Bush continues misleading his people

Bush said today

Some Sun­nis have expressed reser­va­tions about var­i­ous pro­vi­sions in the con­sti­tu­tion and that’s their right as free indi­vid­u­als in a free society,”

Bush praises Iraqi draft con­sti­tu­tion despite dis­agree­ments.

Why doesn’t he dare to say this con­sti­tu­tion is widely unpop­u­lar among all Iraqis Shi­ite, Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turk­men, Chris­tians, Man­deans and Yezidis, from the far north to the far south.

For Basra’s Chris­tians, Hus­sein era the good old days.

Sad­dam Hus­sein was a crim­i­nal and an oppres­sor. Every­body knew that,” said Majid, 45, a Sunni taxi dri­ver who said he was afraid to be iden­ti­fied fur­ther. “These new par­ties cry for soci­ety, but try to drink the blood of the people..“

Is it an attempt to give piece of Iraq to Iran?

Killing the dol­lar in Iran

The US dol­lar can have a deeper impact on the US econ­omy than a direct nuclear attack by Iran. The per­ma­nent demand for dollar-denominated paper stems sub­stan­tially from the fact that until now almost all resources of the world are quoted in it. While this led to the eurodol­lar (US dollar-denominated deposits at for­eign banks or for­eign branches of Amer­i­can banks) mar­ket in the 1970s, the new terms of trade could ring in the demise of the dol­lar as the pre­mier reserve currency.

I don’t want Bush sup­port­ers to enjoy the day with­out remind­ing them of this:

Reuters sound­man shot dead in Baghdad

A Reuters Tele­vi­sion sound­man has been shot dead in Bagh­dad and a cam­era­man with him was wounded and then detained by US soldiers.

For sure he is an Iraqi and that give him Mr. Nobody among Amer­i­can sol­diers, don’t for­get to read the best part in the story:

Kad­hem, the only known eye­wit­ness, was later detained by US troops and was still in cus­tody six hours later despite Reuters’s requests that he be freed to receive med­ical attention.…..Two Iraqi col­leagues who arrived on the scene min­utes after the shoot­ing were briefly detained, then released.

They treated us like dogs. They made us, … includ­ing Khaled who was wounded and ask­ing for water, sit in the sun on the road,” Reuters Tele­vi­sion sound­man Mohammed Idriss said.

Now you can enjoy your day.

Arnhem-Baghdad

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157 Responses to Bush continues misleading his people

  1. Michael says:

    Is that all you have to write? Don’t you feel ashamed of yourself?

  2. DaKruser says:

    Do you know some­thing, Michael? That’s silly, you think you know all. ANYWAY, if you were to open your eyes, you would real­ize that I have never changed my story. From the first time you called me David, I have clearly stated that was not my name. I have never said I was any­thing but an Inter­roga­tor. You even admit­ted I was who I said I was about two months ago, before you tried to be James Bond and fig­ure out who I was. Michael, I’m not going to repeat the list above. You now know more about me than most peo­ple who have ever met me, yet you con­tinue to claim my name is David and that I’m un-employed in the Amer­i­can NW. Even my chal­lenge to pub­lish all that poor slob’s infor­ma­tion on the web didn’t con­vince you. I don’t know what will. It really doesn’t mat­ter.
    Give it a rest.

  3. Michael says:

    Deceit­ful and untruth­ful to the last. You’re hope­less, I would cer­tainly respect you more if you could accept reality.

  4. DaKruser says:

    Like­wise.…

  5. Michael says:

    Hmmm.… I see that you’ve for­got­ten to call me George, blood pres­sure must be up with all the embar­rass­ment. Shame I enjoyed that.

  6. DaKruser says:

    No, actu­ally, I was try­ing to give the name to you that you chose uni­lat­er­ally, with hopes that you would do the same. Guess not. I’ll tell you what.…do you know any­thing about AKO?

  7. Michael says:

    You mean Army igno­rance online David?

  8. DaKruser says:

    some call it that. do you know the require­ments to have an AKO account?

  9. Michael says:

    Active Army, Army Reserve, National Guard, DA Civil­ian, Retired Army, and Army Guests.

  10. Michael says:

    Well I guess that’s the end of that con­ver­sa­tion. As if know­ing what AKO is proves any­thing. :) Pathetic.

  11. DaKruser says:

    Actu­ally, Michael,
    I’ve recon­cidered. I have an AKO email and I was going to give it to you to prove who I am. How­ever, I just don’t trust you. My orig­i­nal idea was to let you search AKO for me, and you would find that I am Retired Military/GS civil­ian at Ft Huachuca. How­ever, that par­tic­u­lar email has my entire name and I don’t want you to go snoop­ing around to find out more about me than you need, so.…
    You are right. That line of con­ver­sa­tion is, indeed closed. Never mind.

