DebateGate

In what is perhaps the  most pathetic action this "administration" has ever attempted, Bush and his cult of loonies are seeking someone for a new office.  The GOP, once known as the party that wanted to shrink government, is now the party of bloated government, layer upon layer of bureaucracy and rampant spending.  Crooks and Liars gives you the lowdown on Bush's sad, sad attempt at passing the buck to generals who only throw up their hands, shrink away from Bush, saying, "How stupid do you think I am?".

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/11/%e2%80%98they-don%e2%80%99t-know-where-the-hell-they%e2%80%99re-going%e2%80%99/

Pretty pathetic.

Kalamazoo Public Schools announces that all KPS students who have been enrolled since kindergarten will receive four-year, full-tuition college scholarships, starting with the class of 2006.

Anonymous philanthropists are funding.  $12 million is all it costs.

Kalamazoo housing increases. 

This is capitalism put to good socialist ideals.  Bravo.

BT had posited that perhaps the global warming faction might find more believers if they had a better marketing campaign.  I mentioned this to my wife to see what she thought of that and she agreed after a fashion.  She put forth that till "they" see that it is affecting them personally in a day to day fashion, "they" will never change their ways.

Her contention was that if their kids can still play soccer on green grass (no matter what it costs) and without having constant asthma attacks, "they" will never change or bother to admit that it is real, no matter how many polar bears they see drowning or ice flows breaking off the Arctic.

Being the superdooper great lady she is, she thought that it might behoove the global warmers who want to stop it to come out with day to day tiny ways that people can change and have impact without giving up their precious SUV's right off the bat.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Saturday morning on the Today Show, one of the guests I caught was Laura David.  She's the producer of An Inconvenient Truth.  (Also, she is the wife of Seinfeld creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David.)  She and (conservative) Campbell Brown went through three or four little things that Americans could do that, if we all did, would be the equivalent of taking X amount of cars off the road.

The first one they talked about was changing the light bulbs to the new corkscrew flourescent things which had a real name like "CPF's" or something but I can't remember it right now.  I had long been considering it and just never gotten around to it (especially since arch-conservative BT had already done it).

Another thing they talked about was getting some canvas bags to take your groceries home with.  I am working on doing that but I have to admit I'd fill silly doing it at first.  I hate those little plastic bags but I hate that we cut down trees to make the paper ones.  She equating this (if everyone in the US did it) to saving so many millions of trees.

But I wanted to talk about the bulbs.  I didn't do any research on them before I cut out with the wife and the boy to Home Depot on our Saturday morning errand running.  At HD, I was surprised to find out that there were like "daylight" vs "soft light" and there weren't all the normal wattages we see like 40 (I didnt' see these) or 75 (my fave).

I had prepared myself to see the prices but paying something like $40 for 16 bulbs was a little cumbersome but I felt good after doing it and isn't that all that matters?

WARNING:  We found the "Daylight" versions absolutely unbearable.  They're perfect for the porchlight or utility room or attic but they absolutely SUCK for inside or living spaces.  It is like straight flourescent light.  I put one in the bedroom because our color choices in there are pretty dark and my wife was aghast and said, "God, all that's missing is a low hum and blood everywhere and we'd have a scene from Se7en."

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Documentary_filmmaker_says_Iraq_troops_training_0206.html

In an interview at Salon today, the maker of a forthcoming PBS documentary warns that America's efforts to "stand up" an Iraqi armed forces may be arming and training the very groups contributing to the country's instability.

Mark Smith, an award-winning television journalist, was interviewed by Salon's Alex Koppelman. His forthcoming documentary is called Gangs of Iraq and will air on PBS as part of its America at a Crossroads series. In the interview, Smith warned that the Mahdi Army, the Shi'a militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, may be a primary beneficiary of the American effort to build a viable Iraqi security force.

"We're not training the Mahdi Army by intent, but we're providing training for people who may take our training program and then go join the militias," Smith told Koppelman. He added, "As early as August '04, there are photographs of uniformed Iraqi police celebrating with the Mahdi Army after a battle in Najaf."

In the months and months of "insurgency", I have contended several times that the US is knowingly arming the insurgents in order to keep Iraq a bloody mess and allow the corporations to continue to make that fat dollar.

