I Like Ike
The tide has turned. The free men of the world are marching together
to victory.
We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the
insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith, that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of Peace, with Justice.
Destiny has laid upon our country the responsibilty of the Free World's leadership.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
posted by John | 11:24 AM
17 Comments:
Me Too:
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, September 11, 1956
Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech at Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953
You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that's assault, not leadership.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
Something Cheney/Bush could never comprehend, being the dodgers of war they were.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Only Americans can hurt America.!!!!!
Dwight D. Eisenhower
What's that Lee Harvey, "Me-too-Like-Ike?"
lol
Lee Harvey is one of those chameleon liberals who like to triangulate and co-opt--if not plagiarize--conservative language, concepts, imagery, and the occasional token Republican icon (like Ike) in the same way that the pantless and perverse President Clinton--Lee Harvey's hero-- liked to promote school uniforms and V-Chips to pretend that he was something he wasn't, i.e. a social conservative (but he was good at doing that, having had plenty of practice pretending that he was John F. Kennedy since adolescence).
Likewise, liberal Senator John F. Kerry (another JFK wannabe) morphed from 1960's war protestor to a 21st Century gung-ho G.I. Joe during a mid-war presidential campaign that required its leaders to demonstrate kick-ass conservative grit (Republicus surveys that shameless political strategy in the July 6 post "A Salute and Censure").
They have to hide who they are because America's conservative heritage and mettle was reawakened with the liberal depravities of Clintonism and splashed with cold water on 9/11, and the word "liberal" was avoided like the plague--by the liberals themselves--with the word itself having been stigmatized to the taboo status of "The 'L' Word."
The regular reader of Republicus will have noticed that twice now he pointedly asked Lee Harvey if he was a liberal (which would simply provide premises out of which he is arguing from, e.g. higher taxes, draconian environmental regulations, theophobic secularism, anti-corporation, a knee-jerk tendency to blame America first, *etc.*).
He took the Fifth and said nothing.
Republicus posted quotes from the great WWII Supreme Allied Commander and 34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower (conservative Republican) to inspire and encourage his people--as Ike did-- to hold firm for the success of democracy around the world (which will make the world a better and safer place), to remember our calling as its champion, and to realize why Republicus saw fit to title his post with the campaign slogan: "I Like Ike."
Meanwhile, Lee Harvey, of course, at this point, is carefully following what Republicus is saying and is determined to obscure the message, and he rushes in to befog and stench up the air-freshening of Republicus in his depraved desire to destroy his likes and dominate his good people (he obviously assumes you're stupid sheep).
Watching Republicus through the crosshair of his scope--the former orating and waving to his people-- he shoots off his own set of quotes to bespatter the message.
Barging in, he tries to put everyone at ease with a mockingly reassuring "Me-too-Like-Ike!" as he busily posts other quotes by the American icon in the insidious effort to contradict Republicus and knock him off his game, and to prove that he--i.e. Lee Harvey-- is not the hateful, extremely partisan, anti-military, bleeding-heart liberal subversive that he most certainly is, oh no, but a moderate, mainstream, "Me-Too-Like-Ike!" American!
Republicus does not play games.
It's D-Day, people:
As discussed in the June 19 post "The America We Remember," the Bush-Hater is temporally-egocentric (though that compound word was never actually used in the piece) and a historical ignoramus, so Lee Harvey--if he has ANY consistency of principle-- can't possibly "Me-Too-Like-Ike" if he knew anything about him beyond the selected quotes that he disembodies from their material context and reads his own views into, while disregarding the substance of the others posted by Republicus.
What does Lee Harvey think of that dark day in American history--May 4, 1970--when a group of 77 National Guard troops advanced on hundreds of antiwar protesters at Kent State University, of "Four-Dead-In-O-Hi-O" infamy?
The day before, on June 3, the Kent State Campus was occupied by nearly 1,000 National Guardsmen, to keep the protesting students under control.
Ohio Governor Rhodes held a press conference and said that the antiwar protestors were "Un-American," and that: "They're worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."
lol Excuse Republicus. What happened the next day is not funny at all, as 29 of the 77 guardsmen fired 67 shots at the unarmed students, killing four of them.
Yes, Lee Harvey: "FREAKIN' MURDERIN' FASCISTS!!!!"
Not to justify or even apologize for the Guardsmen who opened fire on unarmed students, but the government has had a history of playing hardball with unruly, anti-establishment protestors, as it is their job to fend off chaos and maintain order:
In February 1932, Ike was appointed to the staff of General Douglas MacArthur.
Despite--or more likely behind-- the fact that Ike would later say, "I deplore the need or the use of troops anywhere to get American citizens to obey the orders of constituted courts," Ike was involved--along with a young Patton-- in dealing with the Bonus Army in Washington.
How did they decide to deal with it?
Well, MacArthur was later criticized for using tanks, four troops of cavalry with drawn sabers, and infantry with fixed bayonets, on the protesters.
Republicus doesn't know what Ike's counsel was. Perhaps he pushed for a kinder, gentler approach and it was Macarthur himself who wanted to lay down the law in no uncertain terms (it became well-known that Ike would later dislike Macarthur). Or perhaps the young staffer did think that it was a swell idea to show the Bonus Army who was boss.
Whatever the case, Ike was part of that military establishment.
"Me-Too-Like-Ike," Lee Harvey?
Lee Harvey enjoys playing the arm-chair general and criticizing every knot and tangle of a complex war as if a war well-run is free of complexities.
Oh, how Lee Harvey must have gloated in schadenfreude when rifts in the coalition appeared, and disapproval for the strategy was voiced from allied and retired generals while other coalition partners bailed, causing "Bush's War" to hiccup and trip like the "debacle" it is!
And oh how Lee Harvey must have laughed with the spectacle of the Commander in Chief of the War on Terror holding hands with the Wahabist-producing Saudis and making deals with General Pervez Musharraf of Bin Laden-friendly Pakistan!
Yes, what a joke!
And oh how Lee Harvey must've seethed with rage and marched out into his backyard to practice with his B-B gun against a targeted can of Bush's Baked Beans after learning that the Commander in Chief had angered *La France!*
Well, for his part, General Ike appointed one Jean-Francois Darlan as the political head of the French North Africa, sparking a controversy with the Allies and INFURIATING the one and only French General Charles De Gaulle and the French Resistance who claimed that Darlan was a fascist and a Nazi collaborator (a collaborater with the enemies we were fighting).
Nevertheless, both FDR and Churchill endorsed Ike's idea, agreeing that Darlan's appointment would assist in North African military operations.
"Me-Too-Like-Ike," Lee Harvey?
And oh how Lee Harvey's tender heart must bleed for the wasted, 2,100 lives, treated as mere numbers and cannon fodder by the frag-worthy commanders of Bush's catastrophic war!
"THEY'RE SUICIDE MISSIONS! THOSE FUCKING (sic) MURDERERS!" he screams.
For his part, Ike--now Supreme Allied Commander-- rounded up a million combat troops and an additional two million for support services as he prepared to take back Europe by sword and fire.
On June 6, 1944, the largest armada ever assembled in history, a fleet of ships almost tripling Homeric proportions--2,727 ships-- sailed to the coast of Normandy and on Day One landed 156,000 men on a beachhead thirty miles long.
It was the largest and most powerful armada that has ever sailed.
Ike knew that he had to throw massive numbers of men down the throat of the ravenous mouth of 50 German Army divisions led by General Erwin Rommel(the legendary Desert Fox of the North African campaigns), in the hopes of overwhelming to the point of choking the chomping, widow-making maw with a glut of American G.I.'s
Those first waves of troops were cannon fodder.
At Omaha Beach, steep cliffs favoured the Germans and the US Army suffered 2,500 casualties.
Of the 23,000 paratroopers, 15,500 were American, and 6,000 of them were killed or seriously wounded.
Over the next few days, 156,215 total troops were landed from sea and air in Normandy, at a cost of some 10,300 casualties.
That was just the opening battle.
And believe it or not, that landing was considered a success...
...though Ike was later criticised by military legends Omar Bradley and George Patton for not fighting a more positive campaign, arguing that if he had forced General Bernard Montgomery--another legend-- to have fought more aggressively in Caen, the German Army would have been trapped in Normandy.
Instead they were able to retreat back to Nazi Germany and the war was able to continue into 1945 (at the cost of many, many more lives).
"But that was WWII," Lee Harvey discriminates, "We were taking on anglo-fascism (whatever) across an entire continent."
Yes. And Generals Franks, Vine, and Abizaid were and are themselves engaged in a global war and taking on Islamofascism across a region and doing it with a force of 130,000 troops (in Iraq) and with 2,000 lives lost over the last few years.
And let's not talk about the number of European civilians who lost their lives and livilihood when Ike unleashed hell on their homeland.
And Republicus should point out at this juncture that Western European Nazi Germany was not the one that bombed Pearl Harbor.
Far East Japan did.
"Me-Too-Like-Ike" Lee-Harvey-Saddam-Had-Nothing-To-Do-With-9/11?
After the war Eisenhower served briefly as a US member of the Allied Commission governing Germany.
That's right. Germany--along with Japan-- was occupied while we helped them reconstruct and form a democratic government.
They've come out of it splendidly.
Japan is now even part of the coalition helping to rebuild and democratize Iraq.
