Booyah!

[EricMM 0]

SPECIAL COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, 'Countdown'

MSNBC

Updated: 11:19 a.m. ET Oct 6, 2006

 

While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ...

 

While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover ...

 

The president of the United States — unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality — has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

 

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, “177 of the opposition party said, ‘You know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.’”

 

The hell they did.

 

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president’s seizure of another part of the Constitution.

 

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn’t be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

 

President Bush hears what he wants.

 

Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, “Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we’re attacked again before we respond.”

 

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

 

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.

 

“If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party,” the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, “it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is — wait until we’re attacked again.”

 

The president doesn’t just hear what he wants.

 

He hears things that only he can hear.

 

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

 

Yet they do.

 

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president of this nation.

 

Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.

 

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

 

Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, “We must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us.”

 

Mr. Bush, this is a test you have already failed.

 

If your commitment to “put aside differences and work together” is replaced in the span of just three weeks by claiming your political opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing fabrications about what they’ve said, then the questions your critics need to be asking are no longer about your policies.

 

They are, instead, solemn and even terrible questions, about your fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.

 

No Democrat, sir, has ever said anything approaching the suggestion that the best means of self-defense is to “wait until we’re attacked again.”

 

No critic, no commentator, no reluctant Republican in the Senate has ever said anything that any responsible person could even have exaggerated into the slander you spoke in Nevada on Monday night, nor the slander you spoke in California on Tuesday, nor the slander you spoke in Arizona on Wednesday ... nor whatever is next.

 

You have dishonored your party, sir; you have dishonored your supporters; you have dishonored yourself.

 

But tonight the stark question we must face is — why?

 

Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?

 

Why have you chosen to go down in history as the president who made things up?

 

In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.

 

If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.

 

We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size and party. We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.

 

But the premise of a president who comes across as a compulsive liar is nothing less than terrifying.

 

A president who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening — and thanks to Bob Woodward’s most recent account — evidently has never listened.

 

A president who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans that he accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.

 

A president who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be protecting from attack — attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both — it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush believes the enemy is.

 

But if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this: This president — in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering of the Democrats this month — has shown us that he believes whoever the enemies are, they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak called the Constitution of the United States of America.

 

How often do we find priceless truth in the unlikeliest of places?

 

I tonight quote not Jefferson nor Voltaire, but Cigar Aficionado Magazine.

 

On Sept. 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General Tommy Franks, at that point, just retired from his post as commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command — of Cent-Com.

 

And amid his quaint defenses of the then-nagging absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the continuing freedom of Osama bin Laden, General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.

 

He spoke of “the worst thing that can happen” to this country:

 

First, quoting, a “massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western World — it may be in the United States of America.”

 

Then, the general continued, “the Western World, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

 

It was this super-patriotic warrior’s fear that we would lose that most cherished liberty, because of another attack, one — again quoting General Franks — “that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”

 

And here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled, anyway.

 

Habeus corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and impermanent as clay; a president stifling all critics by every means available and, when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they said or felt.

 

And all this, even without the dreaded attack.

 

General Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not just in its values, but in its continuity.

 

He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.

 

He has, perhaps been as naïve as the rest of us, in failing to keep close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity from within.

 

Secretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings with counterterrorism officials before 9/11. Then within hours of this lie, her spokesman confirms the meetings in question. Then she dismisses those meetings as nothing new — yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

 

Mr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and simple influence of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his employer insist they rely on the “generals in the field.” But dozens of those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their experiences, have been ignored.

 

And, of course, inherent in the Pentagon’s war-making functions is the regulation of presidential war lust.

 

Enacting that regulation should include everything up to symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor.

 

Yet—and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this—evidently Mr. Rumsfeld’s strongest check on Mr. Bush’s ambitions, was to get somebody to excise the phrase “Mission Accomplished” out of the infamous Air Force Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003, even while the same empty words hung on a banner over the President’s shoulder.

 

And the vice president is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to accept the conclusions of his own party’s leaders in the Senate, that the foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.

 

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

 

But he still says so.

 

There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

 

But he still says so.

 

And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads—around him and before him—darkness, like some contagion of fear.

 

They are never wrong, and they never regret -- admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.

 

Thus, the sickening attempt to blame the Foley scandal on the negligence of others or “the Clinton era”—even though the Foley scandal began before the Lewinsky scandal.

