We've always known that the Kos-bloggers and other loony leftists out there are not entirely stable when it comes to political discourse. Nor are they as bright or as up on current events as those of us who consider ourselves true political junkies.
Kos is kind of like a game of pick-up football being played by a bunch of guys with anger management issues, who have no concept as to what the rules of the game are. Also the players are all blind and have no arms.
Here's a posting from Kos in which some of the astute minds of the left talk about the toll that the Bush presidency has taken on their personal lives.
So very sad.
angrybird: Have the Bush years taken a toll on your relationships?
I wrote a diary a short time ago about how the Bush administration helped ruin my marriage. It wasn't because my husband was a Bush supporter or anything...it was because of all the stresses from job loses, living without health insurance and getting sick, to my husband being forced to take a job where he wasn't home much that helped ruin my marriage.
However...I started thinking about other relationships that have indeed been killed because those people where Bush supporters.
...Please share your stories about how the bush administration has taken it's toll on your relationships; they can be stories from economy related to the personal. I promise you will feel better if you share :-)"
begone: Hmmm, my relationship with myself, mostly.
Before my head began exploding a few years ago in response
to Busharama, I'd exercise a lot... I mean, almost daily, joyous-type
exericising. Now I come home with a slight frown on my face and
come here to hear the news & be a mojo-mama even if too
tired to comment, and hang for hours here and on other blogs,
as if the light will shine again and I'll be present to hear the
BREAKING news about that.
Bush, I blame you for my new-ish extra 20 pounds....
delphine: I haven't had a relationship since he took office.
But I can say that I've been trashed by potential online dating partners for stating I couldn't date anyone who thinks bush is a good presznit....
cowgirl: I have two co-irkers who are die hard Bushies. I've known them for years. Although we weren't all that close, I've spent time with them outside of work, spent many breaks and lunches together, and generally liked them a whole lot.
Eventually, their support for Bush got to the point where talking with them simply infuriated me. I'm still polite and cordial with them, but we don't hang out the way we used to. It's just hard to fathom their belief system. How can they not be angry at the war alone? That many deaths makes me sick to many stomach, and they support it? W.T.F.
I'm not a violent person, but the last few times I discussed politics with them, I had the strongest urge to thump them upside their pointy little heads...HARD.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, I guess.
Boadicaea: Somehow my family AND relationships are almost all at odds with me. If they're not pro-Bush, they're disparaging about my uphill efforts to do something about him ("You really think a march/what you write/a sign/etc. will make a difference?"). One of my oldest friends called me a "kook." And they all get frothy over who deserves their tax money.
The hardest is my dad, but he's steering clear of politics lately and I just spent six weeks with him with only a few mishaps. He's a retired USAF pilot and looks at everything as bad guys/good guys, liberal media, etc. We're both old enough now for thoughful avoidance; if I feel like the top of my head is about to blow off, I go somewhere far away. He knows why, but accepts it. We talk a lot about family and faith, so conversation isn't superficial.
There was an incident--he called me in to view a video he'd received in his email. Before I knew what it was, I was watching a smart bomb blow up a group of Iraqis--"bad guys"--while my dad raved about our advances in weaponry. He absolutely had no awareness of my reaction to the video and to his enjoyment of it.
I was down the hall, thinking I would puke, when he hollered "Do you want to see it again?" I knew if I said anything but no we'd have a horrible and fruitless spat, so I just disappeared for a few hours....
meldroc: Bush has also damaged my mental health.
After I actually took the trouble to inform myself about politics a couple years ago, and learned the true extent of the damage Bush has done to this country, I have a constant boiling rage inside me. Absolutely constant. Never ceases, though sometimes I can get it down to a simmer so I can go out in public and hang out with friends without doing something stupid. On top of the anger is a generous dose of fear and anxiety, coming directly from the Bush administration's march to fascism.
Frequently, I'm so intensely angry that I hit things. I just broke my bookshelf today because I hit it. My knuckles have decent callouses on them from hitting things, and various pieces of my property show signs of my rage. Thankfully, I've never turned violent against people since I was in high school, though I was sorely tempted to deviate the septum of a wingnut who called me a traitor and faggot to my face at the anti-war march last Saturday.
