<p>Not having a virtuous life, by the way, does not mean someone is wicked. If you want to go there, than, I can name some really wicked people.</p>
<p>I do not think cgm is out of line whatsoever.</p>
<p>I also am curious why you do not like her exactly, xiggi. Not that I am in love with her but certainly, what has she done to warrent such extreme negativitiy? Is it simply her personality that makes you bristle? (and many others, too, for that matter - she does bring out strong reactions…)</p>
<p>But I think if you are going to be so steadfastly derogatory about someone, then it would be helpful to those of us who are not turned-off to hear why in concrete terms.</p>
<p>Because of the tremendous influence of media, the best candidate for President is no longer the best President. These are two different jobs that require two different sets of talent. Of course, there is some overlap, but being attractive, quick with the one liners and having good hair is not what makes a government work well.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton is probably one of the most vetted politicians of our century but vetting only reveals truths about people so it will not stop a tremendous rummor machine from starting up against her during an election. Watch for some group to come out of the woodwork, “Wellesley Girls for Truth” and sophisticated handheld campaign devices to show mini clips of how Hillary will turn the nation into a lesbian hell hole and that all the doctors and rich will flee the country. What I resent the most about the last election was the dependency on lies and manipulation over truth. That is why I think the President no longer has American support, because they voted for an illusion; it turns out, Americans don’t agree with the war, the privitization of Social Security or the ineffective medical assistance to the elderly.</p>
<p>I am not a big fan of HRC but I will see who surfaces during the next election and go with the best candidate. I would pick Hillary over Jeb Bush but I might pick Edwards over Hillary. I would like to look forward to a debate but I know I am just going to be treated like some perspective fast food customer, shown products that don’t exist offerred by pretty smiling people.</p>
<p>If I tell someone that I care about my elderly mother, I might be considered a good conservative or moderate, but when I say that I care enough to want the government to stop supporting the medical industries exploitation of her illness and to create an accessible health care system…then I am labeled liberal.</p>
<p>If I say that adults should be able to make their own decisions about how to lead their lives without the burden of Government, I could be considered a decent conservative…but if I say and that means let adults marry any other adult regardless of gender…I am a liberal.</p>
<p>If my corporation gets a million dollar grant to help create jobs, I am centrist at worst…If my corporation helps get a thousand people foodstamps they were entitled to…back to being a liberal… even though food stamps help create numerous jobs.</p>
<p>These labels are thrown around to play on prejudice and fear. This country should stop focusing on our differences and look to our common goals for direction. Every American should get an opportunity for a great education so they can maximize their talent. That is what I like about CC, it helps people to get their chance.</p>
<p>My D sent me this:</p>
<p>It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates.
Candidate A -
Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists.
He’s had two Mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.</p>
<p>Candidate B -
He was kicked ou t of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.</p>
<p>Candidate C -
He is a decorated war hero. He’s a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife.</p>
<p>Which of these candidates would be your Choice?</p>
<h2>Decide first, no peeking, then scroll down for the answer.</h2>
<p>Candidate A: is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Candidate B: is Winston Churchill.
Candidate C: is Adolph Hitler.</p>
<p>The point is we are very quick to make snap decisions and judgements without having ALL the facts…</p>
<p>And she sent me this:</p>
<p>Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:
- 29 have been accused of spousal abuse
- 7 have been arrested for fraud
- 19 have been accused of writing bad checks
- 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
- 3 have done time for assault
- 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
- 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
- 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
- 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
- 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year
Can you guess which organization this is?
Give up yet?
