That's my opinion, and it's very true.
#29 ©November, 2004 ••••••• Don Harthcock, Editor
That's my opinion, and it's very true.
#29 ©November, 2004 ••••••• Don Harthcock, Editor
OpinionSoup may contain language and topics unsuitable for children.
"'There is nothing more insidious than the conspiracy that doesn't exist." ~Don Coyote
THIS ISSUE:
SPECIAL EDITION
ELECTION 2004
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Excerpt from "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George Bush the First and Brent Scowcroft, from A World Transformed (Knopf, 1998)
"While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state.
"We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf.
"We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well.
"Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold-war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.
"Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome."
DONNY SAYS: This nut fell far from the tree, didn't he? Or maybe he's got some kind of need to out-do Daddy or prove Daddy wrong - something like that. And Saddam tried to kill his Daddy, so he's got to get him back for that. Something like that. Any answer that is completely devoid of common sense and morality is a good answer to the question "Why did President George W. Bush put us in Iraq?"
• * • * • * • Bush Campaign Seeks Help From Thousands of Congregations
By David D. Kirkpatrick
The New York Times
Thursday 03 June 2004
The Bush campaign is seeking to enlist thousands of religious congregations around the country in distributing campaign information and registering voters, according to an e-mail message sent to many members of the clergy and others in Pennsylvania.
Liberal groups charged that the effort invited violations of the separation of church and state and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of churches that cooperated. Some socially conservative church leaders also said they would advise pastors against participating in such a partisan effort.
But Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush administration, said "people of faith have as much right to participate in the political process as any other community" and that the e-mail message was about "building the most sophisticated grass-roots presidential campaign in the country's history."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/060404J.shtml
• * • * • * • BEST QUOTES
"People keep telling me to "get behind our president" and I say we can't be two places at once. We can't be behind Bush and bent over in front of him at the same time." ~J. Marcus
"There ought to be limits to freedom." ~George W. Bush
"You can fool some of the people all of the time - and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!" ~George W. Bush (NY Times)
Bush told FFA youth that he looked forward to "seeing the cows. Occasionally they talk to me - being the good listener that I am." (USA Today)
"I have the feeling that this guy could turn out to be a colossal boob." ~David Letterman
"They say that drinking one or two glasses of red wine per day keeps you mentally alert. Right now in Washington they're trying to get George Bush to start drinking again." ~David Letterman
"Engaging in an obsessive campaign of domestic spying, assassinating American citizens, provoking baseless wars and furiously unraveling civil protections and rights that we hold dear, George W. Bush's ersatz presidency is working hard to transform the United States from a law-abiding republic into a postmodern blend of late Soviet totalitarianism and Gold Rush-era company town...Years after Bush is gone, we'll be paying off the debts he ran up and the lawsuits brought by those whose rights he violated." ~Ted Rall
"From a marketing perspective, you don't introduce new products in August." ~White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, explaining the administration's decision to wait till after Labor Day to push for war with Iraq.
Let's face it: George W. is just plain dumb.
By BILL MAXWELL
St. Petersburg Times
Let's stop dancing around with W and the D-word. I keep reading and hearing smooth euphemisms about the Republican presidential front-runner. He is ''flip,'' he is ''cocky,'' he is ''not a details man'' and he is ''not a policy wonk.''
Give me a break. Let us just tell it straight, Texas-style: W. is dumb.
Most political pundits, however, publicly skirt the issue. For all his money and his charmed head-start at birth, George W. Bush, son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, should be well-read.
And brilliant.
But he is neither. And some observers even have the gall to excuse W.'s inarticulateness and ignorance of important issues.
One of the latest examples comes from none other than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. This Pulitzer Prize winner, who made a cottage industry of calling Bill Clinton and his wife every nasty name permitted in a family newspaper, merely hints that W. is a dummy. She shows W. -- using quintessential Dan Quayle-isms -- referring to the East Timorese as the ''East Timorians.'' She also places W. at a Bedford, N.H., elementary school imparting his brand of wisdom to innocent children: ''Some people say that I proved that if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life.''
Keep in mind that many of these same children would be frowned upon or taken to the woodshed if they earned a C average. They belong to a new generation of pupils who must overachieve, who are being tested into fits of vomiting and recurring nightmares by the likes of W., the Lone Star State's Education Governor.
The plain truth is that W.'s mediocrity may prove that he became ''successful in life'' because of his name (Bush) and his family's wealth. Most other guys of ''average'' intelligence, who fumble their thoughts and wear a smirk, could not dream of becoming governor of any state -- let alone becoming U.S. president. (Ronald Reagan being, of course, a notable exception.)
Keenly aware of his half-baked replies to Dowd, W. said, ''In my life, I never tried to rush the natural progression of growing up.''
Sorry, W., but ''growing up'' includes reading -- and reflecting.
