Former Senator George McGovern
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-08-29/former-senator-george-mcgovern
George McGovern did not exactly have great success as a presidential candidate. He lost all but one state to Richard Nixon. But in an open letter to President Obama in this month’s Harper’s magazine, he warns Obama that it is better to lose an election than lose his soul. Strong words from a man who should know. His letter challenges Obama to step up and lead America with bold initiatives. Initiatives that could revive the economy and build up the middle class like President Roosevelt’s New Deal. We discuss his ambitious blueprint and whether he believes President Obama is the man to get the job done.
Guests
George McGovern
former U.S. senator from South Dakota and former presidential candidate.
Comments
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mellifluous wrote:
Since meanconser cited Ronald Reagan (whose campaign secretly negotiated with the Iranians to keep President Carter from bringing American hostages home until after the 1980 election, who paid for a proxy war against Nicaragua's Sandanistas with proceeds from illegal weapons sales to those same Iranians and whose intelligence services aided and abetted cocaine trafficking during his incumbency; see http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor29.html , http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html ) as someone who “got things done”, liberals and progressives have often been too reluctant to call a crook a crook. Civility is a sensible and admirable standard to aim for and to maintain, but in the face of an endless tide of hypocrisy and sanctimonious lies, the practice of civility sometimes surpasses the bounds of human forbearance
Mellifluous: You are probably right on your first paragraph but considering the blunders in how the Carter Administration handled Iran, I am glad that somebody like Reagan and crew stepped in. You forgot to mentioned that the Iranians had an axe to grind after the failed resue attempt at the embassey.
The first mistake was for Carter to allow Mulla Komienie back to Tehran
mellifluous wrote:
"Please note that the Wikipedia article you linked to reconfirms my assertion that had all votes in Florida been recounted in 2000, Gore wins (narrowly)."
No it doesn't! Note that the votes you cite were "never undertaken". So this is somebody's best guess as to how they might have come out. Hardly evidence. The recounts that WERE done also cited in Wiki show that Bush won.
There are a couple of other problems as well. No one, including Gore himself, wanted all the ballots recounted. He wanted certain counties, which he thought, wrongly, would bring him victory. The court ruled that allowing him to cherry pick the recount would be massively unfair and they were right.
What you want is a do-over. Too bad. In politics you don't get do-overs. Decisions are made and we move on.
The same rules apply to 2004. The key point is that Kerry conceded. After a two year campaign and millions of dollars do you think if he and his camp thought there was any chance to uncover voter fraud and swing OH, they would have taken it?! Duh. Now it is seven years later and yet no one has come foward to blow the whistle. That's not speculation. That's just a fact.
Oh ... and, sorry, but just so you know for future, citing some crackpot blogger does not constitute evidence .
There are still large questions about the Senatorial election results and mishandled ballots in MN that seated Al Franken. You don't hear Republicans crying about that all these years later do you?
These elections are history. You didn't like the outcome. Too bad. There's no changing them. Grow up. Move on.
I listened to the Honorable Senator for quite some time. I was intrigued by his biblical quotations. Interesting is the passage about a rich man, a poor woman, heaven, faith, deeds in their ENTIRE context. It was particularly difficult to listen to the points on eradicating hunger while agree with another ag state senator on pork err subsidies to farmers.
I am closer to Fransician than dear Sen. McGovern, yet I give far more of my wealth and live a more frugal life than Sen. McGovern. I work very hard and give nearly all of it away to others. I am not aware of any calling from God for the in the bible that suggests that any government should be entrusted with caring for a human - indeed quite the contrary. It is up to humans - God' Special Creation - to care for others both directly and through the church - not through the government. No other animal or entity is so charged - it might be wise for a government to care for it's people, but not a calling from God. A government has no sole, it has no reward for existence, only those who feed from it. Feeding on the corporeal entity that has no sole must surely damage you own.
