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Post by phil on Oct 10, 2007 14:16:46 GMT -5
Compassionate conservatism at its best ... ?? October 10, 2007 New York Times - Political Memo Capitol Feud: A 12-Year-Old Is the Fodder By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — There have been moments when the fight between Congressional Democrats and President Bush over the State Children’s Health Insurance Program seemed to devolve into a shouting match about who loves children more. So when Democrats enlisted 12-year-old Graeme Frost, who along with a younger sister relied on the program for treatment of severe brain injuries suffered in a car crash, to give the response to Mr. Bush’s weekly radio address on Sept. 29, Republican opponents quickly accused them of exploiting the boy to score political points. Then, they wasted little time in going after him to score their own. In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats’ plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family’s income and assets — even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite — and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits. Article continues ... www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/washington/10memo.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin |
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Post by phil on Oct 15, 2007 7:46:37 GMT -5
New York Times October 14, 2007 Op-Ed Columnist The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us By FRANK RICH “BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves. Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent. By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.” Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page. Article continues ... www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14rich2.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin |
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Post by shin on Oct 15, 2007 22:03:00 GMT -5
In George Bush's America, these Kommie Kids, the Frost children, are the greatest threat yet to forcibly install Stalinist/Bolshevist socialized medicine in our great Republic:   I wake up everyday and thank Jesus that we have brave patriots like Michelle Malkin and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to protect our free market health care system from these lazy, freeloading losers. |
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Post by shin on Oct 16, 2007 14:42:29 GMT -5
Behold, the new face of Kiddie Kommunism that threatens George Bush's America:  As we are now learning, the easiest way to deal with such domestic terrorism by such teensy, weensy socialists is to threaten their lives. Because, frankly, denying such a loathsome beast a new heart isn't enough to protect our Nation's freedom. Political curbstomping might have to be employed. George Bush's America. Smell it. |
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Post by Matheus on Oct 16, 2007 19:59:16 GMT -5
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Post by phil on Oct 18, 2007 9:42:14 GMT -5
The guy is certifiable !! World War III Is Going To Be HilariousPosted October 17, 2007 | 07:12 PM (EST) Your president giggled and grinned while discussing World War III today. "But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding [grinning] World War III [end grinning], it seems like you [begin giggling] ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge [end giggling] necessary to make a nuclear weapon." Hahahaha! Yeah! Zinger! That's funny shit. For the record, here's his expression while saying the words "World War Three":  To the rest of the known world, however, World War III a scary thing. It's just below abortion and above rape on the list of the all time unfunniest topics. Let's break it down. 1. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, and if they ever developed one, they'd be smart enough to know (despite how we caricaturize Ahmadinejad) that using it would invite their own destruction a thousand times over. Thus, there is no Iranian nuclear threat. 2. Yet the administration is drawing up plans to illegally and preemptively attack anyway, based on the lie that Iran is a nuclear threat. 3. Congress, despite the president's 24-percent approval rating, won't stop the White House because of, 1) The Fear, and 2) because Congress has allowed the president and vice president to seize unprecedented power which almost entirely circumvents Article I of the Constitution (among other things). 4. Meanwhile, if we do attack, it appears as if Pooty-Poot might bring Russia in on the Iranian side. 5. And there you go. Knee slapping boners all around. Milk just came out of my nose. www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/world-war-iii-is-going-to_b_68914.htmlReinstate the draft! We're goin' to war ... HEEHA! |
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Post by phil on Oct 18, 2007 20:24:36 GMT -5
Existential question if there was ever one ... What use is a gun if it's not readily accessible ?? THE NEW BACK UP www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsV50T5uEywBUY ONE FOR BOTH SIDES OF THE BED ... ;D ;D ;D |
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Post by phil on Oct 21, 2007 14:28:17 GMT -5
David Horovitz for president !! TERRORISM AWARENESS PROJECT A Student’s Guide to Hosting Islamo-Fascism Awareness WeekDuring the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses. The purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat. Nothing could be more politically incorrect than to point this out. But nothing could be more important for American students to hear. In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an "Islamophobe." According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are "oppressors." Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to oppose these lies and to rally American students to defend their country. www.terrorismawareness.org/islamo-fascism-awareness-week/49/a-students-guide-to-hosting-islamo-fascism-awareness-week/ |
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Post by maarts on Oct 22, 2007 7:21:47 GMT -5
They don't write war-songs like this about the Iraqi-war, eh?
