Rants and Revelations

In spite of the fact that the Bush camp has turned the whole debate around to be about one set of probably-forged papers, one shouldn’t forget that the basic facts are not in dispute. And those facts are that Bush received a sweetheart deal because of his wealth and status, and then didn’t fullfil his committments, and then has had his proxies and surrogates lie and dissemble about this. Why does he get a by on his obvious lack of integrity and faithfulness to his comiittments from the majority of the press?

Air Force Times

Some highlights:

“I heard George Bush get up and say, `I served in the 187th Air National Guard in Montgomery, Alabama,’” retired Lt. Col. Robert Mintz said on camera. “Really? That was my unit. And I don’t remember seeing you there…”

“Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.” - That’s from Colin Powell’s 1995 book “My American Journey”.

WEINER WITHHOLDS “OUTRAGEOUS” ANTI-GENERAL AVIATION BILL IN HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE

This bill would have essentially outlawed general avaition. For one thing, it would have required the Department of Homeland Security to security screen general aviation flights - I could see them rushing out to put screening stations in all 18,000 general aviation airports in the country. And what about private airfields? And for what? To make sure my friends and family don’t threaten me with a box cutter when I’m taking them flying?

Another provision would have forbidden me from flying within 1500 feet of any structure or building. I don’t see any exemption for airport buildings. I wonder where I was supposed to land?

Oh, and it would have required all aircraft to remain in contact with the FAA (presumably by radio), regardless of altitude or location. Remember that 18,000 airport figure? Guess how many have control towers. About 600. Somehow I don’t see the FAA rushing out and building 17,400 control towers.

At lunch time today a group of us were having a political discussion. As usual the most anti-Bush of us were the most vocal. I say “anti-Bush” instead of “liberal” because one of the most vocal guys is a hard-core Republican who is ashamed that he’s going to have to vote for Kerry because Bush isn’t really a Republican, because of his record deficits and assault on the Constitution. Before the USA PATRIOT act, he and I got into very heated arguments about the purpose of government and who should be helping whom.

Anyway, today we had a woman joining us for lunch who used to eat with us, but stopped. And I think I see why. She’s a hard-core partisan Republican, and claims that Rob isn’t a Republican because he’s not voting for Bush, and Bush is the only person who can fight terrorism. I was trying to be fairly moderate to not make her too uncomfortable while she’s so out-numbered by people who disagree with her politics so completely. But then she turns to me and says “You shouldn’t even be talking”. “What?”, I asked. “You’re not a citizen, you can’t vote, so you shouldn’t even be talking.” I was flabergasted. I half expected her to tell me to “love it or leave it”.

Sorry, I was under the misapprehension that freedom of speech had only been drastically curtailed, not totally eliminated.

U.S. Newswire : Releases : “Excerpts of John Kerry’s Remarks in Springfield, Ohio”

Woo hoo! Kerry takes the gloves off, and responds to the Republican lies and half-truths with a few bitter truths in return.

In today’s paper there is a columnist writing about every miniscule difference between John Kerry in 1984 and John Kerry in 2004. I don’t know about you, but if somebody had *exactly* the same opinions on everything that they did 20 years ago, I’d call them so pig-headed and stubborn that they don’t learn from experience, don’t change their opinion based on new evidence, and don’t grow personally.

So here’s a toast to John Kerry’s ability to think and reason and admit when his original position no longer makes sense based on new information.

The Republican disinformation machine, and their wholy owned subsidiary Fox News have been spreading the lie that John Kerry is the most liberal senator. This site
John Kerry: The Most Liberal Senator? An Analysis sets the record straight.

I’ll rant about this American political assumption that being a liberal is considered political death some other time. Where I’m from being a liberal is a good thing.

Well, that was fun. Harry and Vicki and Emily have already written about it, and I attempted to write something as a comment in Harry’s blog, but the registration system on his blog stymied me.

Anyway, I enjoyed the weekend immensely. I have to confess, however, that the abundance of kids overwhelmed me and I had to go off by myself to recharge a lot. Fortunately my work project is horribly behind schedule so I had a ready excuse to sneak off into a quiet corner to ponder the wonders of the Observer/Observable classes and the “fireContentChanged” methods in AbstractTableModel classes.