Of course, it's unhealthy to harbor this much anger, especially if I'm stuffing it down all the time so people around me don't see me acting borderline psychotic. These emotions leak out, turn into other emotions, like depression, which I've fought with since college. I've also developed a venomous hatred of Bush and his cronies and the 23-percenters that support him. Hatred's never a good emotion to hold, but there it is. I literally hate those motherf*ckers who are destroying our country.
By all rights, I should be getting help, but I'm not going to. I was soured on the psychiatry business by my experience with anti-depressants - I ended up nearly emotionless, apathetic, and lost my motivation and creative drive, and as a result, I was unemployed for three years and had to move back in with my parents. I was your classic anti-depressant zombie. They didn't like the changes to my personality either, and stopped paying for the meds. After I tapered off the anti-depressants, I got my drive back, I was able to find work as a software engineer again, move into my own apartment, and now I'm supporting myself again. On top of that, if I told a counselor about my feelings, or that I'm so afraid of my government that I literally spent several hundred dollars on a shotgun, a deadly weapon, to defend myself against my government, I'm afraid I could get thrown into the psych ward. And I value my freedom enough that I will not allow that to happen under any circumstances. So, no shrinks.
I haven't talked to my best friend and ex-roommate in weeks because of a few personal issues between us, including politics - he's Republican, and though he's no fan of Bush, he constantly mocks and belittles my politics when I talk to him. So I don't."
Bush Derangement Syndrome. It's a disease that effects one in four Americans. If you know someone who suffers from BDS, consult your psychiatrist and ask him about Lierbertrol. The drug that turns left-wing lunatics into mainstream Democrats.
Thanks to Right Wing News for bringing this to our attention.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Just How Insane Are The Folks Who Post on Kos?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Crooks and Fires
Hey Look! A natural disaster! Let's blame the president!
"...the ability of the state's National Guard has been compromised because too much of their equipment and personnel is in Iraq." Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
"How about sending our National Guard back from Iraq, so that we have those people available here to help us?" - CA. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi
Your BS detector should be going crazy right now.
While roughly 2,000 National Guard troops from CA are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly 17,000 troops remain in the state to help with the fires if they are needed.
Just one more example of the Democrats attempting to politicize anything and everything. When will they have to deal with the blow back? Sadly in a state like CA, this type of repulsive and misleading rhetoric is generally rewarded by the voters and ignored by even those with integrity within the Democratic machine.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Socks The Prop
Socks the cat, whom helped Hillary Clinton revive her frigid image in the early Clinton years, was given away by the Senator and Democratic frontrunner after he was no longer needed for political purposes.
In the Clinton worldview, the family pet is not a beloved addition to the household, but is rather a tool to be used to advance the political ambitions of the clan.
Yet another relationship which appears to exsist for the sole purpose of gaining power. There's something a bit scary about that.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Clinton Co-Opt. Version 2.0
Bill and Hillary Clinton are the ultimate political opportunists.
While the Bush and Reagan presidencies were essentially guided by ideology and core beliefs, the Clintons have shown that their political philosophy is far more flexible and can be bent and molded in order to maintain popularity and win elections. Whether or not you think this willingness to abandon principle for power is a good quality for “the leader of the free world” to have, is an argument for another time. However, if Hillary is elected president we will see political opportunism as we have never seen it before. While George W. Bush refused to sink to such a level in his administration’s infancy, we shouldn’t expect similar courtesy from Hillary towards her predecessor.
When George W. Bush first came to power, the economy had been well on its way into recession for several months. While it technically fell into recession within the first month of the Bush presidency, no serious economic analyst blamed Bush for the downturn. He had not passed a budget, nor had any of the president’s economic policies taken effect. It was essentially a recession that the president inherited from the Clinton years.
President Bush could have tried to make political hay out of the economy early on and blamed his predecessor for the slow rate of growth and in turn built support for his pro-growth tax policies. He did not. His supporters know that this president has never been the type of mudslinger that the Clintons were. It’s simply not in his nature. Hillary will not be as kind.
Despite Robert Reich and Paul Krugman’s insistence that a recession is right around the corner (a claim that they have been making since 2003) the economy remains strong and stable. However, recessions cannot be avoided forever. Even if a recession occurs a year or two into a Clinton presidency, Hillary will not hesitate to heap the blame on President Bush, especially if it advances her political goal of raising taxes. That kind of political move was beneath Bush, but Clinton will jump at the chance.
