Pretty sure Dean wasn't though he is hardcore Yale. I did leave out the fact Joe Lieberman also went to Yale, at the same time as Kerry I think, and is also a Connecticut Senator which is no doubt how he secured his VP slot in 2000. The media has chosen to gloss it over but our great democracy had almost nothing but elitist Yale grads running for President. I'm pretty confident that the elitist families of Connecticut are pretty much running this country at this point and commoners need not apply.
"Also, you do realize that President George W. Bush has conquered not just two countries, but several more, all with diplomacy? Pakistan and Libya are now working with us instead of against us. That wasn't true when Bush took office."
You do realize George really didn't know the name of General Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan, when he was asked before he was elected. He really is completely clueless about everything except tax cuts, even then he just knows "tax cuts good, what are deficits".
You do realize Pakistan was an American ally long before George came to town. The CIA ran a war with Pakistan's complicity during the 80's against the Soviet Union from Pakistan's tribal region using an Islamic army. Interestingly enough this army included Bin Laden and what is now Al Qaeda. The CIA helped form them as a weapon against the U.S.S.R. Like many weapons the CIA formed including Saddam, Castro and Noriega it eventually turned on them.
You do realize Pakistan was the leading distributor of nuclear weapons technology, to places like Iran and North Korea, during their alliance with George you are so proud of. When the U.S. forced the issue and broke up the ring Musharraf pardoned the ring leader who is a national hero in Pakistan and still free today.
You do realize Pakistan's alliance in the war on terror is a joke. Chances are high Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are alive and well in the tribal region of Pakistan and the Pakistani government has engaged in nothing but token attempts to find them.
You do realize there is a good chance Libya acquired some junk WMD gear and "gave them up" in order to sucker Bush and Blair in to singing praises of them and lifting sanctions, they've been trying to get lifted for years, so they can get richer selling more oil and companies like Halliburton can work in their oil fields without going through shell companies. Khaddafi played George W. like the sucker he is on that one.
It probably really doesn't matter but the dismantling of the Republic and the creation of the Empire will probably move along more smoothly under Bush with a Republican dominated Congress, and if the current Neocons reamin in control of the Pentagon. Its lost on everyone but Kerry and Bush have nearly the same position on all the volatile issues of the day. Both are fans of the Patriot Act, both support the Iraq war, Kerry is just quibbling on implementation details because he has to to keep the Democratic base happy.
I need to do some research on what happened in Iowa. I gather a dozen or so wealthy people funded attack ads that ran only in Iowa that associated Dean with Bin Laden and started his slide in Iowa. His slide in Iowa finished him before the media finished him off over the "I have a scream" speech. Chances are the Democratic nomination was decided by a dozen people with some money and well placed attacked ad, much like the November election may well be decided by a handful of Republican's funding attack ads like the Swift boat ads. As nearly as I can tell our government is chosen by a few wealthy people, with a few well placed attack ads, which precipitate a media stampede and the American people just follow the ring in their nose.
Its even stranger that Dean is a Yale grad too though I don't think he is Skull and Bones. It kind of shows how the moneyed elite that sits in Connecticut and around Yale had locked up the Presidency before the American people were even consulted.
And then Dick Cheney was also groomed for Yale but he barely survived two years there, his grade were apparently so bad he probably would have flunked out if he hadn't left voluntarily. Don't think he had the family connections George W. had to insure he got passing grades since he was as apparently as intellectually challenged as Cheney was at Yale. George W.'s grandfather Prescott was a former Senator from Connecticut, Yale's home state, insuring George W. would never be flunked no matter how bad his academics sucked there.
Here is a good URL on Jefferson's thinking on the Bill of Rights. He was really unhappy that American rights were left largely to inference in the original constitution. He felt it essential to spell them out to prevent an out of control government, like we have to day, from usurping them:
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:388, Papers 12:440
Unfortunately America is short on people of the stature of the founding father today so it remains to be seen if the unparalleled wisdom of the founding father's work will be unraveled in our lifetime.
For all of the Founding Father's wisdom they couldn't prevent an ignorant and apathetic American people from electing an ignorant President, and a petty malevolent Congress who, working in unison, with soon to be stacked courts, could shred the basis of the Republic and the Bill of Rights without a whimper from the American people.
"The Bill of Rights was a perversion of the purpose of a national constitution into a positive dispensation of rights as detailed in the first several amendments, rather than what it was supposed to be, a limitation and structuring of the powers of government."
Perversion....gag....The Bill Rights is the heart and sole of the Constitution. The original document dwells far to much on the minutia of the mechanics of government, is in numerous areas archaic, no place more so than in the electoral college, and didn't really put adequate checks on the Federal government to prevent it from usurping powers. Its no accident the Bill of Rights was penned by Thomas Jefferson, from a Southern State, Virginia, because the Southern states were most vehement in placing checks on the Federal government, an issue that would in the near future lead to the Civil War.
The Bill of Rights is by far the timeless and crucial part of the document that is being shredded by the current American government.
"also named George."
There is a key difference, Washington was named George, presumably as a namesake of the monarchs at a time America was still pretty loyal to the monarchy. I don't think he could change it after the fact when the colonies turned on George III. I think its a somewhat ironic tribute that he turned on his namesake.
The Bush clan by contrast settled on the name George after America shed the yoke of his dominion. I'd give you even money its because they have Tory sympathies and its a subtle statement they preferred the aristocracy to the democracy that replaced it, a democracy where rabble can aspire to be President. Connecticut, Yale and Skull and Bones are the power base where the Tories, who stayed in the colonies after the revolution, maintained their power base and have slowly reasserted the concept of a ruling elite thinly veiled by a sham democracy.
Well it is a tribute to how easy would be to pull the wool over your eyes and the eyes of the American people that you refuse to believe its possible they were assassinated by powerful people and not lone wacko's and accidents.
I assure you there were a lot of powerful people that wanted JFK dead. The military was royally pissed at him for not invading Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis.
The powers in the CIA were royally pissed at him for denying air support at the Bay of Pigs and letting Castro destroy their little army. JFK gets blamed for the Bay of Pigs but the plan was actually hatched under Eisenhower and the army of Cuban expats was already formed on U.S. soil when JFK came to power. There is a chance that he was more than a little reluctant to go through with it which may explain why he denied it the air cover it needed to succeed and disposed of an Cuban expat army he didn't want in the process.
There is a chance JFK also didn't want to escalate Vietnam which also put him at odds with the CIA and the Pentagon.
Of course RFK was in the middle of all of these same problems so is it so hard to believe that the same powers that whacked JFK would whack RFK to prevent another Kennedy administration.
And then there is Martin Luther King. I can assure you J. Edgar Hoover hated King with a passion as did most of the white men who ran the U.S. at the time. He was a major threat to white supremecy in the U.S.. MLK alone was giving black people the hope that they could aspire to something greater than the next to nothing the U.S. had given them until he cam along. He was also a really vocal opponent of the War in Vietnam, both because he was a pacisfist and it was disproportionately killing black men. Black men had a much harder time ducking the draft while affluent white men like Geroge W. and Dick Cheney had no such problem. It is more than plausible that the powers in Washington whacked King because he was a real threat to their power.
And then you have Wellstone and Mel Carnahan. Not a lot of people are killed in small plane crashes in the country. The odds are somewhat stacked against TWO Democratic Senate candidates dieing in plane crashes in two years. Add in the fact that they happened at a time when Republican's were DESPERATE to maintain their grip on power in the Senate, power crucial to passing their extremist agenda, and a conspiracy is pretty ripe. When Wellstone died the Democrats lost his seat to the Republicans which would have never happened if there hadn't been a crash. His death helped swing power in the Senate and a LOT OF MONEY and POWER swung with it. The circumstances of the crash are more than a little mysterious. For example it is quite possible powerful people could lay there hands on an EMP weapon that would be more than capable of downing a small plane without leaving a trace.
If you recall none other than John Ashcroft was running for a Senate seat agaisnt Mel Carnahan who was also killed in a something mysterious plane crash. In this case, if it was a plot, it failed since Ashcroft sucks so bad he lost to a dead guy or actually his wife.
Well I agree with you completely too except I'm missing George III. Thought George W. was George the II. His dad being George the first. His grand dad was Prescott and I think before that it was Samuel though I'm a little hazy that far back. Bert Walker, George H.W. Bush's maternal grandfather was a key Machiavellian figure who helped propell the family to power and wealth along with the Harriman's, Bunny Harriman being a Yale class mate of Prescott Bush, fellow Skull and Bones man. Prescott did the day to day dirty work managing Harriman investments including working at Union Bank which was seized at the start of World War II since it was the American investment front of the Thyssen family, one of Germany's richest industrial families who helped throw support of German industry behind Hitler at a crucial point and helped insure his rise to power. It was quite the embarrassment to the Bush family at the time and appeared in one of the New York papers at the time. They managed to hush it up though. The documents on the seizure of Union Banking listing Prescott's name were declassified a few years ago and are available in the National Archives.
The Presidents middle names Herbert and Walker are tributes to Bert Walker who was a globetrotting manipulators of empires.
Another vein of this conspiracy theory is there is actually still a Tory party in the U.S. and its power base sits squarely in Connecticut and at Yale, the power base of the Bush family. They lived in Connecticut before they moved to Texas and there is now at least four generations of Yale alum in their family.
