For the sake of balance ...

[rollhead]

I know that everyone here thinks that I am unfairly biased against Republicans, but I do acknowledge that the Democrats have made HUGE errors over the past several years .... not the least of which was the Howard Dean "Byahh" scandal, otherwise known as "Byahgate."

[Gentle Giant]

And we may as well acknowledge that John Kerry has no future as a stand-up comedian.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

And we may as well acknowledge that John Kerry has no future as a stand-up comedian.

On the other hand, President Bush's "No WMDs here, or here, or here..." video got big laughs.
Go figure.

[rollhead]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

And we may as well acknowledge that John Kerry has no future as a stand-up comedian.

I can't wait for the Chappelle video on the Kerry joke.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by patricia

On the other hand, President Bush's "No WMDs here, or here, or here..." video got big laughs.
Go figure.

“If the issue is whether or not John Kerry can tell a joke and tell it well," Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, who campaigned for Mr. Kerry in 2004, said in an interview with Radio Iowa, “I could have told you the answer to that question was no a week ago.”

[Dr Dave]

And as long as we're on the subject of who said or meant what, there's this:

November 3, 2006
The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

"George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men — to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that?

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld’s response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you’ve got — get over it.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military histories — from “Cobra II” to “Fiasco” to “State of Denial” — all of which contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we’ve been making it up — and paying the price — ever since.

And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people they’re fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we’re addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing — demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation — to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases.

Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.

And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong this time.

Let Karl know that you’re not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.

Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.

It means we’re as stupid as Karl thinks we are.

I, for one, don’t think we’re that stupid. Next Tuesday we’ll see."

-30-

[Sandi22]

Politicians have played to our stupidity if not our basest instincts for eons. It's just how they play the game, but they never knew the internet, mass electronic communications, radio and television were going to be surrounding them as it now does. Just look at the speed with which we learn of things today. Now, they themselves are trying to manipulate and control the press as never before, they're even flooding UTube with their own propaganda and spin. I would hope we, for the most part, will take the time to see through what it is they're doing. Lets hope that too many don't fall for it as they would hope.

I like to believe there are people out there who have a better dream for our country, and the world for that matter, than what this administration has shoved at us mercilessly. If change isn't in the works, if this administration and their policies aren't stopped, then pity us as a country, as a benevolent world leader. We are on the way out.

[Dennis Gonzalez]

Originally Posted by rollhead

I know that everyone here thinks that I am unfairly biased against Republicans...

There's no such thing as an unfair bias against Republicans, Rolly.

[Dennis Gonzalez]

Originally Posted by Sandi22

If change isn't in the works, if this administration and their policies aren't stopped, then pity us as a country, as a benevolent world leader. We are on the way out.

I've stated this before here, but the past few times I've played in Portugal, people who lived through the 1974 Portuguese revolt against the fascist government have told me to be strong and to speak out against the fascists in power in our country, and to hope for an overthrow because they are really worried about us as a nation.

The things I was expressing here at the outset of the Iraq war, when I was called naive (later denied by those who called me that) for being against this war, are now being openly embraced by those who were so hawkish at the beginning. I have hope in my heart because of these "awakenings" by my conservative colleagues here, and a hope that next week will be the long overdue beginnings of a turnaround.

[Sandi22]

Originally Posted by Dennis Gonzalez

I've stated this before here, but the past few times I've played in Portugal, people who lived through the 1974 Portuguese revolt against the fascist government have told me to be strong and to speak out against the fascists in power in our country, and to hope for an overthrow because they are really worried about us as a nation.

The things I was expressing here at the outset of the Iraq war, when I was called naive (later denied by those who called me that) for being against this war, are now being openly embraced by those who were so hawkish at the beginning. I have hope in my heart because of these "awakenings" by my conservative colleagues here, and a hope that next week will be the long overdue beginnings of a turnaround.

I post on AAJ as well and have had numerous complaints leveled against what I post, and me, trying to have me thrown off the board. It hasn't always been pretty and still at times it gets a bit nasty.

The funniest time was when I related a story about how Navy fighter jets based in Klamath Falls Oregon were buzzing people at low altitudes and even firing off their guns, causing two different sets of horseback riders to be injured. In both separate incidents they were elderly, and the noise, which was deafening, caused their horses to spook, to panic, run sideways, buck and throw them off, and in one instance fall on them on rocks, and break the ladies back, & her husbands, leg, ribs, etc. I was riduculed and made fun of like you can't believe, not one word I had posted about it was believed by anyone. Not one. Paul Harvey had interviewed the couple that had to be flown out of the Pacific Coast Trail accident, in Black Hawk choppers. That was in the Cascade Mountain Range, and they were flown out with such severe injuries their lives have been changed forever the fellow who was injured has told me. Outdoor Idaho carried their story as well, so there are records of it, should anyone have the time or inclination to check it all out.

The other couple we had seen less than a minute before the jet came over a steep low rise just over our head and did whatever he did to make the plane roar like you can't imagine, it startled the daylights out of us, it was amazing how loud it was, and he was flying so low we could see his face, not much higher than a telephone pole. So it was terribly low. We drove on, & hadn't gone a half a mile, when we heard the gunfire from his cannons. We were terribly upset about it, thinking it was terrible that the public handn't been notified about the war game he was conducting, as the National Guard held those in the general area quite often or had been. We had just seen the man and the woman and we had waved to one another. Those people were bucked off and injured as well. I can't find out who they were though without going on a library search. Anyway, they were so hurt and injured, & both the man and the women riders were elderly as well. They tried to get back to the town of Prineville Oregon without being spotted, twenty miles or so, not sure just how far, hiding everytime they heard a sound which might have been a plane, ducking behind bushes, hiding under trees, scared out of their wits, all the while nursing their broken bones and other injuries. They thought they were living a nightmare. It took them hours and hours.

So, besides being me come down on for being against this administration, it's war, and all of their criminal and stupid policies, other members on AAJ came down on me for relating those two incidents like you can't believe. Openly and privately trying to get me bounced; 86'd from the site. Too funny really.

I've gone through the same thing as you, never having liked what has happened and what is going on now as we sit here. It's caused some hard feelings with some people, however, it's hard not to keep saying "I told you so." Even though there's no joy in it, as it is such a serious situation we're all in. This is what I don't like, the fact that they've allowed this administration to do what it is they've done and what it is they're doing; making things worse for us as well. We're in this mess right along with the ones who believed GW was a god send.

[Ron Thorne]

This administration wins the award for unparalleled hypocrisy.



And, its ego/talent ratio isn't exactly stellar, either.

[Ron Thorne]

For the sake of balance, Kerry is a Doofus with a capital "D".

[Scott Dolan]

What a coincidence!

I consider you to be something with a capital "D" as well!

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

What a coincidence!

I consider you to be something with a capital "D" as well!

Two things, actually.

Yep, I'm a Dad and Drummer, alright!