 

Thus, last month’s enraged attacks on this administration’s predecessors, about Osama bin Laden—a projection of their own negligence in the immediate months before 9/11.

 

Thus, the terrifying attempt to hamstring the fundament of our freedom—the Constitution—a triumph for al Qaida, for which the terrorists could not hope to achieve with a hundred 9/11’s.

 

And thus, worst of all perhaps, these newest lies by President Bush about Democrats choosing to await another attack and not listen to the conversations of terrorists.

 

It is the terror and the guilt within your own heart, Mr. Bush, that you redirect at others who simply wish for you to temper your certainty with counsel.

 

It is the failure and the incompetence within your own memory, Mr. Bush, that leads you to demonize those who might merely quote to you the pleadings of Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

 

It is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you fear, Sir.

 

It is your own—before 9/11 - and (and you alone know this), perhaps afterwards.

 

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you truly wish to preserve.

 

It is not our freedom, nor our country—your actions against the Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

 

You want to preserve a political party’s power. And obviously you’ll sell this country out, to do it.

 

These are lies about the Democrats -- piled atop lies about Iraq -- which were piled atop lies about your preparations for al Qaida.

 

To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries -- as crushing, as immovable.

 

They are not.

 

If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from them.

 

But if you stop -- if you stop fabricating quotes, and building straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same -- you may yet liberate yourself and this nation.

 

Please, sir, do not throw this country’s principles away because your lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the terrorists and the critics.

 

© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

 

Yep.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Booyah, indeed.

[snuffbox 0]

Olberman's Commentaries have been very entertaining lately. It is a shame that those for whom these words are intended will never see or hear them. The only responses that this will get are cheers from those who already see how dismal this entire Administration is, and jeers of 'defeatism etc' from those whose lips are wrapped tight around the political party they support in the face of overwhelming and obvious failures.

 

Passionate stuff like this is the real patriotism(as far as people in America simply talking goes)...too bad more people were watching a screen a few channels away that was talking about 'Mark Foley D-FL'

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...0061013-17.html

 

No comment.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

Good for the President. He is absolutely a man of high character, and that is one of the reasons why I voted for him. I just wish he would cut down on the spending. That wouldn't REALLY help the self government.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Good for the President. He is absolutely a man of high character, and that is one of the reasons why I voted for him.

 

Ahahaha. Is this scarsam?

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Good for the President. He is absolutely a man of high character, and that is one of the reasons why I voted for him.

 

Ahahaha. Is this scarsam?

Sadly, he isn't.

[SuperJerk 0]

Olbermann: Bush owes troops apology, not Kerry

Olbermann: Bush ‘appearing to be stupid’ about Kerry’s joke

SPECIAL COMMENT

By Keith Olbermann

Anchor, 'Countdown'

Countdown

Updated: 8:18 a.m. CT Nov 2, 2006

 

On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner.

 

Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.

 

The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head.

 

Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only because his cane finally broke.

 

Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.

 

In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.

 

Tonight, we almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next new cane.

 

There is tonight no political division in this country that he and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.

 

There is no line this president has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party in power.

 

He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.

 

And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.

 

Sen. John Kerry called him out Monday.

 

He did it two years too late.

 

He had been too cordial — just as Vice President Gore had been too cordial in 2000, just as millions of us have been too cordial ever since.

 

 

Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

 

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you can get stuck in Iraq.”

 

The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

 

The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

 

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

 

They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.

 

And so he now has.

 

That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — is used deliberately, Mr. Bush.

 

Because there are only three possibilities here.

 

One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.

 

This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might still just be stupid, but honest.

 

No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.

 

The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on the troops or even on the nation itself.

 

The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the first two options are in some way conflated.

 

That it is both politically convenient for you and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.

 

A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You are not the United States of America.

 

You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, in fact, is you.

 

So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans’ deliberate distortions.

 

Thus, the president will now begin the apologies he owes our troops, right?

 

This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, “look like just a comma.”

 

This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.

 

This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm’s way.

 

 

This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.

 

This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of “plan” after barely two months.

 

This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.

 

This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue.

 

And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.

 

We will not receive them, of course.

 

This president never apologizes.

 

Not to the troops.

 

Not to the people.

 

Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.

 

In calling him a “stuffed suit,” Sen. Kerry was wrong about the press secretary.

 

Mr. Snow’s words and conduct, falsely earnest and earnestly false, suggest he is not “stuffed,” he is inflated.

