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"badgolferman" <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:xn0esdnys1hjcgb000@news.readfreenews.net...[color=blue]
> Most of you probably didn't expect to hear this from me but I have
> become fed up with the Bush Administration. It's not for the same
> reasons the regular detractors use to justify their hatred of President
> Bush, but more for his ineffectiveness in handling three core issues
> that stand out to me:
>
> 1) Borders -- I'm sick of the illegal immigration invasion. It is
> also a major security problem where terrorists are entering the country
> with whatever weapons they choose. The political decisions based upon
> voting blocs and appeasing the Latino establishment in order to get
> their votes completely ignores what is right for the country. The
> backlash that occurred recently with the ports deal and Minutemen
> project should have sent them a message, but they continue to
> dilly-dally with this Guest Worker program. Seal the borders first
> then deal from a position of power.
>[/color]

It's perfectly reasonable to control our borders. From a national security
perspective, it's extremely important. It is practically unforgiveable that
the Administration makes people take off their shoes before getting on
airplances, puts all the Bob Johnsons in the country on a secret no-fly list
and then, in direct contravention to the principles of the Constitution
offers them no proceedings for getting off of it yet leaves the back-door
wide open!!!

BUT - remember this! Your ancestors and my ancestors and Muhammad from
Pakistan or Xi from Cambodia or Jose from Costa Rica all want the same
thing - a better life for themselves and their children. You and I are just
lucky enough that we didn't have to sneak in or wait in a line thirty years
long for a visa. Deal compassionately with the illegals (yes, you can send
them back, but you can't treat them like cattle) and deal respectfully and
welcomingly to the legal ones.
[color=blue]
> 2) North Korea -- Kim Jong Il has thumbed his nose at us far too long.
> Now he has launched missles in our direction, developed a nuclear
> program (thanks to Clinton),[/color]

Not so...

[url]http://www.slate.com/id/2151354/nav/tap2/[/url]
[color=blue]
> threatens his neighbors, has raised the
> tension in the Far East where we will have to start providing nuclear
> technology to South Korea and Japan just to keep him at bay, and
> capitulate to his demands. Sanctions are worthless as has been proven,
> so it is time to show some military might. The US Navy should be used
> to let them know we mean business. I realize China is behind all this
> and pulls his strings.[/color]

Explain to me how it's benefits China for a state on their boder to have
nuclear weapons.
[color=blue]
> But if we don't kick their lapdog down then
> they will become more brazen also.
>
> 3) Iran -- They are about to become a nuclear country also and they
> are even more dangerous to world stability than North Korea. They are
> so adept at manipulating Middle East policies and opinion that whatever
> choices we make we lose and they win. The Israeli-Hezbollah skirmishes
> recently should be proof of that. It won't be long before Iran has all
> the aces and becomes the prime international policysetter.[/color]

And where does Iran get the money for all this excitement? Oil. What have
we done - the largest consumer of energy on the planet - to reduce our
appetite for oil and starve the Iranians - and a lot of other tin-pot
dicators, like Chavez, of funds that they use to foster terrorism or oppress
their own people? Cheney won't even admit who he talked to in forming
America's energy policy.
[color=blue]
> The
> international community is afraid of Iran's influence with the Islamic
> community and all it would take is for Iran to call for Jihad and
> complete chaos will overtake the European countries. This has already
> been proven by recent riots there that no one was able to quash.
>[/color]

Let's remember that Iran went all Jihadist on Reagan's watch. Yes, Carter
was in office at the time of the Revolution but he had nowhere near as much
time to influence events as Reagan did and Carter's only real option would
have been to prop up a dictator. Reagan could have helped the original
Iraqi civilian Prime Minister - can't remember his name right now - rather
than screwing around and dealing with the Ayatollas for his Nicaraguan
adventures, a move that increased their power. Reagan could have found a
way to use the turmoil that still surrounded that country and bend it our
way but he didn't and the Republican Guard and other elements of theocratic
oppression were allowed to flourish. The average Iranian in the street
liked the US and would have been very happy for an opportunity to grow
closer to the US. Reagan did not take advantage of that at all. Perhaps if
he'd simply spoken to the Iranian people and talked about the principles of
democracy - that might have made all the difference in the world. But he
did not. This is a mistake repeated by Bush in Iraq, I might add. Bush
deals with their putative government; he makes no effort to reach out to the
Iraqi people. He does NOTHING to reduce their fear that we're only in it
for their oil. And this fear feeds the Jihadis.
[color=blue]
> His choice of Condoleeza Rice for Secretary of State is a disaster.
> She is nearly as bad as Madeline Albright was under Clinton. I don't
> care how smart people think she is, she hasn't done anything effective
> since holding that post and has damaged our global political influence
> in my opinion.
>
> There are many things I believe he has done right, such as the tax
> relief he enacted for Americans and the fantastic recovery of the
> business economy. Despite the opposition to the Iraq war I think he
> made the right decision to invade, but the way it is being handled
> right now is not good. The mighty military should be used as intended,
> not as a classroom for sensitivity training and how to hand out Korans
> to prisoners. They have become sitting ducks for insurgents to take
> out and are prevented from using meaningful offenses to eliminate the
> insurgents.
>
> Political correctness is at the root of all this. The fear of what the
> media will say and how people will vote is what has made President Bush
> a different person than he was a few years ago. His swagger is gone
> and the nationalistic pride he exuded to unite Americans has basically
> disappeared.[/color]