As for Germany, well, they're not to keen on Operation Iraqi Freedom, but U.S. Army bases are still there from the end of WWII, and the Germans are glad of it.
All thanks to Ike.
Who Republicus likes.
Moving right along, on January 20, 1953, Ike became the 34th President of the United States.
As President, Eisenhower was against enlarging the role of government in economic matters.
"Me-Too-Like-Ike," Lee-Harvey-taxes-are-too-low?
President Eisenhower also refused to speak out against Joe McCarthy and members of the House of Un-American Activities Committee.
Ouch. "Me-Too-Like-Ike," Lee-Harvey-You-Are-Now-And-Always-Have-Been-A-Pinko-Liberal?
President Eisenhower finally did get involved, however, in 1954, when the HUAC began to attack his army commanders.
"Me-Too-Like-Ike," Lee-Harvey-I-Hate-Favoritism-And-Cronyism?
Hello, what's this:
In January 1957, President Eisenhower made a speech in Congress where he recommended the use of American forces to protect Middle East states against overt aggression from nations "controlled by international communism."
Ooo. NO comment. (lol)
Republicus has made his point on the flippant nature of Lee Harvey's attempt to throw a wig on a mock-up of Ike and stroll in here holding hands with it and saying "Me-Too-Like-Ike!"
Lee Harvey does not demonstrate, today, the kind of character that would like the personage of Ike if they were contemporaries.
Lee Harvey would characteristically belong to the antiwar faction that was active then and listen in rapt attention to the U.S. Ambassador to England, Nazi-sympathizer, and ruthless, social climbing Democrat Joseph Kennedy Sr.'s isolationist speeches while Nazi Germany was engaging in a *blitzkrieging* spree of international bankrobberies in its lust for gold and destabilizing the entire continent while accusing the European Jews of doing just that (projection).
Lee Harvey would belong to the crowd that was attacking FDR and calling for Impeachment on the accusation that he allowed--if not orchestrated-- the attack on Pearl Harbor to happen for the purpose of jumping into the European fray and criminally beginning a world war, all for the sake of juicing an economy recovering from depression.
What, you didn't know there were antiwar activists in WWII, "the moral war"? Of course there was. You just never hear much about them because they're condemned to historical obscurity (where they belong).
Do you really believe that Lee Harvey here would be cheering Ike on as the latter plowed his way across Europe in a war with its own fair share of dissenters and antiwar activists that Lee Harvey would characteristically gravitate to, a war which would cost--when all was said and done-- 500,000 American lives, or 0.4% of the population?
A war that killed 52,199,262 people world-wide?
Does anyone think Lee Harvey could stomach or tolerate that, considering his demonstrated belief that fighting Islamofascism and liberating and reforming the Middle East at the cost of the lives of just over 2,000 troops is worthy of a Munschian scream?
Perhaps he could--but only because FDR was a liberal Democrat.
Lee Harvey and his crowd are not about "antiwar."
They just hate Bush, Republicans, and Conservative America.
All the quotes that were contributed by Lee Harvey out of the goodness of his heart and in shared celebration of Ike (yeah, sure) will presently be addressed by Republicus...
...and put in their proper context.
But first, you should notice that Lee Harvey avoided addressing the quotations provided by Republicus, because therein Ike is indisputably promoting the principles of holding firm for the success of democracy around the world, and reminding us of our calling as its champion, which is precisely the spirit of the Bush Administration's own principles vis-a-vis Operation Iraqi Freedom.
No, what Lee Harvey did was drag in and present a liberal mock-up of Eisenhower as if saying: "Forget those words. Listen to THESE words," and so separating one Ike from the other, and claiming his version as the real McCoy.
And the reader of Republicus was looking at first one Ike, then the other, and then back to the first, and back and forth and then squeezing their eyes shut and shaking their heads about in an effort to shake off a spell of double-vision.
Will the real Ike please stand up?
Sit down, Lee Harvey, and sit that mannequin with you.
As Republicus pointed out, the quotes provided by him indisputably promote the principles of holding firm for the success of democracy around the world, and reminding us of our calling as its champion.
Indisputably. Lee Harvey did not even attempt to dispute their meaning, but instead attempted to eclipse them or confuse them with other quotations he thinks are equally indisputable and take a sharp left turn away from the true spirit of the old conservative war-horse in the process.
But there's only one Ike.
Therefore, what Lee Harvey is doing is presenting his set of quotes disembodied from their material context--and selected as the ones which he could, thus disembodied, most easily read his views into and present as such-- to create the inverted doppelganger.
Not a problem. Republicus will now dispute and destroy Lee Harvey's implied interprtetations and reconcile the One Man--Ike-- with all of his words, and leave Lee Harvey with a mute dummy:
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Right. Governments like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Baathists in Iraq.
By his generic use of the plural "governments," and as inspired by his up-close-&-personal look at the fascist, communist, and imperialist governments in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and the wars THEY provoked, Republicus is sure that Ike was not specifically referring to his own United States government and warning them that "The People" will rise up and violently overthrow them if they don't stop being violent, as Lee Harvey is slyly suggesting he is, oblivious to both the nonsense of the equation and the inflections and figures of speech of 1950's America and the benevolent, grandfatherly character of Ike that spoke those words in the tone of a Midwestern, loving parent in the era of Ozzie and Harriet, threatening big trouble if the kids keep fighting.
But Lee Harvey projects himself into the words, reads a dark, prophetic threat, and perceives a sinister dimension, justifying his fantasy of violent revolution against the despised President George W. Bush, as assented to by Ike!
"OH, YES, YES, DEFINITELY! ME-TOO-LIKE-IKE!"
Next quote:
"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Right. 9/11 was an emergency.
And neither Islamofascist regimes like the Taliban's nor Saddam's Baathist one operated with "justice, fairness, consideration or co-operation," and could never "lead men to the dawn of eternal peace"-- without the emergency intervension of the United States.
And what's happening now in Iraq? The new leaders are--"finally"-- truly trying to be mindful of justice, fairness, and consideration for each other and the disparate elements within Iraq as a co-operative constitution is being forged, inviting ancient enemies to sit at the same table and work out their differences.
Ike wouldn't be approving of that endeavor, having spent the years following WWII doing precisely that for nations that lost millions of their people to one another?
Of course he would.
Next:
"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, September 11, 1956
That's a great quote, but...OO! Lee Harvey made sure to include the date on THAT one, because, look, Ike said that on September 11...
...9/11!
WOW! How prophetic! How appropriate! How...
...irrelevant. A coincidence worthy of an eye-blink, and no more.
Lee Harvey just made sure to include it for theatrics, for dramatic, special effect, perhaps reading into it a metaphor for pencil pushing Pentagon bureaucrats or "Neocon," draft-dodging "chicken-hawks" being "a thousand miles from the cornfield" (i.e. the battlefield).
Let's assume that's a legitimate interpretation.
How is that relevant or "prophetic" or even neat-O when coupled with a date that was the Second Day of Infamy in modern American history?
What, is THAT what 9/11 is all about, what it ultimately symbolizes?
In Lee Harvey's mind, probably, and you should leave it there.
Now if he said THIS on a September 11: "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both," THAT would resonate in the imagination, and be better coupled with what 9/11 came to mean and require of the American people.
Anyway, forget the assumption. Lee Harvey's suggestive metaphor is an illegitame interpretation and unwarranted.
Ike was, in fact, talking about the relationship between farmers, their cornfields, and the bureaucrats in Washington making farm policy.
He said that in 1956, in the farm country of Peoria, Illinois.
Next:
"Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech at Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953
Right. Like Saddam and his WMD.
Like the Democrats' own words about Saddam's WMD.
Next:
"You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that's assault, not leadership."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
Is Lee Harvey kidding? No, he's not, he's just bereft of any self-awareness.
That's a two-pointer: An inverted projection.
He's implying two things there:
1) President Bush and his "Neocon" administration are beating the rest of the country over the head to defend the indefensible and to pass their agenda.
2) It's a mocking dig at Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the reasonable idea that you can't force democracy upon a people who don't want it.
But those are inversions:
1) President Bush, though firm in his principles as president of the United States and forceful in his leadership as the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces in a time of world war, is not one to "assault" or hit any of his fellow citizens over the head to make them get in line with his agenda.
Quite the opposite. Though not demonstrating any of the docility demanded by the Democrats and their base of Bush-haters, he's nevertheless demonstrated an astonishing capacity for insouciance and political laissez faire in the face of a ruthless and unrelenting assault on both his personal character and public agenda, to an extent that his supporters had begun to clamor at him to start fighting back.
That's one of the reasons why the recent counter-attacks regarding who said what and when about the necessity to remove Saddam Hussein--counter-attacks reasonably argued and conducted with calm, it should be added--made news, because, hitherto, for quite some time, "hitting people over the head" was the last thing the administration was doing, and the supporters of President Bush let out a collective: "It's about time!" when the president started hitting BACK (in self-defense).
2) The Iraqi people--under dire threats of death for participating in democracy-- have demonstrated a purple-fingered enthusiasm, enjoyment, and determination to make it work, and came out in droves to work, putting the democratic participation of most democratic countries to shame.
Iraqi Army volunteers likewise risk their lives--and lose them--to protect it (i.e. democracy).
