Well, you're naming names - I haven't been keeping that close of track of events, but I do think that Rummy leaving and the new guy already picked was a relatively smooth move on the administration's part - they didn't want to give Congress a chance to get their teeth into him. ;-)
And how do we know the new guy won't be even worse? 25 years in the CIA? What could he know about overt operations? ;-)
Thanks, Rich
You are assuming that its overt ops they will be asking about. What if they start asking questions about missing cash, missing weapons, or the couple of hundred tons of high explosives they left for the insurgents to haul off?
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ I think you left the stove on.
[snip]
Mr. Bush strikes me exactly as any number of colorful, playful, Texan country folk I have known.
I don't get that at all. To me he's folksy, and down-to-earth, direct in a way that city folk and aristocrats find uncouth.
My mom feels the same as you. But she's so against war of any kind, for any reason, that Mr. Bush can do nothing right in her eyes. Because of the war she hates every aspect of him, and everything associated with or close to him. She hates all his proposals. She hates his house. She hates his staff, his suit, even his haircut. She thinks he invaded to establish a Christian theocracy in Iraq...and the US, and fears he might succeed!
Has he done anything right in your eyes?
But doesn't every other religious person think the same, that they're here for a reason, whatever that reason might be?
The President is religious. And he's open about it. And, unlike his opponents and predecessors, he really means it. I don't think that makes him bad, or overly scary. We have separation of church and state, and plenty of checks and balances.
Best, James Arthur
Disagree. Pelosi *is* a malevolent volcano god. Have you heard the aspersions she's cast? Most unseemly.
Rumsfeld, I think, was extremely frank and forthcoming, but withdrew when it brought him only grief. His critics want to know the unknowable--when, how much, etc.--things you can never know in war, and no answer he could give would satisfy them.
Best regards, James Arthur
On who's authority?
No signs of that recently.
Whatever path causes the Bush-meister and you guys to start approaching reality, is good. We'll be patient while you try to find the excuses or justifications you need to come to terms.
Yeah; Right!
Arrgh! No point wasting more words on that discussion.
On 8 Nov 2006 21:44:08 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
It's not going to do us much good to sit and disagree. I don't see it your way, you don't see it mine. That's fine. Also, two of my close friends who have lived in Texas their entire lives (and lived then and still live completely separate lives from each other) don't think much of Bush and don't imagine him as Texan, either. So I suspect, like a lot of opinions there is no shortage of them.
What you see as folksy, I see as doing a poor job of insincerely trying to talking at the level he perceives others want to see. It's not even a fair job of it, in my opinion. It's downright demeaning. What you see as down-to-earth, I see as feigned image. He has very little in his life to allow him to understand what it is like for others and pretty much every single action I see from him is consistent with that.
We see an entirely different man. And I have no idea at all how you see things your way. We may need to leave it there, unless you want to take this to email. I don't think we can sincerely investigate our differences here.
hehe.
Well, that isn't what is coloring my vision. I'm not that kind of person.
Well, that's a bit extreme for me. I _do_ think he has very little ability to empathize with others or to sincerely care. But I don't go to hating his house (a ranch bought for Texan appearances.)
That's a good question. Not much, really, but I'm sure I could find one or two things. Not that I'd care. I'd be happy if you assumed I find nothing likable about him. It's a close enough approximation for engineers.
I didn't know him when he first took office, except that I knew he'd personally been involved in shipping arms to the Contras in violation of Carter's executive order. He was caught in 1980 and his dad was immediately asked about it when he arrived at the Miami airport during the week of this news fracas about it. Quite a splash for about a week. But that was about all I remembered about him and although I didn't particularly like his involvement, I could remain open to the idea of seeing how things went over time.
One thing that may help you understand, is that I have had to hold the hand of many people who lost their children, their husbands, their wives, their families due to the weapons shipments the US sent. I was involved in helping out. One lady I remember the most would wake up screaming in the middle of the night when a car would drive by. Anyone, to her, who was wealthy enough to own a car was capable of raping her or beating her up and even murdering her if they felt like it. She lost all of her children but one, her husband and her husband's family and only survived by pretending to be dead along with them. She was a remote villager type, living on what little arable lands weren't already in the hands of the few families that controlled that country. She knew nothing of politics, wasn't educated, and pretty much just tried to survive in the cracks, like a lot of people. She was not involved in anything nefarious, at all. But she was a casualty, all the same.