It’s the 435 members of the United States Congress. The same group of idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.</p>
<p>CityGirlsMom,</p>
<p>A few things… opium was legal & commonly used during the turn of the century. I believe that it was still over-the-counter at that time - no prescription required. We read “opium” and tend to think “illegal drug,” although, at the time, aspirin required a prescription & opium did not. So, to account for the times, we should say, “Used Aleve in college.” ;)</p>
<p>Hitler was not a vegetarian. His doctor ordered him to stop eating meat, but he never really followed that order. I believe that he pretended to be a vegetarian to associate himself with Ghandhi and make his movement seem better…</p>
<p>That’s about it for my historical accuracy thing. </p>
<p>The only other thing I can say is that most lawyers & doctors have alcohol problems (so much so that there are special groups for lawyers who have DUIs) - so it doesn’t surprise me that members of Congress are having those problems. Doesn’t excuse it, but it just doesn’t surprise me.</p>
<p>SEE THAT IS THE POINT…if people just voted on the few “facts” given, which were true, but not fully explained. People take a bit they hear on tv, on the radio, from pundents, and believe it, without looking up all the relevant information. It is how people often make vital decisions.</p>
<p>I agree, my point is that from just a few facts, not ALL the facts, it is easy to make snap judgements. As many have done with Hillary. </p>
<p>I love FDR and Churchill was a great man. </p>
<p>WIth a book originally discussed, people made snap decisions from headlines, excerpts, pundents, without researching what was true, what was distorted, what was gossip, etc.</p>
<p>As for the second thread, I was making no judgements. Those congress people have probably done more good than the bad mentioned, but in this day and age, it is easy to pick and choose what we want to justify any position</p>
<p>Mr. B - though I agree with nearly everything you said on your post, the sad truth is that we Americans get what we deserve…it’s not just that it has become increasingly difficult to sift through the sludge to get at the truth but also that we have become truly lazy investigators, depending far too much on surface appearance, on media spin machines, on the manipulation of Rove-hysterics.</p>
<p>And crash, that is the point of my post from my D…its so easy to gloom just a few facts, and not do any investigating and get to the truth…</p>
<p>Oh, Hillary is now pilloried for “standing by her man”, and if she hadn’t, she would have been characterized as that “shrewish divorcee”.</p>
<p>The reality is that she is well-spoken, well-educated, ambitious, caring in the way politicians are, smart, pro-military, pro-Iraq War, and very popular. I could have used exactly the same description for a dozen Republican politicians.</p>
<p>I don’t happen to like her politics, and wish she’d come out strongly in favor of “cut and run” – we’ve done too much already to hand the country to Ayatollah Sistani, and I can’t see why we are obligated to do more. </p>
<p>But she’s really no big deal. </p>
<p>As for doctors and rich people fleeing the country, let 'em go join Wal-Mart in Gangzhou. ;)</p>
<p>CGM:</p>
<p>Completely agree. 
For fun, you could also re-write candidates A & B to include “drinks an occasional beer” because, hey, they are downing martinis and whiskey, not beer. 
We would assume that someone who “drinks the occasional beer” is not getting sloshed on a regular basis, but it’s more fun to be literal. ;)</p>
<p>Don’t they all associate with crooked politicians, being politicians themselves and the crooked variety being ever-so-common?</p>
<p>Finally - how can you sleep until noon AND drink a quart of whiskey in the morning? That’s a trick I have to learn!</p>
<p>Mini, as I would expect :), I disagree with you about cut-and-run. I agree with Colin Powell’s observation of “you break it, you own it.” Because of the mess we’ve made, which for non-Kurdish Iraqi’s is arguable worse than life under Saddam Hussein(!!), I think we’re stuck there until the stability improves, even if our very presence is a factor in what’s driving the insurgency. </p>
<p>Which is all the more reason that those in this administration, who did not know what the firetruck they were doing despite counsel that tried to tell them, should be held accountable, strung up by their heels, and run out of town. I personally would set up the map and spreadsheet software to allow Americans to bid for a designated spot in the long line stretching from Washington, D.C., to Crawford, Texas, to kick Someone’s butt every step of the way.</p>
<p>I recently exchanged e-mail with a Senate staffer saying that imo we were going to pay for this blunder for a generation. Her response was “Longer.”</p>
<p>Btw, I will defend Xiggi on many counts. But I, too, would like to know what specifics he accounts to “evil.” I recently had reason to go to Snopes.com to check out something else and got diverted into the “Hillary” section. M’goi. Some of the allegations would be funny if they weren’t made in such a serious vein.</p>
<p>Did anyone else here hear about the duffel bags of millions of dollars sent over to Iraq for the “contractors” pretty funny if it weren’t so scary</p>
<p><a href=“http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=869413[/url]”>http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=869413</a></p>
<p>But wait, we went to war because…does anybody know?</p>
<p>“Mini, as I would expect , I disagree with you about cut-and-run. I agree with Colin Powell’s observation of “you break it, you own it.” Because of the mess we’ve made, which for non-Kurdish Iraqi’s is arguable worse than life under Saddam Hussein(!!), I think we’re stuck there until the stability improves, even if our very presence is a factor in what’s driving the insurgency.”</p>