I call upon Sen. McGovern and all others to put 1/2 as much energy into helping directly or through your church than in fighting the enemy internal or international.
Sen. McGovern, have faith, give it all to God, give all your money, all your time, all your prestige, then it will be through your deeds, not your words shall you be known, and message will be louder and more compelling than any words you could ever utter.
One final extended dispatch from the flogging-a-zombie-horse department (like anyone still cares).
meanconser wrote:
“…considering the blunders in how the Carter Administration handled Iran, I am glad that somebody like Reagan and crew stepped in. You forgot to mentioned that the Iranians had an axe to grind after the failed resue attempt at the embassey.
The first mistake was for Carter to allow Mulla Komienie back to Tehran”
Yeah, I’m sure that the U.S. Government having overthrown a democratically-elected government and installing a torturing dictator and backing his reign for decades was a mere bagatelle to the hostage-takers: it must have been the failed hostage rescue that really got their goats. To my mind, backing the coup may have been the first mistake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état
It’s a bloody shame that after our designated thug was eventually but inevitably deposed, that a hardline theocrat like Khomeini appeared to the Iranian people to be a reasonable alternative. I think you gloss over the fact that negotiating behind the back of a sitting president with hostile powers who are holding American Embassy personnel hostage is an act of treason. BTW, when is the last time that the U.S. got involved in a shooting war against anyone – including Osama bin Laden -- who wasn’t a former CIA client?
ecgberht wrote:
What you want is a do-over. Too bad. In politics you don't get do-overs. Decisions are made and we move on.
The same rules apply to 2004. The key point is that Kerry conceded. After a two year campaign and millions of dollars do you think if he and his camp thought there was any chance to uncover voter fraud and swing OH, they would have taken it?! Duh. Now it is seven years later and yet no one has come foward to blow the whistle. That's not speculation. That's just a fact.
Oh ... and, sorry, but just so you know for future, citing some crackpot blogger does not constitute evidence .
There are still large questions about the Senatorial election results and mishandled ballots in MN that seated Al Franken. You don't hear Republicans crying about that all these years later do you?
These elections are history. You didn't like the outcome. Too bad. There's no changing them. Grow up. Move on.
I told you what I thought about Kerry’s concession. I’m not beholden to the same power structure that he is, which frees me to think for myself.
I knew the original fix was in back in 2000 as soon as busloads of Republicans were allowed to shut down the recount at the canvassing board in Miami.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/080502a.html
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/112101a.html If those protesters had been environmentalists, they would have been machine-gunned instantly.
The preponderance of evidence shows that the will of the American people was thwarted both in 2000 and 2004. The Bush family throughout the decades has been successful at avoiding prosecution by deceiving, denying, delaying investigations and then pretending that the fact they’re walking around free confers legitimacy equivalent to that of an acquittal by jury verdict. You’re welcome to fall for the okey-doke, but I don’t have to. The sources you cite to legitimize elections that were obviously and pretty openly rigged fail to convince me.
This may be the only instance in your life that you rely on the fortitude and wisdom of Al Gore and John Kerry to guide your assessment of history or reality; I prefer to continue to think critically about these matters. You say I’m entitled to my own opinion but not my own facts, but you seem overly selective about what pieces of the historical record you’re willing to admit.
Terrorism is a matter of legitimacy as much as it is about tactics – who is authorized to use violence to accomplish economic or political objectives, when, against whom, and what for – so even though the Graft and Oligarchy Putsch successfully executed a bloodless coup in this country, I think it’s important for us to recognize and remember who has originated and implemented destructive policies and how they managed to attain and retain power. It’s important for us to know on which side our leaders’ bread has been buttered. This isn’t just about the past. Just as the Reagan Administration was functionally the Revenge of Nixon and the administrations of both Bushes were populated by oilmen and anticommunists, spooks and crooks, some of whom had been plying their trades since the Kennedy assassinations, we currently operate in a political climate and an historical context that is the legacy of previous administrations.
