have both HELPED and INCREASED THE NUMBER of our "enemies"...

no, there's no clear "aiding and abetting" treason in this situation. iraq wasn't a threat and it's not clear that this "greater middle east reform initiative" crusade-of-choice has a real enemy for anyone so inclined to aid.

i love it when people argue that because a word exists, or a concept exists, that proves that anyone who wants to use the word is right to do so. it is possible to commit treason. it is possible to perceive actions as treason. it is IMPOSSIBLE however to commit treason in a situation where there is no discernible enemy. we invaded iraq. we are occupying iraq. those fighting our troops in iraq are an enemy of our invention. treason's a poor fit for this situation.

or maybe we could have a show of hands. treason is:
a) a kalashnikov in the hands of a california teenager, fighting with the taliban in afghanistan.
b) an unanswered question by a washington reporter.
c) lying to the country about the need for war, the purpose of which was to INTENTIONALLY CREATE POLITICAL INSTABILITY in the home region of an enemy who thrives in chaos.

OK, did anyone else notice that there was a video screen inside the lectern he was using? You could see that he was reading talking points for his answers, but he didn't shuffle the papers, and he often had his eyes on the places where the papers weren't.

Not to derail your fervent jingoism, Brandon, but listen a minute:

ARTICLE III, Section 3
Treason against the United States shall consist only in levvying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfieture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

In short, I don't see where what you're saying fits in. Asking a legit (if biased) question during a press conference isn't exactly in the same league as, say, compromising national security and selling state secrets. First amendment willing, it never will be.

(The first amendment, in case you've forgotten, not only encourages the press to ask lippy questions, but also the public to petition the government to redress of grievences. What better place than a press conference?)

And even were your cry of treason applicable, I somehow doubt that a single reporter in a room of scripted questions could possibly damage our credibility. Not in the eyes of those who have been unjustly forced to fight us in order to survive.

I really did not want to jump into the fray here, but Brandon, you're really opening up far more questions than you're answering.

First of all, I (sort of) agree with your point about the "What mistakes did you make?" questions, but for different reasons. Gotcha journalism really serves no one. Of course Bush (or any other sitting President) will not admit to failures of 9-11/Iraq magnitude. He certainly should have expected this line of questioning, though. The press has been asking the same thing to every guest on every Sunday morning show for weeks. That he floundered and looked bad to the international community is Bush’s own damn fault for being unprepared. We have a free press, even in times of war. For better or worse (I like to think better), every administration should realize that every important decision they make will likely wind up on tomorrow's front page. It’s the Bush administration’s bad decisions that are endangering our troops, not the questioning of those decisions. To suggest otherwise is intellectual dishonesty. Bush absolutely should be held accountable for his utter failure in Iraq before his choices kill more Americans.

Secondly, since you are opposed to the current administration and seem to be at least somewhat opposed to the war in Iraq, how do you suggest we voice our dissent? Or are we supposed to rage silently and pray for change? Or is even hoping for change the type of behavior that "should be curtailed for the benefit of national safety"?

Finally, we are not being targeted by terrorists solely because we are not Muslim. The recent bombings perpetrated by Al-Qeada in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia killed far more Muslims than Christians, Jews, Buddhists or Hindus combined. The actions of suicide bombers (or suiciders as our Prez likes to call them) have just as much to do with poverty as they do with religion.

Please read David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor." This book is meticulously researched and should give everyone some insight into the game plan of our administration. (if it's not in your bookstore, have them order it for you)

fwump...your show of hands.

I would say A.
And are you implying that by NOT answering questions in a press conference bush is commiting treason?
That's an absurdity beyond measure.
And try telling the families of those who have died in this latest war that their loved ones were killed not by enemies, but by some neo-polictical phantoms of a justly disgruntled populace.

But the whole issue here goes so much deeper than varying definitions of treason.

We're getting stuck on this whole stupid treason issue...I have my opinions of those reporters, so do you, they differ to be sure, but that doesn't make the underlying issues go away.
Those issues are huge, varied, and far-reaching.
Ganging up on the issue of the month while ignoring the longview is exactly what is destroying America and its credibility on the world stage.

All this squibbling over Bush that Iraq this, my party can beat up your party is just a pissing contest.
Who wins doesn't matter.
There are much bigger issues at stake that we need to start preparing for NOW.
With our actions and behaviour NOW.
How do you people think this is going to play out?
Seriously.
I don't mean over the next few months, the June deadline, the year after that, the ten years after that.
I don't mean Iraq, or Bush.
I mean the longview.
300...500 years down the line. Longer.
What America will be left, what will we be?
Do you ever even think about that, or are you mired in "now"?
We've reached peak oil...what will you do when you can't drive your obscenely gargantuan SUV?
Arable land per capita will only diminish, as will potable water per capita.
What will you do when you when lettuce is 20 dollars a head and water is rationed?
Earth's carrying capacity has already been far exceeded.

We have far surpassed the possibility of just "getting along" with each other.
We have bred ourselves into a frenzied orgy of incompatible idealologies and the friction has been mounting for over 200 years.
It has led us to the situation we now face.
History's most repeatable pattern is rise->conquer->rule->fall.
It's been happening since mankind first walked the Earth...what makes you think it's going to stop now?
All of these problems de jour that people love to bitch about are directly related to this fact.
America is at a pivotal point...we either continue to rule or we begin to fall.
Things will simply not just "get better" with diplomacy.
The stakes are higher, the squeeze is on.

Americans love thier lifestyle, but you have to be willing to do some unpleasantness to maintain it.
You can't have it both ways...we enjoy the best standard of living on the planet for a reason.
If you're in the political camp that dictates we should not meddle in the affiars of foreign countries then you are going to have to be willing to degrade your quality of life eventually.
Leading thinkers in our government know this, and their influence trickles down through presidents and partisans and congresses alike.
The underlying reasons for why America does what it does are not reasons that the average American wants to admit or deal with or even be affiliated to.
America is a nation of spoiled fucking brats, largely ignorant of the bigger picture.

Eat your cheeseburgers, with your super/extra/biggie sized 55 gallon drum of diet coke, live your extravagent (by world standards) life style and pretend that the current political configuration will be adequate to repel the growing darkness in the world.
It won't be.
Complain about GW and Kerry and Iraq untill you're blue in the face, but when you're done, you'll realize that Iraq is not even the tip of the TIP of the iceberg, and that a fundamental shift in the way we view the world and our place in it is neccessary if your great grandchildren are to enjoy the same standard of living that YOU do.

This is a thinking forum and that's good. But dig a little deeper and believe less of what you've been told. In those stupid science classes in school we were told that oil came from old dinosaurs and that it was from organic goo. In the 19th century they were only able to drill to the organic goo. Today they drill so much deeper-much, much deeper than where the organic goo is and they find oil which is r-e-n-e-w-a-b-l-e. There is no Peak oil. There is no tooth fairy, there is no Santa Claus; there was no potato famine in Ireland and there is NO Peak oil. Dig? This is all smoke and mirrors. Oil is lighter than water--it doesn't sink into the goo--it rises up into the goo. But as a people we are rapidly sinking into the goo so don't believe anything you're told-check it out-do your homework and find out how the wizard pulls the strings.

Brandon,

I agree with you that our system of government has to change, that a politician is a politician and only the wealthy can rule, but there is no way in hell anyone can convince me that if Gore had ended up in the White House that things would have been the same.

They would NOT have been the same.

We would NOT be in an unprecedented, needless war in Iraq, we would NOT have undone or weakened almost every single bit of environmentally sound legislation, we would NOT have given tax cuts to the rich and squandered our monetary policy to become fiscally irresponsible, we would NOT have an administration who implies and suggests that people with dissenting opinions are traitors..

Etc., etc., etc.

One person does make a difference. Too bad it was Scalia.

"franky", I agree, somewhat.
Good points, all.
I do think Bush is PARTLY to blame for deaths in Iraq.
But not totally.
Similar to the way that Osama is partly to blame for the deaths of Americans in NY and DC (and elsewhere of course...)
I think they should both be held answerable.

Again, the blame game is pointless, one could extrapolate out this argument to say that we, as Americans are ALL responsible for death's in Iraq, due to a great many causes, not the least of which is our (the public's) shameful lack of control over our own out-of-control government.
And that would be a perfectly sound argument, if, of course, you believe the basic tenets of democracy; that the members of the democracy ultimately control the political direction of their society. (we have failed in this regard, I might add...)
Bush is only one in a long line of unfortunate individuals who's odious task it is to try to appease a great mass of unappeasable people.
(is that a word? "unappeasable"...i don't think so...anyway...)
He, like his predecessors, has listened to his counselours, and made decisions, well-informed or no, about what the American people want.
Drill for oil here.
NO! Don't drill there!
I hate paying 2 bucks a gallon for gas!
But don't...WHATEVER YOU DO...drill there!
And don't drill overseas, either!
And figure out a way we can screw OPEC!
Pass this law.
NO! That law is wrong!
Defend against terrorism.
WAIT! Don't defend against it THAT way, do it another way!
Do it MY way!
This way?
NO!!! THAT WAY IS WORSE!
Smash "evil" everywhere!
But not in Rwanda or Sierra Leone or Sudan or...
We have no finacial interest in those areas.
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
Nah, fuck the children, I don't want mine dying in some sub-saharan country I've never heard of...

and on and on and on...
It's all so very absurd.
Yes, yes yes...this is off topic, but...what's the topic again?
Oh yeah, Bush sucks.
Or apparently so, anyway.

How do we voice our dissent?
The way we are doing it now, but not NOW.
FIRST, we get past this roadbump.
We either commit to being there and finish the job, or we agree to pull out.
Of course, you'll all have to scrape your "THESE COLORS DON'T RUN" stickers off of your cars if we do the latter, but hey...

Look, the Bush problem will go away soon.
I highly doubt that he will be reelected.
I think we can all agree to that.
So why belabour that issue?
The next most important issue?
Figure out the Iraq shitstorm.
The first step is to cease this incremental deployment, this half-assed, creeping-slowy-into-the-shallow-end-of-the-pool-because-you're-afraid-your-balls-will-get-cold approach.
We did that in Vietnam, primarily because of lack of public support for that "police action", and in doing so we strung out the war and lost over 50k lives. (Americans, anyway.)
You want it over fast?
Back it.
With all your heart.
Since you have lost control of your government it's all you can do.
Back it, we'll get in there and do what we need to do before the June deadline, keeping video footy of dead Americans dragged through the streets to an absolute minimum.
THEN, we'll worry about the Bush/Kerry fiasco.

By the way, "raging silently and praying for change" won't help...well, I guess that depends on to which particular flavor of God you pray.
The Muslims shooting at us are praying...

Yes, terrorism kills people other than Jews and Christians, I know this.
But it is the vast chasm of intolerance between the various religions in our past which has caused, and continues to cause global strife.

Poverty? Even the richest Muslims can hate us.
Saddam had more cash than Bill Gates...
Yes, poverty does cause crime, but enrich all of those people, give them lands, and power, and governments, and still they would hate us.
"This I know, for the Bible tells me so."
Or some such nonsense.

