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George W. Bush Live From Facebook
tekgoblin writes "Facebook has just announced that George W. Bush is going to be present November 29th to answer questions about his new book, Decision Points. The discussion will happen on Facebook Live at 2PM PST."
I'm sure this will be a quiet affair. Well balanced, with well thought out talking points and few interruptions.
Also, could someone ring the nurse for me? The pink elephants have begun playing the banjo again...
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
After adding over $1T to the federal deficit to fund a sham war in Iraq that has cost over 4400 American lives (http://antiwar.com/casualties/) and over 100,000 civilian casualties (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/) -- how do you sleep at night?
I would be more interested in seeing him squirm when asked more controversial questions, like questions about how it felt to lie in a coffin with a ribbon tied around his penis during the Skull and Bones initiation ritual (not joking, this is exactly what happens and has been confirmed by multiple sources)
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
"Was your invasion of Iraq entirely to prove that you could do something your father couldn't, to depose Saddam Hussein?" If the answer to that was in any form affirmative, my follow up would be "At any point after you did so, did you realize that he didn't go that extra 20 miles back in the 90's because he realized what would happen if he did?" That's the one question I'd love to have answered from his administration. I can't imagine that the rest of his administration would put on such a dog and pony show and ruin their own careers to advance such a simplistic goal, but "We need a distraction from the fact that we haven't caught Bin Laden yet," really isn't that much better.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bush on Facebook? I feel like I am a character trapped in an Orwell novel still in its first revision.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Exactly. Because the right never does anything loony, like comparing Obama to Hitler.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Stuff he can be indicted for is already in the mainstream press. He admitted ordering water-boarding of detainees. Water-boarding is inhumane and a form of torture. If the US recognised the authority of the ICC, he'd be in the Hague, not giving Q&A's.
Yes, I do know I've just paraphrased my sig.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Ask for his opinion about Farmville Subsidies.
Can't see this over the Internet, but I assume you've got a teabag tied on your ear and a "LISTEN TO ME" sign in your hand.
Well, I definitely don't; I'm a Buckley conservative. But it's pretty funny to listen to liberals trying to claim the Tea Party is nuts.
The Tea Party was formed out of anger with Bush on a broad but specific issue: excessive government spending, which was then compounded by Obama's actions. And it is far more bipartisan than establishment liberals care to acknowledge.
Bush derangement syndrome started when Bush was a candidate; the NAACP ran an ad in 2000 claiming that electing him would be like dragging James Byrd through the streets of Texas. BDS is most prominent among the truther movements, and of course includes execrable characters like Julian Assange.
There's really nothing to defend about BDS because there aren't really any coherent arguments. It's basically all the things the liberals claim the Tea Party is. I'll take the Tea Partiers, who are merely amiably chaotic, over people the left gets to hang out with any day.
Even without recognizing the authority of the ICC, the US has punished users of waterboarding (both Americans and captured foreign opponents) independently, and some of the legal precedent on the subject actually comes from crackdowns on certain rather dodgy police forces which had stumbled upon this most excellent method of closing cases...
Furthermore Ronald Reagan, practically a saint among the right, was the one who pushed for the US ratification of the UN convention against torture, saying:
"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
Even if we have not the slightest interest in giving the ICC the time of day, we have a legal obligation to prosecute torturers we find on our soil, and in some cases to extradite them to the jurisdictions where their crimes took place, assuming extradition agreements are in place.
We can only assume that Ronald Reagan was actually a soft-on-terror deep-cover liberal...
Only in a complete state of denial could you argue that Bush didn't deserve those slogans. He was a shitty President and did more to harm our country than any terrorist ever could. There's loony folks on both sides, but if someone is ripping on Bush then I wouldn't automatically dump them in that category. Maybe if we'd heeded some of those criticisms our country wouldn't be endlessly mired in war, financially ruined, and globally scorned by people around the world who are not infected with Tea Pary logic.
Everyone I've ever talked to who thinks the Tea Partiers are nuts know absolutely nothing about them and are just parroting the MSM and each other.
Are there nuts among the Tea Partiers? There are nuts in every political movement, but I'd like to see a comparison of the fringe content of any Tea Party Rally with any similar liberal protest or gathering. In comparison, they are probably very tame.
