We awake to astounding news out of Iraq — astounding not so much because it’s surprising we would be able to get al-Zarqawi, but because we are so accustomed to something other than good news.
Of course, there is something in us (or there should be something in us) that says, hold on — a man’s
death is good news? What kind of world do we live in?
Well, we live in a world in which a man who kills innocents as a main aim, as a matter of policy, as a way of sowing despair, can get a following of creatures like him. This guy got his jollies cutting off people’s heads for the videos, which he distributed as widely as he could.
He won’t be doing that any more. That’s great news.
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Brad,
Do you think that individuals such as al-Zarqawi and Bin Laden will just “regenerate” themselves? That there is a cadre of individuals that the culture of terrorism replicates and naturally replaces when one is killed off?
I was glad to see that al-Zarqawi got 3 minutes of news this morning on the Today show – and then Angelina and Jolie and baby were able to get their 15. Just good to see that we are keeping priorities in order.
I’ll argue that this isn’t that astounding, as we have met far more success there than gets reported (or so I hear from military friends who have been in theatre).
It is still most certainly another event to celebrate, the timely end of a murderous thug.
One down, several million to go.
Let’s not start the whole “Mission Accomplished” photo-ops, please.
The impact of this event can only be
measured six months or a year from now.
Begs the question as to why Saddam was
allowed to live…
FYI, my “several million to go” comment is based on the estimated 1.5 BILLION muslims in the world.
Great News! Even better news would be an announcement that our troops are coming home.
I thought the number was around one billion Muslims, but it might have risen.
The vast majority of people do not like war or death, and I think there’s an argument to be made for freedom fighters, but al-Zarqawi was a sadist. The least we needed was to remove him from the scene, and this method is the most brutal.
Great news that he’s out of commission, but Al-Qaeda reminds me of the second terminator. You blast him into bits and those bits reconstitute themselves. I’m not proposing we avoid military force against them, but I don’t think that alone will win it for us.
I am sure some of Seditious Left has contingency plans in place to spin this against the United States and its allies.
Our military just keeps shooting holes through their propaganda about this war…literally.
Speaking of propaganda and prejudice:
Lee posed the following question from the “Some Answers for Lee” post: “92% of the 21 million [sic] illegals are Hispanic. What are the chances the Hispanics you encounter are illegal aliens?” [sic] – Lee (the real one)
I replied that I’d check the green cards of the professors at USC or the Spanish teachers at my school with whom I teach and my wife by the way. Maybe Brad can check with the photographer (great young man) with the Hispanic surname. Would everyone else please be diligent in checking too?
Lee, I also think our military has done a terrific job in Iraq. In fact I believe we’ve already won and it’s now time to bring the soldiers home.
Democrats were all big on invading Iraq when Clinton was president. All talk. No results in stopping terrorists.
The only reason I have heard liberals wanting American soldiers to quit fighting is because:
1. We are killing communists
2. The liberals would rather be spending that money on programs to keep poor people in bondage and buy votes.
Lee, atleast you show prejudice towards many different groups (Hispanics, teachers, democrats) – an equal opportunity offender.
By the way, which of the Arab, Kurd, Sunnis, Shiite parties are “communists?”
Lee, do you honestly believe the majority of Hispanics are illegal aliens? That’ a pretty tough statement. I’d have to agree that’s prejudicial even borderline racist.
How is this news? Even a basic knowledge of horror flicks teaches us that you defeat Freddy Krueger by simply not believing in him and by changing the hearts and minds of others so that they don’t believe in him, either.
Behaving as a monster yourself works…not so much. In fact, simply killing the monster usually spawns multiples.
I dunno. Maybe my teenage summers were ill-spent…
Murtha only the other day proclaimed that the US has no intelligence in Iraq and we cant find the leaders and cannot win “this thing”. Can an ex_Marine be any more of an idiot than that?
I think defeating one guy is not winning a war… it’s the old fashioned idea that it’s an organization led by one person with a structure, where by taking out the top we resolve the problem.
Instead, this is a war against an ideal, and the only way you can defeat that is by taking away from its power. War will not stop terrorism, but it can stop certain people.
I think everyone has this whole Iraq thing wrong. It simply does not matter whether we win or lose. Our security and prosperity do not depend on whether we win in Iraq, lose in Iraq or get a draw. What matters is bringing our troops home as quickly as possible. So if the Limbaugh wing of the Republican party says we’re winning in Iraq, I say, so what? If liberals say we’re losing, I say, so what? In the end our national interest is improved by ending our involvement sooner rather than later. Let’s bring the troops home now and quit playing war. Everyone, including the Iraqis will be better off for it. Thousands of lives will be saved and billions of dollars can go toward solving real problems.
Dave: that’s lame calling Murtha an idiot. The man is a war hero with a few more connections than you or I have on this matter so he’s got tremendous crediblity. He was one of the first to characterize Haditha as some troops gone awry. The top marine is saying the same thing now. Murtha knew because of his connections.
I’m not saying he’s right, but he shouldn’t be dismissed as an idiot.
I nominate Ann Coulter and our own Lee for warm and cuddly couple of the year.
Fox news.com didn’t even mention what Coulter said, had nothing on Delay’s investigation, but had the two dems (the Ga slugger and Cold Cash man) on the front page. Fair and Balanced.
Bud, the Canadiens have been thinking like you. However, they just barely missed having their Toronto Peace Tower and several other major landmarks become atrocity sites. Running from them or appeasing them does no good. The Canadiens had appeased them and look what they were in for. We are killing them where it should be done, in their own backyard.
Randy, Murtha is a traitor, worse than an idiot. He convicted the Marines of killing in cold blood before a single Marine could defend himself. The civilian killings were clearly a setup by a guy the US Army had arrested once before. It will all come out fairly in the end. But to slander Marines in the media only knowing part of the story, again, a traitor through and through. By the way, his traitorous hide should be out of Congress in November, then he can do the Cindy Sheehan tour.
BLS – Name one thing Coulter has said that isnt true. She is 100% correct and tells it like it is.
Murtha has a little better connections than you do Dave. The Big Dawg of all Marines didn’t come out and explain their innocence like you have but did offer details very much affirming what Murtha had said. And, Murtha was not calling them cold-blooded killers. He explained that they are under enormous pressure, frustrated, and are losing it.
You just wrote that there should be time for the evidence to come out but you offered a verdict yourself.
I hope we win the war and Murtha is proved wrong and W is exhalted as a hero. But until then, let’s not disparage those that speak out based on solid beliefs and information.
She called these women witches and harpies, she said maybe the husbands were going to divorce the women, she said they are enjoying their husbands deaths.
She has a right to criticize these women because the women made themselves public figures. To make those statements is another matter.
It’s not a matter of lying, it’s a matter of civility. It’s sad that someone would actually condone her comments.
Yeah, Dave, what happened to the Canadian terror plot?
The same thing that happened with the Millenium Bomb Plot.
It was stopped, through the exercise of vigilance.
The World Trade Center attacks, on the other hand, proceeded uninterrupted because Bush, when he received a warning of a serious terror threat, went fishing.
Just goes to show you what happens when you pay attention to what you’re supposed to be paying attention to. And what happens when you don’t pay attention to what you’re supposed to be paying attention to.
And it’s weird, the Canadians stopped the plot without monitoring the phone calls of every single Canadian citizen.
As for Murtha, maybe he has a different idea of morality than you do. To you, the morality of an act is based on whether you support or oppose the person who committed the act. So to you, Bush’s neglect that led to the success of the WTC attacks is good, because you support Bush, and Clinton’s vigilance that foiled the Millenium Bomb Plot is bad. You don’t care about whether Americans are killed or not, you just care about disparaging Clinton and making excuses for Bush.
Similarly, you excuse the murder of civilians because want to defend so-called Marines who don’t deserve to wear the uniform, and whose conduct disgraces the uniform.
But an act is moral or immoral because of the nature of the act. It’s wrong to deliberately target noncombatants, whether bin Laden does it, whether Zarqawi does it, or whether so-called Marines do it.
This is why conservatism is such a failure, and why conservatives like you are failures who are dependent on handouts from liberals to survive. You don’t look at whether something is good or bad, you look at whether you support or oppose who does it. Look at New Jersey versus South Carolina. As Bud pointed out, New Jersey is an earthly paradise compared to South Carolina. Compared to South Carolina, people live longer, are better educated, earn more money, live in better health, take better care of their children, drive more safely, commit murder less frequently, and perform better in nearly every category related to human productivity and happiness. Clearly, to any reasonable mind, New Jersey is better than South Carolina.