President Sock Puppet. The best term I've heard to describe our idiot president.

brian...

No peak oil?
So Earth's resources are in fact not finite, but rather, are INFINITE!
KICK ASS!!!
ALL OUR PROBLEMS ARE OVER!!!
I'll go let the millions of people who are dying from famine across the globe know that they can RISE UP!...RISE UP and EAT EAT EAT!!!
EAT TILL THEIR BELLIES ARE FULL!

Oh wait, they can't...they don't have any food.
Because they don't have any arable land, nor any water with which to irrigate it, nor any resources with which to stabilize a farming industry or produce machines to do their labor because they lack a reliable energy resource with which to power it all by, and they lack a strong labor force with which to catalyze all these things because all the above combined conditions have seriously undercut and fatigued their demographics to a point where they experiencing a Malthusian dieoff of grand scale, due to HIV, poverty, crime, malnutrtition...which brings us back to square one about Earth's finite resources...

HEY!
WE SHOULD GO HELP THOSE PEOPLE!
Nah...fuck 'em.
We have no finacial interest in those areas.

I AM A VIETNAM VET AND WHAT BUSH AND HIS GANG OF THIEVS ARE DOING TO THE VETS ARE BOND OUTRAGOUS IT BORDERS ON CRIMINAL. I WAS JUST GIVEN A T-SHIRT AND ON THE BACK IS PRINTED, THE MEDIA HELPED BUSH LIE AND NOW OUR TROOPS DIE, ON THE FRONT THE WORDING IS HELP OUR TROOPS VOTE OUT BUSH AND BRAKE UP THE CORP: MEDIA AND MR. BRANDON DO NOT CALL ME A TRATOR OR COWARD BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN THERE AND WAR IS NOT A SUNDAY SCHOOL PICKNECK OR A WALK IN THE PARK. AND FUTHER MOOR I BELIEVE THAT YOU SHOULD JOIN THE ARMED SERVICES . YOU AND BUSH WOULD MAKE A GREAT TEAM H.D.COLE

Kudos to Mr. Cole....he speaks true!!
AND, since he has, personally, "Walked the walk", he has ample right to now, "Talk the talk"!
Since I work for at a VA Hospital, I have an inside track and a unique perspective on just how "our" government (..and, I use that term very loosely, since "we" did not elect Dubya and his flunkies...)is planing on treating the maimed and wounded veterans of this illegal and immoral war! We are planning on screwing them, just like we are presently screwing the Viet Nam and Gulf War vets!!!
I have seen these valiant men and women having to fight, in the courts and other bogs of bureauocracy, for meager medical and financial assistance! Instead of being met at home as heros, which many of them DO NOT consider themselves (being very ashamed of what they were ordered to do in various "fields of battle"), they are shunted aside...their potential benefits being used to fuel the current war machine. They are denied medical help, they are denied loans and scholarships...they are forced to secure private medical insurance (another joke!) to get their medicines and assistive devices.
When the Veterans' Administration was founded, by Abraham Lincoln, its purpose was, "...to aide those who have born the battle and their widows and their children". Nowadays, that just is NOT happening!
Our curent regime sees fit to send more and more of our young people into dire danger in this money-grubbing war, but has no intention of "aiding" them in any way once they are wounded and can no longer shoulder a rifle or fly a plane!
We, at VA hospitals are being urged to gear up, in anticipation of more and more war wounded, AND, in the same breath are being informed (not for public knowledge) that we will be "enlisting" some of the maimed/amputees in a "clinical study" of new high-tech prosthetic devices vs the less costly conventional devices now available.
O.K. So, we send them off to lose appendages, and are already planning to use them as guinea pigs when they return...already planning on figuring a way to spend less money on their medical care and more on continuing this horrific war!
And, why; you might ask, do I continue to work for the VA??? I stay, because every day I am there, I advise and support these vets in getting what they need and what they deserve. I work for THEM, not for the government which did this to them!!

Mr. Cole and Clara are connecting the dots which is what most people cannot do or refuse to do. It must be just too horrible to face the "unspeakable truth". But if we don't face the truth, connect the dots and follow the money, then Brandon's expose of his 3rd world countries with Aids, non-arable land, poverty,crime and malnutrition will be an apt description of our lives in the "land o' the free". Aids was developed in the laboratory and has a patent registered with the government. Why do you suppose that was? Connect that little dot and see what you come up with.

What's an insticator

"b) an unanswered question by a washington reporter."

sorry, that should have read "b) a question by a washington reporter (which went unanswered)."

and what does it matter. half of washington's high and mighty were asking the same question - "do you feel responsible?" NYC wants to know. everybody wants to know, just like people wanted to know why clinton was having so much trouble admitting that he messed around with an intern. when you shovel crap at people it piles up and they notice. only this time, people died, shit happened, things really need to be figured out.

i think what boggles people's minds is how MUCH more than "keep it in your pants" you'd have to tell dubya to get his job performance turned around. if he's doing things wrong, he's doing them so wrong, it's really hard to get a grip on it, and it's hard to believe that the administration could be incompetent. it's not something people want to be thinking about when they feel an enemy in the room.

"And try telling the families of those who have died in this latest war that their loved ones were killed not by enemies, but by some neo-polictical phantoms of a justly disgruntled populace."

some of them already know this. they're not happy about it, either. lots of military folk think this action is FUBAR and they are pointing their fingers at the bushies for ignoring good planners' advice early on.

"If you're in the political camp that dictates we should not meddle in the affiars of foreign countries then you are going to have to be willing to degrade your quality of life eventually."

am doing so. have done so.

WHY? IS IT THAT THE RITCH NEVER BLEED&DIE FOR THIS COUNTRY THEY ONLY BLEED IT DRY, I KNOW I HAVE THREE BRO. TWO IN WW2 AND ONE ON KOREA, AND WE ALL HAVE SAID THE SAME THING WHEN IT COMES TO BLEEDING AND DYING FOR THIS COUNTRY THE RITCH COME UP WITH SO MANY EXC. FROM BEING TO REGLIOUS TO LIKING OTHER MEN, AND THEY ARE THE FIRST ONE WHEN IT IS ALL OVER TO SAY THAT THE VETS ARE LIVING OFF US TAXPAYERS. FACT NOT FICYION H.D.COLE

H.D. Cole.
Why on Earth would I call you a traitor?
My own father is a Vietnam vet, in fact, upon his return to the states, he was SPAT upon, right here in Dallas, 20 miles from where I live.
I spent my entire childhood growing up in a military household; I have nothing but respect for people who are asked by our government to risk their lives in defense of my freedom.
I thought I had made myself crystal clear in that regard. No, I have never had my ass in the grass, but I have, on more than one occasion, had guns pointed at me in anger, so I have a very, very small idea of what you have been through and I thank you for your service, from the bottom of my FREE AMERICAN HEART!
Which is all the more reason for me to be frothing mad over what is going on right now, both at home and abroad.

And fwump, this mission IS FUBAR.
Without a doubt.
Division in the American public is making it even MORE FUBAR, just like division in the American public made the events surrounding 1969 FUBAR.

And brian, you nailed it right on the head!
It's what I've been saying since my first post, if you read between the lines; America IS in danger of being displaced from the current "world leader" status that it now enjoys.
America IS in danger facing some of those "3rd world country" dilemmas. (and by the way, dude..."3rd world country" is not the preferred nomenclature..."developing nations", please...)
::rolls eyes::

And how do we avoid that doom?
I KNOW!
LET’S CRUCIFY BUSH!!!
That should do it.
No.
That will accomplish nothing.
We, as a populace, have to change the way we think about our politics and about our government. If what you're doing isn't working, change it.
How many more decades of this bullshit do we have sit through?
How many more old, rich, white men need to tell us they know what's best for us?
It's not working.
I grant you, some might argue that it was working when Clinton was in the whore house...uh...I mean WHITE house (my bad...), but we were still being attacked by the same enemies...oops...they weren't enemies were they, fwump? We were still being attacked by the same neo-political phantoms of a justly disgruntled populace, they hated us then, when we were all hepped up on internet fortunes, intoxicated by our own temporary success, and they hate us still.
Then the bubble burst, the market crashed, Clinton got a blowjob, handed an already failing system over to his hanging-chad successor, dems blamed the crash on reps, we all got 300 dollars in the mail, our towers got knocked down and then the "whole world changed".
NO IT DIDN'T!!!
THE WORLD HAS BEEN FUCKED UP FOR CENTURIES!!
Americans just never noticed it.
Well now you HAVE to notice it.
And this problem is not going to go away.
It's here to stay, and like it or not you have to learn to adapt to the new state of affairs.

I think Dylan may have said it best when he said, "Your old road is rapidly aging...please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand."

Again, I'll say that the time to change is NOW.
Complain all you want, hold your breath in protest, call me crazy and ignore me...but the problem is still there, and Americans seem too afraid to make the tools necessary to fix it.

Nice brief, dont have to watse time watching same lines again and again

MR. BRANDON, HAVING A GUN POINTED AT YOU IS ONE HOLE LOT DIFFERENT THEN BEING IN A WAR IN A WAR EACHPARTY HAS THE RIGHT TO KILLEACH OTHER ANY POSSIBLE. FROM KICKING THE OTHER SIDE HEAD IN TO SHOTING OR EVEN CUTTING HIS THROUGHT TO STRANGLING THE OTHER SIDE AND IT IS ALL PERFERCT LEGAL, FOR THEY CAN ALSO DO IT TO YOU AND THERE IS NO COPS TO STOP THEM. AS FOR CLINTON ALL YOU REPUBLICANS AND THE CORP: NEWS PAPERS WANTED TO DO WAS SMELL HIS SHORTS ALL THE TIME. EVEN NOW YOU WOULD THINK CLINTON WAS STILL PRESIDENT THAT IS ALL YOU HEAR FROM YOU IS CLINTON, BUSH TAKES THE BLAME FOR NOTHING. H.D. COLE

uhhhhh...what?

President Clinton admitted to enjoying oral sex in the White House. President Bush the Younger refuses to admit that he gets his rocks off screwing everyone that happens to be in the way of the plans of his rich political "friends".

Omar...
"President Clinton admitted to enjoying oral sex in the White House."

He did?
Oh that's right...he did, after first lying to us all in a televised statement.
4 months later, when he knew he couldn't cover it up anymore, he begrudgingly told us the truth.
If a man can't be honest about a blowjob, I shudder to think what other lies he hid from us...maybe something about, oh I don't know...terrorist threat cover ups...something something something...

But please...let's not go there.
That issue is as flaccid as...well...it's flaccid...

Hi there! I am from Germany. And I have to tell you...I normally don't understand any of his frases. But this here is great! Thanks!

Crucifying each other, reporters, Bush, Hussein, or bin Laden, mostly sets the example that the way to deal with problems is to find some "bad guy" and crucify them. Walter Wink calls it the myth of redemptive violence. I'd suggest that instead we try to listen to the common motivations the "others" have, see their humanity and let them know we see it. *Then* explain how you see things differently, or alternative strategies you'd like to see pursued, together on the same side.

