Well, see, that’s because you asked a question that dick all to do with the subject at hand. Now, in the interests of fairness, I was kinda snarky in throwing out that which caught your attention and had you asking this bizarre question, but damn, ma’am.
And to bring us back to the OP: Ronald Reagan was an asshole. And I am glad that I can use the past tense, despite the rah rah bullshit that will be heard and spread across the width and breadth of this great land, &c. Can’t say that I’d wish death on him, though. And those that I feel most sorry for are his family. The onset of Alzheimer’s I imagine is confusing and frightening as hell, but the final stages would (I imagine) be the worst for them, since the patient can’t recognize them and they are unable to say goodbye in any meaningful way. And take note that I pointedly did not wonder if Nancy’s astrologer had filled her in on the particulars of Ronnie’s death. That’s because I’m knee deep in class, and it’s only gettin’ deeper.
Further, if there is such a thing as your God, I can only hope that he shares my mindset and sets Ronnie to doing voice overs in hell. (Please make sure that your seatbelt is securely fastened and to keep all portions of your anatomy within the confines of the iron maidens. Our first stop will be for those of you who so disparaged homosexuality, wherein you will be gang raped by an entire coterie of gay men who have so generously agreed to donate their time to this cause. Our next stop. . .)
And just what office have you held in the congress or executive branch? It’s amazing to me that do nothings can be so critical of those who really do something, like a President!
Since when, currently running on the History channel, 5 star generals, watch the one on William Frederick Bull Halsey, Jr., Admiral, United States Navy :smack:
SallyStar, the “Saddam/Hitler” thing originated
in a thread-relevant point, being GLWasteful’s way of implying that you, SallyStar, were an easy patsy for Right-Wing Propaganda.
Part Two
It’s not a matter of clique-ism, Sally. Or maybe it is. We just tend to be hard-assed and uninclined to hand-holding towards the newbs at times. Maybe it’s the caffeine. Just so be warned I may come across as awful pedantic in the rest of the post.
Now, I know this may be putting it kinda coldly, but your OP was weak as starting point for DEBATE . “Kerry said [a series of nice things that is proper and polite for an educated person to say about a recently deceased President]; Who with any credentials will argue with this” . Starting at the end, the front-loaded requirement that there be “credentials”: It reeks of someone reserving the right to disqualify voir dire anyone attempting to refute, it vitiates the invitation to debate turning it instead into a POLL as to who can find similar-level counter-quotes. You start a debate by putting forth that something IS debatable. Otherwise you’re just sharing an opinion.
On to the first part of the OP, the format for starting a “Great Debates” thread is to put forth a proposition that is subject to debate, e.g.: “Ronnie was the guy that saved the world from the Commies”, provide a brief explanation, and maybe a short citation in support of that proposition. An OP that is in its entirety a citation with one-liner tag to the effect of “can anyone disagree” is considered lame form.
That a statement was made by Kerry eulogizing the former President is NOT a debatable, of course, but even the content of this elegiac statement is itself mostly non-controversial in that it is about the quality of the man and the leader, NOT about his policies. So we are left to debate either Kerry’s sincerity, or whether Ron not only had policies some people thought bad but on top of that was really down deep not a genial guy nut a rat bastard. Or whether your thread really belonged here.
Is that the John Kerry who is the Democratic politician candidate for president? I guess it’s OK to argue that he hardly qualifies as a true blue American while at the same time citing him as an authority on the magnificence of Ronald Reagan. Why should anyone believe such an obviously ass-kissing statement which looks to me like an attempt to curry favor with people of your political outlook.
E-Sabbath is right - this is just a witnessing thread. No rational debate is possible. The OP’s position is entirely faith-based, as is that of John Carter of Mars. Their beliefs are evidence-proof.
We are not questioning whether it is okay to compare to Saddam to Nazi Germany and Japan. We are just trying to understand how it is an effective comparison. I mean, Saddam might have had dreams at night of being Hitler…I wouldn’t doubt it one bit. But, is there any evidence that he had anything even remotely approaching the capability to do so? I don’t think there was such evidence, even if you believed the tall tales of a bunch of fabricators known at the time to likely be untrustworthy…let alone on the basis of what we now know of his capabilities.
If we attack every tin pot dictator who dreams of being Hitler or the Emperor of Japan, and it takes the sort of resources we are using in Iraq, we are going to need a much bigger military budget.
To put it another way, when the Right has made comparisons between Saddam and Germany/Japan in WW II, as done here in this very thread, they have used it to justify a pre-emptive (really preventative) war on Iraq.
Yes, it is true that there have been times when people on the Left have made certain limited comparisons between Bush and Nazi Germany. However, their solution has not been that a war must be launched to attack George W. Bush. Rather, it has been used to justify such things as (1) rethinking provisions of the Patriot Act, (2) trying to get the Bush Administration to engage in less Orwellian semantic abuse, (3) trying to make the case for not preventively attacking a country that is no real threat to us.
Is it possible to comprehend a difference here? Or is this just beyond comprehension?