 

And in leaving him out of the equation, Sen. Kerry gave an unwarranted pass to his old friend Sen. John McCain, who should be ashamed of himself tonight.

 

He rolled over and pretended Kerry had said what he obviously had not.

 

Only, the symbolic stick he broke over Kerry’s head came in a context even more disturbing.

 

Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.

 

He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how “many of them have lost limbs.”

 

He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.

 

Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.

 

And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.

 

And to continue this slander as late as this morning — as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.

 

Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats — one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.

 

That was beneath the senator from Arizona.

 

And it was all because of an imaginary insult to the troops that his party cynically manufactured out of a desperation and a futility as deep as that of Congressman Brooks, when he went hunting for Sen. Sumner.

 

This is our beloved country now as you have redefined it, Mr. Bush.

 

Get a tortured Vietnam veteran to attack a decorated Vietnam veteran in defense of military personnel whom that decorated veteran did not insult.

 

Or, get your henchmen to take advantage of the evil lingering dregs of the fear of miscegenation in Tennessee, in your party’s advertisements against Harold Ford.

 

Or, get the satellites who orbit around you, like Rush Limbaugh, to exploit the illness — and the bipartisanship — of Michael J. Fox. Yes, get someone to make fun of the cripple.

 

Oh, and sir, don’t forget to drag your own wife into it.

 

 

“It’s always easy,” she said of Mr. Fox’s commercials — and she used this phrase twice — “to manipulate people’s feelings.”

 

Where on earth might the first lady have gotten that idea, Mr. President?

 

From your endless manipulation of people’s feelings about terrorism?

 

“However they put it,” you said Monday of the Democrats, on the subject of Iraq, “their approach comes down to this: The terrorists win, and America loses.”

 

No manipulation of feelings there.

 

No manipulation of the charlatans of your administration into the only truth-tellers.

 

No shocked outrage at the Kerry insult that wasn’t; no subtle smile as the first lady silently sticks the knife in Michael J. Fox’s back; no attempt on the campaign trail to bury the reality that you have already assured that the terrorists are winning.

 

Winning in Iraq, sir.

 

Winning in America, sir.

 

There we have chaos — joint U.S.-Iraqi checkpoints at Sadr City, the base of the radical Shiite militias, and the Americans have been ordered out by the prime minister of Iraq … and our secretary of defense doesn’t even know about it!

 

And here we have deliberate, systematic, institutionalized lying and smearing and terrorizing — a code of deceit that somehow permits a president to say, “If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don’t have one.”

 

Permits him to say this while his plan in Iraq has amounted to a twisted version of the advice once offered to Lyndon Johnson about his Iraq, called Vietnam.

 

Instead of “declare victory and get out” we now have “declare victory and stay indefinitely.”

 

And also here — we have institutionalized the terrorizing of the opposition.

 

True domestic terror:

 

Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.

 

Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.

 

A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published “national security information” that was openly available on the Internet.

 

One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.

 

And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator’s supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent — and the rage — of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner.

 

Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.

 

You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI’s case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.

 

No, you did not.

 

And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

 

All you have to do, sir, is hand out enough new canes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15519404/

[EricMM 0]

Booyah 2.

[Hasbeen1 0]

Only racists would believe a significant amount of Tennessee voters would change their minds over the Ford ad. In this case, it's the racists believing whites, particularly white southerners, will reject a candidate just because he's black. The liberal media-yeah, it exists-jumped on this and continued on it for days. I live here. It was a non-issue in the state. It was made an issue by national media, particular the likes of the NY Times and this non biased commentator. Yes, there is racism, but yes, it's everywhere. Painting the state as a bunch of retarded idiots stuck in the 1960s was ridiculous, but expected, white southerners are the only group of people that can be ridiculed these days. Anybody else, it would be politically incorrect or racially insensitive. Look at the radio announcer fired for calling a candidate in Boston a fat lesbian. I'd like Olbermann fired for calling me retarded. The ad was a joke, the "Call Me" part was one of several pieces and was talking about Ford attending a playboy party and appearing in ads in a church-not that he lusted after white women. And on Iraq, to the point-look how many of the liberals' heroes believed the same things as President Bush.

[BUTT 0]

Good for the President. He is absolutely a man of high character, and that is one of the reasons why I voted for him. I just wish he would cut down on the spending. That wouldn't REALLY help the self government.

 

Spicy, I have news for you. That stuff Republicans say about wanting to cut back on government? It's all bullshit. Maybe some of them do, but not the real powerful ones. Especially not Bush. They want as much control as they can get.

