It shows the tin ear of this White House. There are countless examples from this to the naming of military operations with names very similar to Nazi Offenses in WWII. Even if you argue these are a bunch of coincidences, it's worthwhile to note because people do care about this stuff. Just like they care about the following: Pickering appointed the day after Bush visited MLK, Jr's grave. Bush advocating an opposition to affirmative action during the MLK, Jr. Holiday last year. Bush advocating some kind of marriage initiative on the anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death. The administration announcing the resumption of nuclear development and testing on the anniversary of Hiroshima. There are others. Either this administration is the most tactless and histotically ignorant administration in history or they do this stuff intentionally or both. Regardless, it is not offensive to point this tuff out. (And the guy was said specifically that he was not comparing Bush and Hitler... he was merely pointing out how this would resonate in Hitler and implicitly questioning whether it could have been done a different way.
Boy, I screwed that sentence up... And the guy was saying specifically that he was not comparing Bush to Hitler... he was merely pointing out how this would resonate within EUROPE and implicitly questioning whether it could have been done a different way.
I think we must've watched different speeches I thought he looked and sounded resolute, determined, assured. contrast his performance w/ Dean's monday night, then ask yourself, who would you really rather have with his finger on the button, the calm, measured statesman, or the enraged gerbil? Glad he's not biased I thought Bush's delivery of this point was masterful, the best part of the speech. He set the Dem's up with the first line, then he shut 'em down with "the threat will not expire." Kennedy looked like the joke he's become, fat, bloated, redfaced, bored, was he picking his nose at one point? memo to Kerry- lose the guy when you leave the northeast- he's not helping you. i thought she looked radient. ask yourself, who would you rather wake up next to, Laura Bush or Hilary Clinton? A couple of other thoughts...for several years I've been struck by the site of a rostrum full of white male faces, and this year with Hastert and Cheney both looking old beyond their years, it's particularly striking, and not a good face for congress to present to the nation, no matter which party is in power. I hope that soon we can see some black, brown and beige, not to mention female, faces in that shot. I'm torn by the "gay marriage" issue. while i'm in favor of gay marrirage, i think the courts are the wrong venue for this issue to be decided in. Likewise, I'm against an amendment to the constitution. Although one could certainly read it otherwise, I think W was right to throw down the gauntlet to activist judges. we're setting ourselves up for a repeat of the the abortion debate if we allow this issue to be decided outside the state legislatures.
I haven't seen the transcript of the part about steroids and only got to see the first few minutes before I was needed by wife and infant (WAI). Sleep deprivation is a bit better lately, although I haven't felt this high since I quit using drugs.
i tend not to respond to TJ, or most of the other overheated, name calling rhetoric from posters on the other side of the aisle. i held rim to a higher standard.
This kind of rhetoric is becoming so common in here, it's about time it was addressed. A) History either teaches us things, or it doesn't. Most believe it does. B) History is organic, and precedents do not come complete with packaging. As such lessons, examples, and incidents from the past either have meaning, or they don't/ If they do, to dismiss them because you don't like the entire picture, or the implications you feel come along with said events is the same as saying' we will only take comfortable lessons.' C) The entire point of historical lessons is not to tell su things we already know, want to hear, or are comfortable with, it si quite the opposite. We donlt need to learn what we already know, etc. so much as we need to be shown the things which we don;t know, don't want to know, etc. There is a reason why the Holocaust Memorial specifically addresses the endemic myth : This can't happen here. Because people only look at what they want to see, are comfortable with, or already know, they are always caught off guard when bad things happen. But the lessons are there. Most people don;t want to see them, and they will say things like " This is offensive to holocaust victims because we are nothing like that situation." when what they mean is " This is offensive to us because we are nothing like that sistuation." Holocaust victims would, I'm sure, fall on the side of cautioning everyone that it CAN happen here...or something like it. This is why the same people who always rail on about being offended re: comparisons to Nazi germany were the ones quite comfortable with all kinds of Saddam/Hitler comparisons, comparing people who opposed invasion with Neville Chamberlain, etc. Where has the concern gone for the Holocaust victims? Of course, the assumption isn;t that Holocaust victims will be offended by comparisons with which WE are comfortable...in other words, we assume that Holocaust victims perpsectives directly mirror our own. D) If you don't want to trivialize hitler's Germany, than look at it and learn the lessons. The best way to cure cancer isn;t to say " Yuck", and refuse to examine our own bodies because cancer is to gross for it ever to touch us, it's to really look at cnacer and really look at our bodies to see if it's there. Among the lessons to be learned from Hotler's Germany are: When you forgive leaders' manipulation of the populace merely because you feel they think they are ultimately doing the right thing, you are letting the wolf into the house. When you refuse to look at the evils of your society because you want to feel better about yourselves, you are allowing evil to grow. When you are selective or ignorant about history, you are allowing the worst to repeat itself. When you feel threatened and respond by loosening the reigns on your leaders, calling those who continue to question authority traitors and cowards, and calling blind loyalty patriotism, all out of fear, you have more to fear from within than without. There are several more lessons germane to our current situation which are there to be learned, but when we choose to ignore them because we don;t like the packaging, we are falling into the same trap as Germans did in 1935.