In addition to this, at the rate that federal revenues are pouring into the government's coffers, the budget will likely come into balance by 2009 or 2010. While the deficit has been dropping dramatically throughout the Bush presidency, due in large part to expedited growth because of the tax cuts, Hillary will find a way to take credit for yet another “Clinton Surplus.” She will most likely attempt to connect the inevitable balanced budget to a tax increase or allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. The truth of course is that, a third Bush term would result in a balanced budget as well, but the mainstream media should be more than willing to adopt the Clinton narrative on the coming Bush surplus.
The Iraq war will likely provide another opportunity for Hillary to accumulate some undeserved political capital. Although you wouldn’t know it from reading The New York Times, the situation in Iraq is improving rapidly.
Civilian and Iraqi military deaths are down nearly 75% since late August. Al Qaeda has been decimated, and the Iraqi people are finally starting to realize that America is in Iraq to help, not to colonize.
Despite the long, bloody march towards success in Iraq and the mistakes which have defined the campaign up until the surge strategy was implemented, will Hillary Clinton give credit to President Bush for the miracle of eventually creating not one, but two democracies in a region that has never seen one before? Not to mention overthrowing two brutal and tyrannical regimes? Of Course Not!
As long as there are still troops in Iraq, Hillary will attempt to take credit for success in the region, even if her policy is only a continuation of Bush’s policies. As soon as the last troop is pulled from Iraq, Hillary and the Democrats will claim that they achieved what the Republicans never could.
While President Bush is likely to oversee a size able American exodus from the nation towards the end of 2008, Hillary will still be more than willing to take credit for the incredible accomplishment which up until this point, Democrats have insisted was impossible.
Bill Clinton's administration took credit for a multitude of accomplishments which he had very little to do with.
He signed a Republican welfare reform bill after vetoing it twice and today takes credit for the bill's incredible results.
He took credit for an economic recovery that was already taking place when he took office. The reality is that Clinton postponed real economic growth by raising taxes when he came to power.
The Clintons fondly reminisce about peaceful days. That borrowed time was cashed in on September 11, 2001, by Al-Qaeda, which had been ignored during the Clinton years despite numerous attacks on American interests around the world.
The Clintons are masterful politicians and will do anything to gain power, keep it and build a legacy around the narrative which they build for themselves, often at the expense of others.
They will not hesitate to do so again and their allies in Congress and the media will aid and abet them in this endeavor. It will be up to historians to sift through the rhetoric and find the real story behind America's economic prosperity and success against terrorism in the 21st century.
- Dan Joseph
Beneath Reproach
"Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
- Democratic Rep. Peter Stark
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Wizard Of Eid
"The Western mind-set—that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away—is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger." - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Polls and The Media
The best of times, the worst of times?
America’s public gloom contradicts people’s enduring, if private, confidence
By Michael Medved
It's no wonder that Americans feel so deeply disconnected from their elected leaders when their contradictory opinions show them similarly out of touch with themselves.
Public approval of Congress has plummeted to an historic low (18%, with a staggering 76% disapproval, according to a recent Gallup Poll) while an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey reports that more than two-thirds of us (68%) believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile, when asked about our own lives, Americans express overwhelming contentment and dazzling confidence. In a mid-August Harris Poll that asked respondents to evaluate their satisfaction levels "with the life you lead," an amazing 94% declared themselves satisfied (with a clear majority — 56% — choosing the highest rating of "very satisfied"). Meanwhile, 62% expected their "personal situation" to get even better in the next five years, as opposed to a paltry 7% who anticipated that their circumstances would get worse.
(Illustration by Web Bryant, USA TODAY)
On the surface, these responses look almost laughably inconsistent. Some 68% of us believe the nation is "off on the wrong track," but by a ratio of nearly 9-to-1 we're confident that our lives will improve, rather than deteriorate, in the next five years. Only 17% say our personal status "got worse" in the past five years (while 54% reported improvement), but by crushing margins of more than 4-to-1, we tell pollsters we disapprove of the job our leaders are doing.
In other words, Americans seem to embrace the odd conviction that each of us dwells upon some sun-kissed, optimistic island of happiness and advancement, while the rest of the country marches dramatically toward catastrophe and collapse.