BDS is real and amazing exercise in mouth-foaming bigotry and childish petulance coming from people who otherwise claim to be tolerant. There's nothing wrong with disliking President Bush and what he did, even strongly. That's not only your right, but your duty as a concerned citizen if you feel that way.
What amazes me on a daily basis is the sheer level of mindless, childish, unchecked rage expressed at the man. I would imagine the hooded thugs at Klan rallies would just shakes their heads sadly at one of their own acting the way too many people act regarding President Bush (along with Sarah Palin and a few others targeted by the left for derision and scorn.)
As strongly as people feel about President Obama, and there is as much _strong_ feelings against him as there ever were for President Bush, I've never heard anyone wish physical harm on him. I've never heard of people in the media fantasizing on the airwaves about his assassination or any of the many other reprehensible things that were directed towards Bush, and seemingly accepted as perfectly reasonable by people I would think are above all that.
Disagreement, dislike, protest, and harsh criticism are all legitimate and honorable actions to take in politics, but the unbridled hatred I've seen directed against President Bush (or any politician, or any _person_ for that matter) has no place in civilized society.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Everybody who is disliked by anybody gets compared to Hitler. Get over it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Sorry but you are way off. Just look at the candidates of the Tea Party. It is not just a minority in the Tea Party that is nuts. They let people like Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell represent the party. You don't let yourself represent by a whacko if you are not totally out there too. You cannot argue that the majority is well informed and reasonable if they allow Sarah Palin to be their spokesperson.
I beg your pardon? Waterboarding is not torture? I'm sorry, but by any definition you care to mention being exposed to "simulated drowning" is torture. If you read up on the practice you'll find that it's slightly more serious than someone splashing a bit of water on you. For extra points go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding and become enlightened. Yes, it doesn't involve cutting people's hands off, breaking legs, setting fire to their eyeballs or anything of a more graphical nature. However, calling it "not torture" is ignorant at best.
I beg to differ. There were a lot of people on the loony right (and the unloony right) who attacked Bush.
And regarding the current President, I find the scariest things about him are not what the loony right charges, but the things that are unquestionably true but ignored, like his 20 years with a racist "church", his unprecedented efforts to suppress his own paper trail, the associations and politics of many of the "czars" and other advisors he surrounds himself with. The list goes on.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Funny, waterboarding is the only form of "torture" that Marines do to each other on weekends for fun. Not even remotely kidding. I was in the Marines, and I have friends who waterboard each other for fun.
There are people who eat broken glass, inject their cocks with cocaine and headbutt iron posts for fun, that doesn't mean it is a legitimate treatment for political prisoners.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"During the Spanish-American War, a U.S. soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using "the water cure." In his review, the Army judge advocate said the charges constituted "resort to torture with a view to extort a confession." He recommended disapproval because "the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture." Yet President Theodore Roosevelt defended the practice. "The enlisted men began to use the old Filipino method: the water cure," he wrote in a 1902 letter. "Nobody was seriously damaged." A Punishable Offense In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. "All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier. Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison." From here.
As for it being torture or not, there are a couple of convenient tests(The first is Erich "Mancow" Mueller, talk radio host, attempting to refute critics of waterboarding, the second is Christopher Hitchens writing about his experience with trying it).
There are certainly even nastier ways of hurting people(which, in part, is why waterboarding is so popular, none of that pesky physical evidence) but it is apparently way less fun than it sounds, especially if it can be repeated over and over, in combination with sleep deprivation, isolation, and the like...
Funny, waterboarding is the only form of "torture" that Marines do to each other on weekends for fun. Not even remotely kidding. I was in the Marines, and I have friends who waterboard each other for fun.
I don't know which is more pathetic; your friends' idea of fun, or your complete lack of understanding of what torture really is all about. As others have observed, anything your friends do to you utterly lacks the requisite psychological dynamic that truly qualifies something as torture.
"What amazes me on a daily basis is the sheer level of mindless, childish, unchecked rage expressed at the man."
Exactly! Just because he's responsible for over 100,000 deaths in an illegal war, we shouldn't forget what a nice moron he is.
Most people wouldn't last more than 5 seconds [citation needed] of water boarding, the technique is to trigger the primal fear of drowning without actually killing you. It's very effective at getting a response from an individual.
A "response" yes. People will say anything to make truly effective torture stop. The truth has little to do with it. As such, warterboarding is well established as a way of coercing false confessions and if necessary, ginning up false "intelligence" to support your desired course of action. As a means of reaching "truth", torture is shit.