but there were legitimate comparisons between Hitler and Saddam, just as there would be between Hitler and Pol Pot, or Saddam and Pol Pot, Saddam and Stalin (his actual model), etc. Similarly, the hope by many in the anti-war camp that the problem would just go away of we negotiated more was nothing if not Chamberlain-esque, a false hope built on false promises. These have nothing to do with Holocaust victims. but when you compare the U.S. government to taht of Nazi germany, you're really saying you see no difference between the atrocities of Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam, Milosevic, etc. and the actions of this government. It's a ridiculous comparison, but it minimizes the pain and suffering of intold millions of people who did at the hands of those murderous regimes. Do you really believe that the death of 20 million at the hands of the Nazis and perhaps 50 million under Stalin compare to some imagined civil liberties restrictions under the Patriot act? You're choosing to distort history to make a political point, not learn from it. If you wish to draw some sort of historical parallel to illustrate Bush's supposed stifling of dissent, or the abdication of responsibility by members of congress or the public in general, there are plenty of other choices and only the laziest would paint with such a broad intellectual brush.
As I said... "Of course, the assumption isn;t that Holocaust victims will be offended by comparisons with which WE are comfortable...in other words, we assume that Holocaust victims perpsectives directly mirror our own."
Here is some of what George Soros has to say about Hitler/third reich comparisons: "SOROS: Look, open society is always endangered. But the dangers are different in character. So, it was endangered by Nazism, it was by fascism, it was endangered by Communism. And now it is endangered in a very unusual, in a very unexpected way, from a very unexpected quarter, which is the United States. I have never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be standing up to defend the principles of open society, which are in the core of American history and tradition, in America. But, it doesn't mean that the threat that is present today is identical with the threat that came from Nazism or Communism. By saying what I'm saying, I'm not comparing Bush to a Nazi. I'm not calling Bush a Nazi. I want to make it very, very explicit that I'm not. And I don't think that the comparison is helpful. In fact, I think it's harmful. It's a different threat. And it's actually a very strange, unexpected [threat]. If you go back to this Doublespeak and the threat of deception, the Goebbels propaganda machine had a total monopoly of the media. The Soviets had such control that they could actually erase people from history, airbrush out leaders who fell, who were disgraced. The deception in America is practiced while you do have pluralistic media. You do have, you know, different channels that are available. Nevertheless, something is going on in the way of managing the interpretation of reality that is actually successful and poses a danger to open society. And it has been spearheaded by the conservative movement. But, it's not confined to the conservative movement. In other words, it's a cultural phenomenon. And it permeates, let's say, the Democratic primaries as much as it does the propaganda of the Bush administration." http://talkingpointsmemo.com The whole Soros interview posted on the site is really good...
once again, he's making the comparison even as he's saying he's not making it. classic double speak. Bush "propaganda?"
Seriously, man, you just don't get it. There is a difference between saying that there are comparisons, there are lessons to be learned, there are warnings, and Bush=Hitler. You would prefer we only sought those comparisons, lessons, and warnings in examples more comfortable to your bias, such as a Rotary Club president caught taking the pizza money for his golf dues, or something similar. Hostory, as I said, doesn't come like that, the lessons lie where they are, and you want to throw out the baby because the bathwater stinks.