When you hear the crying at night, night after night; when you have to help pick up the pieces of this kind of thing, you change some about this.
None of this made me feel that war is always wrong or that hostilities and violence cannot be just. But it raised the bar, for me. A lot. I have very high standards now that must be met. When you engage in war, you may kill a lot of innocent people if you don't carry a lot of risks onto yourself (in other words, if you don't value the lives of those around you more than you do your own.) This create righteous indignation (putting it mildly) and justified hate, which leads to more violence in response, demanding more careless killing of innocents, and the thing escalates out of control. Iraq has turned into a class example of this, too. Bush was all sizzle and no meat, with regard to Iraq and everyone pays the price for this, especially the Iraqis. Luckily, a majority in the US has seen the truth of this and acted.
By the way, Carter's executive order that this younger Bush violated was gradually cast into law in the form of a series of amendments by Ed Boland of Massachusetts. There was a division in congress about whether or not to fund weapons to the Contras and Reagan authorized the CIA to start a covert program of support for them in December of
1981, I recall. Congress initially funded this, but eventually the primary unanswered question became this: Was the CIA truly trying to bring Ortega (now, back in power I see) to the negotiation table or was the CIA really trying to overthrow the Sandinista government? To prevent this latter undertaking, Boland introduced a series of amendments designed to limit the use of appropriations. By 1984, congress gave Reagan a paltry $24 million for the CIA's Contra program and the amount was quickly exhausted. The Reagan administration, though, had earlier already responded to the Carter legacy and the difficulties in getting any measure of firm support from congress by injecting a banking bill modification in 1982 that would allow them to use banks in a creative financing scheme. About 1/3rd of the losses in the savings and loan debacle ($800 billion or so) were due to CIA off-shore loans on the basis of the 1982 banking bill (which changed the insurance protection from a per-individual basis to a per-account basis and allowed the CIA to then approach banks to make loans they knew they would not get back, but now where they could at least be told that the "gov't will insure you" on the accounts.) I watched one particular set of transactions being carefully traced by international bankers, years later during the congressional hearings on the savings and loan situation, transactions amounting to about $5 billion. A lot of these were more difficult to trace, but some mistakes were made on a few large transaction groups and could be well traced. In this case, they were able to trace the money as it flowed from a Texan bank to Colombia and then to Germany. I listened raptly to the testimony over the span of several days on this one.It amounted to a difference of opinion, but here those in the Reagan administration decided that they could "go it alone" and violate the checks and balances set up by our Constitution and instead take any method possible to secure the kinds of funds they felt they needed for their object. It caused a lot of harm in the process, including a lot of thievery by others in the banking system who decided to just "go with the flow" and steal for themselves, too. In the end, it cost us dearly.
Under Reagan, the US when from the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's gratest debtor nation -- big issue in Time magazine about that. And there were a lot of folks convicted of felonies, in the end. Many pardoned by Bush when he took office -- including North and Poindexter.
I had no idea, one way or another, how this Bush would start. I had some reason to believe that he would NOT be like his father -- but I knew nothing much about him and decided to just wait and see. When I saw him starting to appoint people whose names I knew from the Reagan years as felons, I think I decided to close the door on the issue at that point. I knew what these people were like, already. And that told me a lot more about what to expect.
No.
I don't care if he means it or not. I look at results, not words; actions, not beliefs.
There have been NO checks and balances in operation of late. That you think so tells me you must be young and naive and cannot remember when those checks actually worked better. This last few years has been, if it is anything at all, an example of just how weak our system actually is defending itself from a rogue executive branch. I had always thought, before, that there was no way our system could permit things to go quite this far. I've been shown quite wrong in that regard, as things have gone to a place I couldn't have dreamed of 15 years ago, not in my worst nightmares. Now I know it can happen and has happened and that our system isn't up to the challenges and needs some serious work.
At least the broken parts are manifest, now, and we can see them in all their glory.