I've read Musashi, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli. All of them claim that the end justifies the means. However, we claim as Americans to be better than that. We claim to believe in that every human being possesses certain inalienable rights by virtue of his humanity. We cannot espouse such an ideal while also claiming that in war the end justifies the means. The two are contradictory.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
It isn't torture when the good guys do it to the bad guys. Then it's simply "aggressive intelligence gathering". Come on, have you learned nothing from Jack Bauer?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Are you one of those who have managed to ignore the steady stream of FBI and other professional interrogators who claim that torture is, at best, no more effective that conventional techniques and, at worst, actually directly counterproductive, along with causing you to stoop to your enemy's level?
In hindsight, failing to prevent 9/11, invading Iraq under false pretenses, and ending with the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, do you think you did a good job as President of the United States?
My UID is prime. Hah!
It might surprise you to find out that there is a whole subgroup of people who enjoy torture, perhaps we just need to give the detainees 'safe-words'. Also, one doesn't have to be into BDSM to be a Marine, but I'm told that it helps.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Yeah, it's odd how people feel strongly when someone starts a war which hundreds of thousands of people. What's up with that?
I mean, I don't especially appreciate any of your last presidents, Obama included, but G.W.B. was more than simply a bad president.
Dilbert RSS feed
You have violated the rules of Slashthink. The pre-programmed mods will respond in an automatic fashion.
You know, while that may be true, it does not really support your implied statement.
I don't care if your friends do it to each other for fun. If you don't have a problem with it being done to unwilling participants then there is something wrong with you.
Please, enlighten me. You said, "I've never heard anyone wish physical harm on him. I've never heard of people in the media fantasizing on the airwaves about his assassination or any of the many other reprehensible things that were directed towards Bush, and seemingly accepted as perfectly reasonable by people I would think are above all that."
I said, and I paraphrase, "WTF, dood. It's everywhere. Open remaining eye, and take spoon out of cup."
Then you're not paying attention. Threats on the president's life have skyrocketed since Obama took office. Right wing politicians fantasize about "second amendment remedies." There was a national day of prayer for his death.
You're wilfully remaining ignorant if you truly believe that there was more venom directed agains Bush than against Obama.
I know that Americans tend not to care what the rest of the world thinks about your country, but most of us think your tea partiers are nuts. Here's this wishy-washy, do-little centrist president, and you lot are going on and on about his socialist communist tyranny? And you invite open racists from European nationalist organisations to speak, but then claim the Tea Party isn't racist. Your infrastructure is crumbling because no one has the political will to use tax dollars to fix it, but you're Taxed Enough Already? We all think you're nuts.
You're either blind and deaf, or lying. While calling you a liar is much more satisfying, I don't know you from Adam, so I'll just assume you just don't know any better and note that the number of death threats Obama received has been 400% more than Bush; there have been active calls for imprecatory prayer against him, and I have seen more than one billboard say 'do it to him before he does it to us.' Somehow, I don't think 'do it to him before he does it to us' means 'give him universal health care.' And what are we to make of signs with Obama's family quoting a certain verse in Psalms that goes 'And may his children be orphans and may his wife be a widow?'
Yeah. Real classy. And not at ALL wishing physical harm on him. Nope.
So, which was it? Blind and deaf, or lying?
P.S. Just because liberals are no longer putting up with your shit and calling you out when you're being an asshat doesn't mean they're intolerant. It just means they're no longer putting up with your shit.
We called it torture when the North Koreans did it to prepare prisoners for show trials, because it is. Then utter bastards in the realms of unaccountable spooks (not marines) took notice, learnt how to do it and used it at GITMO and other places for what looked like was going to be the same thing. In the end we only had a few pointless show trials that nobody really was convinced by at the cost of a whole lot of evil and the USA losing the high moral ground everywhere. Those same evil bastards are still in the system, picked up lots of tricks from the Saddams torturers, and will probably ply their trade at home some day just like some of the French veterans of Algeria did.
Your problem is that you throw the word "liberal" around way too much as if it was some kind of insult. To begin with, there's nothing in GP's post that even indicates him as a liberal. He could just as well be a libertarian, for example.
not everyone who disagrees with you is either nuts or evil.
An advice you should consider applying to yourself.
