Posts by James Bremner
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Weston,
From the WaPo, a bit on Joe Wilson, the excreble little lying shit, if anyone should be in clink for lying, it should be him.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html
Well, its Independence Day tomorrow, so irony of ironies, I will wish you all, unfavorably disposed to the US as most of you are, a Happy American Independence Day and sign off!!
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RB,
Rasmussen has those self identifying as Repubs at 32% and the Dems at 36%.
Rasmussen Reports linkAmericans are pissed wth both parties at the moment, especially after the way the White House and leaders of both parties in Congress constructed a bill behind closed doors and tried to ram it down the Senate when a clear majority of Americans opposed it.
As for, "And the dreaded immigration bill is a controversy invented by conservatives so they didn't have to talk about Iraq any more."
You are joking I assume? That is so paranoid that only someone like Keith Olberman could have dreamt it up.You can't be happy with a group of people who say they are going to be the most ethical Congress in history and then promptly try to ram through 32,000 earmarks in a bill with no review. Or Nancy demanding that her adult children can fly free on congressional trips. Wouldn't you be pissed if you were a relative of one of the Lebanese politicians who had had been killed by the Syrians and Nancy flies to Damascus (outside her perview) and says "the road to peace passes through Damascus"?
Danielle,
Glad to be galling you. Nasty job, someone has to do it.
The US holds itself out to be special and should be judged as such. But to endlessly excoriate the US while ignoring much worse travesties of numerous other countries is selective, inconsistent and hyprocritical. Sorry, it just is.Alistair,
You can relax. I can assure you that come one morning in Jan 2009, Dubya will be leaving the White House and someone else will be sworn in. No Emperorships or anything like that.No law was broken with regard to Plame and no cover up was undertaken. The only issue was that Libby's memory was different than Tim Russert's on one inconsequential point. Do you think it is reasonable for someone to go to jail for 30 months for that? I don't. Even the WaPo wrote an editorial the other day describing the whole thing as a nonsense, and the WaPo has never been accused of being a card carrying member of the great Neocon conspiracy.
What would make me lose confidence in Bush? How going to war and not fighting like you mean it?
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I can't read Gordon Brown's mind, but it seems rather unlikely to me that he was thinking of politics when he issued his decree on language not to be used by his government. At least politics was not what he should have been thinking about.
He should have been, and I would believe that he was thinking about what is the best course of action to take in the current situation. Which makes his decree on language all the more distressing. How are you ever going to solve a problem if you won't or can't correctly define and describe it?
As the former Islamic terrorist linked to and quoted above in my 3:54AM post above states, the root cause of Islamic terrorism is Islamic theology.
Think of the great leaders in history. Would any of them have shied away from calling a spade a spade?
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Ben,
I am aware that the post is on US politics. Simon G and I have had exchanges on various topics over a period of time, including Abu Ghraib. If you see his post at the bottom of page 3 you will see the comment I was responding to.My point above, and a point above that I have made a number of times is that, by all means criticise the US and the current or any previous US administration. Go ahead and knock yourself out, just have a bit of balance and perspective. The US should be held to a high standard, but that doesn't mean that it is okay to glibbly ignore the many other horrendous acts of other countries, governments or groups around the world.
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Well, if the Times and Telegraph are being solid and clear headed, Gordon Brown certainly isn't.
"Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in connection with the terrorism crisis./"
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/12172/Brown:+Don't+say+terrorists+are+Muslims
Pitiful. Just pitiful.
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Actually Simon, when the Dems won in Nov, the consensus of this blog was a sense of relief and a belief that the Dems in Congress would be a decided improvement on the Repub Congress. My first posts to this blog were stating my view that the Dems would be worse, and I think it is fair to say that events have proven me to be correct on that judgement.
The hype about Abu Ghraib was more than somewhat disconnected to the reality. Based on the NYT running ABG stories on its front page for something like 60 days straight (in an election year), you would have thought it was the end of the world. It wasn’t.
If you are upset about Abu Ghraib, you must be apoplectic about Iran's Evin prison and torture chamber. What about your favorite buddy Castro’s well known propensity to imprison torture and execute? Does that bother you? Did you see that Al Qaeda torture manual that surfaced the other week? Must have driven you crazy, right? Oh sorry, I forgot, only the US and Bush do bad things. If anyone else does something bad, then you don’t seem to worry about it too much do you?
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A good editorial in the Times today, rightly calling out the apologists for Islamic terrorism.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article2017440.ece
" It is perverse of left-wing politicians such as Ken Livingstone to equate the Islamists with social justice and national liberation: they believe in neither. To excuse or even tolerate the intolerant is a denial of all the values that the Left purports to embrace. If Muslims are to denounce the roots of fanaticism, so too must those who would embrace them as neighbours and fellow citizens."
