Author Topic: The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread  (Read 260206 times)

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
Re: Collective Short Term Memory
« Reply #165 on: July 21, 2006, 10:21:18 AM »
Quote from: "princessofcairo"
Quote from: "mshray"
Quote from: "ggould"
sometimes it seems like Bush is brilliantly executing a phenomenal misdirection play.  Everyday seems to bring some new, incredibly lame event, which takes the focus off of the day before's incredible lame event.  The public is dazzled by each new day, and loses track of all the individual crimes being committed.

Oy!



As if to prove your point...have any of you seen THIS yet!?!?!  Bush sneaks up on German Chancellor Andrea Merkel at the recent G8 summit & gives her an unsolicited backrub.



see here for more:http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20060718_groper_in_chief/


dude. if there's one thing i've learned being a wannabe euro citizen: never touch the germans without their consent!


Jon Stewart said "if that had been Clinton, her bra would've come off. I'm just sayin'..."
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

Gazoo

  • The Core
  • Transcendent Typist
  • *****
  • Posts: 15259
    • View Profile
Re: heard on Ed Shultz show
« Reply #166 on: July 22, 2006, 10:33:18 AM »
Quote from: "Gazoo"
Quote from: "ggould"
Heard about it yesterday, and last night of course on the Daily Show, but Ed's point was the profanity was no big deal, compared to Bush's actual intentt that somehow Kofi Annan could just pickup the phone and make it all go away!  What a doofus!

Speaking of which, it bears noting that if Bush wanted Kofi, and the U.N., to be at all effectual, perhaps he shouldn't have appointed to it an "ambassador" who's openly hostile toward them.  I am genuinely surprised that John Bolton didn't terminate his, and the U.S.'s, involvement with the U.N. months ago.


Moving further with this point, here's the NY Times' assessment:

Bolton's Ways Foil Goals, U.N. Envoys Say

Bolton’s Ways Foil Goals, U.N. Envoys Say

By WARREN HOGE
Published: July 23, 2006

UNITED NATIONS, July 22 — In recent months, as one international crisis followed another, John R. Bolton has fulfilled the role of the United Nations’ most influential ambassador at full strength, firmly articulating the position of the United States government regarding Iran, North Korea and the Middle East.

His performance won over at least one crucial critic, Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio. Mr. Voinovich’s opposition a year ago forced Mr. Bolton to take the job as a presidential recess appointment, an arrangement that expires at the end of this Congress in January.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing this Thursday on Mr. Bolton’s renomination, and a floor vote could come in September. Mr. Voinovich said he would vote for Mr. Bolton this time.

The Bush administration is not popular at the United Nations, where it is often perceived as disdainful of diplomacy, and its policies as heedless of the effects on others and single-minded in the willful assertion of American interests. By extension, then, many diplomats say they see Mr. Bolton as a stand-in for the arrogance of the administration itself.

But diplomats focus particularly on an area with less evidence of instructions from Washington and more of Mr. Bolton’s personal touch, the mission that he has described as his priority: overhauling the institution’s discredited management. Envoys say he has in fact endangered that effort by alienating traditional allies. They say he combatively asserts American leadership, contests procedures at the mannerly, rules-bound United Nations and then shrugs off the organization when it does not follow his lead.

Six ambassadors separately offered similar accounts of an incident in June that they said captured the situation. All were from nations in Europe, the Pacific and Latin America that consider themselves close allies of the United States, and they asked to speak anonymously in commenting on a fellow envoy.

Mr. Bolton that day burst into a packed committee hall, produced a cordless microphone and began to lecture envoys from developing nations about their weakening of a proposal to tighten management of the United Nations, his chief goal.

Gaveled to silence, he threw up his hands and said, “Well, so much for trying something different.”

It was not merely rude, the ambassadors said. One recalled that moments later, his BlackBerry flashed a message from another envoy working on management change. “He just busted us apart,” it read.

