SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 15, 2005 23:44:23 GMT -5
Remarking about Cindy Sheehan, Casey Sheehan and the current situation in Iraq, our fearless leader:
"But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job," Bush said. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."
Wow. Her son is dead, but we're all very happy you can go on, George. I disagree with W on most things, agree on a few things probably for entirely different reasons, but the guy is just a complete prick.
If someone said that to my mother, no matter who it was, I'd lay the guy out.
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Post by StPetersburgHoya (Inactive) on Aug 16, 2005 0:57:52 GMT -5
I agree with you on this. I know that the parents and family and friends of deceased service members from Iraq probably have differing opinions on the war, but to say that the President can't take time off from his 5 week vacation on his ranch to meet with this woman for a few minutes is ludicrous. He can chop down every tree in central Texas by hand - or hold more of those strange macho news conferences on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in a pair of jeans and cowboy boots for all that I care but all he has to do to defuse the situation is talk to one person with a very personal stake in the Iraq War issue who disagrees with him and he absolutely refuses to do that - I think its politically stupid and personally sick that he can't bring himself to do that.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2005 7:00:39 GMT -5
War? Excuse me, don't you mean the "global struggle against terrorism" or the "battle to eliminate insurgents" or some other linguistic bull politicians throw at us?
Its stuff like this that leads to Bush's 40-something percent approval.
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Post by showcase on Aug 16, 2005 8:10:28 GMT -5
"But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life,"
It's this manner of speaking that really chafes my hide. I don't think I've ever heard a President use the first person singular as much as Dubya. Makes him seem inordinately self-involved.
As for his ability to 'keep perspective' - well, I'm sure Dubya has spent the last few weeks anguishing about the Sheehans and their loss.
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Nevada Hoya
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Post by Nevada Hoya on Aug 16, 2005 20:53:38 GMT -5
War? Excuse me, don't you mean the "global struggle against terrorism" or the "battle to eliminate insurgents" or some other linguistic bull politicians throw at us? Its stuff like this that leads to Bush's 40-something percent approval. Oh, I thought it was down to 38%. Even the people who voted for him (and I know maybe three) are saying they made the wrong choice.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 16, 2005 21:06:45 GMT -5
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 16, 2005 23:19:47 GMT -5
My very Republican boss said that if Bush had said that to him or his wife after losing their son, he'd have kicked his butt, too.
There aren't more Dems out there than Republicans, so your numbers, DFW, mean that just about every undecided is unhappy with him.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Aug 17, 2005 15:00:58 GMT -5
The President did meet with Cindy Sheehan:
"'I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,' Cindy said after their meeting. 'I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith.'
"The meeting didn't last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.
"The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.
"For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.
For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.
"'That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,' Cindy said."
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Post by fsohoya on Aug 17, 2005 15:07:20 GMT -5
Where is this quote from, kchoya?
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Post by StPetersburgHoya (Inactive) on Aug 17, 2005 16:04:51 GMT -5
If this is the quote that the right wing blogs were falling all over themselves to report it comes from Sheehan's local paper which responded to the Blogs by saying that they completely took those quotes out of context.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Aug 17, 2005 16:51:06 GMT -5
It's from the meeting that this lady had with the President last year. Apparently you get a meeting with the President every time you change your tune.
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Post by fsohoya on Aug 17, 2005 17:17:22 GMT -5
Here's a link to the article in the local paper for anyone who would like to read it: www.thereporter.com/republished/ci_2923921It looks to me like Mrs. Sheehan had a meeting with the president, and while she was and is clearly still angry about the prosecution of the war, it strikes me from the article that at least soon after her meeting with the Bush she did not feel nearly as spurned or angry at the President as she has been letting on. But decide for yourselves.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Aug 17, 2005 19:26:02 GMT -5
What a load of crap. The lady is crazy and deserves no special consideration on the president's time because her adult son volunteered in the armed forces. Quite frankly she strikes me as severely disturbed and I wish people would stop using her grief to feed their Bush-hating habit in what might appear to be a sympathetic manner. Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle What's wrong with her Crawford protest. By Christopher Hitchens Slate (this is a large excerpt- but it is an excerpt for the legally inclined moderators.) ".......Sheehan has obviously taken a short course in the Michael Moore/Ramsey Clark school of Iraq analysis and has not succeeded in making it one atom more elegant or persuasive. I dare say that her "moral authority" to do this is indeed absolute, if we agree for a moment on the weird idea that moral authority is required to adopt overtly political positions, but then so is my "moral" right to say that she is spouting sinister piffle. Suppose I had lost a child in this war. Would any of my critics say that this gave me any extra authority? I certainly would not ask or expect them to do so. Why, then, should anyone grant them such a privilege? Sheehan has met the president before and has favored us with two accounts of the meeting, one fairly warm and the other distinctly cold. I have no means of knowing which mood reflected her real state of mind, but she now thinks she is owed another session with him, presumably in order to tell him what she asserted to the Nightline team. In pursuit of this, she has set up camp near Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and announced that she will not leave until she gets some more face-time with our chief executive. This qualifies her to be described by Dowd as "a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R." Well, I think I have to concede that if Dowd says you have a knack for PR, you have acquired one even if you didn't have one before. (I am not entirely certain, for example, that the above letter to ABC News would count as a delicate illustration of the said "knack.") The president has compromised by sending his national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, down that Crawford road to meet the PR-knackish Cindy. Not good enough, exclaims Dowd. Hadley was pro-war and has even been described as a neocon! Clearly, then, the Sheehan demand is liable to expand the more it is met. President Bush must either find a senior staff member who opposes the war and then send him or her down the track to see if that will do. Or else he must, like the Emperor Henry of old, stage his own Canossa and attend on her himself, abject apologies at the ready. After all, we mustn't forget that we are dealing—as was that emperor in his dispute with Pope Gregory—with "an absolute moral authority." What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it. Most irritating is the snide idea that the president is "on vacation" and thus idly ignoring his suffering subjects, when the truth is that the members of the media—not known for their immunity to the charm of Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod in the month of August—are themselves lazing away the season with a soft-centered nonstory that practically, as we like to say in the trade, "writes itself." Anyway, Sheehan now says that if need be she will "follow" the president "to Washington," so I don't think the holiday sneer has much life left in it. There are, in fact, some principles involved here. Any citizen has the right to petition the president for redress of grievance, or for that matter to insult him to his face. But the potential number of such people is very large, and you don't have the right to cut in line by having so much free time that you can set up camp near his drive. Then there is the question of civilian control over the military, which is an authority that one could indeed say should be absolute. The military and its relatives have no extra claim on the chief executive's ear. Indeed, it might be said that they have less claim than the rest of us, since they have voluntarily sworn an oath to obey and carry out orders. Most presidents in time of war have made an exception in the case of the bereaved—Lincoln's letter to the mother of two dead Union soldiers (at the time, it was thought that she had lost five sons) is a famous instance—but the job there is one of comfort and reassurance, and this has already been discharged in the Sheehan case. If that stricken mother had been given an audience and had risen up to say that Lincoln had broken his past election pledges and sought a wider and more violent war with the Confederacy, his aides would have been quite right to show her the door and to tell her that she was out of order. Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? (a claim that has brought David Duke flying to Ms. Sheehan's side.) This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead "must not have died in vain." I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. Article URL: www.slate.com/id/2124500/
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Aug 17, 2005 19:39:34 GMT -5
"My very Republican boss said that if Bush had said that to him or his wife after losing their son, he'd have kicked his butt, too."
SFHoya99s thread title is more apropos than he might know. Ummmm....WHAT IN HELL did he say that was out of line? He is trying to be as sensitive as he can possibly be to this deranged (probably mentally ill) nutcase parked on his front lawn. What the hell do you want him to do? Say "she's right, you know? Its Israel's fault we got 9/11 and I had her son killed for oil profits?" Give me a goddamn break. Let's grow up a bit shall we? I read Bush's quote and actually expected SFHoya to say something positive about it because I couldn't imagine anything in it could get even a sensitive type's panties in a twist. Every time I think I have serious issues with Bush on policy (which is often,) then I see this blind bigotry that makes idiots of educated and intelligent people who just can't wait to ridicule and hate this guy and I move back in his camp if for no other reason than his critics are even more fanatical and irrational than he is. Disagree with him on policy and engage in an adult debate. Please. Make fun of his religiosity if you want to just move past actually arguing and be just be insulting. I think religion is worth making fun of in general. But to scrutinize, quite painfully, the WAY in which he was verbally deferential but yet refused to flagellate himself? Is that all you got? Your going to lose again then. Don't give me this childish "he is a prick and even the republicans I know want to beat him up" nonsense- just because he didn't satisfy your every linguistic whim in the way he tried to recuse himself from engaging a grief-stricken psychopath who everyone suddenly thinks has a right to stalk the president. Was he not appropriately cowered? That bastard! Should she perhaps be allowed to stay in the guest bedroom at that godforsaken ranch on the state's dime while Laura does her laundry? Does he really have to use the first person so much! The humanity! Maybe if he "sent" his FREE ADULT daughters off to Iraq that would help? Well, besides that being illegal and against everyone of our conceptions as to what you can "make" your adult children do for a living.