You mentioned earlier that you thought that if the election in Ohio had been stolen, that operators instrumental in that theft would have been jailed. American history is rife with the stories on one hand, of violent reactionaries who were permitted to operate essentially unhindered and on the other, nonviolent progressives who were persecuted both through the legal system and extrajudicially.
Victors get to write history: I get it, but that doesn’t make the official version true. Personally, I think it’s important for patriots and other realists to remember what actually happened and the context in which events occurred. Your mileage may differ.
A guy who helped break the Iran/Contra story and has been a journalist for decades is more than just some “crackpot blogger”: Robert Parry has demonstrated his commitment and boasts a record of speaking truth to power in a way that’s often absent from more established organs. http://consortiumnews.com/about/ It’s entirely predictable that right-wingers disparage the mainstream media as being chock-full of liberal bias when it suits their purposes, then hold it up as a definitive example of objective truth and legitimate news when uncomfortable truths are being revealed through less established outlets.
To use your own standard, Norm Coleman pressed his contest with Al Franken seemingly beyond the point of diminishing returns. While Republicans may no longer be disputing those results, they are hardly quiescent when they lose elections: the party has a history of conducting coordinated actions and distractions like calling into question the birth circumstances of a sitting president long past the point where the question has been settled for reasonable people. Another instance was getting a Pepperdine University professor installed as a special prosecutor to investigate specious issues, then setting him free to conduct a fishing expedition that he was able to parlay into the successful setting and springing of a perjury trap.
A Democratic president gets impeached for lying to a partisan prosecutor about receiving extramarital fellatio in office, while a GOP president is allowed to avoid prosecution for stealing the elections that brought him to power and to evade meaningful inquiry into his Administration’s culpability for allowing spectacular terrorist attacks on American soil to be committed. Bush the Younger received seemingly automatic passes for lying to the American people and the world about the reasons for invading another sovereign nation, for violating the Geneva Convention rules on torture and attempting to redefine the legal definition of torture, for spying on the American people illegally and for facilitating the looting of not merely the U.S. Treasury, but the entire economy.
Shall we discuss the ways in which Republican congressmen and senators have stymied the wishes of Democratic voters whether they’ve been in the majority or the minority? Some Republicans attempt, as a matter of principle, to refuse to allow any of the current Democratic president’s nominees for various agencies to achieve confirmation. The illegitimate, unelected second Bush Administration is gone, but the permanent power structure remains. It’s been reported that many of Dick Cheney’s loyalists remain salted throughout the various agencies of government. I suppose some people like to imagine that history is created entirely anew with each election cycle, but we see many of the same nefarious characters recycled and repackaged. The revolving door between government and business remains lucrative for participants, disastrous for taxpayers and citizens and a reliable source of corruption. Had Obama chosen to hold malefactors from the previous administration responsible for their various crimes, it could have discouraged similar actions in the future.
Unfortunately, this president’s campaign was funded to no small degree by the same people who bought the incumbent before him. Same sh*t, different decade.
Thank y’all for the instances where you engaged in debate rather than merely calling me names or sniping.
do-the-math, maybe your understanding of God doesn’t demand that we work for justice rather than pledging our personal fortunes to the relieving the suffering of victims. It’s the whole, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; When I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist,” bit. Relieving suffering is important, but please don’t disparage efforts to eradicate the systemic injustices that engender poverty itself.
mellifluous,
I'll just leave it with this:
FInd something more substantial than "consortiumnews" to bring any sort of credibility to your posts.
There is a sociological phenomenon called "the firehouse effect". The concept is that firemen often have lengthy idle periods between fire alarms, so they spend a lot of time within the same group of people of a similar background (other firemen) discussing the same issues, expressing the same views and having the same discussions over and over again. Over time this leads to the following effect: they stop questioning, and start to agree with each other on many things that most outside, impartial observers would find ludicrous.
