Best Speech, so far.

Parent Cafe
101

<p>“I heard somebody say, ‘Where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.”</p>

<p>I think he meant the Buddhists. ;)</p>

<p>It makes him so endearing, like you know that something strange is going on. Unlike the more charismatic mass killers, like Idi Amin or Bill Clinton, who glide gracefully forward, and then people pick on their peccadillos, and ignore the big picture. </p>

<p>“Honestly, the Bush Administration thinks we’re not smart enough to remember what they say from one day, one speech, to the next.”</p>

<p>Maybe he has trouble imagining that anyone is really smarter than he is? I mean, after all, he may have had classmates that got “A’s”, but they didn’t get elected President twice.</p>

102

<p>One day the American public is going to find out that we weren’t actually fighting terrorists in Iraq, but aliens from a distant galaxy who landed in Baghdad and assimilated themselves with the Iraqis. This is why we are having trouble winning / leaving. This also explains why Captain Planet has been ‘on vacation’ for so long.</p>

103

<p>Mini – You may be right. He did say at the presser that 'I got C’s and Condi’s got a Ph.d. But look who’s the assistant." Of course, there aren’t many presidents who think of the Secretary of State in the same way they think about the intern who fetches coffee but that’s our Bushie! </p>

<p>A little more frightening in demonstrating his disconnection from reality was his impromptu comment last weekend to a group of military families and supporters at the White House. Note: Blue Star mothers are those with children presently serving. Gold Star Mothers are those who have <em>lost</em> children.</p>

<p>Bush: Gold Star Mothers, got you, okay, thank you – Blue Star Mothers, Gold Star Mothers, all the mothers, yes. (Applause.) Every day is Mother’s Day as far as you’re concerned, isn’t it?</p>

<p>I was going to add something sarcastic here, but what can I really add?</p>

104

<p>Well, maybe you could add the entire speech, taken in context.</p>

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<a href=“Briefing Room | The White House”>Briefing Room | The White House;

<p>Quite a different interpretation when it’s not selectively edited, isn’t it?</p>

105

<p>Nope. It’s still a stupid, insensitive statement that only someone missing the empathy of the common garden slug would have made. Everyday is Mother’s Day after you’ve lost a child? I really don’t think so.</p>

106

<p>I laughed till I cried, or cried till I laughed, I don’t know which.</p>

107

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<p>Where was the part in the President’s remarks about supporting the troops where he agreed that our brave soldiers should have 12 months at home for every 12 months they spend in Iraq? I missed that part.</p>

<p>I believe that was the day he sent Darth Vadar over to Congress to make sure that the Republicans blocked passage of the Webb amendment.</p>

108

<p>The audience did not seem to feel the way that you do. I think another interpretation is that mothers support their kids ALL of the time, each and every day. In the context of thanking various service organizations for their support, he singled out mothers as the biggest supporters of the troops. If anyone in attendance had been offended, you’d have heard about it on CNN.</p>

109

<p>Oh, you really think that if someone at that event had rolled their eyes or whispered behind their hand that the presidunce…oops…president had made another gaffe, it would be on CNN? And just because the official transcript says ‘applause’, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t ironic, scoffing, or reluctant. (I’m not saying it was or wasn’t, just that the ‘official transcript’ has been known to be bowdlerized for our protection. And as for ‘laughter’, there’s laughing with and laughing at, but they are both covered by the same word.) </p>

<p>Frankly, the people at that event wouldn’t have been there if they weren’t card-carrying members of the “GWB is A Godly Man” Brigade. The day before this event, a Gold Star father was roughed up at the Peace Rally by rightwing jerks. Didn’t see that on CNN either and I sincerely doubt Carlos Arredondo was invited to hear the president. </p>

<p>You are at liberty – naturally – to interpret GWB’s remarks anyway you want. <em>I</em> think he’s a borderline sociopath with all the imagination and empathy of a rock and every single time he tries to say anything warm or touching he screws it up. Let him talk about war, death and destruction and he’s pretty darn smooth. ‘Putting food on your family’ kind of talk…not so much. He makes stupid jokes at inappropriate moments – as when he told another mother, after giving her a medallion in memory of her dead son, ‘Don’t sell that on E-Bay now.’ Maybe it’s nerves or an inability to think of the right thing at an awkward moment. We can all suffer from that. Most of us, however, aren’t talking to grieving people <em>all the time</em> who are suffering their grief because of something we ourselves have done. He ought to be better at it by now. </p>

<p>But of course, we must remember than Mr. and Mrs. Bush ‘suffer more than anybody’. Poor dears.</p>

110

<p>“You are at liberty to interpret GWB’s remarks anyway you want. <em>I</em> think he’s a borderline sociopath with all the imagination and empathy of a rock and every single time he tries to say anything warm or touching he screws it up.”
Novelisto–You are exactly right. How anyone with a brain can support this man, or be proud of his leadership, just boggles the mind. Every time he opens his mouth, I cringe, and America suffers in the eyes of the world.</p>

111

<p>So, does it take more than half a brain to totally demonize someone, even someone with whom you disagree? There are no shades of grey in your world view? People can never be misinterpreted – the worst possible take on their words has to be correct?</p>

