Jimminy Christmas, Mhendo, why not just tee it up for him next time?
Yeah, i guess it’s the response i should have expected.
If his defense of Great Leader had been had been confined to those occasions when Bush etc. were attacked “falsely” or “stupidly,” that response would have some merit.
But Reeder has been gone for how long now?
Yeah, I know what you mean. Looking at the thread title and who wrote the OP you can just tell this is going to be one of those highly reasoned and cerebral criticisms :rolleyes:
If only that were as true as it seemed. Unfortunately, you then had to go on and say:
No to mention the crack about Democrats leaving their brains at the door. I agree that not all policies supported by the Democratic party are good ones. I believe in a strong military. I believe in good funding for police, and that this should be primarily at a local level. I believe that the entire transfer payment social welfare program needs to be completely re-designed. On the other hand, I believe that help for the needy from the government for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged should exist, and that eliminating and/or hugely cutting down what we have now without providing anything in its place is a “cure” worse than the disease.
I am a hearty supporter of the Democratic party because it is currently the only viable alternative to the Republicans. While I will admit that there appear to be a few decent Pubbies out there, who truly mean well, the vast majority appear to me to fall into two primary groups: 1) those who will vote for anything that increases the advantages of the currently wealthy (corporate and/or individual), generally (although I don’t think this is a particular aim, just a side effect) at the cost of the poor and lower middle class, and 2) those who will vote for anything that supports severe curtailing of individual civil liberties in support of either extreme Christianity or misguided patriotism (or both). (This is particularly ironic since the Republicans bill themselves as the ones in support of libertarian thinking. But apparently one’s rights with many self-described Libertarians begin and mostly end with the right to keep a few more bucks a year in your pocket rather than paying taxes. And for the average citizen, I do mean a few. It’s the very wealthy who tend to truly benefit from that kind of legislation.) There is considerable overlap in these two groups, and both have as their absolute primary goal the furtherance of the Republican party as a whole, their individual selves in particular, and apparently toward this goal, there are no means that are not justified; hence Karl Rove can out a CIA agent without either remorse or penalty. Fearless Leader is particularly dangerous at this point because he has no legal possibility of being re-elected, and his mentor, Cheney, apparently sincerely has never had any interest in going higher than he is now. So those two have little to no motivation to cater to the voters at all, since it buys them little to nothing. A prime example is Bush’s urging to create yet another “Guest Worker” program. On the surface this may appear to be an act of mercy (and therefore detested by group 2), but the reality is, it provides a source of extremely cheap unskilled labor for businesses. Notice that there is no willingness to minimize illegal immigration by coming down hard on the businesses that hire illegals. Of course.
Scylla, believe it or not, I’d *love * to have it demonstrated to me that I’m wrong about this. I’d love to believe that there was actually some selfless good intent in the actions of these people I supposedly ‘demonize’ so readily. Can you demonstrate its falseness by coming up with three pieces of major, heavily Republican-supported legislation in the past six years that have not been in support of either of the two agendas I listed above, especially ones that were NOT equally supported by the Democrats? This is NOT a rhetorical question, btw. I’m deadly serious.
The Democrats are no saints, and not geniuses by any means. But as a party, they do seem to recognize that the idealized concept of an America where everyone starts out on a level playing field is pretty much bullshit.
Our class system is nowhere near as open as that of much of Europe and developing Asia, but never fool yourself into believing it doesn’t exist. It depends heavily on money, but also on education and background - the thing we do (thankfully) lack is any great interest in ancestry as a factor in how we treat people. I know for a fact that I go through life getting far better treatment from strangers (important or not) than a friend of mine, because I speak (and have always spoken) like an educated, “well-bred” person, while she grew up on the streets and barely strings two words together into a sentence that wouldn’t be laughed off of the SDMB. It’s my personal belief (unsupported by any data of which I’m aware) that most racial predjudice these days is based on the fact that many African Americans “talk black”. In fact, a lot of white folks who grow up in ghetto areas “talk black” too, and they get pretty much the same treatment. IMHO, the sky’s the limit for any black person who sounds educated and “white,” and I’d say that the same thing applies to Hispanics and other minority groups - they may meet with a little racism, but for the most part it will be from people who are unable to have any real negative impact on their lives. Unfortunately, this distinctly un-level playing field has led to sufficient resentment that there is now a fair amount of distrust for the entire “system,” and many of the poor have given up on the traditional ways of “bettering themselves” to the point of it being an undesirable attitude to actually try to do well in school and beyond, or even to obey the laws. To these folks, the police are the bad guys, which is very sad. (BTW, I am not idealizing poor folks here; they are exactly the same kind of person as anyone else, given their situations. Some are smart, some are dumb, some are good, some are bad. It’s the hurdles they have to leap to do anything with these qualities, and the attitudes that have built up over the years due to these hurdles that I’m talking about now.)