Also a good article in the Telegraph pissing all over the new Home Secretary's regurgitation of a standard load of moral relativist cant:
"In her statement to the House yesterday, the new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said, "Terrorists are criminals who come from all religious backgrounds", which, in the present context, is absurd. Obviously, all Muslims should not be branded as potential terrorists, but, for present purposes, all terrorists are likely to be Muslims."
A great article by a former Islamic terrorist identifying the true cause of Islamic terrorism, Islamic theology, and highlighting how wrong it is to blame terrorism on western policies or actions.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=465570&in_page_id=1770
"I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.
More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology."Slowly the moral relativist wool is falling from people's eyes and the world is making progress toward a better understanding of the real causes and reality of Islamic terrorism. Better late than never.
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There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything "there" in this fiasco.
When contacted by Novak about his article, the CIA's public relations office confirmed Plame's identify and employment with the CIA to Novak. So if Plame was under cover, the CIA blew her cover. Why isn't she pissed at the CIA?Fitzgerald knew very early on that Armitage was Novak’s source for the article he wrote that identified Plame to Novak and set off this whole load of nonsense, not anyone from the White House. The enquiry should have stopped at that point, as it was obvious that no law had been broken by anyone at the White House.
Cheney, Libby et al had very good reason to enquire about Wilson. Wilson stated that he had been sent on his mission to Africa at the request of Cheney's office, which obviously came as a surprise to Cheney's office, as they had never heard of the execrable little weasel.
This has always been all about politics, and attacking and discrediting the President and his policies, which should never be criminalized. Not now, not ever. In a free society people are allowed to make accusations (except libel etc.) and people are allowed to rebut them, by attacking the credibility of the accuser if appropriate.
Bush should have had the cahones to issue a full pardon; the whole thing has been a load of crap from the getgo.
As for Bush being the worst President in the history of the US, sorry, but Jimmah Carter has a lock on that title for all time. He was horrendous in office and senility has only made him worse.
Yes, Bush is at 29% approval, and his disgraceful performance on the immigration bill has a lot to do with that. Still, if opinion polls matter and Bush sucks because he is at 29%, what does it say about the Democratic controlled congress which is at 14% approval? It has taken Bush 6 years and a lot of water under the bridge to get to 29%, the Dems in Congress have gotten to 14% after barely 6 months in office. So who really sucks the most?
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Whether it is an Uribe, a Paisley or a Adams, whomever is left standing after a civil war or violence of some sort is not going to be a saintly chap with no blood on his hands, but they are the ones who have the ability to bring the violence to an end and make peace, if they have the vision to do so. Uribe is no saint but he has Colombia heading in the right direction, which is a lot more than can be said for Chavez.
As for Castro's drug trafficking activities, these are just 2 of the articles that came up with a Google search.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n23_v43/ai_11732953
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/cubaandcocaine.htmlYes, much of the coke comes from or is processed in Colombia. Until Americans stop shoveling it up their noses it will keep coming, along with the huge damage it does to both Colombian and US societies.
As for comparing Chavez's stacking of the Supreme Court with his lackeys with Roberts and Alito and the process they went through, that is just pathetic. Roberts and Alito are both supremely well qualified for their posts, yes they are conservatives, just as Clinton's appointees Ginsberg & Breyer are both liberals. Elections have consequences. Roberts just crushed the Dems on the Senate Judiciary committee during his hearing, it was fun to listen to, man against boy stuff.
Below is an interesting review Venezuela's democracy as of 2002. Go to page 35 onwards. It highlights the downhill slide Chavez has Venezuela's democracy on. It has gone downhill further since 2002.
http://kellogg.nd.edu/publications/workingpapers/WPS/294.pdf
And yes, the Yanks have propped up some nasty characters over time. Some of it was in the "zero sum game" environment of the cold war, and some of it has been and continues to be oil related (Saudi Arabia). But the Yanks have also pulled the rug out from under a number of their nasty characters. Noriega sits in a US prison. Pinochet was told to step aside and/or have an election (but look how well Chile has done on the path Pinochet put it on, truly the envy of Latin America). Marcos was ditched. Both South Korea and Taiwan were told to clean up their acts. And the last time I checked, those countries that had had the largest US presence for the longest time, Germany Japan and South Korea were doing quite well.
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Election fraud in Venezuela.
This was about the recall election.
http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200409080559
Like he stacked the Supreme Court with his buddies to do his bidding, 3 of the 4 guys on the "independent" election board in Venezuela, are Chavez guys, who control the voting machines.
Before the recent election employees in government departments, obviously including PDVSA, which is a sizable chunk of the electorate were told that if they wanted to keep their jobs they needed vote for Chavez. And this from a governemnt that controls the voting machines, no one believed that their vote would be secret.
Free and fair elections? Not by the standards that we are used to.