DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: domer on December 21, 2006, 04:02:23 PM
-
Hoping Bush decides wisely on the course herein out in Iraq, one fact stands out as essential: he must rally the nation for the effort. Unlike BT's libel on the American electorate, the problem is not our lack of couage but Bush's lack of wisdom. It is a problem of leadership, not followership. Among the measures, aside from the rhetorical, would be to specify and require, to the extent it can be done, sacrifices which will promote the effort unquestionably. A war tax on the top earners and wealth-possessors is but one suggestion among many.
-
Hoping Bush decides wisely on the course herein out in Iraq, one fact stands out as essential: he must rally the nation for the effort. Unlike BT's libel on the American electorate, the problem is not our lack of couage but Bush's lack of wisdom. It is a problem of leadership, not followership. Among the measures, aside from the rhetorical, would be to specify and require, to the extent it can be done, sacrifices which will promote the effort unquestionably. A war tax on the top earners and wealth-possessors is but one suggestion among many.
Domer,
My agreement with you suggestions would only be the beginning if I had the "president's" ear. Repealing all the tax cuts would be an imperative with all the restored revenue used solely for the deficit and Social Security. The threat of terrorism is in a distant second to the threat our debt poses.
When you posed your question to the conservatives and Bush supporters on their views, none heeded the call. It seems they are lost in Bush's, pardon my crudity, bullshit. For nearly four years, it has sufficed to hear Bush's platitudes and simplistic rhetoric to keep their minds off the reality. Now the reality is on the front page and the normal stopgaps of blaming the media and the dissentors are failing. The sight of rats jumping from the ship has them palpitating. And broad rhetoric about forthcoming plans and "victory" do not address car bombs killing 30, 40, 50 at a time nor do they accomplish any of the goals that they have accepted as each new one was handed down.
My given nature is to swing to hyperbole but believe me when I say that it is my firm belief that we are seeing Bush entering his own version of LBJ's and Nixon's periods of delusion, paranoia, desperation. I envision Bush muttering to himself and having soliquies in front of paintings of former holders of the office of POTUS. In a discussion about the situation with my wife, I even went so far as to postulate Bush in Oswald's shoes as he made his way to the Texas Theatre perhaps coming to the realization that something has gone wrong and he, in fact, is realizing that he was been made to be the patsy and seeing walls closing in on him.
His true believers see this or at the very least sense it in some undefined deja vu effect and are only responding with what has worked before. Their old song and dance falls flat. Their total control is gone and their dross is not spun by every talking head and all they can do is dance as fast as they can and hope to get offstage before the tomatoes start flying.
-
Colorful and cogent, Brass, if a bit hyperbolic. Or is Bush's losing grip a matter we should put on our radar screens, not in the sense that he might become nutty (but who knows?) but in the sense that he might find himself so "conflicted" that he reverts once again to simple-mindedness, a simple-mindedness not necessarily divorced from his personal interest: the last stand for a legacy?
-
It seems they are lost in Bush's, pardon my crudity, bullshit.
Or, then again, it might be we're sick and tired of being insulted for our "inane" posts.
-
Your use of statistics in the instance I commented upon WAS inane. Deal with it. The object is free and fair comment. With that in mind, I'm willing to defend the comment, along these lines: the feckless regurgitation of "facts" without any meaningful connective narrative or theme is useless in intellectual discourse.
On the matter of rankling comments in general, the founder of this very board, contrary to all evidence, real or conceivable, said that certain statements (mine) on the present Iraq situation were "nothing but smoke and mirrors" and had an ulterior political motive. Now, that is an (untrue) insult, yet I can move beyond it (until I get a clear shot at the "Iceland sailor").
-
Unlike BT's libel on the American electorate, the problem is not our lack of couage but Bush's lack of wisdom. It is a problem of leadership, not followership.
What a crock. It does not matter who the pitchman is for the crux of the matter to be valid. I stand by my charge.
