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 : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (587135)	7/2/2004 5:47:35 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

So what? I didn't waste my time watching the OJ trial... and I ain't gonna waste much time on this. Good that the Dictator is gone. I've got a long list of other Dictators around the world who should get the boot just as well. But, if this means the US is stuck to the Iraq Tar Baby for decades... target of renewed, invigorated terrorism... and bleeding from a War we can't even pay for, letting homeland security and our domestic needs get short shrift... then maybe it would have been better to do the whole thing SMARTER from the get-go!

To: PROLIFE who wrote (587135)	7/2/2004 6:14:27 AM
From: JDN	Respond to of 769670

I just hope that these trials are not dragged out cause I can see the potential of a lot of violence being attributed to them. In fact, whomever is on the jury and the judge IMHO is very vulnerable to death, including their families. Takes A LOT of courage now for those Iraqi's and I hope OUR media supports them fully. When its all over, we ought to offer to bring them here to the USA to live. jdn

To: PROLIFE who wrote (587135)	7/2/2004 9:53:30 AM
From: DizzyG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Thought you might enjoy this article... Coalition of the Wild-Eyed By Mark Goldblatt Published 7/1/2004 12:04:38 AM The traditional strength of American politics is that the two-party system encourages moderation by effectively marginalizing lunatics on both ends of the ideological spectrum. Republicans don't need to court twitchy backwoods militia types hankering for a return to legalized segregation, and Democrats don't need to get in bed with fist-pumping café revolutionaries who insist that every black man behind bars in the United States is a political prisoner. But that tradition is now in jeopardy. For in its desperation to elect John Kerry president this November, the Democratic hierarchy is busy cobbling together what the Bush campaign recently, and accurately, dubbed Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-Eyed. Rather than putting forward a coherent platform of policy objectives, the Democrats have cast a net of free-floating political rage in the hopes of scooping up every amateur conspiracy theorist with a grudge against the status quo. Their litany of counterfactual charges is by now familiar: the Republicans impeached President Clinton for committing adultery; the Republicans stole the 2000 presidential election; President Bush had sufficient warnings to prevent the attacks of September 11th; Bush's business ties with the Saudi royal family dictated his decision-making after September 11; Bush used the September 11th attacks as an excuse to invade Iraq, which he'd had in mind from day one, in order to line the pockets of his oil industry cronies; Bush sent off predominantly dark-skinned soldiers to die protecting predominantly white men's interests. Senator Kerry knows each of these beliefs is false, demonstrably false, yet he cannot afford to disown any of them because he's made the paranoid fringe a key constituency. The problem runs deeper than the political reality that he cannot distance himself from mainstream-figures-turned-partisan-flamethrowers like Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean and the entirety of the Congressional Black Caucus; Kerry cannot even dismiss Michael Moore's loopy suggestion in his new film that the war in Afghanistan wasn't about overthrowing the Taliban government, which harbored al Qaeda terrorists, but about allowing the Unocal Corporation to build a natural gas pipeline through the country. Kerry cannot, in short, speak the truth without alienating his reflexively wary base. These are perilous times -- and not only because loosely-knit fraternities of jihadists are dreaming up new suicidal schemes designed to kill thousands of Americans. For generations, the decision to vote Democratic or Republican has hinged on the relatively benign question of whether you favor bigger government or smaller government. But that choice no longer works for the Democrats -- who just can't win elections anymore by proposing big government solutions. Their fallback strategy now seems to consist of appealing to voters' worst emotions, tapping into their delusions, their fears, their passions and prejudices, accusing their Republican opposition not merely of being wrong on the issues but of thwarting democracy and engaging in genocide for profit. No tactic could be more cynical. Or more dangerous to the future of political discourse. Mark Goldblatt's novel Africa Speaks is a satire of black urban culture. His website is MarkGoldblatt.com. E-mail: Mgold57@aol.com. spectator.org

To: PROLIFE who wrote (587135)	7/2/2004 9:55:40 AM
From: DizzyG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

This is a good one too... Baloney, Moore or Less By Richard Cohen Thursday, July 1, 2004; Page A23 I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. One of my notes says "John Ellis," who is a cousin of George W. Bush and the fellow who called the election for Fox News that dark and infamous night when the presidency -- or so the myth goes -- was stolen from Al Gore, delivering the nation to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia, and plunging it into war. A better synopsis of the movie you're not likely to read. Ellis appears early in the film, which is not only appropriate but inevitable. He is the personification of the Moore method, which combines guilt by association with the stunning revelation of a stunning fact that has already been revealed countless times before. If, for instance, you did a Lexis-Nexis database search for "John Ellis" and "election," you would be told: "This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents." The Ellis story is no secret. But more than that, what does it mean? Ellis is a Bush cousin, Moore tells us. A close cousin? We are not told. A cousin from the side of the family that did not get invited to Aunt Rivka's wedding? Could be. A cousin who has not forgiven his relative for a slight at a family gathering -- the cheap gift, the tardy entrance, the seat next to a deaf uncle? No info. And even if Ellis loved Bush truly and passionately, as a cousin should, how did he manage to change the election results? To quote the King of Siam, is a puzzlement. I go on about Moore and Ellis because the stunning box-office success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not, as proclaimed, a sure sign that Bush is on his way out but is instead a warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance. Speaking just for myself, not only was I dismayed by how prosaic and boring the movie was -- nothing new and utterly predictable -- but I recoiled from Moore's methodology, if it can be called that. For a time, I hated his approach more than I opposed the cartoonishly portrayed Bush. The case against Bush is too hard and too serious to turn into some sort of joke, as Moore has done. The danger of that is twofold: It can send fence-sitters moving, either out of revulsion or sympathy, the other way, and it leads to an easy and facile dismissal of arguments critical of Bush. During the Vietnam War, it seemed to me that some people supported Richard Nixon not because they thought he was right but because they loathed the war protesters. Beware history repeating itself. Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival -- lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission. The case against Bush need not and should not rest on guilt by association or half-baked conspiracy theories, which collapse at the first double take but reinforce the fervor of those already convinced. The success of Moore's movie, though, suggests this is happening -- a dialogue in which anti-Bush forces talk to themselves and do so in a way that puts off others. I found that happening to me in the run-up to the war, when I spent more time and energy arguing with those who said the war was about oil (no!) or Israel (no!) or something just as silly than I did questioning the stated reasons for invading Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction and Hussein's links to Osama bin Laden. This was stupid of me, but human nature nonetheless. Some of that old feeling returned while watching Moore's assault on the documentary form. It is so juvenile in its approach, so awful in its journalism, such an inside joke for people who already hate Bush, that I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled dope. I fear how it will play to the undecided. For them, I recommend "Spider-Man 2." cohenr@washpost.com © 2004 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com