Our President
POSTED BY: howdyrockerbaby1
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 21, 2025 16:36
VIEWED: 49385
PAGE 8 of 24
Aw man...
So richardecheandia posts a url directing the interested forum viewer to go to a webpage where there's this li'l movie showing Rumpsfelt (sp?
) caught on T.V. in a lie. He never said "immediate threat," oh actually he did, more than once, etc. And then what happens? The heavy hitters on this thread who had only moments ago said that the liberal media had created a myth that the administration claimed that Saddam was an immediate threat, vanish (gotta love the internet). Seriously, does it really take one solid proof that one of their many assertions is simply wrong for them to run and hide?
Nervouspete, I'm sorry to read that you will be absenting yourself from this thread, but I certainly don't blame you. Your very eloquent first post didn't even make a dent in the vehement rhetoric being bandied about here. I agree with you that when your primary form of political action is to shout people down you pave the way for fascism. Being a student of history, It has always sickened me to hear lefties calling our republican presidents fascists, f'rinstance. History teaches that there is no fascist leader without a fascist people. From the evidence on this thread however, the democratic spirit in this country is in serious trouble.
Recent history has been teaching me that liberalism and fear just don't mix. Our country was able to build its excellent human rights record and impressive environmental standards because of our prosperity and our sense of safety in the world and mutual trust of our allies. Now our country is sunk in fear, fear and rage over the 9/11 attacks. People have begun to believe that there are things far more important than social justice and democratic values. Is democracy truly a luxury that we can no longer afford? More importantly, is our new found fear warranted? Are we fundamentally less safe than before 9/11?
I don't really think we're in any greater danger today than we were before 9/11. And I don't think we're any safer. True, nobody's gonna be taking over a plane with box cutters any time soon, but where there's a will, there's a way--as long as people hate, they will find ways to express it. One way to express hate is to post it on the internet. I guess it's better than a letter bomb, but when do we start to work on actually getting rid of the hate, once and for all? Do we even believe that it's possible or desireable to stop hating? Of course it is. Grief, healing, growth, compassion--these are the ways out of fear and rage. How 'bout we work on them?
P.S: Oh, while I was writing this post hero's come back with a diatribe about how environmentalists have destroyed the economy (I'll be sure to let my environmentalist friends know just how powerful they really are). But, as you see, nothing about that pretty important point concerning the current administration's lie that Saddam Hussein presented an immedediate threat to the United States. Hm. I guess he just forgot.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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Quote:
Originally posted by HERO:
Yeah. But those were different French. The good French. They show up every now and then, especially when all the bad French have managed to screw things up. Think Revolution, Napoleon, Revolution, Napoleon III, War, Resitance, and the '80s. Thats not the whole list, but certainly covers the highlights of recent French history.
So are we ignoring the Civil War, slavery, Jim Crowe laws, encampment of the Japanese, and slaughter of Native Americans? Every coountry has negative history and every country has positive history. Lay off the French. If you study the history, the language, and the culture and you understand the French, you can see their perspective. But the French are not responsible for everything wrong with America.
And please everybody lay off the press. Every reporter I know gets calls of bias from both sides, often on the same story. Sometimes a story feels biased because it is. But more often a story feels biased because you don't like the facts that make your argument look bad. And sometimes people are so biased against the press that they won't talk to them, so the article only gets one side of the story.
I have a friend who called to ask how many employees a store had for an economic story, and they wouldn't tell him. The manager wouldn't even give her last name, because she said it was "private" information. When people react like that to reporters, it's impossible for them to get at the truth. So lay off the press.
"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."
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HKCavalier:
Thanks for the calm (not enough of that in this thread), reasoned posting. Yeah... that URL is one of my favorites to address Rummy's attempts at revisionist history.
Regarding environmental laws ruining the economy:
One of the things that concerns me is the formula for the financial impact on society. I've never been able to find one of the reports that includes its sources of information and the formulae used to calculate the costs. When calculating the costs of environmental regulations it seems as if the compliance costs are always included but not the impact of failing to control pollution. Its perfectly legitimate for businesses to estimate their costs to comply but why do we never seem to include the costs of:
a. Increased mortality due to pollution
b. Increased health care problems in people
c. Damage caused to human property (acid rain, lost agriculture production, etc.),
d. Lost worker productivity due to increased sickness
e. Lost value of natural resources
etc, etc.
I suspect some of this may be the difficulty in estimating these items. While I imagine its comparatively easy for an electric utility to estimate the cost of scrubbers and such, calculating/estimating the items listed above are much more complex and (I suspect) subjective.
