Political rant - part deux...if you dare

[beallmd]

I usually don't get into the daily politcal rants but this caught my eye in relation to JPBassking's comment above; http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/Lose8BillionPocket160Million.aspx. Seems in the corporate world you can lose 8 billion! and still get 150 million bonus after! Amazing. Note this is from the wall street journal -not the daily Kos. I feel like Mongo also.

[mrjoe]

It is refreshing for a moderator of a non-political site to allow this kind of discussion as it brings out a whole new perspective about the demographic of wind sport participants. Thanks for that!

Seems that there are not nearly as many of the 'don't discuss serious topics on our enthusiast website' as expected, so that says many of these folks are smart, involved, multi-dimensional personalities. Serious but smart enough and lucky enough to have discovered the joys of wind/kitesurfing. And most are getting over the us vs them of windsurf vs kitesurf finally, just like it took awhile for the ski vs snowboard tussle to die down.

This isosmart character is the clear exception and sticks out like a sore hemorrhoid. What is your deal? You make it sound like you know more than everybody else here on all of these subjects because you have studied oh so very hard to have accumulated such a vast array of knowledge. Get over yourself. This tone sounds like the meanderings of the quintessential narcissist, one who is disappointed that nobody else sees what he is seeing in the reflecting pool. You unknowingly put yourself in the same sentence as the president, congress and the like, a dead giveaway. Your arguments are weak extensions of the most ill voices on the far right (aka fanatical neocon) wing of the party of the most deserving - W's base.

You, little isosmart, are afraid and want everybody else to be afraid, that is the essence of your childish arguments. Sailors who've had a broad experience base have probably faced some pretty dangerous situations and found that fear can be overcome and should not be crippling. Your best years are way behind you and you cannot come to logical grips with that, so by adopting a crusty exterior you're attempting to mask that scared, snot nosed kid that you haven't quite shaken loose of. You are losing control of more and more as the years pass, this is your pathetic attempt to control others if you can make them as fearful as you are. It ain't working here, bud. Grow some 'nads, even if its late in the game. You're pathetic in this theatre. You could never be a voice worthy of listening to because you would never allow even the indisputable best of the opponents argument to seep in as that would be an affront to your (conjured) superiority. And your source materials are suspect and downright deceitful by any reasonable measure.

Starting and supporting senseless wars against bogey men, condoning torture no matter the name, denying healthcare to poor kids, condoning the American government performing illegal acts and forcing your staff to take an oath to the King rather than the country, rewriting the constitution by ignoring it, shamelessly handing the oversight of numerous industries to lobbyists for those industries, these are not the acts nor ideas of a true patriot. You claim to be that, but you are a sniveling coward who has lost any sense of integrity. You've lost the ability to look at the world through the only filter with any intrinsic value - the one that judges between what is right and what is wrong. Instead, you take great pains to manipulate an argument using tactics that are underhanded in a debate setting. This is what makes it frustrating for sane people to listen to this senseless rhetoric of yours and forces them to immerse themselves in their real lives and turn their back on the issues that really need to be discussed. Instead, your supreme intellect has chosen to actively support the actions of the thugs who have the reins of power for the next 15 months. Shame on you, little isosmart.

And tell us again, why should we start bombing Iran - but make sure to use that condescending tone that is so enthralling. As you do, see if your reaction does not harken back to the days when the big boys kicked sand in your face or kicked your ass in the grade school bathroom for being a loudmouthed, snot-nosed dipshit.

It seemed as though you had tired everyone else out here.

[windoggi]

[windoggi]

[jp5]

I'd like to take this opportunity to re-direct the subject of this thread back to what was originally intended and that was a solicitation of peoples opinions about where this country would be today had Senator Kerry been elected president. We are all entitled to our opinions and the fact that they are so different is what makes this thread interesting.

Kindly layoff the personal assaults and keep your posts to the original point.

[swchandler]

I guess if one was going to think about what things would be like if John Kerry was president, it would really revolve around the ideas and actions of those folks brought into the executive branch to help run it. It's hard to picture a book without all the players.

