Ruminations
updated September 15, 2008
WARNING: This page presents
off-topic commentary from a Progressive point of view. Whether you like
what I write here or not, feel free to e-mail me to express
your viewpoint. I reserve the right to publish here any response I
receive, however, including the e-mail address of the sender. Do not
respond to Ruminations on the D3Soccer Message board. That forum is
member-supported (as opposed to D3Soccer.net, which I fund and operate entirely
myself), and for that reason political commentary is prohibited there.
Great Links!
One of the D3Soccer.net
stalwarts has forwarded me the following links that will amuse you. These are segments from The Daily Show:
John
McCain’s Acceptance Speech (this is
a scream, especially from 4:18 to 5:48 of the clip)
John
McCain: Reformed Maverick
Small
Town Values
Here is one I found on my
own: Vietnam
Veterans Against John McCain
ELECTION 2008
COMMENTARY!
Follow up to ‘Not Qualified’
You have to love these cons
(oops, I should say ‘neo-cons’, but you know how I feel about the
oxymoronically named right). Four years
ago, when the Swift-boaters were throwing lies, half-truths, and distortions
about John Kerry’s Vietnam record around, I did not receive one e-mail from
those guys decrying the treatment of a decorated war veteran. Nor did any of them tell me that what happened
30-some years ago and was irrelevant.
Nor have any of them said that John McCain’s time spent in a POW camp is
irrelevant because it happened so long ago.
Yet I bring up the documented fact that John McCain finished 894th
out of 899 graduates in the Naval Academy class of 1958, and I receive three
e-mails whining to the effect that somehow this predates some unwritten statute
of limitations on issues concerning McCain’s character. Clearly, that statute of limitations falls somewhere
between 50 years ago, when McCain graduated, and 41 years ago when he crashed
his 5th Naval aircraft and became a POW. Listen up, gentlemen, you can’t have it both
ways. If you want to parade McCain’s POW
status before me, I get to wave his abysmal record at the Naval Academy
and as a pilot before you.
But isn’t that always the way
with the cons? They can attack anything
they choose (I recently saw an ‘Osama – Obama’ bumper sticker, testimony to the
depths to which the right will sink), but whenever anyone brings anything up
about McCain or Palin, watch out! The
constant efforts of the right to stifle free speech would be humorous if it
wasn’t so tragic.
Please, people, if you want to
e-mail me about my comments, follow these simple guidelines:
- Please
don’t tell me this is a soccer web site and I should not put political
comments on it. I know it’s a
soccer web site. I created it and
maintain it all by myself, remember?
But I also have worked to build up readership to the level it is
now, and if I choose to leverage my access to that audience, that is my
decision, not yours. You could
always go to one of the other sites and instead of political comments see
ads for monster.com, or Pizza Hut, or how to cut down on stomach fat. My income from this site is the same
whether you choose to come here or not: $0.
- If
you are going to tell me how you feel about me bringing up McCain’s record
at the Naval Academy, please give me an honest assessment about how you
feel about the Swift-boating of John Kerry.
- If
you are going to tell me that McCain’s Naval Academy
record is too far in the past, please tell me what the statute of
limitations is on character issues.
As always, I reserve the right
to post here any e-mail I receive with regard to Ruminations.
Not Qualified!
September 10, 2008
Imagine if you will,
that you are sick, very sick. You need
heart bypass surgery immediately. You
check into the hospital and are introduced to two doctors. One of them finished 894 out of 899 graduates
in his medical school. Although trained
at public expense to do bypass surgery, he lost five patients on the table,
four of them during routine procedures.
And let’s say the
other doctor graduated magna cum laude
from Harvard medical school. (Obama did
graduate magnum cum laude from Harvard law.)
OK, so which one do
you want working on you?
In 1958, John
McCain graduated 894th in his class of 899 at the Naval
Academy. He destroyed four planes in
routine, non-combat flight before he was shot down near Hanoi. Can anyone really believe that this man is
qualified to take over a country ravaged by eight years of George Bush? Had McCain’s father and grandfather not been
Navy admirals, he is unlikely to have ever been allowed near a combat
aircraft. We as a country have already
suffered for eight years at the hands of an unqualified child of
privilege. Have we learned nothing from
that?
McCain claims he is
an agent of change. That is
laughable. The record shows he has moved
in lockstep with the Bush Administration for years, and he has not proposed
anything substantial that represents a change from the failed policies of the
Bush administration. On the contrary, he
has vowed to maintain Bush’s tax policy.
He wants to eliminate the Department of Education; certainly that is a change, but it reflects
this man’s incredibly poor judgment.