By the way, I would dare say that you and Nevada need some more diversity among the very weak-kneed token Republicans in your life. Boy I would be ashamed if I didn't actually know one person who wouldn't vote for Gore or Kerry tomorrow. Its a bit rich to be bragging that you only know three people who vote with 50% of America. That's sounds awfully sheltered and boring to me. I work in NYC and live in New Jersey, a state more blue than Nevada is red, and I would say among the people I know, the split is darn near 50/50. I would be too embarrassed to tell you I only knew 3 people who voted for Kerry. (But not anymore of course- they all saw the light.)
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Aug 17, 2005 20:30:16 GMT -5
If this is the quote that the right wing blogs were falling all over themselves to report it comes from Sheehan's local paper which responded to the Blogs by saying that they completely took those quotes out of context. Don't give me that crap St Pete- don't try to paint this as right wing propaganda. Nothing was taken out of context- The woman is CRAZY. You clearly didn't even know that Bush had met with Sheehan when this thread began- something that was quite well known by anyone halfway paying attention to this "news story."
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Post by StPetersburgHoya (Inactive) on Aug 17, 2005 21:05:06 GMT -5
If this is the quote that the right wing blogs were falling all over themselves to report it comes from Sheehan's local paper which responded to the Blogs by saying that they completely took those quotes out of context. Don't give me that crap St Pete- don't try to paint this as right wing propaganda. Nothing was taken out of context- The woman is CRAZY. You clearly didn't even know that Bush has met with Sheehan when this thread began- something that is quite well known by anyone halfway paying attention to this "news story." You are seriously just making things up as you go along here, desperate to appear more well-informed than you actually are. Par for the course I am afraid. Since you are clearly the arbiter of what I do and do not know you would know that I did read the right wing blogs and I did read the story from the local paper that criticized the blogs portrayal of their story. Secondly, I said that the blogs got it wrong - not that they were propaganda - there is a difference there - propaganda is systematically wrong information with the intention to incite others to disinginuously believe in a cause or movement. I don't think that I made that claim when I said that they made a factual error. Thirdly, I find it sickening that you deride a woman that is the mother of a KIA soldier who served in Iraq as crazy. When you walk a mile in her shoes you can do that. Before you describe someone who has lost her son to a war as a "grief-stricken psychopath", "CRAZY", "severely disturbed", and someone who is "using her grief to feed [her] Bush-hating habit", maybe you should consider that she is the mother of a KIA soldier and has the right to voice her opinion on the war. Fourth - it is sick of you to compound her loss by making insinuations about how she is using her son's death. You don't know her son, and you never will, you are equally vintiliqualizing him by implying that he never would have agreed with his mother's current stance. Fifth - Christopher Hitchens? Come on, bin - you can do better than that. Do you really read authors that only fall on the far right. I read Hitchens too and know that he's far right on Iraq - despite his credentials as being far left on social issues. He did do a very nice piece on Russia in Vanity Fair, but other than that his articles in Vanity Fair, Slate, and other publications all fall on the right when it comes to both 9/11 and Iraq. Here's a pretty good appraisal of Hitchens' work to date, IMO.I don't think that posting a long quote from a screaming war hawk commenting on someone advocating peace is actually analysis, bin. Its just using someone elses invective and ad hominem attack as a substitute for your own and further brings no balance to the discussion. The bottom line is this: Cindy Sheehan is the mother of a KIA American soldier, who served in Iraq. She has experienced what it is like to lose someone that she loves the most to the war. You, bin, have not. Even if she is speaking for her dead son, Hitchens' implication that he would have felt completely different about the issue is little more than doing the same thing. And as someone who supports the troops and thier families, I find it personally sickening that you have chosen to attack this woman in this manner.
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Post by StPetersburgHoya (Inactive) on Aug 17, 2005 21:05:38 GMT -5
Oh - I thought you weren't going to respond to me, bin.