Three weeks later, on June 30, the 191-member General Assembly upended Mr. Bolton’s strategy to force change, lifting a six-month budget cap that he engineered without agreeing to significant management improvements. Dumisani Kumalo, South African ambassador and the leader of the Group of 77, which represents 132 developing nations, said Mr. Bolton’s “putting on budget caps and being very contentious” had increased his group’s resistance.

The envoys will not, of course, have any say about whether Mr. Bolton receives the full appointment to the United Nations. But their concerns over his methods extend to issues that the senators will undoubtedly have to weigh: his ability to build coalitions and reach consensus.

Mr. Bolton, whose knowledge of the United Nations is deep from his past service as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, said he did not believe his manner was confrontational. “It’s not a question of personal style so much as it is a way of articulating a position that puts American interests in the best light,” he said. “And I think in some cases people are unfamiliar with that, but I don’t think that’s confrontational. I think that’s a matter of clarity.”

In particular, he said, in the June episode, he had been simply trying to provoke honest debate.

“I said to myself, maybe there’s a way to do something a little unusual here,” he said. “I know it didn’t work, but I think that’s part of what we have to do to shake things up here, to try to do something a little different, a little creative, to try to talk back and forth and engage in a colloquy as if we were on the floor of a parliament.”

He has plenty of backers who remain convinced that only that kind of tough presence can alter the institution. Perhaps his strongest and longest standing supporter is Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is a leading critic of the way the United Nations functions.

“What John offers is what the U.S. needs at the U.N. today,” he said in an interview. “John is the right kind of change agent in a universe that is resistant to change. In order to get reform done, you’re going to have to push, you have to be assertive.”

Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said, “He has done an extraordinary job representing the U.S. during what has turned out to be an extraordinary time at the U.N., and Secretary Rice thinks he’s doing a terrific job.”

But over the past month, more than 30 ambassadors consulted in the preparation of this article who share the United States’ goal of changing United Nations management practices expressed misgivings over Mr. Bolton’s leadership.

Representative Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on an international relations subcommittee that focuses on the United Nations, said that in a visit here last month he had encountered “frustration and resentment over the U.S. performance at the U.N.”

And outside experts also expressed concerns.

“I actually agree with Bolton on what has to be done at the U.N., but his confrontational tactics have been very dysfunctional for the U.S. purpose,” said Edward C. Luck, a professor of international affairs at Columbia who has followed the United Nations for three decades. “To be successful at the U.N., you have to build coalitions, and if you take unilateral action the way Bolton has, you’re isolated, and if you’re isolated, you can’t achieve much.”

William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Association of the United States, an independent support group, said, “There clearly are occasions when you have to put your foot down, but if you put your foot down every day, it unravels any diplomatic assets you have.”

Asked about the allied ambassadors’ broad criticisms, Mr. Bolton said, “What I object to as a matter of tactics is compromising with ourselves before we compromise with our opponents, and by compromising with ourselves, I mean compromising with our friends, too.”

Mr. Bolton came to the United Nations on Aug. 2 last year after a bruising battle in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Democrats on the committee cited accusations that he bullied subordinates, shaped intelligence reports to reflect his policy views and tried to engineer the removal of a C.I.A. official who disagreed with him. They also noted scornful references he had made about the United Nations like his comment that 10 floors of the Secretariat building could be lopped off without being missed.

He immediately stood out from the silken diplomatic crowd with a white shaving-brush mustache, the bouncy walk of a fighter entering the ring and a blunt sense of humor that can veer abruptly from lighthearted to cutting.

In the months after his arrival, ambassadors said that despite his history of putdowns of the United Nations, they were impressed by his work ethic and knowledge of his brief and thought they could collaborate with him.

Now the reaction is different. “My initial feeling was, let’s see if we can work with him, and I have done some things to push for consensus on issues that were not easy for my country,” said an ambassador with close ties to the Bush administration.

“But all he gives us in return is, ‘It doesn’t matter, whatever you do is insufficient,’ ” he said. “He’s lost me as an ally now, and that’s what many other ambassadors who consider themselves friends of the U.S. are saying.”