Are you posting from some alternative universe? Bush - perhaps the strings
are held by Rove - uses language to his own ends. An invasion of Iraq
becomes a fight in the war on "terra." Iraq was never involved, yet the
President sails blithely past this, freely and frequently mentioning Iraq in
the same paragraphs as ObL and "terra," until a correlation is fixed in the
minds of the simple.

And Cheney says whatever he damn well pleases.

There's no "political correctness" filter in this Administration.
[color=blue]
> He was never a conservative in my view but at least he
> had some backbone and stood up for his decisions. Now he is paralyzed
> by the Democratic propaganda machine and makes no effort to fight back.
> America needs a leader who does what is right, not what his opponents
> what him do. George W. Bush was like this at one time but now he is a
> shell of himself. Sadly I see no one on the horizon from either party
> who has leadership qualities. We're in trouble and the Islamic
> Fascists are knocking on our door. How will we answer them?
>
> --
> "Those who stand for nothing fall for anything." ~ Alexander Hamilton[/color]

What?! You think that's a rant?! That's all you got?! Step aside...

Bush doesn't care about the opinion of the media; the Republican political
system (which includes Limbaugh, most of Faux News and Ann Coulter, for
example, as their foot soldiers) freely rewrite history or distort current
events to suit their needs. Scandal in the House? Call Foley a Democrat
(yeah, Fox did that and others have done it). The timing of this is bad?
Don't worry about that, USE the bad timing as "evidence" it's a put-up job
by the Democrats (a Republican Congressman said exactly that and declined to
give any evidence whatever, except that the timing was evidence enough.
Limbaugh has done the same). The Republicans seek to overcome these
adversities with tailored messages, direct to the base (their phone-bots and
e-mailers are very sophisticated and they are wise to enlist the aid of
socially conservative churches). A campaign to foster mistrust of the
"liberal" media (yeah, like anyone could prove that, objectively, for just
one second), becomes an opportunity for the Party apparatchik to feed the
faithful only what they want to hear. The gentle whisper, "you can't trust
the New York Times, but we'll tell you all you need to know about Foley..."
brings the faithful back to the polls.

I was listening to Air America the other day. The Al Franken show was
broadcasting from the University of Minnesota at Morris (great little
school). They occasionally made light of Administration mistakes but most
of the time was spent discussing the problems people encounter living among
the cornfields of Minnesota. Like the evaporation of small towns ("we can't
keep these towns alive if we can't provide jobs for their children", like
the opportunity to use new crops to MAKE MONEY off alternative energy
sources and a candid discussion of how the corn/ethanol connection wasn't a
good long-term solution.

Then they broke for a few minutes of LOCAL NEWS on KTNF or whatever the St.
Louis Park radio station in Minnesota is. Most of the stories on THE LOCAL
NEWS were entirely apolitical; a fire here, a traffic report, things like
that. NO SPIN. No opportunity for it, no reason for it. No slanted
selection.

Then, the announcer mentioned a gubernatorial candidates' debate held that
AM. He mentioned that the debate had been held and then simply presented
three sound bites; one from each candidate, approximately equal in length
(complete sentences do vary), Hatch (D), Hutchinson (I) and Pawlenty (R).
Each of those sound bites was some positive comment by the candiate in
question about his own plans for the state, should he win. Nothing
negative, nothing anti-Pawlenty, nothing anti-Hutch. Each candidate got the
exact same treatment. No pro-liberal paragraph from the announcer at the
end of the story. End of news.

That was the news from the Liberal media outlet in the area. The announced
Liberal media outlet in the area.

And it was entirely and wholly objective. Yeah, Al Franken's got a
viewpoint and it's liberal. But when KTNF breaks for news, it's just news,
it's not Al Franken's viewpoint. It's not carefully selected and polished,
it's just what happened today.

If the NYT, CBS, etc, makes a mistake, it's to get a scoop. Yep, things
slip through. But they are honest about their mistakes and fire people - or
at least force them quietly into retirement. Jayson Blair - fired. Dan
Rather's producer - fired. Dan Rather - gone. If O'Reilly worked for the
NYT, would he survive their standards? Doubtful. If Limbaugh worked for
the NYT, would he survive their standards? Hah.

When the Democrats controlled the various branches of government, the big
guns of the Fourth Estate were trained on them, just as they are on Bush.
Right-ist whining about the slanted media works only for those willing to
forget history.

