The Anger Of The Left

[Wayne Maybury]

Originally Posted by Jamo

I'm beginning to think we're building the fence on the wrong border. I can't perceive any redeeming social value from your quasi-country. He!!, you folks can't even pick grapes.

Jamo, aren't you missing a " " or two at the end of that statement?

We may not be able to pick grapes (I would rather just drink the fermented juice) but we do produce some of the best hockey players in the world. You happen to have a very good hockey team in So Cal that is stocked with Canadian players and the best one comes from Quebec but please don't ask me to spell his name.

Andrew, You stated earlier that 22 Canadians have died in Afganistan. Yesterday seven soldiers lost their lives there when their helicopter was downed, 5 were Americans, 1 was a Brit, and 1 was a Canadian. He was the 56th Canadian to lose his life in Afganistan, not the 23rd.

To all, we can bicker all we want here but we must all respect the efforts our brave soldiers are making so that we can have a better life here. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the troops (American, Canadian, British, and others) and their families, especially to those that have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Wayne

[aharris]

Jamo

I'm beginning to think we're building the fence on the wrong border. I can't perceive any redeeming social value from your quasi-country. He!!, you folks can't even pick grapes.

You are right, I have been harping on the US. You guys are not all bad. You gave us Rosie O'Donnell, Hillary Clinton and the whole Kennedy clan.

We have donated to the betterment of human kind too...Keanu Reeves, Don Cherry and......ummm......ummmm......did I mention Don Cherry.

Andrew

[aharris]

Wayne

Thanks. I stand corrected.

Andrew

[Jamo]

Wayne...ok...you correctly moderated me:

Andrew...

[VRM]

Jamo,
In response to your earlier question:

Secure our borders - seems only a handful of our legislators (all GOP as far as I know) actually want to enforce our immigration laws.

Stop creating new enemies.

Trade with them - theres nothing like a society having something worth living for to prevent them from strapping bombs to themselves. And that same society will soon pull their support for the idiots who don't see it that way. Countries with a happy middle class will never have a revolution.

Stop giving out foreign aid without getting something in return - such as assistance with terrorist hunting.

Refocus on Afghanistan.- fight them there rather than here. Al Quaida will follow, but the population is more on our side than theirs (or at least they were before most of you took your eye off that ball). We might even have the added benefit of eliminating some of the drug trade.


So, again - how do we stabilise Iraq when we are a big source of the instability?

Steve

[Ron61]

Steve,

I certainly can't answer your question about stabilizing Iraq as it seems that part of the world has been unstable since the beginning of recorded history. I don't think us just withdrawing our troops will stabilize anything. If anything, maybe withdraw our forces to the oil fields, set up a security perimeter, and take the oil and let all the factions that have been fighting each other for what seems forever have at it. Then if and when one of them comes out on top, deal with them. I just honestly don't think there is any answer to this and no person, no matter how they try can get things back to whatever they call normal in that part of the world. The Muslims seem to consider any one that isn't one of them an infidel, and all infidels should be killed. So how do you sit down and talk to a group like that about a solution to an age old problem. They hated us before this begin, but were just not so vocal about it and weren't attacking us. I really doubt if either of us will be alive when whatever is going to happen finally happens. And now with the news media hyping the Smallpox thing, that is just another thing that is thrown into the mix to panic people. And they are correct in saying that we don't have enough vaccine for even out troops, because once it was considered wiped out they quit making the vaccine. Then yesterday on the news I saw some Russian General had said that Russia has I think he said 4o missiles with 10 warheads each full of the smallpox virus that they can explode over American cities. I know this is rambling and not even a suggestion of a solution, but what would be a good place to start?

Ron

[VRM]

Ron,
I'm frustrated also. Staying in Iraq is a bad idea. So is leaving. I hate to say it, but under Hussein it actually was stable. It was not a good thing for us, but it was better than what we have now.

