Jun. 9th, 2006 04:32 am
(no subject)
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razorjakJeeeeeesus FUCKSHIT!!!
Gods, how do these people's brains function? How can they parse this shit? As far as I can tell, this is truly how their minds are set:
Anything good that happened in the Clinton administration happened in spite of him.
Everything bad that happened was directly his fault or that of his wife.
Anything good that has come about during Shrubbo's tenure as Chimp in Thief is directly his glory.
Everything that goes wrong was due to those pesky liberals and leftists who are trying hard to undermine his "great work".
Anything I halfhandedly might "blame" on Bush immediately brings out comments of how "this decision had nothing to do with Bush. It was entirely a seperate group who came up with it." And more than half of those commments end with " ... probably a hold-over from Clinton."
Seriously? How can it go from "All the president's fault" to "Not the president's fault" simply due to the token political party each gets their funding?
Gods, how do these people's brains function? How can they parse this shit? As far as I can tell, this is truly how their minds are set:
Anything good that happened in the Clinton administration happened in spite of him.
Everything bad that happened was directly his fault or that of his wife.
Anything good that has come about during Shrubbo's tenure as Chimp in Thief is directly his glory.
Everything that goes wrong was due to those pesky liberals and leftists who are trying hard to undermine his "great work".
Anything I halfhandedly might "blame" on Bush immediately brings out comments of how "this decision had nothing to do with Bush. It was entirely a seperate group who came up with it." And more than half of those commments end with " ... probably a hold-over from Clinton."
Seriously? How can it go from "All the president's fault" to "Not the president's fault" simply due to the token political party each gets their funding?
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no subject
COPA, however, is an interesting thing. When I worked at Scholastic, I would bash my head over the most basic things we couldn't do on the Web sites for the books, all because of COPA. I remember sitting in a meeting with a bunch of people, and this lady who had worked in the business for years said, "Yep, this company helped them create that behemoth, and look how it has bit them on their collective asses." It was really far-flung and restrictive. Drove me insane, because I couldn't do an effective job. However, I'm far more scared of what Bush and Co. are doing with the Internet, particularly porn.
The gun thing is stupid. I'm as liberal as it gets, but to me, being anti-gun is the antithesis of liberal. [Actually, I'm probably more of a libertarian, in that I want less laws and restrictions and think people have the right to personal freedoms, accompanied by personal responsibility.]
Clinton was better than Bush, I think, that's all. I don't have much recollection of pre-either of them, so I can't speak to that at all. I only started taking any interest whatsoever in politics after I watched 9/11 happen. But for some reason, it didn't make me shout USA! USA! like so many people. I don't know.
no subject
The sooner that everyone, including the ACLU forgets the concept that it's just the Republicans out to restrict our rights and realizes that the Democrats are just as high and mighty about restricting the rights of the people the sooner we'll be able to really drive it home to the politicians that they're going down the wrong path.
The gun thing is stupid. I'm as liberal as it gets, but to me, being anti-gun is the antithesis of liberal. [Actually, I'm probably more of a libertarian, in that I want less laws and restrictions and think people have the right to personal freedoms, accompanied by personal responsibility.]
This is where I draw the difference between "liberal" and "Liberal". "liberal" means that you're in favor of permissive laws. All things not expressly prohibited are allowed, ie Explicit prohibitions and implicit freedoms. "Liberals" are out to institute all sorts of social modifications to society, No firearms, no violence, Free Speech Zones where you can't offend anyone, Political Correctness, 'Progressive Taxes" to discourage making too much money, Windfall taxes, etc.
Its interesting that the former ACLU Lawyer was one of the Justices that sided with Taking land from individuals in the Kelo v New London court case. What does that say about her Liberalism?
Clinton was better than Bush, I think, that's all. I don't have much recollection of pre-either of them, so I can't speak to that at all. I only started taking any interest whatsoever in politics after I watched 9/11 happen. But for some reason, it didn't make me shout USA! USA! like so many people. I don't know.
I went into the Clinton Presidency expecting a breath of fresh air. Instead I got more heavy federal government with more onerous actions upon me the little guy when they said they were there for the little guy. They were none of that. The way the BATF was allowed to run rampant with zero checks and balances was just the pinnacle of the problem domestically. And then, letting the Iraq problem run for 8 years during the presidency when more should have been done was also a serious source of irritation for me. I can't count how many times I heard in the CNN newsroom a wire feed announcing that inspectors had been held at such and such facility by Iraqi Security forces while material was moved out another gate and the administration failed to do anything.
no subject
I like your Liberals vs liberals. Unfortunately for them, a lot of their ideas are impossible. No violence? I'm not pro-violence or anything, but the entire human existence has been plagued by violence; There's no way to make that magically go away. If they suceeded in getting every gun out of the hands of gun owners, the world would be no safer. One, criminals would still have them, and two, even if they didn't? They'd start using knives. Or power tools. Or wooden 2X4s. Or their bare hands. Free Speech Zones? The worst of them all. That's just what this country is meant to be. They're all so afraid people will speak, listen and learn, especially the way the media feeds people such little bits of the real news, and distracts them otherwise with missing white girls, celebrity babies and shark attacks. The PC, don't offend anyone, don't say anything vaguely offensive, bullshit is irritating, and creating a country of blank-faced sameness.
