BS: For the good of our country

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: catspaw49
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 08:23 AM

Reagan had forgotten what to DO with an intern, although that may have been from years of living with Nancy......talk about bland. Does anyone remember when her chair fell off the stage? What made it funny was that her expression never changed. The vacuous smile remained as she toppled over as if it was the natural way of things.

I can't help but feel for them a bit now regrdless of politics. Alzheimer's is a terrible way to go.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Grab
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 07:57 AM

DDW, how's about SDI? I'm still not sure if someone suggested it as a joke and Reagan didn't get the punchline...

Isn't Reagan reputed to have called his wife (Nancy) "mother" or "mum" or something like? A bit worrying really. Still, a guy that old, you can at least rely on him not to pull the interns. Elect a middle-aged president, and you can just see the mid-life crisis situation coming on. :-)

Grab.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Lady McMoo
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 06:16 AM

Maybe I'm missing something but why has poor old Morocco got mixed up in all this?

mcmoo

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 05:34 AM

Wasn't it Picard who said "Make it so", not Kirk???

Anyhow, us brits had to put up with Thatcher for years. Why should you yanks get away without a right wing nutter ruling the country...? Or was that Reagan and you are now in for the double(ya) dose...? I don't understand colonial politics;-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: ddw
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 12:53 AM

Mark,

I'm completely bipartisan — I hate politicians of all stripes.

david

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: MarkS
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 12:43 AM

Like to hear more love and bipartisanship expressed here.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Troll
Date: 17 Jan 01 - 12:27 AM

I'm Gonna keep MY dog outa thishere fight.
Hell, I ain't even gonna take him outa th' truck!

troll

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: ddw
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 11:24 PM

Yer right, 'Spaw. But apart from being a news story for a couple of days when he got shot, that old bugger never did anything to hang a memory on, did he?

I do have to laugh, sometimes, tho'.

Can't understand people getting so het up about who's in the White House, since it's largly a ceremonial position now anyway. Even back in the '60s it seemed pretty obvious to me that the real power in the world — never mind in the U.S. — is in corporate board rooms, not political offices. The multinational corporation has pretty well made nationalism (or nation states, for that matter) irrelevant. Except the multinationals woo individual nations to be their police forces around the world. That way they don't have to waste money on armies of their own.

david

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 11:00 PM

Say david, I notice that you forgot Reagan entirely in your Presidential litany. That's OK, he's probably forgotten it too.

Bad Spaw....VERY BAD SPAW......DOWN BOY, DOWN DAMMIT!!!........Sorry, sorry, SORRY, SORRY........really.....................

...........but honest Officer Obie, it was just laying there and I couldn't let it go........................

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: blt
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 10:06 PM

Well, for one thing, if Laura Bush ends up with a lesbian communist, life can't be all bad.

And I believe there is actual research that's pretty well known concerning the efficacy of prayer, so it's clear to me that thoughts can influence outcomes. It's also clear that our thoughts are diverse, and it's difficult to know how negative thinking on a collective level impacts politics. I'm more of the belief that such intense thoughts impact us individually first--I delude myself with my own passions and perhaps I then pass that on to others.

There's also that tale of the 100th monkey--does everyone know that one?

blt

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: ddw
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 09:47 PM

Hey Lepus — I'm no great fan of Dubya's, but are you forgetting his predecessors? Take Kennedy — a fine, upstanding Democrat who first rode onto the public stage on the coat tails of Joe McCarthy, embarrassed the nation with his womanizing, pushed us to the brink of WWIII (Cuban missile crisis) because he was afraid to the seen to be soft on communism and, while consistantly polling the lowest popularity of any president in history, allowed J. Edgar Hoover to run the U.S. so that little sleaze wouldn't publicize the dossier he kept on Kennedy. Oh yeah, he was also the one who put into place the White House taping system that finally caught Nixon.

Then there was good ol' Lyndon J. — who spent like a drunken sailor on social programs that nearly bankrupted the country and had little long-term effect — and made up incidents (Gulf of Tonkin) to justify escalating a war that everybody, particularly Eisenhower, had warned the U.S. to stay out of.