<p>I try to present an alternative to the unrelenting Bush-bashing, conservative-baiting, anti-Republican hate speech that spews forth from this site. It’s just too much like a clique – “If you think the same way I do, then you can be in my club of cool kids.” </p>

<p>There is almost never a nuanced, analytical discussion of any political issue, either here or in the media in general. Do you all honestly think that Dick Cheney is Darth Vader? It would be comical if it weren’t so juvenile.</p>

<p>But that’s fine – I will continue to look at an alternative point of view in any situation, and will probably continue to be pilloried for it.</p>

112

<p>sjmom–You seem to think this type of political sparring is the domain only of snobby liberals. Quite the opposite. During the previous administration–even before Monica–we had to endure endless hate-filled conservative venom spewed over both Clintons. As I recall, it was even implied at one point that Hillary was somehow involved in a murder, for crying out loud. … Some time after that, these same folks went to work on John Kerry, shredding his reputation and turning an articulate war hero into a weak, flip-flopping loser in the eyes of the public. About the same time, they dragged triple-amputee Vietnam vet Max Clelland (a Democrat) through the mud as one who did not sufficiently love his country because he disagreed with Bush.
So, is it really so surprising that liberals today are willing to speak their minds about a man they consider to be, arguably, the worst president of all time?</p>

113

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<p>I do, yes. </p>

<p>Among other things, he had his staff commit treason by outing a CIA operative working to prohibit the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. Just to punish her husband for disagreeing with a particular line of political spin. It doesn’t get much more evil than that.</p>

114

<p>Hindoo - Oh, the right-wingers have brains. Very good brains. It’s their eyes I worry about. They look at GWB and see a charming, intelligent, brave man. From the beginning, I’ve seen a venial, rude hyena with a Napoleon complex (apologies to hyenas.) I didn’t like him any better on 9/12/01 than I liked him on 9/10/01. I am a proud 10 percenter. The rightwing seems to defend him because he’s the president…not because they have any real grasp of the consequences of his actions. He has damaged the government and is working on breaking the military. He has ruined our credibility with other nations. His short-sighted policies has our economy sliding ever downwards – jeez, I’m starting to sound like the Declaration of Independence. (He has waged cruel war…etc., etc.) Hmmm…</p>

<p>I notice, SJMom, that in dwelling on your wounded feelings, you avoid defending your position. I have asked you to enlighten me on your evolved point of view on at least one board and you don’t. If you have strong opinons and the facts to back them up, I for one am waiting. Let me give you a starting point. Why GWB? What is it about him that you like? What do you see in him that I am missing? What do you hear in his speeches that I do not?
(I confess that it would help if I could stand to listen to him for more than 10 minutes without pausing the program to swear.)</p>

115

<p>In 2004, author E. L. Doctorow wrote an essay entitled: The Unfeeling President. I sure some of you remember it. I’ll excerpt a few lines that really stayed with me over the years.</p>

<p>"I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-day in 1944, General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
"But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t got the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for WMDs he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
“But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. … To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. … He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. …”</p>

<p>Here’s a link to The Unfeeling President.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0920-13.htm[/url]”>http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0920-13.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

116

<p>Cheney as Darth Vader? I am not much of a star trek fan. </p>

<p>However, I do think of him as “he who must not be named”.</p>

117

<p>I am as left as they come. Was in SDS and haven’t found anything to change my mind yet but these comparisons will topple from their own absurdity.</p>

<p>“I am not much of a star trek fan”, that’s Star Wars, not that it matters.</p>

<p>I agree with Hindoo about the continual and vicious right attacks against the left – even to the point of making “liberal” a dirty word. What was done to Kerry was unconscionable.</p>

<p>However, as trite and childish as it sounds, I am from the old school of “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Darth Vader? Voldemort? C’mon.</p>

<p>Bush is just a puppet for a social/political agenda that I completely disagree with, but fulsome rhetoric makes our position vulnerable.</p>

118

<p>mythmom, thnx for correcting me, i wasn’t much of a star wars fan either as you can tell!</p>

<p>but really, cheney does display some key personality traits in common with voldemort. for example, voldemort did not care in the slightest how many people (his own or his opponents) had to die in order for him to get what he wanted. i have not seen cheney express sorrow about dead americans or dead iraqis. and even if he did express it in some token manner, do you really think he cares?</p>

119

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Unfortunately one of the lessons from Rove et al is that slander by soundbite is extraordinarily effective - Kerry as flip-flopper, Dems as “defeatocrats” etc. We have learned from the master.</p>

120

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<p>It doesn’t get much more evil than that. But it can. Rumsfeld did something even worse along the very same lines, as noted in this BBC article. What Cheney did promised to ruin Plame’s career (one which this country had invested significantly in) and possibly endanger her contacts’ lives. What Rumsfeld did threatened this guy’s life full-stop. The cruelty of this is beyond measure. Though Sy Hersh, the New Yorker journalist must share in the blame for writing about him first (though I don’t doubt Rumsfeld may have seen that he was given the name, which was supposed to have been kept confidential.)</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm[/url]”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6930197.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;