Jamo pointed out earlier that he thinks Hussein needed to go. I don't entirely disagree with that, but it is also not our place to police the world. He was emasculated when he let the inspectors back in. He was a mild threat, but he was a lot less dangerous than Al Quaida, and he was also tied to geography, while Al Quaida is not.

Al Quaida and the Taliban are also rearing their ugly heads in Afghanistan because we have diverted attention from them. That is bad for us.

I would favour leaving Iraq in phases, hopefully to someplace nearby so that we can be called upon by the Iraqi government if needed. Perhaps a new Cento with the US, Turkey, and Iraq. Ok, so that is not very likely.

Most Muslims are not the way you describe. There is a tiny handful that are, and they are the ones we need to be fighting.

Steve

[392cobra]

Open Letter to the troops from Ben Stein
BY: Ben Stein, Open Letter


Dear Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, National Guard,
Reservists, in Iraq , in the Middle East theater, in Afghanistan ,
in the area nearAfghanistan , in any base anywhere in the world,
and your families:

Let me tell you about why you guys own about 90 percent of the
backbone in the whole world right now and should be happy with
yourselves and proud of whom you are.

It was a dazzlingly hot day here in Rancho Mirage today. I did
small errands like going to the bank to pay my mortgage, finding a
new bed at a price I can afford, practicing driving with my new 5
wood, paying bills for about two hours. I spoke for a long time to
a woman who is going through a nasty child custody fight. I got e-
mails from a woman who was fired today from her job for not paying
attention. I read about multi-billion-dollar mergers in Europe,
Asia , and the Mideast . I noticed how overweight I am, for the
millionth time. In other words, I did a lot of nothing.

Like every other American who is not in the armed forces family, I
basically just rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic in my
trivial, self-important, meaningless way.

Above all, I talked to a friend of more than forty-three years
who told me he thought his life had no meaning because all he did
was count his money. And, friends in the armed forces, this is the
story of all of America today. We are doing nothing but treading
water while you guys carry on the life or death struggle against
worldwide militant Islamic terrorism. Our lives are about nothing:
paying bills, going to humdrum jobs, waiting until we can go to
sleep and then do it all again. Our most vivid issues are trivia
compared with what you do every day, every minute, every second.

Oprah Winfrey talks a lot about "meaning" in life For her,
"meaning" is dieting and then having her photo on the cover of her
magazine every single month (surely a new world record for
egomania). This is not "meaning."

Meaning is doing for others.

Meaning is risking your life for hers.

Meaning is putting your bodies and families' peace of mind on the
line to defeat some of the most evil, sick killers the world has
ever known.

Meaning is leaving the comfort of home to fight to make sure that
there still will be a home for your family and for your nation and
for free men and women everywhere.

Look, Soldiers and Marines and Sailors and Airmen and Coast
Guardsmen, there are six billion people in this world. The whole
fate of this world turns on what you people, 1.4 million, more or
less, do every day. The fate of mankind depends on what about
2/100 of one percent of the people in this world do every day and
you are those people. And joining you is every Policeman, Fireman,
and Emergency Medical Technician in the country, also holding back
the tide of chaos.

Do you know how important you are? Do you know how indispensable
you are? Do you know how humbly grateful any of us who has a head
on his shoulders is to you? Do you know that if you never do
another thing in your lives, you will always still be heroes? That
we could live without Hollywood or Wall Street or the NFL, but we
cannot live for a week without you?

We are on our knees to you and we bless and pray for you every
moment. And Oprah Winfrey, if she were a size two, would not have
one millionth of your importance, and all of the Wall Street
billionaires will never mean what the least of you do, and if
Barry Bonds hits hundreds of home runs it would not mean as much
as you going on one patrol or driving one truck to the Baghdad
airport.

You are everything to us, as we go through our little days, and
you are in the prayers of the nation and of every decent man and
woman on the planet. That's who you are and what you mean. I hope
you know that.

Love,

Ben Stein

[cobra de capell]

I hate to say it, but under Hussein it actually was stable.

