Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (396)	5/3/2003 10:51:25 PM
From: Neeka	Respond to of 793974

John: It is old news, but what isn't old news.......because it really hasn't been confronted head on by either side .......is that most conservatives believe a double standard exists and that there is a perceived bias regarding these political étape de mis . But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First we all have to admit that this bias has existed in the past. I must reiterate: most conservatives believe a double standard exists and that there is a perceived bias regarding these political missteps. Until this is acknowledged walls of division will remain intact. M

To: JohnM who wrote (396)	5/4/2003 12:12:52 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793974

The Iceman Cometh By MAUREEN DOWD Maureen must have hated to watch this scene. :>) LONG BEACH, Calif. The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 m.p.h. to zero in two seconds. Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity. He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics. Compared to Karl Rove's "revvin' up your engine" myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer's movies look like "Lizzie McGuire." This time Maverick didn't just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MIG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning. Mav swaggered across the deck to high-five his old gang: his wise flight instructor, Viper; his amiable sidekick, Goose; his chiseled rival, Iceman. MAVERICK: I feel the need . . . GOOSE: The need for speed! ICEMAN: You're really a cowboy. MAVERICK: What's your problem? ICEMAN: Your ego's writing checks your body can't cash. You didn't need to take all that water survival training in the White House swimming pool. The Abraham Lincoln was practically docked, only 30 miles off shore, after 10 months at sea. They had to steer it away from land for you. If you'd waited a few hours, you could've just walked aboard. You and Rove are making a gorgeous campaign video on the Pacific to cast you as the warrior president for 2004, but back on shore, things are ugly. The California economy's bleeding, even worse than other states'. When you took office, the unemployment rate in San Jose was 1.7 percent; by February of this year, it had risen to 8.5 percent. Your motorcade didn't bother to stop in the depressed high-tech corridor in Silicon Valley. Every time you cut taxes and raise deficits while you're roaring ahead with a pre-emptive military policy, you're unsafe. National unemployment goes up to 6 percent and you just hammer Congress to pass your tax cut. The only guys sure about their jobs these days are defense contractors connected to Republicans and the Carlyle Group, which owns half of the defense plant you visited here. You're dangerous. MAVERICK: That's right, Iceman. I am dangerous. ICEMAN: You can fly, Maverick. But you, Cheney and Rummy are strutting around on a victory tour when you haven't found Osama or Saddam or WMD; you haven't figured out how you're going to stop tribal warfare and religious fanaticism and dangerous skirmishes with our soldiers; you don't yet know how to put Afghanistan and Iraq back together so that a lot of people over there don't hate us. And why can't you stop saying that getting rid of Saddam removed "an ally" of Al Qaeda and was payback for 9/11? You know we just needed to jump somebody in that part of the world. MAVERICK: That part of the world is what I call a target rich environment, sorta like a Democratic debate. Hey, Miss Iceman, why don't you head to the Ladies Room? John Kerry and John Edwards are already there, fixin' their hair all pretty-like. Howard Dean's with 'em, trying on a dress, and Kucinich is hemming it for him. VIPER: You're arrogant, son. I like that in a pilot. You're a hell of an instinctive flyer. You're a lot like your old man. He was a natural, heroic son of a gun. I flew with him in his torpedo bomber in '44. Is that why you fly the way you do? Trying to prove something by doing the opposite? He tried to get deficits down. He did it right. And he knew you had to have wingmen among the allies. You can't buzz the tower of the world every time you go up. You can't just jettison the Top Gun global rules of engagement. MAVERICK: Sure I can. Like greed, aggression is good. Aggression has marked the upward surge of mankind. Aggression breeds patriotism, and patriotism curbs dissent. Aggression has made Democrats cower, the press purr and the world quake. Aggression, you mark my words, will not only save humanity, but it will soon color all the states Republican red. Mission accomplished. nytimes.com

To: JohnM who wrote (396)	5/4/2003 4:54:49 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793974

Antiwar Activists Are Left Unsure: Members of faith communities say they will keep working, with a focus on what they call an overextension of U.S. power abroad. Los Angeles Times We talk a lot about the "Religious Right," but don't forget the "Religious Left." May 3, 2003 NEW YORK The sudden end to the war in Iraq has caused a sense of confusion among antiwar protesters about what to do next, but religious activists say they will continue their work, focusing on what they see as an overextension of American power abroad. "I think the single most overarching foreign policy question for Americans in the next decade and beyond is: What kind of lone superpower are we going to be?" said Ronald Sider, head of Evangelicals for Social Action. Sider called the United States the most powerful and dominant force in the world since the Roman Empire. "Do we use that power for shorter-term self-interest or do we take the lead and create a different kind of world that is genuinely free and democratic?" he asked. Echoing those concerns is the Catholic group Pax Christi, which in a recent statement called on religious Americans to "reassess the role of the United States in the world. Are we a force for good, for justice and peace, or are we perpetrating and deepening the cycle of violence we claim to be fighting?" None of the leaders and activists interviewed about the state of the antiwar movement expressed any surprise at the war's outcome and relatively swift conclusion, which they called practically a foregone conclusion. "There was no question that the United States could overwhelm Iraq," Sider said. "I expected it, and expected it would happen quickly." But some admitted some frustration as the movement turns its attention to opposing the tenets of U.S. foreign policy and faces equal measures of public hostility and indifference. "It's like shouting in the forest and there's no echo," said the Rev. Peter Laarman, senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City, a congregation with a long history of antiwar activism. Equally frustrating is a kind of "I-told-you-so" triumphalism from conservatives, said Ken Estey, who teaches Christian ethics at New York Theological Seminary and is executive director of the New York branch of Peace Action, a national anti-war organization. Estey admits that dire predictions about the war made by activists were not borne out ? including high levels of casualties, large numbers of refugees fleeing Iraq and the unleashing of weapons of mass destruction. But, he said, that is no reason for supporters of the war to gloat. "The conditions under which those predictions were made still exist, and it's up to us to ensure" that such things don't happen, he said. Estey and other activists are now focusing their attention on promoting a new foreign policy that, he said, has three principal aims: upholding human rights and democracy, reducing the threat from weapons of mass destruction, and promoting U.S. cooperation with international organizations. Estey acknowledged that organizing mass movements around changing the overall direction of U.S. foreign policy is not likely to be as easy as planning protests against an imminent war. But, he said, public talk of "U.S. empire" ? something of a rarity until recently ? can resonate with a citizenry that may connect a bad economy at home with claims of overextension of U.S. power abroad. Some say the theme of empire may be a clarion call for U.S. faith communities in coming years. "It's Pax Americana, and such a policy of dominance ultimately costs too much and violates our core values," said Jim Wallis of the Washington, D.C.-based Sojourners Community. Wallis, like Sider, called it "immoral" that the Iraq war and future wars will be paid for by the nation's poor and working class. Wallis said, however, that it won't be enough for U.S. religious groups to merely oppose or protest what is increasingly being called the "Bush Doctrine" in foreign policy. Opponents of that policy need to develop concrete, specific alternatives, he said.http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-religantiwarmay03,1,4675225.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dpolitics