Well how do you do, young Willie McBride,
do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun
I've been working all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
when you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.
Did they beat the drum slowly,
did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march
as they lowered you down.
did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.
Did you leave ere a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that same faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forever behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.
Did they beat the drum slowly,
did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march
as they lowered you down.
did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There's a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.
Did they beat the drum slowly,
did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march
as they lowered you down.
did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.
Now Willie McBride I can't help wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrows, the suffering, the glory. the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they beat the drum slowly,
did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound the dead-march
as they lowered you down.
did the band play the Last post and chorus.
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the forest'.
Eric Bogle.
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Post by shin on Oct 25, 2007 14:59:24 GMT -5
In George Bush's America, the most important thing a President can do to respond to massive wildfires is to park his motorcade in the middle of the highway and furiously masturbate, complicating public traffic in a situation that requires citizens to move about freely to avoid deadly infernos. sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/presidents-visit-snarls-traffic-for-rb.html24% and holding, somehow. |
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Post by phil on Oct 29, 2007 14:28:17 GMT -5
Like Faux News trying to tie the California fires to Al Quaeda ... New York Times October 29, 2007 Op-Ed Columnist Fearing Fear Itself By PAUL KRUGMAN In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then. Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns. Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.” Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.” Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense? Article continues ... www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin |
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Post by phil on Nov 14, 2007 17:19:41 GMT -5
Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007
Where Students Can't Hug
By Steven Gray/Chicago
Megan Coulter, a Mascoutah, Ill., eighth-grader, served two after-school detentions last week. Her offense? Hugging two friends and therefore violating the Mascoutah Middle School's ban on public displays of affection.
Coulter's case drew dozens of newspaper headlines and landed her on NBC's Today Show. But it also illustrates a key challenge facing America's schools: When is a hug inappropriate — or "extreme," as its been dubbed by some administrators? And, more broadly, how far should schools go in policing the behavior of a generation that often takes its social cues from Paris Hilton and Britney Spears?
Student-on-student public displays of affection (PDAs) have long been problematic for school administrators and parents. Experts say anti-PDA policies have existed for nearly two decades, although it's not known how many schools and school districts have imposed such rules. In 1999, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling held schools responsible for creating environments free of harassment among students; that decision then led many lawsuit-averse administrators to ban most forms of student contact — except, of course, for high-contact sports like football and wrestling. Among the most extreme policies is in Vienna, Va., where the Kilmer Middle School has a blanket "No Contact" rule that bans even high-fives. The Fossil Hill Middle School in Fort Worth, Texas, has banned students from hugging and holding hands. Earlier this year, the Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, Illinois, banned hugs.
Other schools have a broad ban on "inappropriate displays of affection," or IPDAs. Proponents say it gives school administrators more discretion in interpreting what constitutes "inappropriate" behavior. Yet that same discretion potentially exposes administrators to accusations of unfairly targeting, say, a Latina for braiding a friend's hair, or for showing favoritism by failing to reprimand the football team's quarterback who playfully smacks a teammate's back after a win.
Practical considerations — like hallway traffic control — are behind some of these no-contact measures. For example, at Iowa City, Iowa's South East Junior High School, girls who hadn't seen each other for an entire 42-minute class often stopped to hug each other in hallways during the four-minute break between classes. The hugging clogged the 700-student school's hallways. So Deb Wretman, the principal, developed a "hands-off, or handshake" slogan to limit greetings to a handshake. (She is loath to call it a "policy," and points out that "you won't find anything in our handbook that refers to 'no hugs' or 'public displays of affection.'") While there's no penalty for "violating the slogan," Wretman says the effort has significantly reduced hallway congestion.