Sane Shia, Kurdish, and yes, even sane Sunni's are tired of having been, for DECADES, "hit over the head" by Saddam's Baathist dictatorship--NOT George W. Bush's leadership and his gift of democracy--and are co-operating to see it--democracy-- work.
That is the kind of post-war work Ike himself was leading abroad.
The only ones there who are being "hit over the head with it" are the Jihadists, the Saddam loyalists, the insane elements within the Shia and Sunni communities, and other anti-Western dead-enders who "antiwar" protestors like Lee Harvey are waging war here on behalf of.
Hit them over the head and hit them hard.
That was the inversion. Here is the projection:
As Republicus has discussed eleswhere-- and as Republicus would have assumed is quite self-evident--it is LEE HARVEY, and his crowd, who are trying to lead by "hitting people over the head" and assaulting sensibilities, as HE HIMSELF shamelessly advises:
"Don't let the Republicans misdirect you into the details or distract you in any way. Just keep hammering the same line over and over and over because the public already knows it's true (note by Republicus: Then why keep "hammering over and over"?): The President is again LYING his failed ass off to the American people."
Lee Harvey (Jeff)
Also, Ike was talking about his grandfatherly, presidential style, "changing the tone" in Washington for the sake of productive intercourse, as politics is politics with the characteristic infighting, backbiting, and bullying that hasn't changed since the dawn of civilization (in Iraq, as it were! Full circle).
But that was easy for him to say.
He let his vice-president--one Richard M. Nixon-- do the bulldogging in an era that--and this may surprise Lee "The America I Remember" Harvey-- had a dueling, two-party system-- just like today-- with a determined presidential contender (i.e. Adlai Stevenson) who relied on any actual or manufactured (and widely propagandized) failures of the incumbent (i.e. Ike) so he could succeed--just like today-- and vociferously and cacophonically clashed with the opposing and incompatible political philosophies of a culture war butting heads.
Just like today.
Finally, during wartime, Ike butt MANY heads, both the enemy's (quite literally) and even his allies':
Recall that during WWII, Ike had infuriated the French ally De Gaulle because he appointed the French Darlan as the political head of the French North Africa, which was controversial because De Gaulle and the French Resistance claimed that Darlan was a fascist and a Nazi collaborator.
Anyway, *voila,* behold Lee Harvey's inverted projection.
Next:
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)
Yes. War is hell, as the old warhorse could well attest with incomparable authority.
But he is no soul-mate of "antiwar" Lee Harvey-- though that's precisely what the latter has tried to imply by rapaciously barging in here and attempting to abduct Ike as some kind of trophy for his own depraved politics.
Despite Ike's testimony on how he feels about war and its nature, he understood realpolitik and did not allow his noble, pacifistic ideals to compromise the defense or pursuit of his nation's interests against a competing system--
--because he knew America was the world's best hope against chronic brutality, futility, and stupidity.
It was the Cold War, and Ike's administration--like Truman's before his-- was very concerned about the success of communism in South East Asia.
Between 1950 and 1953 we had sacrificed 142,000 soldiers protecting South Korea from communist infiltration.
We succeeded in that respect, but, obviously, with the rogue status of communist North Korea today, one wonders if "Give 'Em Hell" Harry Truman should have allowed General "I Shall Return" MacArthur to invade North Korea for good measure.
Instead-- astonished that the pugnacious MacArthur seemed to be itching for a fight with Red China due west next door-- Truman prudently fired him (perhaps wisely, who can say for sure).
The Korean War (known for a time as "The Forgotten War" because it fell behind in publicity and was eclipsed when the first televised war-- i.e. the Vietnam War-- hit the airwaves and bombarded the living room) seems to have a popular ambiguity about whether it was a war won...
...or tied, as Ike drew a thin green line across the 38th Parallel--a.k.a. the DMZ--and warned the North that they better not even THINK of daring stepping over it, and called it a day.
Today, half a century later, that Thin Green Line that divides the Koreas is the most heavily fortified border in the world, bristling with watchtowers, razor wire, landmines, tank-traps and heavy weaponry.
On either side of its 151-mile length, close to two million troops face each other off ready to go to war at a moment's notice.
Officially, the Korean War has not yet ended, as no formal peace deal has ever been signed and the war could start again at any moment.
They have been on a hair trigger alert status since the last shot was fired, over fifty years ago.
Former President Bill Clinton visited the DMZ and called it: "The scariest place on Earth."
So, a win or a draw?
Republicus considers it a win, as the goal of preserving South Korea's freedom was met.
And now, South Korea is performing splendifly as a free nation.
If Lee Harvey was a contemporary of those events, he would most certainly have been championing "The People's" (i.e. the North Korean communist insurgents) right to armed, revolutionary, "self-determination":
"To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side."
Christopher Hitchens
Anyway, Ike was worried that 142,000 American soldiers who lost their lives in the Korean War WOULD HAVE BEEN WASTED (sound familiar?) if the threat of that day--communism--was appeased and allowed its expansive, Blob-like self to flow into an area of less resistance: South Vietnam.
Ike was aware that he would--understandably and quite naturally-- have difficulty in persuading the American public to support another war so quickly after Korea, which means that he, personally, thought it warranted to pose a more aggressive posture in Vietnam but was restrained by political factors.
Nevertheless, he wasn't about to let it be written off, so, in order to prevent South Vietnam from becoming a communist state...
...Ike sent in a small group of Military Advisers.
"ME-TOO-LIKE-IKE!"
Ike also urged the provision of economic aid to those countries with anti-communist governments.
This new foreign policy became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine.
That was reality. And no one in their right mind can like it:
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Ike
That's the proper context, but Lee Harvey, in a compulsive fit, had to uncontrollably jump in on the heels of that noble sentiment and ignobly interject with this childish snipe:
"Something Cheney/Bush could never comprehend, being the dodgers of war they were."
In other words: "Nyeh-nyeh nyeh-nyeh nyeh, nyeh!"
How far gone is Lee Harvey? How can he possibly think he could get away with that little snipe without being horsewhipped, tarred, and feathered by Republicus and carried out of here on a rail for being the purely partisan and shameless hypocrite that he continuously proves himself to be, capable of nothing more than barfing out his bile for Bush?
How far gone is he?
Has he lost his mind?
Is he a historic imbecile?
Or does he think "The People"--you--are stupid?
Republicus knows Lee Harvey is a Clinton-Loving Bush-Hater-- the worst kind, because ALL of the calumnies they hurl at President Bush were embodied by President Clinton, as was widely-publicized and confirmed by the buffoon himself, which proves projection combined with petty vindictiveness, utterly bereft of principle save their own debased self-interests.
Leaving aside the shamelessly ignored historical fact that President Clinton justified his own aggressive bombing campaign against Iraq in Operation Desert Fox on the stated mission goal of degrading Saddam's "WMD capabilities and programs," the Clinton Administration provided a daily barrage of:
1) Campaign scandals (Remember Coffeegate? Remember the overnight legalization of hordes of illegal aliens with feloniouis records just in time for the 1996 Election Day? Remember the White House being leased out to donors and resembling Motel 6?)
2) National Security leaks (Remember Los Alamos-gate, perhaps in the top five list of worst security breaches in American history?)
3) Serial indictments for old inner circle pals and high level administration officials alike (Where to begin? the list is long)
4) Cronyism ("How-Do-I-Look-On-TV?" Brownie as head of FEMA was bad, sure, but how about Jocelyn "Let the Children Masturbate" Elders as the nation's Surgeon General?)
5) Revelations of vindictive, character-destroying actions against both political opponents and troublesome private citizens, using an array of weaponry ranging from IRS audits to confiscated private FBI files to the killing of household pets as a warning (another long list of victims)
6) A well-established pattern of compulsive lying--even when President Clinton shouldn't have felt compelled to, when the truth would have been fine-- on all things great and small)
7) Annoying aesthetic qualities like President Clinton's smug smirking
And yes, his well-documented--and succesful-- effort of dodging the draft:
[Here are key parts of the text of the letter that Bill Clinton wrote to Col. Eugene Holmes, director of the Reserve Officers' Training Corp (ROTC) program at the University of Arkansas, on Dec. 3, 1969] (parenthetical by Republicus):
"First, I want to thank you...for saving me from the draft...Let me try to explain...I decided to accept the draft in spite of my (antiwar) beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the system... I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you to understand more clearly how so many fine young people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military...
Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
He dodged the draft. And was concerned about his political viability.
That from a man who, surrounded by the fanfare following his announcing of his desire for the presidency and his achieving of it, most humbly lied: "I never thought about being president.").
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams--supporting armed revolution--never served.
John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and Millard Fillmore never served.
Abraham Lincoln presided over the bloodiest war in our nation's history.
He served in the genocidal Black Hawk War.
He never saw any action.
His service was recollected in very unflattering terms.
Grover Cleveland paid a "substitute" $150.00 to fight for him in the Civil War (which was legal to do).
President Howard Taft never served.
Woodrow Wilson was the American Commander in Chief during WWI.
He never served.
Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover never served.
FDR was the American Commander in Chief of WWII.
He never served.
George W. Bush served as an F-102 pilot in the Texas National Guard. He was promoted once during his service, from second lieutenant to first lieutenant.
Richard Cheney served at high levels of the federal government through a series of presidents and through War and Peace, overseeing Operation Desert Storm as the Secretery of Defense and working behind the scenes--for decades in different administrations-- in the brinksmanship of the Cold War and contributing to Victory.