The wealthy elite that sits there has for sometime been operating on the same basis British nobility did, that most people are rabble and you can't trust them to govern themselves, so you need a cultured, schooled, moneyed elite to run things and that is pretty much what the Bush family and the Republican party is doing today. Of course Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society sits at the heart of this tory party. Wouldn't be suprised if they arranged the Democratic nomination for Kerry, also Yale grad, also Skull and Bones, with it predetermined that he will fall on his sword in by November as another avenue to insure George W. can't lost in November.
There is probably some truth to the idea that most American's are to dumb to govern themselves but unfortunately the moneyed elite that are doing it in their stead tend to govern in ways that are most likely to increase, enhance and extend their wealth and power, often at the expense of the rest of us.
Not sure exactly what was insightful in this post.
"The Constitution is less about rights than about the orderly functioning of Government."
Excepting that you are conveniently forgetting that attachment to the Constitution called the Bill of Rights, which is about nothing but rights, especially noteworthy being the Tenth amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
This amendement is the sweet one and was put there by the founding fathers, who had amazing wisdom, vision and foresight, because they dreaded the prospect of a power grab by a central government, a party, a President or Congress, especially if they acquired imperial aspirations much like we are seeing today.
The Republican party really seems to have concluded that they are the only party able to run America and the Bush family is for all intents and purposes attempting to form a dynasty to lead the empire. The Founding Fathers really dreaded the prospect of a President acquiring the trappings of the monarchy they hated so much in the King against whom they rebelled. His name was George too. How far America has fallen and how ironic that we once again seem to have a King George, just like the one the founding fathers rebelled against.
The Republicans are no doubt rationalizing to themselves that what they are doing is in the best interest of America, its OK to rig the election to stay in power, since they are the one true defender of the nation. Its OK they are destroying the foundations on which America was built in the process of "saving" it from its enemies, whether they be Muslim extremists or Democrats.
You can slam me for conspiracy theory but I can retort with the simple fact that Richard Nixon, also a Republican, was forced out of office for engaging in illegal activity to insure his reelection and hold on power. There is precedent. The Bush's just seem to have taken it to a whole new level today by exploiting computers.
Sorry to say it to you but you really don't live in the free country you thought you did unless everyone bands together to take it back.
I guess you suck at doing google searches or you suffer from the same cognitive dissonance problem of most Bush supporters. They've totally demolished civil liberties in this country in the name of "safety" and "security" and you all have your heads stuck in the sand.
Both incidents have been carried on the major news networks with video of the couple with the T shirts arrested and a Mankato Minnesota TV station interviewed the kid who was detained for having the sticker on his wallet.
Here I'll help, in google:
"Mankato Kerry sticker"
Here is a search for the couple with the T shirts arrested:
"Tshirt Bush arrested"
and I'll even send a URL.
Here is one for the couple arrested for the T shirts from a search on:
It is something of a saving grace that as far as I know all the judges have thrown out the trespassing cases as the travesty of justice they are though the people involved have had to endure, arrest, lawyers and trials.
Here is an unrelated incident where a man was arrested in a mall for refusing to take off a Tshirt that said "Give Peace a Chance" in 2003.
If this is what America has come to, stop the merry go round, I want to get off and I'm moving to another country. America is a sad parody of the principals its supposed to stand for.
"However, the fact that the kid, and his parents, were hiding these anti-bush tee-shirts are pretty incriminating."
Sorry to rain on your rant, these were two different events. In one case it was a kid in Minnesota who had a Kerry sticker who was detained. The two people arrested for unveiling T shirts was a whole 'nuther place.
In piecing together what I can from the Internet since the networks didn't carry all of the local TV station interview of the kid in Minnesota I think he actually pulled out his wallet himself, presumably, to get his ticket, someone saw the Kerry sticker and the uproar ensued. He wasn't arrested but he was detained until the event was over.
As another poster said you are pretty much required to sign a loyalty oath to attend a Bush/Cheney event and the Kerry sticker was taken as proof of disloyalty leading to his detention. Just the fact you have to be a loyal party member to go to their speeches shows how far in to the rabbit hole this country already is.
At this point I guess I don't care if Bush/Cheney are enforcing a "loyalty oath" to get in to their speeches. Just one more good reason to not listen to what they have to say. But I'm not sure an elected President of the United States, a public servent, should only be giving speeches to the loyal members of his party, that is sooooo 1939.
One thing I can say is this is a sign that they have some screws loose to do this when they go on the campaign trail. The idea of campaigning is to talk to the people who DON'T plan to vote for in order to persuade them, instead of only talking to people who ALREADY are voting for you. Kind of wasting your time campaigning at the people you already own. Preaching to the faithful isn't a very good way to grow your flock.
"The law is intended to promote peace and safety"
Bullshit. Harrassing people over T-shirt's and stickers has NOTHING to do with public safety or the President's safety. It is designed to suppress dissent, intimidate political opponents in to silence, and forge a party of fanatic loyalists. The Nazi party did it to as do most parties with totalitarian tendencies. It is also an indicator of the really bad case of intolerance Republicans are famous for. They did the same things the last time they held power in the '50's. It was called McCarthyism.
"maybe he just doesnt care if you disagree with him?"
Uh, then he would be a grown up and let people peacefully disagree with him, like all his predecessors did, instead of letting the Secret Service abuse their massive power to suppress free speech. The SS will contend they need to do this to protect him in these troubled times but that is an obvious canard since anyone who intended him harm would just refrain from packing signs critical of him, and would more probably be clean cut, wearing red white and blue and packing a sign singing praises of "Bush/Cheney Forever" which apparently dramatically increases your chances of getting within sight of the President.
I'm pretty sure the Republicans remember the lessons of Vietnam where public protest did what it was supposed to do, and put an end to a misguided war and government. This administration is sending an unmistakable message to dissenters that they will be tolerated only as long as they stay in pens, and thus render themselves impotent. Anyone who dissents in a way that is not "approved" or who is going to catch attention is going to regret it.
"and unless you have proof of arrests for supporting someone else, i dont beleive it."
I didn't say "arrests for supporting someone else". I said people have been arrested for nothing beyond a unveiling pair of T shirts with the name Bush in a red circle with a diagonal line through it. There is undeniable video footage of that one, saw it a couple days ago.
I also said a kid was barred from a speech, detained and threatened with arrest at a Minnesota event for carrying a sticker supporting Kerry. There must have been something to it because the local news station interviewed him and there is video of that. He apparently watched the speech on TV in the company of the local police or the Secret Service.
Do a Google search on "Minnesota Bush Kerry sticker wallet". The event was at a quarry in Mankato Minnesota. Obviously it the word of the kid involved and people who witnessed it since in that case he was detained and released so there was no public record of an arrest.
I'm referring to this as "Compassionate Fascism" since in a full up Fascist state the loyal party members would probably have just beat them, and the U.S. isn't that far gone yet. I just never would have believed the U.S. would be so far gone that only loyal party members can attend a speech by the President.
Most normal political candidates, ones who don't have a screw loose and want to get reelected. would let people who support their opponent in to their speeches with the intent of swaying them with the wise words. Thats how democracy used to work before it turned in to nothing but sound bites and attack ads.
You might, I repeat might, be able to make this case for people unveiling T shirts but it is a real stretch. They were quiet, the T shirts were not profane or offensive and would only "outrage the sensibilities" of people who are completely intolerant of anyone who criticizes their extremist hero. Again you might have a case for ejecting them from a private campaign event, but to arrest them is over the line, and its dubious if you should even be ejecting them from a public event.
That said, you have no case for threatening arrest of a teenager who had a sticker on his wallet, expressing support for a legitimate political candidate, which would have never been visible had it not been for an intrusive search. Are you saying we've reached the point it "outrages the sensibilities" of a group of people to force them to see a sticker favoring a legitimate political candidate.
The fact your hometown has a law like is both proof America has developed a really high tolerance for suppressing free speech or you are more probabl and you are really twisting the intent of the law. It is there to prevent truly disruptive behavior at a meeting (i.e. shouting or giving people the finger) and that is not what we are talking about here, it is silent dissent and silent expression of your political views.
Bottomline if Democracy was alive and well, healthy and thriving in this country someone as powerful as the President of the U.S. could tolerate seeing a little dissent. It speaks badly of him, and badly of the American people that he can't and we let him.
Sure except the Secret Service is implementing this. The SS is funded by your tax dollars and mine. Using them to suppress free speech is a fundamentally bad sign for our civil liberties. The SS is typically compelling local police, also paid for with tax dollars, to arrest the "trespassers" and to set up free speech zones, which are in fact "anti-free speech zones". If the people were being disorderly or shouting sure eject them.
If its really a private event, as in your analogy, then the enforcement should be through private security and should stop at barring entry or ejection from the venue, not arrest, especially if there is no disorderly conduct (since you are vague on the concept wearing a T shirt with the name Bush on it doesn't qualify as disorderly conduct, illegal or any other grounds for arrest).