Legislation can’t change social attitudes, at least not in the short run, and I’m of the personal opinion that Affirmative Action programs have the opposite effect of their intent - instead of providing examples of competent minorities from whom the racists can learn that those minorities are not after all inferior, they have a tendency to allow people to assume that anyone who is a minority in a high-ish position (particularly in government, excepting the military) is there solely because of Affirmative Action. As I said, I don’t agree with all Democratic policies (or liberal ideas) by any means. Ebonics? Classic example of a well-meant Very Bad Idea. Rightly or wrongly, this nation judges folks very much by the way they speak, and learning mainstream English is critical to acceptance into the middle class. I wouldn’t hire someone whose speech sounded like he lived in the middle of a ghetto no matter how well he knew his stuff, just as I wouldn’t hire a foreigner whose accent made him unintelligible. Effective communication is an essential skill in almost any job.
So, no, I don’t think I’m either demonizing the Republicans or “angelicizing” the Democrats. But I have to choose the party that I think has a clue as to things worth doing beyond pushing pro-money, pro-fundamentalism, or pro-mindless-patriotism (I consider myself a patriot, and I defy anyone to deny it!). Although they started out the other way around 150 or so years ago, these days that’s the Democrats. (I think the switch happened around the time of FDR, but I’d love for someone who knows more about modern history to step in and correct me or tell me more.)
But given the degree to which you DO defend our current president and his minions, it’s a little hard to swallow the idea that you feel both parties suck equally. I have trouble imagining you defending Bill Clinton from the many false and/or stupid attacks, and he was (pretty much out of political necessity) so moderate a Democrat as to have easily passed for a Republican back in the sixties and early seventies, when liberal wasn’t considered a dirty word. Hell, Richard Nixon as he was in office would have been despised as a raving leftist these days. Times have changed a LOT.
To tell you the truth, having arrived at the 9th page of this thread, i didn’t even remember who wrote the OP.
Sure, the thread title might have been a bit hyperbolic, but the critique of Bush’s actions at that meeting were not without merit. I’ve disagreed with you on a bunch of occasions, and while your defense of Bush often strikes me as contrived and weak, i truly don’t think i’ve ever seen you give a more disingenuous and irrational justification for Bush’s actions than on this occasion. It is truly staggering.
Also, even if the thread title was hyperbolic, the fact is that plenty of people have weighed in with strong, clearly argued reasons for why this sort of behaviour is totally inappropriate in such a setting. And if these had been Bush’s only moment of diplomatic idiocy in the past week alone, it would have been bad enough, but there have been a bunch of others, as some of us have pointed out (e.g., me in post #54). But go on, keep focusing on Bush’s “genius” piece of “negotiation.” :rolleyes:
The funny thing about Bush’s gaffes is the way that we who criticize them can seemingly never catch the shifting goalposts that you defenders of Bush love to move around. If we criticize a specific instance, then you call it nitpicking or looking for minor faults, and ignoring the larger context. If we point out that each gaffe is part of a larger pattern of embarrassing and unprofessional conduct, and of dishonesty and outrageously bad policy-making, we get told that we’re just irrational “Bush bashers” who do nothing but look for the worst.
Your reference to the OP is interesting. First, it implies that we should judge the quality of the argument by looking at the person who makes it, rather than the argument itself. Isn’t this sort of ad hominem exactly what you’re constantly accusing Bush’s critics of?
Secondly, you and other Bush defenders seem to see, in the pattern of criticism on this Board, something nefarious in intent of the leftists and liberals here. Funny how it never seems to occur to you that the constant stream of criticism might say as much about your boy’s conduct as it does about the people making the critique? You tighty righties have “shoot the messenger” down to a fine art.
