<p>Bedhead, I was responding to your implication that we don’t know what’s REALLY happening in Washington, because the press corps isn’t doing it’s job. I did not mean to call anyone here “ignorant.” I just was pointing out the logical fallacy of saying there’s SOMETHING going on, if only someone would tell you about it.</p>
<p>It’s too early to fight – have a good day.</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone denies that the word is getting out about a lot of things, sjmom.</p>
<p>But it’s undeniably true that when it does, the typical right wing response is to complain that people found out about it and to blame the media outlets who dispensed the information.</p>
<p>That alone tells you that the right knows it relies heavily on ignorance to get support.</p>
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<p>Thanks for that clarification. I think that most of the people who post here, you included I imagine, go out of their way to be aware and to dig for information that is not widely reported on. And they form their own opinions based on this digging and a healthy dose of skepticism. Thus I don’t consider myself ignorant, as I try to keep myself informed and also listen to other viewpoints. I think what the other poster was saying was that the media has missed some really major stories here.</p>
<p>When we have major news organizations such as the New York Times apologizing that it got some big stories wrong – e.g., the run-up to the Iraq War and the reasons we were going to go there – you know something is in fact wrong. </p>
<p>During the prelude to the Iraq was, as an example, I was frankly confused as to why we were about to go to war because there were so many reasons offered up: WMD, clear evidence of an alliance between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, a need to establish a democratic and capitalist Arab state that could be an example to the others, and others. This caused me to spend some time reading a lot of news sources – both conservative and liberal – to figure out that it was the democratic and capitalist Arab state notion that was at the forefront, not the other issues really; I had studied under Paul Wolfowitz and paid attention to what the neocons were planning. Having always believed that Bush Sr. made the right decision not to go to Baghdad in Gulf War I, I thought this new war would be reckless and frankly stupid. I had lived in a country that had moved from martial law to democracy. The process is not an easy one and doesn’t happen overnight. And, in my opinion, is certainly not going to happen to a country at the point of an outside invader’s gun. </p>
<p>But I digress: my point is that pieces of information are there for people to find, but much is hidden and the media really let us down on this one. They have admitted it themselves. And the result is a lot of people are really uninformed. So, yes, you could say a lot of people are ignorant, and this is a problematic thing in a democracy, in my opinion.</p>
<p>And thanks again for the clarification. It is indeed too early to fight.</p>
<p>Conyat nails it: according to the nutjobs, the problem wasn’t Abu Gharib, it was the NYT publishing them.</p>
<p>Same thing with the mold, rats, and neglect our disabled soldiers faced at Walter Reed’s outpatient facility. </p>
<p>At FreeRepublic, the Republicans were out in full force insisting that there was nothing wrong with the conditions in Building 18; the real problem was the traitors who let the American people in on the secret. </p>
<p>Of 135 comments, only about 5 are in support of better conditions for our troops there. Most of the rest are just ugly personal attacks on the reporters or their newspaper. One of the milder comments: for exposing the conditions, “the reporters should bear the stain and disgrace of their actions forever.”</p>
<p><a href=“404 Not Found”>404 Not Found;
<p>What’s really amusing is that in more recent threads about the issue, they’ve realized that the world is watching and how bad this makes them look. You’ll actually see themselves sssh-ing each other when one of them starts to spout off about how our troops deserved no better than what they were getting and the real problem is that the conditions came to light.</p>
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<p>This is, of course, the conceit of all such accumulations of smart “intellectuals,” either while pontificating on internet message boards or at their leisure in hair salons: only in one of the two does the eager actor have the opportunity to walk out dolled-up and coifed…the other likely enduring the foppish indignity of a disheveled Bedhead.</p>
<p>Whimsically, the mind drifts to an analogous debate wherein there are those that proclaim, in all sincerity, that sports builds character; opposed to these are those who will be generous enough to say no more than that sports shows, or, rather ruthlessly, exposes ones’ character to good society. I am of the latter opinion with sports…and, apropos this forum, virtual punditry. What’s more, I will extend this quipy sports metaphor above to say that there is next to nothing to learn from the self-styled missives of intellectuals on message boards beyond their redeeming virtue of exposing the limits and conceits of their sappy publishers with such predictable repetition and self-important drivel as they are on all occasions given to…
…all done, remarkably, in complete earnest.</p>
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A laugh is much to hope for. </p>
<p>…either at our selves with others, or at others with others, will do. I believe that, once upon a time, there were more opportunities to work up a tedium-cracking chuckle on cc–to laugh a solitary laugh and to imagine a virtual world of otherwise bored solitary figures laughing with you. That time has, all too regrettably for many, carried no currency with the current crew of technocratic posters…what with their fondness for regurgitating (on the rebound from some politically heroic web site/blog) the dodgy pontifications of their ideological blog-dope of choice…behind the curtain some party apparatchik working his way up the food chain pulls the chain of some ccer. </p>
