God Rigs Election: It's Bush In A "blowout"

[minsue]

I don't know anything about compassionate conservatism. I tend to think it's like a company having "employee empoerment". It's a catchy phrase to deny the obviousness of the opposite bing true.

My conservatism has never been without compassion. Compassionate conservatism seems to be a term created by those who believe the two are mutually exclusive. They aren't. I question if the current brand of conservatism is even conservative, much less compassionate. It seems hellbent on wholesale changes in the world at large and the last time I checked conservatives didn't like radical change.

-Colly

Yea Colly!! Now go off about the party of "State's Rights" constantly passing federal laws to override liberal state laws! (ie Defense of Marriage Act, Partial Birth Abortion Ban, and all of those other odiously named bills)

- Mindy

 

[minsue]

Illegal in bars? If Americans aren't free to protect ourselves while drunk, can we truly call ourselves free?

Come to Arizona, She, you'll fit in just fine!!

As an extra plus, only the outlying areas still use ballots involving chads and no one cares how they vote anyway.

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

From a marketing perspective, the Republican Nat. Committee and the Bush White House have done a brilliant job. You can't argue with something called the "Defense of Marriage Act" and neither can you be a very nice person and have a problem with "faith-based initiatives." "Operation Enduring Freedom" wouldn't have been nearly as popular as "Operation Bomb Now, Plan Later."

 

[Colleen Thomas]

From a marketing perspective, the Republican Nat. Committee and the Bush White House have done a brilliant job. You can't argue with something called the "Defense of Marriage Act" and neither can you be a very nice person and have a problem with "faith-based initiatives." "Operation Enduring Freedom" wouldn't have been nearly as popular as "Operation Bomb Now, Plan Later."

Nor spinning your first attacks on Roe V Wade as barring the "abhorent" practice of partial birth abortion. A term that only politicians use to describe any number of medically safe proceedures. I think it's the first time that Congress has enacted alaw banning a medical proceedure that is both safe and effective.

-Colly

 

[minsue]

Nor spinning your first attacks on Roe V Wade as barring the "abhorent" practice of partial birth abortion. A term that only politicians use to describe any number of medically safe proceedures. I think it's the first time that Congress has enacted alaw banning a medical proceedure that is both safe and effective.

-Colly

Sadly, I have no doubts that it won't be the last.

- Mindy

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Sadly, I have no doubts that it won't be the last.

- Mindy

Ignorant, barefoot and pregnant, with no chance for a job outside the home and no opportunity to make it on your own. The Fundamentalist wet dream of the place of women. Fear it.

-Colly

 

[minsue]

Ignorant, barefoot and pregnant, with no chance for a job outside the home and no opportunity to make it on your own. The Fundamentalist wet dream of the place of women. Fear it.

-Colly

Believe me, I do. The one thing I am most grateful for is a husband who not only has no issue with my indomintable independant streak, but is eagerly awaiting the day I make enough money to support him so that he can stay home & mooch off of me. Sadly, as one who works for a bank, that is never going to happen. I let him dream, though.

I see my sister in law complain that she doesn't even know how much money they have because my brother "takes care of" the finances and it just makes me want to cry. I can't imagine not controlling my own future. (well, pretend to control it anyway)

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

Come to Arizona, She, you'll fit in just fine!!

I lived in Arizona for a while as a kid. Dad was stationed at Luke AFB.

Loved Arizona. I wasn't old enough to care about its politics, but enough to appreciate the beauty of the desert, and of Red Rock and Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. Sedona was a two-bit little truckstop of a town when we stopped the family car to have cheeseburgers there. I was one of those 7-year-olds who never actually eats any food, so mine was given to our cocker spaniel, Snooks. He tasted it, his eyes glazed over with food lust, and he pronounced the cheeseburger too good to eat all at once. It was worth savoring. So he buried it in the sand at the edge of the diner's parking lot.

Poor Snooks. I wonder if he ever dreamed about the elusive Sedona cheeseburger. Maybe the farmer that he went to live with after he tried to bite my cousin took him to visit Arizona and he dug it up and found it delicously petrified.

Please tell me my dad, a Republican conservative who thought Ronald Reagan was too liberal, was telling the truth about that farm in the country. I've met a few other people whose childhood pets went to live on that farm, and it sounds like such nice place, I'd like to see it federally funded.