[Guest Hotbutter Spoontoaster]

That stuff Republicans say about wanting to cut back on government? It's all bullshit.

get outta town. no way.

[Guest Felonies!]

"In point of fact," maybe somebody should break a stick over Keith Olbermann's head.

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

"In point of fact," maybe somebody should break a stick over Keith Olbermann's head.

Why?

[Art Sandusky 0]

Because he's not perceived as a knowledgable political commentator, so his opinion isn't valid. Like Jon Stewart. Being right doesn't mean anything.

[Timmy8271 0]

Stewart's opinion means more than Olbermann. I like Keith but these Comments don't mean jack shit. Even thought they are right.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Here's my question:

 

If the opinions of people who are considered entertainers are worthless, what does that mean for the average citizen who agrees with them? They aren't official pundits either.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Does any opinion really matter, though? I mean, the current administration has shown and even adamantly stated that they are not going to change current policies. I mean, if say, Henry Kissinger, wrote an op ed piece similar to Olbermann's, is it going to have any more weight or meaning at this point?

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Oh, I completely agree. Olbermann doesn't exactly have any stroke with the public. He does have a very public forum to express these views and from what I understand more and more people are gravitating towards his show. So maybe in a few years, the more he does these kind of editorials the more credibility he'll gain. That is... IF he keeps up with the quality.

 

How you measure this I'm not too sure. However, I'm just going by "how mad did he make right-wingers by saying what he does". Which works for me I guess.

[Guest Felonies!]

Because he's not perceived as a knowledgable political commentator, so his opinion isn't valid. Like Jon Stewart. Being right doesn't mean anything.

Actually, it has more to do with my distaste for Olbermann, whom I do see as fairly credible, but obnoxious. I really rolled my eyes at his segment about Rush, which was like

 

"I'm terribly sorry that you had to watch that offensive video, which shows how low some people will sink in their personal attacks. My guest this evening is Sam Seder from Air America. So Sam, ho ho, how many drugs was Rush on just now?"

 

It's like he's not sure if he's going to ramp up the righteous indignation, "MISTER Bush" and all, or just sink to their level. Can't have it both ways.

[Guest A Silent Presence]

Those who don't believe that the entire political system just wants control need to get their heads out of their asses. There's a reason we have problems with getting everyone to vote. There's another reason why those who do vote are split 50% down the middle. Apparently the two party system effectively allows America to pick a leader that represents America, but what they've got is everyone convinced there's only a "Liberal" or a "Conservative" way to go about resolving issues. I call bullshit on that. I wish for once that there was one person in Government who realized they could take more of the votes by showing a way to combine ideas and make things work than playing the same song and dance of, "Hey, want less taxes and no war?"

 

It's frustrating. In 2008, I don't want to vote. I don't want to vote because I'm not sure that I could keep respect for myself if I did. I've heard the whole, "You can't complain if you don't vote," but in the next sentence I've heard, "A vote for independents is a wasted vote." The whole system sucks anymore, we're wasting money to make money instead of fixing problems and everyone across the board is doing it. This is exactly why I can't listen to any of these political columnists, because they all have the way to save America - so run for president.

 

I'm convinced that if someone stepped up and ran commercials and speeches and debates relating to how they would make it work for America and not for themselves or their parties that they'd get the vote. Anymore it's like, "Wow, look at this guy, he's not conservative. Conservatives vote for me." A politician who decided they wanted to make rational decisions that benefited this country and the world would be nice - but we can't have that, because no one is human enough in America to care about anyone but themselves. Not Democrats, not Republicans. I hope politics punches itself out so I don't have to endure people telling me the way to live my life with inconsistency to favor its power as opposed to one who sets the rules, defines the rules, and makes them work.

 

That got off topic, probably, but I needed to vent that. America is a political cesspool, and I can't vote either way. Just no faith in the next guy to actually do anything about our problems, because the priority of these problems aren't coming first anymore. Above all, it's not about how we're going to do it, it's about who and what party that does it. That's staggering to me - we can't first confront the issue, we have to do it in black or white. Nothing is black or white, there's probably an effective way to make it work for larger majority than 50.1% of the nation. We're not concerned about that, though.

[NoCalMike 0]

Another problem is the hypocritical nature in people. When polled, people CLAIM that negative political ads turn them off from a politician, yet when it gets to election time, and someone has a lead, and they get some fraudulent negative ad ran about them, they magically lose their lead, or the gap closes and it becomes a tight race......

