Yet my quote doesn’t show that. Sampiro said that no-one was suggesting the ex-soldier could do what he wanted with his property. I called him a moron - but I didn’t dispute that he was free to do what he wanted with the medal. He certainly is.
As Churchill famously said of Attlee, “He is a very modest man. With a great deal to be modest about.” 
Speaking of cheap laughs, you’re a regular riot inspite yourself. Do keep it up – and the dog’s too, by all means.
Gracias.
'luc, please don’t tell you’re doubting Señor Shodan?! I mean, but of course that’s all you see walking down Madrid’s streets – people masturbating their dogs like a Mother Fucker. Bit shocking for tourists at first I must admit…but they get used to it with time and join in the fun. Latex gloves optional, free-spirited people that we are.
Certainly ensures they will come when you call, I suppose…
Nobody should have to do this.
In his first post, Shodan dropped John Kerry’s name. His cite, which he apparently had not read, was a sympathetic Boston Globe piece by Thos. Oliphant describing how Kerry made a political point (actually pretty respectful) with his and others’ decorations, which probably did not include a purple heart.
In his second post Shodan managed to parrot the prevailing view of both sides: that a veteran can do what s/he likes with his/her medals (excepting John Kerry, presumably), and claims, less plausibly, that for Bush to accept a medal given as political support fodder is analogous, somehow, to inheriting it. Evidently GHWB, a man who knows his sons, has decided to bequeath his medals to someone else, otherwise our famously war-shy president would be claiming the Distinguished Flying Cross as well. Me, I think if Kerry could throw his medals over a fence, some much-older-but-unenlightened-vet can bury his in the nearest pile of shit, if he wants.
In his third post, Shodan asserts that the only real faux pas would be for our fearful leader to wear the medal around (as if most recipients do), as opposed to merely be photographed receiving it (which most non-medal-earners don’t get to do). This is what the eminent Democrat D.P. Moynihan called “defining deviancy down,” and in it’s service, friend Shodan pretty much exhausts the last few molecules of thought and energy he thought would be enough to ruin the party.
In his fourth post, Shodan manages to be utterly without content as far as the OP is concerned. God knows what sort of record he thinks he’s setting.
In a fifth post, Shodan drops everything but a couple of insults nitpicking others’ posts. Ain’t no thought, no argument, no view of the world broader than “hurting the other guy must help me” here, and as usual, there apparently never was.
Why, exactly, does anyone view this guy as anything other than extra spaces between meaningful posts?
I suppose the question i’d like to ask Shodan is “If you feel there is equivalency between this situations and the situation with Kerry, what’s your opinion - was Kerry right then, or is Bush wrong now?”
Do you believe any of the participants in this thread are enemies of the U.S.? Yes or no.
Because people like you are not really as stupid as they pretend to be, at least for the moment.
Exactly as I described him as doing. IOW, I provided a cite making a significant point. Which you intensely dislike, and therefore are flailing about attempting a rebuttal. To the best of your ability, unfortunately.
This is rather like posting to a thread telling everyone not to post to a thread. If you don’t think I have a point, why are you trying so desperately to refute something you obviously either haven’t read, or cannot understand?
I suspect your case is the second - you literally cannot understand any point of view that is not based on the premise “Bush sux”. There is apparently no room inside your tiny little head beyond that thought, amplified to a mental scream. In the same way, RedFury’s brain is equally incapacious, which is why he came to the SDMB with the thought of pasting the LA Times editorial into any thread he came across, regardless of the thread’s actual theme.
Since Bush Jr. is by no means claiming the Purple Heart, as has been pointed out several times, and since you have no knowledge whatever of who Bush Sr. has bequeathed his medals to, the above came straight out of your ass.
Look, it’s quite obvious what is the problem with you. You wanted another of these rather distasteful Two Minutes Hate aimed (as ever) at Bush, and someone came in and spoiled your fun with an alternate point of view.
“Wait - someone, somewhere, doesn’t hate Bush enough! I sense a disturbance in the Force!” Sux to be you, Obi-wan Can-bite-me.
So much for you.
So let’s be sure we are clear here - calling someone an un-American moron is not a dispute that doing whatever was that led you to insult a stranger (and a veteran) was right? So if someone on the SDMB said criticizing Bush was un-American, that is fine with you?
Or, as I suspect, does it turn on and off depending on politics?
The equivalence is between Kerry and the veteran, not Kerry and Bush.