-
We can all be agreed that Bush would be universally acclaimed as wise if he did everything "MY" way.
My way for me , your way for you.
-
I stand by my statement. Let's put it to a vote. I'm even willing to dip my finger in purple ink. And parenthetically, a simple declamation is not argument, it's the arrogance of true believers.
-
There is such a thing as objective truth. I studied all about it at a leading Catholic college, and those Catholics know the truth when they see it.
-
I'm sure you know all about arrogance.
-
I have a passing acquaintance, much to my dismay. But arrogance must be discounted to the extent it is offset by good sense.
-
I have a passing acquaintance, much to my dismay. But arrogance must be discounted to the extent it is offset by good sense.
I am gtlad that you have enough good sense to inoculate yourself against arrogance .
That must be a very large amount of sense.
-
Whatever I may be, I am not a destructively arrogant person, unlike Bush and Cheney.
-
the feckless regurgitation of "facts" without any meaningful connective narrative or theme is useless in intellectual discourse.
I see. Quoting statistics is "feckless" if they disagree with your point, but valid when they agree with your point.
Nah, you're not arrogant.
::)
-
Whatever I may be, I am not a destructively arrogant person, unlike Bush and Cheney.
Geez, now you are posting like Knute. Nice method of keeping your arrogance in check, nothing to be prideful of there.
-
Your use of those statistics was feckless because it obscured the point being debated rather than elucidating it. At best it introduced a distracting tributary into the flow.
-
Whatever I may be, I am not a destructively arrogant person, unlike Bush and Cheney.
What are Bush and Cheny destructive of?
Due to arrogance?
The set of the Democratic party has struck me as arrogant for quite a while because they act as if they were the embodyment of all virtue, all unityu should be striveing in the direction of their program , all disunity is a result of the other half's backwardness.
-
It's your mirror, not mine.
By the way, Bush and Cheney, most notably, were arrogant in their conception of the Iraq war, their method of persuading the country to follow their belligerent impulses, and their unbelievable course of denial-in-the-face-of-facts, which caused them to botch the occupation completely. You don't have to be smart to be arrogant; a foolish "pipeline to God" or an unrenerated tendency to solipsism, in this case the inability to see beyond one's own limited thoughts, will do quite nicely.
-
"...the inability to see beyond one's own limited thoughts,..."
What a standard you set.
What do you see beyond your own thoughts?
-
Virtually the entire of creation, and so would say any sane person.
-
"...the inability to see beyond one's own limited thoughts,..."
What a standard you set.
What do you see beyond your own thoughts?
Virtually the entire of creation, and so would say any sane person.
Wow , I only perceive what my senses , learning and imiganition can bring to my understanding.
I had no idea that the whole of creation was so accessable.
-
The question, Mr. Putz, is what do I consider beyond my abilities.
-
The question, Mr. Putz, is what do I consider beyond my abilities.
A quick reference to my Yiddish dictionary tells me that we are decending into Knutian invective.
I don't consider any particular thing to be beyond your ability.
Not even your ability to do that most ardous of things ,
Persuedeing me.
But your defineing of wisdom and your assertion of perceptivity ,
has not,
Has as far as yet
-
That's the most absurd thing, but not the dumbest thing, to have come out of your mouth in a long time. Set up MY goal as being within YOUR exclusive control? I've had enough of this. See ya later.
-
Your use of those statistics was feckless because it obscured the point being debated rather than elucidating it. At best it introduced a distracting tributary into the flow.
The claim was that the middle class was shrinking and that people were becoming poorer.
The statistics showed that the opposite was happening; people were becoming richer.
You wanted to discard those statistics and assume that people were becoming poorer and try to solve that problem.
-
That's the most absurd thing, but not the dumbest thing, to have come out of your mouth in a long time. Set up MY goal as being within YOUR exclusive control? I've had enough of this. See ya later.
If I have achieved absurdity without stupidity I am very gratified.