Snooks, wherever you are, I wish we had bought you a spare cheeseburger for the car. FYI, you were one of the reasons I never cleaned my plate. Also, I agreed that my cousin deserved to be bitten.

 

[shereads]

Bill Mahr to terrorists: "Hate us a little less, because we're not that free."

Mars mission and immigration policy announcements made the same week.

Coincidence?

Maybe. But if I didn't have my green card, I'd think twice about what the Pres might be planning for me when i come forward to register for legal "guest worker" status.

Speaking of guest workers, Bill Maher, whose show Politically Incorrect was boycotted by sponsors and subsequently canceled when he said something politically incorrect after 9/11, was on Conan's show last night. He pointed out that it's a bit elitist to refer to your sub-minimum-wage lawn man as a "guest."

He also said he's sick of hearing people say that terrorists hate us because we are free. "Hate us a little less, because we're not that free." Then he reminded us that Tommy Chong (of the 70's stoner comedy team Cheech & Chong) is in prison for having sold...

drum roll, please

Drugs? No, not drugs. A bong. A glass gizmo that you could, ostensibly, have purchased because you're doing your apartment in a 60's theme and thought that a bong with a face on it would look funny on the shelf with your lava lamp collection.

This is illegal? I had no idea.

We have room in our prisons for people who sell empty pipes and stoner-era knickknacks?

Undercover agents in Pittsburgh responded to a TV commercial and purchased a bong from Tommy Chong's company, and he's serving six months in prison. Bill Maher was right. We're not all that free. The discussion between Mahr and Conan turned to drug legalization, and Bill Mahr said most Americans don't give a damn because they mistakenly believe that they can light up in their own homes and not go to jail for it. 700,000 people a year go to jail for possessing marijuana, including for personal use - and now for selling an empty pipe.

What's wrong with this picture: Tommy Chong is in jail for selling a glass bong to undercover agents; Rush Limbaugh, the poster child for let's-stop-coddling-drug users, is back on the air after a few weeks of rehab, bitching about how he's being persecuted for his politics. I thought it was because he induced his housekeeper to buy narcotic painkillers on the street, but I could be wrong.

 

[Gary Chambers]

Re: Bill Mahr to terrorists: "Hate us a little less, because we're not that free."

Speaking of guest workers, Bill Maher, whose show Politically Incorrect was boycotted by sponsors and subsequently canceled when he said something politically incorrect after 9/11, was on Conan's show last night. He pointed out that it's a bit elitist to refer to your sub-minimum-wage lawn man as a "guest."

He also said he's sick of hearing people say that terrorists hate us because we are free. "Hate us a little less, because we're not that free." Then he reminded us that Tommy Chong (of the 70's stoner comedy team Cheech & Chong) is in prison for having sold...

drum roll, please

Drugs? No, not drugs. A bong.

Chong's jail term is not a surprise. There are many parts of the world where so called drug paraphernalia is illegal. Many of the laws were introduced in response to successive American presidents and Congressmen whining that other countries don't do enough to keep drugs of American streets. I've had elderly relatives buy me hash pipes for Chrsitmas, thinking they were buying tobacco pipes. Under current law they could have been arrested on their way home with the mall.

Since I don't watch much TV, Maher's sponsorship problems are news to me. Guess I live a sheltered life. Anyway, I'd like to know who the sponsors were. Whenever I hear of capitalist pig bastards using thier advertising dollars to dictate mass media content, I stop buying goods and services from said capitalist pig bastards. It makes me happier, I save money and don't accumulate as much useless crap. Voting with your wallet makes more sense than voting with dodgy ballots.

 

[shereads]

Sears and American Express or maybe Federal Express. It's been a while, but I did write to them.

The comment Maher made on Politically Incorrect was one I had made in private, but since I didn't have any sponsors mine weren't boycotted and my status as a television talk-show host remains unchanged.


He said that "cowardly" was not the word he would use to describe the terrorists who rode the planes into the World Trade Center. (Note that he didn't say anything good about the terrorists, simply said that cowardly is the wrong description of a suicide bomber; I happen to agree.) Then he added that it's less cowardly than ordering missles to be fired at someone, from your office 2,000 miles away.

