New Civilization News: Earth Destroyed By Drunk    
 Earth Destroyed By Drunk21 comments
picture16 Aug 2005 @ 07:45, by Richard Carlson

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
---T.S. Eliot

Right now, do you have a phrase that goes beyond the barrier?
The writing brush comes forward and says: Daba-daba-daba-daba...

---Takuan

Just still the thoughts in your mind. It is good to do this right in the midst of disturbance.

---Yuan-Wu

Jean Hudon thinks it over amidst autumn scenery

1

Do I go too far with my headline? Let's take it a piece at a time. How about starting with the drunk part? Like any good ol' American boy, I know a little something about drunks. Been one myself---lots 'a times. I've been described, upon at least one occasion, by a highly spiritual person, as the drunkest man she'd ever seen. I've been flat on my back in a parking lot in Mayville, and couldn't figure out how to get up. So what's involved in stopping such behavior? And how do we know when someone's cured?

There are a number of ways. Sometimes a person is confronted by his/her entire family...and carried off into a waiting car and locked up in a hospital, where maybe medication is administered. Sometimes a person surrenders and declares, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." Often this is a remark of introduction made at such 12 step groups as Alcoholics Anonymous. Other times a person goes into a church or the like and has something happen like the grace of god and rebirth.

After such things as delerium tremens or other manifestations of withdrawal occur, the drunk confronts what's left of his/her life and begins a reconstruction. I have heard it said the current President of the United States once had a "drinking problem" but had it fixed up by getting reborn...as in Christian fundamentalism. I don't know if this is true, but I did notice his daughters made headlines with drunkenness during his first term. I've also heard tell there is some sort of genetic thing that gets passed along...which maybe just has to do with how the body processes sugar. I don't know a whole lot about that either.

What I do know is this President plays hardball, and he employs people around him to investigate all his enemies and to construct campaigns to destroy their reputations and credibility utterly. I'd like to look a bit at the reputation of past fast times in this President. Apparently his route to sobriety was not with AA. I don't know for a fact that it wasn't, and it's none of my business. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of AA, and there are wonderful reasons for that. What I have heard is he was "saved," and his transformation is not only being advertised but administered as public policy.

Let's take a look for a moment at the AA method. They have these 12 Steps toward a serene life without booze. The people of AA are anonymous but the method is not, and has been adapted by a slew of other groups. The First of these twelve is a confession of such powerlessness over alcohol that one's life is seen as utterly unmanageable. Some people cannot tolerate such a view, and head back out or elsewhere for more "research." I think probably you really have to be dragged into AA. If you have any other recourse at all, like maybe a rich father, you'll choose that route instead.

But if you stay...or the court is threatening imprisonment...you hear about the Second Step. "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Sometime during the First Step, many AA people decide there's no actual "cure" for being a drunk, and they readily call themselves drunks ever after. What there is is a fellowship of discipline for staying sober...and maybe for achieving the top step, which is a "spiritual awakening" known as Serenity. You can get that, but only if you know you'll always be a "drunk." This Second Step is about a Higher Power...which is pretty difficult for a lot a people to take. But it's even worse (and this is only the Second Step) because whatever this power is will "restore us to sanity." You mean I've been insane?

Well goodness sakes, the whole fun of getting drunk is going insane. I mean, we all know we're just kidding around. When we sober up we're not crazy anymore. We remember what we did---or someone tells us...in the event we blacked out... We did what? There was a plate glass window? What's a blackout? When do we know our involvement with a drug is insane? Each person comes to his/her own terms with that question, but when those terms get laid out it usually means getting help. If I get to the point where I have to announce to some part of the world that I have a problem and I need to get help, the world needs to view us a bit differently. Maybe the people in my world are helpful and understanding or maybe they mock and push us challenged people aside and away.

Inevitably the insanity confronted in AA has to do with self-destruction. I don't know if that's the case in being reborn, or sent to a clinic and set up in various jobs by Dad. But in AA that Second Step has to do with discovering I just wanted to drink until I died. I didn't care what happened to anyone else, near or far. It was just me on the way to oblivion. Maybe I'll smoke too.

This attitude is called "stinking thinking" in AA. I hope this level of dependence is addressed among the evangelicals and the wealthy. Alcoholic Anonymous members learn to call it out in themselves and challenge it in others when they see it. It's tough. The process of the Second Step is merciless, but it saves some lives. Without it you remain what is called a "dry drunk." This means the stinking thinking remains intact even without the drinking. I know of at least one person who never took a drink in his life, but nevertheless was a genetic dry drunk. It's just the way he thought and did things and related to people. His father died drunk before his eyes. He made it through successfully...outwardly...by sheer determination and will power, by white-knuckling it.

2

Whether the President admitted he was a drunk or a sinner, there must have been a time when he found himself on his hands and knees searching for his own honesty...if the rebirth was real. Both churches and twelve step groups have open meetings where you hear the testimonies of people who have tried, and probably still are working to turn their lives around. These stories are among the most moving you'll ever hear. They are so emotionally gripping because inevitably the confessor has discovered he or she had been living a life of lies. While still in childhood every person decides whether or not to use lying. It takes practice. By the time a guy's in his teens, he may have been confronted by Mom in the dead of night about how many beers he's had. If he gets away with his answer of "a couple," when in fact it was 8, he may be encouraged to go on to the next level.