I believe this is a kinder way to think about what has happened to the hard-core left rather than simply calling it Bush Derangement Syndrome, a recognized psychological ailment.
Take the Brooks Brothers incident for example. While this is portrayed as Republicans halting election recounts, nothing could be further from the truth. Newspaper accounts recorded that Republicans were trying to ensure only that the ballots were counted FAIRLY , a reasonable desire since Gore was behind in the voting and cheating or attempted cheating was a possibility, but they were denied access.
I will drop off of this too, mellifluous because I"ve never seen a thing in what you've written that says anything other than
Liberal progressive Democrat: good
Conservative Republican: bad
and "Here, look at this consortiumnews link".
Life, or more particularly, politics is much more complex than that. If you want others to take your posts seriously, you've got to think outside the circle of your fireman friends.
Want a challenge? Name one good thing about George W. Bush (other than "he will die eventually")or his administration, or about the Republican party. Seriously. If you can't you need to ask yourself where the problem lies.
ecgberht wrote:
"mellifluous,
I will drop off of this too, mellifluous because I"ve never seen a thing in what you've written that says anything other than
Liberal progressive Democrat: good
Conservative Republican: bad
and "Here, look at this consortiumnews link"."
The notion that the "Brooks Brothers rioters" just sought fairness really doesn't pass the giggle test. Like most notions from the right wing, it sounds reasonable in the abstract or unless you know anything whatsoever about the situation in question.
I get that you think I'm a liberal Democrat, but you haven't been paying close attention. I've basically called them corrupt and spineless. My views would be more accurately described opposing totalitarianism, fascism and corporate control as being wasteful, brutal and evil while I'm looking for a better way. I value freedom, justice and sustainability, so neither of the major political parties speaks for me. My feeling about Republicans is that they have manipulated and benefited from a political system that essentially legalizes bribery more adroitly than their partners in our political duopoly. And yes, I believe the Bushes have gotten away with mass murder.
Bush Derangement Syndrome? Recognized by whom? Did you even read any of the Consortium articles? If you did, what specific problem do you have with them?
I live in a city and a state that is pretty much controlled by Republicans. What you're hearing from me is a corrective to what surrounds me, not deafening echoes from years spent inside a chamber. I would credit Republicans with defending the Second Amendment, except that the NRA has supported a myriad of fascist monstrosities.
mellifluous wrote:
"I get that you think I'm a liberal Democrat, but you haven't been paying close attention."
Yeah. I have. When your criticism of Obama is that he hasn't been hard enough on Bush, what am I supposed to think????!!!!
"Did you even read any of the Consortium articles? If you did, what specific problem do you have with them?"
It is nothing but a pile of ideologically based inuendo and conspiracy theory. What am I supposed to think there????!!!!
Hey, I'll LISTEN to any conspiracy theory, but when all it consists of is "Bush is the Devil", I don't waste my time. The Brooks Bros. article is a case in point - it's called a "Bush conspiracy". When you have the evidence that the President was involved, post it. (An article from consortiumnews does not qualify).
By the way, what I said with respect to Diebold is, that it's 7 years later and nothing has ever surfaced with regard to fraud - except, again, the loony conspiracy theories of places like consortium news. Buy hey, maybe Walden O'Dell had everyone involved murdered! Why don't you have them write an article about that?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14778.html
"My views would be more accurately described opposing totalitarianism, fascism and corporate control as being wasteful, brutal and evil while I'm looking for a better way. I value freedom, justice and sustainability,"
Now if that's really true, mell (although I'm not sure freedom and sustainability are both possible - see curly lightbulb), then you should escape the firehouse and pursue VERIFIABLE FACT-BASED truths, not just what you hear somebody say is truth, that you ideologically wish were truth.
