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


To: Neocon who wrote (611881)8/27/2004 12:15:40 PM
From: Skywatcher  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769670
 
By Kurt Vonnegut

August 6, 2004

I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science fiction
novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion
point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of
Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians,
not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political
connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have
staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain
books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the
names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the
Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media.
The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and
TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so
uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven't noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged
election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were
arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the
world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly
powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven't noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all
over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized
millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and
race. We wound and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not
because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O'Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the
Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there
were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of
their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen World War I. War is now a
form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining
were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was
invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have
something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up
on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I
have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities,
which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or
shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and
corporations and made it all their own?



To: Neocon who wrote (611881)8/27/2004 12:18:45 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 769670
 
"I assume that ideology matters."

That's just the point. It doesn't seem to matter much what politicians PROFESS to BELIEVE in, once they get control over the spending levers they start shoveling out pork and special favors to their supporters.

Our founders came up with the idea of NOT COUNTING ON THE GOODNESS OF LEADERS, but rather designing the structure of government so that power was divided, in an effort to have triparte power centers counter-balance each other.

It was a fine idea then (a WONDERFUL IDEA, I'd argue), and it's still a fine idea now.



To: Neocon who wrote (611881)8/27/2004 12:38:09 PM
From: Thomas A Watson  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769670
 
Yes I believe PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH would have supported broad Medicare expansion including the current drug benefit.

The advances in productivity in all fields, including medicine will eliminate all the projected gloom and doom cost analysis of the future.

Getting money into schools with the vouchers even with bad funding distribution will find some who use vouchers and provide the data that shows vouchers work.

Over time money will be saved.



To: Neocon who wrote (611881)8/27/2004 12:45:13 PM
From: Thomas A Watson  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769670
 
Now let's listen to RUSH and smile. Once again the smartest guy in the room.

RUSH: For you liberals, you can't understand -- I swear I love you people, and I wouldn't be where I am without you, so I don't want you to ever go away. But this pretzel that you have yourselves twisted in. We're supposed to get out of Iraq yesterday but we're not supposed to leave Germany and Japan and South Korea. We've only been there 60 years! We've only been in these places 60 years. I think we've won the peace! Here's a way for you to look at it. Let me explain this in terms that you liberals, and Kerry, can understand this. We are ending our 60-year occupation of Europe. We've occupied. That's what you think the U.S. does. We go out there, we occupy, we don't liberate. Well, we've occupied Europe for 60 years. It's about time we got home. We don't intend to occupy Iraq for 60 years. We want to have a little bit more success. Does that help you understand this? We've got a 60-year occupation of Germany? (Breathing heavily.) You know, folks, sometimes I like being the smartest guy in the room, but sometimes it's pressure. You know, I literally go nuts here because this is just unbelievable. But this whole picture of the French and Germans. Can you just see Lawrence of Arabia rolling in there, Peter O'Toole rolling -- (laughing) -- General Abizaid leading our guys out. Here come the French and Germans to save day, Mighty Mouse II, all because they like John Kerry?

If anybody thinks, with what's happening to the immigration of France, if anybody thinks the French government is going to take on Islamic terrorists you have got to go get a brain exchange. You've got to go wherever you got your brain and ask for a new one because you are an idiot. Anybody who thinks that the French and Germans are going to go in there, they're still hoping to collect on the under-the-table deals they had with Saddam when this is all straightened out. Golly, this is just unbelievable. All right, it's time for another sound bite, folks. The fun just never stops. Audio sound bite number 2. Be prepared for me to yell stop pretty soon in this, Mike. This one doesn't take very long to peg the meter of disbelief. Hang on.

KERRY: Now, with so much at stake in the struggle against Al-Qaeda, the American people want to hear in plain words the answer to a simple question. How are we going to get the terrorists before they get us?

RUSH: Stop the tape. What do you think we are doing? What in the world, does he think this is September 10th and there has not been an attack? We didn't stop the terrorists before they hit us, and we're doing it now so that they can't hit us again. The American people already know the answer to the question. They're watching it take place and they know something else: They don't trust you to keep it from happening again, Senator Kerry. How are we going to get the terrorists before they get us? What kind of language is that from a guy running for president? What is this, cowboys and Indians? Where's my toy six-shooter that I used to use when I was six years old pretending to shoot the bad guys in the backyard? We gotta get them before they get us. It's not us versus them, that's not liberal lingo. We can't talk in terms like that. I thought he was going to fight a sensitive war, now all of a sudden he's declared war on these guys. How we gonna get them before they get us? Just what is our strategy? And he continues.
KERRY: Just what is our strategy? Not just for striking back against the terrorists, but for defeating their aims, destroying their movement, discrediting their cause and bringing old and new friends to our side.

RUSH: Stop the tape. Well, you tell me how you're going to do any of this by getting us out of Iraq. That's where the battle is taking place you dunderhead, and you've just pledged to get us out of the battle. (Breathing heavily.) I may need a paper bag here because I am hyperventilating. Let's listen to the rest of it.

KERRY: What is our long-term strategy for making America safer?

RUSH: We're doing it!

KERRY: Over the course of this campaign I have laid out my plans to reshape and rebuild the American military --

RUSH: Stop the tape. Yeah, this from the guy who spent all of 19 years cutting the military, vote by vote by vote by vote, by not authorizing funds for the current military operation in Iraq before he voted against it or for it, whatever he did. And you gotta go to his website to find the stupid plan. I just saw a commercial here. He's running a commercial about how he's going to get everybody health insurance and this and that. John Kerry has a plan for this, John Kerry has a plan for that. To see the plan go to JohnKerry.com.

Now, he has to know that 99% of the people that see the commercial are not going to go to JohnKerry.com, which means he doesn't want them to see the plan, probably there isn't a plan. There's some words but there's no plan. This is unbelievable, but we're not through with the bite and the pièce de résistance bite still to come. Probably do that in the monolog segment of the next hour.

KERRY: -- ready to fight tomorrow's wars, not yesterday's. As a combat veteran who's walked in your shoes, I know that the first duty of a commander-in-chief is to make sure that our troops are the best trained, best equipped fighting force in the world, and to never send them into battle without a plan to win the peace. That is essential.

RUSH: That is BS, too. It doesn't represent an understanding of the purpose of armies. The purpose of armies is not to go in and win peace. The purpose of armies is to kill people and break things so that you win. Victory is victory. You win when the other guys are defeated or they surrender or they give in, and they change to what you say they have to do. That's victory. Wars are not fought for peace. Only in John Kerry's world are wars fought for peace. Wars are not fought for peace. Nobody ever fought a war for peace. Wars are fought for all sorts of different reasons, but peace happens to be, if you win, happens to be one of the by-products of it. But you've got to be careful because peace to some people is not peace to others. You know, Kim Jong ll has his desire of peace, too. Do you know what his definition of peace is? Enough nukes to wipe out anybody that might want to feed his people. You know what peace was to the Soviet Union? Peace was the absence of threat and a tyranny over its own population so they couldn't uprise against them. What's peace to us? Peace is the absence of threat, the presence of justice. There's a whole bunch of different definitions of peace. Wars are not fought for peace. They're fought for victory. (Breathing heavily.)
rushlimbaugh.com