The easiest way to lie is to convince yourself that, in some way, what you're saying is true. This is risky. Naturally if you come really to believe the lie, you're setting up a mounting burden of pathology. But to some people it's worth it. There may be a higher cause you're serving. Maybe you're a spy. Perhaps you are sworn to secrecy in some club or social society. There's a password or a look to exchange, and then you know you're OK to relax and just be honest---if you still can, and if such a bearing is valued. Outsiders don't know these secrets and so they don't matter as much as the members. The danger of course is the whole group may be set up on a false premise, and may be some kind of cult. And you become brainwashed.

If you're comfortable and successful you may not mind being brainwashed. It can be cool. The hierarchy does the thinking, and you just do what you're told. You chant the mantras and do the dance and enjoy the feast. A life in a tribe like this can be fine, and I believe most of us maintain some aspect of this behavior. But you always have to watch out for the loner, or for that part of yourself that just wants to get away from it all sometimes. Just wants to disappear...or go off to another secret life somewhere else. Like drink, the lie can become more important than anything else. Intimacy is a problem because it's so hard to keep all the stories straight. Ultimately one forgets what's a lie and what isn't...and if there's misery in the situation, it must be time to move on. To the next society, the next lover, the next church.

Lying depends on what you can get away with and how comfortable you are with it. Some people can stand up in front of the whole world, tell a lie, and watch bemused to see who's believing it. Actors have to learn to do this...and certainly to hide the bemusement, and some get into personal crises over this trick. There are those who say United States presidents, and especially this one, can do it. Alas, many in this republic have decided all politicians lie all the time, and have given up on the representative process.

In AA and other groups of reform, finding an inner voice of honesty is the hardest work, but also the most rewarding part. It has to be in order to replace the contentment in deceiving others. The reason it's so hard is the battle with denial. It's possible to throw yourself into the arms of a Higher Power without doing that battle, but AA's don't recommend it. You can weep in front of a priest or a sponsor about what a mess your life has become, and you can leave that old life and those ways behind. But you still carry with you that thinking problem. AA's sometimes say, "It's not so much a drinking problem as it is a thinking problem."

3

Denying goes hand in glove with lying. Mom says, "You had more than a couple beers," and you lie, "No Mom, that's all I had, honest!" Does she believe it or let you get away with it or just avoid further conflict? Maybe she just lets you stagger off to bed to sleep it off, and she'll try to raise you correctly again tomorrow. But what I may learn is there are ways I can be so that people won't know and can't tell who I really am, or find out the bad and lazy things I'm doing. Eventually I may get to the point when someone suggests I have a problem, my defenses will be so impenetrable that I won't hear any amount of convincing. I'll dispute all the facts. I won't even consider the possibility. Consistency won't matter either. Nothing can shake me. Beware the leader who corroborates the lies and denial of others. A whole nation may need restoration to sanity. And the worst part of such a figure is he disdains the foolishness of his followers, and will leave them behind in the first spaceship outta here.

If these musings strike a chord of recognition in you regarding George W. Bush, I'm glad and relieved. I've tried to take him apart in this article precisely because we liberals don't like this approach. We want to discuss issues, not personal failings and scandal. But the issues thing isn't working, and probably hasn't for nearly half a century. We have a leadership in this society that asserts it makes its own reality and the only measure of its merit is whether it succeeds...and whether the leadership still is on top by hook or by crook. I presume the "crook" here is the shepherd's tool rather than criminal activity. But what is the view now of crime? Is it really what people say? "Just don't get caught."

All of this has been inspired by 2 publishings I saw during the past week. The first came to me on Friday from Jean Hudon, a Quebec City native, whose mailing list sends out something nearly every day. His www.earthrainbownetwork.com/ is concerned with global events from a spiritual perspective. This particular message carried an email from Peter Phillips who is Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored, a website that features news stories felt to be ignored by mainstream media. The email introduces yet another study by yet another statistician of the recent major elections in this country. Let me say I am aware that both political parties have histories of crooked manipulations of our free elections, but what concerns me more is when the people shrug off such chicanery as inevitable or not worth doing anything about. Dr. Phillips' message is posted at Jean Hudon's website [link] but allow me to quote it entirely~~~

Date: 11 Aug 2005
From: Peter Phillips peter.phillips@sonoma.edu
Subject: Election Fraud Continues in the US

Election Fraud Continues in the US
New Data Shows Widespread Vote Manipulations in 2004
By Peter Phillips

In the fall of 2001, after an eight-month review of 175,000 Florida ballots never counted in the 2000 election, an analysis by the National Opinion Research Center confirmed that Al Gore actually won Florida and should have been President. However, coverage of this report was only a small blip in the corporate media as a much bigger story dominated the news after September 11, 2001.

New research compiled by Dr. Dennis Loo with the University of Cal Poly Pomona now shows that extensive manipulation of non-paper-trail voting machines occurred in several states during the 2004 election. The facts are as follows: In 2004 Bush far exceeded the 85% of registered Florida Republican votes that he got in 2000, receiving more than 100% of the registered Republican votes in 47 out of 67 Florida counties, 200% of registered Republicans in 15 counties, and over 300% of registered Republicans in 4 counties. Bush managed these remarkable outcomes despite the fact that his share of the crossover votes by registered Democrats in Florida did not increase over 2000, and he lost ground among registered Independents, dropping 15 points. We also know that Bush "won" Ohio by 51-48%, but statewide results were not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 greater than the number of registered voters.