At some point there's a threshold when you start to wonder why the person chooses and/or attracts so many of them.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Even if Pelosi were a "dingbat", that has nothing to do with how crazy are Palin and O'Donnell. No one can make Palin sound like a Rhodes scholar.
Meanwhile, "dingbat" Pelosi has successfully managed the House Speaker office for 4 years. You say she's a "dingbat" because you disagree with her. But you just demonstrated that your logic and evaluation skills don't qualify you to accuse someone else of being a dingbat.
You're just like the rest of the Teabaggers: you exploit an audience's fairness in letting you speak to say anything, no matter how nonsensical, to attack your enemies. Right down to accusing in one sentence your enemies of precisely what you just did yourself in the sentence before it. Nuts and evil.
--
make install -not war
What do you think about Snooki's latest legal trouble!? And what is your opinion on the rumors of 3 new Star Wars films!?
Maybe because they are using those tax dollars to do pointless things that waste the money and fail to do any good. If the U.S. government and the States can't keep things going with close to half the GDP of the richest nation in the world, isn't it time to think the people in charge are incompetent?
Like the TSA, DHS, Border Patrol, and the astronomical amount of defense spending? I look forward to the link to your comment pointing out these failures when Bush was the head cheese.
Blind faith in government is what's nuts.
We agree on something! We probably both like ice cream too!
No, I say she's a dingbat because she says things that are stupid. There's a difference. If you like, I can make citations, but I doubt it will matter.
There are plenty of people with whom I disagree that aren't dingbats. Please don't project on me.
Your circular argument goes in circles.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
They let people like Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell represent the party.
I'm not taking sides in this debate, but I am curious as to exactly how a loosely organized group like the Tea Party would go about not letting individuals "represent" them. It's not like either person that you named was elected to speak on behalf of the party. Right?
Oh wait, I am talking to A/C, which is a lot like talking to myself. Anyone have a helpful reply?
I know you're being facetious to underline your point
Well, it's nice to see that someone noticed that.
but the best intel we've ever gotten has been from when we treated prisoners and 'persons of interest' professionally and did nothing more than talk with them. [Citation needed] but it's not that hard to find. Look up how we got information from German officers during the Second World War.
There is a documentary about The Ritchie Boys ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritchie_Boys ). They were Jewish Germans who were in the intelligence branch of the US army, who served as translators and interrogators. One of their "shticks" was to dress one up as an American officer, and the other as a Russian Officer. The American one would start the interrogation with the German officer. Then when the German officer refused to answer questions, the "Russian" one would burst into the room, and demand to have the prisoner. The American would chase the Russian out, and told the prisoner, "look, if you don't cooperate, I will have to give you over to the Russian.
It's the classic good cop / bad cop routine, but was highly effective. And it used no physical force.
My doctor has a friend who is a psychiatrist, and discussed with me once the effectiveness of "Sleep Deprivation." The psychiatrist said that when you deprive people of sleep, their mind starts going crazy: the person is awake, but is actually dreaming. They'll tell you all kinds of nonsense, and start telling the interrogator anything he wants to hear.
A lot of intelligence in World War II was gathered by simply bugging the prisoners' quarters. When they thought that nobody was listening, they divulged vital information. One specific case was the German navigation beam "Knickebein" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knickebein ). Secret recordings of German POW pilots led the British intelligence to discover that their bombing aid was hidden in a radio in the bombers, which was much more sensitive than it had to be.
Conclusion? Try to use your brain, instead of brute force.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Sorry dude, but the Tea Party got hijacked awhile back by the mainstream Repubs and the Dems. Didn't you get the memo? And as for crazy..Sharon Angle. I actually felt sorry for the folks of NV, as they pretty much had NO choice that didn't smell up the joint.
And before you start screaming "liberal" which I personally find funny as liberal means new ideas so I don't see how it is a dirty word, I'm actually a pro isolationist "America First" type, which sadly gets NO representation from EITHER side. Silly me in thinking that US tax dollars should be spent at home instead of propping up third world dictatorships just so some multinational can get bananas for a nickel cheaper.
As for GWB, lets be honest folks and I don't care which side you consider yourself on, here was a shitty president, full stop. He blew cash like a frat boy on a coke binge while at the same time lowering taxes and starting two wars. Can you say fiscal irresponsibility? I think you can. We had the world on our side and then he blows the post 9/11 goodwill by starting a completely uncalled for war of aggression in Iraq. Whether you supported the war in Afghanistan or not (which I did, it was pretty obvious the whole country was a training camp and frankly we should have kept going into Pakistan until we had OBL's ass drug before the US courts) without following the Constitution and declaring war, allowed the terrorists to win by using PATRIOT and other power grabs to steal the very liberties he was proclaiming to protect, hell I could go on all day. He was a truly shitty president.