<p>Now, I see little more than a conspiracy of earnest ideologues, listing more leftward than I can ever recall (aren’t you the least bit bored with your bland sameness?)…self-righteous and dull right down to their broken funny-bone. </p>
<p>In such a state as this, enduring the raging self-importance of the castrati, is it too much for a girl to expect a hair-cut and blow-dry?</p>
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<p>Ah, DPX, how veahhy clevah you ah, my deah. A veritable second coming of your namesake.</p>
<p>Seriously, if all you can do is throw out a bunch of derivative witticisms that I think you suppose put you above the crowd, you are not adding a lot. And if I don’t find you particularly humorous or frankly witty, don’t assume it’s because I have a broken funny bone.</p>
<p>Aren’t you tired of your bland rhetorical fluorishes? I am actually focused at least on something happening in the real world, not in some literary fantasy world. You are in fact the boring one.</p>
<p>Ah, but I know, I am so tiresomely earnest. You are on the other hand so very, very clever (in your own mind).</p>
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<p>…go get 'em, Tiger!</p>
<p>The world need’s not a few of you…and you may take that as you wish.</p>
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<p>They weren’t even that witty. DPX was trying so hard to be witty, she was near incoherent.</p>
<p>The real Dorothy Parker could get right to the essence of a situation in a few, well-chosen words. Who wouldn’t rather have one perfect limosine?</p>
<p>In a turn of phrase let me add that I find your above attempts to divide people into good and bad, absurd; people are either charming or tedious. And here I am resigned to say that your little bon mot above, if I can be so generous as to call it that, was decidedly, and duly, tedious.</p>
<p>It would have been even if it were, as you will it to be, Saturday.</p>
<p>So, DPX, your contention is that good people want our disabled soldiers to live with rats, mold, and go months without rehabilitative services for their injuries, just so long as no one leaks it to the press?</p>
<p>You may find that charming, I find it detestable.</p>
<p>No doubt you also find our wounded soldiers’ interest in sanitary surroundings, physical therapy and disability benefits so tedious that they wouldn’t hold your attention for a moment, and you’d turn your elegant nose up in oh-so-sophisticated disgust. </p>
<p>But that’s OK, because some of us are around to be the grown-ups.</p>
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No, not at all, taking a page from the ccer’s play book, I should spend my days pontificating and dropping info-dumps into the cc liter box–which, I understand, when done in sufficient qualities, can render one into an interminable bore: </p>
<p>The New Puritans, in fact—…—just in case the pomposity of the first go round wasn’t quite enough for the self-styled and self-important blow-hard of the day.</p>
<p>And not to turn your dragons and damsels back into windmills and wenches, but sadly, I must confess to having never been pro-Bush, and not even for a moment pro-war (not even when the majority of the Democrats were beating the drums like banshees); though I am a conservative of a fashion and therefore, like so many sane and simple people, respond with something like an allergic reaction to the New Puritanism of the latter-day Democrats who, all the while imagining themselves to be speaking from the mountain tops, are in fact perched upon no more than their rickety-rack soap boxes…or, in the case of those that get their jones on the computer, XBoxes and for the smarty-pants amongst them, that interactive video game, the cc cafe. </p>
<p>Imagine the world to be what you will, my dear Polonius, but this business is entertainment and little more; although, as it has been otherwise said, in such play’s the rope wherein we’ll catch the conscious of the dope.</p>
<p>…and that counts for something.
Enjoy…and see if you can’t knock over another windmill, champ–but for now, adieu.</p>
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<p>Yawn…</p>
<p>Right on, Dorothy. </p>
<p>Dennis Miller was a guest on O’Reilly’s show the other night commenting on the bile and hatred that continues to come from the Dem bloggers et al. His view which I agree with is that the left/liberals/Dems have “jumped the shark” on their criticism of President Bush. I only take issue with him as to when it started as I believe they jumped it a long time ago.</p>
<p>The real yawn is the continuous stream of invective directed W’s way. One sees it here on cc. The level of interest in the political threads has diminished dramatically in the few months that I’ve posted here. They put one to sleep because of their utter sameness.</p>
<p>Does anyone doubt that the usual cast of characters will be starting threads or posting comments next week or next month that all say the same thing as this thread and countless others here on cc?</p>
<p>That’s the real yawn.</p>
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<p>VoxDei once again proves my point that anytime Republicans accuses someone of something, it’s to hide their own guilt. This is an example of the kind of “bile and invective” that gets posted here regularly on cc:
I can think of fewer worse slaps in the face to all our soldiers and Iraq veterans who are Democrats–including the ones serving in Congress. </p>
<p>But this kind of bigotry is so commonplace on cc, people have become practically desensitized to it, and only lament that it’s not going unchallenged.</p>