Kind of shows you how willing you've become to accept having your rights trampled that you thinks its OK, and are apologizing for it, when someone threatens arrest of a teenager for having a Kerry sticker on his wallet that wasn't even visible were it not for an intrusive and unwarranted search. At that point you have sacrificed pretty much all free speech and freedom of political thought, you can be ARRESTED merely supporting an opposition candidate. This is what 3rd rate dictators do and we keep telling ourselves and the world what a great democracy we are. Well we simply aren't any more.
This also extends far beyond Republican campaign events. It seems to be happening pretty much every place the President appears. He is a paid servant of all the people, even the ones who didn't vote for him, though he seems to have completely forgetten that fact.
You have to wonders what kind of "Emperor's New Clothes" fantasy world Bush lives in if he NEVER encounters anyone who disagrees with him. What a mind trip it must be for him to know anyone who says a disparaging word about him is subject to arrest, such power, such total power. This is how slow moving totalitarian states are created. They just slowly move out the boundaries of what is acceptable for the state and what is not acceptable for the people, until the state has absolute power and the people have none.
I think I get off on a technicality, I didn't actually mention Nazi's or Hitler though I alluded to them. Fascism is somewhat more the Italian flavor of right wing extremism.
If we are going to start invoking Godwin's law then you really aren't going to be able to run any threads on the new Republican party any more.
Its a sad day for that historied party but you simply can't continue to apply the "conservative" label to what they are today. Outside of tax cuts everything they are doing today is anathema to conservatism.
If someone can suggest an appropriate recognizable political label to apply to the new Republican party I will certainly it take under consideration using it. They seem to be adherents of many of the principals of Fascism:
- Authoritarian government backed by an extensive internal security apparatus growing in leaps and bounds every month - The head of state and the security apparatus has the power to arrest people, detain them indefinitely without due process and subject them to forms of torture. - Suppression of free speech by opponents of the party and the state - Aggressive warfare to preempt threats, real, perceived, fabricated or imagined. - Fascism, as opposed to left wing socialism, works hand in hand with large privately owned corporations and industrialists. It is the authoritarian form of capitalism which seems to be what we have. The government massively intervenes in superficially free markets to make economic winners out of its friends and losers out of its adversaries.
"Compassionate Fascist" is the most descriptive term I can think of. It tends to be the logical conclusion of a right wing party which tilts to far to the right especially when blessed by an attack on the state which can be used to justify the tilt.
Another related example, it appears you now have to get tickets to attend a speech by George W. It would be interesting to see if there is fine print on the tickets. But apparently if you, for example, wear a hidden T shirt that is critical of Bush and unveil it during the event your ticket is instantaneously revoked and you are arrested for trespassing even if you are in what would otherwise be a public space. There is a couple fighting a court battle for this for no crime other than quietly unveiling T shirts with the name Bush under a red circle with a diagonal line through it. A family went to a Bush event in Minnesota. Apparently it was reveiled during the strip search to get in one of the teens had a Kerry sticker on his billfold. The family was ordered to leave and was threatened with arrest.
Its a sad for America that the rabid Bush faithful and the previously apolitical Secret Service really are starting to closely resemble Brown Shirts.
I really don't know how conservatives can prattle about how they hate big government intruding in their lives and then turn around an bow at the feet of George W. I'll probably get modded as flame bait for it was more than a little deceptive when he campaigned as a "compassionate conservative". There isn't an once of true conservativism in him other than tax cuts for the rich. In reality he is a "compassionate fascist". The new Republican party isn't as oppressive as the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy....yet....hence the term "compassionate fascist", but if they stay in power for a few more years and have a new 9/11 attack as justification they will continue the steady migration to an oppressive police state.
In some respects I'd like to see them stay in power a while longer. It may reawaken the sedated America public to realize their government does manner and it can turn totalitarian thanks to American indifference. it may be the only way the American people will throw off the yoke thats been laid on them by a wealthy elite and giant corporations. After another 4 years the American people may be so appalled by the Republicans ad they were after McCarthyism the last time the ruled, that they will be thrown out of office and return to an impotent minority they should be. Of course the Democrats suck too so you are left hoping the complete mess American politics is currently in will be saved by a new 3rd party that will for a change represent middle America without the intolerance of the Republican's or the pandering to interest groups that is the Dem's.
The current misguided rush to redesign the intelligence agencies in the U.S. is a leading indicator of incoming totalitarianism. In the early 1970's Congress put a firewall between the FBI and the CIA, and between domestic and foreign spying to reign in massive abuses of spying on people in the U.S. who were guilty of nothing but opposing the people in power. It was spying designed to cement the hold on power of those in power and suppress dissenting viewpoints.
Just stop and imagine the massive power and potential for abuse now that the CIA, FBI, CIA, DIA are being merged in to one all seeing, all powerful spying agency with no restraints on its domestic spying powers. There will also be one person with a massive power to manipulate intelligence to fabricate the case for war as was done in Iraq and there will be no independent intelligence to offer a dissenting view.
"There's no such thing as the Border Patrol any more. It got rolled into HomeSec a long time ago."
Once again you are being a pedantic dick, Twirp. There was a name change for the umbrella agency to Customs and Border Protection, thats what bureaucracies do, change acronyms when they can't think of anything worthwhile to do.
But the people that patrol the border within that agency still call THEMSELVES the Border Patrol. Here is their web site.
You can admit you are wrong now, though I know you find that psychologicly impossible to do.
"You just can't stop yourself, can you? You make me sick."
Well now you know how the rest of feel when we read your stupid little rants.
"You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all."
Your the lead spout off here, Twirp, and you really don't seem to know what your talking about half the time, refuse to admit it or to change.
Glad to see you are back to your good old, "If you don't agree with me your an idiot and shut the hell up rhetoric".
This is a free country Twirp, everyone is free to express an opinion as much as you obviously hate the concept. Why don't you for just once in your life engage in civilized debate and refrain from the viscous personal attacks. They just make you look like a sick old man who can't cope with himself or anyone else.
"Notice the Democratic party cast a hell of alot of no votes on the bill. Also note that there were members of the Democratic party serving them that had been in the KKK. I'm not saying the Republican party is squeaky clean either, just saying they take most of the blame when they really shouldn't be."
Your a little confused friend, you are supporting my case not refuting it. Those are mostly the segregationist Southern Democrats voting against it. They and their white constituents are the ones who jumped to the Republican party as fallout of the civil rights act and swung the South from the D column to the R column. The Republican's welcomed them with open arms and they are still a critical part of their power base.
If you will recall why Trent Lott was removed as Senate majority leader it was because he made the mistake of openly praising a segregationist Democrat, Strom Thurmond for running on a segregationist ticket after Truman desegregated the army, and doing it when a video camera was running. Here read this. It been something of an open secret that Southern Republican luminaries Trent Lott, Halley Barbour, Bob Barr in particular have ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens a descendent of Thurmond's white supremecists.
I feel that a brief history lesson is in order. "Perhaps you'd like to read up on Abraham Lincoln [wikipedia.org] before we go any further. You'll notice that the first sentence says very clearly that Abraham Lincoln, who is commonly among the top 5 rated Presidents in the country's history, was a member of the Republican Party. Therefore, the President that (according to popular opinion) took the country into a Civil War over (among other things) Slavery, was a Republican President."
I guess I shouldn't let this one slide. You are talking ancient history here. That was 140 years ago. Your seem to be saying that because the Republican party was the party of blacks in the 19th century that I'm wrong when I say Republican's are a white party today. Well they are. I'll repeat....the racial balance of the two parties flipped in the 1960's when Democratic segragationists abandoned the Democratic party because Kennedy and Johnson started to force desegregation.
To quote Johnson at the time:
Nevertheless, the Republican Party's historical "dirty little secret" is the manipulation of racism to win votes. When President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he prophetically predicted to Bill Moyers, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." The Democrats' support for civil rights drove disgruntled Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, transforming the party of Lincoln into the party of Jefferson Davis."
"The parent also addressed this issue. In short, he said that life isn't fair, nobody ever said it was going to be, and it's futile to try to make it so. The only thing people can do is the best with what they have."
Thats awfully easy for you to say since I doubt you are on the losing end of the unfairness.
" It seems to be the result of a larger percentage of crimes committed by a minority"
Geez you just lambasted me for stereotyping blacks as criminals when I didn't and now you just did the same thing. You better be offended at yourself.
"If, however, the Black child fails while the White child succeeds, then you can claim that the color of one's skin directly contributes to one's success in life."
All I can say is you are extremely naive to think that skin color doesn't factor in to your odds of succeeding in America. It isn't as much of a factor as it used to be but it is still most definitely a factor.
"and they will exist after George Bush leaves office."
Again you missed the point. To summarize more concisely he is a sterling example of how race, wealth and privilege can result in success for people who don't deserve it based on their merits or effort. It is an answer to all those who think America is the land of the free and everyone is born equal and its just a matter of hard work and anyone can achieve anything. Sorry to burst the bubble but its just not the case. There is a elite in the U.S. just like every other country. If you are born in to it you are leaps and bounds ahead of your peers.
"Accussing the Republican party of being racist is just plain sickening."
Unfortunately it is simply true. You can try to shoot the messenger for saying it but it doesn't change the facts on the ground.
If you look at any gathering of Republicans, there will be a few token minorities in the crowd but otherwise it will be overwhelmingly white. Just do some side by side comparison of crowd shots between the DNC and RNC conventions. There is an undeniable reality there you are choosing to ignore.