But to you, all that matters is that New Jersey is liberal and South Carolina is conservative. So to you, New Jersey must be bad and South Carolina good. It doesn’t matter to you that the infant mortality in South Carolina is nearly double that of New Jersey. To you, it’s better for a state to allow its youngest citizens to die if that’s necessary to adhere to conservative ideals, than to implement liberal programs that help them to live longer, healthier lives.
Dave, you’re defending the indefensible. No one can be taken seriously that accuses someone of enjoying the death of their spouse. That is way across any line of common decency and I simply have no respect for anyone that defends the exponentially disgusting ann coulter. But I’m expecially angry with NBC for giving her a forum to spread her vile vitriol. But aside from that she’s wrong on all issues.
Didn’t Ann Coulter say she hated Canada for turning its back on America in Iraq, when for decades *including Vietnam* that they had helped out?
I lose count of how many times the conservative media gets things not just wrong, but horribly wrong and then don’t correct themselves.
The same mistakes are bandied about by their pals day to day, while the rest of us have to listen to the insufferable foolishness.
Here’s the Fox News account of the foiled terrorist attack on Canada:
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced Saturday that authorities had foiled a terrorist attack and said 12 men and five teenagers had obtained three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, three times what was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
The key word Dave is FOILED. Had our idiot president been even slightly concerned after he was handed a daily briefing that said, “Bin Laden determined to strike America”, perhaps the headline in the 9/12/01 State newspaper might have read: “American authorities foil planned terrorist attack against targets in New York and Washington”.
But noooooo. Our great and wonderful leader went on vacation. Sorry Dave. The Canadians actually foiled an attack, just as Clinton did in 1999. Face it conservatives, our great leader is a phenomenal failure. The Canadian episode just underscores just how much of a failure Mr. “My Pet Duck” really is.
The bomb that killed al-Zarqawi also killed
four other people including a woman and a child. That’s okay, right? Ends justify the means… Kill em all, let Allah sort em out, right? Might makes right…
We’ve killed more civilians and children than a dozen 9-11’s.
Interesting how protecting the sanctity of marriage is such a big morality issue for some, but making comments like Coulter did is acceptable? Where is the collective outcry from the right in response to her hate?
Ann Coulter can’t find a conditioner that works with her hair. Cut the “lady” some slack.
I agree with RE, though, as we’ve seen it demonstrated here on this very blog. The “right” can sling any mean-spirited sphere at anyone they deem a proper target (while dodging behind the folds of the flag or the bindings of the Bible), yet they cry foul when those same tactics are reversed…even though the “left” doesn’t usually play this game nearly as well, as violently or as dishonestly.
The left tends to believe in things like compassion and treating people as equals, bugbears when it comes to the right and wanting to treat people differently and victimise those who are “different” or varying from “the norm”.
There are always individual exceptions, but nobody can deny that the basic tenets for each ideal go those directions
There is nothing or no one the left likes better than victims. Poverty victims, poor schooling victims, lack of food victims, not enough health care victims, and most of all, grieving and mourning victims. The latter category is given a free pass to become celebrities, join Democrat presidential campaigns, etc. and hit all the talk shows under the cover of their victimhood. The 4 leftist Jersey Girls quit wearing black long ago and are partisans continually attacking the president, Condi Rice, and others. Murtha is another “purple hearted” war hero victim. Murtha will claim that Congressman Jefferson is innocent even if seen taking bribes on tape until he has his day in court, yet he condemned Marines as soon as he heard of the incident. Disgusting at best, traitorous in wartime at worst.
Doug, when our military found out Zarqawi entered the safehouse, do you think we should have sent a social worker to knock on the front door to collect the children and women? Collateral civilian killings are unfortunate but reference every war ever conducted and it happens and will continue to happen. At least our side regrets it while AlQaeda executes school children, blows up people in a mosque,and revels in it. I hope you see the difference.
Mary, you live in nightmare land, not dreamland. Clinton had zero, zilch, nada to do with foiling the Millenium plot. A border agent even admitted they got lucky and saw a nervous person coming from Canada and checked the trunk of a car. While they were getting lucky, Slickmeister was getting lucky in the Oral Office with an intern. That is how he protected us.. and that is why we got hit with 9-11, we know we cannot rely on luck to protect us.
No one yet has indicated that Coulter has said anything untrue. Blunt, direct, yes, untrue, no.
Dave, I have no hard and fast proof but I’m about 99.9999% sure the the 9-11 widows are NOT enjoying the deaths of their husbands as ann coulter stated. That’s an untruth in my book.
It’s pretty obvious that Coulter and Moore are cut from the same fabric, which I’m thinking is made in an asylum. Neither is worth attention, even less, a public forum.
Bud, they are now leftist celebrities traveling the nation on speaking tours, living the high life, and they were richly rewarded for the deaths of their husbands. One just bought a $1.8 million condo in NYC. I am glad you have a small percent of doubt as these 4 are having a ball being celebrated political activists pulling down heavy speaking fees. That is fine that they do that but once they entered the public spotlight they cannot hide under the cover of widowhood.
Dave,
I’m just troubled by the thought that we have a country where 50% of the people will fight to save the “life” of a single embryo but cast aside the deaths of thousands of Iraqi women and children as “collateral damage”. And then that same 50% will call the U.S. a “Christian nation”.
The war on terrorists should be fought with snipers and precision attacks on the enemy. Not by dropping big bombs and hoping that our target is somewhere in the pile of bodies.
Liberals don’t have to prove ann coulter’s outrageous claims are false. The burden of proof is hers to support the outrageous claims she’s made. If her past history is any indication she doesn’t even have the slightest bit of evidence to support any of the nonsense she spouts off. Yes, I admit to some small amount of doubt about the factuality of the claims made by coulter regarding how people feel. That’s because I’m not a mind reader. And neither are you, or coulter.
The difference between enlightened liberals and lock-step limbaugh conservatives, is that liberals leave open the possibility that some new evidence will come along that shows we are wrong. LSLCs on the other hand, ignore any and all evidence that their side may be wrong. No matter how strong the evidence it is simply ignored. Nothing gets in the way of blindly following the conservative big brother.
Besides, coulter has a long history of lying in print. She claimed in her book Slander that the NY Times failed to acknowledge the death of Dale Earnhardt until 2 days after his death. In fact, NYT had a feature story, along with a photograph of the episode, the day after it occurred.
And there’s the ongoing story concering lying about her place of residence to vote in Florida. Here’s the story:
Ann Coulter ‘Lawyers Up’ to Face Felony Voter Fraud Charges
Pundit Retains Bush Law Firm to Fight Allegations in Palm Beach
(Palm Beach reporter) Lambiet reports today that Coulter is now lawyering up to fight the charges that she knowingly registered to vote in Florida at the wrong residence (using her real estate agent’s address). That, despite signing an “oath” on the registration form swearing to the truth of the information provided.
After committing what then appears to be Step One of a felony charge that could bring her a $5,000 fine and 5 years in prison (as she agreed she understood on the form when she signed it), she then went on to vote in an election last February and was told she was registered elsewhere and needed to change her address. Instead of doing so, she hurriedly left the precinct without changing her information, and apparently went on to illegally vote at the precinct where she was fraudulently registered.
She faces up to 5 years in prison if convicted for voter fraud. Ok, Dave, now it’s your turn. Prove that coulter did not intentionally lie in the voting fraud incident. I bet you have a least a tad of doubt now don’t you.
Dave’s attempts to defend Ann Coulter’s veracity are so hilarious as to defy either response or caricature. But since Dave and like-minded souls have taken to citing the National Enquirer website as a source, I saw a juicy one in the Weekly World News at the Bi-Lo this morning. George and Laura’s marriage is on the rocks. Ann Coulter has about as much credibility in my eyes.
Dave, you say this:
“A border agent even admitted they got lucky and saw a nervous person coming from Canada and checked the trunk of a car.”
Yep, and as a result of following up on that lucky break, Clinton was able to stop not only the LAX bombing planned by Ahmed Reesam, but the rest of the coordinated plots to set off bombs all over the world, killing thousands of Americans.
By contrast, Bush got a lucky break when he was informed on August 6, 2001, that bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S. However, instead of following up on that lucky break, Bush went fishing.