He was paying the families of suicide bombers, among other things. He was killing his own people. He more than likely has MMD's and was mad enough to use them. So, you think that business as usual was the route to go with him, even given the World Trade Center scenario? He would have paid all those families as well and anyone else that killed Americans, etc.

[trularin]

They were thinking of making this thread into a movie, but it is too much like CNN with comments.

[Sizzler]

Ben Stein is right. We're all useless, living pointless lives.

The Wenzhou airport bookstore stocks a volume titled, Actually, You Don't Understand the Wenzhou People. It shares a shelf with The Feared Wenzhou People, The Collected Secrets of How Wenzhou People Make Money, and The Jews of the East: The Commercial Stories of Fifty Wenzhou Businessmen. For the Chinese, this part of Zhejiang Province has become a source of fascination, and the local press contributes to the legend. Recently, Wenzhou's Fortune Weekly conducted a survey of local millionaires. One question was: If forced to choose between your business and your family, which would it be? Of the respondents, 60 percent chose business, and 20 percent chose family. The other 20 percent couldn't make up their minds.

From the beginning, an element of desperation helped create the Wenzhou business tradition. The region has little arable soil, and the mountainous landscape made for bad roads to the interior. With few options, Wenzhou natives turned to the sea, developing a strong trading culture by the end of the Ming dynasty, in the 17th century. But they lost their edge after 1949, when the communists came to power and cut off overseas trade links, as well as most private entrepreneurship. Even in the early 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping's free-market reforms began to take hold, Wenzhou started with distinct disadvantages. Residents lacked the education of people in Beijing, and they didn't attract the foreign investment of Shanghai. When the government established the first Special Economic Zone, whose trade and tax privileges were designed to spur growth, they chose Shenzhen, which is near Hong Kong.

But Wenzhou had the priceless capital of native instinct. Families opened tiny workshops, often with fewer than a dozen workers, and they produced simple goods. Over time, workshops blossomed into full-scale factories, and Wenzhou came to dominate certain low-tech industries. Today, one-quarter of all shoes bought in China come from Wenzhou. The city makes 70 percent of the world's cigarette lighters. Over 90 percent of Wenzhou's economy is private.

The Wenzhou Model, as it became known, spread throughout southern Zhejiang Province. Although nearly 80 percent of all Zhejiang entrepreneurs have a formal education of only eight years or less, the province has become the richest in China by most measures. The per capita incomes for both rural and urban residents are the highest of any Chinese province (this excludes specially administered cities such as Shanghai and Beijing). Zhejiang reflects China's economic miracle: a poor, overwhelmingly rural nation that has somehow become the world's most vibrant factory center.

We're a bunch of lazy, entitlement-due, layabouts and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would fight and die to preserve this culture.

As for the Canadian border, just another example of maybe good ideas and intentions badly managed by the powers that be:

A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. The inspector has been removed from border duty.

The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press.

I bet when they send in the suicide small-pox carriers, they'll still look healthy too.

Again, maybe good intentions, but just more and more bad executions. Time to pull the plug on the inept in power today. Maybe tomorrow's clueless will be better. One can only hope. Hope is the only thing left in our worthless existences.

[wtm442]

Sizzler

There is NO cure for stupidity.

[TampaFla]

Looks as though the anger on the left is going to be equally matched by the fear on the right. According to noted Fox News analyst Fred Barnes, the deliema facing Republicans up for reelection in 08 is that to get the nomination they must appeal to the "core" conservative right, but the very position(s) they'd have to take to appeal to the core would lose them the general election. Seems their fear is not of the left but of the very angry "middle."

Which is why many Republicans up for reelection are both trying to hug "W" and also say they never heard of him.

[Ron61]

Tampa,

In many ways both parties seem to have worked themselves into corners on some issues. It will be interesting to see if either party mentions anything they have done during their terms in office or if they concentrate on what the other party did wrong as usual. Just how long has it been since you have heard any politician run for re-election and use what they had done while in power as a platform instead of all the bad things about everyone else that may oppose them for their job.