The media influence
The most important explanation for this bizarre contradiction involves the impact of mass media in a nation where the average individual devotes close to 30 hours per week to his TV set. Instead of working in the news business, most broadcast journalists actually toil in the "bad news business," with natural disasters, bloody accidents, crime, terrorism, battlefield casualties, political conflict and economic threats dominating every day's televised reports. Reassuring news items can hardly rival terrifying dispatches when it comes to riveting the attention of a restless public, powerfully armed with a hair-trigger remote control. Most entertainment, very much including televised comedies, similarly emphasizes conflict, danger, degeneracy and embarrassment — The Sopranos can capture our attention far more readily than the Cleavers. Weekly series about wholesome, ordinary families making steady economic progress stand little chance of grabbing ratings or publicity in a ferociously competitive pop culture marketplace.
Politicians make an additional contribution to the prevailing gloom about the status and direction of the nation at large. It almost always makes sense for candidates and public officials to exaggerate problems and magnify threats. If they're challengers, they cite the miserable state of affairs in order to discredit incumbents, and if they're current office-holders, they emphasize the bad news in order to justify sweeping, ambitious and expensive new programs.
In the face of the grim conclusions conveyed by complaints of politicos and the inevitable alarms of broadcast media, Americans struggle to come to terms with the contrasting evidence of their own eyes and lives.
An ordinary American might worry about frightening talk of Iranian threats or trade imbalances, but that can't shake his pride in becoming a homeowner for the first time, or watching a child become the first one in family history to get a college education.
Economists and statisticians might argue back and forth about trends and living standards, but some new statistics from the IRS seem incontrovertible. In the most recent five years, the number of those earning less than an inflation-adjusted $25,000 a year shrank by 5.5% — representing 3.2 million fewer individuals who were trapped in those poverty level incomes. Meanwhile, the number of taxpayers making more than $100,000 per year grew by nearly 3.4 million and accounted for more than two-thirds of the total growth in the number of returns filed.
Anyone who questions the widespread conclusion that our personal circumstances have improved need only look to the urban area in which you live. Every major city — very much including previously forlorn "rust belt" metropolises such as Detroit and Cleveland — boasts new parks, condo developments, cultural facilities, highways and transit, and commercial districts. Nearly every downtown in the country has notably improved — and it's even tough to single out neighborhoods that have moved in the wrong direction. In recent years, gentrification has become a bigger, more hotly debated problem than the expansion of slums.
It's not surprising that Americans tell pollsters that they feel pleased with their improved circumstances in the past five years and see further enhancements ahead, regardless of the fulminations and failures of our political class.
Comfort closer to home
American satisfaction with the near-at-hand and cynicism about distant reality turned up clearly in the NBC News/Journal poll with contrasting attitudes toward local and national institutions. For instance, 54% expressed "high confidence" in "small business," but only 11% felt similarly positive toward "large corporations." Some 34% deemed "local government" worthy of "high confidence," as opposed to only 16% who felt the same way about the federal government — and 18% who trusted and respected "national news media."
In other words, Americans feel better about institutions and realities the closer they come to their own cities, their own neighborhoods, their own homes. They like and value their personal status, but fret or shrug over the state of the nation. In this context, nothing could improve the national mood more substantially than a new effort by influential figures in media and politics to apply some of our privately grateful, self-reliant and optimistic attitudes to public discussions of the society at large.
Nationally syndicated radio talk host Michael Medved is the author of Right Turns. He is also a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Case Of The Missing Media
Iraqi Security Forces and Civilian Deaths
Period Total
Oct-07 127
Sep-07 842
Aug-07 1,674
Jul-07 1,690
Jun-07 1,345 - Surge Strategy Implemented
May-07 1,980
Apr-07 1,821
Mar-07 2,977
Feb-07 3,014
Jan-07 1,802
Dec-06 1,752
Nov-06 1,864
Oct-06 1,539
Sep-06 3,539
Aug-06 2,966
Jul-06 1,280
Jun-06 870
May-06 1,119
Apr-06 1,009
Mar-06 1,092
Feb-06 846
Jan-06 779
Alright Mainstream Media! Let's get working on those stories about the sucess of the surge! Hello? Is this thing on?
Information taken from icasualties.com
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Obama's Done
33-points behind eventual Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama is looking to the far-left, anti-America crowd for support, in order to remain competitive.
Essentially, Obama is saying that he's ashamed to wear the American flag on his lapel.