The myth of redemptive violence is only one of a number of illusions that all of the world's populous cultures largely agree on. These illusions work together to support hierarchy within a society, and war between societies. See http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?IllusionsOfDominationCulture

Hi there... I'm from Germany too. Some German news-site gave me the link.
Really funny summery. v(^^)v
I still wonder how this militant right-wing-fundamental stupid bastard was able to get even one single vote. (Americans must be in a really scary situation to do such a horrible mistake, don't they?)

PS: Your voting-system has to be reformed! It is clearly unable to deal with 21st-Century-Methods of vote-manipulation.

Great satire, but hey, the plural of Iraqi is not Iraqi's, OK?

John.

I agree with you in theory.
In practice, however, our multiple and varying cultures simply do not care about intellectual endeavours such as the myth of redemptive violence.
It's the last thing on the mind of the Sudanese people right now...

And toji.
if you were here i'd buy you a pint of Warsteiner and shake your hand.
You are absolutely correct.

"Your voting-system has to be reformed! It is clearly unable to deal with 21st-Century-Methods of vote-manipulation."

Couldn't have said better myself.
But that's not ALL that has to be reformed...

Oh, and one more thing, since we were throwing quotes around earlier. (as if quotes from dead people have some sort of mystic significance...)

"War is a blessing, compared to national degradation."

-Andrew Jackson.

hmm
Brandon, I agree with you that our government is fundamentally flawed. I believe that any government which holds the acquisition of money as the highest good is fundamentally flawed. In such a society - those who have money and the structures that support them (i.e. corporations) become god-like in power. The more money they acquire, the more influence they have - and with no moral yardstick, they are capable of many atrocities. Meanwhile the homeless, and people who cannot pay for various amenities are looked down upon, as being less than human.

However, I disagree that we should all just keep our mouths shut until the war is over. You see, I don't want to be a part of a blind team. I am upset not just over the American lives that are being lost - but all of the lives that are being lost and the ignorance that is being propogated and reinforced on both sides.

There are many ways we could go about handling this situation and unfortunately Bush pushed us into the position of being a bully. Your suggestion seems to be to just keep being a bully until we push down all the kids in the playground. You seem to think we shouldn't pause to consider our behavior (or show them our remorse) because then we'll get smacked down ourselves. I personally disagree with this route. I think we should appologize for our behavior - we should expose how corrupt our government has become, and immediately work to remedy the situation.

Anyway, if you're interested in looking at alternative solutions to our present government -you should take a look at the following.

http://www.prout.org/aftercapitalism/
http://www.prout.org/Summary.html
http://www.prout.org/TableofContents.html

One suggestion is an amendment to the bill of rights which would hold that all human beings have a right to basic subsistance. This is not communism (people could rise above basic subsistance with their own efforts), nor is it socialism - but if we could agree on that simple premise (the right of all human beings to have the rudimentary means to live) we could start working toward solutions that not only benefit our tiny corner of the world (or our tiny bank account) but that take the larger picture into account. You see, this whole planet is connected, and if we see things that way then we won't sit idly by while disease and fanaticism run amok.

flaxen.

Great post.
I'd love to sit down with you and discuss these things...
The whole planet is indeed connected.
It is connected in very complex ways that humanity has yet to either fully understand or has learned to accomodate.
And we've been trying for about 40 thousand years.
I firmly believe that humanity, as a race of sentient beings, is facing what may be our final dilema...no, I don't mean Bush/Iraq, nor do I mean "final" as in "today, right now".
The strife we witness in the world, these wars, these democrats, these republicans, these terrorists, these religions, are all casualties of shortsightedness, and they will doom us if we choose to remain mired in them.

I will voraciously consume those URLS you listed.

brandon, you wrote:

"I agree with you in theory.
In practice, however, our multiple and varying cultures simply do not care about intellectual endeavours such as the myth of redemptive violence.
It's the last thing on the mind of the Sudanese people right now..."

If you mean that just talking about these things isn't going to reach many people, i agree. I suggest checking out Nonviolent Communication, which is the best practice & network of people i've found for *experientially* unravelling the myth of redemptive violence (and other, supportive myths).

http://cnvc.org/

http://nonviolentcommunication.com/

On larger scales, i find hope in the exploration of citizen deliberative councils (and other creative large group processes).

http://www.wiki-thataway.org/index.php?page=CitizenDeliberativeCouncil

flaxen, thanks for your links too - not sure about the world government, but the pages on ecstasy and meditation were very interesting.

that's too apocalyptic for me. we escaped a period where for the sake of ideals, we were drawing up plans to obliterate everything on the planet. we got through that. we're more aware of each other than ever. this is a good time, not a bad one, despite the civilian attacks and religious zealotry. people are looking for ways of living and, largely, we are all enjoying the international pop culture that's developing. even if it's dominated by american commerce, this is way better than US/USSR-fueled bloodshed.

there are definitely places where people are angry and thus, stupid.

i am more partisan now than ever in my life because i have seen the bushies throw away all those things in favor of their own poorly-informed vision quests. i bet i speak for a lot of people when i say: if the bushies can't be dissuaded from destructive policies, and i simply don't believe their goals are open for discussion, then they leave opponents no choice but to discredit them and their policies in order to get a better manager in place. we need a better manager in place.

not a perfect manager, not a perfect system.

Just a quick note on the quotes...as much as I'd like to just agree with the Caesar quote, it was, unfortunately, never said, at least not by Caesar. However, Hermann Goering (Of Nazi fame) said:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

'nuf said. If you're wondering about authenticity, check out snopes.com here:

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm

Margaret

I am also optimistic sometimes, fwump. And, as my friend Tom Atlee has often said, "Things are getting better and better and worse and worse, faster and faster." I try not to let this get me into a panicked urgency, because i don't think that really helps.

My guess is that your partisanship is motivated by a genuine care for all people, and the planet (am i anywhere near right?). I simply disagree that strong partisanship is going to help the people or the planet very much, if by partisanship you include the kind of blame/judgement that we see in this thread (e.g. "President Sock Puppet", "idiot", "imbecile", etc.).

My guess is that Bush and the people who support him are motivated in primarily two ways behind the grab for material plenty and military hegemony - i see needs for respect, happiness and security; and the motivation to share and contribute (e.g. freedom). I imagine both threads existing in different proportions among different Bush supporters.

I take strong exception to the strategies being used; i do not believe that material wealth beyond a fairly minimal point brings happiness, or that force is a very effective way to spread democracy. At the same time i can empathize with their deepest motivations - i want them to have security and happiness, and to be able to contribute.

And i believe i am more effective in my efforts to suggest and enact strategies i believe will work better, when i can see them as human beings, trying their best. (this is the general tack i try to take when considering those who attack the U.S. as well, btw)

What do you think?

Oh, and as long as we're doing quotes...

"All the world is my homeland
All its people my kinsfolk"
--Tamil couplet from Purananuru, 2nd century B.C.

"We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them."
--Larry Wall, second State of the Onion speech http://kiev.wall.org/~larry/onion/onion.html

"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" --Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn

"The challenging aspect of compassion is being compassionate toward those who are, at this moment, not being compassionate. Most especially, when it's oneself!"
--JohnAbbe

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I am
not sure about the universe." - Einstein

(I didn't read all the way to the bottom, just up to that "they're all the same" nonsense.)

Sorry, idealists, but Clinton outperformed Bush as president. For real. 3.9% unemployment. $290 billion surplus. 0 soldiers killed during Kosovo. That's lots of real lives really improved in real ways.

Both candidates for president this year are less than perfect. But that doesn't make them the same. Between Bush and Kerry, one of them is guaranteed to win, and one of them will do a better job than the other. Vote for the one that will do the better job.

And yes, that "what's your biggest mistake?" crap shouldn't have been there. Hey "journalists", why don't you go find out what his biggest mistake was, and then report about it?

A journalist somewhere said "We are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory." I think that describes our current military strategy pretty well in the "war against terror".

Our McDisney domination wasn't popular before 9/11, obviously. The war in Iraq wasn't popular. The current chaos in Iraq and atrocities in Fallujah aren't popular, to understate the matter. We haven't successfully cut off Al Qaeda's power base--rather, we've helped it by alienating vast numbers of Middle Easterners who were previously sympathetic to us. In Fallujah, snipers are shooting old women, children, and ambulances. Bush is a war criminal, as are those who enable him to any significant degree. Not only that, he's a stupid war criminal--he aids his own enemies. If we stand behind his war crimes after November, we will perpetuate his mistakes and we will continue to be identified with them. We will attract vastly more hatred than we did before 9/11.

We *must* show the world that this was Bush's war, not America's. That we are *not* a nation of war criminals. (We aren't, are we?)

Oh. Somebody (I can't find who, cause there are way too many comments now) said that people should stop watching tv and read blogs. I totally agree. For one thing, if you think that Bush is a puppet, you know that tv journalists are even more so. Who holds their strings? Networks. Who holds the strings of the networks? Those corporations who buy advertising on the networks. (About the same corporations donating money to Bush, incidentally.) If you watch the networks, you give the networks what they want: ratings. You give the advertisers what they want: potential consumers. You feed the system. Granted, it's good to be informed, but how informative can a puppet show be? Did you know that it's legal to falsify news in the US, at least according to one dismissed whistleblower case brought against Fox news?

If you want intelligent television, boycott the networks and write to tell them that you're doing so and why. Also, tell all your disgruntled friends too. If you just don't want to support the system, then unplug your tv!

Fwump.
That’s my point exactly.
It’s too apocalyptic for you because you are seemingly only going back 20 years or so to determine your current world view.
The fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War were both momentous and positive changes that we as a social order should celebrate…or are they?
They have left us a legacy of chaos and distrust.
We KNEW who our enemies were in 1985…they wore uniforms and marched in rows.
Our enemies now skulk through ramshackle alleyways, feigning to be civilians, gripping weapons imported to them by our current allies, or worse, by our own government, in a time when enemies now were friends. They prey upon our vast, and mostly useless, code of morality. They prey upon the Brobdingnagian juggernaut that is our rigid government. It moves slowly and changes even slower still, our advancement and future development thereby hobbled.
Our current geo-political woes are our inheritance from a jagged past learning curve.
WWI, The War To End All Wars, bred WWII.
WWII bred many conflicts, the Korean War being only one of them.
The Korean War bred the Vietnam War, that war bred may others, and here we are today.
You think we have improved?
We have not improved, we have merely continued our pattern.
The lineage of conflict that led to WWI began before humans chose to record their history.
You mention that we have “escaped a period” where we were going to “obliterate everything on the planet.”
You are incorrectly assuming that the world has agreed that nuclear conflict is a global no-no.
We have escaped nothing, my friend…it aint over till the deuterium-tritium isotopes sing…
(Damn…I should trademark that line…)

Realists are often accused by pacifists of being pessimistic.
I don’t view the world in terms of negative/positive, good/evil, right/wrong.
I do not think that humanity has advanced in a moral sense…we have advanced technologically only.
This is the curse of mankind…for our technology to outstrip our morality.
(I use the term “morality” loosely, as I don’t buy into the traditional moral code instilled in us by man-made religions…)
It is not enough for one person, or one tribe or culture to embrace a moral code, it must be accepted across the board,
by ALL of humanity. When it is not, conflict is the result.
I believe it to be an impossibility, for humanity as a whole to accept an identical moral code, for the simple fact that our religions do not allow this to be a reality.
They haven’t in the past, and they never will in the future, as by definition, stated by their very own dogmas, they are incompatible.
You state that we are more aware of each other now than ever.
You’re right, we are more aware of our global incompatibility now more than ever.
And I’m not implying that this is a “bad time”…’not a good one either.
It’s a time, like all time before it.
We are merely moving through it, and clumsily.