More importantly national exit polls showed Kerry winning in 2004. However, It was only in precincts where there were no paper trails on the voting machines that the exit polls ended up being different from the final count. According to Dr. Steve Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, the odds are 250 million to one that the exit polls were wrong by chance. In fact, where the exit polls disagreed with the computerized outcomes the results always favored Bush - another statistical impossibility.

Dennis Loo writes, "A team at the University of California at Berkeley, headed by sociology professor Michael Hout, found a highly suspicious pattern in which Bush received 260,000 more votes in those Florida precincts that used electronic voting machines than past voting patterns would indicate compared to those precincts that used optical scan read votes where past voting patterns held."

There is now strong statistical evidence of widespread voting machine manipulation occurring in US elections since 2000. Coverage of the fraud has been reported in independent media and various websites. The information is not secret. But it certainly seems to be a taboo subject for the US corporate media.

Black Box Voting ([link]) reported on March 9, 2005 that voting machines used by over 30 million voters were easily hacked by relatively unsophisticated programs and audits of the computers would not show the changes. It is very possible that a small team of hackers could have manipulated the 2004 and earlier elections in various locations throughout the United States. Irregularities in the vote counts certainly indicate that something beyond chance occurrences has been happening in recent elections.

That a special interest group might try to cheat on an election in the United States is nothing new. Historians tell us how local political machines from both major parties have in the past used methods of double counting, ballot box stuffing, poll taxes and registration manipulation to affect elections. In the computer age, however, election fraud can occur externally without local precinct administrators having any awareness of the manipulations - and the fraud can be extensive enough to change the outcome of an entire national election.

There is little doubt key Democrats know that votes in 2004 and earlier elections were stolen. The fact that few in Congress are complaining about fraud is an indication of the totality to which both parties accept the status quo of a money based elections system. Neither party wants to further undermine public confidence in the American "democratic" process (over 80 millions eligible voters refused to vote in 2004). Instead we will likely see the quiet passing of legislation that will correct the most blatant problems. Future elections in the US will continue as an equal opportunity for both parties to maintain a national democratic charade in which money counts more than truth.

Dennis Loo's report "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election," can be viewed at [link]

--
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
[link]

Dr. Loo's study is only the latest to inform the world that George Bush is not actually the President of the United States, nor has he been ever. I find this possibility so disturbing that I cannot imagine how the nation can "stay the course" day after day in such possible illegitimacy. Is such fraud too huge for the average mind to grapple with? What are the stakes and how important are they?

That brings me to the second message, which I saw the day before. It is an article from www.guardian.co.uk/ with the title "(Global) Warming Hits 'Tipping Point."

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday August 11, 2005
Guardian

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.

The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today.

The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.

Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.

Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.

The remainder of the article is here [link] and koravya has even more on this at his Log [link]

Let us be reminded that George Bush has scorned those who warn about global warming, only flipping over to acknowledgement recently after reframing the problem as climate change. I notice no difference in White House policy however. I remember an installment of Scientific American Frontiers earlier in the year on PBS. It was called "Hot Planet - Cold Comfort" and took Alan Alda up to Alaska to witness similar changes in the Arctic climate. Now here's a guy that everybody likes and believes, even when he's playing a debauched senator for Scorsese or TV. Alan appeared as skeptical about all this warming stuff as the next guy, until his guide across the frozen tundra handed him a long pole just in case he sunk up to his waist---which he promptly did. [link]

Are we sunk so deep in fraud, lies and denial that the nation, indeed the species and the planet, are in terminal danger? I am prepared for the mockery that comes when someone asks such a question these days. However, I would welcome a huge forum on these matters. That would be a Reality Show I could get into!


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21 comments

16 Aug 2005 @ 16:13 by jerryvest : Yup, we have a drunk in the Whitehouse
who is in denial and endangering all that we cherish on the planet and beyond. One question might be: How much more damage can he do during these next 3 years?  


16 Aug 2005 @ 18:57 by Quinty @68.226.90.181 : Dry drunks on wobbly foundations

Your description of Bush is very convincing. I balk, as a rule, at accepting this kind of analysis. So much to know, so little known. But this one fits Bush well, and we know that the Neocon gurus through Papa Bush's intervention gave young George a thorough tutoring. He is very loyal and very close to Condee Rice et al. The talk in their clique, if it were recorded, could make Nixon sound Emersonian.

But what was it you said, Bush might decide to hop onto another spaceship?

I can recall reading something by Norman Mailer several decades ago which asserted presidents set the spiritual clime of the nation during their presidencies. And I think that's true. Young George has certainly created a wobbly and unstable environment in our nation with, unfortunately, the willing assent of a lot of people. And in such an environment corruption easily thrives. The overall mood of national spiritual squalor is very intense. And this war in Iraq also heightens a sense of criminal squalor. These are hard times for many people, those who wish this country would reach its potential: the one the Founders originally hoped for.  



16 Aug 2005 @ 19:13 by ankh : AA
What I never liked about AA's philosophy is that a person is labeled a drunk/alcoholic - forever. That is negative conditioning in my book. That means you can NEVER overcome it - so it's like the entire AA system cancels itself out in that, alone.