<p>I think stability would happen MUCH faster if the U.S. left. Yes, there will be civil war. And the Shiites will win. Well, duh…that’s where we are now. But the difference is that with the Americans gone, the steam will be taken out of the insurgency (yes, we will end up fighting the same folks that we’ve now “trained” so well in other places, but do we have train more of them?) The Sunnis will deal 'cause they have to. Bush can guarantee the oil pipelines for his cronies (remember how Iraqi oil was going to pay for the occupation? ;)) </p>
<p>Were we “stuck in Vietnam” until “stability improves”? </p>
<p>But don’t cut and run. Declare victory. On the day the new Constitution (ho-hum) is established, march out of Baghdad, carefully avoiding the roadside munitions, and hold a tickertape parade in New York. </p>
<p>Trudy Rubin has written firsthand of the deterioration in major parts of the country. Places that were pacified, and where she could walk (like Mosul) are no longer safe for her, or even for the general to get out of the armored carrier. No one up there really believes that the Iraqi - ah-hem - military has made any progress whatsoever. </p>
<p>Colin Powell is either an utter fool or an unrepentant liar,. He lied on national tv in 1991 about the destruction of all the Iraqi SCUD missile sites, based on so-called U.S. reconnaissance that he had seen, only to have the U.N. go in and find that the U.S. hadn’t destroyed a single one. He went on national tv and lied about the chemical weapons depot, only to have a bunch of novice newsmen from around the world find within 48 hours that it was a Kurdish chieftain’s headquarters. If you break it, you PAY for it, but you don’t try to glue it back together and then hide it from your mother.</p>
<p>Might I also add that our “stability improving” pushed out all chances of further reform in Iran? I mean, would you vote for “reform” if there were 135,000 of your fiercest enemy’s soldiers on your border, with their leader making bellicose threats toward you on a regular basis?</p>
<p>"Btw, I will defend Xiggi on many counts. But I, too, would like to know what specifics he accounts to “evil.”</p>
<p>TheDad, I have too much respect for you for not answering your question, albeit not in the way you may expect. In a way, I’d expect a bit more from someone who share my affection for the now defunct analogies on the SAT. What made the analogies difficult was the fact that ETS and TCB enjoyed to test secondary and tertiary meanings of simple words. </p>
<p>In this case, I have already explained that I used the words wicked as an antonym to virtuous. It should not be that hard to understand that the adjective wicked can have more than the “evil” meaning. </p>
<p>That established, I have no desire to engage in a hollow and sterile debate of my opinion of Mrs. Clinton that goes any farther from what I have already posted on CC. It is solely an opinion, not the subject of a term paper that needs cogent arguments and an objective conclusion. If the absence of my posting of a vitriolic list is not satisfactory, simply dismiss my opinion; it just saves time since nothing would change this likely outcome. </p>
<p>As far as “facts” … I have little doubt that books will continue to hit the shelves as well as websites will mushroom both in the defense or attack of HRC. I’ll let them debate this issue ad nauseam, and gladly stay out of talking about HRC. I have said all I have to say about her.</p>
<p>But you still haven’t answered the question. You have dodged it over and over again. You really have posted nothing, but whatever.</p>
<p>By the way, many peoplel, conservative and liberal, rep and dem, have discredited the book for a variety of reasons. Just an FYI.</p>
<p>When you call someone wicked, be a man and back it up.</p>
<p>Here, here. Your behavior re: this thread, Xiggi, is what is so wrong – so evil, if you will - right now in the political arena…it is loaded with heresay, too many pointing fingers and accusations without proof, too many disclaimers based on little more than perhaps a personal dislike for someone.</p>
<p>The discussion regarding what is truth, fact and heresay brought this to mind :
"Rumsfeld told “Fox News Sunday,” for example, that he had not made optimistic predictions during the prelude to war. Such a claim, he said, is “false. … I have been balanced and measured.”</p>
<p>Yet, on Feb. 7, 2003, more than a month before the war began, he predicted that “it could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months.” On Feb. 20, 2003, he told PBS that the Americans “would be welcomed,” as happened in Afghanistan, where people in the streets were “playing music, cheering, flying kites.” (Seven months later, when a broadcast journalist asked Rumsfeld about his PBS remarks, he replied: “Never said that. Never did. … You’re thinking of somebody else.”)</p>
<p>Also Sunday, Rumsfeld told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that any rosy prewar predictions (which he denies were made) would have been inappropriate. He said: “Anyone who tries to estimate the end, the time, the cost, or the casualties in a war is making a big mistake.” Yet it was Cheney, on March 16, 2003, who said “I think it will go relatively quickly … weeks rather than months.” A month earlier, Bush budget official Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. publicly estimated that the war could cost roughly $60 billion. (The current cost is $208 billion.)"</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/11992687.htm[/url]”>http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/11992687.htm</a></p>