Did you read the interview? "And there is another aspect that is coming into sharper focus to me, even since I wrote the book. That is that this administration has no compunction in misleading the people. It has no respect for the truth. This, I think, is a real danger. It is the danger of an Orwellian world. It's not new, because obviously, Orwell wrote about this fifty years ago. But what he wrote in 1984, you know, the Ministry of Truth being the Propaganda Ministry, the use of words meaning the opposite of what they are meant to mean. The Fox News, "Fair and Balanced," the "Clear Skies" Act for permitting pollution, the "Leave No Child Behind" [that] provides no money for the legislation. All these things I think pose a real danger to our democracy if they succeed in misleading the electorate. And there is only one remedy: an intelligent and enlightened electorate that sees through it. Now, I find myself in a peculiar position, because having grown up or been exposed to the Nazi regime and the communist regime, I am very sensitive to this kind of propaganda. And the American people, not having been exposed to quite the same extent, seem to be more easily misguided. And that is something that I have been trying to say. And, as a result, I have been accused of calling Bush a Nazi. And that, to me, is itself a demonstration of how this propaganda machine works. That is a real danger, and I think that we really have to somehow become more sensitive to it, and reject it. So, I focused on rejecting the Bush Doctrine. But really behind it is this conviction that we must reject Orwellian Doublespeak. And that, in a sense, was why Dean had such great appeal because, he said, ‘what I say is what you get.’ He's losing some of that now that he's the front runner. But this is what people are really hankering after."
Macbeth... start another thread with your previous post... some good discussion can come out of that. Back on track... "For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America." Did he mean these words... ____________ Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. --Dick Cheney 8/26/2002 Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. --George W. Bush Speech to UN General Assembly, 9/12/2002 After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon. --George W. Bush Cincinnati, Ohio Speech, 10/7/2002 The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it. --Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary, 12/4/2002 The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. --George W. Bush State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003 Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that [Saddam] has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. --Dick Cheney Meet The Press, 3/16/2003 If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct. --Colin Powell, 2/28/2003 As freedom takes hold in Iraq, the Iraqi people will choose their own leaders and their own government. America has no intention of imposing our form of government or our culture. Yet, we will ensure that all Iraqis have a voice in the new government . . . --George W. Bush, 4/28/2003 For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on. --Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 5/28/2003 But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them. --George W. Bush, 5/30/2003 You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons ...They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two...And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. --George W. Bush, 5/30/2003 I'm not sure that's the major reason we went to war. --Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, 6/26/2003
I think there were several instances in the address where the speech writers had to be laughing out loud as they penned the words. As the minions jumped to applause, i kept thinking -- did he really just say that? Although that tends to be standard operating procedure for these types of events.
That was hilarious, MacBeth. Good one! Anyone find it a little bizzare that El Prez didn't even mention Osama? Not once?? He spent the first half of his speech talking about the "war on terror" and didn't mention the most dangerous terrorist in the world? The man who gave us 9/11? I wonder why. Any of his supporters care to explain? Oh, and history and historical comparisons exist and are real. You know that old saying, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."? So it's not OK to discuss historical comparisons now? Not politically correct? Groovy.
He did say something like 2/3 of Al Q leadership has been captured. I guess it was just implied that OBL was in the "other" third.
Great speech. An uplifting speech that invigorated the populace. I was encouraged by the call to support the Patriot Act for our security, tax cuts for our economy, and education for our children. I was also encouraged by the opportunity to elect how I save for my retirement, and the opportunities provided to increase the burden on small business owners (pooling insurance resources, tax cuts, etc). On a side note, did anyone see the visage on one Hillary Clinton when the cameras first caught her? She had that b*tchy look on her face as she slowed clapped while rolling her eyes. I love it when America gets to see her true colors! I honestly think someone must have told her how poorly she came across on camera, because the next time the cameras looked her way, she was caught for a split-second with the ugly, arrogant, bitter look on her face, then she quickly erased that and feigned happiness. It was hilarious. Her emotions are so incredibly transparent. It's almost too easy. My pscyhological warfare would bring her to her knees (unpleasant image).