Presto. Plug pulled.

The context of the comment was a discussion of the reasons why the U.S. was/is hated in the Islamic world. The same discussion we've had in this forum, basically - the "they hate us because we love freedom" idiocy apparently seemed as simplistic and embarrassing to Bill Maher as it does to a lot of us.

After it became clear that ABC would knuckle under, our boy Rumsfeld was asked to comment on the cancellation of Politically Incorrect and said,

"From now on, people had better watch what they say."

From the sheeplike public acceptance of that statement, to the passage of the Patriot Act was just a baby-step. I imagine all of this preliminary activity had something to do with the way the press allowed itself to be turned into a high-tech cheerleading squad during the invasion of Baghdad.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

And just why are they not cowardly? They are about to commit an atrocity the likes of which hasn't been commited since World war II and they are going to assure themselves they don't have to answer for it. Don't tell me they are brave because they are giving up thier lives, they are fucking lemmings and have no respect for human life, even thier own. That qualifies for a darwin award, but it damn sure dosen't make them brave.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

And just why are they not cowardly? They are about to commit an atrocity the likes of which hasn't been commited since World war II and they are going to assure themselves they don't have to answer for it. Don't tell me they are brave because they are giving up thier lives, they are fucking lemmings and have no respect for human life, even thier own. That qualifies for a darwin award, but it damn sure dosen't make them brave.

-Colly

Nobody said terrorists are brave or that they respect human life. Only that cowardly is not the adjective I'd use to describe someone who will knowingly become a human bomb. You can call them insane, cruel, vicious, dastardly, doomed, or more likely, dupes, but the one thing suicide bombers are not is cowardly....Unlike the Bin Ladens who send them into the fray and watch from the sidelines.

They're not cowardly for the same reason they're not green. Or quadrupeds. It just doesn't fit.

 

[shereads]

P.S. If that was your son whose sleeping face was shown detached from his body on the front pages of some non-U.S. newspapers in the opening days of the bombing of Baghdad, you might consider that the man who ordered his death - or was simply willing to take the risk of some collateral damage - was cowardly. Unlike the soldiers sent to accomplish the bombing, their commander acted from a safe distance.

Leaders used to lead their men into battle. It required a certain amount of courage that's no longer necessary. These days, it's possible to commit atrocities from a distance of thousands of miles away; to do so while condemining others as cowardly is simply absurd.

That was Maher's point, and mine.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

P.S. If that was your son whose sleeping face was shown detached from his body on the front pages of some non-U.S. newspapers in the opening days of the bombing of Baghdad, you might consider that the man who ordered his death - or was simply willing to take the risk of some collateral damage - was cowardly. Unlike the soldiers sent to accomplish the bombing, their commander acted from a safe distance.

Leaders used to lead their men into battle. It required a certain amount of courage that's no longer necessary. These days, it's possible to commit atrocities from a distance of thousands of miles away; to do so while condemining others as cowardly is simply absurd.

That was Maher's point, and mine.

I will end up way to angry if i continue with this discussion. 9/11 is still too close to home for me to not loose my cool, so i will bow out.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Sorry, Colly. It's not meant to be a defense of terrorism, but a discussion of semantics and censorship.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Sorry, Colly. It's not meant to be a defense of terrorism, but a discussion of semantics and censorship.

No need to apologize she, I recognize the point is he was fired for expressing an opinion. Just happens the opinion expressed is on a subject that I can't be rational about.

*HUGS*

-Colly

 

[minsue]

Bush in 30 Seconds

Off topic, the ad that one the "Bush in 30 seconds" contest was She's favorite: "Child's Pay"

Sadly, none of the 3 I voted for in the funniest, best animated, or best youth categories won. I'm used to it. I'm a Democrat in Republican land so none of my candidates win.

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

Off topic, the ad that one the "Bush in 30 seconds" contest was She's favorite: "Child's Pay"

Sadly, none of the 3 I voted for in the funniest, best animated, or best youth categories won. I'm used to it. I'm a Democrat in Republican land so none of my candidates win.

- Mindy

My candidate won, so that's news in itself Min. Thanks for the link. It's an excellent spot and I hope it's seen.

 

[minsue]

Re: Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

My candidate won, so that's news in itself Min. Thanks for the link. It's an excellent spot and I hope it's seen.