Bill Clinton dodged the draft. Al Gore went to Vietnam, pushed a pencil, and "smoked some pot," as he put it.
Combat veteran John Kerry earned the wrath of his military peers--his "Band of Brothers"-- when he bolted from the scene with three Purple Hearts for his three Band-Aids, threw "his medals" no "his ribbons, his ribbons" at the U.S. Capital Building--along with someone else's medals-- and testified to the U.S. Senate that the villains in Vietnam were the band of brothers he left behind.
Consider all of that when you hear Lee Harvey sneer:
"Something Cheney/Bush could never comprehend, being the dodgers of war they were."
Next:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
Dwight D. Eienhower
Yes.
But whose fault is that? That guns are made, and warships are launched, and rockets are fired?
Who's to blame first and foremost?
Our enemies?
Hell no! Blame America First!
"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Trust Republicus. He is not confusing honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Saying "I hope Bush gets assassinated!" is not honest dissent.
Who said that, Lee Harvey?
If Ike heard that, he'd have you in shackles.
Meanwhile, Lee Harvey screamed bloody murder when American televangelist Pat Robertson opined that anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be "taken out."
Next:
"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yes, Lee Harvey. Read that again. And again. Memorize it. Recite it aloud every night before you go to bed and first thing when you wake up.
"If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Republicus is quite certain that Ike did not imagine a gun-toting, blue-helmeted UN "aid workers" raping adolescent girls in the Third World countries being aided, and that member nations would be protecting terrorist thugs like Yasser Arafat, Moammar Qaddafi, and Saddam Hussein.
And would not have approved of huddling cabals intent on the destruction of Israel.
Or would he?
Bingo.
Thereby is the cologne which arouses the affections of a liberal, anti-war, theophobic Bush-Hater like Lee Harvey here to proclaim "Me-Too-Like-Ike" for a world-plowing war-horse and Conservative Republican president with a heart-full of religious love like Ike:
In the satiric June 22 post, "The Bush-Haters Bush," Republicus lampoons the apparent factors behind the contempt for Bush--particularly his Foreign Policy and vis-a-vis Operation Iraqi Freedom, and lists one factor thusly, that they take strong exception to:
"B. The Neoconservative Foreign Policy Advisors Wolfie and Perle, and all their cohorts in the media (The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, Foxnews...) and Washington thinktanks, who themselves have an imperialist agenda for America and are agents or strong sympaticos for Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and the hawkish Likkud party, who themselves have a Zionist agenda for the Middle East."
Yes. And of course, there's that January 26, 1998 missive from the Project for a New American Century (parentheticals Republicus):
"To the Honorable William J. Clinton President of the United States, Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies (read: Israel) around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like (read: especially) Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard (Yes--the NUMBER ONE energy resource of the civilized world). As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton (!) Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol (!) Richard Perle (!) Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld (!) William Schneider, Jr. (?) Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz (!) R. James Woolsey (!) Robert B. Zoellick"
Yes. The usual suspects.
Are you beginning to understand?
Can you see why John Bolton's appointment to the UN outraged the antiwar Bush-Haters?
Why they hate Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz?
They think they're agents working on behalf of a foreign country--Israel-- at the expense of American self-interests, and that, in a large way, that's what Operation Iraqi Freedom is about: Not America's security, but Israel's, as antiwar matriarch Mrs. Sheehan recently voiced.
That would be an understandable--and agreeable--gripe, put that way.
But Israel's security is on our self-interest. She's Western. She's the only working democracy in the Middle East.
She's civilized.
Last but not least, she's our ally, and she's beleagured by dark forces intent on her destruction--the same forces which saw fit to commit both 9/11 and carnage in Western Europe and other places around the civilized world.
And the PNAC signers of the letter-- Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman,
Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey,and Robert B. Zoellick-- are accomplished American citizens.
Anyway, with that in mind, Lee Harvey is confident that Ike would never, ever engage in some (with apologies to blogger Phelonius, who inspired this one, lol) Shocking-Awesome-International-Global-Struggling-War-On-Violent-Jihadistc-Extremists and break a lot of things and kill a lot of people if it was not truly a rightous response to 9/11, but more an excuse to activate some pre-existing-- but rejected--imperial agenda, on the notion that Ike would not only not bend this country over for the sake of another--i.e. Israel-- but would even sympathize with the Jihadists.
A book titled *Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953-1960,* by Isaac Alteras (reprinted in 1993), is reviewed here by Daniel Pipes:
"With the passage of time, the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower takes on added interest for understanding U.S. policy in the Middle East. Here was the one case of an American president who seemed to accept the Arabist view that good relations with Israel must harm those with the Arabs. When push came to shove, Eisenhower acted on this belief, compelling the Israelis to evacuate the Sinai Peninsula following the Suez War. Decades later, Arab leaders like Yasir Arafat still dream that another Amercian president might "do what Eisenhower did" and force Israelis from the West Bank and the Golan Heights."
Yes. "Me-Too-Like-Ike" indeed.
However (*italics* by Republicus):
"Alteras shows in this thoroughly researched and elegantly presented study that the reality of U.S.-Israel relations in the 1950s differed substantially from their image. True, Eisenhower did minimize relations with Israel, *but he did not reduce the U.S. commitment to the existence and survival of Israel.*
Even more striking, Alteras argues that "if the Eisenhower administration was less free with pro-Israeli declarations [than the Truman administration], *it was more forthccoming with pro-Israeli deeds* (shades of George Bush!)<--(sic)."
Next:
"In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?"
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The people crying "FIRE!" the loudest on 9/11 was the FDNY and rescue workers around the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside.
The "serious misconduct" now manufacturing a "general war scare" is busy warning of mass destruction to the American economy, education, fields of science, military, minorities, and the environment of the Planet Earth itself by the weapon George W. Bush in the effort to raise cash and muster armies so as force regime change here for "the sake of democracy."
Yes, yes, Republicus knows. It's backwards.
It's sheer lunacy.
Next:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ah, there it is. Republicus was expecting that one to appear sooner or later.
Of course. The Vast, Right-Wing, and Conspiratorial Military Industrial Complex that dispatched a mafioso hitman, a Cuban mercenary, a Soviet spy, and their own boys from the Pentagon's basement to meet and huddle on the grassy knoll, put their collective fingers on a trigger, pull it, high-five, scatter, and make a patsy out of Lee Harvey Oswald (right Jeff?).
Oh yes, "Me-Too-LOVE-Ike!"
Yes, that was Ike's last speech as president, given on January 17th, 1961, and may very well be the most controversial speech of his career.
The other factor the Bush-haters take strong exception to, as also lampooned in the satiric June 22 post, "The Bush-Haters Bush"--along with (B) the Neoconservative visionaries on the Foreign Policy team-- is:
"(A) The corporate, global interests of Halliburton and Kellog, Brown & Root, petroleum hunters and war-profiteers who have corporate agendas with business strategies that targeted the second-largest oilfield in the world (Iraq) and the belligerent Baathist regime there (stationed in the desert like toy soldiers in a shooting range) as an opportunity to land The Mother Of All Contracts, essentially securing a no-bid multi-billion-dollar grant by the Federal Government to demolish an existing infrastructure and claim-jump the oil-fields."
Yes, "the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Republicus will put that in context as well, to defuse any alarming paranoia that has infected Lee Harvey and that he is trying to pass on like a contagion.
Here is the earlier text of that Farewell Address:
"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well."
Now mark this (capitals by Republicus):
BUT WE CAN NO LONGER RISK EMERGENCY IMPROVISATION OF NATIONAL DEFENSE; WE HAVE BEEN COMPELLED to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions."
Yes. "WE HAVE BEEN COMPELLED." We had to. It was a creature birthed of necessity during WWII and grew for the Cold War.
How big did it get?
"Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government."
Yes. Those are the facts. He's explaining how big it is, how many people it employs, how expensive it is to maintain, and how it affect the cultural zeitgeist.
It was the Cold War. The Soviets were rattling sabres made out of nuclear missiles.
He wasn't calling for some "revolution" against it. He accepted it. He presided over its growth for eight years. He passed budgets to keep it well fed.
When he said: "We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations," who does Lee Harvey think signed off on those spending bills, year after year, for eight years?
President Ike, former Supreme Allied Commander who knew what needed to be done for the security of the country he was presiding over.
Indeed, listen well:
"We recognize the imperative need for this development."
Did you hear that, "Me-Too-Like-Ike?"
"Imperative."
We have been compelled.
Ike qualifies:
"Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."
Yes. What does he mean there?
Simply to remember that National Defense is created for our purposes--e.g. security, survival, the preservation of prosperity, etc.-- and not vice versa, that we are human beings, not automatons at the service of a Machine that can take on a life of its own and master its master for its own purposes of survival and prosperity (which would rely upon the making of war, not love).
And yes, it needs to be watched to ensure that doesn't happen.
And it hasn't. America spends less a proportion of its GNP to National Security than most--MOST--other countries, because we have other priorities which have nothing to do with the military services but with the providing of opportunities for our citizens to advance and achieve personal ambitions and a desired comfort level.