I see what you're saying on Clinton, but wouldn't you say Bush is even more heavy-handed? I don't think anyone is for the little guy, nor will they be again. They'll get elected anyway, or find their way into power somehow, so they have no motivation to care unless people can somehow find a way to hold them more accountable.
As for Iraq, I honestly don't know. What could have been done? Start this insane war then, as opposed to now?
I think they've all dropped more balls than I can count. I'm, more than anything, scared for the future. It doesn't look like it holds anything remotely close to change.
no subject
What's really odd is that Codified Media outlets have open reign to pontificate about a given politician because they're the Media. Joe Schmoe who has a blog and may write X number of times equaling Y amount of dollars even though he was not compensated for such which is $10 over the soft money contribution limit is in violation of Federal Election law and is now subject to arrest and charges. This is basically how the Speech Equals Money rule. In a way its almost how the Liberals disassemble the 2nd amendment by saying individuals are not the people, but the Federally Funded National Guard is. The 1st Amendment protects the Codified Press and Oficial News Media, not the individual as regards the McCain-Feingold Act.
I see what you're saying on Clinton, but wouldn't you say Bush is even more heavy-handed? I don't think anyone is for the little guy, nor will they be again. They'll get elected anyway, or find their way into power somehow, so they have no motivation to care unless people can somehow find a way to hold them more accountable.
We expect the Republicans to push for stronger police powers. We don't expect the Democrats to do so, yet they do. Both sides are hacking away at civil liberties in the name of either the war on guns/crime or the war on drugs. If you get anyone that's a serious gun owner that has a clue about politics, we all have a scowl on our faces when the Gun Owners Protection act of 1986 is mentioned because that's when the NFA registry was closed and then there's the Brady Bill. The "compromise" signed into law by a Republican. We don't trust them further than we can throw them when it comes to Anti-Gun legislation. That's why we try to kill the stuff in Committed when we can. We don't trust the Democrats an inch, because they've gone as far as to propose seizures (4th amendment, never heard of it) or 1000% taxes on ammo as a means of implementing their total disarmament of the US public agenda. Usually those bills don't make it out of committee. John Kerry's name was on a number of those kinds of bills so when he said he was a sportsman and supported hunting and gun ownership, the guffaws could be heard down the street.
I stick to first principles. Both sides of the Aisle are attacking free speech. CDA, COPA, McCain Feingold, etc. Only the Democrats are attacking the 2nd Amendment with any strength (save North Eastern Republicans like those from NJ, NY or MA). Katrina showed that we MUST have an ability to defend ourselves. Democrats want to take that away. That's why I dig in and help the republicans first. I can fight back if they knock down the 1st amendment or violate election rights and I have no recourse. I can't fight back easily if I'm not armed.
Part II
Part of the problem with the Bush Administration is how they couched the war from the start, ie about and only about WMD. It's wider than that. Iraq signed a peace treaty, we stop invading and they abide by a number of terms, one of which was unfettered access to their WMD (I hate that term, I prefer NBC as in Nuclear Biological and Chemical) production, research and storage facilities and they hand over ALL data pertaining to their capabilities. Part of that was that we oversee the destruction of the capabilities and verify such.
Over the next 5 years, they provided 3 different versions of their total program, each full final disclosure having more capabilities listed after we'd essentially uncovered those capabilities. A good example is their VX capability. They kept that hidden and it was only discovered after they'd destroyed the weapons secretly in the hopes that we'd not find it. This violated the terms of disclosing the capability, handing the locations over to us for verified destruction and allowing the verification of the destruction of the production sites/materials. This alone was casus belli in my mind. Read through the Chronology at NTI to get a better idea of what I speak of.
Then you add in the repeated shots at our aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones which was part of the treaty as well. If that's not an act of war, I don't know what is.
My complaint with the Clinton Administration was 8 years of allowing the same shell game to go on by the Baathists. Bush Senior bears part of the blame because of the status, but bear in mind that we weren't ready to invade with their partial capability that they had at the end of Gulf War I. They did have weaponized G-Agents and VX that would have caused serious issues. Their Biological capability was also quite real. VX and their Anthrax and Botulinin weapons would have caused some serious casualties on our side as well as among many civilians. OF course we'd have nuked a few troop concentrations in response so it would have been a pointless method of getting back at the US.
Its not that we thought they had NBC capability, it's that they didn't disarm the way they agreed to and continued to act as if they did have an NBC capability of some sort, not to mention continuing to fight. There's more to it, but the treatment of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs after Gulf war I is also a prime reason for going back in and finishing the job.
no subject
I think you'll find a lot of people in conservative circles quite unhappy that Bush has not curtailed federal spending. I was practically beside myself about the Prescription Drug Program. Great, more federal funding for programs not legal under the Constitution....
Limit Spending has been tossed out the window. Why I don't know. But it's left a lot of us very unhappy about things.