Considering the fact that they e-mailed me requesting a donation to get aired during the super bowl, I'm thinking it will be. The GOP keeps putting out ads & press releases bitching about the funding that MoveOn.org gets. It was given a hefty donation by the rich guy, whose name eludes me now, who was one of those pushing so hard for campaign finance reform. I haven't been able to figure out if it's the hypocracy that pisses them off the most or the fact that he has the millions to bankroll his own special interest groups.

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

Considering the fact that they e-mailed me requesting a donation to get aired during the super bowl, I'm thinking it will be. The GOP keeps putting out ads & press releases bitching about the funding that MoveOn.org gets. It was given a hefty donation by the rich guy, whose name eludes me now, who was one of those pushing so hard for campaign finance reform. I haven't been able to figure out if it's the hypocracy that pisses them off the most or the fact that he has the millions to bankroll his own special interest groups.

- Mindy

I saw him on the Today Show. He donated $12 million to fund Move On. If the RNC is ticked off with this guy, it's probably for two reasons: (1) his activities indicate that soft money negates any benefit of campaign finance reform, leading to the only logical conclusion: nobody spends a nickle on political campaigns; the candidates write an essay outlining their views and then we vote on who did the best job. Anyone caught helping a candidate with his homework is suspended and sent home in shame. (2) rich guys aren't supposed to oppose the President; they're suppossed to be grateful for their tax break.

 

[minsue]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

I saw him on the Today Show. He donated $12 million to fund Move On. If the RNC is ticked off with this guy, it's probably for two reasons: (1) his activities indicate that soft money negates any benefit of campaign finance reform, leading to the only logical conclusion: nobody spends a nickle on political campaigns; the candidates write an essay outlining their views and then we vote on who did the best job. Anyone caught helping a candidate with his homework is suspended and sent home in shame. (2) rich guys aren't supposed to oppose the President; they're suppossed to be grateful for their tax break.

Oh my god, I can't get the mental image out of my head of the candidates in a big lecture hall with 2-3 empty desks between each of them as they sweat over their respective essays. In case you're wondering, Dean is chewing furiously on the eraser of his pencil, Kerry is raking his hand through his hair over & over, Clark is calmly editing his already written paper, and Bush is furtively sneaking a completed essay out of his backpack with a smirk on his face.

I'll never be the same.

- Mindy

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

Oh my god, I can't get the mental image out of my head of the candidates in a big lecture hall with 2-3 empty desks between each of them as they sweat over their respective essays. In case you're wondering, Dean is chewing furiously on the eraser of his pencil, Kerry is raking his hand through his hair over & over, Clark is calmly editing his already written paper, and Bush is furtively sneaking a completed essay out of his backpack with a smirk on his face.

I'll never be the same.

- Mindy

You forgot Buchanan hoding his hand over a black sheet of paper, praying and waiting for the lord to fill it in for him.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

You forgot Buchanan hoding his hand over a black sheet of paper, praying and waiting for the lord to fill it in for him.

-Colly

ROFLING all over the place, MAO, etc....Min, you left out the "ropey" pulsing veins and eyes of rage from Washington Post's flattering description of Howard Dean...

BTW, the more Dean gets dissed by the party faithful, the more I'm starting to like him. This might be the first time in recent history that a doctor instead of a corporate ceo and/or lawyer ran for the Presidency. I read today that he got into politics when he had to battle city hall and the local Episcopal church to get a bicycle path built.

Here's the thing that will kill his electability, no matter that the NY Times was able to dig up that dirty business with him once losing his temper and pounding his fist on a table... (!)

His wife plans to continue her medical practice. That's going to piss people off to no end. Another uppity woman with access to the President! And we were so comfortable with Laura Bush, who in public always stands slightly behind and to the side and gazes at her husband with unquestioning adoration.

This will make Hillary's comment about not wanting to share cookie recipes with Good Housekeeping seem tame. A First Lady who wants to keep her job. It's not to be borne.

 

[minsue]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush in 30 Seconds

You forgot Buchanan hoding his hand over a black sheet of paper, praying and waiting for the lord to fill it in for him.

-Colly

you are so bad...I'm with She rolling on the floor.

- Mindy