Posts by James Bremner
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Craig,
With regard to the Catholic Church what has surprised me for along time is that they still give the sacrements to staunch abortion advocates, people who enable something the Church considers a terrible sin. The Pope was over here recently and he gave communion to Ted Kennedy, Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi amongst others. What is the point of considering something a sin if you play all cutsey with those that enable it?I am not a Catholic or a particularly religious person, but it seems to me that the Catholic Church or any Church should be able to give or not give communion as they see fit. How is it that outside people or organizations should dictate to them how they are to conduct their Church, as long as they are with in the law.
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the feminist aspect of this, a woman trashing other woman to protect her husband is a topic for a whole other discussion
James Bremner, Feminist Theorist. Now I've really heard it all!
Hillary Clinton, who got where she is not on her own merit, but as the wife of Bill, who trashed women to protect her husband, and who allowed herself to be treated like a piece of shit over a period of decades by an adulterous husband (bloody dangerous in the age of Aids). Quite how she is a great feminist icon escapes me, but as you allude to, feminism is most definitely not my area of expertise.
Still, warts and all, I would vote for her in a heartbeat ahead of Baz OBambi , if they were the two choices on a ballot I was casting.
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With regard to Pfleger:
"but his Wikipedia article actually makes him sound quite admirable:"
Well that should tell you a thing or two about Wikipedia, shouldn't it? The guy is a certifiable nut case. Period.
Craig, yes I do realize that Pleger is a Catholic. Shame on the Catholic Church that they hadn't cleaned this guy out a long time ago, but that would be par for the course for that institution.
The issue for Obama is not so much the fact that his pastors are ignorant morons, but rather that his pastors completely contradict his post racial healer rhetoric that he used to introduce himself to the American public, and which is at the core of his attractiveness. And he has been closely connected with these guys for the majority of his adult life.
In contrast McCain has been around since Adam. Everybody feels they know who he is and what he is about, like it or not, and it will take something quite significant to change that, a lot more than the endorsement of a couple of pastors of dubious distinction. Consequently, his pastors aren't getting much attention at all in the media (any segment of the media), and I don't see that changing.
Bazza will need to change his tune of doom and despondency on these subjects to reflect these new realities, but he has tied himself very strongly to the pessimistic view ...
Well, a little reality in the room would be welcome.
Craig, I linked to a WaPo editorial that was telling Bazza to get a new narrative on Iraq. When a liberal gets told to get a grip by the WaPo, you know they have a problem!!
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Obama's has had another nutty preacher blow up in his face over the last few days, another 20 year friend and acquaintance who is a complete loon, called Father Pfleger, and he and his wife have withdrawn his membership from the now world famous Trinity Church.
It will be hard for Obama to convincingly distance himself from all this crazy stuff, it is now clear that this is way beyond an isolated happening; it is pretty clearly a long established pattern of behavior of his. You are who your friends, acquaintances and colleagues are. I would tend to think that this nutty pastor stuff is a bigger problem for Obama than Willie Horton was for Dukakis. It goes directly to his narrative, the post racial healer, which has been so appealing. How can a post racial healer have these kind of guys as his friends and spiritual advisors? The views that these nutty pastors espouse are far outside the mainstream in the US.
Two questions spring to mind. How on earth did Hillary not find out about this and use it to stop Obama, and how did the people who have backed and promoted Obama not found out about this and, if they did, then not realize that is a very serious, potentially fatal problem in a general election?
Maybe the legendary Clinton political machine is not so effective after all. I assumed that if there was any dirt anywhere on Obama, Hillary would find it, after all she was in charge of destroying the women her husband had slept with or abused (or raped - Juanita Brodderrick) who popped up as a problem when they were in the White House. She was very effective and utterly ruthless at this task (the feminist aspect of this, a woman trashing other woman to protect her husband is a topic for a whole other discussion)
The other interesting thing right now is that the meta narrative on the US is changing, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan, Al Qaida and the US economy.
A foundation stone of the liberal media, the WaPo editorial page, is telling Bazza that he needs a plan for success in Iraq. If progress is so obvious that even the MSM can’t ignore or deny it any longer, things really have changed for the better.
US deaths in Iraq are at the lowest point since the beginning of the war and progress continues to accelerate:
http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSL01687040
Afghanistan is getting better as, like the insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban have been on the receiving end of a good old fashioned ass kicking:
Al Qaida is in a downward spiral (again, this is from the WaPo, MSM outlets are always lagging indicators on this subject)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052904116.html?hpid=topnews
Muslims decide Al Qaida sucks, after all:
http://hstoday.us/content/view/3621/128/
And the US economy is not going to go into recession this year. If it didn't in the first quarter (growth revised up from 0.6% to 0.8%, 2.5% ttm) there is no reason to believe that it will go into recession and any later quarters, the credit crunch is past and oil is more likely to go down than up going forward.