A European envoy said that Mr. Bolton was a difficult ally for his traditionally pro-American group because he often staked out unilateral hard-line positions in the media or Congress and then proved unwilling to compromise in the give and take of negotiations.

In the aftermath of a 170-to-4 vote last spring on creating a Human Rights Council, which the United States opposed, Peter Maurer, the ambassador of Switzerland, characterized the American approach as “intransigent and maximalist.”

“All too often,” he said, “high ambitions are cover-ups for less noble aims, and oriented not at improving the United Nations, but at belittling and weakening it.”

Mr. Bolton’s habit of avoiding any favorable mention of the United Nations while seizing many opportunities to disparage it is so well established that Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, observed to him in a May hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee, “The role of constant scold I’m not sure is the best way to induce change.”

An envoy of a country close to the United States complained that Mr. Bolton often stayed away from meetings, leaving ambassadors in the dark about American positions, then produced 11th-hour amendments and demands for reopening points that had been painfully muscled into consensus.

“We are all like cooks, and the U.S. is sitting on the sidewalk and when we have this platter cooked, the U.S. comes in and says it was the wrong dish, you were cooking chicken and we wanted meat,” said an envoy from a country close to the United States.

On June 30, Mr. Bolton stunned a group of allied ambassadors. As they waited in the office of Jan Eliasson, the president of the General Assembly, to approve a plan to review thousands of outdated and redundant directives, word arrived that Mr. Bolton had cut a side deal to postpone the effort. And he had done so with the three countries viewed as the proposal’s most vocal opponents, Egypt, India and South Africa.

Mr. Bolton explained the incident by saying, “What I was trying to do was sit down with people whose positions diverge the most with the United States and, rather than work through indirection, negotiate directly.”

But an envoy from a country that always votes with the United States said: “That came as very shocking and disappointing to us. We usually work very closely with him, but sometimes, I guess, you get surprised.”
“The choir of children sing their song.  They've practiced all year long.  Ding dong.  Ding dong.  Ding dong.”

princessofcairo

  • The Core
  • Super Scribe
  • *****
  • Posts: 6394
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #167 on: July 24, 2006, 09:18:51 AM »

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #168 on: July 28, 2006, 07:30:48 AM »
PBS fires kid-show host for snarkily adult vid clip from seven years ago! Mark Morford fumes:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/07/28/notes072806.DTL
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #169 on: September 11, 2006, 03:09:08 PM »
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

princessofcairo

  • The Core
  • Super Scribe
  • *****
  • Posts: 6394
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #170 on: September 11, 2006, 03:37:19 PM »
Quote from: "RGMike"
Moby to Dubya: Drop Dead

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/003339.html


why can't moby spell?

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #171 on: September 11, 2006, 09:13:40 PM »
so, does ESPN have to give Phil Angeledes equal time after the big wet kiss of a photo op they gave Ah-nuld during Mon Nite Football? Ah-nuld introducing a hero fireman on the 9/11 anniv. Yeesh.
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #172 on: September 15, 2006, 07:24:32 AM »
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

mshray

  • The Core
  • Transcendent Typist
  • *****
  • Posts: 15129
    • View Profile
You must read this all the way to the end!
« Reply #173 on: September 15, 2006, 09:25:20 AM »
An Alternate 9/11 History
By staying 'humble,' as he promised in 2000, Bush preserved much of the post-9/11 good will abroad.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly peaceful. President Bush's pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in the first tier of American presidents.

As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn't easy, but he kept at it. At the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly executed.

Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide. Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying "humble," as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11 good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.

At home, some aides suggested that Bush simply tell the nation to "go shopping." But the president knew he had a precious opportunity to ask Americans for real sacrifice. He took John McCain's suggestion and pushed through Congress an ambitious national-service program that bolstered communities and helped train citizens as first responders.