The Democrats, especially Southern Democrats, used to be the rascist party but when Johnson shoved through the civil rights act in the mid sixties there was a seismic shift. Blacks moved to the Democratic party and southern whites moved to the Republicans because the Democratic party turned in to the party of blacks, its why the Republican's have a lock on the Southern white vote today.
You may not find it pleasant, and it is politically incorrect of me to point out the obvious, but as a whole the Republican party is a white men's party. They may well pull in big chunks of the Asian and Latino vote too but it simply isn't a party concerned with or interested in representing blacks.
You're kind of showing your partisan blinders when I slammed both candidates equally and you you are acting like I'm a shill for the Republican party. I found Kerry's military record a source of deep concern long before the Swift Boat Veterans came along. If you go back in my/. posts you will find I said just that long before they came on the scene.
The fact is Kerry's war record is extremely vulnerable to criticism. It simply doesn't sit well with most people that he could rack up 3 purple hearts based on scratches, when you see people coming back from Iraq missing arms and legs or horribly burned. Those are the people the medal was designed to honor. Medals are kind of a sick concept in the first place but if you give them out like Cracker Jack prizes they really do become meaningless.
Kerry and the Democrats pretty much begged to be slammed on this issue by severely overplaying his "heroism" at the convention while they glossed over the rest of his mediocre career.
"Now he has some master plan to get out of Vietnam?"
I wager he volunteered for Swift boat duty because:
A. He wanted combat service and medals to further his future political career B. He's spent his entire life trying to follow in JFK's footsteps and Swift boats were the Vietnam equivalent of PT boats. John F. Kerry, get it, he called himself this at Yale and everyone there new he was angling for a Presidential run someday.
I wager when he got to Vietnam he decided it wasn't a pleasant place or very heroic and he took the first out he got. Being the flip flipper he is he almost certainly sensed the war was turning unpopular and he always tries to stay on the popular side of every issue. He got out of Vietnam because there was a rule you got out after three purple hearts. If he really wanted to stay in Vietnam who could have waived that rule and finished his tour instead of cutting and running from his boat and his crew.
Its just really a little disturbing someone could rack up 3 purple hearts and spend no appreciable time in the hospital.
I'll grant you a guy fell in the water and Kerry pulled him out. Whether it was under fire is unfortunately impossible to establish at this point. Rifle fire is unfortunately not entirely easy to identify unless you see muzzle flashes or ricochets. It really doesn't strike me as medal worthy, everyone else on the boat took the same risk, the guy fell off Kerry's boat, it was Kerry's duty to pick him up. It really sounds like heroism inflation.
Not sure anyone would being making such a big deal out if the Dems hadn't predicated their entire convention on his heroism and glossed over the rest of Kerry's career which is pretty mediocre. I pretty much gagged when he opened his speech there with that blatantly sappy "Reporting for Duty" B.S. Richard Nixon pegged him back in the 70's, he wreaks of "phony".
This is really a sad time for American government that we have two candidates for President who are both so undeserving of the office.
Unfortunately medal systems in any military are extremely easy to game especially when the superiors who approve them weren't there. They come down to the mercy of the people that write the reports, some of which were written by Kerry, and eyewitness reports of people who may or may not be entirely truthful.
"Not to mention the flow of tax dollars is from blue states to red states. Considering that urban dwellers are subsidizing rural dwellers' choice of lifestyle, I don't see how they can sit around and crow about self-reliance and not needing government."
Well I guess the urban dwellers could cut off the subsidy and the people in rural areas could cut off the food supply and see which side buckles first:) Though it should be noted most food is coming from giant corporate farms these days anyway so farmers and ranchers are a dieing breed. You are talking like living on a farm or ranch is a luxury, well it is for city dwellers who make their money in the city and retire to the country. If you try to make a career and a living on agriculture I think you would find its a pretty hard life, many farms fail and most squeak by only with the help of outside jobs.
"While I agree with your last statement, I think that this idea that the government is some seperate entity is wrong. We are the government. When "the government" is doing something you don't like, it's your fellow citizens doing something you don't like."
That is simply not true anymore if it ever was. Professional politicians are a class unto themselves. They aren't wired like or representative of the vast majority of people. Kind of obvious since the majority of them are lawyers and most people in this country aren't lawyers. Especially now that politicians are completely beholden to lobbyists, big contributors and corporate benefactors. In an entrenched two party system, where both parties are increasingly distasteful to most people, its nearly impossible for most ordi
"There are many other minorities in this country that dont seem to have these kinds of problems...or at least not ones like these that tend to grind generation after generation into a dead end life that just propogates itself..."
Probably shouldn't point this but you are engaging in the very kind of thinking that causes the problem you are lamenting. Forgive me for putting words in your mouth but you seem to be saying Asian's are hard working and industrious so they are successful while blacks are not.
Take this mind set and put it in a prospective employer interviewing Asian and Black candidates. In the employers mind the Asian candidate doesn't have all the social baggage the black candidate does. As the stereotype goes the Asian is much more likely to work hard and be successful, maybe the black guy grew up in a slum, doing drugs and listening to rap music. He's going to hire the Asian candidate unless he is filling a quota.
It is a fact of life in America if you are black you are inherently at a disadvantage in life. You are going to be racially profiled by police and hassle more than any other ethnicity. You are going to be at a disadvantage in nearly every interview.
You may choose to forget it but America, especially the South, was practicing something resembling apartheid barely 40 years ago. The Republican party and many whites are still rascist, either overtly or with a thin veil. Its kind of naive to think blacks are going to jump from deeply oppressed, and in social tatters, to a level playing field in the space of a couple of generations.
If you grow up knowing all this chances are you too would be toting animosity to people whose ethnicity gives them every advantage. I'm guessing your ethnicity has always puts you at a advantage so you really have no clue what the problem is like. Someone black in America can succeed but they are going to have to work at least twice as hard to just reach parity. Someone who is affluent and white can fail too but they have work twice as hard at it too, and they can succeed without really trying or deserving it.
Here is a case study. There is this white guy I know. He was an academic disaster, intellectually challenged, squandered his youth partying, was arrested for Cocaine possession, failed in every business he tried excepting wealthy friends of his family baled him out every time. How did he make out in life. He is President of the United States. How did this happen you ask, he was born in to a white, privledged, wealthy, powerful family. If he'd been poor and black and and made the same life choices he would have ended up packing an M-16 in Vietnam and probably the rest of his life in prison.
Its all nice to bang the drum about how free America is and anyone can succeed but its a lot freer for some than it is for others, and it sure helps being born in the right place at the right time and the right color.
I really can't see the basis for this claim. Vietnam is the huge issue it is because both candidates have major issues with their Vietnam service that speaks volumes on their character. Kerry deserves some credit for serving in Vietnam while the Bush family used their connections to let George W. duck it. Both candidates have endorsed invading Iraq, the only policy difference they have was the HOWTO. If Kerry was an opponent of the War in Iraq maybe your case would have flown but he isn't.
As for Vietnam says about George's character there were something like 500 candidates for a small number of slots in the Texas Air National Guard with a small number of slots open, like 5. Back then the Guard was the way to escape combat duty, not like it is today under Bush where it is really a back door draft in to combat.
There was a qualifying test, George apparently flunked it. He should have been disqualified but family friends got him in over MANY better qualified candidates. After squandering a million training him to fly he unilaterally left Texas without approval and later refused a flight physical in Alabama when drug testing was instituted. He was fond of Cocaine at the time, and was grounded as a result. He should have been thrown out of the Guard and remanded to the regular Army but again family connections saved him and his Guard file was mysteriously purged of all this embarrassment later. Amazingly with the fixation on Kerry's record lately this still gets very little media play. There is a commercial out about it finally but you still see the ads slamming Kerry 90% of the time.
But in fairness Kerry's record is more than a little suspect and reflects badly on his character too. It REALLY looks like he was trying to rack up medals he didn't deserve so:
A. He could get out of Vietnam when he had 3 purple hearts B. He would have medals he could milk later in life when he ran for office, he was planning a political career then and racking up a chest full of medals is a classic scheme by future politicians to help insure future electability and he was obviously milking it to the hilt at the convention.
If he had character he would have declined purple hearts for superficial wounds at a minimum. Of course he probably wanted to get out because he saw what kind of atrocity Vietnam was. Those Swifts boats were frequently in free fire zones which meant they could shoot anyone they saw which often meant innocent civilians.
"Anyway, fear is fueled by isolation, compasion is fueled by interaction, which helps with empathy. That's why rural places trend towards conservative and urban areas trend towards liberal."
Thats a pretty bold leap in to oversimplification. I can do it to. People who live in rural areas tend to be self sufficient, and want to sink or swim on their own merits. They prefer to work with their family and neighbors to succeed on their own. They crave for and strive to keep government out of their lives (farm subsidies being the extreme contradiction).
People in cities tend to be heavily socialized out of necessity. They are being constantly subjected to rules and regulations that keep people from stepping on each other which is the nature of high density living. They are much more amenable to government intervention in their lives or they wouldn't be living in densely socialized cities.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty sure Dean wasn't though he is hardcore Yale. I did leave out the fact Joe Lieberman also went to Yale, at the same time as Kerry I think, and is also a Connecticut Senator which is no doubt how he secured his VP slot in 2000. The media has chosen to gloss it over but our great democracy had almost nothing but elitist Yale grads running for President. I'm pretty confident that the elitist families of Connecticut are pretty much running this country at this point and commoners need not apply.