  12. Michael says:

    Well what would have been the point any­way? That would not have proved you saw active duty. You’re obvi­ously a mil­i­tary groupie and wannabe but that’s as far as it goes.

  13. DaKruser says:

    See? I’m glad I didn’t give you any more infor­ma­tion than I already have. Claim what you want, Michael. Believe what you want, but know that this belief you have is false.

  14. Charles says:

    Michael,

    You want me to play by your rules. Can you give me one good reason?

    They are not ‘my’ rules — they are the rules of civ­i­lized discourse.

    I proved that I’m correct.

    Hee Hee — Is any­one else watch­ing this? Nadia and Lady­bird, for all of your mis­trust and/or hatred for Bush, the US, etc., could you please step in here? While we prob­a­bly dis­agree on most inter­pre­ta­tions of events, etc., you still seem to have com­mon decency. This is becom­ing ludicrous.

    Michael is again assert­ing that the US was the main sup­plier of weapons to Sad­dam. Are you begin­ning to see a pattern?

    In your dreams.

    Very insight­ful response as usual Michael.

    Con­trol­ling it, since it doesn’t belong to the US, is the same as steal­ing it. Any other the­o­ries as to why the USA under­took this ille­gal oil inva­sion is absurd.

    You pro­vided no evi­dence of either con­trol­ling or steal­ing. There is a state min­istry in Iraq that con­trols Iraqi oil.

    I’ve asked you numer­ous times why in your opin­ion the US has spent $220,000,000,000 on this ille­gal war and you’ve been unable to come up with anything.

    I responded to you at length and you chose to ignore it and move on to another non­sense asser­tion (typ­i­cal tactic).

    Well obvi­ously any act of loot­ing whether by Iraqis or indi­rectly by Amer­i­cans would not have occured if the ille­gal inva­sion had not taken place.

    By your logic every­thing bad that ever occurred is ulti­mately Iraq’s fault any­way becuase Adam and Eve broke god’s rules and were cast our of eden (land between the rivers). Inter­est­ing how you totally deny that human indi­vid­u­als have any free­dom of thought or respon­si­bil­ity for their actions.

    I don’t expect you to accept this obvi­ous fact because you seem to want to lie about everything.

    I’m still wait­ing for any sane per­son to point out where I have lied.

    Inci­dently the fact that some of these things have been found by cus­toms in the lug­gage of return­ing Amer­i­cans or offered for sale on e-bay sug­gests that the Amer­i­cans are involved with steal­ing these treasures.

    I agree. While the vol­ume of trin­kets bought at mar­kets in Iraq by US sol­diers is small rel­a­tive to the over­all loot­ing, it is still wrong. Many of the sol­diers thought they were buy­ing sou­venirs. In any case, they should be returned to Iraq.

    By the way, did you hear of Emory Uni­ver­sity and cit­i­zens of Atlanta pay­ing for a mummy, bring­ing it to the uni­ver­sity, restor­ing it, iden­ti­fy­ing it as a king, and return­ing it to Egypt?

    I’ll bet your tal­iban would have dopne the same thing!

  15. Michael says:

    Charles the usual “big lie” crap. Keep repeat­ing the same lies over and over and hope some peo­ple will believe them. That’s what Bush did and imbe­ciles like your­self fell for it. But unfor­tu­nately you are only fool­ing your­self, the USA was the biggest client of Saddam’s sell­ing him arms, ille­gal weapons, even WMD. Then dur­ing the sanc­tions it was the USA companies/individuals that did most of the ille­gal trad­ing.
    As unpleas­ant as it may be for you, you have to start fac­ing real­ity. The real­ity being that the USA can­not afford to spend $220,000,000,000 out of con­cern for Iraqi’s well being or pre­tended con­cerns over human rights. I must admit some­times this forum is hard to fol­low and if by chance I’ve missed your attempt at explain­ing the fact that it was an oil inva­sion away, I do apol­o­gise, best try again I like a good laugh. To be hon­est it’s prob­a­bly not a good time now any­way since dusk descends here and I’m hardly likely to go search­ing for one of your posts in the morning.

  16. Charles says:

    I am begin­ning to won­der if Michael is just some soft­ware script used for trolling blogs.

    He keeps repeat­ing the same things over and over again almost verbatum.

    He is either ‘sim­ple’ per­son, or a clever soft­ware script.

  17. DaKruser says:

    Charles,
    Your name will soon be some­thing like Joseph Klien­metz, with sup­pos­edly two email addresses that con­firm your iden­tity. You are mak­ing too much sense, Charles, so you must be dis­cred­ited. Mark my words. It’ll hap­pen. Michael is actu­ally quite predictable.