And your assessment that anger equals stupidity is wrong from the very core.
Anger has wrought many a good change in the past, and it will do so in the future.

I will not even address your statements about your being more partisan now than ever.
The fact that you choose to perpetuate a useless system speaks volumes of your lack of desire to change it.
Wield your pop-culture monikers, invoke the term “bushies” as often as you can…it comforts you, I can tell.
Hmmmm…I guess I addressed it after all…

John Abbe..
Brilliant self-appraising quote, you narcissistic bastard.
I’m sure you are proud.

mybologna…
Absolutely one of my all-time favorite quotes.
I’m sure we can agree that all knowledge is unifiable.
yeah yeah… ;)

steve…
How did Clinton outperform Bush?
With numbers? With percentages? With poles populated by the inane?
Surplus?
You actually bought that lie?
Wow…
Zero soldiers were killed in Kosovo?
Depends on which side you’re on , I suppose…
Clinton also allowed the Cole to be bombed, along with numerous other American interests.
Don’t remember that?
Of course you don’t.
It would seriously interfere with your uninformed viewpoint.

Hello fish…my name is Gun…get in the barrel.

Brandon:
One last word, then you can have the floor forever.

"....the unconscious one does not betray. He walks secure through life. But we who are a part of the tradition....and carry on the tradition we have betrayed with awareness, insight and consciousness, we have carefully analyzed all the wars before they were declared. But we did not stop them. (And many amongst us became the propagandists of the wars as soon as they were declared.) We describe how the poor are plundered by the rich. We live among the rich. Live on the plunder and pander ideas to the rich. We have described the torture and we have put our names under appeals against torture, but we did not stop it. (And we ourselves became torturers when the higher interests demanded torture and we became the ideologists of torture.) Now we once more can analyze the world situation and describe the wars and explain why the many are poor and hungry. But we do no more.
"We are not the bearers of consciousness. We are the whores of reason."

--from Confessions of a Disloyal European by Jan Myrdal

leisure...

Yes, that does indeed sound like the self-depreciating and rambling misgivings of a European. (was that a racist comment?...)
Eloquently written, to be sure.
Why would one carry on a tradition that he has also betrayed, especially when that betrayal was borne of some supposed higher understanding or awareness? We all know that the poor are plundered by the rich, we ALL live among the rich. And why wouldn't this theoretical person, apparently so endowed with a transcendent understanding of the world, choose to stand idly by as these metaphoric atrocities of war and torture transpired?
I can hear the background music, I can picture the scene, but it sways me not.
Maybe I'm missing something.
Perhaps my pragmatic mind is preventing me from grasping a deeper meaning.
If so, educate me, please, for I love to learn.

Or is this just another corpsequote?

Or maybe you can just call me "The Unconscious One..."

brandon:

"Brilliant self-appraising quote, you narcissistic bastard.
I’m sure you are proud."

Well actually, i'm not, and that's my biggest problem. I judge myself terribly for not living up to my ideals. That's why it's so important for me to remember to be compassionate *even to myself*.

I'm not sure if i'm understanding you brandon, and i'd like to. I'm hearing (please tell me if i'm wrong) that you see roots to current problems that go back to prehistorical times, and differences among people that you see no way to reconcile. I would guess that you feel complete despair about that, but from other things you've said it sounds like you have some (non-partisan?) ideas about how to move forward. Would you share some of them?

(and/or correct my current understanding)

What i have to say may have been said before since i don't have time to read every single comment, even though the battles are a lot fun.

I missed or haven't heard what Brandon's solution to our fucked up government is. While I can agree that the reporters ask questions seemingly designed to trap, it does seem to be their job perhaps because a lot of people LOVE it. I suppose some idealistic journalist could come in and try to change the whole system, make it more honorable. But i'd bet the free market would have the noble journalist waiting tables before long. Take a media history class sometime -- which comes first: the media gives the people what they want? or the media convinces the impressionalbe people to want what they deliver? (The answer is probably not black and white -- i've asked a question to trap all the simple-minded people!) It seems that what Brandon wants is for people to evolve into very rational, fact-lovers without limbic systems. I often want that too. That would make things a lot easier in government (and certainly preclude idealogues getting into positions of power), but here's the rub for most people, it would make things pretty BORING. I agree that the old limbic system causes a lot of problems, leads people to patriotic fervor, leads people to side vehemently with a sports team, a politcal party, leads people to ignore "facts" that don't agree with their view, leads people to die for a cause, leads people to demand dissenters be hung for treason. And i'm pretty sure that most people commenting here aren't doing it because they think they are going to change someone's mind. We're doing it because it's fun, stimulating, making us FEEL something like anger, or pride, or fear. We're doing it because we are "stuck" with our limbic systems.

Brandon, i admire your idealism. i am one too. My ideal society is made up of people who know when to apply reason and know how to enjoy their emotions without hurting themselves or others, and are able to pick and choose among all the various alternatives for government without worrying about loyalty to an institution, to any label. You are much more confident about what "America" is than i am. People are still arguing about the intentions of the founding fathers. What does it mean to be "American"? I don't know exactly, except that it suggests freedom to choose. In the Bible Belt, I feel like i have more in common with Scandanavians. There are a lot of Americans like me I bet. Yet, many Americans who disagree with me, have decided that they are the true Americans and the rest of us are pinkos, commies, idiots, helpers of fundamentalist Islam. This is what bothers me: such people just KNOW somehow what America is as if they talked to Tom, Ben, George Washington directly. I wouldn't be surprised if many of same people also KNOW there is a God, KNOW how this God wants YOU to live. Funny how much that sounds like the thinking of Islam fundamentalists.

I am an American in that I was born in America. I will only be proud to be called American if it means: one who lives in a country that is free to evolve into what most of the people there want it to be. If it happens that most of the people here want it to be something drastically different from my preferences and nauseating to me, i will be the first to declare that I am unAmerican. It's just a label. I mean no disrespect to veterans and those who have died for "America". I believe they fought, died for an ideal of what America is/was at a particular time and they are heroic. Many of them have a preference for what they want America to be in the future. How many of them DEMAND that America be what THEY want it to be? How many current "Americans" ask that America become locked into their own preferences, no longer free to change according to the desires of the majority of people living there? It's a high ideal, calling for some really rational behavior to stick to the practice of standing for freedom EVEN WHEN the majority, using such freedom, comes to want something other than what you want. If there is something worth dying for, that might be it.

P.S. I have now read most of the previous comments. Man, this is confusing. It seems that a lot of people are arguing with each other and actually, they agree in many respects -- caring about resources, caring about people in less forutnate situations, caring about being informed. So what is all this about?

Brandon likes telling people they are stupid. He's condencendingly telling the rest of us the we haven't figured out the long-view and can't make the "intuitive leap", mainly becuase he is being attacked for crashing a Bush-slamming party. Am I right, Brandon, that what you really hate, is lowly human nature? I've been there too. I used to drive down the highway in my little old car, ASSUMING that every SUV driver was a self-righteous, comfortable, greedy, religious head-in-the-sand idiot. But I'm wrong. They are not ALL that way. when I was doing that I was self-righteous. Hey, Brandon, you won't change people by picking stupid battles. You act like you are calmly arguing but it's obvious you are all worked up. Regardless of your stated lack of affiliation, you are high on crashing a party of Dems/liberals. And then, you waltz in ASSUMING that we are all against everything you belief in. It's obvious by now that that is not true. I haven't yet figured out which values you truly believe in and which you aspouse simply to be the opposite of your debasers. you hate to hear people slam Bush LIVE and love to tell people what is appropriate behavior (that sounds right-wing and like an idealogue) AND you also are worried about the future of the planet and resources. I may conclude that you are highly idealistic, care about some left causes, and you want people to be less emotionally involved with parties and make informed decisions (join The Union of Concerned Scientist if you haven't already done so!). You aren't religious yet you have a religious fervor about Americans APPEARING to be united against emenies. you also love judging people, feeling elitist, insisting that people shape up to what YOU want. It was your self-righteous way of introducing yourself that got so many against you.

The basic conflict that started it all: should we hide our true feelings in order to avoid POSSIBLY detrimental consequences in war time?

I believe that most of us who disagreed with Brandon at the start did so because: we enjoy expressing ourselves in this way and it SEEMS to us, pretty harmless. we aren't as confident as Brandon that their world-witnessed expressions will have those consequences that he predicts. Brandon is a type of evangelist who KNOWS better though. I suggest you kindly show us the evidence next time instead of pointing us to the literature after attempting to make us feel like imbeciles. (If you really are thinking about consequences, you should know that the your ends would be better served by other means than those you used.)

Yes, Brandon, then only thing you did to tick me off was try to tell me what to and what not express. I will stand up for expressing myself. And for all you suicide bombers listening in, don't get all excited -- this isn't about politics or religion at all -- it's about personality differences. I don't know what you do for a living, but i would suggest you buy a ruler, get a job in an elementary school, and have fun slapping youngsters on the wrist every time they express some "inappropriate" emotion. You elected yourself the big brother of all us "short-sighted" (what?!) Dems and anti-bushies. What ever you got, you asked for it.

Have you ever considered what has led to the fall of empires like Rome in the past? Don't you think America will suffer the same fate?

Endless discussions like is one sign that the tree is rotting from the inside. No one can see it now, I mean, the tree looks stronger then it ever has. But if you listen closely, when the wind blow you can hear it cracking.

Perhaps I shouldn't be pessimistic about my own country's fate, but what a bunch of saps we've become. That we'd spend so much time on politics is one sure sign our priorities are in the wrong place. That we've become preoccupied with what the rest of the world thinks is one sign that they've have already baited us into a direction our ancestors never wanted us to take.

martha in NC.

You must’ve needed a parachute to jump down off of that soapbox…
“Evil Brandon” wished it had never opened…”Good Brandon” laughed aloud at your pseudo-well-worded comments.
Kudos.

Let’s see…I’m a condescending right-wing, self-righteous, religiously evangelical
intellectual and moral elitist who likes to slap small children and tyrannically oppress the sub-intelligentsia, while suffering from both acute big-brother syndrome and SUV envy.
I think this adequately summarizes your opinion of me.