Soon Bush put the country on a Manhattan Project crash course to get off oil. He bluntly told Detroit that it was embarrassing that Chinese automakers had better fuel efficiency, he classified SUVs as cars, and he imposed a stiff gas tax with a rebate for the working poor. To pay for it, he abandoned his tax cuts for the wealthy, reminding the country that no president in history had ever cut taxes in the middle of a war. This president would be damned if he was going to put more oil money into the pockets of Middle Eastern hatemongers who had killed nearly 3,000 of our people. To dramatize the point, he drove to his 2002 State of the Union address in a hybrid car. Sales soared.

When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up short. Didn't Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics? Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.

Taking a cue from Lincoln's impatience with his generals, Bush was merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of the FBI couldn't fix the bureau's computers in a year's time to "connect the dots," he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders whose radios didn't communicate. If someone had told him that five years after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have laughed him out of the office.

In 2003, Vice President Cheney advised the president to take out Iraq's Saddam Hussein militarily. But Bush was beginning to understand that his veep, while sounding full of gravitas, was in fact reckless. When it became clear that Saddam posed no imminent threat, Bush resolved to neuter him, Kaddafi style. When the president found, after a little asking around, that the 10-year cost of invading Iraq would be a crushing $1.2 trillion, he opted out of this war of choice.

Five years after that awful September day, even Bush's fiercest critics have learned an important lesson: leadership counts. Imagine if we'd done the opposite of these things. This country—and the world—would be in a heap of trouble.
"Music is the Earth, People are the Flowers, and I am the Hose."

--Carlos Santana, 2010

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #174 on: September 15, 2006, 09:29:03 AM »
that is absolute genius, Mark.
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

Gazoo

  • The Core
  • Transcendent Typist
  • *****
  • Posts: 15259
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #175 on: September 15, 2006, 10:13:45 AM »
Also worth perusing: Niall Ferguson, in last week's Time, speculating on how this all could play out over the next 25 years: (caution: it's LONG)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531303,00.html
“The choir of children sing their song.  They've practiced all year long.  Ding dong.  Ding dong.  Ding dong.”

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #176 on: September 15, 2006, 12:32:41 PM »
very scary but not surprising:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
Re: You must read this all the way to the end!
« Reply #177 on: September 16, 2006, 10:55:40 AM »
Quote from: "mshray"
An Alternate 9/11 History...


So I emailed this to a bunch of people, one of them sent me this from Salon.com:

America: Battered Wife. (An Intervention)

Dear America,

As a friend of the family I can’t sit back and watch you do this to yourself without saying something. Consider this a long distance intervention.

Your man is no good. He treats you like crap, lies to you, abuses you, bullies you, exploits you, takes your money. As a friend I want to tell you that you deserve better. You deserve a person that treats you with respect, cares about your welfare, and your children’s welfare, but that’s not George and it never will be.

Do you tell yourself that he’ll stop, or that it won’t get worse? He won’t ever stop, every insult, injury and death he has caused are a line that once crossed will never be uncrossed. Forget the dream. You will never have the American dream with George. You have to forget about what might have been, what George might have been, and realise that at the end of the day you are what you do, and look at George’s track record.

Notice how he’s alienated all your friends? Who can blame them, they can’t understand why you stay with him when he treats you like shit and embarrasses you in front of everybody. The more his public behaviour overshadows yours, The more doubt creeps over them, they wonder if they knew you as well as they thought they did. You seem to have changed - if you condone his behaviour- and your silence can create the impression that you do. People are more inclined to take things at face value when they feel alienated. Your friends remember the good times you had together, the heroic battles you fought together, all of the intricate interweavings between their families and yours through time and space. Do you even recognise yourself anymore America? He is a drunken, coke-addled loser and he always will be, you should kick him out of your house today before he can destroy any more members of your family, your history, your culture, before he decimates your bank account so irretrievably that China and Saudi Arabia repossess all your stuff.

YOU CAN DO BETTER! You are an amazing country, beautiful, interesting, funny, positively glamorous, you wouldn’t stay single for five minutes, you know that suitors would be competing for your affections and any one of them would be ten times better than George. And how can you stand his god-awful Stepford’s answer to Marie-Antoinette mother, piping up with another casual atrocity every time she opens her mouth.