You don’t consider the possibility of changing a person who was personally an ally to a personal enemy (even though politically she may still support some of Bush’s policies) to be an important issue? You don’t consider the further deterioration of our president’s view by the rest of the world to be of any importance? Despite the fact that the title of the thread was admittedly not exactly what you might call intellectual, this is something of an issue. After all, representing the US to the rest of the world is one of the major things our president does.
I have to admit that you’ve been waffling a lot in this thread, coming up with two highly implausible “explanations” (and trying to pass the first one off as a sophisticated joke once someone else came up with the idea), and now claiming it to be a purely trivial and inflammatory issue. Not up to what I’d expect from the intelligent guy I know you to be.
I’m going off, probably for the night, so if there are any further remarks (such as **Scylla ** coming up with those three pieces of major legislation), I won’t be responding until tomorrow. Just didn’t want you to think I was doing a drive-by.
Only if you define “driveby” as well-reasoned, carefully laid out, in-depth, civil yet heartfelt discussion of an issue.
It’s taken you fully 42 posts to get across your point that the subject of the OP is a mere faux pas, and I’m supposed to be the stupid one making much ado about nothing?
Okay, little buddy, whatever you say.
Vouchers and no child left behind, Social Security seperate accounts, prescriptions for the elderly.
Yes. It is bullshit.
I agree with much of what you said. I’m not sure how it’s an indictment of Republicans though.
Housing projects. Really bad idea. I’m agreeing with you again.
I agree with you.
I see nothing in what you’ve written here that is not worthy of respect.
Not equally, I still think the Democrats suck worse.
Lots of people say that, but I’m a 99’er and I’m on record more than once saying that I didn’t think Bill was a bad President. I also think he did get the shaft with the Whitewater Investigation, but not the Perjury thing. Funny how all the people who talk about acting “presidential” and being aware of protocol and that the eyes of the world are upon the Prez are the same people who see no issue with diddling interns, and lying about it under oath.
A lot of the issues you bring up vis a vis race are very legitimate. Personally, I feel that the Democratic party patronizes and condescends to minorities but when push comes to shove they never offer anything substantive. Certainly nothing changes. I blame the Democrats for the horrible blunder of housing projects that have condemned so many to lives without any real hope. I blame both parties for inner city schools.
I am a believer in a safety net. Society needs one. I’m also aware of the immutable law that you encourage that which you subsidize. Ultimately, I’m a pragmatist.
I’m not trying to be insulting, but I think that attempting to connect meaningul and significant connection between those things and the faux pas that occured is really stupid and a transparent excuse at this board’s favorite pasttime: Bushbashing.
Yes, and in going out there and doing it, faux pas’ will occur.
I don’t see what’s implausible about the latter. It’s already forgotten in the news. It didn’t even make major news that I saw (actually I saw it once on CNN being discussed as a viral video, and they were talking about the fact that the President is much more public than he used to be because of the internet.)
So when do they put him under oath to find out if he’s done this to other women?
I’m sure you’d agree that just because it’s predictable doesn’t mean castigation is inappropriate.
I’m struck though at your cavalier attitude, here. Earlier on in the thread you made clear that it was your view that Bush did what he did on purpose, as part of some clever tactics on his part. Now you seem equally convinced it was just a mistake, and hey, who can blame a guy for a mistake, huh? You’ve gone rather quickly from Bush the cunning manipulator to Bush the unwary victim of fate; if I may ask, what made you change your mind so quickly and (apparently) comprehensively?
It matters. There are things that matter more, to be sure, but it still matters.
Watching GeeDubya try to follow Bubba Horndog on the world stage is like Sheriff Andy of Mayberry died and Deputy Barney takes over. It isn’t so much that I can’t imagine Bill saying so simplistic and sophomoric as thing as Bush said about Syria, I can’t even imagine him thinking it. Bill is a policy wonk, GeeDubya is a policy weenie. Bill slides, GeeDub swaggers. Maybe there are international diplomatic settings where the good ol’ boy, nut scratching and farting approach would be considered charmingly rustic. This wasn’t one of them.
The Force. Powerful effect on complex thinkers.