But it does not serve the purposes of Bush, Cheney and Hastert to have
people looking for independent sources of information. They want to control
the message, they want to manage the message and they want to own the
message. So, they distort the truth as they please and foster distrust of
those who report what they can find. The effort to spin Woodward's new book
would be immense. They're lucky people are distracted by the Foley scandal.

Nor does it serve the purposes of the Bush Administration to trust academics
or scientists. They're in bed with the fossil fuel industry. So, they use
their foot soldiers - and their own speeches - to throw a screen around
inconvenient things like Global Warming. They tell us "there's
controversy." They tell us "there's a political agenda." They feed us
bullshit.

I've met some of the the guys working on Global Warming, I've had the
opportunity to hear them speak and I've had the opportunity to ask them
questions. What they say makes sense and aligns with the math, chemistry
and physics I learned in high school, college and 40 years of reading
"Scientific American," "Science," "Nature," and the papers, and relearning
math, chemistry and physics to help kids with their homework. The only
people telling us Global Warming is not the best science available are oil
company shills and political appointees atop NASA and the EPA.

Lies don't last long in science. You think your colleague is wrong? You
repeat his experiment. You rework his math. You design your own
experiment, you either confirm his results or you tear down his. This goes
on all the time. Remember Fleischmann and Pons? How long did they last?
What derailed them so quickly? No one could repeat their results. Does
reliigion work like this? Not a chance. You disagree with the doctrine and
you'd better have a power base for the ensuing fight or you'll be
excommunicated and then you'll have to go grow your own church. And then,
as soon as you're both strong enough, you'll probably fight a war with each
other.

Science is open and public; it's just difficult enough that most people
don't bother with it and soon don't care. The Administration and their foot
soldiers know this and they exploit it.

And they invent the most outrageous lies when scientists get publicity for
ideas that are inconvenient to the Administration...

The idea that the scientists who study the atmosphere "hate America's
success" or "want
America to fail" is laughable. They LIVE HERE. Their children go to school
here. They'll be in the nursing home here. Why would they tear down their
own country? How could a vast conspiracy among atmospheric scientsts be
organized? What is the payoff? What purpose would it serve to boost the
Chinese economy at the expense of our own? These are all questions that any
rational, thinking individual should ask - but no one ever does.

Evolution - same deal. Evolutionary biologists just follow the facts. The
Principle of Evolution not only makes a good deal of inherent sense (as
Leonhard Engel's introduction to my copy of "They Voyage of the Beagle" puts
it, when Darwin and Wallace proposed the Principle of Natural Selection,
"everything fell into place" among the scientists of the time), it also
explains quite a lot about the biology we do know. The controversies over
evolution (and there are some - but it's over mechanics and details not the
overarching principles) are spun to create the illusion of disagreement over
principles that are widely accepted. The Administration and their foot
solderiers talk about teaching "different theories" and "teaching the
controversy" to assuage the Christian Right base for their own political
purposes. They foster mistrust of legitimate scientific inquiry to advance
theological agendas.

But - science and legitimate scientific inquiry actually works. Why is
malaria under control? Why do we understand so much about disease? Why
does your GPS unit actually tell you where you really, really are?

What actually makes your life better - or at least longer? Religion or
Science? It's science, hands down. If we were praying to eradicate
disease, half the people my age would be dead. If we were praying to
understand the universe, we wouldn't have nuclear power and our GPS units
(presuming we'd ever figured out electronics at all) would be lying to us
about where we are (they have to be relativistically corrected).

These things are part and parcel of the very same science that tells us how
old the Earth and Universe really are and how they really got started. But
the Right has to keep its base happy, so they're willing to tolerate loons
who don't realize the first books of the Bible were stories written to
reassure illiterate shepherds that God loves them. They're willing to cater
to people who are so insecure that they can't stand the uncertain nature of
science. For people who are so insecure that they are unwilling to tolerate
the idea of an allegory in the Bible (unless it's in Revelation, then it's
OK). People who would be enthusiastic Wahhabist Jihadis except for the
accident of their birth in the United States into a Christian household.

Then their foot soldier carry on other disinformation campaigns. Ann
Coulter's new book, "Godless" raises their hypocrisy and deceit to levels
previously undreamed-of. The Right - the President's base - must
increasingly get their information from sources that are not just wrong but
spectacualrly wrong. Ann Coulter has written a book about the Left as
though there are no Christians in the Left whatever. A LIE THAT COULD BE
UNCOVERED SIMPLY BY DRIVING BY A CHURCH ONCE IN A WHILE AND NOTICING THAT
THERE ARE STILL KERRY STICKERS IN THE PARKING LOT AT MANY OF THEM. How
contemptuous of the Right is Coulter that she can produce this lie and
presume people will read it? Coulter - and the Administration, clearly
cater to the willfully ignorant and/or unbelievably stupid.

This Administration and their supporters are actively working against the
people of the United States in their desire for power and they will use any
means necessary to get what they want. They don't fear "Political
Correctness," they use that as a phrase to explain why the papers aren't
continually reporting rosy news about the Administration and the world.



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