We Are Under Attack !!!!!!!!

[Noir]

Originally Posted by Trevor

I have found one admission from you i.e. "Director of Sales & Marketing Systems Admin". Enough said.

:P hahahaha

i'm sorry, i couldn't resist the spewing forth the tea i was drinking as i read that comment.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by Noir

I thank our soldiers for my right to speak about my government.

I also would like a thanks from our soldiers for the paycheck they receive every month, benefits received from my daily contribution, and keeping the local infrastructure intact so that they have a place to come home to.

I would also like a thanks for keeping their parents or grandparents fed and pillboxes full with my monthly social security payment.

That is all.

As a retired military veteran, I would also like to thank Harry for that retirement check I get every month.

Oh! And my degree in Electrical Engineering. Thanks Dude!!

[lhopp77]

Originally Posted by Noir

I thank our soldiers for my right to speak about my government.

I also would like a thanks from our soldiers for the paycheck they receive every month, benefits received from my daily contribution, and keeping the local infrastructure intact so that they have a place to come home to.

I would also like a thanks for keeping their parents or grandparents fed and pillboxes full with my monthly social security payment.

That is all.

Soldiers pay taxes to include social security, also. Do you thank your employer for the check he gives you or do you feel like you earn it and maybe deserve a thank you from your employer for a job well done??

Lee

[Noir]

Originally Posted by lhopp77

Soldiers pay taxes also. Do you thank your employer for the check he gives you or do you feel like you earn it and maybe deserve a thank you from your employer for a job well done??

Lee

i thank my employer for giving me the opportunity to work in a great company and choosing me over the next joe over.

i've hired people in the past and i can easily fire them as well with replacements ready and willing. i could run up and tell the CEO that he should thank me and that his company wouldn't exist without my labor, but i think that i would be replaced very quicky with such a cocky and arrogant attitude.

soldiers paying tax is not my concern. take that up with your manager. i know without my money and the money of other 'civilians' and corporations, the soldiers wouldn't be able to pay their taxes now would they?

[Noir]

Originally Posted by Electrophil

As a retired military veteran, I would also like to thank Harry for that retirement check I get every month.

Oh! And my degree in Electrical Engineering. Thanks Dude!!

you are welcome and it is our pleasure. thank you for not cramming that crap down our throats that you're better than the rest of us 'civilians'.

[shotgunslade]

Interesting and insightful commentary from Keith Olbermann

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet. We end the countdown where we began, our #1 story. with a special comment on Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday. It demands the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American. For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land; Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants – our employees - with a total omniscience; total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve. Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq. It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it is right - and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For, in their time, there was another government faced with true peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless. That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their morality. That government was England’s, in the 1930’s. It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone to England. It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords. It knew that the hard evidence it had received, which contradicted it’s own policies, it’s own conclusions - it’s own omniscience - needed to be dismissed. The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth. Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile – at best morally or intellectually confused. That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill. Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill. History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England - had taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts. Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards. His government, absolute and exclusive in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient Ones. That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such, all voices count - not just his. Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago - about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago - we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego. But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have – inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically. And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes. In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused… the United States of America?
–
The confusion we - as its citizens - must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light and we can too. The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.
–
And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that - though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.
–
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral." Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men; Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."

And so, good night, and good luck.

[lhopp77]

Originally Posted by shotgunslade

Interesting and insightful commentary from Keith Olbermann

Yes, it is interesting, but Olbermann and you both seem to miss the point. The Democratic leaders are the Chamberlains of today and the Rumsfeld camp IS the Churchhill---whether you want to believe it or not.

Good, Old Olbermann---about as liberal as you will find on the tube.

Lee

[SubaSteevo]

Originally Posted by shotgunslade

Interesting and insightful commentary from Keith Olbermann

It irks me when people argue about how "This is a Democracy!"

The United States is not a Democracy, it is a Republic. In a Democracy, decisions are made directly by the people, in which the simple majority wins.

"...and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, [under God] with liberty and justice for all"

[shotgunslade]

In terms of lying to the public, concealing and misrepresenting vital intelligence, being proved wrong in the court of subsequent events, smearing, libeling, and misquoting its opponents, all the time avoiding discussion of the true impacts of its incompetence, dishonesty and failed policies, I would definitely say the Bush administration is far more reminiscent of Chamberlain's established government than Winston Churchill's righteous opposition. The only similarity between Churchill and Bush is that they both advocated a strong military intervention. In the case of Bush, he had to lie, mispresent and defraud in order to justify invoking military action, just as Chamberlain had to do to justify witholding it.

It is really interesting to compare Bush's spin today on the Iraq war with his original justifications. His current spin could be characterized as "we are in this horrible mess and we have to stay the course, otherwise the results will be disastrous". There is little mention of the fact that he used a dishonest and misleading public relations campaign to convince the American people and the Congress to land this country in this disaster.

By the way, arguing against someone's position by calling him a "liberal" is no more legitimate than pursuing the opposite argument by calling someone supporting your position a "war-mongering, fascistic, fear-spreading, bully, with no sense of morals, completely without character, absolutely unworthy of citizenship in this country." I have borrowed some invective from Ann Coulter, here. Please note that I have not said that about you. My only insults in this forum have been directed against our illustrious president. But disregarding Olbermann's positions on other matters, I believe he has a legitimate point about the comparable misuse of public power by both the Bush and Chamberlain administrations to convince the public of the legitimacy of a course of action that had already been revealed by withheld intelligence to be indefensible.

[Manarius]

I'm rather angry with the fact that Bush is content to compare the terrorists of today to the Nazi's during WWII and the Russians during the cold war. I would never put "Nazi" and "terrorist" in the same sentence because that's just entirely wrong. The nazi's had a country strong enough to control almost all of Europe and beyond. These piddly terrorists have enough power to run some planes into buildings. The Germans slaughtered 6 million Jews and these terrorists have killed maybe 6000 people. So, the Germans killed 1000x more people than these piddly terrorists have. How dare Bush compare terrorists to Germany in WWII.

How dare he compare them to the Russians in the cold war. The terrorists do not have so many nukes that they could destroy the world many times over, nor do they have a land area spanning thousands of miles.

It's very disturbing that he would be willing to crap on the memories of those who gave up their lives fighting a real enemy in the Axis powers. I bet those 300k who died during WWII are rolling in their graves.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by Noir

you are welcome and it is our pleasure. thank you for not cramming that crap down our throats that you're better than the rest of us 'civilians'.

I would never do that.

But I am still just sooooo better looking than you, and I've been much more successful with the ladies than you could ever dream of being.

And my SVX? Much fastah than urs!!1111!!!!1!1!!1

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by SubaSteevo

It irks me when people argue about how "This is a Democracy!"

The United States is not a Democracy, it is a Republic. In a Democracy, decisions are made directly by the people, in which the simple majority wins.

"...and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, [under God] with liberty and justice for all"

And McCarthyism threw that "under God" part in during the 50's as they campaigned on the evilness of the "Godless" Soviet Union. I wonder how many think it was there from the beginning? I wonder how many think it was put in there due to actual respect for religion? Oh yeah!! That Bush supporting group!

[RSVX]

I just wanted to say thanks to all of the people who wanted this thread to end, and are now keeping it alive.

[SubaSteevo]

Originally Posted by RSVX

I just wanted to say thanks to all of the people who wanted this thread to end, and are now keeping it alive.

I also want to say thanks to all of the people thanking all of the people for keeping this thread alive, for keeping this thread alive.

[Electrophil]

Originally Posted by SubaSteevo

I also want to say thanks to all of the people thanking all of the people for keeping this thread alive, for keeping this thread alive.

Me too!!11!!1!