Bazza will need to change his tune of doom and despondency on these subjects to reflect these new realities, but he has tied himself very strongly to the pessimistic view, which the articles above prove to be a poor exercise of judgment. So like resigning from Trinity after 20 years, it will strain credibility when he changes his tune on these big picture subjects.
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Obama's gaff about the concentration camp might have been relatively minor, but he needs to be careful, you only have so many free passes in a campaign, and he has already used up a couple. He is the new guy on the block and a lot of people are seeing him for the first time, so too many screw ups could hurt him. This article lays out the danger quite well.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/americandebate/19351804.html
It really seems like Clinton is the better bet for the Dems, especially after the recent primary blow outs in Kentucky etc. But it would cause a blow up of enormous proportions to take the nomination off Obama now. The article below lays out the electoral math that favors Clinton.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obamas_woes_a_tale_of_three_st.html
As for Murdoch, that boy can smell a change in the air, no doubt about that. Although I might not like his prediction this time, I will forever love the guy. My grandmother had a relative or friend who way back when told her that there was this up an coming guy who was going to make it really big, and his name was Rupert Murdoch. God bless Granny, she went out and bought a bunch of stock at the very beginning of what became Newscorp...
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I would have thought being accepted into Harvard and Princeton would be hardly be evidence of discrimination, quite the opposite in fact. But read Michele Obama's stump speech, it is enough to make you want to cut your wrists, it does not represent the average American's experience.
And more relevant to the point I was making, her diatribe of negativity won’t do her husband a lot of good trying to win the White House. And it doesn't matter whether I am a transplant from NZ or Mars, the point is valid and it being quite widely discussed at the moment. It first surfaced after her "I am proud of my country for the first time in my life" comment. Perhaps she is the reason they kept going to Trinity for 20 years, maybe she just lapped up Wright's loony tunes.
(If you want to read a useful book read "Come On People, the path from victims to victors" by Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint. Michele Obama would do much better studying that book rather than listening to Wright and his ilk.)
Craig,
You are quite right; the Repubs are looking at a hiding in Nov. You would have thought that after being whipped in 2006, they would have done some navel gazing and figured out what they had done wrong, and fix it, and put forth a platform that addressed the concerns of the American people. But oh no, not these goons. They can't get it into their thick heads that they lost because the American people were disgusted with their out of control spending, earmarks and corruption. I might even consider voting Dem myself if it wasn't for the fact that the Dems will only be much worse on those fronts, throw in promising the biggest tax increase in US history, appointing "make shit up as you go along" judges, whimping out against Islamic fascists, lining up to kiss tyrants butts etc. etc. and the most likely outcome in Nov, the Dems with both houses and the White House its not a pretty picture.It truly is a choice between sucks, and sucks worse. But oh well, what are you going to do? Whatever will be, will be.
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I am a bit late to the game but never mind. After reading the previous posts one thing that stands out as interesting is the change in views about Hillary Clinton over the past few months. Now she is not so well thought of by the majority of posters at PAS.
Hillary in 2008 is exactly the same person she has been since 1992, when she first came onto the national scene. What took so long to figure out that she has many apparent problems, such as her troubled relationship with the truth? It has been abundantly obvious for years, 16 years in fact.
As for where it goes from here, Obama has won the Dem nomination; he really won it back in Feb when he had that string of 11 or so wins that gave him an uncatchable lead in delegates.
As for the general, who knows, not me that's for sure. Obama could win 40 states or implode spectacularly. I think the long campaign season (primary and general) works against Obama as people tire of his shtick and find out more about the difference between his lofty talk and how he has lived his life, or more specifically who he has lived his life with. Why did it take you 20 years to decide you don't like Rev Wrights rantings? Most people could have figured that out in 20 minutes or less.
Black Liberation Theology is in play, and it doesn't go over so well with moderate Dems or independents, populations with which Obama has to do well to win in November.
I think his wife will end up being a problem for Obama. Americans are optimists, angry and bitter doesn't sell well. Sorry darling, don't give me all this hard done by shit after you went to Princeton and Harvard. You ought to at least be grateful for the incredible opportunities you have had, not all pissed off and bent out of shape as you apparently are.
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Unfortunately interagency rivalry and competition is nothing new to the US govt. but it does seem to have ramped up a notch or two this go around. Some State and CIA people actively worked to undermine the policies of the elected head of govt, which should see them out of a job at the least or in some deep shit of some sort. Like the elected head or his policies or not, if you work in the executive branch, you are required to implement his policies. The fact that Bush didn't crack down on these bastards is one of his biggest failings.
Incompetence and corruption in the military is nothing new either, the Yanks were famous for bombing their own side in WWII. Post D-Day, they ran a pipeline across the channel and through Europe to bring fuel to the front line as it moved toward Germany. Before long there was no fuel getting to the end of the pipeline, US supply troops had tapped into the pipeline so many times to get fuel and sell it to the locals to make a quick buck, that there was none left for the US tanks & trucks.
