I'll be damned, we might just pull out of this.

It's weird. I know it seems crazy with all the fantastical things Bush is saying and the torture and all, but I see that the Press is finally really letting loose and exposing the lies. Maybe Torturegate is just the catalyst that is needed to shake people up. To be sure the Right is trying to say MTV and the 60's drug culture is to blame for the sadism we have witnessed at Abu Ghraib, but Lyndie England hardly fits the profile of a second generation 60's druggie gone MTVer. She is much more like a member of the Falwellian flock with their "sound" Christian principles.

Even Hardball is showing the imperial crimes of torture that have gone on during the Cold War in Central America and elsewhere. Most of this truthtelling is being driven by the internet acting as counterpoint to the corporate press. The latter is in a bind because they have to have some credibility or their bottom line suffers and that credibility is being challenged with each article they print.

The Internet is the modern day equivalent of the 16th century Guttenberg Press that, IMO, was the main reason Martin Luther's Reformation movement took hold.

This process of exposing and examining the truth and lies of our government can be extremely empowering. It can result in a kind of socio-cultural malaise as happened after Vietnam and was quickly exploited by the neo-cons for their own disasterous ends, but maybe this time we will understand that the malaise is THE problem and the Internet can act as a vehicle for getting through this process and get it right this time. The people can take the hits; there is no country that comes close to the US in experiencing the socio-political extremes and survived to talk about it. We were a huge driving force on a global scale in the 20th century, the grand experiment in democracy, that went terribly wrong.

(((I'm just glad Al Gore invented the Internet)))

In the US there has always been an undercurrent of suspicion about government and those in power. It goes nearly dormant at times like here in the past two decades or so, but it doesn't die. Even the Right has its cynics against government power, very misguided IMO, but there is still a skepticism. Oddly Patrick Buchanan has been blasting Bush as hard as any critic lately. The Iraq disaster and the torture is forcing people to look into themselves and to look for better sources of info. The skeptics, muckrakers and other lovable folk here at DU and elsewhere on the Internet have kept the fire of truth burning and now people are starting to be drawn to that fire out of a desperate need to find answers.

We might just pull out of this mess and move on to better things.

What do you all think?

but please don't call it "Torturegate." That puts it on the same level as a political scandal like Watergate. What happened at Abu Ghraib was Geneva Convention violations and war crimes.

trouble finding a PC word for Bush's speech.....it's mainly "he tried and that's a good thing!...."

for a good mental institution in her later years.

I have this suspicion that an awful lot of these RW talking heads will be gone in the next year or so.

in "Raging Bull"...it was an almost, good try guy, you lost comment. Scar man tried to cover, but it was "uncomfortable" in many Republican dinner parties......LOL

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Sorry, I guess you and your friends will be needing a warm nuthouse as well, but I don't go to such places myself, I just chase fisheezz and bites them.

Suggestion: You might contact your local Crisis Clinic when the need arises, they can probably help, hee.

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saying goes.

"Won't be fooled again".

There is no friendship between me you and your ilk. There may be a truce when you admit you were flat wrong then unequivocally and vigorously denounce this maniac you helped into office.

Unconditional surrender or nothing.

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VERY trying.

CHHHRRRRRRRRRRISStopher..." while she was at it, floundering around for the right words?

That's what she did after some big bush scandal blew up in everybody's faces and she was on with Chris Matthews. Every time her turn came up, it was this vamping, swooning, sighing "CHHHRRRRRRRISStopher..." It would, in fact, take up most of her camera time. That was all she could come up with, all she had to say for herself to defend her valiant president - "CHHHRRRRRRRISStopher..."

PATHETIC!

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Peggy Noonan was Reagan's Monica. She's trying to be the bushies' Monica, too, but hasn't gotten too far into little bush's inner circle, the way she did with his poppy.

bush*ies will only allow nubile bimbos into the club.

Nubile bimbos??? :puke:

1) Bush will address the problems, put a band-aid on 'em, and get a big boost in the polls. At his speech today, he claimed that coalistion forces will demolish Abu Ghraib prison; it's these kind of superficial, address-the-symptom-not-the-underlying-problem solutions that unfortunately sound like good news to the brainwashed populace.

2) The October Surprise, Part II.

3) The press coverage of the neocon regime will become just heated enough to make Bush look like "the underdog," and thus available for the sympathy vote. Just the other night, Conan O'Brien had Richard Reich on, and when Reich started to criticize the chimp, Conan launched into a blatant but reasonable-sounding falsehood: that despite all his crimes and fuck-ups, Bush is still a "likable person." He STILL has that stupid-ass "beer buddy appeal," unfortunately. And rednecks, freepers, and fundies will rally 'round him in defense, aided by the whore press and supposedly neutral entertainers like Conan (who I used to like a lot.)

4) Te press will continue to ignore Kerry while the AM radio Grand Dragons will continue to vilify him; in effect, they will be convincing people not to vote for a phantom. So come November, the advantage of the incumbent will be too much to combat.

5) BBV.

If we had just beaten the Iraqi's to death, nobody would have given two shits about them. But because we reportedly raped them and possibly forced them to sodomize each other (or at least "simulate" it -- wink-wink -- for the cameras), the press latched onto it like frat boys on a keg of beer. That's pretty much the level to which the mainstream media has descended.

We're still in Okinawa.

We're still in Korea.

We're still in Kuwait (first Gulf War).

