Democracy for Vancouver

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1. While I deplore personal attacks on any person, when an individual becomes a public figure, it is a different story.

   Congress was not given the Generals own version of Iraq, he was quoting the White House take of it, as the Bush Admin. mentioned it first.

   More and more free speech is being taken away from the American people. Just like the idiot at Kerry’s speech getting tazered. Seems like some people who are elected to positions can’t take the heat, therefore do their best to shut down dissent, won’t let people vote on how their tax money is spent, etc. We have seen this here in Vancouver several times, last one was the Port district trying to raise taxes.

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   1. Above written by Allen on September 21st, 2007 at 6:46 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

2. Odd, isn’t it, that you would so vociferously defend moveon.org’s right to free speech while simultaneously condemning the right to free speech of the 72 senators in question.

   So, if I’m not mistaken, in your bizarro world, moveon.org may feel free to express any opinion they so desire, but the United States Senate is not so privileged?

   Good God. You people are such unmitigated hypocrites.

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   2. Above written by John Edwards on September 21st, 2007 at 7:59 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

3. [quote post="856"]but the United States Senate is not so privileged?[/quote]

   I did not say the Senators are “not so privileged”. I expressed may contempt for them wasting their time on unimportant matters and, because they are supposedly “leaders”, helping to squelch dissent which is patriotic and what this country is founded upon.

   I would appreciate not twisting my words.

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   3. Above written by bushtool on September 21st, 2007 at 8:06 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

4. That’s a crock, BT.

   When you call for the “replacement” of 72 Senators engaging in PRECISELY the same thing moveon.org did; namely, expressing an opinion; you are, effectively, denying the Senate the same right you defend for moveon.org.

   If “wasting their time” were the criteria for such nonsense, then certainly you would make the same demand every time Reid engaged in stupidity trying to get bills passed for purely political reasons that have exactly ZERO chance of passing… like last weeks idiocy over troop rest periods between tours.

   But you see, you only get pissed when it’s a “waste of time” that YOU don’t agree with. “Wastes of time” that further the leftist agenda are, well, just swell with you.

   moveon.org has viciously attacked anyone they disagree with. They’ve done it in the past; they’ll do it in the future. “Squelch dissent?” Exactly how does the senate expressing an opinion “squelch” ANYTHING?

   If ANYTHING, your bizarre demand that the Senators who voted in the affirmative on this bill has a far more chilling effect on free speech and dissent then anything the Senate did.

   I’m not twisting a damned thing, and both you and moveon.org are engaging in rank hypocrisy that will avail you nothing.

   Typically, when you’re in a hole, the best course of action is to stop digging. Tossing more shovels into the hole won’t get you anywhere.

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   4. Above written by John Edwards on September 21st, 2007 at 8:35 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

5. Cindy Sheehan has a post on this subject today.

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   5. Above written by bushtool on September 21st, 2007 at 9:14 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

6. Olbermann to Bush: ‘Your hypocrisy is so vast’
   A reaction to Thursday’s press conference: the president was the one who interjected Gen. Petraeus into the political dialogue in the first place

   SPECIAL COMMENT
   By Keith Olbermann
   Anchor, ‘Countdown’
   Updated: 6:59 p.m. PT Sept 20, 2007

   So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn’t already – the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.

   I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.’

   And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

   And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.’

   That was a sorry deal.’

   First off, it’s Democrat-ic’ party.

   You keep pretending you’re not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.

   Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?

   But most importantly, making that the last question?

   So that there was no chance at a follow-up?

   So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!

   Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?

   Eleven months ago the President’s own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.

   Bin Laden.

   Al-Zawahiri’s rumored quote of six years ago about having bought suitcase bombs.’

   All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion and the dire announcement:

   These are the stakes - vote, November 7th.’

   That one was ok, Mr. Bush?

   Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party has never brought as much as a public comment from you?

   The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval?

   But a shot at General Petraeus, about whom you conveniently ignore it, was you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack, merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?

   Your hypocrisy is so vast that if we could somehow use it to fill the ranks in Iraq you could realize your dream and keep us fighting there until the year 3000.

   The line between the military and the civilian government is not to be crossed.

   When Douglas MacArthur attempted to make policy for the United States in Korea half a century ago, President Truman moved quickly to fire him, even though Truman knew it meant his own political suicide, and the deification of a General who history suggests had begun to lose his mind.

   When George McClellan tried to make policy for the Union in the Civil War, President Lincoln finally fired his chief General, even though he knew McClellan could galvanize political opposition which he did when McClellan ran as Lincoln’s presidential opponent in 1864, nearly defeating our greatest president.

   Even when the conduit flowed the other way and Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to smear the Army because it wouldn’t defer the service of one of McCarthy’s staff aides, the entire civilian and Defense Department structures, after four years of fearful servitude, rose up against McCarthy and said enough’ and buried him.

   The list is not endless but it is instructive.

   Air Force General LeMay—who broke with Kennedy over the Cuban Missile Crisis and was retired.

   Army General Edwin Anderson Walker—who started passing out John Birch Society leaflets to his soldiers.

   Marine General Smedley Butler—who revealed to Congress the makings of a plot to remove FDR as President and for merely being approached by the plotters, was phased out of the military hierarchy.

   These careers were ended because the line between the military and the civilian is not to be crossed!

   Mr. Bush, you had no right to order General Petraeus to become your front man.

   And he obviously should have refused that order and resigned rather than ruin his military career.

   The upshot is and contrary it is, to the MoveOn advertisement he betrayed himself more than he did us.

   But there has been in his actions a sort of reflexive courage, some twisted vision of duty at a time of crisis. That the man doesn’t understand that serving officers cannot double as serving political ops, is not so much his fault as it is your good, exploitable, fortune.

   But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the planted last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

   That is not only un-American but it is dictatorial.

   And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

   You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.

   It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military political, and the political, military.

   It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta.

   Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous transgression, for a call to further politicize our military.
   © 2007 MSNBC Interactive

   URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20896378/

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   6. Above written by bushtool on September 21st, 2007 at 9:18 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

7. John Edwards,
   Not everyone has short memories. Moveon.org learned from the SwiftBoaters. REMEMBER THEM? A lot of people do remember.

   But it sounds like in your world, it was OK to swiftboat someone, but when it comes back at you, you guys cry like little babies. So touching.

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   7. Above written by Allen on September 21st, 2007 at 10:43 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

8. And another article about Senators who don’t deserve their titles.

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   8. Above written by bushtool on September 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

9. And yet another from Jeff Cohen.

   This story just won’t die but I bet most of the Senate wishes it would. No, no, wrong, this is a good diversion from having to do anything with meaning and substance like ending our illegal occupation of a foreign country.

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   9. Above written by bushtool on September 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

10. Interesting take here about what really riled the Dems about the MoveOn ad.

    I love this quote from the article:

    Democrats, as my crusty old country uncle used to say, don’t know whether to shit or go blind — so they walk around all day with one-eye closed farting.’

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    10. Above written by bushtool on September 24th, 2007 at 9:05 am (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).