If a Dem president, i.e. Clinton, had invaded Iraq, there would have been fewer interagency problems, as most of the State Dept etc are libs, and the media would have hailed the Dem president as a great liberator and humanitarian for liberating Iraq from the clutches of one of the worst dictators of the last century. But there would have been plenty of corruption and incompetence regardless of who the Pres was. Sad but true.
Not least of which is the bizarre argument that "we've severely fucked it up getting to this point, so we need to be allowed to stick with it".
So what is your suggestion Simon? Just walk away and allow genocide, much worse than the carnage to date, to take place? That is the most likely outcome of the implication of your statement. Just sit back and watch a bloodbath taking place and say "not my problem”. How is that the right thing to do?
If that is what you really believe, then follow the NYT and Obama and make an explicit statement to that effect, I want to see it in print, in all its obscenity.
As for " .. have actively damaged their stated cause (reduction of global terrorism), and made the world a far more dangerous place."
There has been a steady drumbeat of good news on that front for about a year. Sunni in Anbar turning on Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda’s approval plummeting in the Muslim world, Muslims who once approved of suicide bombings now rejecting suicide bombings.
Here is the latest installment:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120640588050061101.html?mod=todays_columnists
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A couple of points in response to other posts.
The containment effort was crumbing in 2001 & 2002. With the Oil for Food billions, Saddam was in the process of buying the French, Russian and Chinese votes in the UNSC to get rid of the sanctions. They weren't going to last much longer and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous. And lets face it they hadn't worked as intended, Saddam was still in power, hadn't changed his behaviour and they were exacting a toll on the Iraqi people. The choice was either let the sanctions effort collapse leaving Saddam's regime intact and bolstered by seeing off the sanctions, or take him out.
Well don't you know it, 600,000 pages of Saddam era Iraqi govt documents show that:
“captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.”
http://a.abcnews.com/images/pdf/Pentagon_Report_V1.pdf
Ralp Peters has an acerbic take on Iraq at 5. I especially like his rheeming of the left's antics.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03202008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/shock_and_awful_102665.htm
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Rich,
I understand your point about Iraq, made with your example of the unprepared hike, but you are not accurate in your suggestion that no preparations and plans were made for post invasion Iraq. In fact the planning for deposing Saddam and a post Saddam Iraq goes right back to the Iraq Liberation act of 1998, signed into law by President Clinton in 1998, 5 years before Bush pulled the trigger.The concept was to knock out Saddam fast (as happened) and put the Iraqis and the Iraqi Army in charge of their country quickly (which did not happen). And therein lays the key mistake, as far as I can deduce, from the books and material I have read on the subject. Bush allowed a dysfunctional national security apparatus to fester and did not intervene to pull things back onto the previously agreed track (put the Iraqis in charge quickly) and to decide key issues as the White House and the Pentagon fought with the State Dept and the CIA. So critical mistakes like not recalling the Army were made. I mean to say, how hard could that be? All you have to do is to announce that Army personnel have just been awarded a 400% pay raise, to be paid to them when they come back to barracks, and bingo, most would come back. Instead people trained in weapons and bombs etc found themselves with no job and no money coming in and access to a bunch of weapons & bombs. And Paul Bremner acted like a proconsul and pissed off everyone. Tragic, absolutely tragic.
So yes, Bush deserves every bit of abuse he gets on that point. But for all of the US mistakes, why is it that all the deaths of Iraqis are all laid at the door of the US when it is insurgents and terrorists who have deliberately, purposely, targeted and killed Iraqi civilians, who have killed many times more Iraqis than those lost to American fire, when the US Armed Forces go a long way out of their way to avoid civilian casualties? The US made mistakes after they got rid of a shithead but where is the outrage at Al Qaeda and the various insurgent groups who have killed so many Iraqis? I haven’t read much abuse of them, compared with abuse directed at Bush et al. I have read a lot of excuse making and moral equivalence regard terrorists and insurgents, a whole lot of that, and it is absolutely sickening.
Polls. What is wrong with using polls, if as best you can tell are legitimate? How else are you supposed to determine opinion on any subject? I think the real issue here is that those who don’t like the poll I linked to on opinion in Iraq don’t like the results of the poll and message conveyed, it doesn't fit their views, so lets just criticize polls instead.
If he hadn’t been taken out, Saddam and his sons and grandson would have continued to imprison and kill and brutalize Iraqis for decades to come. Saddam stated very clearly (see the Delfurs (sp?) report) that his game was to keep as much of his equipment, people, knowledge etc. as possible, get rid of the UN sanctions and restart his various weapons programs. So the most likely scenario if Saddam had been left in place is that we would have nutcases in both Iraq and Iran racing to build the baddest weapons they could, while sitting on top of, or close to a large portion of the world’s oil. Saddam would most likely have continued to support homicide bombers in Israel and his relations with most terrorist groups in the Middle East. Sometimes there are no good options and the decision is to figure out what is the least worst option. Leaving Saddam in place had a big downside, and no one even considers that today.