COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, April 20, 2007

Bush not seeing the big picture, again.


Habu said...
Gonzo needs to go.

One of Bushes failures is his blind eye , tin ear to threats to his administration. It's an inability to understand the difference between being loyal to an appointee/friend and his responsibility to move the country forward by using his political capital wisely.
Now what little political capital he has is being eroded by an AG who is more Muppett than AG.
I guess it's too late for him to learn that he doesn't have to ride over the cliff with every screw up in his administration.
Loyalty is a great thing but the President has an entire superpower country to lead and can ill afford to squander his power. Gonzo must go.

Thu Apr 19, 11:10:00 PM EDT


29 comments:

  1. Loyalty is a Bush family fetish.

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  2. Totally.
    To his REAL friends.
    To all us conservatives who he SAID were his friends,
    not so much.

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  3. JEEZE, LOUISE!

    Asian-Americans concerned by rush to focus on race

    RICHMOND, Va. — Before his age, his hometown or his name, America learned one thing about the Virginia Tech shooter — he was Asian. That characterization has bristled activists who say the swift focus on ethnicity shows decades-old suspicions of Asian-Americans linger.
    The Korean community joins America in mourning the deaths of 32 students and teachers at the Blacksburg campus. But activists see the identification of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui as shaded to emphasize that he was South Korean — as if his 15 years living in the United States didn't count — and the rush to describe him by race, not by his physical features the way a white suspect might have been.

    "When I heard that the suspect was Asian, I was just like, I know what's going to happen," said Tamara Nopper, a Korean-American advocate who teaches courses on race at Temple University in Philadelphia. "For a while, all they had was 'It's an Asian man, it's an Asian man."'
    ---
    BECAUSE IT'S ALL THEY HAD!!!

    Advocates and Activists: Dontcha Love 'em.

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  4. "Easily Bristled,"
    Like Allen.

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  5. "who teaches courses on race at Temple University in Philadelphia. "

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  6. That's a subject and course of study that will make you wise and wealthy and a hit at any social event:
    Homeys for honkies 101

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  7. Maybe Gonzales Won't Recall His Painful Day on the Hill

    Alberto Gonzales's tenure as attorney general was pronounced dead at 3:02 p.m. yesterday by Tom Coburn, M.D.

    The good doctor, who also happens to be a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made this clinical judgment after watching Gonzales suffer through four hours of painful testimony. The Oklahoman listed the cause of death as management failure and other complications of the Justice Department's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

    "It was handled incompetently. The communication was atrocious," Coburn told the beleaguered attorney general. "You ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered, and I believe that the best way to put this behind us is your resignation."

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  8. Even habu is coming around.

    I think it was the White House site concerning the Religion of Peace, but who knows, really, what the each individuals' tipping point is.

    Each of US reach it, eventually, in regards Mr Bush.

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  9. 71 times, the AG could "not recall" what had occurred.
    His staffer needs to "Take the Fifth".

    A sad day, to say the least.

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  10. "America appreciates and celebrates the traditions of Islam."
    ---
    Right On!
    And those of Ted Kennedy Too, while we're at it.

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  11. "I've made it clear, Madam President, that the war against terrorism is not a war against Muslims, nor is it a war against Arabs. It's a war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people."
    Remarks by President George W. Bush and President Megawati of Indonesia
    The Oval Office, Washington, D.C.
    September 19, 2001


    Mr Bush is at War with Ismail Axe.

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  12. Rufus,
    Could we Clone President Megawati and hook them up to the grid for some safe renewable Bioelectricity?
    Peaceful use of the ROP.

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  13. Rice on The Right Tracks
    By David Ignatius

    Give Peace a Chance, that's all they are saying.

    Following the Dr Kissingers' advise, Ignatius claims we are.
    He thinks it a "good thing".

    The Sauds are still winning.

    Jaw, Jaw better than War, War.

    Excepting that for 150,000 US GIs it's police, police.

    Iraq for Iraqis, sooner the better.

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  14. Hokies hope to come back from loss to Georgia in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.

    The Chick-fil-A Bowl, formerly called the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, and before that simply (and perhaps more familiarly) called the Peach Bowl, is an annual college football bowl game played in Atlanta, Georgia since December, 1968.
    News to this West-Coaster!

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  15. Alberto Gonzales’s Disastrous Day
    The attorney general bombs before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    By Byron York

    Judging by his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, there are three questions about the U.S. attorneys mess that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants answered: What did I know? When did I know it? And why did I fire those U.S. attorneys?

    As the day dragged on, it became clear — painfully clear to anyone who supports Gonzales — that the attorney general didn’t know the answers. Much of the time, he explained, he didn’t really know much at all — he was just doing what his senior staff recommended he do.