I wish you the very best in that pursuit.
mellifluous wrote:
"Yeah, I’m sure that the U.S. Government having overthrown a democratically-elected government and installing a torturing dictator and backing his reign for decades was a mere bagatelle to the hostage-takers: it must have been the failed hostage rescue that really got their goats. To my mind, backing the coup may have been the first mistake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état"
mellifluous:
I am so glad you brought history up because you probably already know that in foreign intelligence, no matter what US party is in office, an administration will use rogue elements in foreign countries to the benefit of the USA.
As far as for Carter (Sitting President), it worked out for Reagan with the best possible results. The hostages returned safely.
Give you one example being that it is late. Remember Papa Somoza who was president of Nicaragua. Will known statement from President Truman, "He an SOB but he is our SOB". We all know the story of this man and his son. So get real, the Democratics do the same thing.
(replying to ecgberht's most recent entry above)
OCD got the better of me. Describing a pervasive culture of corruption to the determinedly unconvinced often appears to be endless iterations of conspiracy theories.
I will readily admit I think that if there is an Antichrist on Earth, the Bush Family number among his most prominent minions in America (We don’t maintain a monopoly on evil). If the Devil exists, the Republican Party supplies him with a multitude of parishioners and a public relations firm. Satan is traditionally the Father of Lies and King George Junior is a politician who, to my knowledge, has never told an unvarnished truth in public; to the contrary, as President of the United States, he was lying anytime his lips were moving and even sometimes when they weren’t. When I’d see him on TV, I figured I could divine his true meaning by converting his words to the opposite of whatever he was saying, and that worked well consistently.
I took the challenge in your previous note for the hell of it, but I realized later that what you were telling me was essentially that if I refuse to kiss the whip I’m being beaten with, then I suffer from a defect of character. I reject that formulation. If you believed what you were telling me though, rather than merely projecting, please say something nice about liberal Democrats or better yet, multiracial, pacifist, pagan, lesbian, vegan environmentalists.
I thought the articles I cited from Consortium News were fact-based, reasonably clear and transparently sourced. They may also qualify as advocacy journalism, but I’d say that some progressive news and analysis that makes its bias plain is a necessary corrective to the status quo. After all, your side employs Fox News in order to manipulate public opinion, being as it is, from my understanding, nonstop propaganda often masquerading as reportage.
You reject information when you disagree with what it reveals: apparently, I’m “not entitled to (my) own facts” but you are. Regarding Diebold, there are many important stories that go underreported. If you’re actually curious and willing to entertain possibilities that reside outside your comfort zone, I would be willing to look up some stuff; I haven’t taken the time to seek it online, although some books I have probably contain further details. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but newspapers have been decimated in recent years and investigative journalism has not been funded as fully it was in the halcyon days of the Watergate scandal. That’s certainly how the illegitimate, unelected second Bush Administration managed to get away with so much unscathed -- not to mention the cowardly reluctance to criticize it in the wake of, “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” – and this is part of what makes independent professionals such as Robert Parry so important.
You’ve cited Wikipedia, so I’ll trust that’s authoritative enough for our purposes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot The article quotes Bush the Younger’s praise for the organizer of the violent disruption.
At least three of ten named operatives shown in a photo of the protesters wound up working in Shrub’s White House: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31074-2005Jan23.html
http://makethemaccountable.com/images/0904/BrooksBrothersRiot.jpg
BTW, ecgb, multiplying punctuation marks doesn’t make your denials and evasions any more credible. I continue to await your citation that Bush Derangement Syndrome is “a recognized psychological ailment.” If you’re gonna call me crazy, at least have the decency and veracity to back up the charge with relevant facts: otherwise you’re just being derogatory and dishonest.