Although there are similarities, this ain't the Cold War, where Republicus remembers crawling under his elementary school desk with the conduction of WWIII drills, where the policy of deterrence was called M.A.D.--Mutually Assured Destruction (which accounted for many a neoroses and--interestingly enough-coincided with the rise of the vast, industrial complex of psychotherapy).
The Administration has encouraged the nation not to panic and to go about our lives during this international crisis.
That caused critics to mock this as a faux war, that if it were a *real* war, we would all be out collecting tin cans and other rubbish to feed the hungry militay industrial complex.
Why aren't we?
Because this is the 21st Century. WWII and the Cold War have been won and put to rest. And we are not a militarized people by any stretch. Quite the opposite. We don't like war. We like comfort, and prefer the concerns of cupidity over the courage and carnage required to protect that way of life.
God Bless America, be happy, but make no mistake: that comfort don't come cheap, and it is highly coveted around the world--if not hated.
But our elected leaders should be applauded for going out of their way--thus far-- to ensure that "our toil, resources and livelihood" are NOT "all involved," nor is "the very structure of our society."
Behold the existence of the antiwar crowd, who can scream their fool heads off with impunity, and see fit to describe one of the cleanest, large-scale conflicts Republicus can recall as some barbaric, genocidal atrocity against "The People" of the Planet Earth, and decry the resurrection of Ike's "military industrial complex."
The "Military Industrial Complex" must always gallantly bow to the nation it serves before rushing off to protect it and preserve its interests.
It is neither seen, nor heard.
Ike was worried about it being seen and heard everywhere, and Athens being transformed into Sparta.
Quite frankly, Republicus would prefer to see his luxurious people have a little more Spartan fibre at this juncture of history, but Republicus understands: the bonuses and burgers beckon.
The Administration has opted for a leaner, meaner military force to see to the military matters required abroad.
They have been criticized by pro-war hawks like Senator John McCain for not going in with Powellian magnitude...
...for not unleashing the full might of the military industrial complex.
Aside from the efforts to make us remember and recognize that there is a threat--when antiwar forces try to make us forget or, worse, misconstrue or even invert the nature of the enemy we are engaged at war with-- the administration's compartmentalizing of the war effort and it's "business as usual" dash is to its credit.
We don't like war. But when forced into it, we do what must be done with the least inconvenience to the people.
Read this again:
"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government."
Now ask yourselves this:
Aside from the diminished fashion of wearing American Flag lapels pins, the annual pumping of patriotic fuel into our veins on Patriot's and Veteran's Day, sightseeing at Arlington National Cemetery, and the American extravaganza of the Fourth of July celebration that showcases the rockets red glare and the bombs bursting in air, can you honestly say that there has been "a conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" with a "total influence--economic, political, even spiritual-- felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government?"
Of course not. "Total influence" of anything today can only apply to what the industrial sex complex is churning out.
So why did Lee Harvey think it appropriate to include that quote?
Because, (1) he misread the speech and apparently thinks Ike was against it's very existence.
He wasn't. He said the need for it was "imperative."
(2) He apparently thinks that the "grave implications" that Ike did warn about--a devolution from Athens to Sparta-- has happened.
But that's nonsense.
Republicus has asked Lee Harvey to admit that he was a loud and proud liberal--social, economic, the works-- not because Republicus is posing as some red-baiting, Grand Inquisitor a la Joe Mcarthy, but to premise the liberal baggage he's unpacking his arguments from, arguments on the "dangers" of "corporatism" (i.e. American Business), and argumets based on his dire dread of...
..."militarism" (the belief that 'the total influence-- economic, political, even spiritual-- of the military industrial complex is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government," today, that Ike's warning was a prophecy that has come to pass.
Next:
"Only Americans can hurt America.!!!!!"
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The screaming series of exclamation points is, of course, Lee Harvey's emphasis.
But yes, indeed. Memorize that one too, Lee Harvey.
Better yet, I want you to stay after school and write it on the blackboard a hundred times.
Ike left office as one of the most popular presidents in American history.
He was admired for his integrity, modesty, strength and a flair for conciliation.
He retired to his farm in Gettysburg and devoted much of his time to writing his memoirs. Mandate For Change (1963), Waging Peace (1965) and At Ease (1967).
Dwight David Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969.
"Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
You have officially lost it "Republicus". Big time.
No, "Jeff." You lost. Big time.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
I don't plan on it. What you still don't seem to get Republicus is- this is an illegal war. It matters not the slightest bit trying to justify how well or not its going.That is irrelevant. We went under a cloud of lies and forged intelligence coming out of the pentagon and White House. Luckily you are a very fast shrinking minority of thought that still worships this administration and believes anything they say.
"I don't plan on (losing)."
Too late. You already did. A long time ago. Now you're trying to get revenge.
Hallo, what's this?
"...Luckily you are a very fast shrinking minority of thought that still worships this administration and believes anything they say."
That is Lee Harvey's perverse demagoguery at work.
Lee Harvey is a self-crowned but deluded champion of minority, anti-American ideology-- i.e. extreme, Bush-Hating liberalism--and tries to convince everyone else that it's a mainstream sentiment.
So climb on board!
Don't join his group out of anything he says-- or especially thinks (for obvious reasons)--but because he's telling you that "Everyone's doing it!"
That is the demagogue posing as some egalitarian champion appealing to the very worst qualities within us: susceptibilty to peer pressure, and any tendency to feel shame or timidity for your own principles and instincts and instead join an unprincipled and mindless mob of hate, envy, revenge, or anything else which your best conscience should have qualms with.
Republicus is an individualist, respects his readers own intelligence and capacity for Reason, and appeals to those faculties.
Any reader of Republicus could attest that he never tries to back any argument by thumbing at some angry mob behind him.
Lee Harvey?
"Wake up calls have been issued and are being received very warmly!!!!!!!!!!
Bushies disapproval ratings..........
Poll Date Approve Disapprove Gap
Fox 11/9 36 53 -17
AP 11/9 37 61 -24
NBC 11/7 38 57 -19
Pew 11/6 36 55 -19
ABC 11/2 39 60 -21
Zogby 11/2 39 61 -22
CBS 11/1 35 57 -22
Mean ---- 37.1 57.7 -20.6"
Yes, Lee Harvey can only squint--in eager anticipation-- over fluctuating polls (which he does not understand the nuances of) and determine, on the one hand, that when majority opinion or approval does not seem to go his way, as reflected by polls, then it is evidence that the country is being swayed by nationalistic, fascistic fervor or, worse, controlled by red-state Christian Jihadists, or some hybrid of both.
And then it is to hell with democracy and "majority opinion," and he tries to torpedo the protocols and principles which form the ballast of that ship-of-state and shouts at the passengers to jump overboard and swim to him while he slanders the competence and character of the officers and crew.
He seems to think that when "the majority" does not reflect his own perverse politics, something is dreadfully wrong, and it is incumbent upon him to change that, not by reasoned argument, mind you, but by utilizing--consciously or unconsciously-- well-demonstrated tactics of projection and inversion--as diagrammed by Republicus-- and over-the-top demonizations which also demonstrate his notion that the readers of Republicus are simpletons who will believe anything he says, and undiscerning of how he says it.
When that fails to shake the opinions of any group or "majority," he will sneer about the brainwashed stupidity of the American people--"the lemmings"-- write off an entire region of the country--the "Red States"-- and hint at his desire for insurrection and explicitly snarl that he "hopes Bush gets assassinated."
The bullet over the ballot.
Ergo, his championing of the principles of "democracy" and "majority rule" are aired only when he thinks he has the numbers behind him, principles that are aired when convenient, but dismissed when not.
He does not crow about poll numbers then, but denigrates them.
Indeed, how does the erstwhile "Champion of the Oppressed Minority" treat what he seems to think is a new minority?
He gloats vindictively:
"Wake up calls have been issued and are being received very warmly!!!!!!!!!
He relishes revenge.
He oppresses.
That's why his ideological kind are in the minority to begin with.
They're unprincipled scoundrels.
They're emotional basket-cases.
And ideological fascists.
They rely on assembling a mindless, monolithic block of group-think that they can line-up behind them, shouting obscenities and burning effigies of the president, and smile: "See? Everyone knows."
"Don't let the Republicans misdirect you into the details or distract you in any way. Just keep hammering the same line over and over and over because the public already knows it's true..."
Lee Harvey (Jeff)
So here he is now, crowing about what he perceives to be a growing mob that he apparently thinks shares his desire for loss in the War on Terror, higher taxes, subjugation to the edicts of the United Nations, draconian environmental regulations, fear of "corporatism" and "militarism," and a "hope" to see the President of the United States assassinated by one of his own people during wartime.
And the "minority"--like Republicus--must be demeaned, discredited, and destroyed.
Wotta snake.
But fear not, fellow Americans.
Republicus is a stronger man by far.
Lee Harvey has to inflate himself like the telltale bullfrog who tried to compete with the moon's majesty...
...and exploded in the attempt.
Just as Lee Harvey--characteristically-- first inverts and then exaggerates to the nth degree the public policies and personal qualities of President Bush and all things Bush, so too does he exaggerate and inflate his own "victories."
Look what he does:
First he marginalizes Republicus by saying that he "worships this administration and believes anything they say."
That is an over-the-top exaggeration of the sympathies of Republicus meant to portray a supporter of the President--i.e. Republicus--as some fanatic.