Everything McCain says is a rehash of Bush’s policies. Yet Republican voters, even those who have
abandoned George Bush, will insist that McCain is a change candidate, too
intellectually lazy to actually look at the issues and the policies espoused by
their candidate.
Think about that
when you enter the voting booth in November.
Do you want doctor #894 of 899 operating on you? Or someone who has succeeded in everything he
has done?
Just a Reminder
Reposted September
10, 2008
Here’s a reminder
excerpted from one of my rants from the 2006 mid-term elections (the reference
to Republican control of Congress was true at that time, but obviously has
changed since):
Maybe you’re a
one-issue voter, pulling the ‘right-to-life’ lever. Think about this: Republicans have had control of the White
House and both houses of Congress, and have stacked the courts, but have not
yet delivered any meaningful victory to you on this issue. Aren’t you curious why? Maybe it’s because you one-issue voters have
carried the last two elections for them, and if they ever give you what you
want they fear you will go back to not voting and they will lose that
edge. They could have Congress for
decades and while they would tease you with little victories, they would never
deliver the goods. They are playing you
like a fine piano.
Random Observations
I perceived the
need for Ruminations while watching the Bush Administration steadily piss away
the good will we as a nation have accumulated over the past 200-plus
years. The Neo-cons (or as I call them, just cons, for indeed they have
conned so many Americans over the past several years), are steering the ship of
state toward a dangerous precipice from which there is no turning back.
We all have an opportunity, and in my opinion an obligation, to avert this
disaster, beginning at the polls.
Ruminations will be
short essays published as the spirit moves me.
George
W. Bush – Taliban Sympathizer?
March, 8 2008
Yeah, I thought that would get your
attention. But don’t worry, this will be
short.
Hmm . . . George Walker Bush, POTUS . . . John Walker Lindh, American
Taliban. Clearly the fact that these two
share a common middle name is reason to suspect Bush of conspiring with the
Taliban.
Of course, that is ridiculous. But so is the continuing insistence of
dim-witted conservatives (largely redundant, I know) on trying to scare
Americans by pointing out that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, as in
Saddam Hussein. (Interesting how none of
them have pointed out the link to the late King Hussein of Jordan.)
It’s time to knock off all of the inapt
innuendo and discuss candidates based on their positions, not on their names or
heritage. Of course, when your party is
headed by George Bush the track record won’t take you very far. Not far at all.
Too
Stupid to be Democrats!
January 14, 2008
I’ve been called a lot of things in
my life, some of them not very pleasant.
But today’s insult tops the list.
I received in the mail an envelope
from the Republican National Committee.
Inside was a letter and a ‘Republican Party Census Document’. The letter opened with ‘Dear Fellow
Republican’. Never in my life have I
been so insulted! While I consider
myself an independent, I have always been a registered Democrat. After a few minutes of seething, I tore up
strips of newspaper and added a not so nice note, making sure the RNC knows
that I never have been and never will be greedy enough to be a Republican, then
stuffed all of it into the return envelope and dropped it in the mailbox. (That way the RNC is on the hook for the
postage; a small price to pay for the insult, but at least it made me feel
better.)
The ‘Republican Party Census
Document’ is comical. Clearly this is
not an instrument aimed at real Republicans, but a thinly disguised junk mail
equivalent of push-polling of Democrats.
I guess the RNC thinks the addressees are as gullible as those who have
voted for the Bush Crime Family, since silliness such as this works with real
Republicans. Statistics show that the
average Democratic voter is better educated than the average Republican
voter. Perhaps the would-be Rove who
came up with this scheme didn’t read that - after all, the leader of their
party brags about not being a reader!
No, I won’t be filling out the
document. But I will tell you this: I am nearing my 57th birthday, and
I have never missed an election since becoming eligible to vote. In every one of those elections, I have found
at least one Republican for whom to vote because I believe in the two party
system. But not this year. This fraud has convinced me that there is
nothing redeeming about the Republican Party as it is now constituted.
If you get one of these letters and
feel as I do, please be sure to return the postage-paid envelope. Think how much that will cost the RNC if a
million of us do that. George Bush
doesn’t have enough fingers to count that high!
Hypocrisy
Rules
July 17, 2007
For a long time now, the Republican
Party has touted themselves as the party of family values, appealing to the
so-called ‘Moral Majority’ (whose stances on many social issues are anything
BUT moral and don’t reflect majority values).
They have won elections based on that myth. But let’s look at the record.