So, here’s the lucky break score for the Millenium Bomb Plot versus the September 11 attacks:
President Lucky Break Plots foiled Deaths
Clinton 1 1 0
Bush 1 0 3000
Coulter definitely lied about Canada’s involvement in Vietnam – or lack thereof.
Proof? Canada was not involved in Vietnam.
Game, set and match.
Dave: the 911 widows are fair game for criticism because they are now public figures. Calling them harpies and witches, claiming they enjoy their husbands death, and stating that the husbands may have been considering a divorce is NOT criticism. Those are insults – mean-spirited and vicious. You are doing the same thing. This is contrary the the values for which American soldiers are dying. We ALL have the right even are charged with civic involvement.
If Coulter wants to attack their stances and criticize the magnified credibility they have because they are 911 widows, fine. She can dismiss them as libs who the media pays extra attention to, but shouldn’t. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT SHE DID so don’t defend her on the basis of some supposed political commentary when her comments were simply vicious personal attacks.
I have a simple question. What created the bitterness that so clearly rules the judgment of Ann Coulter?
Supervillains are made, not born. So, from where does her hatred spring?
I’ve given her (on record) personal history a decent glance, and I can’t see anything, other than her mediocre looks earning her the status of “hottie” by Republican standards, that would lead a woman of her age and background to be so self-satisfactorily vicious.
Anyone? Li’l help?
And before you start, Dave and Lee, I can already guess why Hillary is the way she is.
Coulter is too skinny for my liking. Floyd actually looks like she has some nice legs. I saw Brad checking her out during the debate, that’s why he asked her more questions – to sneak more peeks.
I think coulter is simply trying to make money in order to pay her legal bills. And of course the right wingers are eating it up. Randy, your response to Dave was better than mine. Personal attacks of this type can never be 100% refuted and they don’t need to be. Dave’s challenge to prove coulter’s comments are not true is a non-sequetor.
RE, I definitely don’t think she’s happenin’. Not enough curves for me…
By Republican, white male standards, she’s a supermodel, though.
She has that withered, troubled, worn-down-by-life look that suggests there is a deeper malady affecting or providing her motivation.
Maybe I’m looking too deeply into a rather shallow pool…
>>She has that withered, troubled,
>>worn-down-by-life look that suggests
>>there is a deeper malady affecting
>>or providing her motivation.
That’s called the “Nancy Reagan”.
Sort of like “Blue Steel” by Zoolander.
Please don’t ever refer to Zoolander on this site, I hated that movie!
Randy – when I fill my tank at the gas station, I can’t help but start singing “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”….
I think I got the black lung, pops…
That movie gets better and better every time I watch it.
LOL, to each his own. I am a big FLETCH fan – not exactly Oscar material either.
As a Dalmation owner I’m fond of the old Disney Movie 101 Dalmations. Wouldn’t ann coulter make the perfect Cruela Deville?
Ann’s thoughts on the Jersey Girls are not alone by any means. Many of the other survivor families find these 4 media hogs to be disgusting and ungrateful. Yes, they suffered severe loss, and they have the constitutional right to say whatever they want, but Ann isn’t letting them hide behind the black widow’s veil and get away with their nonsense.
Ann is a doll by the way, and she can handle a pistol or rifle like a Marine. She eats liberals for breakfast and lunch, like most recently chewing up Matt Lauer and spitting him out. Yes, that is a real woman there.
Bud, that voter fraud silliness is about as silly as Algore trying to find a few chads to fill some ballot holes. You and I both know it wont go anywhere. We have equal protection clause in this nation. Is the election commission going to prosecute all the rich liberal jews that voted in NY and then flew to Florida and voted again at the end of the day. ALL have to be prosecuted. Wake me up when they do that.
Hot Rumor — The US military had snooped in on Zarqawis cell phone calls before he was killed. Feingold, Pat Leahy, and Teddy Kennedy are threatening more committee hearings to investigate the abuse of Zarqawi’s rights. Same old liberals there.
Contrary to Clinton’s fiddling around and passing up a sure shot at BinLaden, W did everything except fly the F16’s that made the hit. Now there is the real difference in leadership. We have a real MAN’s MAN in the White House. Note to all – W’s ratings are now on the way up. Now all we need, Bud, is Bin Laden barbecued before the November election. Can W do it,, sure!!!!!!
Hey, Mary’s back!
Dave, once again, which is better:
The conservative policies of South Carolina that lead to a high infant mortality rate, or:
The liberal policies of New Jersey that lead to a low infant mortality rate?
Vietvet, here’s Moore:
“The young men and women of America who enlist into our armies are willing to fight and die for their country. They fight so we don’t have to. They die so we don’t have to. The only thing they ask of us is that we only send them into harm’s way when it absolutely necessary.”
Here’s Coulter:
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”
Yeah.
Opposite sides of the same coin. Both viewpoints are equally extreme.
Or maybe they’re not. Maybe not every analysis consists of putting down two different viewpoints, characterizing both as extreme, and saying that the correct position is a compromise between them.
Maybe the idea that we should never send our soldiers into harm’s way unless it’s absolutely necessary ISN’T as extreme as attacking women who lost their husbands and who criticize Bush for what they see as his failure to keep America safe.
Dave, it’s a playground mentality to consider mean-spiritedness and personal attacks as effective commentary. It’s sad to see this behavior championed – nothing more than one bully cheering on another.
The debate in which you think was being addressed became an event not centered on the real issues at hand but on the acts of an individual. I don’t see how this helps the US. An effective pundit would have people listen to her position on the issues and possibly persuade others to agree. Ann Coulter did nothing of the sort. She gave the party a black eye. And what’s sad is that there are people who can’t see beyond winning for the sake of winning.
Randy, Ann is not a republican, but truly a conservative. She was ballistic at Bush over Harriet Miers and other issues. She doesnt campaign for GOP candidates.
Mary, you don’t have a single clue as to why infant mortality is lower in NJ than SC. It could be that the female drug addicts find it a lot easier to get abortions in NJ and the diseased and sick babies never get a chance to be born and then die. I dont know either, what I do know is that it is the Democrat LBJ welfare policies that have created the horrible welfare and drug dependency system that is responsible for those dying infants. They aren’t dying in Spring Valley, are they?
“doesn’t campaing for GOP candidates…nah!” She would never do that. And Delay never accepts lobbyist contributions either.
Hey, y’all — they’re talking about Ann Coulter over here.
Dave, your analysis makes no sense, and provides yet more evidence that if conservatives didn’t receive handouts paid for by the taxes of liberals, their shiftlessness and ignorance would result in their starvation.
HOW can LBJ’s policies be the cause of the higher infant mortality in South Carolina, when BOTH South Carolina AND New Jersey were both part of the United States?
If all these problems are caused by liberalism, WHY do their burdens fall so much more heavily on conservatives than on liberals? Why do conservative states have higher rates of:
abortion
divorce
teen pregnancy
murder
illiteracy
poverty
alcoholism
smoking
obesity
traffic deaths
out of wedlock births
and nearly every other condition bespeaking human ignorance and misery?
If liberalism is the cause, WHY are CONSERVATIVES so much more severely afflicted?
Here’s my analysis. The vastly superior performance of New Jersey compared to South Carolina doesn’t have anything to do with Lyndon Johnson. It has to do with the fact that South Carolina is a conservative state that has built its society on racism and handouts, and those aren’t good foundations for a decent society. Conservativism has failed in South Carolina, the same way it has failed everywhere else. But conservatives don’t ever acknowledge that they might be the cause of some of their own problems. You, for example, blame black and Jewish people for the problems caused by your own ignorance and shiftlessness and the ignorance and shiftlessness of your fellow conservatives. That may make you feel OK, but it doesn’t make you a productive or worthwhile citizen.
Citizens of New Jersey, by contrast, when faced with a problem, face it squarely and solve it.
That’s why South Carolina’s problems are so much worse, and of so much greater duration, than New Jersey’s. It isn’t that South Carolina’s problems can’t be solved, it’s that sitting around blaming “undesirables” is all conservatives know how to do, and sitting around blaming “undesirables” doesn’t accomplish anything.
Mary, you refuse to acknowledge the truth. How many conservative Republicans live in N. Charleston? Eau Claire? Dunbar? These towns statistically match almost identically with Camden, NJ on all the bad statistics you mention. The disease is Democrat welfare dependency and socialism, and fortunately the disease does not infect Spring Valley, Seneca, or Hilton Head, bastions of conservatism and the GOP. Can you forget about state to state comparisons and see the truth on this? I am sure you wont.