  18. Charles says:

    Oh and PS

    Charles you clearly lied and the fact that you’ve since trawled the inter­net to see if any­thing can get you off the hook doesn’t change that basic fact.

    If you con­sider trawl­ing the inter­net the same as a split sec­ond google search to the orig­i­nal text of the 9/11 com­mis­sion report that debunks your mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions — then — well — hee hee — I guess you’ve got me pegged mikey.

    How­ever good it makes you feel to lie and dole out insults mikey, the truth is in black and white for all to see.

    And I hope you don’t think that your insults hurt anyone’s feel­ings. Just con­sider the hun­dreds of silent read­ers watch­ing these dis­cus­sions — watch­ing as you regur­gi­tate com­mon, yet base­less asser­tions, and then read­ing how patient, thought­ful peo­ple tear your non­sense to shreds.

    They already all know what’s com­ing next —


    As unpleas­ant as it may be for you, you have to start fac­ing real­ity. The real­ity being that the USA can­not afford to spend $220,000,000,000 out of con­cern for Iraqi’s well being or pre­tended con­cerns over human rights.”

    It never fails!

    Peo­ple could start plac­ing side bets on when you will pro­vide the rote response.

    You are not taken seri­ously Mikey.

  19. Charles says:

    DaKruser,

    I think if I had cho­sen an alias I would be more vul­ner­a­ble. But per­haps you are right. We shall see.

  20. Hank says:

    Nichael writes that the lib­er­a­tion of Iraq was “ille­gal”. Could he per­haps iden­tify which law he has in mind?

  21. Charles says:

    Can some­one please con­firm whether or not the Bosn­ian and Kosovo cam­paigns by NATO were approved in advance by UNSC?

    I’m pretty sure the lat­ter was not (Russ­ian veto threat).

    In either case, were the arab al jazeera types up in arms about the bru­tal oppres­sion of the Serbs by the fas­cist US military?

    Um, What the hell! You mean there is no oil in the for­mer Yugoslavia? What a frig­gin waste…

  22. Hank says:

    Michael

    Yes of course but that doesn’t stretch to ille­gally invad­ing another coun­try result­ing in the deaths of over 123,000. I’m sure you would be the first to com­plain if China invaded Iran and took con­trol of the oil fields.

    Or do you take the posi­tion that all coun­tries except the USA should act in the their national interest?

    Not at all as I’ve already explained. The point is you seem to believe that it’s only the USA that can invade another coun­try in order to seal and con­trol nat­ural resources.

    *****

    Of course I would be among the first to com­plain if China took over the Iran­ian oil­fields. In fact we are now work­ing on plans to pre­vent exactly that. The national inter­est of the Anglo-Sphere (USA, Great Britain, India, Aus­tralia etc) and or other firneds is to deny con­trol of Mid­dle East­ern oil­fields to unfriendly pow­ers. While it is not quite clear whose inter­ests you are defen­ing in your com­ments on these blogs, you will no doubt at least under­stand that logic.

    You also appear to think, naively if I may say so, that theer are laws among nations gov­ern­ing these mat­ters. Not so, since ‘laws’ require an enforcer, and there is none..An unhappy posi­tion for the human race per­haps, but there we are — at least for the fore­see­able future and/or until the Anglo-Sphere can exert its benev­o­lent sway more widely.

    Your oppo­si­tion to US con­trol of Mid­dle East­ern oil is of course based less on your respect for the illu­sion which you con­jure up of inter­na­tional law than your laugh­able char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of that coun­try as a Nazi state. As the closet homo­sex­ual is fre­quently the most vocif­er­ous hom­phobe, so the would-be assas­sin of the people’s lib­erty masks his aims by char­ac­ter­is­ing the free coun­tries as fascist.In the no doubt hope­less hope of receiv­ing one of your less demented answers Michael, let me ask you which coun­tries do you see as approx­i­mat­ing to free and demo­c­ra­tic and by what char­ac­ter­is­tics is this appar­ent to you?

    So if you would deny con­trol of the oil to the Anglo-Sphere (and in par­tic­u­lar what appears to be your pro­fes­sional bug­bear, the USA), who would you have con­trol it, who else would you deny that con­trol to, and how would you enforce that denial of others?

    On another of your responses, no doubt scripted by that soft­ware as Charles has sug­gested, how did the jail­ing of the poet and inde­pen­dent Cuban jour­nal­ist, Raul Rivero,along with the inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ist and poet Manuel Vazquez Por­tal and the 73 other dis­si­dents who were arrested and impri­oned in March 2003 by the dic­ta­tor Cas­tro and his fam­ily and cronies pro­tect Cuba from the ter­ror­ist state next door? Rather to pro­tect the dictator-for-life Cas­tro, his fam­ily and cronies I would have thought, wouldn’t you, old boy?