Under the most extreme anti-PDA policies, however, even a student who hugs a friend whose parent has just died could potentially face suspension. The lack of nuance in such policies bothers critics like Lisa Graybill, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union's Texas Chapter. "Preventing harassment and teaching kids to respect each other is important, but having yet another reason for kids' behavior to be criminalized is unnecessary," she says. "It's draconian to ban all forms of touch."
Megan Coulter's case began in earnest at a sports event a couple of weeks ago. Her parents say her southern Illinois school's vice principal asked her and a male friend to stop hugging. Then, on Nov. 2, Megan stood near a bus in the school's parking lot and put her arm around a male friend's shoulder. The vice principal, who did not return calls seeking comment, immediately issued a detention order. Minutes later, as Megan walked across the school's front lawn, a female friend gave her a hug. The vice principal issued the second detention order.
"I honestly think I shouldn't have been punished, because the hugs were nothing inappropriate," Megan, 13, said in a Today show interview, her face expressionless, her brown hair pulled back, one hand clutching her mother's. "There wasn't bodies pressed up against each other."
Now, says her mother Melissa Coulter, Megan is being shunned by friends, whose parents deem her a "bad influence." Yet the Coulters say they still support anti-PDA policies, particularly for teenagers. "I don't want them to be all over each other in the hallways," Melissa Coulter told TIME on Sunday. "We just need to clarify how they apply it. Maybe the administrators weren't given enough latitude in using their judgment." The Coulters are waiting to see if Megan's school reviews the policy for the next year. If that does not happen, they will take the issue to the school board.
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Post by phil on Jan 27, 2008 21:33:21 GMT -5
A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald  What will be the legacy of President George Walker Bush? In this fascinating, timely book, Glenn Greenwald examines the Bush presidency and its long-term effect on the nation. What began on shaky, uncertain ground and was bolstered and propelled by tragedy, has ultimately faltered and failed on the back of the dichotomous worldview — good versus evil — that once served it so well. In A Tragic Legacy, Greenwald charts the rise and steep fall of the current administration, dissecting the rhetoric and revealing the faulty ideals upon which George W. Bush built his policies. On September 12, 2001, President Bush addressed the nation and presented a very clear view of what was to come — a view that can be said to define his entire presidency: "This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil." Based on his own Christian faith and backed by biblical allusions, Bush's worldview was basic and binary — and everyone was forced to choose a side. Riding high on public support, Bush sailed through the early "War on Terror," easily defining our enemies and clearly setting an agenda for defeating them. But once the war became murkier — its target unclear, its combatants no longer seen in black-and-white — support for Bush and his policies dropped precipitously. Glenn Greenwald brilliantly reveals the reasons behind the collapse of Bush's power and approval, and argues that his greatest weakness is the same rhetoric that once propelled him so far forward. Facing issues that could not be turned into simple good versus evil choices — the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, his plans for Social Security "reform," and, most ironic, the failed Dubai ports deal — Bush faltered and fell. Now, Greenwald argues, Bush is trapped by his own choices, unable to break out of the mold that once served him so well, and indifferent to the consequences. A Tragic Legacy is the first true character study of one of the most controversial men ever to hold the office of president. Enlightening, powerful, and eye-opening, this is an in-depth look at the man whose incapability and cowboy logic have left America at risk.
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Post by shin on Jan 31, 2008 0:14:34 GMT -5
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Post by phil on Feb 18, 2008 10:13:56 GMT -5
The Dumbing Of AmericaCall Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces By Susan Jacoby Sunday, February 17, 2008; B01 "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations. This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era. The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture. Article continues ... www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901_pf.html
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