"Also, you do realize that President George W. Bush has conquered not just two countries, but several more, all with diplomacy? Pakistan and Libya are now working with us instead of against us. That wasn't true when Bush took office."
You do realize George really didn't know the name of General Musharraf, the dictator of Pakistan, when he was asked before he was elected. He really is completely clueless about everything except tax cuts, even then he just knows "tax cuts good, what are deficits".
You do realize Pakistan was an American ally long before George came to town. The CIA ran a war with Pakistan's complicity during the 80's against the Soviet Union from Pakistan's tribal region using an Islamic army. Interestingly enough this army included Bin Laden and what is now Al Qaeda. The CIA helped form them as a weapon against the U.S.S.R. Like many weapons the CIA formed including Saddam, Castro and Noriega it eventually turned on them.
You do realize Pakistan was the leading distributor of nuclear weapons technology, to places like Iran and North Korea, during their alliance with George you are so proud of. When the U.S. forced the issue and broke up the ring Musharraf pardoned the ring leader who is a national hero in Pakistan and still free today.
You do realize Pakistan's alliance in the war on terror is a joke. Chances are high Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are alive and well in the tribal region of Pakistan and the Pakistani government has engaged in nothing but token attempts to find them.
You do realize there is a good chance Libya acquired some junk WMD gear and "gave them up" in order to sucker Bush and Blair in to singing praises of them and lifting sanctions, they've been trying to get lifted for years, so they can get richer selling more oil and companies like Halliburton can work in their oil fields without going through shell companies. Khaddafi played George W. like the sucker he is on that one.
It probably really doesn't matter but the dismantling of the Republic and the creation of the Empire will probably move along more smoothly under Bush with a Republican dominated Congress, and if the current Neocons reamin in control of the Pentagon. Its lost on everyone but Kerry and Bush have nearly the same position on all the volatile issues of the day. Both are fans of the Patriot Act, both support the Iraq war, Kerry is just quibbling on implementation details because he has to to keep the Democratic base happy.
I need to do some research on what happened in Iowa. I gather a dozen or so wealthy people funded attack ads that ran only in Iowa that associated Dean with Bin Laden and started his slide in Iowa. His slide in Iowa finished him before the media finished him off over the "I have a scream" speech. Chances are the Democratic nomination was decided by a dozen people with some money and well placed attacked ad, much like the November election may well be decided by a handful of Republican's funding attack ads like the Swift boat ads. As nearly as I can tell our government is chosen by a few wealthy people, with a few well placed attack ads, which precipitate a media stampede and the American people just follow the ring in their nose.
Its even stranger that Dean is a Yale grad too though I don't think he is Skull and Bones. It kind of shows how the moneyed elite that sits in Connecticut and around Yale had locked up the Presidency before the American people were even consulted.
And then Dick Cheney was also groomed for Yale but he barely survived two years there, his grade were apparently so bad he probably would have flunked out if he hadn't left voluntarily. Don't think he had the family connections George W. had to insure he got passing grades since he was as apparently as intellectually challenged as Cheney was at Yale. George W.'s grandfather Prescott was a former Senator from Connecticut, Yale's home state, insuring George W. would never be flunked no matter how bad his academics sucked there.
Here is a good URL on Jefferson's thinking on the Bill of Rights. He was really unhappy that American rights were left largely to inference in the original constitution. He felt it essential to spell them out to prevent an out of control government, like we have to day, from usurping them:
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:388, Papers 12:440
Unfortunately America is short on people of the stature of the founding father today so it remains to be seen if the unparalleled wisdom of the founding father's work will be unraveled in our lifetime.
For all of the Founding Father's wisdom they couldn't prevent an ignorant and apathetic American people from electing an ignorant President, and a petty malevolent Congress who, working in unison, with soon to be stacked courts, could shred the basis of the Republic and the Bill of Rights without a whimper from the American people.
"The Bill of Rights was a perversion of the purpose of a national constitution into a positive dispensation of rights as detailed in the first several amendments, rather than what it was supposed to be, a limitation and structuring of the powers of government."
Perversion....gag....The Bill Rights is the heart and sole of the Constitution. The original document dwells far to much on the minutia of the mechanics of government, is in numerous areas archaic, no place more so than in the electoral college, and didn't really put adequate checks on the Federal government to prevent it from usurping powers. Its no accident the Bill of Rights was penned by Thomas Jefferson, from a Southern State, Virginia, because the Southern states were most vehement in placing checks on the Federal government, an issue that would in the near future lead to the Civil War.
The Bill of Rights is by far the timeless and crucial part of the document that is being shredded by the current American government.
"also named George."
There is a key difference, Washington was named George, presumably as a namesake of the monarchs at a time America was still pretty loyal to the monarchy. I don't think he could change it after the fact when the colonies turned on George III. I think its a somewhat ironic tribute that he turned on his namesake.
The Bush clan by contrast settled on the name George after America shed the yoke of his dominion. I'd give you even money its because they have Tory sympathies and its a subtle statement they preferred the aristocracy to the democracy that replaced it, a democracy where rabble can aspire to be President. Connecticut, Yale and Skull and Bones are the power base where the Tories, who stayed in the colonies after the revolution, maintained their power base and have slowly reasserted the concept of a ruling elite thinly veiled by a sham democracy.
Well it is a tribute to how easy would be to pull the wool over your eyes and the eyes of the American people that you refuse to believe its possible they were assassinated by powerful people and not lone wacko's and accidents.
I assure you there were a lot of powerful people that wanted JFK dead. The military was royally pissed at him for not invading Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis.
The powers in the CIA were royally pissed at him for denying air support at the Bay of Pigs and letting Castro destroy their little army. JFK gets blamed for the Bay of Pigs but the plan was actually hatched under Eisenhower and the army of Cuban expats was already formed on U.S. soil when JFK came to power. There is a chance that he was more than a little reluctant to go through with it which may explain why he denied it the air cover it needed to succeed and disposed of an Cuban expat army he didn't want in the process.
There is a chance JFK also didn't want to escalate Vietnam which also put him at odds with the CIA and the Pentagon.
Of course RFK was in the middle of all of these same problems so is it so hard to believe that the same powers that whacked JFK would whack RFK to prevent another Kennedy administration.
And then there is Martin Luther King. I can assure you J. Edgar Hoover hated King with a passion as did most of the white men who ran the U.S. at the time. He was a major threat to white supremecy in the U.S.. MLK alone was giving black people the hope that they could aspire to something greater than the next to nothing the U.S. had given them until he cam along. He was also a really vocal opponent of the War in Vietnam, both because he was a pacisfist and it was disproportionately killing black men. Black men had a much harder time ducking the draft while affluent white men like Geroge W. and Dick Cheney had no such problem. It is more than plausible that the powers in Washington whacked King because he was a real threat to their power.
And then you have Wellstone and Mel Carnahan. Not a lot of people are killed in small plane crashes in the country. The odds are somewhat stacked against TWO Democratic Senate candidates dieing in plane crashes in two years. Add in the fact that they happened at a time when Republican's were DESPERATE to maintain their grip on power in the Senate, power crucial to passing their extremist agenda, and a conspiracy is pretty ripe. When Wellstone died the Democrats lost his seat to the Republicans which would have never happened if there hadn't been a crash. His death helped swing power in the Senate and a LOT OF MONEY and POWER swung with it. The circumstances of the crash are more than a little mysterious. For example it is quite possible powerful people could lay there hands on an EMP weapon that would be more than capable of downing a small plane without leaving a trace.
If you recall none other than John Ashcroft was running for a Senate seat agaisnt Mel Carnahan who was also killed in a something mysterious plane crash. In this case, if it was a plot, it failed since Ashcroft sucks so bad he lost to a dead guy or actually his wife.
Well I agree with you completely too except I'm missing George III. Thought George W. was George the II. His dad being George the first. His grand dad was Prescott and I think before that it was Samuel though I'm a little hazy that far back. Bert Walker, George H.W. Bush's maternal grandfather was a key Machiavellian figure who helped propell the family to power and wealth along with the Harriman's, Bunny Harriman being a Yale class mate of Prescott Bush, fellow Skull and Bones man. Prescott did the day to day dirty work managing Harriman investments including working at Union Bank which was seized at the start of World War II since it was the American investment front of the Thyssen family, one of Germany's richest industrial families who helped throw support of German industry behind Hitler at a crucial point and helped insure his rise to power. It was quite the embarrassment to the Bush family at the time and appeared in one of the New York papers at the time. They managed to hush it up though. The documents on the seizure of Union Banking listing Prescott's name were declassified a few years ago and are available in the National Archives.
The Presidents middle names Herbert and Walker are tributes to Bert Walker who was a globetrotting manipulators of empires.
Another vein of this conspiracy theory is there is actually still a Tory party in the U.S. and its power base sits squarely in Connecticut and at Yale, the power base of the Bush family. They lived in Connecticut before they moved to Texas and there is now at least four generations of Yale alum in their family.