Check it:
Obama Stops Wearing Flag Pin
Oct 4 03:39 PM US/Eastern
By MIKE GLOVER
Associated Press Writer
WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for "true patriotism" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Asked about it Wednesday in an interview with KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Illinois senator said he stopped wearing the pin shortly after the attacks and instead hoped to show his patriotism by explaining his ideas to citizens.
"The truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.
"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said in the interview. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism."
So if by some miracle Obama were to win the White House next year, would he remove the American Flag from The White House? Perhaps as an apology to our European "friends" for our "arrogant" behavior in taking on a tyrannical dictator who had constantly ignored the will of the world and was believed to be stockpiling weapons of mass Destruction?
Seriously Barack. If you're ashamed to wear the symbol of America proudly, how can you be trusted to stand up to anti-American sentiment around the world?
The first time you meet Hugo Chavez are you going beg his forgiveness? "Your right Hugo. You've been right about everything. We're sorry. Please come to White House and tell us how much better things are in your dirt-poor, dictatorship than they are here."
But this is what the Move.On crowd loves to see. Candidates who do not believe that America is a force for good in the world, with noble intentions and a beacon of freedom. But who instead imply that American values are being pushed on the world because of our own hubris, that our society is unfair and unjust in almost every way and that we should be ashamed of who we are and what we do.
The John Edwards campaign is over, with his wife getting more media attention these days than the candidate himself.
The far-left activists who despise Hillary for her early support of the Iraq war and her refusal to commit to surrender in the region if she becomes President, are going to have to get behind someone. Knowing that he will not be the choice of mainstream Democrats in the primaries, by removing the symbol of America from his lapel, Obama has sent a signal to the far-left that he is their protest vote.
Politically it may not be such a bad move. Hillary will want to unite the party, after the primaries and by picking Obama as her running-mate she will get the radical elements of the far-left behind her and not risk losing them to a third-party, thus handing the race to the GOP.
But for Obama it's just political. That's what makes this latest move so disturbing.
Yet Another Thing Reagan Got Right........
'Star Wars' Indeed
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Security: Perhaps you haven't heard, since the media would rather ignore the success of what they've derided since Ronald Reagan floated the idea 24 years ago, but America now has a working missile defense system.
The news was not entirely ignored. The New York Times/International Herald Tribune covered it. But it has gone largely unreported elsewhere.
When a senior military officer says that a key defense system is operative, newspapers should splash that on their front pages and television and radio should begin their broadcasts with the news.
It's as if the media don't believe the U.S. is worth protecting.
But some Americans do, and last week they held another successful test. On Friday, the kill vehicle from an interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California hit a target dummy warhead launched in Alaska that had been tracked by radar at Beale Air Force Base, outside of Sacramento, Calif., as well as sea-based X-band radar and an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ship. Multiple tracking is an important factor in neutralizing decoys.
The outcome was enough for Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command U.S. Northern Command, to declare that the system is ready to be used at any time. With interceptor bases in Vandenberg or Ft. Greely, Alaska, the U.S. has formed a virtual shield that can protect the country from a limited missile attack launched from Asia.
"I'm fully confident that we have all of the pieces in place that, if the nation needed to, we could respond," the Air Force general said.
The media's weak coverage of this milestone should have been expected. They have long been an ally of the politically driven missile defense opponents who said the system was the foolish dream of a doddering old man. It will never work, they piously claimed. Can't hit a bullet with a bullet.
Yet the bullet has hit another bullet — six times out of the past nine tests since 2001. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, has noted the system has not had a major problem in more than two years.
"I think this goes a long way to answering" the skeptics' questions, Oberling said.
The system is, of course, limited. But its development will advance — unless it's derailed by senseless politics — as all technologies advance. Already it is able to sift through other objects in the sky, select its intended target and then destroy it.
The system's next test is scheduled for some time in the first half of 2008. From that test, its ability to deal with airborne decoys will be assessed. Further tests, and the inevitable improvements, such as multiple kill vehicles deployed from a single interceptor, will continue as long as there is a will to complete the job.
While the political left here and abroad continues to be skeptical, sober leaders in Japan, Poland and the Czech Republic have expressed interest in a system that Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy once derided as "Star Wars." At the same time, Russia has threatened to aim missiles at Europe if parts of the missile defense system are deployed on European soil.
Why so much fuss, we wonder, over a fanciful dream that can never be achieved?
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