(no subject)

[theweaselking]

New American nuclear policy: If the President thinks there might be nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in an area, NUKE IT PRE-EMPTIVELY.

I'll repeat that again. IF THE PRESIDENT *THINKS* THERE *MIGHT* BE WMD.

And since you don't have a President, that means Bush will be the one doing the "thinking" and the ordering of nukes.

The same guy who said there were WMDs in Iraq, and you needed to go to war because of a real, imminent threat of them being used.

The way things are going? You're fucked, USA. It's time to get rid of Chimpzilla before he nukes Iran and North Korea, and North Korea, China, and Russia nuke you *and take actual, functioning countries with you*.

Spreading democracy starts at home, you victims of the third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship.

Comments

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

The vast majority of us down here still respect and follow the law. If the rule of law breaks down, nothing else can be saved. Bush is done in 2 years. If things keep going like they are, he's done after the midterms since he'll have lost congress. The pendulum will swing back the other way, it always does.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I guess those of us in the rest of the world have to hope things stay together for those two years, then.

-- Steve's joked about digging a bunker before. Now it doesn't seem as funny.

[toku666.livejournal.com]

"third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship"

Christ on a crutch, John. I have to wonder to myself if you were going on like this in, say, 1997.

Honestly, because of the way our political system works, aside from the war (which is obviously major) the shape we were in was not that different from where we are now.

I'm glad the rest of the world likes big fat philandering hillbillies, but was he that much better of a president? Not enough better, in my estimation.

jsbowden is right, the pendulum will swing. I had plenty of friends who were simply SUICIDAL the second week of November of 1992. I'm pretty sure most of them voted Kerry, actually, but that's beside the point. The world didn't end then, it's not going to now. We're in the soup, thick and deep, but the threads are starting to unravel and the veil is finally starting to lift and THIRTY-SIX PERCENT, man! The irony being that Brown's firing is the first thing that has even come close to an admission of wrong-doing on the part of this administration, and that will shake up at least part of those stalwart 36%.

I'm just sayin'. I usually agree with you, but "third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship..." Goddam.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

I see how people can think that the system in the US isn't all that democratic; it isn't. We don't have instant run-off voting and we don't have negative referendum, two features which I think are essential for a maximally democratic republic.

[toku666.livejournal.com]

I agree with that fully and certainly never take issue with anybody that points the fact out.

Instant run-off, I believe, would work amazingly well here. Hell, doesn't American Idol use it? I'm copping ignorance on that one, but when it comes to American Idol, I'm pretty sure I can say that I'm proud to cop ignorance. ;)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> I have to wonder to myself if you were going on like this in, say, 1997.

Why would I have? In 1997, you had non-fraudulent elections for a non-theocrat who believed that Americans had rights, that leaving thousands of poor Americans to die was a *bad* thing, that a huge national debt to make tax cuts for himself and his friends was not the best thing for the country, and who didn't, to the best of my knowledge, completely bungle disaster relief.

Oh, and who got blow jobs from his interns. Evidently with the permission or consent of his wife. And with the consent of the intern. Who gives a shit?

> was he that much better of a president? Not enough better, in my estimation.

Try me. Find the worst things you hate about Clinton, or Bush Senior, or Carter, or even Reagan and Ford and Nixon, and I'll find you worse things from the Chimp.

> "third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship..."

When your poor start having health care and education, like they do in all *civilised* countries, and they stop having a "fend for yourself" disaster management plan, you'll have a claim to not be third-world.

When you stop having your "leaders" make and veto laws based on religion, enforce law selectively based on religion, when they stop rewriting the facts because they don't agree with their religion, and when they stop teaching religion in schools as fact, then you'll have a claim to not being theocratic.

When you stop imprisoning and torturing your own citizens without trial or evidence, and when you restore basic civil liberties you'll have a claim to not being a banana republic.

When you have actual elections without blatant signs of fraud and the "winners" of the election immediately stamping out any hope of investigation, you can drop the "dictatorship" part of it.

These aren't large requests. They're not complicated requests. They are, in fact, the bare minimum required for a civilised country - and yet, the USA isn't doing any of them.

[toku666.livejournal.com]

Then wait two years.

Honestly, I think it's fine when people screed over Bush. I think it's a little short-sighted, but you also address the larger problems, so that's certainly no criticism of your technique or candor.

Things I dislike/d about Clinton? Immaterial. My point is that Clinton and Bush and then Clinton and Dole were the only ones who had a chance of winning. That isn't right, or in any way demonstrative of a true democratic process, regardless of maguffins like the Electoral College. You don't understand how much I hated voting for Gore and Kerry, but I did it, and I sure as hell stand by it now. But that doesn't change the fact that the functional differences between Bush and his cronies making themselves lots of money and Kerry and his cronies making themselves lots of money is slim.

Essentially, I suppose I am calling you out on extremism. It's certainly very easy to cull these things from daily media and pass them on, and, in fact, it is something I would call a service for which I am quite grateful. However, remember what Nietzsche said about the abyss, and take a hard look at the amount of lines you've spent railing against what is, I agree, a horrendous situation and a horrendous group of people presiding over it, and remember that all that shit is going to hose off.

This really isn't any different than any other period in our history where fear gives way to increased use of and show of power by our government that then ushers in periods of supposed greater freedom and enlightenment. "Every Year Is Worse" is something that has been said since several thousand years BCE, but for all of our adorable viral qualities we're still here and the sun hasn't gone black yet.