<p>“Yes, there are madras that are funded by the Saudis and teachings of hatred are being spread through these in many countries. But unless a country has a substantial Islamic base to begin with, it’s not like we are revisiting the 1930s and a cloud of possible subjugation of the entire free world.”</p>
<p>30% of the French population under 20 is Muslim and the number rises to 45% in urban France. France in 20 years will be a very different country than it is today. For starters its army will be Muslim. When we are avoiding Islamic lands will France have to be one of them? What are the implications for Europe and the EU? Similar demographics are at work in Russia and several other European countries.</p>
<p>Islam is also on the march in Africa and when it marches it converts or displaces populations which don’t care to live under Islamic law. Will a Frenchman in 2050 decide it is prudent and beneficial to convert to the new state religion? Many and African Christian or animist faced with the same decision has made the move to Islam. That is what is going on in Darfur, in the Phillipines, in Thailand, in the former Yugoslavia, and in several other parts of sub-sharan Africa.</p>
<p>You seem to think that Islam is statically confined to more or less the lands it currently occupies. I don’t share that view because what is going on today in the world is nothing short of the vast volk movements that brought down the Roman Empire. In the Western Hemisphere is movement of hispanics north. But the cultural gap between Spanish America and Anglo America are much smaller. Assimillation or fusion much easier. Islam doesn’t adapt. It conquers.</p>
<p>I didn’t make the comment about Senator Lieberman. That being said, the Dem pols in Washington seem to be more interested that failure is the end result of anything that President Bush does. Face it, the Dems have a vested interest in the failure of anything that W espouses. If W’s surge succeeds, your Dem friends lose in the political arena.</p>
<p>I’m sure that there are some Dems who want the U.S. to succeed militarily in Iraq. Unfortunately, whoever they are they’re as quiet as a churchmouse.</p>
<p>Conyat, you consistently make a deliberate effort to insult me or to misinterpret my posts. I already corrected my post to say that I intended the comment to apply to members of Congress, not to the general population. It is my opinion that those who voted to support a deadline for retreat from Iraq, while loading up with unnecessary spending on “pork”, are working against the interests of this country. This is not bigotry or a slap in the face – it is my interpretation of the misguided efforts of some elected representatives to derail any hope of success in Iraq. I do not apologize or equivocate these opinions in any way.</p>
<p>By the way, you really seem to enjoy quoting my posts – should I be flattered or are you just using my thoughts as a spring board for your own opinions? I will also note that you seem to take great pains to paint or slant my comments in the most negative way possible, oftentimes out of context, while ignoring corrections I might make. Can’t you find any other stay at home, middle aged housewives to harrass? If you can point out any of my posts where I have personally insulted you, I’d appreciate it if you would point them out. I generally try to make an effort to restrict my criticism to public figures or policies of political parties, not posters on CC. If I’ve slipped up on this, maybe you could point it out.</p>
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<p>Am I correct in thinking that you see political bias on CC? Just take a look at the titles of recent threads in the cafe. I think it’s clear that the majority of these threads have a decidedly liberal tone.</p>
<p>Attorney-gate could get interesting
How bad is Bush?
King of Allies Calls It “Illegal Foreign Occupation”
NY Times: Libby trial good or bad for the media?
Blackwater USA
Democratic candidates health care forum
Can Obama take a punch?
NYPD spied on potential protesters before G.O.P. convention
Ever wondered how the insurgents get materials for roadside bombs?
Oh the irony – a photo of President Bush
An inconvenient truth
A Republican president on criticism in times of war
Why is global warming a “liberal” issue?
CPAC convention: Ann Coulter on John Edwards
For those who want info on the US Attorney story
Gingrich was having an affair while Clinton was being investigated.
Scientific censorship and the Bush administration
Supporting the troops? – To what extent?
Soldiers disabled in action must repay enlistment bonus
US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
Why do Republican ex presidents or VP don’t do anything useful?</p>
<p>I still think it’s a slap in the face to the Congressmen who prior to this election actually risked their lives to fight in this war–all of them Democrats. </p>
<p>I will grant that you rarely attack other posters directly, and I don’t have anything against you personally. I even suspect that deep down, you don’t believe the Iraq war veterans in Congress are “actively seeking the defeat” of the men they served with, and in some cases, led so ably. </p>
<p>I think you just got carried away by the “Democrats are the enemy” meme that’s ruled sectors of the public airwaves since the 1980s. This is the very reason that I feel it’s important to confront the demonization of Democrats when it occurs, because it’s so pervasive and insidious that it sucks in good people so easily.</p>
<p>If you’re really interested in the situation, you should read up on what Secretary Gates says about what the Democrats are doing. Like General McCaffery, he thinks the pressure from Democrats for a phased withdrawal helps the situation, because it puts pressure on the Iraqis to settle their differences and help stabilize their country. </p>
<p>As a parent, haven’t you found setting limits to be an effective means of enacting positive change? Why would anyone expect it to work the opposite in foreign affairs? Geopolitics in many ways is household affairs–and common sense–writ large.</p>