As a rabid liberal Democrat who never had a word of praise for Bush before last Tuesday, let me say this.
Chas.E, Curious George, and Chronolicht: Stop helping. Really.
While I will still likely disagree with most, if not all, of Bush’s political positions, he is our President, and I will stand behind him for this crisis. Partisan sniping will resume much, much later.
Oh, and Chas? I’m not sure who your list of three is, but count me on it. I’ve called you an asshole before, and I’ll do it again. Asshole.
I find it a wonder that you Lefties act as if you are compassionate to the world in general, but turn out to be sociopathic asses when it comes to real human pain. There are more than 5000 people dead in the ruins of the WTC, and you say they had it coming.
Let us assume your woefully uninformed geopolitical view is absolutely correct in every detail; how would that justify killing a 22 year-old welfare-to-work mom on her first filing job; killing a 39 year-old-cop who was there to rescue people; killing a 32 year-old Kenyan immigrant dishwasher? How do you say any of those people had it coming?
As if there would be no suffering in the world if we didn’t interfere. It most definitely is a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t in the world today. If we don’t help, we are chastised and berated as being arrogant and uncaring. If we help, we are accused of helping the wrong side or the wrong government. Or we are accused of not helping enough.
There exists no perfect world where your idealistic “helping hands” can operate without causing someone to be upset.
To paraphrase Chronolicht:
‘It is truly amazing that all you generally anti-cerebrative terminal valve Democrats (and [single issue] Florida-Vote nuts) are sitting there at your monitors doing your best to cook up attacks for this simian atavism.’
Hibbins. Horseshit. You accomodate the present state of things with a mild totalization of the problem. If you have to work to “put food on your family”, then you are on the wrong side and you are a fucking complete moron for it. And you are not alone. Note the tremendous upsurge of support for our grammatically challenged “president”.
I am actually quite pragmatic but I also possess the imagination to see how things could be better. Let me give you a case in point. The airline industry has repeatedly resisted attempts to increase security. Anything that retards departure (and therefore lowers profit) has been heavily lobbied against. If the planes aren’t flying they aren’t making profit. You didn’t have to be a security expert or a genius to see that a WTC type horror was inevitable. Note the very unpopular, former director of FAA security’s excoriation of the aviation industry’s security practices. The WTC could probably been avoided (if they had done what they should have done in the first place). But by your flaccid logic, demanding better security would be idealistic. Don’t want to “upset” the airline people. Now we better give them 15 billion dollars. They might get upset. Use your fucking head. Look at the sickeningly skewed distribution of wealth and the absence of civil liberties around the world. Look at the massive ecological degradation. Look at the worldwide trade in arms. Is it idealistic to even see that there is enough for everyone to eat? Is it idealistic to see that if we valued human life and peace more than profit and the myopic factionalism of nationalism (or the kneejerk ideology of “freemarket” capitalism), the world would be a better place for it? We don’t have a monopoly on shortsightedness but we are the worst example of it. Frankly, I can’t see how anyone who has children can ascribe to the policies of any recent administration. Gore would have been only somewhat better than Bush, but at least he would have been better. We’ll take what we can get. (While miserable acephalic pieces of shit like you ensure that our descendants inherit a smoking husk).
“…WTC, and you say they had it coming.” --Gobear
No one said they had it coming. Sophist, culero, moron.
JSexton, lift your finger high after you lick it. That’s the way to go. Appearance over principle. Allegiance over substance and integrity. You’ve got a friend in Phil Gramm.
At first, Chronolicht’s posts filled me with rage.
Now, it’s just pity.
Congrats, kid. You and Chas have enough bile to fill the Grand Canyon, and you think that means you have feelings. You and he demagouge and demonize, and think that means you’re good people.
You know why I didn’t bother to debate whether we should understand the motives of the terrorists?
You really are insane, Chronolicht. Did a rabid animal bite you? In your last two posts of any substance, you’ve ranted and frothed about the airlines and the election, two topics that were barely alluded to, if at all, earlier in the thread. Now you’re just inventing reasons to hurl insults at posters.