Another aspect of many AA groups is the focus on religion, as if that's the answer to addiction. It's just replacing one addiction with another one, and I'd say that it's not a better one at that. (Case in point, Bush.) Both lead a person to believe they are NOT personally empowered beings who choose to drink or not to drink. Each time a person takes a drink or a drug it's out of choice. Yeah, the body has a lot to do with it if one is addicted, but it's still a choice. Is it working for ya? That's the question.  



16 Aug 2005 @ 22:46 by Quinty @68.226.90.181 : AA

AA is very rigid. They make no distinction between heavy drinkers and alcoholics. There is a difference. I've always assumed AA was as rigid as it is because in some cases that's the only way to crack the nut, so to speak. That its members require AA's narrow doctrinaire approach.

There are many, many reasons for doing drugs or alcohol. AA is like a faith, a doctrinaire religion: if it works for you, then fine. And AA, I suppose, has helped many people. Those who need an extremely narrow and disciplined way out. A rigid structure in their lives to help stay off the sauce.

But there are differences between drinkers, and not all heavy drinkers are alcoholics. Nor do they all greatly impair their own lives or those who are close to them. Alcohol can be a boon, a pleasure, and even beneficial to your health if consumed moderately. Could AA ever loosen up enough to make such an admission? To glory in good wine and spirits? No, all I have ever heard from them are baleful tales of having that one drink: the one leading to the bottom. AA is not a cheerful organization: but then its members may not be very cheerful on the subject themselves. And they may depend upon AA's doleful rigidity.

I consume about 8 or 10 ounces of wine a night with dinner and maybe two or three times a year go overboard. If anyone reading this knows me (and I know a few of you do) then you know that at one time I drank quite heavily. The transition was easy and rather uneventful.

If my doctor ever tells me to quit maybe I will.  



17 Aug 2005 @ 00:28 by bushman : Hmm
I used to drink, but was told by my doctor I was alergic to it, because it dosnt warm me up it makes me cold and shivery, so I just stopped drinking alcohal compleetly, sometimes I might take a swig of jack when passed around the campfire with my closest friends, but that situation might happen once every 5 or 6 years, dont know why it was so easy to just say no, mostly because Id have to drink alot to even get buzzed, too hyper, just burns off while thinking, lol, just a bad buzz as well having to try and stay in that almost sick zone to be buzzed from it.  


17 Aug 2005 @ 04:47 by ankh : Same here, Bushman
I'm allergic to most wines and hate the taste of most alcoholic beverages. Although I do enjoy a beer once a year lol. Getting warm is also a sign of allergic reaction - I get flushed after one or two sips of wine and immediately feel high. Probably because I'm not used to it but my body does not like it. I also am allergic to raisins so that probably makes sense I'd be allergic to most wines. Quinty, you made a choice and it works, too :-)  


17 Aug 2005 @ 10:31 by jazzolog : Is Bush Out Of Control?
I don't like smashing into people as I did in this entry either quinty, but maybe I'm too passive/aggressive...at least in Karl Rove's hunter's guide. I'm glad it stirred up some discussion: here in Athens I'm getting invited to coffee with professors who've read it, so maybe I've hit a nerve of concern.

As to AA, the real bottom line, as you've all said, is whether it helps the person who desires sobriety---which goal really is the only requirement for membership. "You're a member if you say you are." Some people come drunk to the meetings, which is supposed to be OK as long as that person wishes she/he could be sober instead. In fact, I've heard of people thanking the drunk person next to him for the contact high---which of course reminds the drunk you can't hide it. Lots of humor in AA.

Of course there are levels of addiction, and alcholics used to argue dependence on booze isn't addiction at all. Anyone who's done psychiatric work and seen DTs in action ought have no doubts however. What AA says is alcoholism is a progressive disease, with the payoff being the shot liver and difficult death. If you stop, to some degree the liver can rebuild...but each person's tolerance for alcohol remains the same, as does the craving. The craving never goes away, although one can train one's mind not to think of it. One way is to remind oneself constantly that one is a drunk and always will be. That's why AA's introduce themselves at every meeting every time the way they do.

The real motto of AA is Take what you need and leave the rest. That's actually not very rigid. Many members say openly they don't like the Higher Power stuff...but some of them do develop a kind of understanding of it they can use. The wonder of the organization is created by its single purpose and topic of discussion, and any organization can operate that way and produce a similar effect. When people from all walks of life and all levels of prosperity show up somewhere and discuss just one thing, soon real priorities in life emerge.

Apparently I wasn't alone in the wee hours of a sleepless night Monday over the character of this President. Dana found this one and sent it out to her list last night~~~

From Capitol Hill Blue

The Rant
Is Bush Out of Control?
By DOUG THOMPSON
Aug 15, 2005, 05:46

Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”

In fact, George W. Bush’s mood swings have become so drastic that White House emails often contain “weather reports” to warn of the President’s demeanor. “Calm seas” means Bush is calm while “tornado alert” is a warning that he is pissed at the world.

Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President’s paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a “god-damned traitor” for opposing him on stem-cell research.

“There’s real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it,” a high-level aide told me recently.

A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President’s wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

As a recovering alcoholic (sober 11 years, two months, nine days), I know all too well the symptoms that Dr. Frank describes and, after watching Bush for the past several years, I have to, unfortunately, agree with him.

Conversations over the last few weeks with longtime friends who work in the Bush White House confirm even more what Dr. Frank says and others have suggested.

The President of the United States is out of control. How long can the ship of state continue to sail with a madman at the helm?