Senator David Vitter (R, Louisiana),
whose Senate campaign was based largely on family values, is embroiled in a
controversy in which he admits to connections to a prostitution ring in
Washington. He also is besieged by
allegations that he frequented a brothel in his home state (in fairness, he
denies the latter). Newt Gingrich, while
dogging President Bill Clinton during the Wilensky affair, hypocritically was
indulging in some adulterous behavior of his own.
Georgia State Senator Bill Stephens,
a Republican, in 2004 introduced a ‘Sanctity of Marriage’ amendment to the
state constitution. Odd for someone who
divorced his wife of 15 years, leaving her and their two sons, after persistent
allegations that he was having an extramarital affair. “Unfortunate things happen,” said
Stephens(?!).
Then there was the Mark Foley scandal
in the House of Representatives, bad enough in that the Republican
representative abused his power in his predation of young pages, but even more
heinous for the way in which Republican leadership covered up the allegations.
Rudy Giuliani? Family values? Enough said about THAT one . . .
The list goes on, and includes the immorality
of continuing to support George Bush’s failed war.
Don’t get me wrong; I am not staking out the high moral ground
for progressives or the Democratic Party.
There is an over-abundance of hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle, and
there are good and bad apples in each party.
But isn’t it time that the Republican Party either drop their claim to
moral superiority, or start acting as if they deserve it? Sadly, I doubt that they will as long as
there are those voters who continue to believe the myth despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary.
ADDENDUM: Judy Miller refuses to divulge her source for
the CIA leak story and does 85 days in prison.
Scooter Libby is convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice and
walks, thanks to the free pass given by George Bush (somewhere in Texas there
is a village missing an idiot). Bush has
taught our children it is better to lie than to say nothing. Another family value courtesy of the
Republican Party. (Don’t give me the
tired argument about ‘no underlying crime’ in the Libby mess; where was the underlying crime when the cons
went after Clinton? Perjury and
obstruction of justice are crimes unto themselves and require NO underlying
crime).
The
Aftermath
November 8, 2006
(At the time of this writing, the
composition of the next Senate was still in doubt, as the Virginia race has not
been decided. The House, of course, has
taken a turn to the left.)
There you have it. The people have spoken resoundingly. Democrats have netted 33 House seats, 6 State
Houses, and at least 4 (5, if you count Lieberman) Senate seats. In South Dakota a Democratic candidate for
local office who died two months ago still defeated the Republican incumbent,
100 to 64. Across the nation,
Republican candidates have felt the wrath of an electorate increasingly
disillusioned with the war in Iraq, the corruption in Washington, the
abandonment by the GOP of their supposed core principles. Undoubtedly some of those candidates were
good people with no connection to the scandals or the ineptitude of the current
administration. That’s the way it works
in politics, for better or worse. Guilt
by association can be a powerful factor at times like this.
So what’s next? I watched last night with both anger and
amusement as one after another turned-out Republican spoke of the need for the
two major parties to work together.
Ironic, isn’t it, given that the GOP would not give the Democrats the
time of day for the last several years, when they controlled everything? Now all of a sudden bipartisanship is a good
idea. They are right, of course, but
they should have thought of this a long time ago.
My hope is that the
Democratic-controlled house does not indulge itself in a messy impeachment of
the president, although there certainly are more reasons to do so than there
ever were to impeach Bill Clinton. To
that end, Nancy Pelosi has vowed to short-circuit promised efforts by John
Conyers to introduce articles of impeachment to the House floor. We should all hope she succeeds.
That’s not to say, however, that the
Democrats should not use their subpoena power.
There are many things for which the Bush administration needs to
answer: the manipulation of intelligence
during the run-up to the war in Iraq, the bungling of the response to Katrina,
the formulation of the administration’s energy policy and the influence of
energy providers on that process, and the undermining of the constitutional
rights of our citizens, just to name a few.
The damage can’t be undone; the
goal of any investigation should be to ensure that these travesties can not
happen again.
I would like to see the parties work
together in Congress to replace the current Medicare drug benefit with one that
is fiscally responsible, allowing DHHS to actually negotiate lower prices with
the drug companies. I would like to see
them work together to bring about a timely but responsible end to the war in
Iraq. I would like to see bipartisan
support for meaningful enforcement of ethics rules. I would like to see a lot of things happen,
but each will require cooperation and a president who does not veto everything
just because it came from a Democratic House.
The burden of this cooperation will fall on the leaders in the House and
the Senate. One network pundit put it
perfectly last night. We will be
watching to see if Nancy Pelosi becomes the Speaker of the House, in the style
of Tip O’Neill, or the Speaker of the Party, in the manner of Newt Gingrich.