  23. Charles says:

    Hank writes “You also appear to think, naively if I may say so, that theer are laws among nations gov­ern­ing these mat­ters. Not so, since ‘laws’ require an enforcer, and there is none..An unhappy posi­tion for the human race per­haps, but there we are — at least for the fore­see­able future and/or until the Anglo-Sphere can exert its benev­o­lent sway more widely.”

    I feel this is like try­ing to explain nuclear physics to a nean­derthal, but there is such a thing as Inter­na­tional Law. Laws get bro­ken and as with Ger­many in 1939, some­times it takes a num­ber of years before they are enforced. So if you think the USA, Bush and the rest of his Nazi accom­plices are off the hook, I feel like you may to cel­e­brat­ing a lit­tle too early. The US econ­omy is shortly to col­lapse, when that hap­pens the uSA will be look­ing for help and assis­tance from the rest of the world, but there will of course be a price to pay.

  24. Michael says:

    Sorry about that, I wrote the aboce not the other goon, Charles.

  25. Hank says:

    No Michael, although there is a sub­ject which you can study which is called “Inter­na­tional Law”, there is no inter­na­tional law. Inter­na­tional Law if is going to be enforced must be enforced through national courts. It is there­fore in fact a species of national law. By the way, we are about to see a fine exam­ple: “The sense in Wash­ing­ton and Paris is that both gov­ern­ments are resolved to bring the Assad regime to an end” http://www.debka.com/ . As you watch this happy event tyran­spire (long over­due if i may say so) yo will note that theere may be much jump­ing up and down in the cap­i­tals of the world’s tyrants (and on this blog by their acolytes I would think) but no law case is going to be brought to decide who was right and who was wrong. You are not, and this this is demon­strated by your every post, liv­ing in the real world, my dear chap.

  26. Hank says:

    By the way Michael, I see from your #124 that we are get­ting our knick­ers in a twist again.

  27. Christopher says:

    A very inter­set­ing link, Hank. “DEBKAfile’s intel­li­gence sources report the Assad regime is in a panic as the UN team’s find­ings on the mur­der case come closer to Dam­as­cus. In Beirut, the specter of civil war hov­ers as Syr­ian agents and Hizbal­lah offi­cers are seen hand­ing out weapons to Mus­lims – the first sign that Assad has decided to react to the threat clos­ing in on him by ignit­ing fresh civil bloodshed.”

    Now there we have a leader REALLY mis­lead­ing his peo­ple. In the man­ner of the tyrant, he is prompt to trig­ger a civil war to save his own mis­er­able skin. It won’t work. He will be brought down like the dog he is. A lit­tle fur­ther off in Iraq, your mus­lim ter­ror­ist lead­ers are up to the same ruse — casu­ally caus­ing the deaths of 600 or so Iraqis par­tic­i­pat­ing in a holy cer­e­mony — in a des­per­ate attempt to stop the adop­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion in Iraq by foment­ing civil war. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=LV4GKTM2NX2HPQFIQMGCM5WAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2005/08/31/uiraq.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/08/31/ixportaltop.html Same thing in Gaza of course. Where do the Arabs and other mus­lim regimes and reli­gious mafias not engage in this barbarity?

    The mis­lead­ing of the peo­ples of the Mid­dle East though is going to be brought to an end by the power of the Coali­tion. It is not likely to be pretty — the down­fall of tyrants rarely is. How does the Internationale’s first line go…? I have said it before;I will say it again; the United States with its allies is the only true rev­o­lu­tion­ary force in the world today. Down with the boy Has­sad! Down with all tyrants! Long live lib­erty! Long live the USA!

  28. Hank says:

    i think you may be too san­guine, Christo­pher. here is the sum­mary of an artile in the lat­est edi­tion of For­eign Affairs Magazine:“The Bush admin­is­tra­tion con­tends that the push for democ­racy in the Mus­lim world will improve U.S. secu­rity. But this premise is faulty: there is no evi­dence that democ­racy reduces ter­ror­ism. Indeed, a demo­c­ra­tic Mid­dle East would prob­a­bly result in Islamist gov­ern­ments unwill­ing to coop­er­ate with Wash­ing­ton.” http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84506/f-gregory-gause-iii/can-democracy-stop-terrorism.html

    What is the corol­lary — that Pres­i­dent Bush should sup­port some kind of auto­cratic state? This is a conun­drum. What is clear to me though is that US national inter­est (and Coali­tional national inter­ests) must come first, as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple in for­eign pol­icy. If encour­ag­ing democ­racy would endan­ger the USA, then — if only as a tac­tic — it must oppose it. Michael, who does not of course believes democ­racy or any approx­i­ma­tion of it — exists any­wheer and would prob­a­bly stamp on it if he saw it, would prob­a­bly agree with this — but may be not. Since he wants to see the USA brought down, he should be encour­ag­ing democ­racy in the Mid­dle East! Con­tra­dic­tions to wres­tle with!