Now comes a documentary that says that we are unintentionally doing it but how is it that the supposed greatest nation on earth, the most wise and powerful nation on earth can't keep up with who they train and where their own weapons go.

Note:  These are NOT stolen weapons that the "insurgents" are using as some have stated in the past when comparing the weapons used by them allegedly from Iran.  I would interested, on a side note, in finding out if the US has ever purchased weapons from IRAN.  How easy would that be for them to do so and then give those weapons to the Iraqis that are being "trained" and then claim that Iran was arming the "insurgents". 

But here we have an Occam's razor situation.  What's the simplest explanation?  Wouldn't it just make simple sense that the US just hired their own insurgents and armed them with Iranian arms?  I think so.

Quote from: Brassmask on February 02, 2007, 02:58:17 PM

Legal?  Sure.

And there in lies the rub

It's no real secret that sirs' and I aren't the best of buds at times, but I've gotten really sick to death of this kind of crap.  Far be it for me to be the guy to complain about someone snarking but this is basically what I feel we've been up against for the last six years with Bush and his bullshit cult.

This is the kind of attitude that has torn this nation apart for the last few years and it has been the modus operandi of nearly every conservative from the erstwhile to the hardcore and I've really gotten sick of it.

Over the years, this sort of attitude and mode of responce has just been intellectually insulting.

In this particular case, sirs has used the mode to reply to something I said about Wal-Mart's practice of paying itself rent.  Nowhere in the thread has anyone stated that WM's practices are illegal.  NOWHERE.  I called them unethical and utter bullshit.  Went out of my way to do it, in fact.  And yet, sirs feels in stating that since the practice is legal, then there is nothing inherently wrong with it.  True, he has not flatly stated that there is nothing inherently wrong with it but by stating that the rub lies in the fact that it is legal, he essentially implies that is exactly how he feels.

This tactic is at best annoying, at worst, enraging.  The reason being that I get the impression that he feels that he has "won" somehow.  That by typing this statement and endorsing this LEGAL practice that there is no reason to be talking about the practice to begin with.  (Other impressions I get from this are that he feels this is just more socialist, liberal whining from the left about how they don't have a lot of money and the left feels that "someone else" should shoulder all the government's burdern and on and on and on...) when the facts clearly show that the practice is exploitation of a "loophole".  Now, let's remind ourselves of the definition of "loophole", shall we?  Let's.

loop·hole (lūp'hōl')
n.
A way of escaping a difficulty, especially an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law that provides a means of evading compliance.

Now, think about that.  It is a means of "evading compliance".  Now come on. 

Are you guys going to sit there and say, "Welp, they orta writ the law better."  WM is a multi-billion dollar corporation with stores worldwide.  It wreaks havoc on small town economies. (Don't start with me!)  Think of the tax dollars that could be collected by small towns from WM if WM wasn't taking advantage (and I mean that exactly how you think I mean that) of the law.

This is plausible deniability.  This is following the letter not the spirit of the law.  This is skating the system.  This is asking forgiveness rather than asking permission.  This is the conservative way.  This is the Bush "administration" mode.  "Oh, there's a law against that?  Oh, I'm soooo sorry.  Our lawyers said that it reads THIS way, not that way.  We're soooo very sorry.  Where do we send the check for the fine?"

And this is how you guys have been supporting your arguments for the last 6 years.  You'd rather call Bush incompetent than a criminal.  You'd rather call him politically conniving when others are calling him incompetent.  You'd rather paint Bush a victim when others are calling him nefarious.  And then when it has been shown over and over and over again that there is something wrong with Bush (whatever it is), you accuse the opponent of being a crybaby because they'd rather just check out of the process of it all.  Worst of all, you haven't taken into account that no matter what the excuse for any and all of Bush's failures, they are always excuses.  It wasn't his fault.  He was lied to.  He was led astray.  He is resolute (code for pigheaded in the face of facts).  Excuse after excuse after excuse.