Of course there’s a tension between personal fulfillment and public duty: more if you’re greedy and less if your aim is that everyone – not only you and your immediate family or tribe -- should prosper. Freedom is not the abdication of responsibility for the ways in which our actions affect others. Karma is an aspect of reality, and payback is a motherf@$+er. Choosing to act in ways that benefit not only the planet and its inhabitants in the present, but also for the next seven generations, is still a choice. As long as we, the people remain dependent on systems, chemicals and sources of energy that are beyond our control for our basic needs, all of us remain in thrall. The military-industrial complex has us by the short-and-curlies; my impression is that well-designed conservation of scarce resources would be cheaper and more satisfying than our endless wars for oil (and the environmental havoc wrought by burning fossil fuels) are. The “conservative” fear of and anger at compact fluorescents mystifies me: so does the prospect of using LEDs make you apoplectically soil yourself?
meanconser:
Your comment makes no sense to me. I understand you’re trying to make some feeble point about how Democrats engage in dirty tricks too, but I fail to see how whatever abuses Democrats have engaged in excuses the politically-motivated act of treason I brought up.
“The best possible results”? You might ask surviving hostages whether they wouldn’t rather have come home safely the previous November, rather than waiting 2 1/2 more months until Reagan was inaugurated. The best available evidence tells us that George Bush the Elder, vice-presidential candidate and William Casey, soon to assume directorship of the CIA, among others active with Reagan’s campaign, treasonously secretly bargained with hostile powers, using U.S. Embassy personnel as pawns in order to gain political advantage for their candidate, thereby interfering with and frustrating efforts by the sitting president to free the hostages. Why you would consider such acts anything other than unconscionable is beyond me – but then, I suppose “conservatives” are constitutionally incapable of confronting or even acknowledging evil when it’s committed by Republicans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
“Conservatives” are fond of squealing and grunting about the hazards of moral relativism, especially when castigating “liberals”, and particularly those working in academia – so how do the incidents you describe jibe with American values? “The same thing”? When have any Democrats bargained with an enemy to hold Americans hostage for political advantage? The comparison you offer is spurious, which renders your assertion ridiculous.
Wikipedia reports that “our son of a bitch” characterization to be variously attributed to FDR or originating with Somoza himself about either Somoza or the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo, finds no mention of the remark in FDR’s archives and judges it to be apocryphal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García#.22Our_son_of_a_bitch.22
mell,
Ok, a few items:
"your side employs Fox News in order to manipulate public opinion, being as it is, from my understanding, nonstop propaganda often masquerading as reportage."
Sorry. Such an opinion should never be rendered "from your understanding". You should actually try watching. As for Fox News itself, Charles Krauthammer (whom I'm sure you also hate) said it best, "The genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting—half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism."
"You reject information when you disagree with what it reveals: apparently, I’m “not entitled to (my) own facts” but you are."
mell, and I mean this with all respect, I think you are not clear on what a "fact" is. Because I read through all 4 articles you linked to on Ohio, and I don't see the evidence. It is not enough to say that O'Dell is a Republican who supported Bush, the exit polls didn't support the result (they can often be misleading) therefore the Bush camp cheated. Kerry is an attorney. He knew better. You want reporting standards? If you're going to prove a "Watergate" type case, you better have hard evidence; memos, tapes, insider information. It hasn't come out because it doesn't exist. The fact that cyber terrorism exists, isn't evidence that Diebold used it. The fact that someone might have inserted "kernel code" into the machines doesn't mean it happened. That's the very definition of "conspiracy theory". I also noted that the articles try to use the fact that Rove and Republicans used hard-nosed political tactics to win the election. Is that supposed to support the charge of fraud?! If not, why is it in there, other than to attempt to persuade when the facts aren't enough.
Part deux -
Then again, some of the statements are flat-out false. Like this one:
"The recount discovered that if all legally cast votes had been counted, Al Gore would have won Florida regardless of what standard of “chad” was used. In other words, Gore was the rightfully elected President of the United States, not Bush." Maybe it's cathartic for the writer to say that. But it simply isn't true, and the results (as we've reviewed) don't support the contention.