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7218.shtml  



17 Aug 2005 @ 16:38 by Quinty @68.226.90.181 : Did anyone see this?

Two or three weeks ago when Senator Frist announced he would support stem cell research he visited the White House. Was he summoned? CNN - I think it was CNN - ran a fascinating bit of film footage of Frist and Bush emerging from their meeting. In those three or four seconds in which they were shown walking together Bush's face was up against Frist's in an incredibly furious manner. Hard for me to describe, it was as if Bush were pitting his outrage at Frist in a totally unconcealed manner. Whereas Frist's facial expression, it appeared to me, was merely pensive. CNN must have known what it was doing running that bit of footage. In this unguarded moment Bush was the peevish CEO fiercely reprimanding an underling: a raw brutal display of uncontrolled power.

This in contrast the usual Bush we are accustomed to seeing. Bush the smiler, never changing his manner and style whatever he's discussing. His voice always inflected in the same way. Always seeing the bright side and offering a reassuring wink and a smirk even as he tells the bombing will continue, more will die, but it's all (wink and a smirk) for the better good. And everything (broader smile) will turn out well.

Bush's management style appears to be corporate. He' s not the first president who has behaved more like a business executive than a statesman in the White House. But he is a very shallow CEO who has unlimitted power which he wields on a whim with complete impunity. There is something almost childish about this self-centered thoughtless use of power.

He also seems to believe in dishonesty and deceit for their own ends. They are simply ways of getting what you want. If that doesn't work, remember that you are president. Underlings quickly bow and say "Yes sir," without argument. And contradictory realities are unwelcome: signifying a "bad attitude." One of the Bush's staffers famously said "we create reality." The Neocon cabal, followers of Leo Strauss, believes fully in that dark philosophy. They also believe the American people are incapable of deciding what's best for the country: therefore they have to be lied to. Not for their own good, but because nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of what the Neocons desire: that being ultimate power. And in such a "corporate" society good citizens boost, they never nock. They enthusiastically back the president, the flag, the war, the troops.Those with a fascistic side to their characters find all that highly appealing.

Then there 's the religious element. Most Americans appear to be so ignorant that they don't even know that the Founders did not want religion mixed into politics. That they wrote their "godless constitution" with the example of two hundred years of religious strife to guide them. And now here's Bush saying, "It time government stopped discrimating against religion."  



18 Aug 2005 @ 06:19 by ankh : Yes
I saw it and also know that the new appointee to the Supreme Court was in favor of prayer in public schools. They spit on the Founders.  


18 Aug 2005 @ 06:38 by jazzolog : The Bush Family Anger
Maureen Dowd's column yesterday has been posted all over the place, but the section in which she recalls the temper tantrum mentality these people can't help but display may be worth repeating~~~

"The first President Bush told us that he kept a telephone in his golf cart and his cigarette boat so he could easily stay on top of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. But at least he seemed worried that he was sending the wrong signal, as his boating and golfing was juxtaposed on the news with footage of the frightened families of troops leaving for the Middle East.

"'I just don't like taking questions on serious matters on my vacation,' the usually good-natured Bush senior barked at reporters on the golf course. 'So I hope you'll understand if I, when I'm recreating, will recreate.' His hot-tempered oldest son, who was golfing with his father that day, was even more irritated. 'Hey! Hey!' W. snapped at reporters asking questions on the first tee. 'Can't you wait until we finish hitting, at least?'

"Junior always had his priorities straight."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/opinion/17dowd.html  



18 Aug 2005 @ 15:25 by Quinty @68.226.90.181 : Maureen's comments

"It turns out that the people of Iraq have ethnic and religious identities, not a national identity. Shiites and Kurds want to suppress the Sunnis who once repressed them and break off into their own states, smashing the Bush model kitchen of democracy."

We are fearfully ignorant of the Middle East here in the United States. So long as we could receive our oil and support the concept of a Jewish homeland there Americans were content enough. No one ever seemed to ask what the Arabs thought. Nor did most Americans care. After, aren't we better than everyone else in the world? The envy of the world? Iraq never truly existed. It was a set of lines drawn in the sand by the imperial powers. If Iraq reverted to its natural political boundaries it would be composed of separate tribes. There is no Iraq. I say that as an ignorant American. We should have been happy enough with Saddam. He was willing to be our puppet and would have kept the whole fantastic entity together. We would still receive our oil. And we could have kept on dreaming.  



21 Aug 2005 @ 23:54 by jerryvest : A real hero among us.....
Cindy Sheehan may be the most important voice on our planet right now. She is honest, sincere and courageous. She has lost her son in Iraq and has a message and questions for Bush and this administration. Bush continues to lie and evade Cindy and the issues while the press distorts her views and refuses to address Bush on His lies and His War.

This article on 'Truthout" should be passed along to every thinking, caring and loving person. And, I hope she serves as a good wakeup call for these wimpy democrats as well.

{Link:http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082005X.shtml}

Bring the troops home. These lies continue to cause great harm to our great soldiers, innocent others and our Great Nation. I am so ashamed of having Bush as our "elected" president. God help US!

Jerry  



22 Aug 2005 @ 15:07 by Quinty @68.226.90.181 : Yeah
all she has done is boldly speak the truth and it has them running like roaches searching for shadows. Hard language but Rush and O'Reilly and the gang have been using sledge hammers on Cindy.