And all the while that you point out that Bush is doing so and so because of this and that, there has never been one positively indisputably overwhelmingly supported idea of "his" since he stood on the top of that car in New York and proclaimed that some people were going to hear from us.  He has never once done anything or proposed anything that soon couldn't be seen as possibly nefarious or self-serving.  Nothing he has proposed or done has been in the name of the greater good.

You'd rather declare victory on a point that was never contested than confront the true points of the discussion.  The right has set up a "god" in the White House.  All the lies and excuses and plausible deniability used to defend the god myth are employed by the Bush "administration".  He's too busy to take care of this group when this thing is going on.  Free will is how he shows he loves you.  His law is the only law (until it applies to someone I like and then there are all these little loopholes that can be applied).

When comes the end?  I've often asked what would be the thing that would make the hardcore Bush supporter like sirs, Plane, Ami, BT turn on Bush.  There has never been one thing offered.  I think that one time one of the hardcore righties said that he would stop supporting Bush if he withdrew the troops from Iraq.  Do you know how insane that sounds to me?   This is exactly what billions of people want, including IRAQIS and whoever it was said that would be the thing that would make him turn on Bush.  The very thing that would be in the interest of the greater good for ALL is the thing that would make him turn on Bush.  Geez.

The polls show Bush bottoming out at around 30%.  It still boggles my mind that SO many people continue to support him or even like him.  That low a number of people who do just underlines the hardcore "No matter whatters" out there who will never change their minds about him no matter what he does and that's just insanity (same thing over and over) to me.

This really comes off as a rant but it is just because I got incensed over that snarky comment.  I've endeavoured to be LESS snarky and at least, try to make better arguments or if I feel I can't do that, to stay out of them.

Have you at long last had enough?  Have you on the right gotten sick to death of Bush's absolute increases in the size and scope of government, clearly flying in the face of every libertarian thought you've ever had in your head?

Here, now W has signed a direction adding yet another level of government and increasing the office of the presidency beyond its originally intended scope.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/NY_Times_Bush_gives_White_House_0129.html

I join with those of you on the other side in decrying Bush's actions.

President George W. Bush has given his administration a boost in how the government regulates key issues such as civil rights and the environment, RAW STORY has learned The New York Times will report on its Tuesday front page.

The President "signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules that the federal government develops to regulate public health, safety," privacy and other issues, writes Robert Pear for the Times.

Pear reports that "in an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee" who will monitor the creation of process and procedures and the associated documentation.

"The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency," Pear writes, "to analyze the costs and benefits of new rules and to make sure they carry out the president's priorities."

From DailyKos.


You will squirm
by zenbowl [Subscribe]
Tue Jan 23, 2007 at 01:02:10 PM CST
Tonight, Mr. President, you will squirm.

You will squirm when you begin your address by saying "Madame Speaker" when raucous applause breaks out from the majority party, celebrating the first ever woman to be so addressed in a State of the Union speech. It's not going well already, can you sense it?

You will squirm when you realize that there are more of us than of you.

You will squirm when your plans for Iraq and Iran are met with stony silence by members not just of the majority, but of the minority as well.

You will squirm when the Democrats choose to clap at the wrong time in your speech, when you want them to applaud the line about increasing the troops, but they only clap when you talk about bringing them home.

zenbowl's diary :: ::
You will squirm when your aides rush up to you with bad news about what the talking heads are saying.

You will squirm when Jim Webb delivers a powerful rebuttal of your speech, pointing out that your Iraq policies are wrong-headed, and whenever you happened to get something right in the Domestic agenda, it was a weaker version of a better Democratic policy.

You will squirm when the ratings come back proving that most of America tuned out this speech, and those who didn't were unimpressed.

You will squirm, lastly, and most squirmingly of all, when you realize that your Presidency is over. You can no longer control the American people with fear. Your goons can no longer brow-beat moderate Republicans in Congress. Your prized advisor has been proven a fool. You can no longer call on friends to come and visit, as you have become a pariah for anyone with hopes of being reelected. You can only squirm.

As usual, I will take two aspirin and watch Bush's lies fall from his mouth tonight.  His speech will be nothing more than time passing.  He will say nothing new and he will smear it with lots of rhetoric and platitudes.
My blood pressure will elevate slightly and I'll make snarky comments throughout.


What's everyone expecting tonight?