However, without exception from what was known in the race, I really feel that we would have had an infinitely better bargain in John Edwards over Dick Cheney as the vice president. Cheney is one scary jerk, and the sooner he is out of a job the better. Still, he has already left a terribly bad stain on this country that I'm afraid will haunt us for years to come.

[nealpar]

[mac]

I can't let isobars rant go unchallenged. As they said in the British compound in Iraq, Yehaw is not a foreign policy. When all the dust has settled, we have created another failed state in both Afghanistan and Iraq--ideal nurseries for terrorism. We've killed a bunch of terrorists, but manufactured many more by our swagger through the Middle east, our torture, and our utter destruction of Iraq. Poor planning, incompetents who touted the Bush line, and the lack of sufficient military presence to please that scumbag Rumsfeld dreams of a new, leaner military. (Can you spell short guy with a Napoleanic complex?) So we've worn out our military demonstrating to the rest of the world, yet again, that you can't occupy a country and wind their hearts and minds.

This was accomplished by lying, systematically and repeatedly. About our intelligence, about our costs, about what was going wrong, and about the motives of those who thought that invading a sovereign country was a pretty bad idea. He will try to do it again in Iran--Cheney has been asking for a nuclear strategy for Iran for years. If we do that, we destroy the internal opposition to the flake at the top, and like Iraq, we strengthen the zealots and force all of the moderates out of the country. But it doesn't matter to isobars--all of these right wing wing nuts wash their brains in the same laundromats!

[isobars]

Sure, this is long. But it responds to > a dozen posts; how can it be short?

Swchandler sez he can hardly wait ‘til 2009. Guess he likes doubled taxes and the resulting busted economy. If ya WANT to give more of yer money to the gum’mint, be our guest, but why force the rest of us to do it? And with surrender monkeys in charge, who’s going to defend your family against radical Islam?

swchandler adds that Cheney is one scary jerk. I have long suspected Cheney is one reason W is still alive. Every terrorist nutjob who finished the third grade knows that if Cheney became Pres their 72 virgins would arrive shortly thereafter.

BassMan fears “corporate greed” more than he does millions of armed fanatics who have sworn to kill us. The threat from the latter is self-evident, but
1. Define greed (good luck).
2. Even if you could define greed, how does it threaten you? I submit that Bill Gates is rich because he infinitely enriched our lives in many respects and deserves every cent he earned.
3. “Protect the working class”? From what? Many longshoremen, auto mechanics, and assembly line auto workers earn six figures. You want ME (i.e. my taxes) to carry you? Fine … ASK me and maybe I’ll help you out. But what gives you you the right to take my hard-earned money at gunpoint just to guarantee your fiscal comfort?

And the Bassman sez Bush doesn’t care about the middle class. Uh … based on what facts? OK, I get it; he hates Bush. But which is the cause and which is the effect … Bush-hatred or facts? Bush has made the middle class safer by opposing terrorism and richer by cutting their taxes (you DO know, don’tcha, that taxes on the richest people are paying an ever-increasing share of the government’s operating costs, according to IRS data?). Even if Bush’s motivation was just to garner my vote, I’ll still take both benefits. I’m selling off most of my stocks in ‘08 if the tax-insane Dems win, because of their vow to triple, at the very least, my taxes.

George astutely sez this red OR blue paradigm is unnecessarily divisive. Sure is … but what’s a voter’s alternative? I use to naively think we could vote for the best candidate, but now there’s virtually no overlap between the parties, so we must choose more or less between capitalists willing to oppose terrorism and socialists who want to appease it; independent votes are wasted. I like Lieberman a great deal, but I’d never vote for a socialist because we’ve seen how frequently those programs fail. The other 20 little issues such as early abortion and gay marriages pale in comparison.

Kerry? KERRY? Some of you just aren’t paying any attention. The man stated his willingness, even eagerness, to subjugate our Constitution to the U.N. and/or other nations, and Naval records prove (and his commanders have sworn) that virtually all the Swift Boaters’ outright disgusting charges are true, that the man is a total fraud.