Dave, once again, we see why conservatism and conservatives are failures. In New Jersey, they care about decreasing poverty rates, so they set about to achieve a productive, educated work force. In South Carolina, they care about collecting federal handouts and blaming their problems on “undesirables,” so the problems remain.
And the poverty rate in Seneca may be somewhat lower due to the presence of large numbers of retirees from liberal states who moved to South Carolina because it is cheap. But what is the rate of poverty, alcoholism, obesity, murder, illiteracy, etc., in Seneca, among NATIVE SOUTH CAROLINIANS? Pretty high, I would have to guess.
Mary, here is your homework assignment. Please go door to door in Seneca and do a survey. Ask the people if they are like most native S.Carolinians being fat, poor, illiterate, murderous alcoholics, and when was the last time they beat their spouse up? Preferably, wear a signboard saying I HATE SOUTH CAROLINA on one side and I HATE GEORGE BUSH on the other. Lets see if you can make it through one neighborhood. haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
You don’t see Mary Rosh volunteering to take in some of those “native South Carolinians” who drag down the statistics. Why not? Liberals created the programs which encouraged the victim mentality, welfare, food stamps, government instant slums, bastardy and child abuse, which those suckers bought hook, line and sinker.
Again, Lee, if all these problems are the fault of liberal policies, WHY DO THEY AFFLICT CONSERVATIVES SO MUCH MORE THAN LIBERALS?
WHY is the liberal state of New Jersey able to achieve a rate of infant mortality so much less than that of the conservative South Carolina?
WHY are citizens of New Jersey so much better educated?
WHY is the median income of New Jersey so much higher?
WHY is the divorce rate in New Jersey so much lower?
WHY is the rate of illegitimate births in New Jersey so much lower?
The reason, of course, is that it is not liberalism that causes all these problems; it is conservatism. South Carolina made a choice a long time ago that they were going to establish a “competitive” labor force. That is, they were going to establish a poorly educated, unproductive, compliant, low wage work force. You see the harvest. If you base all your appeal on being cheaper, someone else can be even cheaper than you. Now, South Carolinians aren’t able to compete with slave labor in places like China, and with illegal immigrants who are allowed in by the Republicans as part of a deliberate strategy to lower wages. Rant all you want, Lee, about illegal immigration, but the Republicans are not going to do anything to stop it, or to enforce immigration laws, because they want a supply of workers who are scared to make trouble and demand decent treatment. This is real trouble for South Carolina workers, because such a large proportion of South Carolina workers aren’t that much more productive or highly skilled than illegal immigrants. New Jersey, on the other hand, has some protection, because so many of them can do work that illegal immigrants simply aren’t capable of doing.
Mary, show me a conservative in Spring Valley who is conflicted by your laundry list of horrors. You are a laugh a minute trying to pass the buck from your failed Stalinist programs.
Dave, I’ll grant you that if your analysis excludes poor people from consideration, the population you examine will not include a high proportion of poor people. But that doesn’t tell you anything about the overall population, or the effects of conservative versus liberal polcies; it only tells us that your analysis is faulty.
And what is the prevalance among Spring Valley conservatives of:
divorce
obesity
alcoholism
child abuse
spouse abuse
teen pregnancy
sexually transmitted diseases
versus New Jersey?
And I gather from what you say that Spring Valley is one of the wealthiest areas in South Carolina, although, if you look at home values there, they seem pretty cheap, especially compared to similar sized homes around here, or even smaller homes around here.
If you’re going to compare wealthiest areas against one another, what are the incomes of the wealthiest areas in New Jersey, versus in South Carolina?
For that matter, what is the median income for New Jersey as a whole against the incomes in the wealthiest areas of South Carolina?
You and your sheet-wearing friends can try to blame “undesirables” for South Carolina’s deficiencies all you want, but South Carolina is not a failure because of black people, and South Carolina is not a failure because of Jewish people. South Carolina is a failure because conservatism teaches people to blame problems on scapegoats rather than to solve problems and create a better community.
New Jersey, on the other hand, adheres to liberal policies intended to improve the lives of citizens of the state.
The result, of course, is that the citizens of New Jersey as a whole are wealthier, healthier, happier, and more productive than the citizens of South Carolina as a whole, and the wealthiest citizens of New Jersey are wealthier, healthier, happier, and more productive than are the wealthiest citizens of South Carolina.
Mary, you leave out an important factor. Education was not mandated in the Southern States until much later than the NE states. Education will have a greater impact on the issues you address than any bill Corzine signs into law. Hence, you can’t compare two populations solely on the factor of political policy and discern a direct cause and effect.
And I thought New Jersey was most famous for organized crime and crooked politicians.
When I worked in Princeton, the state solved the teacher shortage by letting engineers retired and laid off by all those big companies like AT&T and GE become teachers without taking those job-protection certification courses. Test scores shot up more in a year than in the previous 20 years.
Mary, your sheet wearing KKK hero, Senator Byrd, will break Strom’s senatorial longevity record tomorrow. Must make you proud to have Sheets Byrd be the benchmark for all future senators. Just a couple of years ago, he was still spouting the N-word on national tv. But he got a pass from the liberal media and the naacp. By the way, Byrd is also known as Senator Pork as he grabbed all the federal money he could for WV, and openly bragged about hogging it. The people of SC are generous compared to that type of greed.
Randy, WHY were conservative states so late in instituting public education, and WHY don’t they value generally available education to this day? The lack of attention to education that has significantly contributed to the stagnation and squalor experienced by the populations of conservative states is a deliberate choice resulting from conservative values. Conservatives wish beyond everything else to maintain existing power relationships, with a few people using their influence over business and public institutions to direct benefits to themselves, while the rest of the population remains compliant. Generally available, high quality public education, like that provided by New Jersey and other liberal states, disrupts these relationships, by creating an informed population and moving the society more in a direction in which rewards are based on merit. This sort of thing is dangerous to the entrenched “aristocracy” in conservative states, because they typically gain rewards not through merit, but through their control over institutions. More than anything else, conservatives want an ignorant, compliant, low wage work force. The fact that a better educated work force will be more productive, creating greater prosperity for the society as a whole, doesn’t matter to them, because they don’t care about the prosperity of the society as a whole. They only care about concentrating whatever limited prosperity the society can produce in their hands.
Certainly the ignorance of the population of South Carolina goes a long way to explain the squalor and degradation characterizing the lives of the citizens of South Carolina. And you are right that this ignorance is caused in significant part by a lack of attention to education. But you err in failing to draw the connection between conservative values and the lack of attention to education that has led to the ignorance and squalor in which South Carolina has wallowed for so many years.
Dave, am I to take it that by abandoning the subject and bringing up a non sequitur about Robert Byrd’s past Klan membership (which has been repudiated by him and which he characterizes as a matter of great shame to himself) you are admiting that the fact that liberal states do so much better than conservative states in every respect has to do with the fact that liberal policies succeed in promoting human welfare and productivity, while conservative policies succeed only in promoting human misery and degradation?
Mary, how naive you are. You THINK that Byrd repudiated the KKK because that is what you want to think. Yet he was still using the N-word as recently as 2 years ago on national TV. In private, I bet he uses it all the time amongst trusted cronies. You are a complete naive fool to think otherwise. Did he have an epiphany 23 months ago and swear off the N-word? So you just keep praising and worshipping Senator Pork as long as it makes you feel better. You also had a NJ governor most recently who was giving out BJ’s to random strangers at rest stops on the Jersey Pike. Nice people up there, right where you belong. But the governor wrote a book and has renounced his own behavior, just like Byrd. LOL here!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill and Hillary Clinton have also be caught by open microphones using the “N word”, but their supporters in the infotainment media and “black leaders” ignore such obvious expressions of their racism.
Dave, I didn’t bring up Senator Byrd, you did. Am I to take it that by so doing you are admitting that the fact that liberal states do so much better than conservative states in every respect has to do with the fact that liberal policies succeed in promoting human welfare and productivity, while conservative policies succeed only in promoting human misery and degradation?
Is Senator Byrd from a liberal or conservative state?
WV voted conservative in the last election, but historically has voted liberal. Basically, Byrd has been Senator of a “state” that has “swung” between two ideologies – or what we call a “swing state”.
A large part of West Virginia and its coal mines are owned by the DuPont and Kennedy families. You liberals remember that, the next time a mine caves in.
Apparently the DuPonts and Kennedys are big into business, so they’re not really “Democrats”. You conservatives remember that, the next time you claim someone is a lefty.