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Aug 17, 2005 21:13:37 GMT -5
Oh - I thought you weren't going to respond to me, bin. But the blogs didn't get anything "wrong" you idiot- not ONE THING! Go ahead, dispute one FACT about Sheehan's first meeting....Let's hear it. You just say this sort of thing because you think nobody will call you out on what in this case is pretty much willful ignorance. I am not going to continue with you. Its really a lot of work to respond to such sophomoric drivel because you find that you can make no assumptions of current events literacy or argumentative maturity with a person such as yourself. Its like playing a video game you know very well but having to start from the begining. Its just to boring to do all that leg work again. If you are the kind of person who falls for this "moral authority" crap of a woman who clearly is (clincally speaking) disturbed, then I will saunter off to bed now and let the idiocy of your own words speak for themselves. I don't have the will to deal with your mock outrage, being as uninformed as you are that you didn't even know Bush has already met with the woman twice. You can't even see that it is you who are seeking to manipulate woman's illness for your own gains.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Aug 17, 2005 21:20:23 GMT -5
"Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy … not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy." Yeah, that sounds like the diatribe of your average mother who's dealing with the loss of her son who was killed in Iraq. "The neo-con PNAC agendas" How many average people use the phrase neo-con? Have you ever heard anyone other than bloggers or political pundits use this term? Do you even think she knows that the terms means? Hell, I'm not even sure I have a good grasp on the term and I was an American Government major? And referring to the PNAC? WTF? I even had to look that one up. I thought maybe it was some new moveon.org type group. Do you think this lady had ever heard of PNAC a year ago? Look, very few people can relate to what this lady went through, losing her son in war. But that doesn't provide her absolute immunity. Not when she's putting herself out there like she is and becoming the media darling of the left. She's opened herself wide open to legit criticism by doing what she's doing. Sure she has a right to voice her opinion on the war. But others have a right to give opinions on her actions and her motivations.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 17, 2005 21:45:23 GMT -5
"My very Republican boss said that if Bush had said that to him or his wife after losing their son, he'd have kicked his butt, too." SFHoya99s thread title is more apropos than he might know. Ummmm....WHAT IN HELL did he say that was out of line? He is trying to be as sensitive as he can possibly be to this deranged (probably mentally ill) nutcase parked on his front lawn. What the hell do you want him to do? Say "she's right, you know? Its Israel's fault we got 9/11 and I had her son killed for oil profits?" Give me a goddamn break. Let's grow up a bit shall we? I read Bush's quote and actually expected SFHoya to say something positive about it because I couldn't imagine anything in it could get even a sensitive type's panties in a twist. Every time I think I have serious issues with Bush on policy (which is often,) then I see this blind bigotry that makes idiots of educated and intelligent people who just can't wait to ridicule and hate this guy and I move back in his camp if for no other reason than his critics are even more fanatical and irrational than he is. Disagree with him on policy and engage in an adult debate. Please. Make fun of his religiosity if you want to just move past actually arguing and be just be insulting. I think religion is worth making fun of in general. But to scrutinize, quite painfully, the WAY in which he was verbally deferential but yet refused to flagellate himself? Is that all you got? Your going to lose again then. Don't give me this childish "he is a prick and even the republicans I know want to beat him up" nonsense- just because he didn't satisfy your every linguistic whim in the way he tried to recuse himself from engaging a grief-stricken psychopath who everyone suddenly thinks has a right to stalk the president. Was he not appropriately cowered? That bastard! Should she perhaps be allowed to stay in the guest bedroom at that godforsaken ranch on the state's dime while Laura does her laundry? Does he really have to use the first person so much! The humanity! Maybe if he "sent" his FREE ADULT daughters off to Iraq that would help? Well, besides that being illegal and against everyone of our conceptions as to what you can "make" your adult children do for a living. By the way, I would dare say that you and Nevada need some more diversity among the very weak-kneed token Republicans in your life. Boy I would be ashamed if I didn't actually know one person who wouldn't vote for Gore or Kerry tomorrow. Its a bit rich to be bragging that you only know three people who vote with 50% of America. That's sounds awfully sheltered and boring to me. I work in NYC and live in New Jersey, a state more blue than Nevada is red, and I would say among the people I know, the split is darn near 50/50. I would be too embarrassed to tell you I only knew 3 people who voted for Kerry. (But not anymore of course- they all saw the light.) Wow, the token response by the guy waaay too invested in the right to ever see anything wrong with it. Face it, thebin, if you never disagree with the Republican party, you pretty much lose all credibility, considering the myriad of contradictions within any party. Frankly, I agree with some of what Ms. Sheehan says (outrage over going to war just to make his buddies rich) and disagree with some of what she says (the troops must come home now). I do not think Bush needs to respond to her AGAIN. But if he chooses to, how about being respectful (I also think it is ridiculous the amount of vacation the man takes during a war. He is a leader, and everything he does send a message. This says, "I don't care if you die.") Regardless, Bush's lack of tact is pretty simple. He's saying, to a woman who has lost her son, that, yeah, he's tried, as he sits their on his fifth week of vacation this year, but HE has to get on with his life. It was the most insincere and self-centered commentary I've ever scene. My boss is hardly weak-kneed. He's not even a Californian Republican. He's from Indiana and hasn't softened much. But maybe, just maybe, he can actually criticize someone he voted for. And maybe, just maybe, he has a 17 year old son who could be overseas right now dying. And maybe he was being honest that if someone acted so callously about his and his wife's grief, he'd be angry. Bin, a large portion of my friends vote Republican. However, they are also rational people with opinions of their own. You are merely an automation that repeats the party line.
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