  29. Hank says:

    Charles” (actu­ally Mikey in dis­guise accord­ing to his con­fes­sion) writes “The US econ­omy is shortly to collapse.”

    Other, brighter minds dis­agree although you will be sorry to hear that.Elsewhere in For­eign Affairs Mag­a­zine a Chi­nese com­men­ta­tor who is Direc­tor of the Insti­tute of Inter­na­tional Strate­gic Stud­ies at the Cen­tral Party School of the Com­mu­nist Party of China (yes, Michael old bean a red com­mie bas­tard no less which will make you happy — although he could be wrong — the CP usu­ally has been) writes: “Despite seri­ous prob­lems such as swelling trade and fis­cal deficits, ille­gal immi­gra­tion, inad­e­quate health care, vio­lent crime, major income dis­par­i­ties, a declin­ing edu­ca­tional sys­tem, and a deeply divided elec­torate, the U.S. econ­omy is healthy: last year, U.S. GDP grew an esti­mated 4.4 per­cent, and this year the growth rate is expected to be 3.5 per­cent, much greater than the cor­re­spond­ing fig­ures for the euro­zone (2.0 per­cent and 1.6 per­cent). Bar­ring an unex­pected sharp eco­nomic down­turn, the size of the U.S. econ­omy as a pro­por­tion of the global econ­omy is likely to increase in the years to come.

    Many other indexes of U.S. “hard power” are also on the rise. The U.S. defense bud­get, for exam­ple, has increased con­sid­er­ably in recent years. In 2004, it hit $437 bil­lion, or roughly half of all mil­i­tary spend­ing around the world. Yet as a per­cent­age of U.S. GDP, the fig­ure was lower than it was dur­ing the Cold War.“
    http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84504/wang-jisi/china-s-search-for-stability-with-america.html

    You really should widen your hori­zons a bit Michael.

  30. Hank says:

    And fur­ther “For a long time to come, the United States is likely to remain dom­i­nant, with suf­fi­cient hard power to back up aggres­sive diplo­matic and mil­i­tary policies.”

    Dream on, Michael.

  31. Hank says:

    As to the national inter­est of the USA in the area, which I men­tioned in #122, the red com­mie bas­tard continues:

    ” The greater Mid­dle East, a region stretch­ing from Kash­mir to Morocco and from the Red Sea to the Cau­ca­sus, is vital to U.S. inter­ests. Rich in oil and nat­ural gas, the region is also beset by eth­nic and reli­gious con­flicts and is a base for ram­pant inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism. None of the coun­tries in the area is polit­i­cally sta­ble, and chaos there can affect the United States directly, as the coun­try learned on Sep­tem­ber 11.”

    How can lady­bug and Michael and lit­tle nadia pos­si­bly sub­scribe to the idea that in defend­ing this inter­est pres­i­dent Bush , as the title of this thread puts it,“continues mis­lead­ing his peo­ple”? You char­ac­ters really do spout the most unut­ter­able rub­bish. What party school were you edu­cated in? Try a course in the depart­ment at Peking Uni­ver­sity where the author of the arti­cle cited also teaches.

  32. Hank says:

    Vital inter­ests” That means inter­ests which a coun­try must be pre­pared to go to war to defend. Just learn the ABCs first Michael.

  33. Michael says:

    Hank writes “Bar­ring an unex­pected sharp eco­nomic down­turn, the size of the U.S. econ­omy as a pro­por­tion of the global econ­omy is likely to increase in the years to come.”

    Well that’s what they keep telling you but the real­ity is some­what dif­fer­ent. But look at the WTO fig­ures on http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2004_e/section1_e/i05.xls
    Ger­many already exceeds the USA as the world’s largest exporter and indeed out of the top 10 lead­ing exports the USA shows the small­est growth. Imports are of course a dif­fer­ent mat­ter, the trad­ing deficit grows at an alarm­ing rate and relies of inward invest­ment to keep your heads above the water. How­ever, I do feel that rely­ing on coun­tries such as China, Rus­sia and the OPEC coun­tries to keep financ­ing your spend­ing spree may not be the most sen­si­ble of moves.
    Already there’s a switch from using the US$ to var­i­ous other cur­ren­cies.
    Not that I would expect a red­neck such as your­self Hank to under­stand any of this, you just worry when the ground is removed beneath your feet. Even Greenspan, noted for his unfounded opti­mism is start­ing to issue warnings.