What’s life like in that glass house? What’s that pile of rocks for?...

In actuality I am none of, nor DO any of, those things.
The horns and cloven hooves you so badly want to believe that I have are mysteriously absent from my anatomy.
I do have a pitchfork though, but I only use it impale puppies and gore the elderly…not really…

You asked me if it is correct that I hate lowly human nature, and for me to properly answer that question, in a manner that would satisfy your curiosity, you would have to define for me exactly what you believe "lowly human nature" to be, and what you mean by “hate”.

Your question did nevertheless cause me to pause and think, though, and for that I thank you.
I thought of how I would best describe my viewpoint of this vague and ragged enigma, “humanity”, our collective past, our present and future.
I typed a bunch of crap, then deleted it...then typed it again.
Then I deleted it again.
Why?
I don't know.
In a tribute to simplicity, I can accomplish this task with but a single word…
“Disappointed.”
…Then I typed it again…
At one point in my life I bought in to the vision that humanity, by way of our multi-faceted and learned enlightenment, would overcome all the “badness” in the world, that we would re-stitch our ill-woven and darkened past to create a
future which I thought could never be utopian to be sure, but at least could be symbiotic. I had faith that we could accomplish this, working together towards the same goal. I was younger then, believing in those aforementioned silly concepts of “good” and “evil”, and I clung to the precept that humans were inherently the former. That all changed for me fairly suddenly, and I remember feeling a sadness over it.
As I grew and my reasoning matured, I realized that even symbiosis is unachievable.
I don’t mourn the loss, anymore.
It’s just a fact.
There are simply too many of us…
All we can do is organize into groups of people with whom we hold similar ideologies, but this of course leads to the “us and them” dilemma, which culminates with planes getting flown into buildings in the name of God, among other things.
The only way to solve these problems is to unify together under one world view.
This will remain impossible as long as religions serve as moral compasses…different religions create different moral compasses.
Religion is the great divider of people.
While the impossibility of a single world view may be slightly disappointing, it is to be expected.
What’s more disappointing, to me anyway, is the apparent inability of humanity to deal with its inherent differences.
Humanity, taken as a whole unit, is a bit of a train wreck.
And it just disappoints me…my original, uneducated hopes, were higher.
It’s as simple as that.
If that’s what you mean by “lowly human nature” then yes, I suppose I find that not quite to my liking.

We can all find comfort in our personal relationships, we can strive to be virtuous and have integrity, construct our lives around
a code of morality of our choosing…we can help each other when help is needed, we can enjoy what we have and do what we can do while we’re here.
And we all should, but for some reason that just doesn’t seem to fix the world’s problems, does it?
No matter how good your intentions are, somebody still wants to kill you.
The honest contemplation of exactly why that statement is true will take you very very long time.
I’m not depressed about it.
I don’t delude myself into thinking I can change it.
But the reality of the situation is still there, waiting to be understood, and I just choose to talk about it frankly.
I would like people to base their opinions and decisions on conclusions that they draw from the independent and lengthy, often-times gut-wrenching stringent re-appraisal of everything they have been taught, to re-evaluate the entirety of the world around them and to escape the bonds of pre-supposition borne of tradition.
Is that too much to ask?
The answer is, “Yes”, apparently.

The majority of your post contains direct personal attacks on me and I really don’t think that the people still reading this thread, if indeed there are any, really care to read along as we spar over what you think I believe in and what kind of person you think I am.
Your assessment of me was over-simplified to an extreme degree, and while I understand this forum, as a vessel to convey complex thoughts and ideas, is fairly inadequate, it is plainly obvious that you scratched it onto the wall with the stone from your sling, David.
I’m not Goliath.

Enough of all of that…
My goal posting on this thread was not to “change people”.
I am aware, as I’m sure we are all, that people only change when they decide to change.
My goal, originally anyway, was to announce myself with a loud bang, and see if I could startle people out of their casual and lowbrow “Bush-whacking”, knowing that a crass post like my first one would either set-off a stream of ridiculous “fuck you” responses, or a stream of interesting and thought-provoking posts.
I accomplished that goal, and as a bonus, the posts became more and more interesting as the days went by.
I think I’m fairly correct in assuming that we all had fun participating…
I know I did…
And I’d like to thank the good people at criticalviewer.com…

Gabe…I agree with everything you said.

John Abbe.
I should confess that I shot from the hip with that “bastard” comment… it’s hard to use the word “narcissist” without immediately following it with “bastard”. They seem to fit together like a good joke at the right time…
No harm no foul.
Yes, I see “roots to current problems that go back to prehistoric times, and
differences among people that I see no way to reconcile.”
I guess that technically, there are ways to reconcile them, but you’d have to be either extremely naïve or an idealist of the purest nature to believe that those ways would ever come to fruition.
I’m neither, so I see the situation as a reciprocal, non-rectifiable situation, perpetuated by the same apothegms that gave rise to it.
I don’t find this to be a source of despair, however…it’s just cold, unbiased truth.
It’s emotionless and it asks nothing from you…it’s there, to be accepted or disbelieved, like all truth, like all reality.
I choose to accept it…perhaps that is my biggest flaw, perhaps my greatest strength.

In conclusion, by the process of elimination, electrons must taste like gravy.

Oh, and I'm an artist.
My profession...since you asked. (kind of).

I will address this to any who may still be reading this thread & wish to continue:
What if the human race made a perceptual mistake a few thousand years ago that resulted in the fear mongering, name calling, mess we confront today? What if we corrected the mistake & started behaving (thinking, communicating & acting) differently? It may take some time & there may not be much of that left, but I have enough idealism & love for the planet to think it worth a try.
The perceptual error I refer to has to do with the 3 monotheistic religions that have, by their influence, so poisoned our minds that it is nearly impossible to think or act in ways that are beyond their reach but let me try.
The roots of Judaism, Christianity & Islam are embedded in the soil of "sin". Traditionally, the source of sin is to be found in the story of "The Fall" located in Chapter 3 of Genesis, written by some mysterious figure referred to as Moses. First lets look at the story.
For the sake of brevity please allow me to paraphrase & condense.
In the beginning, God created everything, including humanity & proclaimed all of it Good. It's worth noting that God is described as both plural & made up of both sexes; "God said let US create man in our image, male & female". The more important point is that from this God's point of view, there is no evil in creation, including humankind. Then comes the 'Garden of Eden".
God creates Adam (generic man) & Eve (generic woman) & places them in an idyllic place telling them to "be fruitful & multiply & to enjoy the fruits of the garden".
Now it gets interesting. God didn't give them 10 commandments or any other long list of do's & don'ts. The only limitation on their behavior was this myterious admonition that they were not to eat of one tree called (this is critical to unravelling the perceptual error) The Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil! They are warned that to touch it or eat of it will cause them to die (not as punishment but as a consequence).
{I have found it helpful to regard this story as a parable of parenting from this point on. It's a little like a parent telling their toddler not to leave the yard & play in the road cause they could be hurt or killed.}
So God's children frolic in the garden without a care in the world until one day they are attracted to the tree by a talking serpent (representing in some ancient traditions the limbic system & wisdom).
The serpent assures them that God has lied to them & they will not die, because God knows that if they eat they will become LIKE God, knowing good & evil. And so their curiosity gets the better of them & they eat.
The result is the beginning of the perceptual error referred to ealrier.
On the face of it, the serpent seems correct, i.e. they don't die. At least not physically. But their perception of themselves, their relationship to their parent & each other is profoundly changed. They look at themselves. notice they are naked & decide that naked is bad. (remember the name of the tree? sure you do, just teasing)
Now, naked wasn't bad to God or to them prior to that moment. So what happened. They had become "like" God. They had taken on the power of deciding good & evil. They had "gained?" wisdom. The fly in the ointment is that they only became "like" God & did not "become" God. In other words, If you are the creator of the universe & everything within it, then you have intimate & unique knowledge of its nature & are therefore in a position to pass judgement about the goodness or badness of any aspect of creation. But God had already done that by proclaiming the entirety of creation Good.
So if you try to judge something without ALL of the information, you're going to screw it up.
But back to the story.
They looked at themselves, saw that they were naked & were suddenly filled with shame, guilt, & fear. They made crude clothes to cover their nakedness & went into hiding.
God comes looking for them & is surprised to find them hiding. There is no hint in the story that God is angry only curious. "Why are you hiding?" "We are afraid because we are naked!" "Who told you that you were naked....ahhh you must have eaten of the fruit I asked you not to eat." (still no hint of anger & here is where the peceptual error is turned into the curse that now threatens to engulf the entire planet in self-fulfilling, apocalyptic fratricide).
When confronted with their disobediance, they could have simply said "yes, we did eat & we are sorry. Forgive us because we don't like these new feelings" But they didn't. Instead they decided to hang on to their new power & turned it on each other & God.
"The man said, 'The woman YOU GAVE ME, tempted me.' (Adam blames Eve & God for his torment). The woman says, the serpent, YOUR CREATURE, tempeted me (Eve blames nature & God).
The wrtten curse that follows must be understood from the new perceptual landscape inhabited by mankind once the decision is made to hold onto the power of playing God, judging good & evil. From that perspective, God is the bad guy (or gal) out to get us. The one (or many) from whom we must hide & to whom we must make endless sacrifices to try to appease what we now assume must be anger at us for our disobediance. Religion is born.
I am convinced that every human misery can be traced to that turning point in our collective history &/or our personal history. We have the option at any time, to let go of our presumed right, some would say obligation, to decide right & wrong, good & evil & accept that we are not & can never be God. It dos not even require that we believe in any God. What it does require is that we admit & accept the consequences of no longer playing god.
I fully realize, on the one hand, how unlikely that is; but I submit it is inevitable for each of us if only on our death beds. How brighter the future if we could be persuaded to do it sooner.

be well my unseen friends!

OK, in perhaps what will be considered a feeble attempt to avoid being castigated as a doomsayer with no suggestions, I’ll list a few top-level things that I think would help bring about a positive change. None of these things are new, others have said them at other times, and I don’t imply that I alone hold some arcane knowledge that will repair the woes of the world and bring the entirety of it’s populace together in harmonious accord.
That disclaimer stated, I’ll also say that I thought the implications of the things I’ve written earlier were obvious, but I suppose that they could be in fact, not so obvious.

