Aaron

Accepted. I almost did the same thing to you untill I saw your edit. I understand your initial reaction as I didn't do a good job of clarifying my point when I wrote that.

Honestly, I have the deepest respect for every soldier that has served this country. My best friend is a Vietnam vet - "Blowed up twice" - as he puts it
(I have to feel the shrapnel in his head every time we have a stint at the bar). A good friend of mine died, because of a stupid wartime accident in the first gulf war. Now, my son in law is deployed in Iraq - fortunately not infantry - fighting a BS war.

I'm not cutting on any soldier in what I said. I'm just questioning the logic of joining the service if you know there's a BS war going on and pointing out that serving our country brings the risk of ending up in a BS war.

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"The pump don't work cause' the vandals took the handle" - Bob Dylan

AndyLES

That's my sentiment in a nutshell. I despise the bastard, but the use of assasination to bring about political change is so, well, 3rd world to me. The great experiment known as America was designed to do away with these archaisms; this is why we have a constitution with a bill of rights, due process of law, articles of impeachment....because assasination is a form of savagery. This might sound a tad ethnocentric (I apologize in advance) but American society is supposed to be better than that.

Besides, his daughters (whom I find equally repellent) seem him as dad, not Mr. President. Is it fair to cause them suffering?

calamitus

no not really.the problem is that there would be no guarantee of anyone better.personally,i think he is a disaster,and the sooner he is out of the equation one way or another,the better.

Skepticologist

Personally, I'm leaning more and more toward Ralph Nader's contention, last time he ran for president, that there's not a dime's worth of difference between the political parties and their candidates.

I was naively encouraged when the Democrats took control of Congress last year, thinking (hoping, really) that they'd make some major positive changes. As it turns out, I'm convinced it doesn't matter which party is in power. All that matters is the turns of the screw applied by the military/industrial powers that be.

Until this country finds a way to value principles such as compassion, of the people - by the people - for the people, and a few others that have long since lost their meaning, we are doomed to continue our downward spiral into the abyss of globalism and money for its own sake that has characterized us for the last 50 years or more.

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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

The An-Jel

It really seems that way doesn't it?

Until science tells the politicians and they can make it marketable thats when you will see a difference I think. When science suddenly diverts itself from human domination but then again the money isn't flowing that way.

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"And let there be Light!" said the Blind man.

Life is simple, people make it complicated - Basilisk

Nulli Expugnabilis Hosti - Royal Gibraltar Regiment

Skepticologist

I think you've hit the proverbial nail on the head. It's all about the money, isn't it? The surprise isn't that everyone has a price. The surprise is that it's so very low.

So why did it come as a suprise to me that a Democrat-controlled Congress has failed to live up to its campaign promises about Iraq that appealed to so many fed-up and lied-to Americans? They're bought and sold as easily as Republicans, despite their efforts to be more subtle about it.

The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill had the salvation of our political system at its heart, but it's been watered down to the point where it's made no substantive difference.

I, for one, have given up on this country's ability to place the good of its people over money. When a system requires that candidates for public office be bought and sold by the powers that be before they can be considered viable, the inevitable outcome will be a representive democracy that represents only the wealthiest 1% of its citizens.

Unless the other 99% of us can figure out some way to make it different, we're headed into the same abyss that has swallowed so manu other "great societies" that have passed into oblivion.

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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

NotConvinced

Maybe the dems not living up to their campaign promises turned out to be a good thing. We won't accurately know for quite a few years, but hey, you never know. Overall I think it was more an issue of "how can we cover our political asses and do what we said we'd do?" It was such a complex issue that they couldn't really find an effective way to both at the same time, so they decided to cover their asses and make a futile attempt at an attempt to live up to their promises. If they did end up cutting funding and effectively bringing the troops home, they would have taken part of the ownership of the failure the situation would have amounted to. Sure much of the failure was due to the administration, and to a much lesser extent the military, but the dems would have stamped a "this failure is 20% our fault" on the Iraq report card. I just use 20% as an example, though honestly it wouldn't be any less than 10 in my opinion.

If the surge is the beginning of a decent end to Iraq, and that's a pretty big if, how will we look back on the whole situation 50 years from now?

whatif?

Originally Posted by Skepticologist
I believe Obama has found a way to address this problem. I know he still needs lots of money from the 'big guys' but it actually feels as if I have a chance to 'vote' with a relatively small amount of money whenever I feel he's said something that needs support, instead of just helplessly watching the goings on. Not that I sent money in every time I felt the urge, but at least I know that I CAN make a tiny amount of difference (because he can say how many small donors are supporting him...) It's our only hope...

I've never given to any campaign before this, even though I've been voting for over 30 years. I have to admit I have the little 'shrub' (as Maureen, the op-ed columnist - I believe that's her name - lovingly call Bush) to thank for putting a fire under my butt.

And, on topic, I agree that his assassination would only make things worse. And the optimist in me is still hoping that he'll face some sort of justice for what he's done.

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If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life. Henry David Thoreau

Ice_Monkey

... though I still maintain that a head shot would be a waste of a bullet.

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God created humans to act as if they possessed human nature, and by god, he's not going to let us get away with it!