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 : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (9909)	1/27/2006 1:56:12 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 541477

A President Who Can Do No Right By BOB HERBERT / Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times January 26, 2006 We should be used to it by now. There are a couple of Congressional committees trying to investigate the tragic Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the Bush administration is refusing to turn over certain documents or allow certain senior White House officials to testify before the committees under oath. Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is by no means unfriendly to the Bush crowd, said this week, "There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do." Once again the president has, in effect, flipped the bird at Congress. He's amazing. Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers. George W. Bush does what he wants to do. He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation. He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself — a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam — as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war. Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush. The administration's high-handedness with the Katrina investigators comes at the same time as disclosures showing that the White House was warned in the hours just before the hurricane hit New Orleans that it might well cause catastrophic flooding and the breaching of the city's levees. That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29. On Sept. 1, with the city all but completely underwater, the president went on television and blithely declared, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." This guy is something. Remember his "Top Gun" moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? And his famous taunt — "Bring 'em on" — to the insurgents in Iraq? His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence. And that's the real problem. That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence. Fantasy may be in fashion. Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on Mr. Bush's watch. But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time. Many thousands of people — men, women and children — have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies. Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for George H. W. Bush, counseled against the occupation of Iraq at the end of the first gulf war. As recounted in a New Yorker article last fall, he said, "At the minimum, we'd be an occupier in a hostile land. Our forces would be sniped at by guerrillas, and, once we were there, how would we get out?" George W. Bush had no such concerns. In fact, he joked about his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like a frat boy making cracks about a bad bet on a football game, Mr. Bush displayed what he felt was a hilarious set of photos during a spoof that he performed at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents Association in March 2004. The photos showed the president peering behind curtains and looking under furniture in the Oval Office for the missing weapons. Mr. Bush offered mock captions for the photos, saying, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." And, "Nope, no weapons over there, maybe under here." This week, as the killing of American G.I.'s and innocent Iraqis continued, we learned from a draft report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction that, like the war itself, the Bush plan for rebuilding Iraq has been crippled by incompetence and extreme shortages of personnel. I doubt that this will bother the president any more than any of his other failures. He seems to truly believe that he can do no wrong. The fiasco in Iraq and the president's response to the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe were Mr. Bush's two most spectacular foul-ups. There have been many others. The president's new Medicare prescription drug program has been a monumental embarrassment, leaving some of the most vulnerable members of our society without essential medication. Prominent members of the president's own party are balking at the heavy hand of his No Child Left Behind law, which was supposed to radically upgrade the quality of public education. The Constitution? Civil liberties? Don't ask. Just keep in mind, whatever your political beliefs, that incompetence in high places can have devastating consequences.

To: epicure who wrote (9909)	1/27/2006 2:37:45 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541477

Perhaps you would care to define Far Left for me, IYO..... since you are quite clearly wrong about what the far left is. I noticed S2 must think Bob Herbert is an example of FarLeft as he posted an article by him on your comment. As I said, I think of FarLeft examples IN Government as some of those I noted, and some FarLeft examples OUTSIDE Government as the ones I mentioned as well.... Maybe those people are more communistic than FarLeft???? Although as Peter Freuchen said years ago....the only true society that is communistic is/was the Eskimo society.

To: epicure who wrote (9909)	1/27/2006 9:32:46 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 541477

since you are quite clearly wrong about what the far left is. I reacted to the same thing you did. And I agree with you that KLP's fulcrum is off. I think that part of the problem, though, is discussing this in terms of extremists. The extremes are defined by their ideas. The discussion, however, was about ugly partisan rhetoric, which isn't the same thing although there would appear to be some correlation. You can be extreme in your ideas but civil in your tone and you can also be mainstream in your ideas and ugly in your tone. The content of one's message and the tone of the message are two different things. KLP conflated them when she switched the framework from partisan ugliness to extreme ideology. KLP framed the wings with Falwell and Robertson vs. Dean and Pelosi, etc. Part of the reason for the etcetera only on one side, I think, is the mislocation of the fulcrum. My experience is that on the ideology scale, she is the equivalent of Dean and Pelosi while Falwell and Robertson are to the right of her. In terms of tone, she would also be the equivalent of Dean and Pelosi. Thus the distorted fulcrum.