And just for the sake of argument, our poor didn't have health care and education under Clinton, the same people were trying to make laws the same way under Clinton, our own citizens were being imprisoned and tortured, and I'm fairly certain that votes were bought and bartered and other frauds masterminded long before Shrub showed up. Hell, what's the real important difference between Carville and Rove? I'd say "Carville is better at not getting caught."

So was Kennedy a dictator? No, seriously, John. Privileged scion of a family reknown for old money ways whose forebears had dealings with Nazis and who won an election that could possibly have gone differently under a recount. Pre-emptive military actions probably only curtailed by nuclear threat. One instance of said nuclear threat only becoming as serious as it was because the President decided to take the weekend off... Sound familiar?

I realize it may sound as if I'm arguing "all politicians are corrupt, so it's okay that politicians are corrupt," but that's not it at all.

I think I just feel like you're wasting a lot of heat to only melt the top ten feet of the mile-high iceberg.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's short sighted at all. Saddly the president has enough power to totally destroy america in the short time he's in office. Bush has been doing vast damage to our rights, our laws, and the forward momentum that we had been experiencing in most progressive ways (evolution, gay rights, women's rights, the list goes on). We've been set back at least ten years in all those areas and more in some. Not to mention the fact that we are more hopelessly in debt than we ever have been and the wealthiest people in this country got a tax cut to help us cover that debt.

This is an obvious example of the "classic" republican phillosophy (which until now has been mildly amusing and sort of an off the cuf joke but anymore is a fact). Screw up as much stuff as you can real fast in office. the american people won't notice how screwed they are till there's a democrat in office and then you'll be able to take back the white house later on.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Yes, but is he the only president to do most of those?

[toku666.livejournal.com]

Certainly not, and that's what I'm driving at. There seems to be a predominant theme of "but he's the worst" coming from John, and I can't say that I disagree, but I don't actually care anymore. I don't want second worst or third worst, I want good. I wanted to vote for Nader in 2000 and 2004, but vote-swapping is a fucking joke so I pulled the lever for two huge losers. It is unacceptable for voting for the highest office in the land to amount to two shitty fan-clubs to have a middle-school bike-rack rumble every four years that is entirely based on personality.

And maybe that's another reason I took issue with John's phrasing: I'm tired and sick to death of our country's (and, to a certain extent, the world's) insistence on politics via personality. Nobody is ever truly judged on merit or accomplishment anymore (otherwise we'd have a president named McCain right now, and wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place) but instead on how they come across, what they believe, or even worse, what they "feel." Too many people are content with the fact that the President is "determined" and "steadfast" and all that other bullshit that HAS NO LOGICAL CONNECTION TO HOW WELL A PERSON MAKES DECISIONS.

It didn't start with Kennedy, but that was a big, bad case of it, and Reagan was certainly a horribly apt example of it as well. Shit, he was literally a figurehead for at least half of his presidency. If we live in a country that elects a man to the presidency because he reminded enough people of their doddering old grandfather then we're fucked before the starting shot.

Bush II is a prime example, mainly due to the disgusting Rovian strategems that are a direct effect of politics by personality. If you don't win politics through personality, ad hominems have much less effect.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> that doesn't change the fact that the functional differences between Bush
> and his cronies making themselves lots of money and Kerry and his cronies
> making themselves lots of money is slim

I believe it is. You've got record spending combined with low taxes to creat unprecedented debt, that will take *generations* to repay at ruinous interest. Not even Reagan did that kind of damage. You've got, again, historic loss of rights, protection for companies over the individual, and brain-numbingly obvious corruption in your vote-tallying system.

> all that shit is going to hose off.

That's the problem. For a whole lot of people, it's *not* going to hose off. They're dead. They're in debt up to their eyeballs and can never get free. Let's give him a pass on September 11th - sure, he ignored blatant and explicit warnings, but let's assume Gore would have ignored them, too - so that's 3000 dead Americans that AREN'T on the butcher's bill, but he's holding the bag for 2000 Americans and nobody knows how many Iraqis in Iraq. He's directly responsible for the incompetence and lackluster response to the flooding of New Orleans, and all the people there who died because the government didn't send the help they promised and prevented others from sending it, and prevented the people from getting out of the city.

And now, they're talking about pre-emptive nuclear strikes on countries in the same situation as Iraq - Bush doesn't like them personally and is completely ignoring any and all evidence that they *are* cooperating and that they *don't* have WMDs.

That shit does not wash off. You have an unusual situation: an administration doing permanent damage and damage that will take decades to fix at a minimum - and even if you disagere with me and think that this isn't worse than Reagan or McCarthy, *those* ones still took decades to recover from, and you haven't managed it fully yet.

(And, of course, again: As long as your election system is corrupt, built specifically to facilitate fraud, conceal the correct results so fraud cannot be reversed, and shows blatantly fraudulent results, you *can't* wash that shit off.)

[toku666.livejournal.com]

See, here again, we now agree. Besides, I had given an "Iraq situation aside" caveat, despite that not being something that should really be put aside in this sort of discussion.

However, we are also "still recovering" from military cutbacks and shrinkages from the late '80s and '90s (yes, Bush the First had some hand in all of that, so I'm not just pointing the finger at Clinton) in a very noticeable way.

And I still think that shit will, in fact, wash off. We'll have to wait and see if the re-wording of the nuclear response policies even take hold.

Finally, it's not even so much that the election system does all of that. It needs to be reworked from the ground up, but that kind of shit tends to only happen after revolutions and wars. We'll see. Hopefully this administration leaves a foul enough taste in enough peoples' mouths that something may get done about the way we vote for presidents in this country.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

the third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship

Hey, we may be a third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship, but we're a third-world theocratic banana republic dictatorship WITH NUKES! So you better watch it, Canada-boy!

Meh.