“Fahrenheit 9/11”? Theq is kidding, right? Certainly he understands that Michael Moore literally has no concept of the meanings of the words “truth”, “facts”, or “science”, right? Moore is as certifiable -- and as certified as such by factual records and scientific evidence contradicting his insane rhetoric -- as Al Gore is. Has Moore ever stated a truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in context, in his life? His statements in interviews leads me to believe he believes his BS, but then so do the people who wear tin foil hats, who believe we faked the moon landings, who believe Islamic terrorists qualify for the Geneva Convention, and who believe any aspect of 9/11 was an inside job. But uninformed belief is not necessarily truth, ignorance is fixable, stupidity is permanent, backstabbing one’s chosen country is despicable, and people must understand the profound differences between scientifically proved facts, opinions, and outright lies.

TheQ also said “ I liked Howard Dean … a vocal backer of our invasion of Afghanistan, and an opponent of an Iraq invasion. In such matters, a guy couldn't be any more correct. The GOP has its own "Dean-like" candidate in Ron Paul … who is spurned buy the party elite, just as Dean was.”. Apparently neither TheQ nor Dean gets it, “It” being that our enemy is radical Islam, not individual nations. Al Qaeda alone, as just one faction of radical Islam, is known to function in at least 60 nations. A major reason we chose to attack Iraq is that it was the only nation openly and actively supporting terrorism as a matter of national policy, and don’t forget who said that as our next president she would attack the terrorists wherever they exist.

Of COURSE Paul is spurned; the man is a total idiot, as is Dean. Withdraw from the world, shut our eyes and ears to it, disband all intelligence agencies (what contributed more to our ignorance of Al Qaeda, et.al., than Carter’s decimation of our intelligence services?), and just sit back and blindly wait to be attacked from all sides on our homeland? And am I wrong in thinking I heard Paul advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament? That would accelerate those attacks by a decade and guarantees defeat.

TheQ also sez “Rove and Co. were very successful in getting a large segment of the population scared out of their wits.” Huh? It was Bill Clinton who very belatedly sounded that alarm from the rooftops in the mid-1990s, yet chose to do nothing about it because he lacked the courage. (That’s not an attack on the poor man; he was raised that way and was in over his emotional head.)

The BassMan says and George concurs that, “Choosing a particular party affiliation does not require one to blindly follow all the policies and opinions of that party.” Among voters, I agree, but Lieberman and Zel Miller, both of whom I respect a great deal, prove otherwise when it comes to politicians. Stray from the party line, and a pol becomes dog meat. That’s at the heart of my absolute disgust with our political system and our politicians: use your brain and speak your mind and you’re killed and eaten by the pack.

BassMan supports a woman’s right to choose. So do I; she has every right to choose whether to have intercourse. But when that choice leads to a pregnancy, she has consequences to pay. I don’t care if she has an early abortion or two, but several, in lieu of choosing to Just Say No, or aborting a viable but unwanted late term baby, or for God’s sake killing a baby at birth should not be a legal choice, especially at taxpayers’ expense and not without parental involvement for minors.

And, like I, BassMan, don’t “love all republicans and hate all democrats as Geohaye might suggest”. But it’s obvious that many people, such as Rowena and countless of her ilk, do hate anyone from the other side of the political fence. I had never in my life seen so many unfounded, inexplicable, factless, vacant, vile personal attacks from anyone until people like her and several similar political zombies here and in other forums discovered a “neocon” -- whatever that is -- to mindlessly pounce on. I thought Rowena was our ad hominem poster child, but then along comes Mr. Joe, with only 59 relevant (although totally misinformed) words buried in a 698-word personal attack (and he sez my tone is condescending?) revealing his total incapacity for rational, topical, informed discourse. Four tips for Mr. Joe:
1) Try factually debating the issues and see how your opinions hold up to scrutiny,
2) Facts are neither condescending, childish, nor arrogant; they’re just facts. Only people who operate on emotion rather than facts attribute emotion to or fear facts.
3) “Bogey men”? Islamic terrorists have deliberately slaughtered scores to hundreds of thousands of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian civilians, women, and children in dozens of nations in your brief lifetime, and they’re “bogey [fictitious] men”? Quoting your president: “The United States has been the target of over 32 per cent of all terrorist attacks worldwide, second only to Israel." ... and that was in Sep 1998 (before 9/11 and George Bush, in case it isn’t obvious from the date).
4) ”You make it sound like you know more than everybody else here on all of these subjects because you have studied oh so very hard to have accumulated such a vast array of knowledge.” It’s just the opposite. What makes me sound more knowledgeable than some of of the people here are some gross misstatements and stupid, off-topic personal attacks void of any facts or opinions relevant and topical to the thread.