First and foremost, I believe it is imperative that religion be removed from the world stage. It has proven to be an embarrassing failure in providing a mass moral code.
Religion is malleably interpretable and humans are corruptible…that’s a bad combination.
The tenets of Christianity alone change more than I change my socks.
I don’t think this is the place for tangencies on religion, but let’s all be blatantly honest here; the bureaucracy of religion has historically and continually hamstrung scientific development, confused and corrupted politics and martyred those who without it we would just consider murderers.
The Palestinian suicide bomber is a murderer to some, a freedom-fighter to others, and a martyr, ordained by god, to die in his service and spend eternity in paradise to others still.
Organized religion is a scourge on humanity for so many reasons; it should therefore be abandoned by us. I’m not suggesting that people abandon their faith, whatever it may be, but I’m saying that it should be a wholly introverted and internal endeavor. Of course, this goes against the very tenets of the world’s three major religions. You people are saying that I’M the one forcing my views on others, assuming that I know what’s best and expecting the world to see things the way I choose to see them…but that can, in fact, be said to be the driving
force behind all religions. The Bible and the Koran both insist that its readers spread the information contained within the two books, indeed that it is a duty to do so, both actually stating that those who don’t choose to accept
that information as truth be punished in of a variety of rather creative ways.
While this may have worked in the 6th – 15th centuries, (if you of course ignore the manifold atrocities committed by both the followers and leaders of the varying religions) while there were still areas left to escape to if you became
the target of religious persecution, it will increasingly become more of an abject absurdity as the Earth is populated by ever more opinionated peoples of various ethic codes and we run out of physical space into which to spread, wielding our fanatical supernatural religions like so many torches that we claim light the world, but which in point of fact lights it on fire and burns it down around us as we greedily spread it.
The futility of achieving this first and vital step to world peace should be obvious to any who ponder it.
And in actuality, the bucks stops here.
Our failure in this regard catalyzes other failures. Unfortunately, martha, it IS about religion, and politics, as those are both simply titles with which we have codified our primary belief structures.
Personality differences are branches of those bigger trees, as all differences first started with similarities. You and I were once blank slates, it was our environments and our upbringings and our influences that changed us,
which were themselves ultimately created by others, who were in turn influenced by others on down the line ad infinitum. To simply pass the issue off as “personality differences” is to refuse to conceptualize the entirety of the situation, and this is what mean when I say things like “gut-wrenching and stringent re-appraisal of everything they have been taught…”

However, I will continue.
American partisan politics.
Not working.
A written debate of global politics could fill literally thousands of books, and indeed it does.
Here’s an interesting exercise:
Look up “partisan” on dictionary.com
What you will find is pure irony.
“A weapon having a blade with lateral projections”… “A fervent, sometimes militant supporter or proponent of a party”…
“A member of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy”…
“Adherent to a party or faction; especially, having the character of blind, passionate, or unreasonable adherence to a party”
Blind adherence.
If that’s what “partisan” means, why double your agony with Bipartisanism?
How do we fix it? If I knew I’d be fixing it.
I’m sorry John Abbe, I don’t have an ironclad documented plan…nobody does.
I’m researching that plan, I’m attempting to learn all I can, but other people have done the same long before me. They came to the same conclusion that I’ve come to I think…it’s just not a reasonable feasibility, so they downgraded
and what they ended up with was our current system.
That is quite daunting.
I suppose we should start by just rebooting the whole system, leveling the field, starting over.
We need a ruling council that can adequately and simultaneously handle both foreign and domestic affairs.
We need to disincentivise corruption…blah blah blah and all those other clichés that we are all very familiar with.
I could type a laundry list that would bore us all, as could any of us.
The fact is that we all KNOW what needs to be done. We all know what kind society we want to be a part of. Finding the fortitude to actually make it happen is where we really need to focus.
And that fortitude will only come by completely casting off all prior restraints and failed or failing ideals.
The solution transcends the problem, I’m afraid, rendering it frustratingly unsolvable, as I have eluded to in prior posts.

kelley.

Good post.
I'm slightly confused, though.
Do you believe in the Adam/Eve myth or are you using it metaphorically?
I most certainly agree with the first couple of paragraphs you wrote, and we must have been typing our responses at the same time, as my lastest post has some of the same sentiments in it.

"self-fulfilling, apocalyptic fratricide".
I love that line. ;)

Brandon

Just a quick comment that your quote ("War is a blessing, compared to national degradation." -Andrew Jackson) would carry more gravitas if it was uttered by someone of more sterling character. Andrew Jackson's support of the forced removal of the Cherokee nation is one of the most shameful events in our nation's history, and was widely condemned even at the time. Over 4,000 people died.

And as to the general tone of anti-religiosity in some of the posts, I would encourage you to look a little deeper at history. Religion can exist as a spiritual commitment, or it can exist as a cultural identity. When it is expressed only as a cultural identity, all manner of mayhem can ensue. When it is expressed as a spiritual commitment, there can still be mayhem, depending on the tenets of the religion, but there an also be undeniable good as well. The anti-slavery and civil rights movements were grounded in religion; most of the pacifist movements of the last three or four hundred years were driven by religious belief. Most wars are driven by some malignant sense of honor, rather than the call to personal humility most religions provide. Actually, refer back to the Jackson quote. When people utter "Death before dishonor", they really mean the death of the other guy.

brandon,
Though we've traveled different paths, you & I seem to have arrived in the same general neighborhood, metaphorically &/or metaphysically speaking.
It's unusual to find anyone willing to make the journey, but I began to sense in your more recent posts & those of other respondents that here were some folks willing to look beyond the mind numbing circular arguments that typify most contemporary discussions.

I generally refrain from getting involved in these forays for that & other reasons.
As to my "belief" in the Adam & Eve myth....(you may be sorry you asked).

By what I must assume to be an accident of birth, I find myself living in a culture & time dominated in every respect by a world view deeply rooted in biblically derived notions of who we are & how we should think. My personal history led me to be "immersed" in southern/american baptist interpretations of biblical stuff, thus providing my first taste of things metaphysical. Though that experience whetted my appetite, it ultimately left me desparately hungry. It did, however provide some very intriguing clues that I determined to pursue wherever they led.

It was within that context that I had several psycho/social/spiritual experiences that
persuaded me for a time to pursue ordained ministry. Consequently, at age 18 I began to pursue every avenue open to me that would contribute to that end. The next 15 years or so embroiled me in "christian culture" at several levels: sunday school teacher, sunday school superintendant, chaplain's assistant aboard an aircraft carrier, supply pastor to small churches in central Ohio that had no full time pastor, licensed by one such church to serve as their full time pastor for 2 1/2 years, youth pastor at a large baptist church, BA degree in religion with a focus on biblical studies at a liberal arts college, became a methodist lay minister, worked for 2 years with a christian based crisis telephone intervention service, etc.
As far back as I can remember, I have been unwilling to accept half answers to whole questions. But that is precisely what is offered up in most of what passes for institutions of higher learning or churches in this culture.
One of the whole questions I began to struggle with about 30 years ago was the precise nature of "sin". Following a very frutrating encounter with a retired fundamentalist minister & his family, I spent 3 or 4 very intense days immersed in bible lore. The conclusion I arrived at was that if there were such a thing as the "anti-christ", the institutional church was it. That in turn, led me to take a long hard look at how when & where the "bible" came into existence. I won't pursue those details for now but that in turn led me to a new (at least new to me) way of understanding & appreciating the authors of biblical writings. Moses became critical because his writings started the whole shebang.
I began taking an anthropological approach to the bible & its characters. Which is to say, trying to set aside all previous bias I might have about the writings & attempt to walk in their shoes.

What I concluded about Moses was that here was an exceptional intellect writing incredibly sophisticated stuff at a time in history when only a handful of people would have the kind of education needed to do that. So whether he was in the Pharoah's household or not, this was someone who had a pharoah's understanding of how religion works as a means of holding power over entire civilizations. The Adam & Eve story provides incredible insight into the very heart & soul of Judaism & all that follows. So do I believe in it? Not as historic fact but that kind of truth is hard to find anywhere else. And in a culture & time so bound to that concept of sin, everyone owes it to themselves to understand as best they can, how the system works & where it came from & then work like hell to get free of it.

told you you'd be sorry! :)
k

edtekker...

Character is a nebulous trait that is open to a great deal of conjecture.
If you're an American, you are here in this country primarily (meaning "ultimately") because of the actions of a few men of "less than sterling character" during the 14th and 15th centuries, who slaughtered countless hundreds of thousands of native "New Worlders", primarily because they believed that they had a certain inalienable right and were themselves ordained by god.
Consider the following quote, since we're back on quotes again:

"...We come to conquer this land by his command, that all may come to a knowledge of God and of His Holy Catholic Faith; and by reason of our good mission, God, the creator of Heaven and Earth, and all things in them, permits this, in order that you may know him and come out from the bestial and diabolical life that you lead. It is for this reason that we, being so few in number, subjugate that vast host. When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of His Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian..."

-Exerpts from eyewitness accounts of Francisco Pizzaro's subjugation of Emperor Atahuallpa on November 16th, 1532 at Cajamarca, Peru, taken from "Guns, Germs, And Steel (The Fates of Human Societies)" by Jared Diamond.

I am quite sure that Pizarro's compatriots did not view him as anything less than a holy soldier of God, working God's divine plan.
Of course, now, since time has passed and we think we've morally improved, some would look down upon Pizzaro's actions as barbaric.
Yet that does not change the fact that they were committed in the name of God...the same god Christians and Jews pray to today.
I find that markedly ironic and more than a little bit hypocritical.
The point I am making is that the quality of character is indeed in the eyes and in the heart of the beholder. Suicide bombers are both revered and hated, for the exact same, but yet exact opposite reason...such is the nonsensicality of religion.

kelley...
Very interesting post, again, and we have more in common than you might think.
I grew up in a very similar environment to the one you have described.
It sounds like you have led a very intriguing life, and that you've fully explored the topics about which you speak.
I have done the same, and strive continually to do so.
We are a rare breed, it seems.
We are in agreement...if not 100%, damn close.

And I'm not sorry I asked at all... ;)

What else ya got? :)

brandon,
Glad to see you're still aboard. And since you've asked, there may be a couple more items that would interest you.
As I pursued my interest in moses & his writings in my effort to better understand the spiritual & political underpinnings of the judeao/Christian culture, another overlooked or unexplored dimension to this person came into play.
First, it's important to remember that the only written record of what transpired between Moses, the Hebrews (or Israelites) & the Egyptians is Moses own account or at least is attributed to Moses. It is also the case, that the entire history of the Hebrew people from Adam & Eve up to the exodus from Egypt & their relationship with "the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob", is written by or attributed to Moses. It is probably the case, agreed to by most biblical scholars, that other writers after Moses, added to & edited the Pentateuch to suit their own particular interests or the interests of those they represented. But in any case there is an estimated 400 year gap between the time that Abraham responds to God's "call" & is given title to the land now known as Israel or Palestine (depending on political/cultural/religious preferences) & the time that moses is writing about it. So that for all intents & purposes, someone, be it Moses or later writers, take what may or may not have been some fragments or oral history from a remnant of bedoin tribesman living on the outskirts of Egypt at the height of its power in that region & use those stories to lay the foundation for the Land of Israel.
The thing that came to intrigue me the most about the Moses story is Moses account of his conversation with God on mt.Sinai (the burning bush story). As I said earlier, it can be inferred that Moses came from a very erudite background. At least one researcher suggests he may have been a priest in a monotheistic cult in Egypt that fell out of favor & left him unemployed & perhaps with an ax to grind. In any case, here is a relatively young , well educated man living with bedoins in the Sinai dessert for, who knows what, reason. One might presume that he would be undergoing some psychic stress related to his fallen state. Then one day he observes something strange on the mountain, goes to investigate & has, what amounts to, a psychotic breakdown. At least that's what we would call it today. But so-called primitive people have a different appreciation for such phenomenon. They tend to regard them as sacred events, opportunities for divine inspiration & often treat the recipients with great respect, deference & even awe.
In Moses case, their is an especially fascinating drama that unfolds that, at least in my mind, has not been fully appreciated or explored without the bias of religion getting in the way.
Moses hears his name being called; understands that he is being addressed by some divine being; is ordered by this divinity to return to Egypt & deliver the Israelites from captivity. When Moses protests that he cannot speak well God informs him not to worry. God's plan is that Moses' brother Aaron (of the tribe of Levy) will be Moses prophet or spokesmsn. In fact, what he is told is that he will be as God to Aaron, the Israelites & Egyptians. When Moses asks God what he is to tell the people of Israel or the Egyptians when they ask the name of the God that has sent him, the response is "I AM THAT I AM, tell them I AM sent me."
That has always intrigued me but if you once understand the premise that Moses is to be as God to Aaron & that Aaron is to speak on his (Moses)behalf, it make perfect sense.
Picture Aaron coming to regard Moses as God (how that happens is not an explicit part of the story). Picture their first encounter with either the Egyptians or the Israelites. Moses is there but not speaking directly to anyone except Aaron. Aaron, his prophet is speaking for him. The question arises, who is this god you claim to have sent you? The answer, "I AM"!