And before you bring up Obama allow me to say he is also a truly shitty president, with trying to claim 50,000 troops still getting shot at is "mission accomplished" when we all know Iraq is still a giant clusterfuck, not doing anything about the security theater bullshit while we have a border so leaky you could drive a bomb on a Ryder truck through the damned thing, and in fact embracing the nastiest parts like warrant-less wiretaps after lying during the campaign, lying again about don't ask don't tell, which throwing good soldiers out in a time of war because of who they sleep with is pretty fucking stupid, continuing GWB's blowing cash like a fratboy routine, etc.
Basically I give us about a decade tops before like Ireland we end up against the wall only unlike them nobody, including all those oil fiefdoms we helped to prop up, will come to our rescue. My bet is that we'll have to default, the Repubs will try to cut off all the social programs which are frankly the only things keeping the working poor from starvation and rioting in the streets, and then we will see SOME REAL CHANGE, whether for good or ill is anybody's guess. But I can tell you in the flyover states it already looks like the great depression, with signs on cars saying "looking for work, call xxx-xxxx" and whole streets abandoned and boarded up factories as far as the eye can see.
If we don't start putting Americans before the needs of multinationals this whole powderkeg is libel to blow up, although I think thanks to treasonous bribery we are probably already too far gone. To quote the great man Thomas Jefferson "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.". And sorry about the length, I'm just tired of the "liberal" "conservative" bullshit when BOTH sides are fucking us over and kissing the multinational ass as fast as they can.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
To imply that the US won't/doesn't try its soldiers is simply absurd.
There are ample cases in US history - from current all the way back the Revolutionary War - of the US gov't trying US soldiers for all sorts of crimes.
Now, you might contend that the US is RELUCTANT to try its soldiers, and have a point.
Even there, I'd argue that where the blame is clear, no, the US military has actually been fairly swift to try some soldiers.
Where the evidence is sketchy or brought forward by people whose personal agenda is clearly anti-US or anti-military, then I believe that they do investigate/explain/exonerate to a point that might be overcorrecting.
-Styopa
As a European, I saw the Tea Party from only two points of views :
- Complete whackos like Sarah Palin, and the other woman, what was her name ? Said it was important to spend government money to fight agaisnt masturbation or something like that... Oh, also Glenn Beck. In short, people that are spokepersons of the tea party.
- Lawrence Lessig, admittedly a liberal, that said the tea party was a great political initiative. Despite disagreement on almost every point, he agreed on the two most central points in his view : the fight against corruption and lobbying and the need for grassroots politics.
I mean, there may be something, but why, oh why in heaven's sake do you let people like Palin speak out for you ? Why don't you criticize the complete nutjobs that speak in your name ? Do you realize that it takes a person you probably consider like an enemy to explain the good things that are in this party ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Don't various tea party rallies around the country actively try to recruit Sarah Palin to give speeches?
Likewise, the primary wins of O'Donnell and Joe Miller, due to people who admit to supporting the tea party, clearly shows that these are in fact the desired representatives of many in the tea party (for those states).
Is this a 'real' tea party organization? http://teapartypatriots.org
If so, they seem to think that the recent election was a "win" for them. If so, the new freshman republicans do represent their views. Now, have you seen those views? Look up some of the things that people like Allen West are saying. Or anti-evolution reps like Sandy Adams from Florida.
None of them believe that global warning is an issue (for various reasons), most are extremely close to fundamentalist christians, etc..
I know you aren't taking sides, but I thought I'd point out that yes, Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell do represent, by request of the tea party, the tea party.
And to various posters above claiming that the tea party, overall, isn't nuts, I'd say this: The stated general principles, smaller government, more freedom, free-markets, etc.. are all sane ideas worth talking about. The problem is that those sane ideas normally come along with a host of idiotic, ignorant, and sometimes scary ideas.
There don't seem to be very many true conservatives in existence (at least in the public spotlight) anymore. The republicans were so effective at pushing the country to the right, that I believe they have permanently injured their party's ability to govern. Take the START treaty for example.