The highlight of the weekend for me was the Saturday evening discussion, mostly because it’s good to find people who are far more politically aware, astute and active than I who are not totally paranoid about the election. My personal feeling is that dirty tricks are going to give us at least 4 more years of this crap (and a good possibility of the complete destruction of democracy in the process), and it’s good to know that Angus and Harry and Misha aren’t totally convinced that this is a done deal. (But I’m not giving up my Canadian passport, either.)

It looks like the coronation of King George I is proceeding apace.

CNN.com - Officials discuss how to delay Election Day - Jul 11, 2004

I can’t decide which I hate worse - the atrocities done at Abu Ghraib prison, or the apologists who think that torture, including rape, can be excused.

Even the erstwhile “Lean Left” gets it awfully, awfully wrong, linking rape and threats of rape with homophobia and sexuality. Rape isn’t sex. It’s merely the most degrading and damaging thing you can do to another person. Worse, far worse than murder, or maiming or physical torture or psychological torture.

What is going to appear below the cut line is pretty heavy, you probably don’t want to read it.

Continue reading ‘Heavy Stuff, Don’t Read’ »

‘I take full responsibility’

Stop the presses, something unprecedented has happened! Somebody from the G.W.Bush White House has not only taken responsibility for something, he’s even apologized!

Now if only Rumsfeld would do the traditional thing after a mistake this major, and resign. The only problem with that is that probably (shudder) Wolfowitz would take over.

Of course the real “taking full responsibility” are the poor innocent soldiers on the ground who are going to face a much bigger and more determined resistance/insurgency/uprising because of the actions of the scum who did this. I hope they make the people who took those pictures visit the families of every solider who dies from now on to say “It might be my fault your son or daughter died”.

And Rush Limbaugh can blow me.

When I see in articles like this one
Stations to Boycott ‘Nightline’s’ List of the Fallen (washingtonpost.com)
that people think that honouring the soldiers who have died in Iraq is “motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq”, I have to wonder if the American public, or at least some part of it didn’t learn the wrong lesson from Vietnam.

It seems to me that these people think the US didn’t lose in Vietnam because they went in with no clear plan, were backing one oppressive regime against another, were so afraid of provoking the Soviets and the Chinese that they saddled the fighting forces with ridiculous rules of engagement (especially when bombing Hanoi), and that both Johnson and Nixon micromanaged the war like they were playing with toy soliders. Oh no, the whole reason for the defeat was that we didn’t totally stifle any discouraging words at home. So as long as we censor any attempts to bring home the full cost of this Iraqi venture in lives and money, we’ll be fine.

This site looks like a legit Bush/Cheney web site, until you read the actual articles. Very clever.

More in U.S. Say Bush Did All Possible to Stop Sept. 11 Attacks

After Richard Clarke’s forthrightness, and the administration’s spin, evasions, personal attacks on Clarke, and outright lies, MORE people think Bush did the right thing? I think the whole damn country has gone stupid.

Oh yeah, he did all he could. After all, he ignored the warnings of his counter-terrorism advisor, put together a panel that never met, appointed a cold war expert on the Soviet Union as his National Security Advisor instead of somebody who understood the current threats, and concentrated on settling old scores in Iraq to the exclusion of all other foreign policy.

And 43 percent of the nation is buying this line.

The headline says Kerry suggests Bush may have set Iraq deadline for political reasons.

Where did the “may” come from? I mean, it’s pretty damn obvious from Bush’s obscene haste to get the goverment turned over exactly on time, even when it looks like the situation is getting worse and worse, that it’s all politically motivated.

I’m sure that Bush, or rather the Bush advisors who can count to 11 without taking off their socks, sat down last year and did a complex calculus of how much time they could possible make political hay out of the new Iraqi government, based on how long it would be before the inevitable civil war breaks out or at least until it becomes patently obvious the new goverment isn’t working, and worked backwards from election day to figure out when to set the deadline.

A real leader, somebody who actually cared about making things better for Iraq and the rest of the world, would have said “We’ll restore the infastructure first, THEN we’ll get a provisional goverment set up, THEN get the oil flowing again”. Instead, they did the oil first, the government second, and they still haven’t gotten the infastructure going, and Iraq is looking more and more like Somalia but with US private security companies playing the role of some of the warlords.

Last night one of the few semi-non-political jokes stemmed from how Clinton lied about sex, and how that led to a frank discussion in bedrooms across the country about what wasn’t or was adultery. “My wife told me in no uncertain terms that oral sex *is* adultery. Which I guess is why we haven’t had any since we got married.”