George W. Bush, Lame Duck. R.I.P., 08 March 2006

today | me

[DrDeb]

"Thanks! You are a very brave patriot."


We're actually in the majority . . . BOGUS polling data and LOUD extremists get the press; we 'patriots' win the elections!!

[defconw]

Tell the truth did you know prior to the announcement of this deal that Great Britain owned the company that "runs" our ports, even though that is a poor way of representing the actual deal?

[defconw]

Hope so! I am not ready to throw the President to the wolves, in fact I will stand with him as the ship burns because I think he is right. He can turn this around. But I am extremely unhappy with a lot of other folks.

[thoughtomator]

I knew little about it beforehand and learned much during the debate. From what I understand it is not the UK itself but a private UK company which currently performs the operations in question (whether that be terminals, ports, or what have you). If it were the UK government itself, I would not love that idea, but the relationship we have with the UK is still far far different that that which we have with the UAE.

[defconw]

Yes and that is the sticky part. We are advocating one ally over another and granted GB has been a trusted ally longer. But we trust but verify our navy in UAE and we need to have allies in the Mid East unless of course we kill every man, woman and child in the Mid East, which I doubt even the purest of the pure would honestly advocate.

[llevrok]

Such eloquence.

Rather than say you disagree, you use an invective, multi syllable, word.

That's an impressive display of rhetorical skills, Kenny my boy.

consider anger management.

[llevrok]

shows as general/chat to me, friend.

[DrDeb]

"No he is not...but if he had ran on the agenda he has persued last year, he would have lost the election. And that makes him a typical politician. He is no Ronald Reagan; just another Bush."

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . .

More from the article I cited above:

"In 1980, Reagan ran on an agenda that had been his political philosophy and really his mantra for 20 years," says Greg Schneiders, a Democratic political consultant. "But in 1984 he ran on fluff and feel good advertising, I think because he didn't have much new to say."

Senator JOHN MCCAIN, R-AZ, said the second Reagan term has been hampered by "a certain inability to rouse your supporters when you're the party in power." But that natural obstacle was not helped, McCain said, by a re-election campaign that "for the sake of a big win, stayed away from issues that would be controversial."

. . . Representative NEWT GINGRICH, R-GA, even traces the loss of Republican control in the Senate two years later to the meatless 1984 campaign theme, which he says told Reagan supporters that "the job was done, they didn't have to go out and vote.

. . . Among House Republicans such as Gingrich, who have toiled in minority status throughout their political careers, the demand for a positive agenda to engage voters' interest is particularly acute.

Says Rep. Dan Lungren, R-CA, "People don't want to know what you have done for them. They want to know what you'll do in the future. You've got to have the courage to carry out some risky ventures, and I'm not sure they've done that. It's come back to hurt Ronald Reagan."

"If you look back to before (1987), you really see the big leadership coming not from the White House but from the Senate Republicans . . . The salient deficit-cutting initiative of the second term, for example, came not from the administration but from Sen Phil Gramm, R-Tx, in concert with colleagues Warren B. Rudman, R-NH, and Ernest F Hollings, D-SC.

. . . Many political observers will argue that Reagan lost control of the agenda by default. Many will arue that default took, place, albeit indirectly, by political design.

In securing its own re-election victory without putting forward a vision for a second term, the Reagan presidency sacrificed its momentum. It allowed its relationship with Congress to stagnate, not by going to the political well too often but by failing to replenish it with fresh ideas and energy."

[lonestar67]

awesome post.

Great historical perspective.

[llevrok]

They just stabbed our military in the back

Agreed. Why are we spilling blood in the middle east so politicians can get re-elected?

Now I am truly reminded of Vietnam (qualified: from a Washington DC perspective).

[thoughtomator]

That's fine and I have no problem treating the UAE well if they treat us well. However, when we are in a war against Islamic fanaticism, and our ports (and our borders more generally) are already known to be vulnerable, it is really not a sensible move to put a country with a lot of Islamic fanatics in charge of any aspect of port operations.

[mhking]

[yawn]

[prairiebreeze]

It showed up intially in News/Activism, which is where I saw it. Seems the thread is designated as Chat, so my apologies if you posted it there and it somehow showed up in News.

[defconw]

Well if you submit to either of the following theories. From pop culture, if you will "keep your friends close. but your enemies closer" or from an old political sage who asked me once when I was very young and had a problem with a certain person who's motives for being on our side were dubious at best, "would you rather have a skunk on the inside of the tent pissing out or on the outside pissing in?" Bear in mind either way you are stuck with the skunk.

[gogogodzilla]

No, no, no...

You keep your friends close... and kill all your enemies.

:-)

[defconw]

Hear you! Thanks for the thread. In order to stay ahead of the curve I have reading to do. See you on the Snow Thread.

[defconw]

Funny, yet that is the only other option we have. We either learn to live with these people or kill every single one of them. When I say live with, I mean that MUST be a two way street. They don't get to be idiots and we are not the targets.

[Cedar]

Good post of yours, #26.

[gogogodzilla]

What we need to realize is that we are not fighting a country, an organization, or a people.

We are fighting an idea.

An idea that Islam must rule the world and that all unbelievers must convert or die. It's like a disease, but a disease of the mind. And we have no vaccine or cure.

Currently, we have no weapons that can eradicate an idea from a person's mind. Nor do we have a reliable way to determine if someone has instilled that idea in their psyche outside of simple observation. But by then, it is already too late, for the actions of the infected are dedicated to killing/conquering you.

So we can only use the weapons we have, which can kill the carrier and eliminate propagation venues. We must kill the carriers before they have a chance to spread this disease to others. We can also destroy the media that allows this disease to spread out and infect others. We can destroy their disease manufactories... Mosques and their Imams. We can isolate the uninfected (IE - young children and babies) and give them proper care. We can insure that the infected cannot spread their disease (IE - cut out their tongue and chop off their hands). We can quarantine cities with known outbreaks and sterilize them. We can do many things to the infected carriers, but not to the disease itself. So the only effective cure is to eliminate all the carriers.

There is much we can do to end the disease of Islamofacism, but we will need to treat it as the disease it is. We cannot be squeamish about the cure, either.

[llevrok]

Easy on the salt / heavy on the butter