Also - what about the fact that its just wrong morally? How do you calculate that financially? And as a society are we so devoid of morality that ALL our questions should be decided based on purely economic considerations? Hello? What's the moral at the end of the Train Job. Sometimes the right thing to do is personally inconvenient but you still need to do it.
Anyway, just 'cuz Hero types something doesn't mean its true. If he has any information to quote that bolsters his assertion (including the formula - not just a bottom line number) then I for one might find his increasing strident argument a little bit believeable.
I think we've got a handle on the "immediate threat" thing, now let's deal with the environment.
After that we can all tackle world hunger together 
"Let's get on with this increasingly eerie-ass day"
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Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
P.S: Oh, while I was writing this post hero's come back with a diatribe about how environmentalists have destroyed the economy (I'll be sure to let my environmentalist friends know just how powerful they really are). But, as you see, nothing about that pretty important point concerning the current administration's lie that Saddam Hussein presented an immedediate threat to the United States. Hm. I guess he just forgot.
I take requests. Arguing the Saddam/threat issue wasn't my beef, but like any good lawyer, I can argue anything.
Here goes.
Saddam was a bad man. Did he play a role in 9/11? Probably a minor one. Like a movie extra, or that stairway on Serenity's bridge that doesn't really go anywhere.
Immediate threat. Well he violated the 1991 cease fire which pretty much meant that the original war was back on anytime he wanted. Thats why he used to shoot at our planes EVERY DAY. His weapons program was pretty much in the toilet, but not because he didn't want them, have them, or plan to make them as soon as possible. He was giving money to families of suicide bombers and was generally being a bad man every chance he got.
But, as I may have mentioned before, if mass graves, torture chambers, and rape as instruments of government don't justify war, nothing does. Some people believe nothing justifies war, those people should be killed and their stuff given to me.
I guess you are one of those people who are mad we fought Hitler, after all he never attacked us and clearly was no immediate threat to North America.
I think you are just mad because your share of the 'oil for food' money has stopped coming in.
H
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Quote:
Originally posted by CapnHarbatkin:
HKCavalier:
Anyway, just 'cuz Hero types something doesn't mean its true. If he has any information to quote that bolsters his assertion (including the formula - not just a bottom line number) then I for one might find his increasing strident argument a little bit believeable.
I never claimed to be an economist. I hate numbers and formulas, thats why I studied criminal law, so the only numbers I worry about is how long will the guilty man be in jail. And yes, they are all guilty, otherwise I would not charge them.
Now, not being an economist I can't give you numbers or formulas. Yet Akron is filled with shut down rubber plants, Cleveland has shut down steel mills. Why? Because it is cheaper to make those goods in foreign countries. Labor costs are one issue, another is the cost of retooling to meet clean air standards. In Mexico, for example, you pay your best workers a fraction of what the worst American workers make and the enviroment is not even a concern.
Maybe we should blame NAFTA. Maybe we should blame the unions. But for thirty years the enviromentalists have been attacking big industry. So at least some of the blame belongs to them.
As for energy. Maybe they should retool their plants to be cleaner. Can they afford it? Maybe. But if not they will simply shut down. This is not good since new plants are not being built. All the while demand is increasing.
California is a great example, increased demand and static supply. Then price controls caused domestic production to be reduced below the demand level forcing the state to buy outside power at premium prices. All the while 7 new powerplants stood ready to go but waiting, some as long as 10 years, for the EPA to issue final approval, which was being actively opposed by enviromentalists. Then everthing caught on fire because they would not allow underbrush to be properly cleared...a field mouse was the issue. Then the porn industry shut down and American Idol is caught in a blackout induced scandal.
So riddle me this my French loving liberal friends:
Is your perfect world of clean air, French wine, no Jews, and no jobs really what you want?
If so, then you should be willing to fight for it.
BTW, my perfect world is freedom, deomcracy, and a new Firefly TV series. I'd fight for that, in fact I play my part every day.
H
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[EDITED TO CORRECT NUMEROUS CAFFEINE INDUCED TYPOS]
Hero,
In the spirit of Browncoatism let me agree with you on a couple of your points:
1. Saddam was a very bad man
2. He was in violation of one or more UN resolutions
I take both of those as a fact.
Where I would (respectfully) disagree with you is on how those translate into an immediate threat and our nation's selective conciousness regarding these issues.
Sure, bad guy, killed his own people with chemical weapons (which I believe we supplied him the seed stocks for BTW) had his jets try to circumvent the no fly zones in Iraq, etc. etc.
Do you think Saddam is THAT much worse than someone like Pinnochet in Chile that as a nation we supported for close to 20 years?
Is he really worse than Rios Mott in Guatemala who's accused of a scorched earth policy that's estimated to have killed 19,000 in his 18 month reign? (BTW, he ran for re-election (!) last year).