 

Everything now is a smear campaign. I wish people would just realize that politicians come out of the same gene pool as the general public, they aren't going to be perfect people. I understand there is LEGIT corruption in the government and that of course needs to be dealt with, but some of these attack ads are going straight for totally irrelevent character flaws that serve no one.

[Guest A Silent Presence]

Another problem is the hypocritical nature in people. When polled, people CLAIM that negative political ads turn them off from a politician, yet when it gets to election time, and someone has a lead, and they get some fraudulent negative ad ran about them, they magically lose their lead, or the gap closes and it becomes a tight race......

 

Everything now is a smear campaign. I wish people would just realize that politicians come out of the same gene pool as the general public, they aren't going to be perfect people. I understand there is LEGIT corruption in the government and that of course needs to be dealt with, but some of these attack ads are going straight for totally irrelevent character flaws that serve no one.

 

There's also some of the more ridiculous ones, such as (here in Ohio) Kenneth Blackwell's ad stating he's "Fighting the fight to keep the words 'Under God' in the Pledge." Forget the drug cartels or the educational system, this man has his priorities set.

 

It just shows how stereotypical the voters in our country are. If that's a serious issue for some people, they need to rework their brain and get a clue. It's not that I'm Agnostic or Atheist, it's that it shouldn't be an issue, and it is. That's sickening to me. If someone with all the right ideas were around and could make it work for the better of the people but their religion and faith came into question - forget about, half the vote for them would disappear.

 

We're letting it happen, that's the worst part. We're letting the government tell us we have to see in black and white in order to best vote for a politician. A politician should be trying to accurately represent America, and I know in my mind that America isn't 50 down the middle, nor would 50 scream "BLOODY LIBERAL" if a Democrat actually decided they wanted to solve the world's problems and let the voters know about it. I at least hope that it doesn't work that way, but I'm still under the belief that a majority would logically get behind someone who had a clue as to what needed to happen as opposed to what their political agenda's little, isolated world thinks needs to happen or believes will happen. I'll be alive longer than any of the assholes in office should I not die of untimely, unnatural causes or be struck with a deadly illness, and yet the government will ignorantly make choices that effect me for themselves.

[SuperJerk 0]

"In point of fact," maybe somebody should break a stick over Keith Olbermann's head.

Just remember I like HIM a lot more than I like YOU.

[Guest Felonies!]

Ooh.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

stuff

 

I find crap like this really annoying.

 

"If we all just sat down and worked out our problems and did what's best for America, things would be great!"

 

You act like the there aren't real differences between the parties or between liberals & conservatives. There isn't some magical centrist approach to problems. Yes, compromise can happen at times, but disagreements exist and can't just be ironed out by some centrist white knight from Nottingham.

 

American liberals & conservatives (or Democrats & Republicans) actually agree on a whole lot of things, but the differences & disagreements are real, and they're not going away.

[NoCalMike 0]

stuff

 

I find crap like this really annoying.

 

"If we all just sat down and worked out our problems and did what's best for America, things would be great!"

 

You act like the there aren't real differences between the parties or between liberals & conservatives. There isn't some magical centrist approach to problems. Yes, compromise can happen at times, but disagreements exist and can't just be ironed out by some centrist white knight from Nottingham.

 

American liberals & conservatives (or Democrats & Republicans) actually agree on a whole lot of things, but the differences & disagreements are real, and they're not going away.

 

 

One of the problems is the BLURRING of terms Democrats/Liberals & Republicans/Conservatives.........I'd say Democrats/Republicans have stuff in common, but Liberals/Conservatives, not so much. The stupid fucking media has done so much to blur each respective term that people don't even have a clue that all four mean different things.

[Guest A Silent Presence]

Did you somehow misread what I said, Bigolsmitty? The point wasn't what each term was (I could define them should I really need to, but I've read through this section of the forum that I assume you guys realize what I mean). My point was, our Democracy is a system that dictates votes by telling a stereotype who to vote for because it's "better for America". They might agree on a lot of things, but they get nothing done over discrepancies which cripple our system.

 

It's possible I rambled too long for my own good, but the point I was trying to get across is how black or white all issues need be in this country. You don't think someone could effectively brainstorm an idea that WORKS? The government is far and above inept at doing this, or at least publically letting the people know the plan before making it happen.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

What kind of ideas? There are all sorts of think tanks & ideas out there.