So long as she stays focussed, presenting herself to the country in all her simple decency and honesty, asking "Why? Why did they die for your lies Mr. Bush?" her impact will be very powerful.

Who would ever have thunk?  



23 Aug 2005 @ 08:55 by jazzolog : Just Back From Canada
and I'll probably do a separate piece on the trip. All Yanks should step outside the US right now, just to get a feel for how we're seen elsewhere. Our trip was to the Georgian Bay and the fabulous Summerfolk festival http://www.summerfolk.org/performers.html and for those of you opposed to Bush, it would have done your heart good. A number of those performers are from down here, particularly Eliza Gilkyson, whose new song Man Of God tore the place wide open on the first night. The quality of protest songs, which singer James Gordon is calling Weapons Of Mass Instruction, is beyond anything I've heard from such composers in 40 years. For those of us who have to be "careful" what we say around colleagues and employers and such these days, it was liberating indeed to be among the solid support in Canada. You probably heard Joan Baez serenaded the Camp at Crawford over the weekend. Maybe dissent and discussion will start to loosen all that tight and rigid hatred gripping this republic.  


26 Aug 2005 @ 06:15 by bushman : Hmm
An Update?
Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides
Posted on Thursday, August 25 By DOUG THOMPSON


While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.
“I’m not meeting with that goddamned bitch,” Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. “She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!”

Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them “motherfucking traitors.” He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore “bullshit protectors” over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to “tell those VFW assholes that I’ll never speak to them again is they can’t keep their members under control.”

White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and most doubt the President’s honesty.

“Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”

Bush, whiles setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger at the camera before going live. Aides say the President often “flips the bird” to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to “go to hell” or to “go fuck yourself.”

Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear.

To see that fear emerges, Dr. Frank says, all one has to do is confront the President. “To actually directly confront him in a clear way, to bring him out, so you would really see the bully, and you would also see the fear,” he says.

Dr. Frank, in his book, speculates that Bush, an alcoholic who brags that he gave up booze without help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, may be drinking again.

“Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took office,” Dr. Frank says. “Is he still drinking? And if not, is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of his psychological state.”

Last year, Capitol Hill Blue learned the White House physician prescribed anti-depressant drugs for the President to control what aides called “violent mood swings.” As Dr. Frank also notes: “In writing about Bush's halting appearance in a press conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that ‘the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.’”

Dr. Frank explains Bush’s behavior as all-to-typical of an alcoholic who is still in denial:

“The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic personality; it's rarely limited to his or her drinking,” he says. “The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush's personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat.”

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7267.shtml  



3 Sep 2005 @ 11:00 by jazzolog : The Insulation Of The Elite President
When he's busy making so much reality and money, don't bother him with facts! At what point does a hurricane breach the Homeland Security? Who could have foreseen such a thing? You like how your tax dollars are being invested for you?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The New York Times
September 3, 2005

United States of Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03dowd.html?th&emc=th  



4 Sep 2005 @ 09:30 by jazzolog : Rich Reviews Bush Katrina Performance
Why is a theatre critic emerging with the most devastating analysis of this presidential administration? Is it appropriate? Before Reagan we always looked to such weighty scholars as George Kennan, Walter Lippmann or Arthur Schlesinger to clarify what was smoke and what were mirrors. But the Great Actor changed the White House into a sitcom, and the guys that have followed cater to showbiz realities.

Remember early in W's first term, George marching alone on Ellis Island before the Statue of Liberty to wrench our hearts and stir our devotion? Remember the lighting for that performance? The director deserved an academy award. More obviously, the aircraft carrier Mission Accomplished thing. The hidden transmitter that tells him what to say. Who plans this stuff?

W's first administration may have been more slick than this one, partly because Bush likes to promote his warriors off the front lines into something more cushy when they've pleased him. Karen Hughes may be the best example. Remember her? The advisor who left Washington in 2002 to go back to Texas to be a good mom? Whatever happened to her?

After graduating from Southern Methodist in 1977, Karen got a job as a TV reporter, specializing in politics and campaigns. She kept that job until 1984, when she joined the Reagan-Bush campaign as press coordinator. Since the '90s she's been Bush II's communications coordinator. Her background in television has meant she's always stocked W's staff with the best media production Republican money can buy. You may recall how upset the President was when she left Washington...but do you know she remained in daily contact nevertheless as his special advisor? Do you know she returned fulltime in 2004, planning the Republican Convention from a special office set up for her on Air Force One? The ad campaigns in the late stages of the 2004 election are hers. The Dallas Morning News calls Hughes "the most powerful woman ever to serve in the White House." ABC News called her Bush's "most essential advisor." (More than Rove!?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Hughes

Where is she now? How about Undersecretary of State? http://www.state.gov/misc/19232.htm Scroll down to the senior official in charge of "public diplomacy and public affairs." The one without a picture or biography. The Washington Post put it this way in July: "Only two senators were in the room when Karen Hughes testified at her confirmation hearings. When it came time for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to vote on her nomination yesterday, she was easily approved. And thus with no discussion and no debate, Hughes takes over the least noticed, least respected and possibly most important job in the State Department." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072601551.html BuzzFlash was a bit more rude last year http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/04/05/edi04033.html .