The wealthy elite that sits there has for sometime been operating on the same basis British nobility did, that most people are rabble and you can't trust them to govern themselves, so you need a cultured, schooled, moneyed elite to run things and that is pretty much what the Bush family and the Republican party is doing today. Of course Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society sits at the heart of this tory party. Wouldn't be suprised if they arranged the Democratic nomination for Kerry, also Yale grad, also Skull and Bones, with it predetermined that he will fall on his sword in by November as another avenue to insure George W. can't lost in November.
There is probably some truth to the idea that most American's are to dumb to govern themselves but unfortunately the moneyed elite that are doing it in their stead tend to govern in ways that are most likely to increase, enhance and extend their wealth and power, often at the expense of the rest of us.
Not sure exactly what was insightful in this post.
"The Constitution is less about rights than about the orderly functioning of Government."
Excepting that you are conveniently forgetting that attachment to the Constitution called the Bill of Rights, which is about nothing but rights, especially noteworthy being the Tenth amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
This amendement is the sweet one and was put there by the founding fathers, who had amazing wisdom, vision and foresight, because they dreaded the prospect of a power grab by a central government, a party, a President or Congress, especially if they acquired imperial aspirations much like we are seeing today.
The Republican party really seems to have concluded that they are the only party able to run America and the Bush family is for all intents and purposes attempting to form a dynasty to lead the empire. The Founding Fathers really dreaded the prospect of a President acquiring the trappings of the monarchy they hated so much in the King against whom they rebelled. His name was George too. How far America has fallen and how ironic that we once again seem to have a King George, just like the one the founding fathers rebelled against.
The Republicans are no doubt rationalizing to themselves that what they are doing is in the best interest of America, its OK to rig the election to stay in power, since they are the one true defender of the nation. Its OK they are destroying the foundations on which America was built in the process of "saving" it from its enemies, whether they be Muslim extremists or Democrats.
You can slam me for conspiracy theory but I can retort with the simple fact that Richard Nixon, also a Republican, was forced out of office for engaging in illegal activity to insure his reelection and hold on power. There is precedent. The Bush's just seem to have taken it to a whole new level today by exploiting computers.
Sorry to say it to you but you really don't live in the free country you thought you did unless everyone bands together to take it back.
I guess you suck at doing google searches or you suffer from the same cognitive dissonance problem of most Bush supporters. They've totally demolished civil liberties in this country in the name of "safety" and "security" and you all have your heads stuck in the sand.
Both incidents have been carried on the major news networks with video of the couple with the T shirts arrested and a Mankato Minnesota TV station interviewed the kid who was detained for having the sticker on his wallet.
Here I'll help, in google:
"Mankato Kerry sticker"
Here is a search for the couple with the T shirts arrested:
"Tshirt Bush arrested"
and I'll even send a URL.
Here is one for the couple arrested for the T shirts from a search on:
It is something of a saving grace that as far as I know all the judges have thrown out the trespassing cases as the travesty of justice they are though the people involved have had to endure, arrest, lawyers and trials.
Here is an unrelated incident where a man was arrested in a mall for refusing to take off a Tshirt that said "Give Peace a Chance" in 2003.
If this is what America has come to, stop the merry go round, I want to get off and I'm moving to another country. America is a sad parody of the principals its supposed to stand for.
"However, the fact that the kid, and his parents, were hiding these anti-bush tee-shirts are pretty incriminating."
Sorry to rain on your rant, these were two different events. In one case it was a kid in Minnesota who had a Kerry sticker who was detained. The two people arrested for unveiling T shirts was a whole 'nuther place.
In piecing together what I can from the Internet since the networks didn't carry all of the local TV station interview of the kid in Minnesota I think he actually pulled out his wallet himself, presumably, to get his ticket, someone saw the Kerry sticker and the uproar ensued. He wasn't arrested but he was detained until the event was over.
As another poster said you are pretty much required to sign a loyalty oath to attend a Bush/Cheney event and the Kerry sticker was taken as proof of disloyalty leading to his detention. Just the fact you have to be a loyal party member to go to their speeches shows how far in to the rabbit hole this country already is.
At this point I guess I don't care if Bush/Cheney are enforcing a "loyalty oath" to get in to their speeches. Just one more good reason to not listen to what they have to say. But I'm not sure an elected President of the United States, a public servent, should only be giving speeches to the loyal members of his party, that is sooooo 1939.
One thing I can say is this is a sign that they have some screws loose to do this when they go on the campaign trail. The idea of campaigning is to talk to the people who DON'T plan to vote for in order to persuade them, instead of only talking to people who ALREADY are voting for you. Kind of wasting your time campaigning at the people you already own. Preaching to the faithful isn't a very good way to grow your flock.
"The law is intended to promote peace and safety"
Bullshit. Harrassing people over T-shirt's and stickers has NOTHING to do with public safety or the President's safety. It is designed to suppress dissent, intimidate political opponents in to silence, and forge a party of fanatic loyalists. The Nazi party did it to as do most parties with totalitarian tendencies. It is also an indicator of the really bad case of intolerance Republicans are famous for. They did the same things the last time they held power in the '50's. It was called McCarthyism.
"maybe he just doesnt care if you disagree with him?"
Uh, then he would be a grown up and let people peacefully disagree with him, like all his predecessors did, instead of letting the Secret Service abuse their massive power to suppress free speech. The SS will contend they need to do this to protect him in these troubled times but that is an obvious canard since anyone who intended him harm would just refrain from packing signs critical of him, and would more probably be clean cut, wearing red white and blue and packing a sign singing praises of "Bush/Cheney Forever" which apparently dramatically increases your chances of getting within sight of the President.
I'm pretty sure the Republicans remember the lessons of Vietnam where public protest did what it was supposed to do, and put an end to a misguided war and government. This administration is sending an unmistakable message to dissenters that they will be tolerated only as long as they stay in pens, and thus render themselves impotent. Anyone who dissents in a way that is not "approved" or who is going to catch attention is going to regret it.
"and unless you have proof of arrests for supporting someone else, i dont beleive it."
I didn't say "arrests for supporting someone else". I said people have been arrested for nothing beyond a unveiling pair of T shirts with the name Bush in a red circle with a diagonal line through it. There is undeniable video footage of that one, saw it a couple days ago.
I also said a kid was barred from a speech, detained and threatened with arrest at a Minnesota event for carrying a sticker supporting Kerry. There must have been something to it because the local news station interviewed him and there is video of that. He apparently watched the speech on TV in the company of the local police or the Secret Service.
Do a Google search on "Minnesota Bush Kerry sticker wallet". The event was at a quarry in Mankato Minnesota. Obviously it the word of the kid involved and people who witnessed it since in that case he was detained and released so there was no public record of an arrest.
I'm referring to this as "Compassionate Fascism" since in a full up Fascist state the loyal party members would probably have just beat them, and the U.S. isn't that far gone yet. I just never would have believed the U.S. would be so far gone that only loyal party members can attend a speech by the President.
Most normal political candidates, ones who don't have a screw loose and want to get reelected. would let people who support their opponent in to their speeches with the intent of swaying them with the wise words. Thats how democracy used to work before it turned in to nothing but sound bites and attack ads.
You might, I repeat might, be able to make this case for people unveiling T shirts but it is a real stretch. They were quiet, the T shirts were not profane or offensive and would only "outrage the sensibilities" of people who are completely intolerant of anyone who criticizes their extremist hero. Again you might have a case for ejecting them from a private campaign event, but to arrest them is over the line, and its dubious if you should even be ejecting them from a public event.
That said, you have no case for threatening arrest of a teenager who had a sticker on his wallet, expressing support for a legitimate political candidate, which would have never been visible had it not been for an intrusive search. Are you saying we've reached the point it "outrages the sensibilities" of a group of people to force them to see a sticker favoring a legitimate political candidate.
The fact your hometown has a law like is both proof America has developed a really high tolerance for suppressing free speech or you are more probabl and you are really twisting the intent of the law. It is there to prevent truly disruptive behavior at a meeting (i.e. shouting or giving people the finger) and that is not what we are talking about here, it is silent dissent and silent expression of your political views.
Bottomline if Democracy was alive and well, healthy and thriving in this country someone as powerful as the President of the U.S. could tolerate seeing a little dissent. It speaks badly of him, and badly of the American people that he can't and we let him.
Sure except the Secret Service is implementing this. The SS is funded by your tax dollars and mine. Using them to suppress free speech is a fundamentally bad sign for our civil liberties. The SS is typically compelling local police, also paid for with tax dollars, to arrest the "trespassers" and to set up free speech zones, which are in fact "anti-free speech zones". If the people were being disorderly or shouting sure eject them.
If its really a private event, as in your analogy, then the enforcement should be through private security and should stop at barring entry or ejection from the venue, not arrest, especially if there is no disorderly conduct (since you are vague on the concept wearing a T shirt with the name Bush on it doesn't qualify as disorderly conduct, illegal or any other grounds for arrest).
Kind of shows you how willing you've become to accept having your rights trampled that you thinks its OK, and are apologizing for it, when someone threatens arrest of a teenager for having a Kerry sticker on his wallet that wasn't even visible were it not for an intrusive and unwarranted search. At that point you have sacrificed pretty much all free speech and freedom of political thought, you can be ARRESTED merely supporting an opposition candidate. This is what 3rd rate dictators do and we keep telling ourselves and the world what a great democracy we are. Well we simply aren't any more.
