Is NOT! Sure, SimonX and a bunch of other cafeteria Republicans are saying they disagree with this or that policy of Bush’s or that they dont’ like the Bush admin. as a whole. I feel their pain. Some of the things Bill Clinton did while in office for political reasons just had me gritting my teeth in frustration. Clinton’s “triangulation” approach led him to sign on to stuff that was clearly Republican in nature, and contrary to the best interests of the country.
That said, I can distinctly remember when Clinton was Prez cries of “The Dems are doing this” and “The Dems are doing that” from Republicans who weren’t happy about Clinton’s policies. They didn’t bother to distinguish between Dems who liked this Clinton policy and disliked that Clinton policy, they just said “The Dems.”
Frankly, this strikes me as fair to an extent. Why do you have to use mealy-mouthed, watered-down phrases such as, “Some elements of the Republican Party who support the Bush Admin.” when “the Republicans” is so much shorter and to the point? Did the Republican Party as a whole not work to get Dubya elected? Is he not their man? If they don’t like his policies, let them nominate someone else for Prez in 2004. THAT would shut me up pretty good!
Bush minions commit vile acts and get caught, then Bush apoligizes … I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t take his apoligies at face value. 'Cause I’d feel pretty durned stupid if I did.
I think they’re a fine way to alert the undecideds about the vile moral status of the Bush admin in particular and the Republicans in general.
What does legal or justified have to do with politics? The voters didn’t give a shit about legal or justified so why would congress have had to take such things into consideration?
And no, I don’t think they realized or believed that Bush would lie to them as baldly and as shamelessly as he did. It seemed like a safe bet at the time that Bush would find some WMDs, or WMD programs or something in Iraq which would retroactively justify their votes and make them look smart. I don’t cut the Dems any slack for voting for the war. They’re almost as guilty as Bush (but not quite as guilty because Bush knew he was lying) I criticized them for the pandering cowards they were in voting for the war (but I’m proud to say that one of the most notable dissenters was my own state’s Paul Wellstone who voted against the war in the midst of a neck and neck election campaign. Wellstone was the moral exception which proves the rule in congress).
Kerry is now forced to simply attack Bush’s handling of the war rather than the initiation of the war. That’s what he gets for not having any political balls when it counts, but my point is that Kerry et al did not vote the way they did because Bush is intelligent but because they had to pander to their bloodthirsty constituencies. Legality and morality are only as important as the voters think they are and in this case the voters didn’t give a shit for either one.
DtC, your position makes no sense. If Bush was lieing, then he KNEW there were no WMD, correct? I mean, if he thought there were, then he wasn’t lieing, was he?? Or maybe you mean he was lieing about something else but not about his belief there were WMD? On the assumption you mean Bush was lieing about the WMD, how does this statement by you make any sense at all??
Why did it seem a safe bet? Because Bush was the only one (except for Saddam of course and maybe a few others ‘in the know’ who didn’t have any solid proof) that Iraq had no WMD?? I’m really trying to understand the whole ‘Bush lied about WMD’ logic here. I can see that Bush et al cherry picked the data to present a clearer picture than what they actually had to influence things. I’ll buy that as its pretty much a given IMO. But why WOULD Bush lie about WMD in Iraq if he KNEW there weren’t any?? He would have to know it would come back and bite him on the ass…as it in fact has.
Why isn’t it more reasonable that Bush et al had indications that Iraq still had WMD, but that the data wasn’t firm, and they manipulated the presentation and emphasis of that data to make the case appear more cut and dried? To me its a much simpler explaination than trying to say Bush knew there were no WMD but chose to emphasis that there WERE, repeatedly and often in the publics eye, but figured it would all go away if none were ever found. To me, that makes zero sense by anyone even remotely familiar with how the US operates.
Everybody thought Iraq probably still had WMDs. Bush said he knew it, that he knew where they were and they demanded an immediate preemtive attack. That’s what he was lying about and what he knew he was lying about. He inflated the evidence beyond what it truly was. Essentially, he lied- and he knew he was lying- when he said he had proof that Iraq was an imminent threat to the US. That’s not the same as saying he knew there were no WMDs. I didn’t mean to imply that. What I meant was that he knew it had not been proven that they did.
I see it like this:
BUSH: Hey, we just found out the Iraqis have a whole damn bunch of WMDs pointed right at us. We need to invade them sumbitches like yesterday.
CONGRESS: Yeah, well we all sort of figured he had something left over but we never knew for sure.
BUSH: We know for damn sure fellas. It ain’t just old stuff either. They’re bulding brand new stuff as we speak. They’re even trying to get them some uranium from Africa. They’re fixing to blow us all to hell.
CONGRESS: Well, hell, maybe we should see this new info.
BUSH: Well, you know, that’s all top secret and classificated but I can show you some summaries and highlights that Mr. Cheney wrote down for me.