The shortest most powerful sentence in human language & the one name for god of the many they used that Judaism made so holy that no one beyond Moses would ever be allowed to speak it.

For all intents & purposes, Moses became the first God of Israel. The pentateuch (aka Torah or The Law) came from Moses according to Jewish tradition. As referenced above, Moses was seen by the people he liberated as GOD. The religion he forged is an almost exact duplicate of the religions that flourished in Egypt. The Pharoah was god on earth. Moses was God on earth. The priests in Egypt were the power behind the Pharoahs because they were the ones who made the rules that governed all life in Egypt. They were the richest & most powerful class in Egypt next to the pharoah but they operated behind the scenes. You had to be born into the priest caste in Egypt, it was not a position you could aspire to. In Moses case, his brother became not only his prophet, but the first in line of the priestly caste, the family of Levy. Only men born into the Levite clan could serve as priests in the Theocracy created by Moses. And according to the rules created by Moses &, presumably his brother Aaron, the sacrifices & tithes that were required of every Israelite were to be delivered to the Levites for their support & that of the the widow, the orphan & the visitor or guest. And those tithes & offerings were to be from the best of what the worshipper had to offer.
I think it is safe to say that all references in the Torah to "The Lord your God" are references to Moses.
Whatever Moses personal beliefs may have been regarding a creator God beyond the ken of man, the religious community & culture he created & established at the juncture of one of the most critical trade routes in the known world was a stroke of genius. One can easily get lost in the mind boggling details of the Torah, but if you take the long view & focus on the critical dynamics I have just described, it is not only a compelling story but contains a wealth of anthropological, sociological, psychological & indeed spiritual gems waiting to be mined.
The I AM factor has one more fascinating chapter in biblical lore I want to touch on before closing.
The life & teachings of Jesus fascinate me. One of the most fascinating & mysterious elements in his story has to do with hints that, when questioned by the high priest the night before his crucifixion, regarding his true identity, Jesus used that forbidden 2 word name for God. I AM in response to the question, are you the son of God? This is the blasphemy referred to in rather veiled terms in the gospels that leads to the High priest tearing his robe & condeming Jesus to death. It also has incredibly powerful implications because there are also hints buried within the gospels that Jesus primary message to his disciples was that not only was he, Jesus, the son of God, but that indeed we are all sons & daughters of God & that the only thing that prevents us from claiming that identity & enjoying a new relationship with our "Parent Creator God" free of fear, guilt & shame, is our reluctance to let go of our old identity bound to the Mosaic Law that condems us to indentured servitude of a Religion that brands us as being sinful by nature.
It is also the case that no idea can be more dangerous in the minds of the powers that be. If people are no longer afraid of death, they can no longer be governed with fear.
I AM, YOU AM, WE AM.......Yes Maam!

k

After reading much of this I've decided that Brandon needs to get a life.

that opinion isn't surprising coming from an egg-laiden fish ovary.

brandon, thank you for sharing your thoughts. and bringing this to another level. whether these people agree with you or not, you've made people think.

I'd go back even earlier and broader than kelley. Not as far back as when people first started killing each other (that goes back to pre-humanity, ape tribes have been known to wipe other tribes out - again Jared Diamond, in The Third Chimpanzee). IMHO the problem was when people first started to *justify* killing or otherwise hurting one another (perhaps to avoid guilt?).

Daniel Quinn sees the origins of our confusion as going back to the time of intensive food production, and offers an interpretation of the fall and the Cain & Abel story in Ishmael - i wrote a little on that and Jesus over here: http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?RedemptiveLoveAndOriginalNonSin

I grew up atheist, became a grudging agnostic by sheer logic, and have only recently become really open to faith/belief beyond mechanistic materialism. I am also culturally Christian, having grown up in the U.S., so biblical stories have meaning for me at least as metaphor. And i think that talking about religion in the right way can help to reduce the dogma about it.

[kelley, i'm not sure i got the bit about Moses and I AM - is it that there was something convincing to them that he claimed to be God? Anyway, i get the power of Jesus taking it up and offering divinity to everyone :). Also, i haven't read it, but from following Douglas Rushkoff's blog, i know i will eventually read Nothing Sacred, his fresh/old look at Judaism - may be interesting]

However and whenever our collective confusion started, imho there has been a long development of mutually supportive beliefs which now plague *all* of the populous cultures of the world, all of which have a history of conquering and hierarchy (that's how they got populous). The specific illusions may look different in different cultures; my list so far is here: http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?IllusionsOfDominationCulture

Walter Wink and Riane Eisler write about the origins and dynamics of domination thinking, from a Christian and anthropological/feminist perspective respectively. I'd love to hear about others', especially non-Western, ideas in this regard.

Domination beliefs/stories are lived out not just by religions, but also by governments, businesses, schools, media, etc., and believing them makes people act in ways that make them seem true. Reform movements appear regularly in these institutions, and are regularly dumbed down and/or subverted - e.g. Buddha & Jesus' original teachings; and you can see it already happening with Gandhi. Whether it's feasible for there to ever be a radical enough reform movement that it really sticks and grows to transform everyone i don't know, but that won't keep me from trying :)

brandon - Thanks for offering what you've got, i wasn't looking for an ironclad documented plan (i'd probably worry more if you had one :). And thank you for your intervention in the bushwhacking to get a much more connecting and imho useful conversation going here. Plan-wise, i'm hearing you'd have some hope if we could eliminate/reduce religion, partisanship and corruption.

If by religion you mean dogma, i'm all with you. Partisanship, corruption, sure. The trick of course, is how? I totally agree on the value of fortitude in this endeavour, would add creativity, and a more specific bit i've found useful:

I practice a sort of aikido of social interaction (Nonviolent Communication), that assumes that there is positive intent behind every word, thought and deed. When i am faced with someone and my first reaction is WTF! i've learned to listen for that positive intent, and if it seems like it would help connect us, to reflect it back to them. For example:

"I think we Christians should just wipe out all the Muslims!"

I might guess, "you really want the people you know to be safe, hunh?"

"Yeah, and those Muslims just want us all converted or dead, so we have to defend ourselves."

Me: "You're not seeing any other way to protect us, is that it?"

If this can be done long and well enough (and it's *hard work* for most of us to learn how), then their attention is on what they really want, and they can see that i genuinely want that for them (if i'm not genuine then i need to go get help myself before dialoguing with them). Then i can start to offer my values that would be frustrated by the strategy they're suggesting, and offer alternatives. No doubt that may trigger a new response, and on we go. Shifts may not come quickly or easily, but it's much more likely to go somewhere fruitful than me simply arguing or walking away.

OMG

:: quote ::
:: IMHO the problem was when people
:: first started to *justify* killing
:: or otherwise hurting one another
:: (perhaps to avoid guilt?).
:: end quote ::

How naive. When a single-cell animal ate another single-cell animal, do you think he felt guilty? LOL He was just hungry.

The consciousness you speak of came much latter. More advanced animals acquired skills like planning and reasoning. Teamwork is useful and entire societies developed with laws like "thou shall not steal from each other" and "thou shall not kill each other". Members of those societies had to worry less about protecting their own life and belongings. They could spend their time on more useful endeavors and thus the society progressed beyond others.

People who broke the community's rules might feel guilty if they liked some of the people in the community. They know...or sense...they've broken something valuable.

I'm glad this discussion has turned philosophical. However, is everyone here under the assumption that there is something wrong with the human psyche? Something that needs to be corrected if people are going to be happy?

Religion is, by its nature, exclusionary.

Brandon and Kelley are in love.

Everything goes in cycles, hence, our civilization will also become history, and it's looking like sooner rather than later.

I love philosophy, but

Bush is the worst president this country has ever had because Cheney is the one in power, and his shadow government has acted again and again above the law, which no one in the United States seems to be able to do anything about. If another attack occurs in the U.S., I'm afraid a police state will ensue.

Isn't that how Hitler got his start?

And what about those delusional Christian fundamentalists that are cheering on the day when their "Rapture" occurs?

Religion sucks. Spirituality rocks.

But Bush still rules. If he is re-elected, watch how fast that draft is put back into action.

Sorry for the disjointed rants.

Thank god you took out all his stupid parts. As a Canadian, I really can't understand why my favourite shows were pre-empted to watch him sweat. I loved my 15 year olds comment, "Dude looks pretty nervous, What did he do?"

Oh My! Now I know why I don't do this very often.