“Apparently” into big business? Duh. You really do need to read up on the millionaires who run the Democratic Party, as well as the wannabees and those who became a little rich by being front men, like Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson and the Clintons.
Excactly, Lee. I know the Democrats are a big business party like the Republicans. That’s why they’re a right wing party with centrist sympathies, not “leftist”.
Does the former communist party associations of Ralph Nader, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry help rehabilitate them in the eyes of you honest socialists, or has all that loot corrupted them?
How about Castro, named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s richest men, with all those tobacco and coffee plantations he stole?
“Does the former communist party associations of Ralph Nader, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry help rehabilitate them in the eyes of you honest socialists, or has all that loot corrupted them?”
Firstly, I want hard proof they were ever communists, let alone socialists.
Secondly, if they were, they did sell out to be center-right.
“How about Castro, named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s richest men, with all those tobacco and coffee plantations he stole?”
Castro is a bastard. Individual men do not cease making an ideal function, even if that is communism and not socialism. Hitler was right wing, does that the Republicans evil?
Cut the c___, Lee. Try to discuss instead of lecture. There is a lot more evidence that W’s grandfather financed German rearmament under Hitler than that any of the named individuals were ever communist in any real sense.
I didn’t say the current crop of Democratic celebrities were communists. I said they were associated with and used by the Soviets and the Communist Party USA. They are now just selfish Baby Boomers, out to get rich off socialism or any ism, but still supporters of world government and the end of the USA as a the world power.
* Hillary Clinton worked in the law offices of the Communist Party USA of California, and for communist organizer Saul Alinsky.
* Ralph Nader ran his 2000 campaign from the CPUSA offices in New York City.
* Bill Clinton fled the US to avoid the draft and prosecution for perjury, was recruited by communists at Oxford, and protested the Vietnam War in Moscow as a guest of the Soviet Union.
* John Kerry’s anti-war group was financed by the KGB, according to archives recovered by British historians, and confirmed by former KGB officers who ran the operation.
You might try reading the first-hand account of former communist and associate of these “useful idiots”, David Horowitz. The book title is “Radical Son”. His parents were FDR Democrats and Stalinists.
Or, Lee, if one wants to learn about David Horowitz (and you) one can read the DSM IV.
Mary Rosh falls back on that Leninist tactic of “diagnosing” critics of communism as “mentally ill”. She reveals her anti-intellectual heritage.
When I first ran across Horowitz, he was writing for Ramparts magazine, so I don’t need to “learn about him” from some socialist tract, either.
Mary, the US is a conservative nation overall. It is the most successful governmental and economic experiment in human history. Forget about individual city or state analysis, look at the US as a whole. Or do you hate the USA as it is? Maybe?
Itemization of Treatment of Prisoners at GITMO
The treatment provided is consistent with the Geneva Convention requirements on safeguarding prisoners, but does not offer all of the personal privileges granted a legitimate POW. That is what President Bush has ordered. Here is a list of what the Gitmo detainees have 24/7, and the access of detainees to the Red Cross (ICRC), legal counsel and the press (Excerpted from a comprehensive collection at the U. Minn. Law School, titled Materials on Torture and Other Ill Treatment at page 41.)-
“Detainees receive:
– Three meals per day that meet cultural dietary requirements;
– Adequate shelter, including cells with beds, mattresses, and sheets;
– Adequate clothing, including shoes, uniforms, and hygiene items;
– Opportunity to worship, including prayer beads, rugs, and copies of the Koran;
– The means to send and receive mail;
– Reading materials, including allowing detainees to keep books in their cells; and
– Excellent medical care.
All enemy combatants get state-of-the art medical and dental care that is comparable to that received by U.S. Armed Forces deployed overseas. Wounded enemy combatants are treated humanely and nursed back to health, and amputees are fitted with modern prosthetics.
Detainees write to and receive mail from their families and friends. Detainees who are illiterate, but trustworthy enough for a classroom setting, are taught to read and write in their native language so they, too, can communicate with their families and friends.
Enemy combatants at Guantanamo may worship as desired and in accordance with their beliefs. They have access to the Koran and other prayer accessories. Traditional garb is available for some detainees.
Where security permits, detainees are eligible for communal living in a new Medium Security Facility, with fan-cooled dormitories, family-style dinners, and increased outdoor recreation time, where they play board games like chess and checkers, and team sports like soccer.
The United States permits the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit privately with every detainee in DoD control at Guantanamo. Communications between the U.S. Government and the ICRC are confidential.
In addition, legal counsel representing the detainees in habeas corpus cases have visited detainees at Guantanamo since late August 2004. As of late April 2005, counsel in nineteen cases had personally met with the 74 detainees they represent, and counsel in seventeen of those cases have made repeat visits to Guantanamo. To date, every request by American counsel of record in the habeas cases to visit detainees at Guantanamo has been granted, after that counsel has received the requisite security clearance and agreed to the terms of the protective order issued by the Federal court. The Government does not monitor these meetings (or the written correspondence between counsel and detainees), which occur in a confidential manner. The Government also allows foreign and domestic media to visit the facilities.”
U.Minn. Law Student David Weissbrodt has performed yeoman’s service collecting the relevant reports and law. He compares the Military’s investigations, the national and international law, and the acts by the NGO’s. He is skeptical of the DoD investigations that have not found fault up the chain of command. But he does not offer contrary evidence.
The US Military offers two means for a detainee to obtain release, a Combatant Status Review Tribunal and an Annual Review Board, these means include a right to counsel. Same Weissbrodt link at pages 33-37: “As of March 29, 2005, the CSRT Director had taken final action in all 558 cases. Thirty-eight detainees were determined no longer to be enemy combatants; twenty-three of them have been subsequently released to their home countries, and at the time of this Report’s submission, arrangements are underway for the release of the others.” In addition “As of April 26, 2005, the United States has transferred 234 persons from Guantanamo — 169 transferred for release and 66 transferred to the custody of other governments for further detention, investigation, prosecution, or control.” This is from the Second Report of the United States of America to the Committee Against Torture, May 6, 2005, Weissbrodt excerpts it beginning at page 25 of the UMinn link.
Here is the list of currently approved interrogation techniques, as of April 2003 (as far as I can tell through google).
There is no order from the US Government condoning torture, or allowing treatment beyond the techniques listed in April 2003.
The DoD has conducted numerous investigations of claimed abuse, here is an account of confirmed abuses at Gitmo (from the U.Minn. collection pages 46-47, Weissbrodt’s excerpt of the US report to the Committee Against Torture) –
“Therefore, although there have been allegations of serious abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the United States has not found evidence substantiating such claims. Instead, it has identified 10 substantiated incidents of misconduct at Guantanamo:
– A female interrogator inappropriately touched a detainee on April 17, 2003 by running her fingers through the detainee’s hair, and made sexually suggestive comments and body movements, including sitting on the detainee’s lap, during an interrogation. The female interrogator received a written admonishment and additional training.
– On April 22, 2003, an interrogator assaulted a detainee by directing military policemen repeatedly to bring the detainee from a standing to a prone position and back. A review of medical records indicated superficial bruising to the detainee’s knees. The interrogator received a letter of reprimand.
– A female interrogator, at an unknown date, in response to being spit upon by a detainee, assaulted the detainee by wiping red dye from a red magic marker on the detainee’s shirt and telling the detainee that the red stain was blood. The interrogator received a verbal reprimand for her behavior.
– In October 2002, an interrogator used duct tape to tape shut the mouth of a detainee who was being extremely disruptive during an interrogation. The tape did not harm the detainee and the interrogator received a verbal reprimand for his behavior.
– A military policeman (MP) assaulted a detainee on September 17, 2002, by attempting to spray him with a hose after the detainee had thrown an unidentified, foul-smelling liquid on the MP. The MP received non-judicial punishment that included seven days restriction and reduction in grade from Specialist (E-4) to Private First Class (E-3).
– On March 23, 2003, after a detainee threw unidentified liquid on an MP, the MP sprayed the detainee with pepper spray. The MP declined non-judicial punishment, and he was subsequently tried by special court-martial where he was acquitted of all charges.
– On April 10, 2003, after a detainee had struck an MP in the face (causing the MP to lose a tooth) and bitten another MP, the MP struck the detainee with a handheld radio. This MP was given non-judicial punishment, received 45 days extra-duty, and was reduced in grade from Specialist (E-4) to Private First Class (E-3).
