Friday, September 24, 2004

Getting Started - some politics

Blog Universe ... HELLO!
I guess I’m new and old to this. A decade ago we played this game while reviewing the OJ Simpson trial and various nonsensical assertions being represented as "evidence". Times have changed. Now we have BLOGs when then we had e-mail groups. But, I suppose, the idea remains the same – separate the idiots and their positions from the truth and facts; get to the main crux of the issue and scare the hell out of those who want to brainwash people into accepting their illogical and unfounded – rationally unsupportable – B/S.
I guess, since it’s election time, I should pass about a few thoughts on the election:
1. Bush will be re-elected. This has no reflection on his honesty, or the righteousness of his pronouncements – they hardly pass an rational sniff test. The basic reality is that we are a nation of semi-literates who will believe anything that is repeated often enough. The Bush team repeat the same falsehoods with sufficient regularity as to ensure a solid base – their scrip never changes, they add a bit of honesty, just so they can claim to have told the truth, and then return to their distortions and misrepresentations.
As Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time." Unfortunately, this reality, in a free and democratic society, means you need only fool 43% of the people all the time, and 6% of the people some of the time – and, allowing for the 4% who usually toss their votes away on third party candidates, that will give you a very secure 49% plurality and an safe election win.
2. Recent polls show George W. Bush currently has the same number of hardcore supporters as Saddam Hussein – 40%. That both men have an additional swing, or transient, support base of 6-7%.
3. John Kerry? OK he IS a legitimate hero. I was surprised the media didn’t jump all over the "swift Boat" idiot who claimed Kerry wrote the action report that resulted in the idiot getting his medal. Fact, we don’t know who wrote the post action report in question – they aren’t generally signed and are usually compilations of multiple individual reports. But it is telling that the idiot said the report was a lie. Think about it ... idiot gets medal based on report that he says is a falsehood; he publically proclaims he didn’t earn his medal and he accepted it knowing that it was a lie – but he proudly showed it for 35 years – and now he comes forward to claim that, because he was dishonest in acquiring his medal, Kerry have also obtained one dishonestly. The difference? Idiot wasn’t there when Kerry chased down and killed the sniper who was shooting at his men – and admits it. The man in the water knows he was being shot at; the people on Kerry’s boat know they were under fire; and all their signed reports concur on what transpired.
OK, Kerry came home from what was known to be a stupid and meaningless exercise in the expenditure of human life – having proved himself in combat – and publically denounced the stupidity.
George W Bush is credited with having written in his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House": "My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."
To be honest, I got the preceding quote from The New York Times September 24, 2004 editorial By BOB HERBERT, "Bush Upbeat as Iraq Burns". I hadn’t even guess "W" was literate enough to have an "autobiography" – after all, this is a guy who got gentleman’s "C’s" in every school he attended and boasts that he doesn’t read. A big contrast to the honor student and Rhode’s School, Bill Clinton – and, of course, JFK, the President who read everything at 2,000 wpm.
Yep ... no question ... Bush is a man of the (illiterate) people ... and as our educational system has for four decades worked diligently to reduce everyone to the lowest common educational denominator – without rendering them dyslexic (because dyslexics know how to think) – the proudly illiterate now have sufficient ballot power to keep one of their own in the White House.
WELL ... so much for getting things started.

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