    The country deserves better

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  16. Hey Doug, I had a mutt named Brett, a Brittany
    Spanial, a long time ago. Poor guy, fell in a sewer when the city street crew left a manhole cover off. Spent 28 days down there, before they happened to come by again and hear him yelp. Lost a lot of weight and smelled like the dickens, but survived!

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  17. desert rat said...

    "Even habu is coming around.

    I think it was the White House site concerning the Religion of Peace, but who knows, really, what the each individuals' tipping point is."

    That was my impression as well, that it was the citing of the Bush speech. It is encouraging that folks minds can be changed through discussion though its a mixed blessing in this case - xenophobia about Islam.

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  18. well, ash, there is a mighty debate with regards Islam, the Mohammedans and the scope of the War.

    habu takes the position, advocated by Bernard Lewis, that it is Islam itself that is the core of the problem. That the much heralded "Islamic Reformation" is under way and exemplified by Osama and his ilk. That there are few "moderates" in the mix.

    It seems to me that, as in Iraq, the "moderates" will not stand up to these new Reformists. Rather than fight for a moderate Iraq, they flee. As exemplified by the 2.25 milion Iraqis that have already fled Iraq.

    I am of the opinion that the Sauds are the true threat to US, that wahabbist doctrine, financed by the Sauds, is the greatest enemy of liberal civilization in the world today.
    That they have managed to make Iran the scapegoat of 9-11-01 is just an indication of their propaganda machine and it's superb abilities.

    If the War is Iraq is worth fighting, it's worth winning. How winning is defined is again, core to the discussion.
    habu's definition of winning will not be fulfilled on our current course. The enemy will not be beat on the field of battle, we refuse to meet them there. As the jihadi a fighting a fifth generation war, while we still fight the third, and debate the tactics required for the fourth.

    Would it be better to allow the Caliphate to form, so our style of warfare can be employeed?

    If US efforts over the past four years in Iraq have not been totally wasted, the Iraqi can handle aQ on their own, with limited help from US. This strategy has only begun to be attempted, letting Iraqi police Iraq. Those efforts should be expanded and reinforced, politically as well as with a limited number of US boots on the ground.

    A long term committment would be required, the US and Iraq should recongnize and formalize it, the sooner the better, for all concerned.

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  19. I'm not convinced the Iranian scapegoating is a function of Saud propaganda but rather a reflection of perceived political imperatives at home.

    I also don't think we are at a great risk of the Caliphate being formed in in the near term. I agree that we should look for ways to empower the moderates of the Islamic faith. Our present course of action does not seem to be meeting with much success toward that goal.

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  20. There will be no reform in the mindset of islamers until they experience a serious cataclysm. That's just human psychology. In the case of islamic propagandizers like Ash, that would include the inability to air their pedantic pro islamist scrit for fear of serious bodily harm and death. In the case of the more militant Islamers, it would include the removal of large tracks of territory from their control, removal of "holy" sites/cities with their populations, and a total economic, technological, political, and humanitarian embargo. Can these things be accomplished? I think they certainly can. And as soon as a viable economic alternative to oil emerges, they certainly will and should.

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  21. Since 2+ million Iraqi's have used shanks mare to boogie out of town tell me this.

    Why isn't it possible to cordone off a quarter of the city. Leflets fly warning of the coming destruction and then level that area..start where the real bad guys live. Hopefully they won't leave and will die in the air and arty barrage.
    Then the remainder would know ere no longer fucking around which is what we've been doing.
    I was in the ME in the 70's and know that Arabs respect overt power they can see with their own eyes. Anticeptic warfare doesn't scare them one bit, but bombing the shit out of them would cause them to cower. Why do you thing they are so fixated on using the knife to cut the heads off their victims..it's part of the psychological terror they want to inculcate in their enemies.

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  22. Habu,

    Unfortunately, you're one of few that understands the arab psyche.

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  23. If the experiment in Iraq fails and the "moderates" continue to shelter the militant islamers, then not even saudi oil money and their corruption of our politicians is going save them in the next round of this war.

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  24. habu,

    Did you read that Washington Institute for Near East Policy paper we discussed a few weeks back?

    http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC04.php?CID=267

    One thing that struck me about 'the Arab's' respect for power was in the description of the handing out of jobs in the south. A person with 'power' could supply a job to a person so they were a bit pissed when they were told to show up to apply for a job and they didn't get it but rather had to stand in line with 2500 people to apply for 500 available jobs. I think the 'respect for power' meme needs to encompass more then the power to destroy.

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  25. Have the NORKS disabled their nuke site yet? I know we unfroze some cash for them. Maybe they're buying some stuff from the leftovers of AQ Kahn's network.

    Diplomacy. It be working.

    As for Gonzo - meh. His Justice Dept. jails Border Patrol agents for shooting aliens smuggling bales of Mexican dirt-weed into the country.

    I'd be happy to see his sorry ass go...

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