"The Internet is the modern day equivalent of the 16th century Guttenberg Press that, IMO, was the main reason Martin Luther's Reformation movement took hold. "

It's saving Democracy! Hey, 9215! Talk about your co-opted memes... That's a Republican idea:

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the  proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate-we cannot  consecrate-we cannot  hallow this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here have  consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so  nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take Increased  devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of  devotion-that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain-that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom-and that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was more worried about "jobbers" (military contractors) and corporations than the South as a threat to the US.

first, let me tell you i've learned my lesson ... i thought i would just "skim" your post and then respond ... what kind of crap is this guy peddling I thought to myself as i read your argument that the Internet was the main reason for Martin Luther's reformation ... a re-read straightened me out on that one ...

now, about this little touch of optimism you've expressed ...

we do not have power and we will not have power ... it may well come to pass that the neo-cons will finally be driven into the sea ... and we may have some good years to follow ... but still, we refuse to fight the real battle ... we are so fragmented in our various movements that we never seem to focus on the big picture ...

money has completely destroyed even the semblance of democracy ... our government is bought and paid for by the largest stockholders ... might things get better ?? sure ... we are likely to see a more isolationist foreign policy ... and we are likely to make some effort to rejoin the global community ... and perhaps the pendulum will swing back a bit to the left ... but the bottom line is still the bottom line ... the rich continue to grow richer and more powerful everyday ...

and until we can stop being distracted by our favorite issues and join together to take down the very worst aspects of capitalism, all progress is illusory ... and just as the good changes will come with the next president so shall they disappear with the president after that ...

our understanding of our interdependence. :cry:

Please let me quibble over this bit of "American Exceptionalism":

"The people can take the hits; there is no country that comes close to the US in experiencing the socio-political extremes and survived to talk about it."

Would you care to rephrase that or do you actually believe it?

hi karenina ...

did you mean to reply to my post ?? if so, i'm not clear exactly what you're asking me to rephrase ...

- WT2

YOUR post hit the nail on the head. :toast:

is that no country has been through so many levels of experience as the US and, most importantly, survived. We fought the Revolution to free us from colonial rule and then had to have a civil war to end slavery, we aspired to Empire and became one, we subjected the citizenry, at home and abroad, to every concievable form of mind control, dumbing-down, disinforming, corruption and yet the spirit of dissent, the essential ingredient of democracy, has survived.

IMO when this mess is over we will come out of it a new nation, very, very differant than what we were before.

In Lincoln's words we are the last best hope.

but it SHOOOOO be smellin' NASSY of late. ;-)

happens to the BFEE. IMO it is at the center of the international criminal forces. If it goes down it will be a fatal blow to the forces of fascism. It will not be replaced by some other entity too quickly.

The BFEE has built itself up over the last 100 years to be where it is today and the peoples voice through the Internet is giving them hell. There have always been forces for popular control of government out there and they have grown stronger in recent years.

We are witnessing a surge of popular resistance to predatory capitalism and, like in Venezuela particularly, the people, through popularly elected leaders, are holding onto the power.

What is happening on another level is that we are ALL going to die in a polluted and otherwise environmentally disrupted, unlivable planet if we don't change our ways. I repeat ALL of us. Even the Pentagon is worrying about the environent as a threat to national security. This will be the great challenge of this century.

:toast:

i'm so very tired of all this stuff, and i very much want to share your optimism. i've felt it myself a bit these days, in fleeting moments where i see glimpses of what you're talking about.

but the BFEE is so much more than just a bunch of lying, warmongering hypocrites. they have their hands into all kinds of things, as kerry discovered, and i'm pretty sure we've not seen the last of them, even if kerry is allowed to win.

i was thinking the other day that the BFEE likes this particular pattern: rape, rob and pillage for a few years, and then let a real leader build up false hope and confidence in democracy, capitalism, america's greatness, only to start the whole pattern over again. now that they've tasted ultimate power a couple of times, i'm not really sure anything less than prison for 000s of them would make any difference.

i think the BFEE is so removed from real americans that they'd rather continue to see this nation throw away generations of our resources, people, and world prestige so long as they continue to get rich. and kerry or no, if we 'stay the course' in iraq, money will continue to enrich their coffers and bolster their control in the global sense. because the BFEE doesn't just think about america folks, the old man himself said it best: a new world order.

revolution, in my humble opinion, and nothing short of it, is what it will take to change the direction the BFEE has driven the nation. and frankly, it may be too late for even that to help things. while bush is busy killing iraqis and distracting us all to madness doing so, he's done a great deal of permanent damage to literally everything else. i really don't see how anyone, let alone kerry, could undo what has been done in less than a generation, let alone four or eight years. and even if he wins, who here believes we'll ever see trials, jailtime, or the real truth of what the BFEE is and does?

i guess today, i really don't.

:tinfoilhat: Mostly cautious ... We still have diebold :(

The plans for us appointing thier heads of state combined with the stories a week or so ago about how the Iraqi government won't have to power to kick US forces out of Iraq and the huge embassy and smaller branches Shrub has in mind, all make me doubt that he wants to pull out.

My thought is that he wants to make the average American feel as though we have pulled out, while actually staying there and continuuing the course.

reason or the other, it has to be cleaned up, if not by me, someone has to do it. Now, up until I was five, my mommy did it for me. Then things changed. If she had to clean up my messes, there were consequences. We cannot walk away from this. Our collective noses will be rubbed in it, no matter who cleans the mess up, because the plastic turkey president did this in our name and we could do nothing to stop him.

Bush is a mess and still they love him?? Its almost as if he wants to lose on purpose but they won't let him.

"get it" and see the lies in technicolor.

Although right now on Hardball, they're taliking about how "likeable" Bush is. I have never thought he was likeable. He's a cocky asshole. What's so likeable about that?