  34. Hank says:

    No Michael, it’s NOT Hank writes — as I thought I had made plain, even to the dullest; it’s by a Chi­nese com­mu­nist ana­lyst and even by your lights not one surely to over­look if he could pos­si­bly avoid it the like­li­hood that “The US econ­omy is shortly to collapse”.

    Dream on, Mikey!

  35. Michael says:

    Did you look at the link I pro­vided Hank, and if you did, did you under­stand any of it? It seems to me that you are going to have that arro­gant smirk wipes of your fat hill­billy face within a very short time. Just remem­ber it was me that tried to explain it to you first :)http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2004_e/section1_e/i05.xls

  36. Michael says:

    US attempted to bribe Sunni law­mak­ers with $5 mil­lion each to sign constitution

    Juan Cole

    http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/2345711.html

    Tues­day, August 30, 2005
    Al-Watan (Riyadh) [Ara­bic link] reports that one Sunni mem­ber of the par­lia­men­tary draft­ing com­mit­tee told it that Wash­ing­ton at one point promised $5 mil­lion apiece to tthe Sun­nis on the com­mit­tee if they would sign off on the constitution.

    Sy Hersh has also alleged bribery.

    It is cer­tainly the case that a lot of money is being spread around for coop­er­a­tive­ness. I was told that one high Iraqi offi­cial received one mil­lion dol­lars a month for serv­ing in the interim gov­ern­ment of Iyad Allawi, and recently went on a shop­ping spree at Harrod’s in Lon­don where he spent $1 mil­lion on gifts for his sec­ond wife. [We guys object to this sort of thing on two grounds. First, it gives the impres­sion of cor­rup­tion or at the least overly high liv­ing on the part of a pub­lic ser­vant. Sec­ond, the expec­ta­tions of wives just shouldn’t be raised this way, espe­cially those of sec­ond wives.] This politi­cian sup­ports the constitution.

  37. Charles says:

    I would agree with Michael to a large extent that the US econ­omy faces many sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. This has always been the case though, and his­tory has shown that a more lib­eral and diverse econ­omy is bet­ter posi­tioned to adapt and prosper.

    Every coun­try faces eco­nomic challenges.

    Some are cer­tainly sit­ting pretty (oil exporters) because of the cur­rent high prices of oil, but as with most ‘one act shows’, their suc­cess is fleet­ing. Hav­ing a lot of cash in the bank does not nec­es­sar­ily equate with hav­ing a strong econ­omy. Higher oil prices spur invest­ment in new pro­duc­tion, and bring more reserves into the range of viable recov­er­abil­ity. Cana­dian tar sands are now quite viable and bring Canada to the num­ber two spot of proven reserves, nearly dou­ble the size of Iraqi and Iran­ian reserves, at 180 bil­lion barrels.

    But quite frankly, I don’t see the point of this dis­cus­sion. Are we sim­ply try­ing to bash the US by rel­ish­ing in gloom and doom hyperbole?

  38. Hank says:

    What link was that Mikey — where you were post­ing under the name of Charles?

  39. Hank says:

    Charles, “Are we sim­ply try­ing to bash the US by rel­ish­ing in gloom and doom hyper­bole? ” That, accord­ing to my under­stand­ing, is the rai­son d’etre of this blog.

  40. Michael says:

    Is “Con­ser­vatism” a New Kind Of Men­tal Ill­ness?http://www.beggarscanbechoosers.com/2005/08/is-conservatism-new-kind-of-mental.html

    By Man­i­festo Joe

    When I heard the title of Michael Savage’s lat­est screed — Lib­er­al­ism Is a Men­tal Dis­or­der: Sav­age Solu­tions — the irony wasn’t lost on me. This is from a man who:

    Was fired from MSNBC for telling a caller to “get AIDS and die” among other things.

    Has referred to Iraqi pris­on­ers as “sub­hu­mans” and called for them to be sum­mar­ily exe­cuted by the thousands.

    Said the tsunami that struck East Asian coun­tries was not a tragedy but rather a mes­sage from God.

    Says women should be denied the vote because they are too emo­tional — their hor­mones rage.
    But Sav­age isn’t the only “con­ser­v­a­tive” who’s been wax­ing psy­cho­pathic lately. The vil­i­fi­ca­tion of anti-war pro­tester Cindy Shee­han has shown a zany vicious­ness once heard only from the most demented ele­ments of the right. The typ­i­cally milder-mannered Fred Barnes called her a “crack­pot.” Rush Lim­baugh said Sheehan’s story is “noth­ing more than forged doc­u­ments.” (Two days later Lim­baugh denied say­ing any­thing like this, what­ever it was that he meant.) One-time Trot­skyite turned right-wing strait­jacket can­di­date David Horowitz described Sheehan’s protest as “hate­ful” and said she is dis­hon­or­ing the mem­ory of her fallen son. A polit­i­cal con­sul­tant and blog­ger named Erick Erick­son said Shee­han is “a whore in the form of a griev­ing mother.”