Ron

[TampaFla]

Precisely Ron, It's almost a "pundit" fact that no candidate for the Republican Party wants to be seen in the company of George W. Bush. Similarly, many Democrats are waking up to realize that Hillary is "unelectable" (money is not everything).
What's bothering both parties in what happened in 06. suddenly an election was decided/decisively by the "middle." Worse, the middle is angry (as Fred Thompson correctly said yesterday) at both the Republicans and the Democrats. It is far more likely the "middle" will be voting against candidates not for them (so both sides need to make sure they are not on the hated list).

[BeanCounter]

Tampa,

I think you're right. Here's an exact quote from e-mails that I sent both of my Senators and my Representative.

"If you don't vote to send them back, I'm not voting to send you back........no matter who is running against you. I refuse to vote for a politician who condones breaking the law." I'm hoping VRM is really a Frenchman here illegally.

And we wouldn't even want to get into the email I sent John McCain.

[VRM]

Originally Posted by BeanCounter

Tampa,

I think you're right. Here's an exact quote from e-mails that I sent both of my Senators and my Representative.

"If you don't vote to send them back, I'm not voting to send you back........no matter who is running against you. I refuse to vote for a politician who condones breaking the law." I'm hoping VRM is really a Frenchman here illegally.

And we wouldn't even want to get into the email I sent John McCain.

No such luck Bernie, I've got relatives on my mums side going back to a little after the Mayflower. Maybe someday I'll let you win an argument just so you don't hate me as much...

And good job on your emails. I've been sending similar to mine for a while, though I doubt the KKs will pay any attention. The good news is that someone supposedly is going to run against Kerry. Kennedy has even lost a lot of support from the locals for his stance on immigration.

Steve

[chopper]

Tampa:

I think you're correct. Interesting article in the WSJ this morning by Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, in which she pretty much puts the stake in GWB's heart:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/column...jrss=frontpage

Also, there are reports coming out that RNC contributions are off 40%. Most of the pundits are blaming the President's stand on the immigration bill. Apparently the only thing lower than Bush's ratings right now are those of Congress.

[VRM]

Originally Posted by chopper

Tampa:

I think you're correct. Interesting article in the WSJ this morning by Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, in which she pretty much puts the stake in GWB's heart:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/column...jrss=frontpage

Also, there are reports coming out that RNC contributions are off 40%. Most of the pundits are blaming the President's stand on the immigration bill. Apparently the only thing lower than Bush's ratings right now are those of Congress.

Chopper,
Do you agree with some or all of that article??

Steve

[chopper]

Originally Posted by VRM

Chopper,
Do you agree with some or all of that article??

Steve

I think Peggy Noonan has a pretty good thumb on the pulse of the party.

I've said all along that I don't agree with the President on the subjects of immigration and NAFTA. Border security is wrapped up in the immigration problem (or vice versa, take your pick). I think the President is flat wrong on this issue and that the proposed "immigration reform" is a sellout to the liberal Hispanic lobby. Yes, I know, immigrants are not all Hispanic. But the reality is that the immigration problem being discussed here deals primarily with Hispanics entering the country through Mexico.

I work with, and my wife employs, several Hispanic people. It is my personal experience and observation that those Hispanics who are in this country legally are at least as upset with the illegals as are most of the rest of us. It's especially acute here in the southwestern states. The situation centers around two points: (1) how to close the US-Mexican border (and, again IMHO, the US-Canadian border) and (2) what to do with 12 million illegal aliens now in this country. For my money, we should use whatever force is necessary to close the borders, and begin rounding up those here illegally and forcibly returning them to their homes of origin. But that's my opinion. I would hazard a guess that, with contributions off by 40% and the RNC laying off most of its solicitors, it appears many of my fellow conservatives feel the same.

Now, if some of you liberals would tell Pelosi the same thing, maybe we could get on with fixing the problem.