Frank Rich of The New York Times comes as close as any other pundit in stating unequivocably that W. might suffer from gray matter deficit syndrome. In a column arguing that W. won the cocaine joust with journalists, Rich writes: ''Some voters are less concerned with what drugs, if any, passed through Mr. Bush's brain than with what other traffic, if any, did.
''Though otherwise cooperating with a seven-part Washington Post profile this summer, this would-be education president would not permit Andover or Yale to release his grades. Asked by a South Carolina elementary-school kid at a campaign photo op ... to name his favorite book as a child, Mr. Bush responded, 'I can't remember any specific books.''' Amid all the creakhead cracks on late-night talk shows was David Letterman's chilling aside, ''I have the feeling that this guy could turn out to be a colossal boob.''
Whenever I hear W. speak, I sense that I am listening to a faux Texas hick. How, for heaven's sake, can a serious presidential candidate publicly confuse Slovenians and Slovakians? How can he say Grecian (formula perhaps?) when he means Greek? How, pray tell, can he use Kosovians when he should say Kosovars?
We have a serious problem here, fellow voters.
I am convinced that W., like Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s, stands at the front of a new cycle of anti-intellectualism in the United States. Eisenhower, a celebrated general of World War II, known for his conventional mind and clumsy speech, ran against Adlai Stevenson, the ''egghead'' Democrat whom historian Richard Hofstadter, author of the book ''Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,'' describes as ''a politician of uncommon mind and style . ...''
And like Ike, W. is of conventional mind and sounds as dumb when opening his mouth. W. operates in a party that blames the nation's social problems on the so-called ''cognitive elite.'' One wag called this trend a ''jihad against gray matter'' -- an apt allusion that explains why that ofttimes vacant look on W.'s face reminds me of the character in the movie ''Forrest Gump.''
In falling all over W., as polls indicate, is America simply reacting to the sorry escapades of the brainy, over-sexed Clinton by celebrating stupidity?
Check out what Tucker Carlson writes about W. in the September issue of Talk magazine: ''Toward the end of one interview with Bush I decide to test the Larry King Theory -- that dumb questions are the most evocative -- and ask Bush who his heroes are. Expecting the stock Albert Schweitzer-Aristole-Mother Teresa phoniness, I am surprised when Bush can't seem to come up with an answer. After thinking for an uncomfortably long moment, he names only one: retired baseball player Nolan Ryan. (In the airport later, I notice that Ryan, a close friend of Bush's, happens to be on the cover of that month's Texas Monthly.) When I ask Bush to name something he isn't good at, there is no hesitation at all. 'Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something,' he says.''
I am not making this up, America.
One reason that Bush might not let Yale or Andover release his grades is that, as a rich kid who filled ''legacy'' slots, he made lousy grades and probably did not belong on either campus. His first grade in English at Phillips Academy was a big fat goose egg. He also struggled in math.
He certainly is not a poster boy for meritocracy.
Am I saying that the intellectually challenged are not fit for public office? Nope. We are swamped with legions of them at all levels of public life. Am I saying that such a person should not be president of the world's last superpower? Absolutely.
Do we really want W. Gump at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?
* * * * * * *
Bill Maxwell is an editorial writer and columnist for the St. Petersburg Times.
http://www.polkonline.com/stories/092299/opi_maxwell.shtml
Bush Quotes about Osama bin Laden
~a BuzzFlash Reader Commentary
by KarenFor your amusement and future reference, here's what Bush has said about bin Laden at various points in time, depending on how he was trying to spin things:http://www.buzzflash.com
"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." (9/13/01)
"I want justice...there's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said 'Wanted: Dead or Alive." (9/17/01, UPI)
"...Secondly, he is not escaping us. This is a guy, who, three months ago, was in control of a county [sic]. Now he's maybe in control of a cave. He's on the run. Listen, a while ago I said to the American people, our objective is more than bin Laden. But one of the things for certain is we're going to get him running and keep him running, and bring him to justice. And that's what's happening. He's on the run, if he's running at all. So we don't know whether he's in a cave with the door shut, or a cave with the door open - we just don't know..." (12/28/01, remarks in Press Availability with Press Travel Pool in Crawford TX, as reported on official White House site
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." (3/12/02)
"I am truly not that concerned about him." (4/8/02, The New American)
DONNY SAYS: President George W. Bush has been bad for America. This is the position of the Rock & Roll Church of All Nations. We stand opposed to him on most matters, and we oppose his re-election. President Bush is an Enemy of the People. He is a usurper, a puppet of those whose only interest is raping America as she struggles to stay alive.
You are most sincerely urged to vote today, and you are urged to vote for Anybody But Bush.
RRCANNA supports David Cobb of the Green Party. However, we hope that you will vote for John Kerry if you do not plan to vote for David. We do not support the 2004 candidacy of Ralph Nader. We denounce Ralph Nader for Crimes Against the People and Nerdiness. We think Ralph Nader is a "bobbahead." However, we dislike George Bush even more. Please cast your vote against George W. Bush.
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