If you could trouble yourself to actually read my posts for comprehension, you might notice that I mentioned what I found objectionable about Kerry’s repudiation of his decorations. He attempted, later, to reclaim what he earlier made clear he didn’t want, for his own political advantage. This makes him a hypocrite. Bush has done exactly the opposite - made it clear that he welcomes this gesture of suppor. Not because he is making any claim to eligibility to the Order of the Purple Heart - that is mere nonsense from the political Gollums on the SDMB who react with instant condemnation of anything - quite literally anything - that Bush does or doesn’t do. Then if Bush does or doesn’t do whatever they say he should, they either condemn him for doing it, refraining from doing it, or merely throw up their hands in despair and lie about it, as King of Soup has done.
So both the veteran and Kerry are entirely within their rights to do what they like with their medals. No one who didn’t criticize Kerry for making a political gesture with his medals has any right to complain if the vet does the same thing. No one who is criticizing Bush for accepting the gift has any moral consistency.
They didn’t start off with much, so no great loss to their credibility.
So you have it phrased wrong. Kerry was right then (although he abandoned that moral stance in one of his earlier flip-flops - he must have voted in favor of his decorations before he voted against them 
) and Bush and the vet are right now.
As I said in my first posts to the thread, if it was OK for Kerry to do it, then it must be OK for the vet to do it. If it is not OK for the vet to do it, then it was not OK for Kerry to do it.
Although it seems I could call Kerry an un-American moron and all the SDMB would agree that this was a perfectly fair criticism.
HAHAHAHAHA! I slay me.
Regards,
Shodan
Or they come pretty soon thereafter, at the very least. Depending on how good your technique is.
Shodan- dear, sweet, passionate, simple Shodan-
Passing judgment on somebody’s actions and denying their rights to do those actions are not synonymous. You have the right to do anything you wish with your property so long as it is legal: if you want to spray paint your new car bright purple, if you want to sell your house and give the proceeds to the Nation of Islam, or if you want to take out those handwoven antique Persian rugs from your dining room and replace them with astro-turf, these things are your right. If Diogenes should come along and say “Man… only a stupid asshole would spray paint his car purple” or Revenant Threshold should say “anyone who would replace Persian carpets with astro-turf is a cretin and a git” or if I should say “Damn, you do realize the Nation of Islam hates white people don’t you? You do? Well then, you’re a dumbass for giving them your money…”, that’s passing judgment, NOT disputing your right. Disputing your right would be to say “You should be arrested for painting that car purple” or “it should be illegal for a white guy to give money to the N.o.I.”.
And always wear a condom and your seat belt.
And at the same time, just to be sure.
And to be completely honest I really don’t have a problem with what John Kerry did with his medals- I think it was a thousand times more meaningful than some hemp sandal wearing trustafarian saying “War’s like… wrong… man!” because it was coming from somebody who had actually been to Vietnam and been decorated for his service there and who was saying “see these honors? Fuck 'em! Fuck the war! Get us out!”
That said, I can’t stand John Kerry. I held my nose and voted for him for the simple reason that he wasn’t Bush. I think a lot of Bush loathing Dopers were the same way. But what he did with his medals more than 30 years ago is irrelevant to this post- nobody is challenging his rights to dispose of them, nobody’s challenging Thomas’s right to give them to Bush. They’re passing judgment on Bush for accepting them when he should have declined it with a very nice very sincere “thanks for no thanks” letter rather than showing, along with hiring Rich-fucking-Little to host the WHPC dinner (which is traditionally a roast) that he feels like a martyr and can’t take criticism. (If you’re really sensitive to personal attacks, that’s also okay- but don’t go into politics and don’t start wars, cause you’re probably going to be called bad names by the other kids.)
I keep seeing this assertion made vigorously by you and others, and I don’t think it’s strictly true.
I know I don’t criticize Bush for everything he does and does not do. Hell, when he assumed office, I reserved judgement and waited to see what he’d actually do…not because I had faith in him per se but because if I criticize him reflexively, regardless of what he does, I know it isn’t fair and it makes me intellectually lazy, not to mention making me look bad.
Now I do criticize him when he does something I consider serious enough to criticize…just as I criticized Clinton for serious stuff.
If it seems to you that you see a lot of posts from me that bash Bush, that just reflects the relative proportion of criticizable stuff he’s done. IMHO, of course.
I also would object to, if I wasn’t too busy laughing at, your assertion that Bush has treated others with dignity and civility. The “Democrat” party? “Liberal” as a dirty word? “Traitor”? “If you’re not with us, you’re against us?” Authorizing torture – or not caring enought to root it out, which is the same thing? Groping the German Chancellor?
The man may be following the recommendations of Rove or he may come by it himself, but he’s a master at antagonizing and disrespecting others. That’s an opinion unrelated to my feelings about his actual policies.