Jon
Jon
Stop drawing from your own reasoned personal reality and stop using your own personal experiences to justify your opinions. Although you may try to present a clear case for your views, they are unimportant in this group.
You are clearly a leftist-wienie.
Right, Jim and Johns?
How it is that some feel it is wrong to care about the suffering of others and to be generous in time and money to those not as lucky -- so wrong that they must denigrate at every opportunity the very idea of it -- is beyond my ken. But I don't believe that the progress of US society has brought us to no more than selfish attitudes.
By the way, I got a chance to actually hear a fair amount of Bush's speech today and my take on it is quite different than James Arthur's, now that I've listened. Oh, well.
Jon
I was being sarcastic. Sorry if you missed that.
Your reply was so well crafted and though out, that I thought it would be humorous if I complimented you for what you did well in the post by twisting it with the kind of trite reply we often see in this group.
Sorry if my semi-humor wasn't obvious.
Keep up the good posts. I totally agree with your post I was joking about. I only wish I had the time and thoughtfullness to post like you did.
adjustments
Jim, as far out of touch with reality as ever.
Has he found any more "self-admitted" dangerous terrorists on the user-group recently?
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Well, his critics included his General Staff, who didn't know precisely how many troops would be needed to maintain order in Irak after the invasion, but did know that the number was bigger than the U.S.could provide on its own - IIRR two or three times the force that has been failing to maintain order in Irak over the past few years.
Rumsfeld and Bush ignored that advice from the General Staff when they set the invasion in motion without the UN support that might have provided the extra occupation troops. It is nice that Rumsfeld has finally been forced to resign, but this won't bring back the 655,000 who have died in Irak because the occupation forces available aren't big enough to maintain law and order.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
When I was student at MIT, there was a candidate for the Massachusetts State Assembly who declared he was the ONLY sane candidate.
And he could prove it... he had a certificate from the state nut house declaring him to be sane when he was released ;-)
How do you know for sure that I don't have a certificate too ?:-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
I don't need excuses. But the next two years will, hopefully, protect us from a Democrat President in 2008.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
[snip]
Absolutely. Except it's spelled "weenie" (for "weakness", they're certainly not HOT dogs :-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
You escaped, they didn't release you.
-- Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to prove it. Member of DAV #85. Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
You do a comedy act at truck stops?
-- Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to prove it. Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell Central Florida
Bush lost the congress because he insisted on staying the course. If he was willing to flip flop he may have carried the house and certainly could have kept the senate. Just a simple thing like firing Rummy on Monday might have made the difference in those close races. It is just not his style.
Okay, I understand from the snip that you had reservations going back to Iran-Contra, from long before, both for the President and his current helpers. Thanks for that most thoughtful reply.
I know a little about the conflict in Central America second-hand. My dad was there, saw it, felt it, and, as a doctor, did what he could:
War is certainly a very nasty business, not to be taken up lightly. Civilians will be killed, either because there's no way to avoid it, or intentionally, to actively discourage an opposing state, e.g., the fire bombing of Tokyo, and intense bombings of Germany in WWII. Those were good people too our fathers killed. But it had to be done. War is not a toy.
Oh, I think you either misunderstand what I mean, or you're mistaken. Especially among born-agains, but also among other christians and even muslims, it's a common theme: a humble belief that God has placed them here on this Earth for some purpose, and they're here to serve him and his will.
That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon missionaries who knock on my door saturday mornings think, anyhow.
Well then what results? What bad practical consequences have there been?
"Faith-based initiatives" (if I have that right) seems a) a clear sponsorship of religion by the State, and b) AIUI, the money exclusively goes to Christian causes and none to other religions.
Apart from that, I don't see any practical consequences to the American people of the President's beliefs. He's made his pitch, to little avail. Abortion rights are unimpaired. Stem cell research, gay marriage...I'd submit that these are more active and vibrant than ever.
Of course there have been. Remember the President's Social Security proposal, the one that was shouted down by scare-mongers? Gone. And the President's Gay Marriage amendment?
I admit to being young at heart, and loathe to assume malice until proven. It does take an effort some times, but it's usually worth it.
Thanks for your frank and revealing insights--I understand your views better.
Best, James Arthur
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