BartBlog

What’s Wrong with the Neocon Mind

Once I had an email exchange with an avid neocon Bush supporter; cornered by pesky facts, instead of responding to my arguments directly, he sent me to a site called “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Without a hint of irony, it named as cowboys Ronald Reagan and John Wayne as well as Tex Ritter, Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon, Hoss & Li’l Joe Cartwright of “Bonanza,” Paladin, and TV’s Maverick. All actors or fictitious characters. If you ever wonder what went wrong with the neocon mind, this is a good place to start — they can’t distinguish reality from fantasy.

Here, see for yourself, but make sure you’ve swallowed your beverage first: “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”

Elsewhere on the same page, you’ll find this gem; count how many Bush has violated in his six years as our First Installed President:

The Ten Cowboy Commandments by Gene Autry

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This is intended to be a series of articles.

There are so many issues to address with our current administration, it would be impossible to fit them in one post or many posts. So I decided to title a series of articles of importance to us all in an election year. There is a myriad of issues to be examined and crimes committed against our Constitution and its citizens by this administration, they just run into each other and they are impossible to separate.

This actually may be the first administration that committed so many crimes intentionally so that it would be impossible for average citizens, but also people that actually track these things to keep up with them. It seems there is a crime a day or sometimes three a day. How can anybody possibly keep up? It’s not possible. I have thought of several issues I would like to address in this series but I am sure the list will grow exponentially as we go along. So I will not list a series of issues. I hope you will follow the series and comment. Comments, positive and negative are appreciated; you can send a comment to: nobegood@gmail.com

So to start the series I would like to briefly comment on the Attorney General nomination to be decided tomorrow. (more…)

“I don’t have to prove myself to anybody. I’ve done pretty well being me. And me is all they’re going to get.”
– Fred Thompson, as quoted by Slate.com.

Sunday on Meet the Press, Fred Thompson, wearing every one of his 65 years on his sagging face, amiably talked himself out of the Republican nomination for president in 2008. On social issues, he nearly sounded sane, coming out against any amendments to the Constitution or federal statutes making abortion and gay marriage illegal, preferring to leave those decisions to the states. And he also considered the fervid pandering of the GOP leadership attempting to intercede in the Terri Schiavo tragedy excessive, believing that such life-and-death decisions should be left to the family and the doctors in charge. At one point, remarkable for a Republican of the Bush era, he even granted his fellow citizens the right to disagree with him without reprisal. If you’re keeping score, Fred essentially told the Christopublican ‘values voters’ to sit on it and twist. Why, he’s almost as liberal as Giuliani on the social issues that have propelled the born-again base to the polls like lemmings since Ronald Reagan did his star turn in the Oval Office.

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Mark Perkel wrote:

I watched the Democratic debate Tuesday and I’m not impressed with candidates who use personal and phony attacks. I think Edwards in particular and Obama to a lesser extent are behaving more like Republicans than Democrats.

If a candidate can’t win on the merits of their position and their record then they shouldn’t win. When candidates go negative and do it in a dishonest way all you get is a dishonest politician. I used to like Edwards and Obama. Now, not so much.

Could you be a little less specific, please? I watched the debate as well (that makes two of us) and I didn’t notice any “personal attacks”. It seemed to me Edwards and Obama were simply trying to highlight the differences in platforms and one accomplishes that by saying, “my opponent’s position is this and my position is that”. Nobody forced Hillary to say she supported a program to issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants before she said she didn’t say that. Was it wrong of the other candidates to point out both of her answers? Is that a personal attack?

As for me, I oppose the candidate that will be most beholden to mega-corporations and special interests…but it’s nothing personal…

On April 30^th 1970, president Nixon announced a massive offensive into Cambodia. This sparked massive demonstrations across the country, particularly in college campuses. For some reason the mayor of Kent Ohio, thought Kent State was beyond control and asked the Governor Jim Rhodes (Republican of course), to bring in the National Guard. On May 3^rd, the National Guard bayoneted 2 men. This was not enough to convince the governor that maybe this was not such a good idea. On May fourth in a fusillade of 67 shots that lasted 13 seconds, the National Guard killed 4 unarmed students and wounded another 9. This together with the Mai-Lai massacre (1969) galvanized the American public against the war and ultimately ended the war. Of course, not before Nixon was re-elected with his secret plan to end the war. Rhodes was term limited out, but he did become Governor again in 1975 and was then re-elected to serve a total of 8 more years. A grand tribute to our famous short term memory.

Yes Nixon was not directly in charge of the National Guard, but an human being would have resigned. Richard was not human, nor sub-human, more like a rodent. So what does this have to do with today? Good question.

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[Scene: A grimy windowless backroom lit only by a bank of harsh fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Two men, INTERROGATOR A and INTERROGATOR B stand on either side of a wooden table, Strapped onto the table is the DETAINEE, clad only in boxer shorts. As the scene opens, INTERROGATOR A is applying pressure to a thumbscrew attached to the DETAINEE'S right hand.]

DETAINEE: “YOWWWWWWWW!”

INTERROGATOR A: “All right, Muhammad, we know you planted a nuke in the city; we know all about it except where you put it and when it’s set to go off. Confess!” [He lessens pressure on the thumbscrew.]

DETAINEE: “I keep telling you guys my name’s not Muhammad — it’s Jim Smith of…” [INTERROGATOR A increases pressure on the thumbscrew.] “YOWWWWWWWWW!”

INTERROGATOR A: “Stop with your lies! We have intercepted…”

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