To John Abbe, Gabe & Lunalf - The issue before us is political power.
The common denominator of everyone who logged onto this site & commented is deep frustration, fear & anger over the fact that George Bush &/or Dick Cheney have political power & are using it in incredibly destructive ways.
1) Political power exists when one person or group makes rules (laws) that other persons or groups are expected to abide by.
2) The use of power can be characterized in a variety of ways (good/bad, right/wrong, democratic/dictatorial, etc,). I happen to believe that the most helpful way to characterize the use of power is healthy/unhealthy because those terms are less pejorative & focus on the effects rather than the perpetrators thus allowing for a more constructive discussion. (Venting has it's place but if all we're going to do is curse the darkness, the light will forever elude us.)
3) The first time & place that every human being experiences power is in our families. I would argue that every family is by nature a theocracy in every sense of the word. A man & woman mate & "create" a child. In every practical sense of the word, the parents are as God to the child throughout it's infancy. From that child's perspective the parent's (his or her creators) are all knowing, all powerful, all seeing & hold both the survival & future of that child in their hands. It doesn't even matter if the parents understand their role in this way or not. The dynamics speak for themselves.(hence my erlier biblical refernces to moses the I AM God)
4) The child must depend on the parents not only for their physical sustenance but for about 95% of what that young human will come to believe about the world they inhabit. The child's pysche will be shaped by the language of their parents, the emotional climate of the home, the economic circumstances of the parents, the beliefs, prejudices & preferences of their parents well before they recognize they have any choice in those matters.
5)At about age 2 most children discover choice in the form of the word NO. It is, arguably, the most powerful word in the human language as it puts the parental Gods on notice that their power has limits. How parents respond to that challenge will have a profound & lifelong effect on both their ongoing relationship with that emerging person & that person's relationships with everyone else they meet; most importantly, other authority figures, their own future mate & children.
6) Rules become the focus of the family once the child learns to say no. Government is born. (For the moment I'm suspending the question of what "rules" may have been at play in the relationship of mom & dad.)
7) If the parents have a healthy relationship with each other (I choose to define healthy in this instance as an unconditional love & respect for each other, free of fear, that places the other person's happiness & well being above their own) then it increases the likeliehood that they will treat their offspring the same way. Therefore, whatever rules are in play will be premised on a compassionate concern for the overall health of this smaller person. Ideally, that would include an appreciation of the fact that they (the parents) are only temporaily God (The Lawgiver)& that the developing person in their care must be helped to understand that & creatively encouraged to begin making their own laws including laws or rules that govern how this person will interact with persons outside the protection of the family.
8) An unhealthy family ruled by fear will tend to be abusive & produce unhealthy rules that seek to control & maipulate the children to serve the needs of the parents. Such a home will produce children ruled by fear with a deep & abiding need to control & manipulate & hurt others.

In a healthy family or society, information is shared openly & eagerly because it is understood as necessary to the healthy development & participation of its members. Unhealthy homes or governments are characterized by deception & secrecy driven by fear of the other. Repression, brutality & war are the inevitable results.

So, what to do when confronted with a repressive parent or government?
A healthy parent or government understands & accepts that the power they have over the infant or the governed must be used for their benefit & development & must be relinquished over time by educating the governed into an appreciation of their own power & standing in the world. To that parent or government, NO will not be seen as a threat but as an opportunity to begin that education.
It is regrettable but true that unhealthy parents or governments can only become healthy if they are confronted with compassion. If they are confronted out of anger & fear, their view of the world will be reinforced & the reaction will be more repression. Repressive parents & governments can be & have been overthrown by force. That is what got us to where we are. Until we can learn to say no to our parents or children without hating or fearing them, we have no hope of saying no to our government in a way that will bring real hope & health to the world.

be well my unseen friends!

Repressive government? LOL Just as long as they don't repress my paycheck with new taxes, they're doing pretty good by my book.

Socialists and cry-babies looking for handouts are the repressive force in modern democratic societies. It is one area where democracy can fail. People have a tendancy to want something without earning it, and by giving power to the masses, democracy can realize this tendancy on a grand scale. If people are stupid enough, they can vote themselves right into economic oblivion.

Gabe wrote: "When a single-cell animal ate another single-cell animal, do you think he felt guilty? LOL He was just hungry."

I'm getting the vague sense that you want me to see thinigs as they are, Gabe, but i'm not really sure. I don't believe single-celled critters feel guilt, which is why i don't imagine them coming up with righteousness. Humans do feel guilt, and (i hypothesize) invented righteousness.

Gabe: "is everyone here under the assumption that there is something wrong with the human psyche? Something that needs to be corrected if people are going to be happy?"

I don't think there's anything wrong with the human psyche. I do believe there are some aspects of all - or nearly all - human cultures which if changed would result in dramatic improvements in people's survival and thrival, er, thriving.

More later, i'm on a limited connection...

No one died
When Clinton lied.

"No one died when clinton lied..."

Oh, how so very cute, Womanoflittleimportance.
Too bad it is a blatant falsehood.
People were dying all throughout president clithead's reign of buffoonery.
Let me just pose one such example and then extrapolate it out to our current woes:

Sierra Leone.

President Clinton, apparently interested in more selfish issues, choose to ignore the situation in Sierra Leone all through the 1990s.
Apart from the obvious atrocities that were occurring in that country, there was a much more sinister underlying vein of wrongdoings that would have disastrous consequences in the near future, for you see, the very same terrorists that you democrats love to pin on Bush's shoulder of responsibility were using the illegal Sierra Leonean diamond trade to fund and forge the then nascent memes that would eventually lead to 09.11.2001...after many practice runs...one in Yemen on the Cole, others in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania...

While it is very easy for simple minds to spin simple rhymes, they fall miserably short of grasping and conveying the deeper and complex meanings that they seek to trivialize.

President Clinton's lack of action in the 90s only added to a long string of similar inaction in the past.
We are where we are now because of that inaction, and because of the ignorance and arrogance of the American populace.

Brandon,

Boy, you've been blowing me away for quite a few hours now. You've got it right buddy. I've been telling people for years that organized religion is the root of all our world's social problems.

However, I disagree with your idea that all political parties are essentially the same and have no meaning or consequence to society. I, as yourself am a free thinker and I just naturally gravitated to liberal politics and I am proud to be called a Democrat or Liberal. Hey, we aren't perfect and actually I wish sometimes there was another party that would even more perfectly express my ideals. Brandon, you're a real smart guy and you must have noticed that the right wing party (the Rebublicans) have become more and more influenced by these extreme Christian Fundamentalists and their crazy religious agenda. They would most definitely like to tear down that part of our contitution which seperates church and state amoung many other things. In other words they want to have greater power to force their ideas down our throats.

Most if not all of the modern American social progress in this country is due to a lot of hard work by Democrats down through the years. You know stuff like: Progressive Taxation, Social Security, Medicare, The G.I. Bill, College Student Programs, etc.,etc..etc. What are the Republican known for? .... McCarthyism, Watergate and fighting all the modern programs the Democrats propose. Ooops, I forgot Military spending. Hey, I'm sure they'd love to go back to the gilded era days of the Rockefellers and Carnegies back when there was no middle class. Yeah, poor and very, very, very rich is a real neat deal .... for the very, very, very rich. We are the only modern industrialized country in the world that doesn't have a national health care system. We should be ashamed of that. And who's been fighting it all these years ... Not the Democrats. Look, we Democrats are not perfect and we don't have a perfectly ideal party but we've made a decision that this party is the best that's available and can lead the country in a better direction. Look, Clinton made mistakes. I'm sure all the Democratic and Republican presidents have made their fair share of mistakes. But this George W. Bush is not a smart man and it is very scary to have a not so smart guy in charge of the United States Of America. He is in my opinion making a lot of very bad judgement calls. That's what these people were expressing in their original posts. This guy is not smart enough to be President.

And womanoflittleimportance DID make a very good point when she said "No one died when Clinton lied". Yeah, I know it's a corny rhyming cliche but she was obviously saying lies about sex are not as nearly as important as lies about a needles war in Iraq that Bush dragged us into on false pretenses. You then proceeded to take the argument off into an unrelated tangent. You can't really be saying that the supposed Sierra Leonean thing, if it is true, is related to the blow job Clinton got from Monica in the oval office.

I'll close by saying again how impressed I was with your eloquent remarks on the state of religion and its universal social ramifications. For the life of me I don't understand why you don't consider yourself a liberal being the free thinker you obviously are.

Freddybear

.

Regan Nomicks...

While (almost) funny, your remarks were obviously a slam on my portrayal of Bill Clinton's presidency, using dripping sarcasm in a type of reverse psychology to both attempt to prove me wrong and yourself right.
Look, the point, again, is so very simple:
Presidents serve one purpose and one purpose only...to be the target of blame for all the country’s woes for either 4 or 8 years.
It's not Bush's fault alone we are at war...it's the whole machine behind him, his counselors, his cabinet, his politically sympathetic senators and congressman. Likewise, all of the supposedly angelic happenstances of the Clinton era were also not his "fault". These things happened because of the combined efforts of his administration.
As I have blatantly said in earlier posts, a president of this country is simply a figurehead. Unfortunately, we have far surpassed the days when one man of omnipotent power ruled over his domain with an iron fist, unfettered by special interests and political leanings…we have supposedly advanced morally beyond that point.
I said it before…it really doesn’t matter who you put in the White House (I say “you” purposely…I refuse to participate in this broken system…).
Rep or Dem…they ARE all the same, ultimately.

Freddybear…
No, I am not suggesting that because Clinton got a blowjob in the Oval Office the atrocities in Sierra Leone occurred.
However, democrats love to think that our current woes are the amalgamated fault of republicans.
They are not.
The situation our nation faces in 2004 is simply our legacy of numerous past leadership flaws…LEADERship…leave bipartisanism aside…
The atrocities in Sierra Leone DID happen, Al Qaeda DID use the illegal diamond trade there to amass funds, these funds were utilized later to
mobilize the plans that culminated with 09.11.2001.
(And there are numerous other global hotspots occuring right now, and that have occured in the past, that our government ignores, either purposely or out of ignorance...) The buzz going around our government now is “why didn’t bush stop 9.11?...who’s to blame?”
I’m asking you all to realize the bigger picture…why didn’t Clinton stop 9.11?
Why didn’t Reagan…and on down the line.
The answer is simple and obvious:
It would have been impossible to stop 9.11, because even had past presidents attempted to act on any knowledge they may have had,
the American public would have collectively shit the proverbial brick.
Human “rights” organizations would have been up in arms, picket lines on the Whitehouse lawn, a Million Hippy March…etc…
As I have stated earlier, Americans are REactive, not PROactive, I noted that nothing has changed in this regard since 12.07.1941.
…And as a sidebar, I was actually shocked that nobody in this forum challenged me on that statement…
Anyway, the American public would never have allowed pre-emptive action in 1991 against a handful of countries that few people even know about to destroy a group of terrorists before the word “terrorists” had the apocalyptic meaning that it does now.
And the absolutely maddening truth of the matter is that even after what has transpired in the last 3 years, Americans STILL do not have the
fortitude to do what needs to be done to accomplish the goal we all want to accomplish.
I’m telling you it is absolutely sickening and I actually loose sleep at night raging over it.

Thanks for your kind words Freddybear.
ABOLISH RELIGION!
FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS WORSHIP MYTHS!!

And again...here's a few enlightening books:

"Why Terrorism Works" by Alan M. Derschowitz.

"Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos" by Robert D. Kaplan

"The Crisis Of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror" by Bernard Lewis
(actually, Bernard Lewis has written a whole slew of very informative books on middle eastern culture and its ramifications...)

"Blood Diamonds: Tracing The Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones" by Greg Campbell.

"Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror" by Douglas Farah

"Guns, Germs And Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond.

Abolish all religions, except the ones YOU happen to believe in, right? Perhaps the religion where you deem yourself to be God!

Clinton is the reason that the slaves got freed and women got the vote too. He found a time machine and went back in time; prove it didn't happen.

--------------------------------

What a bunch of garbage.

You folks need to smoke a little less crack.

vavoom.

Pure tripe.
Your intellect is infinitesimal.
Prove it isn't.