– On January 4, 2004, an MP platoon leader received an initial allegation that one of his guards had thrown cleaning fluid on a detainee and later made inappropriate comments to the detainee. The platoon leader, however, did not properly investigate the allegation or report it to his chain of command. The initial allegation against the guard ultimately turned out to be substantiated. The MP was given non-judicial punishment and received forfeiture of pay of $150 per month for two months and reduction in grade from Private (E-2) to Private (E-1). The platoon leader was issued a reprimand for dereliction of duty.
– On February 10, 2004, an MP inappropriately joked with a detainee, and dared the detainee to throw a cup of water on him. After the detainee did so, the MP threw a cup of water on the detainee. The MP was removed from further duty because of these inappropriate actions.
– On February 15, 2004, a barber intentionally gave two detainees unusual haircuts, including an “inverse Mohawk,” in an effort to frustrate the detainees’ request for similar haircuts as a sign of unity. The barber and his company commander were both counseled because of this incident.
The above list of substantiated abuses and the subsequent punishment of those responsible at Guantanamo Bay demonstrates that misconduct will not be tolerated.”
Let me be clear (even though I cannot figure out blockquotes), the above is what the US Government has reported, in OUR GOVERNMENT’S WORDS.
On the other hand, we have seen the ACLU’s copy of an FBI agent’s e-mail detailing humiliation forced on detainees during interrogation on “a couple occasions.” What we have not seen is evidence of torture.
Dave, am I to take it that by dishonestly conflating conservatism and patriotism, you are admitting that the reason liberal regions and populations are so much more successful and productive than conservative regions and populations is that conservatives and conservative principles are failures at promoting human productivity and welfare?
Can’t answer the findings of those liberal lawyers that prisoners are treated well at GITMO, can you?
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP 6/15/2006) — American and Iraqi forces have carried out 452 raids since last week’s killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and 104 insurgents were killed during those actions, the U.S. military said Thursday.
Lee, why are you so obsessed with killing? Do you visit cemetaries on your days off? Do you have skeletons in your closet (literaly)? All this killing, death, destruction and we’re actually further from resolving the Iraq conflict than ever before. Sectarian violence is 10 times greater than it was 3 years ago. The BUD plan for Iraq: Bring the Troops Home, NOW!
I am just reporting the success of our troops in Iraq. If you hate our success, ask yourself why you want America to fail to defeat another of its enemies.
Lee, the “successes” you cite aren’t that closely tied to the goals of the United States, which are to achieve some peace and stability in the region, so they’re not really that informative.
A more informative measure of success would be, did the Zarqawi killing and these “successful” raids stop people getting blown up by insurgents, terrorists, and garden variety thugs.
And the answer, unfortunately, seems to be no.
Since the entire business of Zarqawi and the goons we have captured and killed was the business of killing innocent Iraqis in a campaign of terror, the answer is…
YES, killing Zarquawi and other terrorists is a measure of success in winning this war.
Most of the Iraqis killed by Americans were enemy combatants.
Most of the Iraqis killed by enemy combatants were innocent civilians, Iraqi police, and government leaders, in a classic communist model of attempted intimidation through violence.
Compare the few exceptions of minor mistreatment by our soldiers receiving swift discipline, with the torture and beheading practiced by Saddam Hussein, his sons, Zarquawi and the other socialist Muslims who are the sworn enemies of Western Civilization.
If you measure success by body counts, you’re basically admitting that you’re losing.
Body counts are the only thing the terrorists can accomplish. That is why they are losing.
America is winning by killing terrorists, and in every other area that counts, like elecions, economic growth, schools, medical care.
Mary, it must really irk you to see the puzzle of success coming together in Iraq. Bush standing side by side with their new leader. Even Sunnis now turning in the terrorist mafia thugs to their own government. People there are beginning to trust their own government to protect their families and possessions. The corner has been turned and this is turning into a huge success that will be a milestone event in all time history. 25 million people freed from tyranny and offered freedom and self government. Concepts you hate for sure as you sit smugly watching the news every day, praying for US failure so more people can hate Bush. You lose. You lost on your hatred of Rove too but you are silent about that now all of a sudden. In fact, what do you ever predict that actually happens. Nothing. Anyway, get over it. Bush’s legacy will be the deliverer of freedom to repressed people forever.
It’s a bad flashback to when the Berlin Wall came down.
Dave, wasn’t another bomb set off in a mosque just the other day? That suggests to me that maybe, just maybe, that killing ONE GUY isn’t, in and of itself, the rousing success you seem to think it is.
And how is “Bush standing side by side with the new leader” a sign of success? Are you now defining success down so far that the fact that Bush can STAND UP is a success to you? I had discounted all the rumors that Bush had fallen off thw wagon, but do you have some sort of special knowledge that maybe he is, which is why you think the mere ability to stand up is impressive?
I personally don’t see flying into Iraq in the middle of the night with the lights off, without telling anyone, staying a few hours, and they racing back out of there, as a success. If the war in Iraq is going so well, why couldn’t Bush fly in there in the daytime?
Anyway, back to your post from a couple of days ago, am I to take it that by dishonestly conflating conservatism and patriotism, you are admitting that the reason liberal regions and populations are so much more successful and productive than conservative regions and populations is that conservatives and conservative principles are failures at promoting human productivity and welfare?
Let’s have some more excuses for why we shouldn’t blame the failure of the conservative state of South Carolina on the conservative policies that caused the failure, and we shouldn’t attribute the success of the liberal state of New Jersey to the liberal policies that led to the success.
Ask the people in NJ who lost family and friends on 9/11 if they think we should let the terrorists run free, as the Democrats permitted them to do for 8 years.
Lee, Bush was president when the September 11 attacks took place. You don’t approach the analysis from the right direction (no surprise, because if you had the initiative that it takes to do the analysis correctly, you wouldn’t have depended on handouts for survival every day of your life). You take the position that everything bad that happened MUST have been the fault of Democrats. So you back up from that to the false assertion that Democrats allowed terrorists to run free for 8 years. The fact is that Bush was president on September 11, and it was his negligence that led to the success of the September 11 attacks. When Bush was warned of an impending attack, he went fishing. When Bush was informed that an attack was taking place, he just sat there. Bush’s inaction was HIS FAULT, not the fault of Democrats.
Not everything bad that happens is the fault of Democrats. Take a look at yourself:
Is it the fault of Democrats that you’re ignorant?
No, it’s YOUR FAULT.
Is it the fault of Democrats that you’re lazy and shiftless?
No, it’s YOUR FAULT.
Is it the fault of Democrats that you’re a liar?
No, it’s YOUR FAULT.
Is it the fault of Democrats that the choices you have made for your life have led you to a squalid, parasitic existence?
No, it’s YOUR FAULT.
Bush’s failures are BUSH’S FAULT.
Your failures are YOUR FAULT.
South Carolina’s status as a failed state are the fault of the conservatives who inhabit and control South Carolina.
Clinton ordered the USAF to not kill Ossama Bin Laden.
Janet Reno told Egypt, Jordan and the Sudan that we did not want them to arrest Bin Laden and hand him over for his indictment in the 1993 WTC bombing.
Reno and Jamie Gorelick blocked the Army Intelligence units from telling the FBI about the 9/11 plot.
Clinton’s new computer system for the FBI was a complete project failure, with data about the hijackers entered but not indexed or available to field agents.
Clinton’s INS failed to pick up the hijackers, after being warned by the CIA and FBI.
Clinton bombed the hijacker training camps for show, weeks too late, after they were empty, months after the CIA provided the targets.
Clinton never bombed two major hijacker training camps, and four biological and chemical weapons deployment and training facilities in Iraq. They were all captured by the US Army in 2003.
Democrat gutting of intelligence agents overseas left America unable to track the hijackers continuously, and made us dependent on Czech, Russian, and Asian agencies.
Clinton and Reno covered up the OKC bombing ties to German terrorist cells and to meetings with Muslim radicals on several trips to the Phillipines.
Lee, made up stuff doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter how long the list is, if none of the stuff in it actually happened, it doesn’t make Bush’s failures Clinton’s fault.
Let’s give another examples. You have taken handouts all your life. That has led you to be lazy, shiftless, and worthless. Your laziness, shiftlessness, and worthlessness, are YOUR FAULT, because they result from SOMETHING YOU DID THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Bush failed to respond to a warning of an impending attack. That was something HE DID THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Bush also sat doiong nothing while Flight 77 was racing toward the Pentagon, after he had been warned that the U.S. was under attack. That’s something BUSH DID THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. The success of the September 11 attacks was BUSH’S FAULT. Your failure in life is YOUR FAULT.