First off, Republicus "worships" no mere man.
Secondly, he is also slyly implying that anyone who agrees with Republicus also "worships" the administration and credulously believes everything a Commander in Chief at war telegraphs to the citizenry, or anything any politician tries to sell.
That is Immediately followed by more exaggeration, but this one in the other direction to widen the gap between the President, his administration, Republicans, Conservatives, and the American people themselves from him and "The People" (whoever the hell they are):
"...Luckily you are a very fast shrinking minority of thought that still worships this administration and believes anything they say."
So Republicus is not just "a minority" of thought. Nor is he just a "shrinking minority of thought." Nor is he a "fast shrinking minority of thought," no, but "a VERY fast shrinking minority of thought."
The only that is shrinking faster than an exploding bullfrog is Lee Harvey's credibility.
"Very fast shrinking minority of thought?"
Republicus doesn't think Lee Harvey is looking at the same polls which indicate otherwise.
Who's H&A?
HINTS & ALLEGATIONS! LOL
Yes, well, Republicus had to be thorough.
Call it "Shock & Awe." ;)
"Run away, run away, run away and save your life..."
Real McCoy
P.S. Pay attention, Lee Harvey. You missed this gem:
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Pay attention, Jess.
I beatcha to it. ;)
I put it out there to bait Jeff. But you bit instead, so, okay:
That quote also likes to be thrown out there by Leftists who now embrace the conservative Ike as some liberal champion who would have also hated Bush (in the similar topsy-turvy way in this crazy world of ours that pro-war neoconservatives have embraced Democratic icon Woodrow Wilson).
The quote you triumphantly produced--but that I tauntingly waved FIRST, so there--omits Ike's specific reference to the "oil tycoon" he was talking about--H.L. Hunt:
"...you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires..."
Obviously, the devious omission of the specificity allows the cult of Bush-Haters to Nostradamusize it into some kind of "Ah!-OO!-Ah!-Me-Like-Ike!" prophetic utterance devoid of any particulars that would confine it to where it belongs-- in the past, about individuals long dead.
Also, Bush isn't trying to "abolish" Social Security.
He's trying to save it.
There's nothing "negligibly supported" or "stupid" about that.
Remember this, seven years ago:
"What should we do with this projected surplus? I have a simple four-word answer: Save Social Security first."
President Bill Clinton, 1998
Ike was a classic small-government Republican.
He thought thought that the government had grown too big (and compromised state sovereignties) since FDR's New Deal in the 1930's and the massive, emergency funding of defense agencies for WWII that piqued the appetite of the infamous Military Industrial Complex and made it gluttonous for more with the ominous spectre of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
But the Great Depression was over, and WWII was won, so Ike wanted to return to the "Middle Way," AND BEGAN TO PRUNE FEDERAL SUBSIDIES for industries like agriculture and power companies, which he didn't think needed the help at that point (but you can bet that the industries that got a cut in their allowance screamed all sorts of things and stumped for Adlai Stevenson).
However, he wanted to maintain and even increase funding for programs with good track records, and Social Security was one of them (as was the Military INdustrial Complex).
But that was a different time. By Ike's day in the White House, not even one generation had passed since FDR first enacted the program--a program which has proven to be sorely near-sighted.
It did not account for the massive discrepancy beween retirees and workers when the Boomer's retire in full force.
So to wave that quote when Bush is trying to do something about that FACT of a looming shortfall just for the point of suggesting that Eisenhower would think that Bush is as "stupid" as H.L. Hunt was in his day-- when the problems we have today vis-a-vis Social Security could only be imagined-- is as silly as taking an Ike quote made about the difficulties of farming made on a September 11 decades ago and extending it to prophetically suggest that it is somehow referring to Pentagon pencil-pushers (or key-strokers--does anyone here still use a pencil?) not understanding the difficulties of war on the heels of 9/11.
"Bush is trying to "save" social security??? LOL- OMG you truly are completely delusional man, fuck........ Geezus, what the hell happend to you, seriously?????????????????"
And he bites the bait!
Easy, Lee Harvey. Get a hold of yourself.
Lee Harvey is a victim of far Left propaganda.
While accusing Republicus of "being blinded to whatever Bush says" (whatever THAT means), it is Lee Harvey himself who is a protesting puppet of political propoganda.
If Michael Moore or Al Franken tells him to hit the streets and march against the administration, he will do so.
If Howard Dean tells him to shout out and howl against the administration, he will do so.
If Lyndon Larouche tells him that the plan to privatize Social Security is a sinister, fascist scheme to "abolish it" in order to "loot" the account for the sake of "propping up" an economy that is quivering and on the verge of a spectacular collapse, Lee Harvey, of course, will buy it precisely as presented and characterized, and peddle it accordingly.
Bush's fortunes in the polls and his undefeated record in the first term was first undermined by a carefully coordinated and aggressive campaign against his plan to privatize Social Security.
That plan was being aggressively forged way back in the 2000 campaign, when Texas Governor Bush campaigned on a plank of Social Security Reform:
Here is a question posed to President Clinton at the South Lawn of the White House on October 25, 2000:
Q "Mr. President, the Democrats are about to launch a concerted campaign effort to discredit Governor Bush's Social Security proposals. I'm wondering if you plan to participate in that effort..."
It was an organized campaign.
And the weapons used were Fear and the infliction of Paranoia, and they knew just the man to turn to:
Lyndon Larouche.
The eventual "outing" of "The Agenda" behind the scheme served several political purposes, the primary ones of which were not about saving" Social Security," but for the purpose of--finally--finding a chink in Bush's political armor, inserting a crowbar, and prying it open like a can of sardines to say: "See this rotten fishiness?"
What do you think of Bush's "honesty" and "integrity" now?
It is no coincidence that the screeds against the privatization unwaveringly lead to ad hominem attacks on one of Bush's strengths: his character, because weakening the president is far more important than the issue used as an excuse to attack him.
The relative success of the attack was enabled by Bush's own--perhaps overconfident-- insouciant approach to selling the proposal to the American people, in a "tour" that appeared mismanaged and off-the-cuff from the get-go and had a very weak response team to counter the aggressive and coordinated campaign to demonize him and the plan.
The results were succesful for the Democratic Party and the assorted Bush-Hating organizations, as the American people--including Republicus himself-- looked askant at each other with an "I don't know about this one" look, and any enthusiasm that was trying to be drummed up for the proposal remained, at best, anemic.
"Third Rail" indeed.
The aggressive campaign to block the progress of the proposed program also provided an opportunity to portray the president as a deceiver who is having his strings pulled by a very bad crowd (i.e. "crooks," "scumbags," "fascists," *etc.*).
Leftist Bush-Haters like Lee Harvey--obviously-- drink very deeply of that Pierian Spring of demonization, but the average American Joe and Jane also caught enough of the whiff of that concocted, toxic brew to get confused and squeamish.
And George W. Bush stumbled.
On the heels of that followed a quick succession of political blunders, natural catastrophes, and setbacks in Foreign Policy (the Terry Sciavo case, Hurricane Katrina, a rising death toll in Iraq), the alarming attention called to the sieve-like southern border with Mexico, and the Valerie Plame Controversy--all of which were aggressively exploited by the same Leftist forces that were determined to bring Bush down since 2000--and cumulatively subtracteed approval points for the president, and thereby--behold-- made him a premature lame duck (though not irredeemably so).
The onslaught of this year--catalyzed by the weak response to Social Security Reform and fueled by the rapid succession ofunfortunate contingencies--has one overriding goal in mind:
Slander the president's reputation and defame his policies as well as his administration's, the Republican Party's, conservatives, theists, and his best supporters in general--enough to discourage and ebb the conservative wave which washed over the country, led to his two-term elections, AND led to a series of disasters for the Left which included the discrediting and banishment of message-controlling leftist giants like Dan Rather and the stunning loss of both houses of Congress (to name a very few of the serious setbacks the Democratic Party and liberal ideology has suffered).
Meanwhile, they rally and fire up their most reliable base of support--the unhinged, Bush-Hating Left-- to compel them to come out in droves to vote for next year's mid-term elections, win back the House, and commence Impeachment proceedings, claiming a "mandate."
That's what's going on right now, with, among a long list of complaints, the "debacle" of Operation Iraqi Freedom being--like Saddam's possession of WMDs being among the 16 Senate Resolutions against Saddam--the "easiest to sell" to the American people in calling for regime change here...
...and trumping the evidence in like manner.
But remember that the attack on the Social Security proposal was what caused Bush to first stumble (and allowed the Left to stick out their leg, push him from behind, and make him trip, from whence he got up and began to hobble around like a lame duck), and that First Battle Won in a war that seemed lost for the Left is now sanctified and commemorated like the Battle for Manassas (a.k.a. Bull Run) was celebrated by the Confederate rebels, and any Union Loyalist--like Republicus-- who dilutes the demonization of the Union soldiers (an injected demonization that is necessary to compel the rebels to fight harder--injected by Lyndon Larouche) is attacked for threatening to dilute the injected compulsion:
"Bush is trying to "save" social security??? LOL- OMG you truly are completely delusional man, fuck........ Geezus, what the hell happend to you, seriously?????????????????"