So yes, a theatre critic is perfect to take apart the productions of this administration. Sunday after Sunday, Frank Rich's column looks behind the scenery and costumes and gets into the dressing room. He checks the script and is merciless if that speech was a hack job and needed a rewrite. I mean, the whole world's watching and the Department of State is in the director's chair!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times
September 4, 2005

Falluja Floods the Superdome
By FRANK RICH

As the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.

As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.

After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001078.html , the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."

This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.

Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.

The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said, "There won't have to be tax increases."

But on a second go-round, even the right isn't so easily fooled by this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found much reassurance in Mr. Bush's initial autopilot statement about the hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn't be obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11 national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more pronounced.

You could almost see Mr. Bush's political base starting to crumble at its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja.

A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked "No Spin Zone." Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted "that the haves of this city, the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either immediately before or immediately after the storm." What he didn't have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was the poor who were left behind to drown.

In that sense, the inequality of the suffering has not only exposed the sham of the relentless photo-ops with black schoolchildren whom the president trots out at campaign time to sell his "compassionate conservatism"; it has also positioned Katrina before a rapt late-summer audience as a replay of the sinking of the Titanic. New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.

THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.

On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.

But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.

Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.

The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rich.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all  



18 Oct 2005 @ 15:09 by melztripp : Positive, encouraging thoughts!!!!!!
since history does keep repeating itself in pretty much the same way, how about changing our thoughts and behaviors?!?! if all that is talked and discussed is the conspiracy, wrongdoing, and all around sickening behaviour of our government and its officials...then that is exactly what our viewpoints will continue to be. it gets old hearing about the "gossip". maybe someone needs to give george a hug, and tell him he's doing a great job. and maybe include something like....brother, i'm glad it's your job and not mine! how many of us could do what he does? who would frickin' want to??? our future is NOT written in stone, maybe we, as a species of humans, can learn to evolve past the insane behaviour of Pete and RePeat. this is what addiction is by the way...."repeating the same behaviour over and over again, and getting the same negative results" this describes alcoholism and drug addiction, or any addiction for that matter. i am not saying that i agree with things the way they are, but all the blame is not for one man. i'm really glad that you can see the human side of bush when he talks..he's not some clever, charismatic, master manipulator...instead he is flawed!!! i think that is wonderful! he screws up and stutters, or says something really dumb once in a while..i'm relieved by this. i just feel basically like we need to show more support, we might as well, he is our president for the next few years, so why put him down??  


18 Oct 2005 @ 16:03 by Quinty @68.230.135.75 : All George needs is a little hug

I can't resist taking issue with your logic, Melztrip. (Sorry, but that's the only name I have to work with.) And I will attempt to answer some of your points. Not all, of course, because to do so would be to burrow deep, deep down into the substrata and foundations of your reasoning. So let's just remain up at the surface, without getting too complicated. Nor do I want to sound complacent or arrogant. Since, considering what we have to work with, that would be easy to do so.

Does George need a little a hug, and someone to tell him he's doing a great job? Well, perhaps he does. But what has this to do with the effects of his behavior on us? Who counts, after all, in all this? George or us?

It seems to me that the presidency is the highest form of public service, and that a president is required to serve the public. That his conduct effects the public good, and has enormous consequences.

No, no one forced George to become president. No one held a gun to his head. He fought (quite dirtily, by the way) very hard to become governor and then president. If he had desired to he could have spared himself all the effort and anguish. But the prize was quite large. And, as you suggest, he he strove for these rewards not for the American people but for himself.

Should we feel sorry for George or for ourselves? That question is the same as: "Should we feel sorry for the embezzler or those whose life savings are stolen? Since the embezzler may go to jail, and suffer, and be forced to account for his behavior?"

"Peat and Repeat.... " Well, yes, history does repeat itself. George Bush is not the first criminal to hold great office and power. And probably won't be the last. And as each one comes along has to be held to account, don't you agree? Unless criminality becomes the norm, and an encouraging hug is our only response.

I'll end it there, and hope I didn't sound too smug.

Have a good day, Melztrip.......  



18 Oct 2005 @ 16:37 by jmarc : The 12 Steps


1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of OURSELVES
5. Admitted to God, to OURSELVES and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
10. Continued to take PERSONAL inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs


(jmarc's) 13th step
Practice what you preach.  



22 Jul 2006 @ 10:26 by jazzolog : If He Were Just A Drunk
This essay by William Rivers Pitt requires preserving~~~

The Ballad of Dumb George
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 21 July 2006

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid.

- "The Ultimate Flame," author unknown

George W. Bush is a good man, word has it. He's plain-spoken, they say. A regular fella. A good guy to have a beer with, except he supposedly doesn't drink anymore.

I wish, more than anything, that he were drinking. I wish he were drinking all the time. I wish, oh how I wish, that he were stand-up-fall-down-ralphing-down-his-shirt loaded every minute of every day. It would be a comfort, simply because it would explain a great many things. Having a drunk for a president is, after all, a fixable situation. Put him to bed at Camp David for a few weeks and surround him with Secret Service agents. Let his body clean itself out. Problem solved, and really, would anyone actually notice his absence?

I don't believe Bush has gotten off the sauce, if truth be told. I know more than a few boozers who, like George, periodically show up with odd wounds on their faces they got from falling over or running into walls. The injuries that appear on George's mien from time to time can perhaps be explained away - maybe Dick Cheney is stalking the halls with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and blasting anyone, even the boss, who gets in his way - but if "George still drinks" were up on the big board at the MGM Grand sports book, I'd take the bet no matter what the oddsmakers had to say.