When he does something good, such as using his powers to declare a huge marine sanctuary, I have defended his actions in conversations with others who still sought reason to complain about him.
I think that you trivialize, and thus show disrespect and incivilty toward, the concerns of other citizens when you assert that they reflexively, mindlessly criticize your hero. Calling them Gollums doesn’t help.
I do not yet know – because the heat-to-light ratio is so poor in this thread – if the President is actually planning a medal award ceremony to receive a certificate comparing criticism to war wounds. IF he does so, it will be worth criticizing. IF he does something different in tone or message, I will respond differently.
My precious.
Sailboat
I might also remind Shodan just who started this particular thread. Martin Hyde is hardly a knee-jerk Bush-basher; quite the opposite, in fact. If he is angry with Bush over this faux pas, don’t you think there might just be something to it?
Why? Why is Bush accepting the gift of something he is not entitled to and has not been awarded by the legimate authorities just as moral as the vet (or Kerry) doing what they want with something they WERE entitled to and were awarded by the legitimate authorities?
This particular juncture in the discussion seems like a good time for everyone to go read 7 Reasons the 21st Century Is Making You Miserable.
Reason #1: Not enough annoying strangers in our lives.
No, it’s not a joke.
Dammit. Why do you always make me laugh even if I’m not in the mood? I mean, come on! Just got back from a three hour walk and I don’t have the faintest idea of just how many dogs I had to jerk along the way.
I’m tired, ya dip.
Because it is not immoral to accept the medal as a gift. And a gift is something you haven’t earned and aren’t entitled to, pretty much by definition. Bush is not representing that he was awarded the Purple Heart, or that he earned it, or any of the rest of the nonsense you types are raving about. That assertion is quite stupid and unfounded.
Therefore, what we have left after discarding the knee-jerk anti-Bush rants by the usual idiots who Pit every breath Bush takes, is a President accepting a tribute from a citizen. Said citizen is entirely within his rights to offer the gift (although a bunch of assholes on a messageboard will call him “un-American” for doing it), and there is no sense in which Bush is claiming that he is entitled to anything.
But, as mentioned, some people can’t sleep at night for fear that someone somewhere doesn’t hate Bush. So they Pit him and call him names.
When referring to the political Gollums on the SDMB, as I did, it is strictly true.
Also quite true. Which is why the PGs of the SDMB are intellectually lazy, and look bad.
But fun to mock, which forms a large part of my enjoyment of this place.
This is part of the problem, and why I object to Zoe’s post.
The statement is from Scylla, not me. It is hardly fair to to Scylla to confuse him with me, and it is more than I deserve.
And it is much of the problem hereabouts (not aimed at you or Zoe, specifically, but in general). Nobody, especially on the Left, really reads anything that they think they disagree with. They look at the title of the thread, check who posted, and then hit the Reply button and begin writing what they were gonna write anyway. RedFury did it earlier in this thread - not because the McGovern slam had anything to do with a Purple Heart, but because Red only has room for the one thought in his head, and he was gonna get it out come hell or high water.
Unless that is what they have done often enough to be clear that “Bush sux” constitutes the sum total of their political thinking.
Of course I’m trivializing it - it was trivial to begin with.
Well, that’s perfectly fair. But did you notice that none of the Usual Suspects are waiting to see this before they leap to the attack?
Regards,
Shodan
I corrected the attribution in Zoe’s post, which should have been to Scylla, not you.
You seem to be confusing two different things. If someone said criticising Bush was un-American? Perfectly fine by me. They are free to say what they wish. I would disagree with it in some cases, but that person is quite free to do what they want in that regard.
Same thing for the veteran here. He is free to do whatever he wants with his medal. He can give it to Bush. He could throw it away. He could keep it. All of these things are within his power, and I do not dispute his right to do any of them. OTOH, I am perfectly free to say his reasoning is stupid. That’s the difference; Sampiro said that no-one was claiming the veteran couldn’t do what he wanted with his medal. I said his reasoning was flawed, but I didn’t dispute his right to do it.
No, it does not.
Fair enough. I’m sorry I misunderstood your position.
Ah, if only. 
No-one would dispute your ability to do so, of course. That you seem unable to grasp the difference between ability to do something and reasoning for doing something does seem to be the reason for your misplaced amusement - but hey, who am I to spoil your fun?
A further question; the veteran in question has written a citation for Bush, which he is accepting. Would it be fair to say then that Bush feels the citation is accurate? That Bush is representing that he has earned the item by the criteria set out in the citation? We don’t know the text, but this seems a reasonable conjecture.