When you go into a subject like this with a pre-concieved notion of how you want it to come out, and the writer supports your contention, you're going to read into it what you please. The facts, the evidence, simply isn't there. If Obama loses in 2012, I'm sure it will be because Republicans cheated.
"I took the challenge in your previous note for the hell of it, but I realized later that what you were telling me was essentially that if I refuse to kiss the whip I’m being beaten with, then I suffer from a defect of character. "
Well, I tried to give you as wide a berth as I could - Bush, his administration, or the Republican party, takes in a lot of folks. So, it seems you took the challenge, you just didn't take it seriously.
"If you believed what you were telling me though, rather than merely projecting, please say something nice about liberal Democrats or better yet, multiracial, pacifist, pagan, lesbian, vegan environmentalists."
OK, here you go ... God loves them all. And so do I.
Part tres -
"Describing a pervasive culture of corruption to the determinedly unconvinced often appears to be endless iterations of conspiracy theories."
Am I to take that to mean: If I don't believe your conspiracy theory, then I suffer from a defect of character?
"BTW, ecgb, multiplying punctuation marks doesn’t make your denials and evasions any more credible. I continue to await your citation that Bush Derangement Syndrome is “a recognized psychological ailment.” If you’re gonna call me crazy, at least have the decency and veracity to back up the charge with relevant facts: otherwise you’re just being derogatory and dishonest."
OMG, mell! The BDS comment was a JOKE. THAT's why I didn't respond. Now, don't take this the wrong way, because you say you're not a liberal, but I've noticed that liberals have no sense of humor whatsoever. Maybe my sense is a little dry for you, but, I repeat, it was a JOKE (3 exclamation points). Now, from a clinical perspective, however, BDS is a form of OCD, which you do admit to, so ... what can I say?
"does the prospect of using LEDs make you apoplectically soil yourself?"
And I'M being derogatory? You imply that I might be incontinent and I'M being derogatory? But maybe you meant it in a good way?
Part vier -
"Choosing to act in ways that benefit not only the planet and its inhabitants in the present, but also for the next seven generations, is still a choice ... my impression is that well-designed conservation of scarce resources would be cheaper and more satisfying ... The “conservative” fear of and anger at compact fluorescents mystifies me:" What I hear coming through in all that is that it's YOUR choice, but it might not be mine. What I hear you saying is, "I thnk I know better than you, therefore my opinion is imposed on you". That's not freedom, that's tyranny. That's why Freedom, and Environmentalism are at odds. Let me clear up the "fear and anger at compact fluorescents" for you. Come next year, the use of compact fluorescents will not be a choice anymore. Manufacturers will NO LONGER BE ABLE TO MANUFACTURE incandescent bulbs. There will still be willing makers and sellers and willing buyers, but they will all be thwarted by the hand of government. Where is the choice in that? If incandescent bulbs were dangerous (as are compact fluorescents) I could see it. But this is the simplest example of government control in a place, under our Constitution, that it does not belong.
"I will readily admit I think that if there is an Antichrist on Earth, the Bush Family number among his most prominent minions in America (We don’t maintain a monopoly on evil). If the Devil exists, the Republican Party supplies him with a multitude of parishioners and a public relations firm. "
Yes, it is clear that Democrats are the angels in this picture. Ugh!
Part ng -
Still, this was the part that piqued my interest the most though. I happen to believe that the concept of antichrist is real. But, sorry, I don't think he's one of the Bushes. I believe antichrist will appear, but has not yet. There is a lot of misconception about antichrist, however. I believe he will be a man, and I believe he will be (must be) a Jew. He will come with solutions. He will be welcomed ... most importantly by the Jewish people. The term when best translated from the Greek does not mean "against Christ", it means a "substitute Christ". I'm keeping my eyes open.
ecgberht,
One danger of communicating through lines of type is that nuances of facial expressions and vocal inflections are entirely lost, so it’s much easier to miss cues and misunderstand intent. I apologize if I was taking your joking too seriously. You went straight from your description of sociological phenomenon the “firehouse syndrome” to pegging me as a brain-damaged, addled victim of far-left groupthink. Considering the proximity and similarity in style, it looked for all the world like an amateur diagnosis. God knows with Big Pharma encouraging the pathologizing of every aspect of human experience and behavior, so that they can prescribe a patented chemical to correct it, in that context BDS was plausible. Oh, look what I found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syndrome You were right: it is recognized, at least by a blithering madman.