This also extends far beyond Republican campaign events. It seems to be happening pretty much every place the President appears. He is a paid servant of all the people, even the ones who didn't vote for him, though he seems to have completely forgetten that fact.
You have to wonders what kind of "Emperor's New Clothes" fantasy world Bush lives in if he NEVER encounters anyone who disagrees with him. What a mind trip it must be for him to know anyone who says a disparaging word about him is subject to arrest, such power, such total power. This is how slow moving totalitarian states are created. They just slowly move out the boundaries of what is acceptable for the state and what is not acceptable for the people, until the state has absolute power and the people have none.
I think I get off on a technicality, I didn't actually mention Nazi's or Hitler though I alluded to them. Fascism is somewhat more the Italian flavor of right wing extremism.
If we are going to start invoking Godwin's law then you really aren't going to be able to run any threads on the new Republican party any more.
Its a sad day for that historied party but you simply can't continue to apply the "conservative" label to what they are today. Outside of tax cuts everything they are doing today is anathema to conservatism.
If someone can suggest an appropriate recognizable political label to apply to the new Republican party I will certainly it take under consideration using it. They seem to be adherents of many of the principals of Fascism:
- Authoritarian government backed by an extensive internal security apparatus growing in leaps and bounds every month
- The head of state and the security apparatus has the power to arrest people, detain them indefinitely without due process and subject them to forms of torture.
- Suppression of free speech by opponents of the party and the state
- Aggressive warfare to preempt threats, real, perceived, fabricated or imagined.
- Fascism, as opposed to left wing socialism, works hand in hand with large privately owned corporations and industrialists. It is the authoritarian form of capitalism which seems to be what we have. The government massively intervenes in superficially free markets to make economic winners out of its friends and losers out of its adversaries.
"Compassionate Fascist" is the most descriptive term I can think of. It tends to be the logical conclusion of a right wing party which tilts to far to the right especially when blessed by an attack on the state which can be used to justify the tilt.
Another related example, it appears you now have to get tickets to attend a speech by George W. It would be interesting to see if there is fine print on the tickets. But apparently if you, for example, wear a hidden T shirt that is critical of Bush and unveil it during the event your ticket is instantaneously revoked and you are arrested for trespassing even if you are in what would otherwise be a public space. There is a couple fighting a court battle for this for no crime other than quietly unveiling T shirts with the name Bush under a red circle with a diagonal line through it. A family went to a Bush event in Minnesota. Apparently it was reveiled during the strip search to get in one of the teens had a Kerry sticker on his billfold. The family was ordered to leave and was threatened with arrest.
Its a sad for America that the rabid Bush faithful and the previously apolitical Secret Service really are starting to closely resemble Brown Shirts.
I really don't know how conservatives can prattle about how they hate big government intruding in their lives and then turn around an bow at the feet of George W. I'll probably get modded as flame bait for it was more than a little deceptive when he campaigned as a "compassionate conservative". There isn't an once of true conservativism in him other than tax cuts for the rich. In reality he is a "compassionate fascist". The new Republican party isn't as oppressive as the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy....yet....hence the term "compassionate fascist", but if they stay in power for a few more years and have a new 9/11 attack as justification they will continue the steady migration to an oppressive police state.
In some respects I'd like to see them stay in power a while longer. It may reawaken the sedated America public to realize their government does manner and it can turn totalitarian thanks to American indifference. it may be the only way the American people will throw off the yoke thats been laid on them by a wealthy elite and giant corporations. After another 4 years the American people may be so appalled by the Republicans ad they were after McCarthyism the last time the ruled, that they will be thrown out of office and return to an impotent minority they should be. Of course the Democrats suck too so you are left hoping the complete mess American politics is currently in will be saved by a new 3rd party that will for a change represent middle America without the intolerance of the Republican's or the pandering to interest groups that is the Dem's.
The current misguided rush to redesign the intelligence agencies in the U.S. is a leading indicator of incoming totalitarianism. In the early 1970's Congress put a firewall between the FBI and the CIA, and between domestic and foreign spying to reign in massive abuses of spying on people in the U.S. who were guilty of nothing but opposing the people in power. It was spying designed to cement the hold on power of those in power and suppress dissenting viewpoints.
Just stop and imagine the massive power and potential for abuse now that the CIA, FBI, CIA, DIA are being merged in to one all seeing, all powerful spying agency with no restraints on its domestic spying powers. There will also be one person with a massive power to manipulate intelligence to fabricate the case for war as was done in Iraq and there will be no independent intelligence to offer a dissenting view.
"There's no such thing as the Border Patrol any more. It got rolled into HomeSec a long time ago."
Once again you are being a pedantic dick, Twirp. There was a name change for the umbrella agency to Customs and Border Protection, thats what bureaucracies do, change acronyms when they can't think of anything worthwhile to do.
But the people that patrol the border within that agency still call THEMSELVES the Border Patrol. Here is their web site.
You can admit you are wrong now, though I know you find that psychologicly impossible to do.
"You just can't stop yourself, can you? You make me sick."
Well now you know how the rest of feel when we read your stupid little rants.
"You are a fucking idiot. I really wish you, like all the other spout-offs here, would just shut the hell up about a subject about which you know nothing at all."
Your the lead spout off here, Twirp, and you really don't seem to know what your talking about half the time, refuse to admit it or to change.
Glad to see you are back to your good old, "If you don't agree with me your an idiot and shut the hell up rhetoric".
This is a free country Twirp, everyone is free to express an opinion as much as you obviously hate the concept. Why don't you for just once in your life engage in civilized debate and refrain from the viscous personal attacks. They just make you look like a sick old man who can't cope with himself or anyone else.
"Notice the Democratic party cast a hell of alot of no votes on the bill. Also note that there were members of the Democratic party serving them that had been in the KKK. I'm not saying the Republican party is squeaky clean either, just saying they take most of the blame when they really shouldn't be."
Your a little confused friend, you are supporting my case not refuting it. Those are mostly the segregationist Southern Democrats voting against it. They and their white constituents are the ones who jumped to the Republican party as fallout of the civil rights act and swung the South from the D column to the R column. The Republican's welcomed them with open arms and they are still a critical part of their power base.
If you will recall why Trent Lott was removed as Senate majority leader it was because he made the mistake of openly praising a segregationist Democrat, Strom Thurmond for running on a segregationist ticket after Truman desegregated the army, and doing it when a video camera was running. Here read this.
It been something of an open secret that Southern Republican luminaries Trent Lott, Halley Barbour, Bob Barr in particular have ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens a descendent of Thurmond's white supremecists.
I feel that a brief history lesson is in order. "Perhaps you'd like to read up on Abraham Lincoln [wikipedia.org] before we go any further. You'll notice that the first sentence says very clearly that Abraham Lincoln, who is commonly among the top 5 rated Presidents in the country's history, was a member of the Republican Party. Therefore, the President that (according to popular opinion) took the country into a Civil War over (among other things) Slavery, was a Republican President."
I guess I shouldn't let this one slide. You are talking ancient history here. That was 140 years ago. Your seem to be saying that because the Republican party was the party of blacks in the 19th century that I'm wrong when I say Republican's are a white party today. Well they are. I'll repeat....the racial balance of the two parties flipped in the 1960's when Democratic segragationists abandoned the Democratic party because Kennedy and Johnson started to force desegregation.
To quote Johnson at the time:
Nevertheless, the Republican Party's historical "dirty little secret" is the manipulation of racism to win votes. When President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he prophetically predicted to Bill Moyers, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." The Democrats' support for civil rights drove disgruntled Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, transforming the party of Lincoln into the party of Jefferson Davis."
"The parent also addressed this issue. In short, he said that life isn't fair, nobody ever said it was going to be, and it's futile to try to make it so. The only thing people can do is the best with what they have."
Thats awfully easy for you to say since I doubt you are on the losing end of the unfairness.
" It seems to be the result of a larger percentage of crimes committed by a minority"
Geez you just lambasted me for stereotyping blacks as criminals when I didn't and now you just did the same thing. You better be offended at yourself.
"If, however, the Black child fails while the White child succeeds, then you can claim that the color of one's skin directly contributes to one's success in life."
All I can say is you are extremely naive to think that skin color doesn't factor in to your odds of succeeding in America. It isn't as much of a factor as it used to be but it is still most definitely a factor.
"and they will exist after George Bush leaves office."
Again you missed the point. To summarize more concisely he is a sterling example of how race, wealth and privilege can result in success for people who don't deserve it based on their merits or effort. It is an answer to all those who think America is the land of the free and everyone is born equal and its just a matter of hard work and anyone can achieve anything. Sorry to burst the bubble but its just not the case. There is a elite in the U.S. just like every other country. If you are born in to it you are leaps and bounds ahead of your peers.
"Accussing the Republican party of being racist is just plain sickening."
Unfortunately it is simply true. You can try to shoot the messenger for saying it but it doesn't change the facts on the ground.
If you look at any gathering of Republicans, there will be a few token minorities in the crowd but otherwise it will be overwhelmingly white. Just do some side by side comparison of crowd shots between the DNC and RNC conventions. There is an undeniable reality there you are choosing to ignore.
