Journal Dannon's Journal: Technical difficulties? 5
A good Canadian friend of mine sent me this link last night. A well-crafted little flash animation... filled with utter nonsense.
I sent him a response with my perception of things, and I'm going to tack that onto this journal entry as a reply. Comments are always welcome.
My reply (Score:2)
Interesting stuff. Can't say I agree with it all, but then, I rarely tend to agree with all of anything.
I don't see Bush's presidency as a 'technical difficulty', I see it as the valid outcome of a very close election in which the value of the American electoral process and the importance of solid rules was reiterated. I'd hate to see Gore as president after 9/11, especially since all he's done in the past two year is make very snide, hypocritical stabs. I also see Bush as the lesser of two evils, both of which I voted against.
The 'revoking aid to desperately poor women and children' accusation is a new one to me, especially since in Afghanistan we were giving food to the poor even as we were bombing the Taliban. Which aid have we revoked?
The war-to-help-the-oil-industry canard is such an old accusation I have trouble digging up my favorite disproof of it any more, except to say that the President could do the same thing a dozen easier ways without having to start a war and get the cooperation of the French.
The bit with the veterans' benefits is unfortunate. Seems that this one administrative office made promises to veterans that they didn't have the authority to back up. Promised that they would receive benefits that Congress hadn't approved. Bush has been pushing pay and benefits raises for the armed forces to bring them at least up to the level of the average union-protected federal employee.
Public dissent isn't criminalized yet, just look at all the ridiculous war protests that have been going on. I'm halfway concerned about my privacy, just because I tend to be paranoid about that kind of thing, but I'm no more afraid of the government in that respect than I am of a hacker getting into Amazon's records.
The whole mess with treating Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant is messed up, that I'll agree with. But it seems to me that the Justice Department is still looking for a rule to follow here. On the one hand, if you go overseas and take up arms with an enemy, that's like giving up your citizenship in your homeland and all the protections that go with it. A whole bunch of people said this is how John Walker Lindh should've been treated. On the other hand, public opinion is fickle. It's a mess.
And when did we ever shoot first?
Just my point of view from down here. Thanks for the link, I do like to try and figure out how/what/if other people are thinking, as always!
Cheers! (Score:1)
I wish I had an answer to the problem of getting people to give a damn about how the country is being run. Unfortunately, it's not confined to the USA, but seems to have spread to most of the developed world...
Very powerful (Score:2)
FWIW... (Score:2)
The `revoking aid to third-world women' charge was a favorite liberal canard in the summer before 9/11. It is a drastic misrepresentation of Bush's decision to enforce laws passed by congress in the eighties, laws which Clinton had flagrantly violated, which forbid the US from giving foreign aid to support abortion and sterilization programs overseas.
Since there is a certain segment on the left for whom abortion is the answer to everything, the left has taken to claiming that this is a way of attacking women in the third world.
Pathetic...
Re:FWIW... (Score:2)