Having a drunk for a president is manageable. Having a stone bozo for a president, on the other hand, is a calamity of global proportions.

Let's take a walk through the last few days. George winged off to Russia for trade talks at the G-8 summit, and managed in the course of 100 hours to embarrass himself and our entire country. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is smarter than Bush by several orders of magnitude, insulted George in front of the international press corps with a tight quip about "democracy" in Iraq. No trade deal got done. The whole thing was a humiliating waste of time, captured best by all the photos of Bush and Putin together. In each and every one of them, Putin is looking at George with an expression that somehow conveyed disgust, disdain and awe simultaneously.

Putin's disgust and disdain are easily understood - the poor guy was trapped in a room with our knucklehead president for hours, after all - but the awe requires notice. What, Putin must have thought, is this fool doing running a country?

After that came the much-noted open-mike gaffe, during which George dropped an s-bomb while discussing the Middle East crisis with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The cussing doesn't trouble me - those who know say that John F. Kennedy swore like a sailor whenever he talked shop - but the rest of the scene was like something out of a high school cafeteria. Bush sat there, talking with what looked like seventeen doughnuts stuffed into his gob, while poor Tony tried to discuss matters of life and death.

You have to listen to the audio to get a full grasp of what transpired. It wasn't just the dialogue. It was the tone in Blair's voice. He sounded for all the world like a teacher attempting to explain something to an exceptionally dull student. His tone suggested infinite patience and a touch of true sadness, as if he could not quite believe he was speaking this way to an American president.

"It takes him eight hours to fly home," said George at one point during the open-mike massacre. "Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China." He was, presumably, speaking to someone about Chinese President Hu Jintao's travel requirements, but really now. Huffington Post writer Cenk Uygur captured the unbelievable vapidity of the discourse.

"Russia's big and so is China?" exclaimed Uygur. "This guys sounds like a third grader. Do you know anyone who would have a conversation like this with their neighbor, let alone a business associate, let alone a world leader? Who's proud to know that Russia is big and so is China? If someone is this ignorant, they're usually embarrassed and try not to talk much. But this guy is so dumb he has no idea how dumb he is. This sounds like a conversation you might have with a child, a mentally challenged child. Johnny, do you know how big Russia is? How about China? This would all be unfortunate if George were your dentist, or worse yet, your accountant. But he is the leader of the free world. This man makes life or death decisions every day. If you say you're not scared about that, you're lying."

Then came the pig-roast thing. Newsday described it best: "As Israeli warplanes were preparing an attack on Lebanon Thursday afternoon, and a Lebanese militia was aiming a rocket at the ancient Israeli city of Safed, President George W. Bush was bantering with reporters in Germany about a pig. Bush kept bringing up the roast wild boar he was about to dine on at a banquet that night, even when asked about the swelling crisis in the Middle East, where pig meat is forbidden to religious Jews and Muslims. 'Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed?' a reporter asked. 'And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war?' 'I thought you were going to ask me about the pig,' Bush replied blithely. Then he brought the pig up again - for the fifth time - before giving a long answer that ended with his saying Israel needed to protect itself."

After this came the moment when George tried to give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a back massage while she was speaking to someone at the summit table. He sidled up behind her and just started rubbing. Merkel's reaction was instantaneous and dramatic: she flinched, flailed her arms up and basically waved the president of the United States away from her. Her reaction would have been no different if Bush had dropped a live catfish down the back of her shirt.

What's next? Will George go to the United Nations, sit on Kofi Annan's head, and fart like some bratty brother tormenting a sibling? Will the cameras catch him playing penny hockey during Middle East peace negotiations? You can't say it'll never happen. It reminds me of the scene from "Caddyshack" where the golfers are hiding in the bushes and betting on whether the Smails kid picks his nose. It is not too farfetched a concept to believe that the other G-8 leaders were doing something very similar while watching Bush.

There were, by my count, no less than twenty different moments in the last few days where George brought shame and disgrace upon this country. He did not do this by being too tough, or too soft, or too strident. He did this simply by being himself. His head is an echo chamber where very stupid bats roost. He has the intellect of a bag of rocks. Maybe it's impolite to say this, but it has to be said.

And yeah, Mr. Uygur, it is really, really scary. I wish the man were a drunk. I'd sleep better, and so would the world.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072106J.shtml

http://www.katu.com/news/images/story2006/060721bush_merkel.jpg

The Back Rub

http://thestar.com.my/archives/2006/7/14/worldupdates/2006-07-13T234652Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONP_1_India-259473-2-pic0.jpg

The Pig Roast  



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Other entries in
9 Sep 2008 @ 21:25: The United States Demonic Assault On The World Cannot Stand
13 May 2008 @ 12:36: THE STATE IS NO 'BIG MAMA' BUT AN ENABLER
13 May 2008 @ 09:20: The Superclass
9 Mar 2008 @ 14:01: What Will It Take?
24 Dec 2007 @ 21:41: X-Mas In NOLA
1 Dec 2007 @ 19:13: Art of Mental Warfare
26 Oct 2007 @ 05:20: Thought Crime Law
1 Oct 2007 @ 18:49: The Adoption of the Nazi State, with silence.
16 Sep 2007 @ 09:19: AMERIKAN DEMOCRACY DEAD
14 Sep 2007 @ 06:17: SURRENDER



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