I can take a joke if I can tell it’s a joke. Please let’s not get into a contest over who is more humorless and doctrinaire, Birckenstocked hippies or jackbooted fascists. Of course, I didn’t actually assume that you were incontinent (although if you are, I apologize again because explosive diarrhea isn’t funny when it’s happening to you), but I found the image I conjured to be irresistibly silly.
After the time and care you’ve taken to respond to me… even though you missed some essential details in the points I tried to make… I’m afraid I’m really going to have to beg off for a day or two here because I’ve been ignoring more personal and therefore pressing correspondence to come and play in this sandbox. Rest assured, I began preparing a response. I just wanted to let you know a) I can’t talk now and b) I’m not ignoring you. See you soon.
mellifluous wrote
I believe you are the one that makes no sense. I mentioned that Reagan was one of the greatest leaders and it was you that brought up the behind the negotiation behind Carter and Iran. I replied that Carter was a weakling in letting Komienie back in when he should of had the shah shoot down that plane. I was mentioned that he was a weakling in handling the hostages.
All I am doing is proving my point that no administration including Democratics have skelton in the closet in the foreign arena. Your right no Democratic has held hostages but they done some pretty stupid stuff in international diplomacy.
Where is "the best avialable evidence"? Give me a source. After those helicopters came down in Iran, those mullahs were madder than hell. They resented Carter, that was one of the reasons they were open to the possible new administration of Reagan.
“Conservatives” are fond of squealing and grunting about the hazards of moral relativism, especially when castigating “liberals”, and particularly those working in academia – so how do the incidents you describe jibe with American values?
Dems/Libs are wimps and pansies as we have seen in the Carter,Clinton, & Obama administration.
mellifluous wrote:
Wikipedia reports that “our son of a bitch” characterization to be variously attributed to FDR or originating with Somoza himself about either Somoza or the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo, finds no mention of the remark in FDR’s archives and judges it to be apocryphal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_García#.22Our_son_of_a_bitch.22
No Mellifluous it was Somoza. Lot of people do not alway see wikepedia as a reliable source.
What a pleasure to hear Senator McGovern speak on the rebroadcast today! His common-sense, sane solutions to our current problems should be seriously considered by today's politicians. How can we as Americans argue with his advocacy of peace, civility, and infrastructure redevelopment? It is so inspiring to see how vital, intelligent, and up-to-date the Senator is--we could learn so much from people like him! President Obama and Congress, please take note!
Ms. Rehm,
I understand that I am listening to a rebroadcast. That said, if you are in touch with the former Senator, please share the following comment with him.
With respect to the Department of Defense it is interesting that three World War II warriors - the Senator, Bob Dole and President Eisenhower recognized the need to curtail military spending and ensure caring for persons in need.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
Your truly,
Harold J. MacCaughey
Winchester, MA
I have worked for two political campaigns in my life. The first was for George McGovern, and the second was for Barack Obama. I regret neither; I will be working to re-elect President Obama. It made me feel young again to hear the advice and attitude of Senator McGovern. All these years later, I am still hoping that gentleness, reason, and hope can triumph. The acrimony and twisting of facts practiced by so many politicians and so much television is a turn-off, but those of us who still care must make sure that President Obama gets elected. Although the Republicans' main ammunition is fear, I really fear what would happen if Republicans are elected. We barely made it through the last eight year fiasco.
George McGovern - the best President we never had and better than most that we did have. A truly honorable man.