You’re Scylla Gorilla???
Vouchers? You must be kidding! They’re a double hitter - subsidy for the wealthy AND for the ultra-religious. Not to mention a nod to the ultra-libertarians who feel that schools shouldn’t be publicly financed at all. And just think about the consequences for ONE minute. Your better suburban schools would suffer little if any. But the city schools that suffer the most already from having too little funding? They’d be so broke in a year or two that they’d have shut down entirely. And how are they fair? I’m not a parent at all, but I pay school taxes. My parents haven’t had children of public school age in 32 years, but they pay school taxes. Spread among us all, school taxes are a comparatively low expense, even when they’re as high as they ought to be (which in these days of anyone promising any tax cut whatsoever being a shoe-in to office is rare).
No Child Left Behind? I’ll grant you one half. I think it was reasonably well-meant, and enormously, hugely ill-conceived. It was based on an absurd premise: that teachers and other school officials are primarily motivated by money. They aren’t, especially in the inner cities - who in their right minds would take an inner city school job if they didn’t have a real desire to do the job, and do it right? The administrators weren’t money-driven before; they were driven mostly by a desire to do the job well. NOW they are forced to work to federal guidelines and meet federally established goals that practically guarantee that funding will be cut for those schools that need it the most, because the motivation they are using is not “Look, if your kids fail we’ll help.” but rather, “Look, if your kids fail, we’ll take away what little money we give you.” Since there is an extremely strong correlation between school performance and income in the school district, this means that the poorest schools are likliest to go under. The schools in my area don’t have enough text books that kids are allowed take them home in the evening to study. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t get it. The kids in my area are not allowed to bring their text books home at night with them, because the school doesn’t have enough. And one of the solutions? Well, let’s turn it over to a third party for-profit company to run! No one has yet to explain to me how introducing a layer of profit is supposed to make things better. Make salaries, benefits, and working conditions worse for the people doing the work? Check. Introduce non-local management unfamiliar with the area and having no stake beyond the financial in its succes? Check. Bringing in an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit? How? The employees of a corporation are no difference from the employees of a government: they will work according to their own work-ethic and drive to perform well, not because the corporation’s performance will make any difference to their lives.
Social Security separate accounts: A subsidy to Wall Street, and a near guarantee of the need for a bail-out some twenty-thirty years down the road that would make the savings and loan scandal bail-out look like a tiny pimple. I’ve sometimes wondered if the whole point wasn’t to try to sneak in the second ‘alternative’ the president offered: basing SS payouts on income. While this sounds on the surface like a Democratic policy, being progressive and all, it is the one thing that almost could have guaranteed that ultimately SS would have been done away with, which after all was the ultimate intent. The answer to The Social Security Problem is to stop considering the intake for Social Security as part of the federal budget, as Moynihan suggested some twenty years back. Besides, SS isn’t in immediate danger. Medicare is, but not SS.
Which brings us to prescriptions for the elderly, as you so sweetly call it. Most of the rest of us who aren’t seniors call it a subsidy to both big Pharma and the med insurance companies, while the seniors themselves just call it a mess (when not using stronger language). Administered by the already in-place Medicare system, and given the power to negotiate directly with Pharma AND with foreign manufacturers such as Canada, this could have been a wonderful program - simple for seniors to use, and of real value in getting them lower cost medicine. But that would have served the seniors *without * protecting Pharma or increasing insurance business, so it wouldn’t have done.
Sorry, in my book you score one half out of 3. I’ll grant you that on the whole NCLB was well meant, but given its providing mandates without additional funding and its flawed basic assumptions, I can’t give you better than a half.
Don’t know if you noticed, but the rest of the world really doesn’t care much about the sexual habits of its leaders (alhough the British tabloid press seems to have a great deal of fun, especially with the royal family), as long as they’re between consenting adults. That being said, yes, I’d say this issue with our current president is on about a par with the president’s blow job. Maybe we can get Ken Starr in and ultimately W will lie, because of course no one in this administration has lied so far in the past six years.
Of course you feel that way - I was demonstrating the ways in which I am NOT a fanatical democrat.
Whereas living in rickety old slums without functional heat, plumbing, and/or electricity was granting enormous hope to this particular population? 