Republicus will presently display Larouche's political narcotic that was injected into Lee Harvey's veins and compels him to hysterically spew invective and scream in defense of the sacred justification of opposing Social Security Reform, but first Republicus will indeed dilute the injected demonization of Bush's plan to save Social Security:
First, it's a big country with big programs and lots and lots of diversely-thinking individuals--on both sides--offering their own rationalizations and justifications for this or that policy proposal.
Blogger "Ignoble Experiment" sheds light on this dynamic in the recent discussion of "hedgehogs" versus "foxes" in the making of history.
With Bush at the vanguard championing Social Security reform, he appears as a "hedgehog," but there undoubtedly many "foxes" behind the scenes, and it would be difficult to determine who is actually driving the proposal.
That being said, there are sure to be foxes who have their own opinions on not only what is to be done with Social Security, but also whether Social Security should even exist, whether American citizens are even Constitutionally entitled to it, *etc.*
It is on that negligible, H.L. Hunt mindset that Larouche resurrects and fixates on and magnifies as the primary force driving "The Agenda."
That crowd was around in Ike's day, and it included the aforementioned H.L. Hunt and "Texas oil tycoons" who Ike called "negligible" and "stupid."
Republicus would agree.
Many people rely on whatever peanuts their Social Security check provides, and it wouldn't be right to deprive them of it--especially after they spent a working lifetime paying into the system.
And President Bush--the overriding hedgehog-- agrees.
His program is one of CHOICE.
NO ONE receiving benefits today would be adversely affected in any way.
There would be no change.
NO ONE who would prefer the status quo would be forbidden from continuing it.
But there IS a long term problem with it.
It will eventually need reform.
President Bush wants to be the president who leads that reform.
Why put off for tomorrow what can be done today with less urgency?
Good idea, bad idea, Republicus himself is not qualified to determine that.
There would eventually be a cut in benefits. The program is forecasted to cost 2 trillion dollars.
However, Republicus does consider the CHOICE for financially-saavier American citizens to manage their own accounts in the private sector an attractive one.
Of course, that would mean that they are no longer contributing to the common trough...
Republicus cannot commit to any argument pro or con at this juncture-- but not because of any of the political propoganda shouted out from the Left which has ulterior motives aside from any reasoned arguments against the prroposal.
The Left knows that--just as the enactment of Social Security helped elevate FDR into the pantheon of Presidential Greatness (undoubtedly helped by his 12 year tenure and his steady presiding over the crises of the Great Depression and WWII)--if Bush were to succeed as the heir of sorts who "saved" FDR's New Deal for generations to come, they would have to share--if not lose--a proud feather worn on the otherwise flimsy headdress of a party that can boast of little else.
To have a Democratic sacred cow co-opted by a rival Republican president--and one who is particularly despised by the Left--would be an anathema.
"What?" you may ask, astonished, "Is all the protest against reform--at its heart--really about jealousy and a desire to keep credit in one camp for a popular policy, all in the service of the pursuit for political power?
Yes.
It is called "The Third Rail" for a reason: any Republican who tries to touch it--whether on behalf of the "negligible" or "stupid" Texans Ike dismissed, or just because they want to make difference-- will be ZAPPED--and zapped hard:
"Bush is trying to "save" social security??? LOL- OMG you truly are completely delusional man, fuck........ Geezus, what the hell happend to you, seriously?????????????????"
Lee Harvey (zapping)
President Bush was attacked for "lying" that the Social Security system was in critical condition and needed immediate reform.
But just like they accused the president of saying that Saddam Hussein posed "an imminent threat"--when in fact, as Republicus quoted in the November 16 post "FYI: What The Democrats Said" (the post that first compelled Lee Harvey to swoop in like a screaming banshee) it was Democrats like Vice President John Edwards himself who used those very words-- it is the Democrats themselves who had exploited and fanned fear for the "critical" state of solvency for the program, not President Bush.
President Bush went out of his way-- many times-- to say "No, it's okay for now and will be solvent for years to come, but I just want to take the opportunity to solve the problem now":
"Let's fix this permanently. Let's don't slap a Band-Aid on the problem. My call to people from both political parties is: now is the time to put aside our political differences and focus on solving this problem for generations of Americans to come."
Memphis, Tennesee, March 11, 2005
Great!
Listen to his appeal once more:
"My call to people from both political parties is: now is the time to put aside our political differences and focus on solving this problem for generations of Americans to come."
Is that unilateral? Is that radical?
He's simply saying: "Let's do it now. All of us."
Did he say "crisis?"
"Imminent threat?"
The widely-publicized accusations that he did use the word "crisis" refers to a speech he made at the Ronald Reagan Building for the White House Economic Conference, wherein he did--in fact-- use the word "crisis."
And so was aggressively launched yet another loud campaign that called him a liar and demanded that he keep his filthy hands off the sacred cow.
Here is what the president said (*italics* and parentheticals by Republicus):
"Social Security reform, entitlement reform is an important topic we discussed today...One of the things that we heard today from experts is that the Social Security system is safe *today,* but is in serious danger as we *head down the road of the 21st century.*
(Yes. Everyone agrees that is true.)
"And this problem has got to be confronted now."
(There it is! He's lying! No it doesn't have to be confronted "now"!)
But he explains:
"By the year 2018... (Judgment Year for Social Security is actually in dispute, even among the White House's own economic advisors, but that's irrelevant to the fact that Bush is hardly "fear-mongering")...Social Security will pay out more in benefits than the government collects in payroll taxes. And once that line into red has been crossed, the shortfalls will grow larger with each passing year. We have a problem."
Yes.
"Now, some will say, well, that's 2018, I'm not going to be around. But I don't think that's what a good public servant thinks -- should think. I think somebody who is charged with responsibly representing the people must look at the data that I just described and say, now is the time to work together to confront the problem. I understand how government works. Congressman Penny was talking about the last time we dealt with the Social Security issue in a real earnest way was when there was a crisis.
A lot of government, if the truth be known, is crisis-oriented management. You know, we wait and wait and wait, and then the crisis is upon us and everybody demands a solution. The problem with that when it comes to a modernization of Social Security is, is that the longer we wait, the more expensive the solution becomes. And so one of my jobs, one of my charges is to explain to Congress as clearly as I can, the crisis is now. You may not feel it, your constituents may not be overwhelming you with letters demanding a fix now, but the crisis is now. And so why don't we work together to do so. I will also assure members of Congress that this is an issue on which I campaigned, and I'm still standing (note that: it feeds the spite from the Bush-Hating Left to see him knocked down)...
If anybody is interested in the politics of Social Security, here's my view. First of all, what has made Social Security a difficult issue to discuss is that many times when you discuss it, a flyer would follow your discussion telling certain people in our society, generally those who have been on Social Security, that they're not going to get their check. I mean, that is fairly typical politics in the past. It really has been. And so people were afraid to address the issue, and I can understand why. If you talk about reforming Social Security, modernizing Social Security, you would get clobbered politically for it. But that dynamic began to shift recently -- recently being, I think the 2000 election. President Clinton, after the '96 election, had a lot of very important panels on the subject. He began to lay the groundwork for substantive real change. He felt comfortable discussing it. I felt comfortable campaigning on it in two elections. I'll tell you why -- because once you assure the seniors
I did talk about some principles during the course of the campaign. One was, nothing will change if you're retired or near retirement. Two, I do not believe we should raise payroll taxes to try to fix the system. Three, I do believe younger workers ought to be allowed to take some of their own money, some of their own payroll taxes, and on a voluntary basis, set up a personal savings account, an account that will earn -- an account that they manage; an account that earns a better rate of return than the current -- that their money earns inside the current Social Security trust; an account that they can pass on from one generation to the next, in other words, it's your asset; and an account the government can't take away.
...I will also say again, like we said this morning, that people are not going to be allowed to take their own money for their retirement account and take it to Vegas to shoot dice.
This is going to be a managed account, similar to the thrift savings plans that we federal employees have available to us now.
These challenges I've just discussed are important challenges. They are big agenda items. But they should be. I mean, why think little when it comes to making sure America is still the center of excellence in the world?
Great economies do not get weak all at once. They're kind of eaten away, you know, year by year, by challenges that people just refuse to meet. Slowly but surely, an economy, a great economy can be eroded to the point of mediocrity. This nation must never settle for mediocrity. This nation must always, always strive for the best and leave behind a better America for our children and our grandchildren."
Well said, Mr. President.
He explained that there is NOT an immediate crisis, but that there will be and he wants to have the honor of being the president to pre-empt the inevitable crisis and save Social Security for future generations.
President Bush came to Washington to do big things, and reforming Social Security would be big indeed.
And he fearlessly grabbed the Third Rail.
Note that he referred to President Clinton's own recognition of the long-term unsustainabilty of the program and his own efforts towards reform.
The attentive citizen should have noticed and recall that President Clinton felt free to jump onto the tracks, take off his socks, and stand on that Third Rail.
President Clinton went around the country on his own tour, ringing the alarm bell on what he explicitly mongered as the coming Social Security "crisis."
All of his administration's economic achievements, he said in February 1998, "are threatened by the looming fiscal *crisis* in Social Security."
"Looming?"
"We have a great opportunity now to take action now (using the word "now" twice was no accident) to avert a *crisis* in the Social Security system," Clinton said, again in February 1998. "By 2030, there will be twice as many elderly as there are today, with only two people working for every person drawing Social Security. After 2032, contributions from payroll taxes will only cover 75 cents on the dollar of current benefits. So we must act, and act now, to save Social Security."