Because of George and his friends global warming is now upon us - I know what it has cost your family already, combined with George’s complete uselessness and indifference in a crisis. It would probably now be possible for a mathematician to calculate exactly how much of all of our futures we are losing for every minute you stay with that sick,twisted, idiot.

I see you doing what everyone in your position does - you end up looking to the perpetrator for comfort because theres no one else left, and look at how he reacts for Christ’s sake, look at what he did to New Orleans, and you should know that yet again he did it in front of all of your friends, all of us saw nothing happening whilst thousands died, all of us heard Ray Negen and the president of Jefferson Parish (I must heard him 30+ times now and I still cry every time) and all of us heard George’s bloody mother. We have been trying to help and he won’t let us. We are all appalled and aghast, it breaks our hearts to see him hurting you like this, and you not fighting back, you just take it and take it as it slowly spirals down into the pits of hell. What will it take America, will you let him kill you before you’ll kick him out? This is not rhetoric America, he is killing you every day you stay with him. If I had described your relationship with George to you back when you were still with Bill you never would have believed me. He degrades you in little increments, every day he erodes your assets as well as your dignity, your reputation, your legacy and your life America.

All of our TV crews were rescuing survivors as they filmed the devastation because there was nobody else there to help them, all of us saw the victims being treated like some sudden new insurgency. with suspicion and hostility. Those poor people, the heart & soul of New Orleans, the very people whose culture and history made New Orleans beloved around the world, He just left your brothers and sisters to die. Can you really continue in your relationship with George after this? There is a degree at which cognitive dissonance becomes outright delusion. He is a maniac, he is destroying your life, please, please leave him, just leave him, only you have the power to make it stop.

He is selling out your family business, if you let him continue like this how are you going to live? How are you going to feed your children, what happens if you get ill? Everything he has ever touched has turned to shit, he puts any idiot that’ll kiss his ass into positions of power and New Orleans is the result. Kick him out America! Do it today! I know it feels like you would be leaping into a void, but I promise you, you will be leaping out of one. Your friends will come back as soon as they see you are back to your old self, they really miss you. I know that less than 36% of your heart is still in it. Go with the 67% of you, that 36% is just that vestigial, primitive part of the brain that clings to the familiar no matter how badly the familiar sucks.

It all comes down to you, America. I know no-one likes other people passing comment on their relationships but this is an extreme situation. You are in very real danger, he is hurting you everyday and he is hurting us, your friends as well. But only you can make it stop. We are all rooting for you, although we don’t get to talk to you very often anymore, because he cuts us off from you. We are on your side, we will all be over the moon the day you finally kick him out. You know he really should be thrown in jail for the things he has done to you. Him and all of his gangster friends.

Please, please, do it America, you know I am right. If not for yourself then do it for your brothers and sisters and children. Do it before he kills any more of your family or anyone else’s. We are all really worried for your welfare.

Your friend,

Gail
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #178 on: September 26, 2006, 09:05:48 AM »
Been hearing those commercials on KBCO for this guy Bill Winter, one of those Democratic military vets who's running for Congress:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/31/94744/2953

worth a read -- the Repugnican he's running against is a real asshole.
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round

RGMike

  • The Core
  • Eight Miles High
  • *****
  • Posts: 79493
    • View Profile
The Rant & Vent about the Right Wing thread
« Reply #179 on: September 27, 2006, 08:01:09 AM »
as you may have heard, Ah-nuld has a double-digit lead over Angelides:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/27/MNGC4LDHSB1.DTL

As a registered Dem, I am embarrassed and disgusted at the godawful campaign we are running. A year ago Ah-nuld's approval ratings were in the toilet. Now he can seemingly do no wrong. Angelides is a tired hack -- if your only strategy is to repeatedly show clips of Ah-nuld campaigning for Dubya 2 years ago... you are desperate and clueless.  Westly would've been a far better candidate IMHO.  Sad, sad, sad.
You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round