The projects haven’t improved things the way they were hoped to, but I’m not seeing how they made things worse. The basic problem here is a large concentration of poor people with no hope living in a small area. That problem exists whether it’s happening in tumble-down nineteenth century slums or 1960s era slums.
I don’t have a good solution for the problems of the poor. I have some ideas, but they’d never get traction with either party. My idea is to provide unlimited goods and services (i.e. food, dorm-style shelter, serviceable clothing, basic medical and legal service) to ANYONE who shows up - no applications, no background checks, nothing. The recipient has the choice of paying a nominal fee (e.g. a buck or two for a meal) or working at some aspect that service’s administration (e.g. clearing up and washing dishes for a meal) for a given number of hours. If millionaires wanted to come down and have their meals there, so what? No transfer payments, except for Social Security, which if it didn’t keep being spent by the government to conceal deficit spending, would be fine.
You might as well blame them both for the weather. As long as there is multi-generational poverty, there is going to be a serious problem with inner-city schools. I can make some suggestions though:
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Legalize Drugs. The only result of the current drugs laws is to hugely inflate the value of a commodity that otherwise would be absurdly cheap. This means there is a mountain of money to be made in an illegal fashion, and this is perceived as a potential ‘way out’ (or at least way up) for many poor kids. Same thing to a lesser extent to prostitution, except that since there has been no declared “war on whores,” the actual price and the true market value are probably far more in sync.
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Subsidize day careprograms like Head Start and keep going. The earlier you can get these kids, the better, but you have to keep it going after kindergarten.
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Recognize that the schools having problems is generally NOT the fault of the teachers. Yes, there are a few underqualified teachers out there. Some of them are really unqualified, others are great teachers who haven’t dotted the proper i’s or crossed the right t’s. Most people who go into teaching have a sincere interest in teaching well. A little more or a little less money isn’t going to change their attitude toward executing the job of teaching their students, but it may cause enough resentment to drive them out of the field altogether.
As long as we have a great divide between suburban parents spending all their time practically doing their kids’ homework for them and trucking them around to soccer, music, and the seventeen other activities their first grader has scheduled already, and the urban parents who are either working three jobs to keep a roof overhead or are lying around watching General Hospital drunk or stoned, the divide between the people who say Education is My Top Priority and then vote for reduction after reduction of local and/or property taxes that pay for education, the problems are going to continue to exist. I don’t have a good answer. Throwing money at the problem isn’t enough, I’ll grant you - there the Democrats have not succeeded. But taking money away, which seems to be the Republicans’ solution, is certainly NOT the answer.
If you’ve ever lived on Welfare, or even Unemployment (which is considerably better if you had a pretty good job to begin with), you’d recognize that the money being given is NOT enough to encourage anyone. It generally barely covers the cost of a roof over the head, if that. Yes, I started as an Econ major, and I understand the principle. Maybe if we incented (God, I HATE that word!) our working poor a bit better, we’d do a bit better, but right now, if you’re on Welfare, you can generally get help in other areas such as medical care and food. If you’re working a job for a miminal pay, you’ve disqualified yourself from most financial aid programs for everything, quite possibly leaving yourself worse off than you were on Welfare. And here’s a clue: the Dems aren’t the ones who scaled back those programs so much that only those who have nothing at all can qualify.
Scylla, I’m sure that if you and I met in person, we’d like one another. You’d tell funny stories and I’d laugh my head off. We’d probably find that we agree in principle on many issues - I consider myself a pragmatist as well. It’s when we come down to what constitutes pragmatism that things fall apart. You seem to be in favor of the kind of pragmatism that leaves more money in your pocket (and a LOT more money in the pockets of the very wealthy), while I’m in favor of the kind of pragmatism that helps people a bit more, and a bit more sensibly, even if it means making some mistakes along the way.
That was another “drive-by” (thanks for the compliment, ETF! Coming from you, that means a lot!), as I probably won’t return for some hours, if at all today. Sorry.
A snicker, a guffaw… what have you. A blanket indictment of foreign polcy, all Republicans in general, and all who disagree being labelled “cocksuckers,” not so much.
I was kidding about the master plan of such genius that it was beyond comprehension and mistakenly viewed as an error. This was said more than once, and really, it’s not too difficult to figure out.