CONGRESS: Well this stuff looks sort of scary…maybe we should take a poll and see how we feel.
VOTERS: Kill! Kill! Kill!
CONGRESS: We are outraged. We must stop this threat to America (you’re sure you’re going to find something, right?)
BUSH: I know right where all them nuc-u-lar bombs and Saran wrap gas cans is at at. Them Iraqis is gonna dance in the streets once we liberate 'em.
CONGRESS: Well, they probably have something. Find it quick, ok.
As an alternate take on this issue, lemme ask this: does anyone deny that Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rove are like an unholy trinity of genius? (Scratch “unholy” if necessary ). It seems plausible to me, even likely, that Bush depends on their political acumen for most of his decisions: when he’s without their guidance seems to be when he makes his most flagrant mistakes (during speeches, during press conferences, running baseball teams, etc.)
His strengths seem to me to be an ability to inspire tremendous devotion in underlings, an ability to connect very quickly with individuals, and an ability to choose canny grand viziers. These don’t necessarily indicate a mammoth intellect.
What’s really amazing is that Bush was able to convince most of Congress, most of the American people of this lie even though he’s a terrible public speaker and has been proven by this board to be** NOT INTELLIGENT**!
DtC: Ok, I see where you are coming from now. Thanks for clarifying that, as I’ve often heard people say ‘Bush lied about WMD’ and never really understood where they were coming from.
I agree Bush DID say he ‘knew’ they had them and ‘knew’ where they were, and ‘knew’ they were being manufactured. Thats all true. It doesn’t necessarily follow that he lied, he could have simply been wrong, but I see where you are coming from on this now and it doesn’t seem the ridiculous position I thought it was.
The one problem I have with your Bush/Congress conversation is this:
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t there a Congressional sub-committee that deals with top secret stuff like this, so that Congress is informed about it, but all the information isn’t diseminated to all of Congress? And wasn’t that committe informed of all the information Bush had? I remember they talking about this before the war…that a bi-partisan sub-committee of Congress was up to date on all available intellegence.
You say “mealy-mouthed, watered-down,” I say intellectually honest and accurate. Of course if all you want to do is issue taunts, then it doesn’t matter even one flying fuck how honest or accurate you are. Since you’ve obviously only an intent to taunt, it doesn’t matter.
There’re several committees that deal with top secret stuff. Traditionally, there’s an NIE drawn up before the Pres goes to Congress. As it happened this time, members of Congress had to use threats to get an NIE. The NIE was “hurriedly” put together.
No, it doesn’t. It specifically does not specify special treatment for anyone. Marriage is defined as 1 man, 1 woman; any man is free to marry any woman (if she accepts the proposal) and vice-versa.
What it specifically does NOT do is reward deviant behaviour and that is what all the whining is about.
Who in here loves President Bush because he is such an eloquent public speaker?
…circkets…
I didn’t think so. And although Cecil’s column proved that Bush is intelligent more than anything, we’ll just ignore that point for a second.
It is possible for someone to be a bad public speaker and uninteligent, because people are polarized by strong core beliefs and morals, something that GWB has.
Yeah, they’re the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. They concluded in September that the intelligence was weak
It looks like the House Committee was impressed by the presentation of the intel at first but that they were misled about the confidence of a lot of it.
[Note: My link is to a liberal website but the article is reprinted directly from the Washington Post. For some reason I couldn’t get it to load correctly from the Post site.]
Your “definition” is a tautology, and a discriminatory and stupid one at that. You’re saying only a woman has the right to marry a man and that discriminates against men.
Because marriage is traditionally defined as “a union between a man and a woman”, you’re right. By the traditional definition, this would forbid anything other than a woman from marrying a man. Men and women, however, are not forbidden from being joined together in a way in a strong relationship. It’s just can’t be marriage. It has to be civil unions or whatever terminology you want to use.
Our society is predominately Christian. Therefore, anything that goes against Christian beliefs is going to be considered (by Christians, the majority) to be deviant. This Bible passage spells it out:
Also, combine this belief with the fact that a small minority of people are homosexual. Anything that goes against the majority is deviant (being left-handed is deviating from the normal).
Homosexuality may or may not be moral, depending on your beliefs, but it is deviant.
I haven’t followed the rest of the thread… but your logic seems fine as far as determining that Homos are “deviants” and anti-christian. Sex out of marriage was deviant before, divorce was deviant before, bastard kids were deviants, anal sex, having lovers was deviant behaviour. All of these are common now. So even if the number of gays remains small isn’t there a chance that they are like all these former anti-christian behaviours that Gays will become “common” ?
). It seems plausible to me, even likely, that Bush depends on their political acumen for most of his decisions: when he’s without their guidance seems to be when he makes his most flagrant mistakes (during speeches, during press conferences, running baseball teams, etc.)