    Sav­age is right about one thing: There is a strain of men­tal ill­ness spread­ing in Amer­ica. Prob­lem is, he’s point­ing in the wrong direc­tion, as usual. Many of those who call them­selves “con­ser­v­a­tives” are not merely dan­ger­ous rad­i­cals. They could use a dose of anti-psychotic drugs.

    I’ve been won­der­ing about the san­ity of “con­ser­v­a­tives” since the days of Lee Atwa­ter, when it became appar­ent that these self-styled paragons of virtue would say and do just about any­thing to win an elec­tion. Atwa­ter later died, report­edly of a brain tumor; but I’m con­vinced that the tumor was benign. It’s the brain that was malignant.

    It’s got­ten worse since then. Con­sider a polit­i­cal land­scape in which:

    A Repub­li­can con­gress­man, Tom Tan­credo of Col­orado, sug­gests that if ter­ror­ists attack the United States with a nuke, we could “take out their holy sites.” (Pre­sum­ably he would hold all Mus­lims responsible.)

    The Rev. Pat Robert­son, one of our best-known “Chris­t­ian” broad­cast­ers, sug­gests that we assas­si­nate a legally elected for­eign head of state because we don’t like his poli­cies or the com­pany he keeps. (But hey, keep that oil coming.)

    Best­selling com­men­ta­tor Ann Coul­ter says, quite seri­ously, about Islamic nations that we should “invade their coun­tries, kill their lead­ers and con­vert them to Chris­tian­ity.” (Mil­lions buy this shrill woman’s books. I sup­pose these are the read­ers who cut class the day the pro­fes­sor lec­tured on The Crusades.)

    Barry Gold­wa­ter, after leav­ing pol­i­tics, lamented that the Repub­li­can Party had been taken over by “a bunch of kooks.” This was ironic when one recalls LBJ sup­port­ers in 1964 say­ing about rival can­di­date Gold­wa­ter, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.” If Gold­wa­ter scared peo­ple back then, what does that say about some of the loonies who hold high office now?

    I sug­gest some­thing fur­ther: That pretty much describes the whole con­tem­po­rary “con­ser­v­a­tive” move­ment. It’s not just some of the top politi­cos, pun­dits and preach­ers who are spout­ing rubber-room rhetoric. It’s become like a bizarre cult of mil­lions. The only pos­i­tive aspect about how many of these fanat­i­cal weirdos there are is that they could never have all fit into the com­pound at Mount Carmel.

    The Texas Repub­li­can Party, in its delu­sional 2004 plat­form, for exam­ple, urges that the IRS be elim­i­nated, along with “income tax, inher­i­tance tax, gift tax, cap­i­tal gains, cor­po­rate income tax, pay­roll tax and prop­erty tax.” The state GOP would also kill “the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the posi­tion of Sur­geon Gen­eral, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, the Depart­ments of Energy, Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment, Health and Human Ser­vices, Edu­ca­tion, Com­merce and Labor.” (I guess when you believe that The Rap­ture is com­ing soon, who needs a government?)

    The com­pa­ra­bly deranged 2000 plat­form calls for Amer­ica to return to the gold stan­dard and sup­ports “indi­vid­ual teach­ers’ right to teach cre­ation sci­ence in Texas pub­lic schools.” It also calls for the United States to quit the United Nations and re-establish con­trol of the Panama Canal. (It stops short of unleash­ing Chi­ang Kai-shek’s skele­tal remains on main­land China.)

    Con­sider that this is the polit­i­cal party that is gov­ern­ing Texas, vir­tu­ally unchallenged.

    Then there are the assorted lunatics who blog, argue in chat rooms, etc. A “Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive” who iden­ti­fied him­self (her­self?) as “fro­gribs” posted a reply to an ear­lier arti­cle of mine on this blog in which he wrote:

    Yes, it is bet­ter ‘to have the Lon­don sub­way sys­tem be a bat­tle­ground than to have al Qaeda blow­ing up folks over here.’ The duty of the pres­i­dent is to place the lives and well being of Amer­i­cans above all oth­ers.” (I’m glad Bush was think­ing that when he mis­led the coun­try into a need­less war in Iraq. And I’m cer­tain the British will be thrilled to know we’re will­ing to use them, and other allied civil­ians, as human shields.)