One thing is certain: not much can change without change in the
White House. The VP has said that
regardless of the election the war in Iraq will proceed “full speed ahead”. The president has recently softened his stance
that he would proceed with his agenda regardless of the outcome of the
election, but has given no real indication of compromise. Much as he took the last election as a
mandate, he should consider this election a rejection of his policies and style
and respond accordingly.
It will surprise no one reading this
that I am a registered Democrat. That is
because in Maryland a voter can only vote in the primary of the party to which
he or she belongs. An Independent, which
is what I actually consider myself to be, does not get to vote in a
primary. I registered as a Democrat to
get that one extra vote, and because their values are much closer to mine than
those of the GOP. But rest assured, I
will be watching the Democrats with the same critical eye that I turned toward
the Republicans.
Pssst
. . .
October 29, 2006
Hey you . . . yeah, you in that voting booth. Before you vote for that Republican
candidate, think about this:
Are you voting for him or her because
you are conservative, and he or she claims to be conservative? Then you should look at the record of this
Congress. It’s enough to make a fiscal
conservative puke! They inherited a
budget surplus and turned it into record-breaking deficits. In FY 2006, the U.S. paid $406B interest on a
national debt of $8.5 trillion. That
debt breaks down to about $30,000 per citizen.
The Republicans try to scare you
about the “tax and spend” Democrats, but isn’t “don’t tax but spend like a
drunken sailor” worse? This Republican
Congress is so fiscally irresponsible that conservative former Congressman and
current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough wrote in his recent book that he would
prefer “an assortment of Bourbon Street hookers running the Southern Baptist
Convention than having this lot of Republicans controlling America’s checkbook
for the next two years.” And how many
vetoes of spending bills has George Bush issued? None.
Maybe you’re voting for her or him
because of some perceived moral superiority of the GOP? You have to hand it to them, they did a good
job of selling that fiction while covering up the fact that one of their own
was sending lewd e-mails and IMs to under-age pages. Oh yeah, and to make sure the Democrats
didn’t get wind of the situation, they held a Page Board meeting to discuss it
behind closed doors without inviting the sole Democratic member of the
Board. Then of course, there are the
lies. Constant lies. About everything. And that Jack Abramoff thing . . . and all
those corruption investigations . . . and so on.
Maybe you’re a one-issue voter,
pulling the ‘right-to-life’ lever. Think
about this: Republicans have had control
of the White House and both houses of Congress, and have stacked the courts,
but have not yet delivered any meaningful victory to you on this issue. Aren’t you curious why? Maybe it’s because you one-issue voters have
carried the last two elections for them, and if they ever give you what you
want they fear you will go back to not voting and they will lose that
edge. They could have Congress for
decades and while they would tease you with little victories, they would never
deliver the goods. They are playing you
like a fine piano.
I hope you’re not considering that
candidate because of his support for the war in Iraq! Better look again. These guys are abandoning George Bush’s war
like rats leaving a sinking ship. Talk
about a flip-flop!
Whatever you do, please think about
why you are doing it. The Republicans
love mindless voters. That is why they
spout phrases like ‘cut-and-run’ and ‘flip-flop’, knowing that a certain
segment of the electorate loves the convenience of chanting mantras instead of
actually reading about what is happening in this world and forming coherent
opinions of their own. (True story: In 2004, a friend of mine kept saying she
wouldn’t vote for Kerry because he ‘flip-flopped’. When I asked her to tell me how he did so,
she couldn’t.) Think about it. Do you really want these guys in charge any
longer? Or is it time for someone who
would actually hold the White House accountable for their actions, and would
investigate wrong-doing rather than cover it up. Think about it, and do the right thing.
Support Our Troops
August 7, 2006
One can not drive
more than a block or two these days without pulling in behind another vehicle
bearing the familiar ribbon challenging each of us to ‘Support Our
Troops’. This is in truth a noble idea, and in fact I know of no one who
does not agree with it in principle. I certainly do. But let’s look
how the Bush Administration has twisted this idea. Early on, anyone
expressing any doubts about the sanity of the invasion of Iraq was admonished
for not supporting the troops. How many times were we told that if we
spoke out against the war, we were emboldening the enemy and demoralizing our
troops? Ironically, those troops are fighting, at least so we are told,
for the freedoms we enjoy, including freedom of speech which this
administration tries time and again to stifle when criticized.
But I ask you, does
sending insufficient numbers of troops to a foreign country, without proper
body armor, appropriately armored Humvees, and most importantly without a
strategy for ensuring the peace following the downfall of Saddam, sound like
support? Does the stop-loss policy through which enlistment periods are
unilaterally extended by the government sound like support? Does
continually cutting funding for VA hospitals, in which many troops wounded in
Iraq find themselves, sound like support? How about the attempts by the
administration to make soldiers pay for equipment lost in the heat of battle? I could go on and on with examples in which
this administration has abused the troops that they claim to support so
earnestly.