The only defense Democrats have for the dereliction of the Clinton administration is to deny the facts, even though millions of people lived through it, and can look up their failures in news reports.
“Blinded by hate”, is a good description of such people.
Lee, liberals are not blinded by hate, we’re simply enlightend by facts. No matter how many times you accuse liberals of hating America, hating Bush or whatever nonsensecal bromide you throw out the fact remains: 9-11 HAPPENED ON GEORGE W. BUSH’S AFTER HE RECEIVED NUMEROUS WARNINGS IT WOULD OCCUR. Richard Clarke was among those from the Clinton years that passed along the warning signs. Did Bush act? NOOOOOOO. He went on vacation. Does that make me or Mary a Bush hater? No, that just makes us realists. It’s not hate to point out facts. So I suggest that rather than accusing the left of hate, you answer this one question – Why did George W. Bush sit in a classroom for 7 minutes reading “My Pet Goat” AFTER he was notified that the SECOND plane had hit the WTC?
Richard Clarke wrote that he begged Clinton to pay attention to the terrorists and take out Bin Laden.
Of course, Richard Clarke failed miserably in his job and now attempts to pass blame to everyone above and below himself.
George Bush remained in the classroom for a few minutes because he was told the situation was being assessed, the Secret Service was implementing a protection plan, and the President did not want to panic the nation by frightening a class of children.
What would Al Gore have done?
Or Kerry?
Or Clinton?
Panic, followed by soul searching to learn what America did to deserve this, then an attempt to cut a deal with Bin Laden.
Lee, the ONLY information Bush received about the attacks from the time he entered the classroom until the time he left was this:
“A second aircraft has hit the second tower. America is under attack.”
No one said anything else to him about the attacks until after he left the classroom about 10 minutes later.
As to “panicking the nation”, how was Bush’s scaring a bunch of schoolchildren going to increase whatever panic might be felt by a nation that had been looking at a smoking hole in one tower of the WTC and had just SEEN AN AIRCRAFT CRASH INTO THE OTHER TOWER?
Second, how would Bush’s prompt attention to his job have frightened the children? All he needed to do was to leave the room. How was that going to scare the children? Hadn’t they ever seen people walk out of rooms before? How did they get out of the room on the previous day?
In addition, they had just finished a portion of the lesson, and hadn’t even started the story about the goat at the time Bush was informed of the second crash. How was it going to frighten the children for Bush to get up, say “I’ve got to go”, and leave? And that’s what he did anyway after another 10 minutes.
How would leaving promptly have frightened the children, if leaving after spending 10 minutes frozen with fear didn’t frighten them?
All it would take to panic most Democrats is to tell them their government check will be late.
Clinton lied and 3,000 died.
Lee, you’re a fine one to talk about other people panicking when their government check is late. Where would you be if not for government welfare programs designed to prop up so-called “businesspeople” so that they wouldn’t have to suffer for their inability to produce goods that people wanted to buy at prices they wanted to pay?
Please explain to me how anything Clinton did kept Bush rooted to his seat listening to children read a story about a goat for 10 minutes after he’d been informed that America was under attack. Of course, if you had enough initiative to do that, you might have enough initiative to support yourself, and I wouldn’t have to pay excess federal taxes to finance the handouts that keep you from starving to death.
The Bush Haters criticize everything, but never say what they would have done, much less what they would do.
Even with 5 years to ponder, they can’t come up with what they would have done when they received the news about the WTC attacks.
But wait! We KNOW what they did. We saw them on television, scurrying away from the Capitol Complex as fast as they could, some of them hiding for days.
Please explain to me how anything Clinton did kept Bush rooted to his seat listening to children read a story about a goat for 10 minutes after he’d been informed that America was under attack.
What would Kerry or Gore have done?
Hey, today we killed Zarqawi’s replacement. He didn’t last long.
Please explain to me how anything Clinton did kept Bush rooted to his seat listening to children read a story about a goat for 10 minutes after he’d been informed that America was under attack.
Mary, you are so naive. Do you by chance drag your knuckles on the ground when you walk, and really like bananas? Yes, that explains it. When Clinton was informed that the WTC was bombed in 93, he did nothing. Did you expect him to get on a chopper, fly there, and go after the terrorists with an AK-47? Point of fact, he never was concerned enough to even VISIT the site. That was another reaction that emboldened Al Qaeda. A weak president who would not counter-attack. Get real Mary, and put some ice on those knuckles.
Richard Holbrooke, Richard Clarke, and Dick Morris all wrote that Clinton was paralyzed by foreign policy in the Mideast, and afraid to provoke the terrorists. His advisors could not get him to act, because he avoided risk, and didn’t want to do anything that might generate military losses and bad press.
Please explain to me how anything Clinton did kept Bush rooted to his seat listening to children read a story about a goat for 10 minutes after he’d been informed that America was under attack.
All the socialist nutcase haters can come up with is that Bush didn’t jump out of his chair in panic.
Lee, is the only way to get out of a chair to jump out of it in a panic? And is the only alternative to jumping out of a chair in a panic to sit doing nothing while schoolchildren read a story about a goat?
And again with the throwing around “socialist” as an epithet. Where would you be if it weren’t for programs you deride as “socialist”? What would South Carolina be like if its economy depended on the initiative and industry of its citizens, rather than on handouts and subsidies paid for by the federal taxes of liberals? Where would you be if not for the “socialist” practice of providing government handouts to “businessmen” so they don’t have to suffer because their ignorance and shiftlessness renders them unable to provide goods that the public wishes to buy, at prices they’re willing to pay?
And oh yeah,
please explain to me how anything Clinton did kept Bush rooted to his seat listening to children read a story about a goat for 10 minutes after he’d been informed that America was under attack.
Only a few of you Gore-Aid drinkers think Bush did wrong to not run out of the classroom.
Considering that Clinton and Gore never reacted at all to the 1993 WTC bombing, everyone was happy that a Democrat was not in office in 2001.
I never received any “business welfare”, like the Daschle ethanol subsidies, so I don’t know what Mary is talking about.
But then Mary doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Lee, this is an example of why South Carolina continues to be stuck in squalor, poverty, and ignorance. You are so lazy, ignorant, and shiftless, that you consider this is the only possible condition, and are unable to think beyond it. You don’t contribute anything to society, subsisting on handouts and subsidies, and you don’t understand why other people have the concept that one should pull one’s own weight and make some contribution to soceity.
The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES is in an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM doing a MEANINGLESS PHOTO OPPORTUNITY.
He is informed of an ONGOING ATTACK on the United States.
He doesn’t know the extent of the attack.
He doesn’t ask.
He doesn’t know if it consists only of hijacked planes, or if it also involves other weapons, even nuclear weapons.
He doesn’t ask.
He doesn’t know how many planes have been hijacked.
He doesn’t ask.
He doesn’t know what steps are being taken to respond to the attack.
He doesn’t ask.
He doesn’t say “what’s going on?”
He doesn’t say, “what are we doing to stop the attacks?”
He does nothing.
He sits there for 10 minutes, and all this time, Flight 77 is heading toward the Pentagon.
Langley has not been scrambled.
Andrews has not been scrambled.
But a lifetime of living off of handouts has left you are so lazy, so shiftless, so totally worthless, so devoid of any feeling that anyone has any responsibilities other than to sit and collect handouts drawn from the taxes of liberals, that you think that the BEST response Bush could have made to an ONGOING ATTACK about which he knew NOTHING, was NOT to ask a question, NOT to find out what was going on, but to sit, silent, in an elementary school classroom, listening to a story about a goat.
With people like you in it, no wonder South Carolina steeped in ignorance and squalor, living off racism and handouts.
Point us to what Gore, Kerry, Hillary, and others would have done differently than Bush.
We already know what Clinton would do…nothing.
Let’s see, Lee, on the one hand, Bush did nothing, and to you, that was the right thing to do.
Now, on the other hand, Clinton (according to you) would have done nothing, and that would have been the wrong thing to do.
I’ll tell you again, that BUSH was responsible for responding to the attacks. He did nothing when warned that the attacks were impending, and he did nothing when they were actually going on. The success of the attacks was Bush’s fault, not Clinton’s.
Similarly, your failure in life is a result of your ignorance and shiftlessness. It is YOUR fault, not the fault of Democrats, not the fault of black people, not the fault of anyone else but you. You had an opportunity to base your life on something other than racism and handouts. You didn’t take that opportunity. Your failure to take it is YOUR FAULT.