So what's up?
Simple. The Democrats will be damned if they allow the hated Republican Bush to be the one to reform the sacred cow and be associated with it for generations to come, and adding yet another qualification to enter the pantheon of Great American Presidents.
That they can't allow.
You have seen, ladies and gentleman, the origin and context of Bush's use of the word "crisis" that caused a fury of editorials attacking him for "lying."
He explained the nature of the "crisis," that there was none now but would be in over a decade, and stated that he simply wanted to be the one to pre-empt it now, with everyone's help from both sides of the aisle.
The vicious and implacable Left will have none of that.
Republicus has once again shown their compulsive tendency to project and invert their own shortcomings and vices of character away from themselves and onto President Bush:
It was President Clinton who used the word "looming crisis" vis-a-vis the solvency of Social Security, not President Bush, who properly put the "crisis" in its temporal context in his speech at the Ronald Reagan Building.
And yet, for how long and how ubiquitously did the Leftists dominate the information conduits and tell you that Bush--not Clinton-- was cooking up a crisis when there was not one for the sake of not reforming the program as necessary, but destroying it gratuitously?
It's politics. It's dirty, ruthless politics from a vicious, unprincipled crowd and the propoganda has infected and unhinged the mind of Lee Harvey:
"Bush is trying to "save" social security??? LOL- OMG you truly are completely delusional man, fuck........ Geezus, what the hell happend to you, seriously?????????????????"
What the hell happened to Lee Harvey?
Well, when he says something like this:
"Blame me all you want, go on and read some more propoganda paid for by your pwezidante..."
He's projecting.
He's reading stuff paid for by George Soros...
...and Lyndon Larouche.
Republicus will now display Larouche's political narcotic that was injected into Lee Harvey's veins and compels him to hysterically spew invective and scream in defense of the "noble" justification of opposing Social Security Reform.
You will discern that it is precisely wells such as the one below that Lee Harvey drinks from and becomes deranged, before barging in here to insult both the host and his guests.
Especially note the expressed political strategy behind the attack on Bush's proposal to reform Social Security.
It is explicitly noted that the underlying motive is not to "save Social Security" from the evil Republicans, but to exploit the opportunity to trip the hitherto invulnerable Bush and cause him to become a premature lame duck.
In the meantime, Larouche goes off on his exquisitely detailed--and quite scary-- survey of "The Agenda," a diabolical plot sprung from the very bowels of the Vast, Right Wing Conspiracy.
So who is Lee Harvey?
Just a useful, Bush-Hating idiot at the very end of the food chain that receives all this garbage and then runs out to pollute the grassroots with it.
Fasten your seatbelts. Republicus presents to you a chapter out of the Bush-Hater's Bible:
February 18, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
February 18, 2005
Wall Street May Lose Bet on Bush
To Loot Social Security
by Paul Gallagher
In an unprecedented mobilization of the kind which did not occur during the 2004 Presidential election, virtually all Democratic Senators and Representatives are holding town meetings in their districts during February, against President George W. Bush's scheme to loot Social Security.
In Michigan, 15 town meetings are being held by Representatives Sander Levin, Debbie Stabenow, John Dingell, Carolyn Kilpatrick, and state constituency groups; five Ohio Representatives are holding another dozen. One said, "I think we're going to beat Bush on this; we've gotten 2,700 letters against it, and one phone call for it."
The unified mission of all these Democrats is clear—defeat Bush's Social Security theft, the top-priority mission Lyndon LaRouche laid out for the Democrats last Dec. 16. Their town meetings' open-debate character contrasts with the careful pre-screening of audiences for Bush's Social Security privatization meetings.
LaRouche Strategy Working
Lyndon LaRouche's powerful call on Columbus, Ohio radio on Dec. 16—for national action to pull together "the Democratic Party of President Franklin Roosevelt" to stop George W. Bush from stealing the Social Security of the American people—has been extraordinarily effective.
LaRouche's forecast that Bush, pressured by looming financial collapse, would go on an immediate mad-bull charge to "steal Social Security for Wall Street"—was put forward as a chance to bring Bush down. Refuse to "negotiate" Social Security with that mad bull; adopt a united mission to defeat Bush on it; and sane Republicans will have to deal with the consequences, LaRouche advised.
From Christmas to Feb. 10, LaRouche caused circulation of 600,000 of the first edition of an anti-privatization LaRouche PAC pamphlet across the United States.
The Democrats have been able to re-emerge in a unified resistance which is threatening to defeat Bush and make him an instant lame duck, as LaRouche emphasized.
He has made the issue of George Shultz's "Chile model of fascism" so central, that when the New York Times of Jan. 27 ran a front-page exposé of what a disaster Chile's Social Security privatization has been, ABC News immediately noted that the Times was "borrowing a page from Lyndon LaRouche."
Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of California attached that Times article to a "dear colleague" letter to the entire House of Representatives.
Bush's use of Chile as a supposedly successful model, has been destroyed.
Democrats in Congress show extraordinary unity and have picked up the banner of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—deliberately stashed away by party bureaucrats in recent years—to fight to defeat Bush on Social Security.
A key turning point came when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, after announcing on Feb. 1 that "no Democrat" would support Bush's attempt to steal Social Security, answered the President's Feb. 2 State of the Union with a Rooseveltian proposal for a "Marshall Plan for America, to rebuild America's economic infrastructure."
Reid is preparing "Marshall Plan" legislation.
On Feb. 3, "standing outside the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Senators Reid, Schumer, and members of the Senate Democratic Caucus presented a united front to fight against the President's plans to send the national debt skyrocketing by privatizing Social Security....
The Senators today invoked the image of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who pioneered Social Security."
When Administration representatives presented the Fiscal 2006 budget to Congress Feb. 8-9, Democrats led by Charles Rangel (N.Y.) and John Spratt (S.C.) remained completely focused on defending Social Security. Rangel declared Bush's scheme "dead," and challenged Treasury Secretary John Snow on how he could say Social Security—which has a large surplus—is bankrupt, while insisting that the Federal budget—more than $500 billion in deficit—is not.
The effect of the Democrats' unified focus was such, that it was a number of Congressional Republicans who came out against Bush's budget cuts.
The Cheney-Bush White House—still hell-bent to force through the Congress this year the diversion of Social Security to Wall Street—is being compelled toward a strategy of doing so by enforcing a strict party-line Republican vote in both Houses.
That is just what Congressional Republicans do not want. If citizens are mobilized nationwide by this pamphlet of LaRouche and by their own state and national elected representatives, Congressional Republicans voting for a fascist economic takedown of Social Security would face wholesale election defeat in 2006.
On Feb. 10, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said, "I don't think [Bush is] making that much progress, but that doesn't mean we won't continue to be relentless, on the floor of the House, on the road, on the Internet, and any opportunities we have."
Wall Street and the Boston "Vault" bankers are running the White House scheme from the inside, confirmed John Shipman of State Street Bank, Cato Institute, and Carriage Partners Ltd. The Wall Street forces not only want the Social Security money; they want big benefit cuts.
"We have to say, Your future is lower benefits, greater leverage," said Kent Smetters of the Wharton School of Business.
Cato spokesman Michael Tanner raved, "Social Security is a lie.... There is no legal right to benefits. If people take away only this, from this conference, we will have succeeded."
"The interest [on the Treasury Bonds held by the Social Security Trust Fund] is a fiction," said Thomas Saving of the Cato-linked National Center for Policy Analysis.
"535 people could decide at any time" to lower or abolish that Treasury obligation and gouge Social Security, said Saving—who, incredibly, is now a Trustee of the Social Security Administration!
The Wall Street/Cato crowd is lurking in Congress with its own "extreme privatization" schemes. After Bush exhausts himself scaring Americans about the "coming collapse of Social Security," these schemes would turn the entire payroll tax over to Wall Street, reduce benefits for remaining retirees and pay them by huge new Federal borrowing—on Wall Street.
The American people, at town meetings and in debates across the country, are hearing fundamental issues of FDR's "General Welfare" legacy, vs. fascist economic looting and "every man for himself" economics, raised by LaRouche Youth Movement leaders, and sometimes by elected officials and by ordinary citizens, for the first time in years. Despite being hit by an incredible barrage of scare-propaganda from the White House and Wall Street committees—often repeated as "facts" by news media, Americans in national polls continue to oppose privatization of Social Security.
The LaRouche Youth Movement is participating in scores of Congressional town meetings nationwide, and the LaRouche movement's conferences in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles on Presidents' Day weekend were to be major events in defeating the "foot in the door to fascism."
Man you just don't get that Clinton is no longer in power anymore, It's Bush and Bush alone now John, and all the failures that go along with that. Get over it already. Bush is a complete fgailure, always has been and always will be. Bait taking my ass, your just wrong, period, no substance or facts anywhere in your BUsh loving rants, nothing but propoganda given to you by pathalogical liars and criminals, and of course you buy it. John, social security failed with Bush because he tried to destroy it, plain and simple, get your shit straight, nobody bought that bull he was peddling. You want to fix it, make the government repay every dime of our money they have " borrowed" and never repayed, now claiming us to be bankrupt or damn near it. Good lord man, you are clueless, it's embarassing.
lol
Post a Comment
<< Home