    Iraqi civil­ian casu­al­ties have occurred, but at a rate lower than any­one expected.” (Was this per­son here, on this planet, in March 2003? We were hear­ing that this would be a cake­walk, and that Iraqis would be toss­ing rose petals at our sol­diers’ feet. Since then, dozens of sui­cide bomb­ings later, the cake’s been dec­o­rated with entrails, and the petals look curi­ously like toenails.)

    The U.S. still faces an insur­gency, but they must remain to com­plete the mis­sion in order to avoid the dis­as­trous result learned in Viet­nam. Napoleon said it best, ‘If you decide to take Paris, take Paris.’ Fin­ish the job. …” (This per­son evi­dently never heard about Water­loo. Or Nixon’s hap­less “Viet­namiza­tion” pol­icy. What should we call this now — “Iraqification”?)

    Does any­one remem­ber how we got this coun­try? We got it by force. We dec­i­mated the Indi­ans … We invaded the Span­ish and the Mex­i­cans and we took the spoils. We exploited slaves until the error was purged with the blood of 500,000 of our coun­try­men … Man­i­fest Des­tiny still runs in my veins and the veins of the free and the brave …”

    (Gosh, so Amer­ica really was largely built on geno­cide, slav­ery and mil­i­tary aggres­sion? Since it worked so well in the past, why don’t we do all that stuff again? And when they bring back the slave auc­tions, I won­der — how much would Jesus bid?)

    If this per­son is a sin­cere, believ­ing, born-again Chris­t­ian, then some­one must have slipped a cou­ple of books by Niet­zsche and Machi­avelli into his Bible. I can envi­sion The Prince, and Beyond Good and Evil, bound in there some­where between Gala­tians and Rev­e­la­tion, no doubt by God­less nihilis­tic conspirators.

    But seri­ously, crazy peo­ple don’t per­ceive even such basic ide­o­log­i­cal con­tra­dic­tions. I’ve seen this first­hand in para­noid schiz­o­phren­ics. They feel quite free to just make it up as they go along.

    I think we’ve iden­ti­fied a unique per­son­al­ity dis­or­der. It isn’t hard to diag­nose, because most of the patients call them­selves “conservatives.”

    Charge nurse, call the order­lies, and break out the Tho­razine. This is no prob­lem that a lit­tle heavy seda­tion won’t fix.

  41. Hank says:

    Now, now, mikey, tem­per, temper.

  42. Michael says:

    It’s the only way to get your atten­tion. Do you milk horses like your president?

  43. Crusader says:

    Where have we seen Michael’s lan­guage else­where? Try this for example:


    http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/analysis.htm

    Yes, folks. Michael is just a sore loser of the old, unre­con­structed Pravda style “left­wing” hop­ing for a come-back by ally­ing him­self with Islamic terror.

    As Hank says: Dream on, mikey!.

  44. Charles says:

    Hank —

    That, accord­ing to my under­stand­ing, is the rai­son d’etre of this blog.

    Oh, right. I keep forgetting…

  45. Hank says:

    What’s all this about milk­ing horses mikey? Another weighty polit­i­cal point you are mak­ing? Went by me I’m afraid — but then I’m a bear of lit­tle brain.

  46. Michael says:

    Out­side of your lit­tle gold­fish bowl Hank, your Pres­i­dent is an object of ridicule through­out the world due to his low IQ and stu­pid­ity. I guess he’s another “bear of lit­tle brain” like yourself.

    here check this out, it includes a video for you to watch.
    http://www.depresident.com/laura-bush-horse-joke-video.asp

    Laura Bush + George Bush = milk­ing male horse

  47. Crusader says:

    Michael, a run­ning dog of… For all those who don’t yet under­stand “where Michael is com­ing from”, try this:

    The Nazis denounced Amer­ica as a Jew­ish state and blamed the Jews for start­ing World War II. The com­mu­nist denounce Amer­ica as an impe­ri­al­ist state and pre­pare to blame the Amer­i­cans for start­ing World War III. The writ­ing is on the wall. The pro­pa­ganda has already done its work. And should the Amer­i­can econ­omy fal­ter, the pro­pa­ganda will get more and more bla­tant until it begins to resem­ble the old Stal­in­ist rant (and the raw insis­tence that Amer­ica should be destroyed if the world is to know peace).…

    … Com­mu­nist pro­pa­ganda has a strate­gic objec­tive. Blacken America’s name, place a ques­tion mark over America’s motives and rally the malcontents.”

    http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/analysis.htm

  48. Michael says:

    But the prob­lem is Cru­sader is that the USA are the new Nazis.

  49. Crusader says:

    Yes, com­rade.