Similarly, the failure of South Carolina caused by South Carolina’s conservative policies is the fault of the conservative policies that caused the failure.
Bush got out of his chair at that Florida school, visited the smoking WTC site, and sent the Special Forces after the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Marines after Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Clinton didn’t even visit the WTC after the 1993 bombing. He covered up the OKC connections to Muslim terrorists. He fired the chief investigator on TWA 800 and put Al Gore in charge of forcing a non-terrorist theory. He refused to extradict Bin Laden, and stopped our Air Force from killing him.
What would Hillary, Kerry, or Gore done differently than Bush did? Why would America want that?
Lee, you mean that Bush did nothing while the attack was underway, then after several days went to the WTC and had another photo-op, then attacked Afghanistan with too few forces, so that bin Laden escaped, then attacked Iraq, destabilizing the country so that al Qaeda was able to operate freely there.
Clinton, on the other hand, did “nothing,” if by “nothing,” you mean caught the people who bombed the WTC, and stopped numerous other terrorist plots including the Millenium Bomb Plot.
It’s true that Clinton “covered up” the Muslim terrorist connections to the OKC bombing. This was pretty easy, as those connections don’t exist anywhere except in your racist, drug-addled fantasies.
Similarly, he “forced” a non-terrorist theory on the Flight 800 investigation, a simple matter, because again, the terrorist connections to Flight 800 exist nowhere other than in your racist, drug-addled fantasies.
Again, Bush failed to do anything to respond to an ongoing attack on the United States. He had a chance to stop Flight 77 from hitting the Pentagon, but instead, he proceeded with a meaningless photo-op and continued the photo-op even after he knew that America was under attack.
Explain how Clinton was responsible for that.
Oh, so Bush let that plane fly into the Pentagon, eh Mary? Why did he do that?
And why did Clinton stop the USAF from killing Bin Laden, after he and Reno refused the extradition of Bin Laden by the Sudan?
Bush didn’t “let” Flight 77 be flown into the Pentagon on purpose, and didn’t even know that it had been hijacked, but he failed to take any steps to find out whether any other planes had been hijacked, where they were, and what steps were being taken (if any) to stop them, whether those steps were sufficient, and whether any additional steps could be taken.
The reason for this failure was his cowardice and laziness, which caused him to fail to comare the relative importance of:
1. Responding to an attack on the United States
2. Listening to schoolchildren read a story about a goat.
Now, this really happened, in constrast to your drug-addled fantasies about Clinton’s supposed failings.
I know all about Clinton’s “refusal” of bin Laden’s extradition by Sudan. There was never any offer to turn over bin Laden. What there was, was, a self-promoting representation by some guy named Mansoor Ijaz that he was entitled to speak on behalf of the Sudanese government, and that he could get a deal for them to turn over bin Laden in exchange for removal of sanctions against Sudan, which had been imposed as a response to genocide carried out by the Sudanese government. Mansoor Ijaz was not entitled to speak for the Sudanese goverment, and there never was any offer from any authorized representative.
Of course, if you had the initiative required to figure those things out, you might also have the initiative to support yourself without handouts.
Poor Mary still has no answer as to what Bush should have done, and what Gore, Hillary or Kerry would have done on Sept 11, 2001.
Neither to Kerry, Gore, and Hillary.
So Lee, let me get this straight. Bush had two alternatives facing him on September 11.
(a) Find out everything he could, as fast as he could, about the extent and nature of the attacks and do everything he could to stop them.
(b) Sit in silence listening to children read a story about a goat, while doing nothing to respond to the attacks.
He chose (b).
I don’t think it’s any secret that my choice would have been (a). My post of 9:25 AM on June 21 makes it clear to anyone except a lazy, shiftless, worthless idiot that my choice would have been (a).
President Bush has a staff that was gathering information for him on 9/11. When they knew enough, he acted within 8 minutes.
Unlike Clinton doing nothing for 8 years.
Fiver years later, Kerry, Hillary and Gore are still unable to say what they would have done differently.
“President Bush has a staff that was gathering information for him on 9/11. When they knew enough, he acted within 8 minutes.”
Well, we know that isn’t true. The ONLY thing any member of Bush’s staff said to him from the time he went into the classroom until the time he left was “A second aircraft has hit the second tower. America is under attack.”
That’s it.
No one said that anyone was gathering information, and no one told Bush about any information that had been gathered, or that they had enough information. Bush’s decision to leave the classroom when he did had nothing to do with any idea that enough information had been gathered for him to deal with the situation, because he had no idea how much information had been gathered or was being gathered, or what the extent of the attack was.
You can make all the excuses you want, and blame everybody that you want, but Bush’s failure to respond to the September 11 attacks was HIS FAULT, just as your failure in life due to your shiftlessness is not the fault of liberals, and is not the fault of black people, but is YOUR FAULT.
Why a Bush supporter apologize for cleaining up Clinton’s mess with the terrorists?
What would Kerry, Hillary, Gore and Goat Boy have done differently than Bush?
How did “black people” get into this? You illiberals can’t go 60 seconds without some racial thought floating through your craniums.
Mary, your real problem is you don’t have a clue about leadership or managing a situation. Sometimes the worst thing a leader can do is instantly react and blurt out a command to his organization. Maybe you would have been happy if Bush had immediately said, Nuke Mecca Now!!!! Hey, that would have been instant action right. You are a goofus of the world class kind. A parasitic New Jersey resentful, envious, bitter, warped mind who sits up there in your socialist overtaxed land complaining and moaning about how much federal money SC gets. Do us all a favor. Never, ever come to SC. We don’t want or need hateful people here. Also, Ms Everyone is a Racist, I bet you live in a lily white development very far removed from minorities. Typical liberal.
Lee, if you really believed that what Bush did on September 11 was the right thing to do, you would not lie about what he did. As I’ve demonstrated above, none of the justifications you presented for Bush’s inactions has any basis in reality.
Dave, yes, sometimes the worst thing a leader can do is to instantly react and blurt out a command to his organization. However, sometimes it’s the best thing he can do. For example, if Bush had blurted out the command “Tell me what’s going on”, Flight 77 might have been intercepted before it hit the Pentagon.
I think we can all agree that the very worst thing a leader can do is to sit, cut off from all relevant information and communication, in the middle of a meaningless photo-op, listening to a story about a goat, while an attack on his country is underway. And that’s what Bush did.
And I don’t complain about how much federal money South Carolina gets. I understand that a state full of, and run by, shiftless, worthless, lazy people like you and Lee is not going to be able to sustain its economy through the industry and initiative of its citizens. You, Lee, and many other South Carolinians, have built your lives around racism and handouts. I understand that, and I am willing to pay the taxes needed to keep fellow Americans from experiencing the suffering and starvation that would result from forcing them to live on the value of what they are capable of producint. What I don’t appreciate, however, is the ingratitude. Look at you. You acknowledge that you are a freeloader, that you get more in federal handouts than you pay in federal taxes, but you call people from New Jersey parasitic! How can someone be parasitice who contributes more than they get in exchange?
And it’s not New Jersey’s fault that South Carolina has higher rates of divorce, illegitimate births, poverty, venereal disease, alcoholism, murder, traffic deaths, and infant mortality than does New Jersey. It’s the fault of South Carolina and the failed conservative policies that South Carolinians support.
You need to compare the rates of divorce, illegitimate births, poverty, venereal disease, alcoholism, murder, traffic deaths, and infant mortality among the same racial groups in New Jersey and South Carolina, in order to see how liberalism has destroyed the black family in both states since 1965.
Yeah, Lee. All of South Carolina’s failures are the result of black people being able to vote. Your failure in life isn’t your fault, it’s the fault of black people who failed to stay in their place.
Mary, you are the one insulting South Carolina for social problems which are largely in its black community. I doubt you really care.
Yes Mary, if SC could get all of the liberal democrats to move to New Jersey, we would have the greatest state in the nation. But, being compassionate conservatives as we are, the good people of SC are trying hard to pull the poverty stricken out of poverty. Your cohorts are only concerned with keeping them there. Throw them a couple more bucks of welfare money and keep them in place. That formula has failed, can’t you see that? The real leeches are in New Jersey, now begging for more Homeland Security money from my taxes. Wasn’t it your queer governor who put his boytoy in charge of NJ Homeland security? Now there is the kind of criminal wastefulness that Lee and myself detest. Typical New Jersey.