The Democrats, especially Southern Democrats, used to be the rascist party but when Johnson shoved through the civil rights act in the mid sixties there was a seismic shift. Blacks moved to the Democratic party and southern whites moved to the Republicans because the Democratic party turned in to the party of blacks, its why the Republican's have a lock on the Southern white vote today.
You may not find it pleasant, and it is politically incorrect of me to point out the obvious, but as a whole the Republican party is a white men's party. They may well pull in big chunks of the Asian and Latino vote too but it simply isn't a party concerned with or interested in representing blacks.
You're kind of showing your partisan blinders when I slammed both candidates equally and you you are acting like I'm a shill for the Republican party. I found Kerry's military record a source of deep concern long before the Swift Boat Veterans came along. If you go back in my /. posts you will find I said just that long before they came on the scene.
The fact is Kerry's war record is extremely vulnerable to criticism. It simply doesn't sit well with most people that he could rack up 3 purple hearts based on scratches, when you see people coming back from Iraq missing arms and legs or horribly burned. Those are the people the medal was designed to honor. Medals are kind of a sick concept in the first place but if you give them out like Cracker Jack prizes they really do become meaningless.
Kerry and the Democrats pretty much begged to be slammed on this issue by severely overplaying his "heroism" at the convention while they glossed over the rest of his mediocre career.
"Now he has some master plan to get out of Vietnam?"
:) Though it should be noted most food is coming from giant corporate farms these days anyway so farmers and ranchers are a dieing breed. You are talking like living on a farm or ranch is a luxury, well it is for city dwellers who make their money in the city and retire to the country. If you try to make a career and a living on agriculture I think you would find its a pretty hard life, many farms fail and most squeak by only with the help of outside jobs.
I wager he volunteered for Swift boat duty because:
A. He wanted combat service and medals to further his future political career
B. He's spent his entire life trying to follow in JFK's footsteps and Swift boats were the Vietnam equivalent of PT boats. John F. Kerry, get it, he called himself this at Yale and everyone there new he was angling for a Presidential run someday.
I wager when he got to Vietnam he decided it wasn't a pleasant place or very heroic and he took the first out he got. Being the flip flipper he is he almost certainly sensed the war was turning unpopular and he always tries to stay on the popular side of every issue. He got out of Vietnam because there was a rule you got out after three purple hearts. If he really wanted to stay in Vietnam who could have waived that rule and finished his tour instead of cutting and running from his boat and his crew.
Its just really a little disturbing someone could rack up 3 purple hearts and spend no appreciable time in the hospital.
I'll grant you a guy fell in the water and Kerry pulled him out. Whether it was under fire is unfortunately impossible to establish at this point. Rifle fire is unfortunately not entirely easy to identify unless you see muzzle flashes or ricochets. It really doesn't strike me as medal worthy, everyone else on the boat took the same risk, the guy fell off Kerry's boat, it was Kerry's duty to pick him up. It really sounds like heroism inflation.
Not sure anyone would being making such a big deal out if the Dems hadn't predicated their entire convention on his heroism and glossed over the rest of Kerry's career which is pretty mediocre. I pretty much gagged when he opened his speech there with that blatantly sappy "Reporting for Duty" B.S. Richard Nixon pegged him back in the 70's, he wreaks of "phony".
This is really a sad time for American government that we have two candidates for President who are both so undeserving of the office.
Unfortunately medal systems in any military are extremely easy to game especially when the superiors who approve them weren't there. They come down to the mercy of the people that write the reports, some of which were written by Kerry, and eyewitness reports of people who may or may not be entirely truthful.
"Not to mention the flow of tax dollars is from blue states to red states. Considering that urban dwellers are subsidizing rural dwellers' choice of lifestyle, I don't see how they can sit around and crow about self-reliance and not needing government."
Well I guess the urban dwellers could cut off the subsidy and the people in rural areas could cut off the food supply and see which side buckles first
"While I agree with your last statement, I think that this idea that the government is some seperate entity is wrong. We are the government. When "the government" is doing something you don't like, it's your fellow citizens doing something you don't like."
That is simply not true anymore if it ever was. Professional politicians are a class unto themselves. They aren't wired like or representative of the vast majority of people. Kind of obvious since the majority of them are lawyers and most people in this country aren't lawyers. Especially now that politicians are completely beholden to lobbyists, big contributors and corporate benefactors. In an entrenched two party system, where both parties are increasingly distasteful to most people, its nearly impossible for most ordi
"There are many other minorities in this country that dont seem to have these kinds of problems...or at least not ones like these that tend to grind generation after generation into a dead end life that just propogates itself..."
Probably shouldn't point this but you are engaging in the very kind of thinking that causes the problem you are lamenting. Forgive me for putting words in your mouth but you seem to be saying Asian's are hard working and industrious so they are successful while blacks are not.
Take this mind set and put it in a prospective employer interviewing Asian and Black candidates. In the employers mind the Asian candidate doesn't have all the social baggage the black candidate does. As the stereotype goes the Asian is much more likely to work hard and be successful, maybe the black guy grew up in a slum, doing drugs and listening to rap music. He's going to hire the Asian candidate unless he is filling a quota.
It is a fact of life in America if you are black you are inherently at a disadvantage in life. You are going to be racially profiled by police and hassle more than any other ethnicity. You are going to be at a disadvantage in nearly every interview.
You may choose to forget it but America, especially the South, was practicing something resembling apartheid barely 40 years ago. The Republican party and many whites are still rascist, either overtly or with a thin veil. Its kind of naive to think blacks are going to jump from deeply oppressed, and in social tatters, to a level playing field in the space of a couple of generations.
If you grow up knowing all this chances are you too would be toting animosity to people whose ethnicity gives them every advantage. I'm guessing your ethnicity has always puts you at a advantage so you really have no clue what the problem is like. Someone black in America can succeed but they are going to have to work at least twice as hard to just reach parity. Someone who is affluent and white can fail too but they have work twice as hard at it too, and they can succeed without really trying or deserving it.
Here is a case study. There is this white guy I know. He was an academic disaster, intellectually challenged, squandered his youth partying, was arrested for Cocaine possession, failed in every business he tried excepting wealthy friends of his family baled him out every time. How did he make out in life. He is President of the United States. How did this happen you ask, he was born in to a white, privledged, wealthy, powerful family. If he'd been poor and black and and made the same life choices he would have ended up packing an M-16 in Vietnam and probably the rest of his life in prison.
Its all nice to bang the drum about how free America is and anyone can succeed but its a lot freer for some than it is for others, and it sure helps being born in the right place at the right time and the right color.
"Vietnam is a surrogate issue for Iraq"
I really can't see the basis for this claim. Vietnam is the huge issue it is because both candidates have major issues with their Vietnam service that speaks volumes on their character. Kerry deserves some credit for serving in Vietnam while the Bush family used their connections to let George W. duck it. Both candidates have endorsed invading Iraq, the only policy difference they have was the HOWTO. If Kerry was an opponent of the War in Iraq maybe your case would have flown but he isn't.
As for Vietnam says about George's character there were something like 500 candidates for a small number of slots in the Texas Air National Guard with a small number of slots open, like 5. Back then the Guard was the way to escape combat duty, not like it is today under Bush where it is really a back door draft in to combat.
There was a qualifying test, George apparently flunked it. He should have been disqualified but family friends got him in over MANY better qualified candidates. After squandering a million training him to fly he unilaterally left Texas without approval and later refused a flight physical in Alabama when drug testing was instituted. He was fond of Cocaine at the time, and was grounded as a result. He should have been thrown out of the Guard and remanded to the regular Army but again family connections saved him and his Guard file was mysteriously purged of all this embarrassment later. Amazingly with the fixation on Kerry's record lately this still gets very little media play. There is a commercial out about it finally but you still see the ads slamming Kerry 90% of the time.
But in fairness Kerry's record is more than a little suspect and reflects badly on his character too. It REALLY looks like he was trying to rack up medals he didn't deserve so:
A. He could get out of Vietnam when he had 3 purple hearts
B. He would have medals he could milk later in life when he ran for office, he was planning a political career then and racking up a chest full of medals is a classic scheme by future politicians to help insure future electability and he was obviously milking it to the hilt at the convention.
If he had character he would have declined purple hearts for superficial wounds at a minimum. Of course he probably wanted to get out because he saw what kind of atrocity Vietnam was. Those Swifts boats were frequently in free fire zones which meant they could shoot anyone they saw which often meant innocent civilians.
"Anyway, fear is fueled by isolation, compasion is fueled by interaction, which helps with empathy. That's why rural places trend towards conservative and urban areas trend towards liberal."
Thats a pretty bold leap in to oversimplification. I can do it to. People who live in rural areas tend to be self sufficient, and want to sink or swim on their own merits. They prefer to work with their family and neighbors to succeed on their own. They crave for and strive to keep government out of their lives (farm subsidies being the extreme contradiction).
People in cities tend to be heavily socialized out of necessity. They are being constantly subjected to rules and regulations that keep people from stepping on each other which is the nature of high density living. They are much more amenable to government intervention in their lives or they wouldn't be living in densely socialized cities.