I do not display a
‘Support Our Troops’ sticker on my cars; I don’t feel a need to. I did my
best to support our troops by voting against the administration that
‘supported’ them in all of the questionable ways detailed above. I
suggest that the best way to Support Our Troops is to bring them back alive and
well. Sadly, for over 2500 of them that will never happen.
Response received 8/14:
From:
"Don Edwards" <d_edwards@vngas.com>
This posting is inappropriate and
does not take in to consideration all the facts about the situation I the
middle east or around the world. I would much rather follow a visionary who
stop the attaches on US
soil than supported those who would wish us dead. I know you may mean well with
this posting but wish you left your politics where the sun does not shine. This
is soccer site and if your political agenda must come out do it else where.
Interestingly (at
least to me), when I replied to Mr. Edwards (if that is indeed his name) at the
e-mail address noted, my reply was filtered and bounced back to me. Isn’t that just the way with the cons: they
never want to hear any dissent! I do
appreciate Mr. Edwards telling me what I can post on my own privately-funded
web site, and where I should leave my politics.
Too bad he’ll never read my reply to him. Craven old fart. I’ll bet he owns a lot of Halliburton stock.
Response received 10/17/06
It is unfortunate that you feel this way and sit around whining
about what has happened in the past. I can’t hope to change your mind but
maybe now that North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon and Iran has re-supplied
and re-funded the insurgents in IRAQ you can at least take a few minutes
and talk about your vision for the future and how you are going to change
things (not what you are not going to do but what specifically you and the
other nostalgic crazy Clintonites are suggesting that we do). It is so easy to
say “Well I wouldn’t have done that and I hate you and every thing you stand
for and Stop the war now since we should never have been there in the first
place”. Nobody wants to be at war but whether we like it or not we are in
an ideological war with fundamentalists around the world and they only understand
violence and force. Tell me one instance where doing nothing and talking
diplomatically did anything but postpone the inevitable confrontation. In case
you don’t get it they go to heaven and sleep with virgins based on the number
of Christians/infidels they kill. If you want to distract the people who read
your site for soccer info with political ranting at least have the courage to
state definitively what it is you would do if you were in charge.
Otherwise you are just a frustrated complainer and guess what; we did
that for eight years under Clinton 1 and it got us into most of the world
problems we are facing now. And I for one will do everything I can to avoid
making that mistake again….
(PLEASE NOTE: It has been pointed out to me that I probably
crossed a line in my original response to Mr. Beatty’s post. For that, I apologize, and I have removed the
offending portions of my response.)
The responses to my
post have been running about 3-2 in favor of my point of view, which pretty
closely reflects the nation’s attitude toward Bush’s war. I haven’t been posting them, but this one was
too good to pass up. Notice how this guy
falls back on the time-honored Republican tradition of blaming everything on
Clinton (to be expected, of course; for
years Dems blamed everything on Reagan, and in the future they will blame it
all on W). Randall puts words in my
mouth. Nowhere did I mention stopping
the war NOW. The war needs to be
stopped, but I am not naïve enough to think that will happen overnight. Nowhere did I mention that I was a
Clintonite, or even a Democrat! Mr.
Beatty needs to wake up to the fact that people of all persuasions are fed up
with the constant distortion of the situation in Iraq, and of the lack of
progress, and of the mounting bills that our children and grandchildren will be
forced to pay (but children and grandchildren of Halliburton shareholders will
do OK). Former members of the Bush
administration, from Colin Powell to several Generals who served in Iraq, and
beyond, have come out against this administration’s Iraq policy. Mr. Beatty states that “we are in an
ideological war with fundamentalists around the world and they only understand
violence and force.” That is true, but it is also true that fundamentalists
within our own country (for that is of course where the roots of
neo-conservatism lie) seem to only understand violence and force. In fact, that is a cornerstone of the
neo-conservative movement.
The link to this
page clearly indicates this will be progressive political commentary. The message at the top of the page clearly
warns about what follows. If you follow
the link and don’t like what you read, the onus is on you. Mr Beatty, like everyone else who has read
this far, was warned. I maintain this
site myself, with no funding, no advertising revenue, nothing. I spend 800 or more hours a year on the
site. My opinions, like them or not,
come with the deal.
A final word. One of the responses in support of my
position reminded me of a quote by Samuel Johnson that is apt here:
“Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”