We shall see whether the BassMan’s admonition helps put this boat back on course: “Kindly layoff the personal assaults and keep your posts to the original point”. (I submit that the relevant political discussions here pertain to BassMan’s original posit because Kerry’s not that different from the rest of his party, IMO.)

The one rational and relevant thing Rowena offers is that “many people are Republicans or Democrats because their parents were, their grandparents were”. That’s factual and a pity, because today’s Democratic (or Democrat, or Progressive, or NeoSoc, or whatever PC euphemism they prefer these days) Party bears virtually no resemblance to the Donkeys our parents grew up with. The old Donkeys had some good ideas, but their party’s current leaders prove every time they open their mouths what radical extremists they are. I can’t comprehend supporting a party which supports absolute, embarrassing, party-hack, slimy, freakazoids like Pelosi, Jabba the Kennedy, and Reid, all of whom lie to their own constituents from the podia of the Congress almost weekly.

The rest of her mindless ad hominem isn’t worthy of a response as it slides into such nonsense as “Isobars is too old at 64 to have been part of the protest generation”. Simple arithmetic shows that I was in high school and college in ... ta daaaa … the ‘60s, right up through 1967. And guess where I lived then (hint: I saw firsthand the 20th century’s greatest hero leading the protest march from Selma to Montgomery, rode some of the same busses as Rosa Parks, and saw the KKK march through my town at night during the Freedom Rider riots.) Later I watched the TV in horror as uninformed protesters sucked up every lying word of Walter Kronkite’s and stormed out to snatch defeat from the jaws of our Viet Nam victory at a cost of 35,000 more soldiers’ lives and the lives of another two million southeast Asia citizens we betrayed. Score: MLK Jr. One, Fonda/Kronkite/Kerry 2,035,000 … and the Democrat Party leaders have vowed to repeat that grisly embarrassment. Dammit, but you activists need to actually study the FACTS, instead of mindlessly watching the MEDIA.

My head just reels as Gregorvass calls Kahlifornyans “independent thinkers”. I wonder if he has any CLUE how most of the rest of the nation shakes its head in absolute “dumbfoundery” as news come out of that insane state. The list is too long even for me to present here, starting in San Franscisco, whose leaders want to ban or even disband the U.S. military.

Sparks then injects some concise thoughts which may reveal even more than even he intended, with a nuance here and a wisely placed “…“ there. “You certainly know your views are not yours alone. Too few folks with a conservative bent take the time to engage in a thoughtful response to the knee-jerk reactions and allegations of the socialist movement in this country.“, for example. Yup … as witnessed by the unprecedented success of the Fox News juggernaut, which now dwarfs the rest of cable news combined, and by the L.A. think tank whose study by several major institutions found that Fox’s own Brit Hume’s ”Special Report” news show, the biggest politically oriented show on all of cable TV, is among the two or three most centrist/balanced news shows on TV.

Sparky adds “Socializm is loud, and everpresent … I sense a pushback ... checks and balances ... work best when both viewpoints are represented [ah, yes … fair and balanced. What a concept! Some news network should try that; they might take over Cable News.]. … George.... well.... he has conviction. but among his shortcomings, he's too ingrained with this idea of a global economy and is trying to give away the US in the process.” He also has shot himself in both feet and the belly by appointing too many incompetent friends to high office. All presidents do it, but Bush has made some stunningly poor choices.

Now, Mac joins Rowena, et.al. in mindless ad hominem, but he also challenged my topical comments head-on, which is their purpose, so I''ll respond.

“we have created another failed state in both Afghanistan and Iraq”, he sez. So he agrees with Reid in conceding defeat, even as the surge appears promising. C’mon, man, give peace a chance. I’m discouraged, but haven’t given up yet.

