Thursday, August 31, 2006

I remember when Keith O. was on SportsCenter. But after this monologue, I'm convinced he's found his calling. It's a long read, but worth every word.

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; a 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 Emperor’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, is 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.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

That's it. I've had it.

Usually when someone from the administration does or says something so incredibly stupid and offensive, I try to respond on my blog with wit, insight, humor, sarcasm, and intellect. Thanks to Donald Rumsfeld, I'm through with that.

From the AP:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces ``a new type of fascism'' and likened critics of the Bush administration's war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis in the 1930s.

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from ``moral or intellectual confusion'' about what threatens the nation's security.

And here is my response Donald:

Fuck you.

Fuck you, fuck the horse you rode in on, fuck your whole philosophy of playing on people's fear. And most of all, fuck you for comparing me to a group of people responsible for 12 million systematic deaths, along with millions of other military deaths.

I hope there is a hell, because it is my strong believe you will end up there someday. My only regret is that I won't be there with you to watch you suffer. But don't worry- you and Adolf will have plenty of time together to discuss your comparrisons.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Quotes of the day:

"But as for catching Usama, it’s irrelevant." - Ann Coulter

So Ann, you disagree with the FBI, do you? Think the man on their most wanted list is "irrelevant?"

Talk about TREASON!!!

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," - Katherine Harris

I wonder what Senators Schumer, Feingold, Specter, Feinstein, Boxer, Lieberman, Lautenberg, Levin, Wyden and Kohl have to say about that. Or Mayor Bloomberg. Or Governors Lingle and Rendell.

Question to Ms. Harris: Where are you going to find Christians to elect in Iraq? By your logic, the U.S. has helped create a government of sin.

Friday, August 25, 2006

In a lengthy interview with Florida Baptist Witness, struggling U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris asserts, among other things, that the separation of church and state is a fallacy.

"We have to have the faithful in government and over time," the Witness quotes Harris as saying, "that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."

Ok, Katherine:

1) First off, Antonin Scalia (the man who chose our current leader) is about as far from god-like as they come.

2) We do not have "rulers" in America. We are not subservient to the will of our leaders. Even if we were:

Thursday, August 24, 2006

I was having lunch with a friend a few weeks ago, and she was telling me about her relatively newly-found interest in her Catholic congregation. She mentioned that in her Bible study class, she was currently reading Samuel and Kings.

This reminded me of my favorite passages from Kings, and one of my favorite verses in all the Bible; it's not very spiritual, but I've always liked it.

Judges chapter 20, verses 15 & 16

15 The children of Benjamin were numbered on that day out of the cities twenty-six thousand men who drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who were numbered seven hundred chosen men.

16 Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; everyone could sling stones at a hair-breadth, and not miss.


Even back then, there were immense benefits to filling your roster with lefites!

Monday, August 21, 2006

Twice in a press conference today, President Bush used the word "suicider," a word he has used in the past.

I checked three on-line dictionaries and found no such word to exist.

This man went to Yale?

Friday, August 11, 2006

From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

In several interviews as (Se. Santorum) toured Southwestern Pennsylvania, the Republican accused Democrats of politicizing the war issue, and sending messages that, he said, encouraged perceptions by the nation's enemies that the United States lacks resolve.

Oh really?

From AP News:

"In the middle of a war on terror, we need to remain focused on furthering Republican ideas more than ever before," former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said in a letter that asked for donations to the Republican National Committee.

Glass houses, Rick. Glass houses.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

All is right in the universe.

It's August. The Yankees are in first. The Red Sox are in second.

There, now doesn't that feel better?