Was Saddam more dangerous with his alledged WMD than North Korea that has admitted to working with nuclear weapons programs. The north Korean regime must surely be counted as repressive to its people as well (not sure on the death count there... need to go look that up).
Why aren't we marching into PyonYang like we did in Bagdad? If we as a nation are going to use that as a justification for war, don't you think it needs to be applied uniformly? What do we really stand for as a people?
Finally - quoting his violation of UN resolutions. I agree he was a pest but are you really saying that he wasn't contained in Iraq? I seem to recall that everytime he tried to lock any surface to air weapons on any of our jets, we took out that installation pretty immediately. His jets were absolutely no match to the best that the US had in the region in the time as shown by the number of times they managed to shoot down one of our jets (If memory serves, 1 time in 12 years of enforcing the NFZone).
If he's a bad guy for giving money to terrorists, why aren't we in Saudi Arabia's face (remember? 15 out of 19 terrorists?)
Finally, as I sit here and type this I'm wondering how many UN resolutions the US is currently in violation of.... Hmmmm I'm going to spring for $10 and get an answer to that question on Google Answers. I'll be sure to post the final number here.
Anyway Hero, you're obviously very passionate about this. Its good to have convictions. Don't you think those convictions need to be applied consistently though?
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You're saying a field mouse was the issue in the energy crisis in California?
Wow - that's a stretch. Hope your arguments are better for your clients when you're in front of a jury.
Maybe you've missed the topic of the energy companies artifically manipulating the prices in CA. Reliant Energy has already been formally charged (you know what that means right?)
Unlike you though I won't just make the claim:
Check out http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ca
lifornia+energy+price+manipulation for a lot of the links.
This one link has some good details:
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040409/topstories/23009.shtml
Quote:
"The vast majority of corporate executives are honest, hardworking people," Attorney General John Ashcroft said. "But when a company conducts itself in the manner Reliant Energy Services is alleged to have acted here, it will face severe consequences."
California's power crisis caused rolling blackouts, sent the state's utility companies heavily into debt and forced sharp increases in state electricity prices. Houston-based Reliant Resources is among several energy companies that have paid regulatory fines stemming from the crisis.
The six-count indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in San Francisco and released by the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. It accuses the company of withholding power from the market and purchasing electricity instead of producing it, then selling power at artificially high prices.
(snip)
Three former Enron Corp. traders have been charged with wire fraud related to price manipulation in California. Two of them pleaded guilty and a third awaits trial in October.
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Quote:
But, as I may have mentioned before, if mass graves, torture chambers, and rape as instruments of government don't justify war, nothing does. Some people believe nothing justifies war, those people should be killed and their stuff given to me.
I guess you are one of those people who are mad we fought Hitler, after all he never attacked us and clearly was no immediate threat to North America.
Comparing the war on Iraq to WWII does not hold up. Hitler marched into the de-militarized zone in the Rhineland in 1935 (if memory serves). He annexed Austria in 1937, invaded "Sudetenland" (don't know the English name) in 1939. Up until this point no one in the international community lifted a finger to stop him, despite Hitler having expressively stated his intention to take over eastern Europe in "Mein Kampf" in the '20s. Even when Hitler invaded Czechia (also in '39) the international community did nothing. Only after Germany's invasion of Poland a few weeks later did the war start, the US refuse to join this war before being directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. This hesitation cost Millions of Britons, Frenchmen and Russians their lives (and even Germans, though mentioning them in this context isn't very sensible).
Germany had shown aggressive and expansionist tendencies for six years, Germany had a human rights record MUCH worse than the Iraqi regime under Saddam and Poland was an ally of France and England.
Oh and Hero and Auraptor... if you don't know how to behave and properly conduct a debate and refrain from calling people morons and being racist towards other nationalities, maybe you shouldn't be partaking in this discussion. (And Hero you certainly shouldn't be accusing people of being racist or antisemitic if you are so obviously racist (towards the French) yourself)
Thank you nervouspete for introducing a calm and sensible tone into this discussion.
Coward
(runs and hides (chuckles while everyone else kicks the crap out of each other))
P.S. I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the French ethniticity or nationality.
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Quote:
Coward wrote:
(runs and hides (chuckles while everyone else kicks the crap out of each other))
LOL!
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CAPNHARBATKIN (sorry, had to fix since I got all confused as to who's who!) -
I don't know a whole lot about this, but here you go. A group known as Redefining Progress has an alternative way of measuring, well, progress - it's called the GPI, or Genuine Progress Indicator.
http://www.rprogress.org/
I guess it's a way of measuring the quality of our environment/lives, as opposed to putting a dollar sign on everything.
****
I know your name, Jackass.
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