“ideal nurseries for terrorism”. Exactly why we should do our best to help them pacify their countries and bring them into at least the 19th Century. “We've killed a bunch of terrorists, but manufactured many more” … Manufactured, or just brought to a head? I hear you, but I think -- along with our previous president, that this pimple was coming to a head anyway. Better now on their soil than on our soil after they get nukes, on which they have been hell-bent for over a decade.

Again, the very rare cases of torture were under investigation and on their way to prosecution before the press discovered and sensationalized them.

“Our utter destruction of Iraq”? New schools, vastly increased home ownership, thriving new home-grown business ventures, power plants, the first TV sets most of these people have owned since Saddam took over, and on and on and on.

“Poor planning, incompetents who touted the Bush line, and the lack of sufficient military presence”, I fully agree with.

“that scumbag Rumsfeld dreams of a new, leaner military”? Uh, isn’t that a great and admirable dream, and didn’t it depose Saddam and decimate the Taliban toot sweet?

“you can't occupy a country and win their hearts and minds”? So how come 10 sheiks banded together to oppose the terrorists, and how come Iraqi citizens in ever-increasing numbers are outing terrorists? Did anyone think this would happen in just months or a few years? Rumsfeld said years ago, even before Wolfowitz screwed things up under W’s poor oversight, that this would be a very long, drawn-out process.

“This was accomplished by lying”. What lie is that?

“Cheney has been asking for a nuclear strategy for Iran for years. If we do that, we destroy the internal opposition to the flake at the top, and like Iraq, we strengthen the zealots and force all of the moderates out of the country” Yup … one very strong reason rational minds don’t want to attack Iran broadly and that no prominent voice proposes nuclear action there (“action” and “strategy” are vasty different concepts; we MUST leave NO strategies off ANY bargaining table). Another reason is that nukes are overkill in this task.

But I gotta ask you … how far would you advocate going to stop Iran from going nuclear? I agree with the vast majority of all the presidential candidates that it must be prevented at any cost because the cost of not preventing it will be greater.

As for “It doesn't matter to isobars”, you’re an idiot. How’s that for ad hominem? (At least mine’s not baseless.)

[keycocker]

Isobars likes to research his positions and state things in a strong way.
Personal attacks are a waste of a good keyboard.
There is no right or wrong in discussions of the strategy the US should use to move ahead at home and abroad.There are merely more or less effective options.
To undermine the opinions of the well informed right like Mike, the lefties here need to do more homework.
Among my friends there are two groups of conservatives, Those who have traveled esp. in the Muslim world, and those who caught it on TV.
The first group wanted to see real proof of the danger from Saddam before we made a big mistake in attacking. They knew that Osama and others were hoping and planning, in public, that the US would do this.
It worked out great for Al Quada. They hated Saddam because he was not religious and slaughtered any Jihadist he got his hands on.
These conservatives know that Cheney called for the Iraq war 16 years, repeatly made speeches in the interim and made that the subject or his inaugaral address. He ordered the attack on Iraq in the Oval Office on Sept. 11 claiming the president had just authorized it on the phone. After an embarrassed silence someone timidly told the great man that the phone had not been used since the planes hit, and maybe we should check who attacked us first.
That is why we attacked Iraq- not "weak intelligence" Anyone who has been listening to Cheney all these years knows why we are there.It is his obsession. The American people made it happen for him, screwing around arguing about an imaginary 100 million bilion Jihadists riding toward us, which he cared little about. He cared about attacking Iraq and nothng else.
First 4 years after 9/11 a new Al Quada attack on a bridge or station was announced by Attorney General Ashcroft more than 50 times. All proved to be false alarms, which is how we heard it overseas, but here at home you guys felt it as a wave of nonstop scary news.
Where there is smoke there is -=---- smoke.
He was another guy joining Cheney in doing Osamas work.
One attack in NY isn't how to terrorize a great nation. You need a wave of phony attacks like that or folks start to relax again. You can read that on the jihadist sites.
All this is well known all over the world but not the thing that stands out on the US based news.