Poor old Nixon was just dumb — he chose to surround himself with people who would do ANYTHING to retain power and Gerald Ford as his VP. Of course he too had made his early name as a McCarthy wannabe.

Ol' Jerry F. had just played too much football without a helmet, but at least he had the sense to know he was just a caretaker.

Then we got Carter, who was so intelligent he could see all sides of a problem but couldn't make a choice about anything. Hell, he couldn't even get out of his own head to follow his lust.

Then we got Bush. Like him or not, he was the only U.S. leader in decades who could analyze a threat to the country and actually DO something about it. His biggest failing, as far as I'm concerned, was that he urged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein and then let his advisors talk him out of helping them when they did. Got hundreds of thousands of them gassed or napalmed when Saddam took his retribution.

So then we got Clinton — or should I say The Clintons. Lovely couple. She overweeningly hungry for power, him overweeningly hungry for sex. The fact that the economy hit an upswing while they were in office made them look a lot better than they were for the country. But what did they DO? Can you think of a single policy initiative that actually worked? Maybe Hillary will be more successful when she's elected in 2004 or 2008.

Till then, maybe Dubya will be hamstrung by a divided Senate to the point that he can't do any real good or any real damage. But Gore would have had the same problem, wouldn't he?

Oh, and to your last comment about walling off the south — that was tried before, by the south. As I recall, it was a Republican who launched an unconstitutional war to stop it. So maybe you're right.

cheers,

david

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 16 Jan 01 - 06:59 PM

I dunno. Most people who vote Republican are greedy, stupid, lazy, and/or racist (no offense). And like I've said before, I think the only way to get these morons to learn is to kick them in the teeth. "Dubya" and his goons could be a nice, steel-toed kick in the teeth if everything goes horribly wrong, as I'm hoping it will. Probably won't, but I can dream... But hopefully, we can ALL suffer, and then blame the mullet-headed jackasses who voted Republican for our troubles (again, no offense). Of course, I'd like to wall off 'the south' (including Texas) and turn it into a penal colony (or at least give it to Mexico), so maybe I'm a little out of line... ;)

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 07:14 PM

"I doubt that it will, but people need to learn that there are consequences for stupid votes."

But that's a bit rough. Most of the people who voted didn't vote for the man after all - even down in Florida. The stupid votes that counted were in the Supreme Court.

AS I understand it, the man himself isn't that interested in politics, and would probably just like to goof around having a good time. Unfortunately I gather he's got a bunch of courtiers who are interested in messing around with politics, and pushing ahead with various unpleasant sounding projects which will bring in big money for their friends and partners. Let's just hope that indolence wins out.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 07:04 PM

Thanks, everyone. Nice to get your take on this.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From:
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 06:22 PM

And after 8 years of that moron Reagan, we survived Bush, sr....though maybe a bit barely...

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 04:42 PM

Well said, Kat. I agree with your outlook on this.

- LH

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Charcloth
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 04:13 PM

Geez it doesn't sound like there are any moderates here

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Wesley S
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 04:06 PM

Jeez Lepus - Don't hold back - tell us how you really feel.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: mousethief
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 04:02 PM

Hey, we survived 8 years of Reagan (well, most of us did), we'll survive this idiot too.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 03:55 PM

I still hope he fails miserably, and I hope the country suffers horribly under his regime. I doubt that it will, but people need to learn that there are consequences for stupid votes. But my evil wishes are directed more at 'Dubya' himself. In fact, I hope he comes down with some horrible (but not fatal) venereal disease, gotten from a Moroccan boy-whore. And I hope his wife leaves him for a lesbian Communist, and I hope his daughters are impregnated by goats. And I hope his brother falls down a well, and his parents hijack a school bus. Yup.

Ugh, I'm gonna get, like, karmic kancer now, aren't I?

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 03:45 PM

After 8 years of clinton/gore, I don't see how anyone can be afraid of Bush. Call him shrub - or any other name that nakes you feel self-righteous - but realize that there are other people in this country who don't like the way America was going, and the examples being set by our leaders.

Subject: RE: Help: For the good of our country
From: R!
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 03:24 PM

Kat, Thanks for sharing that. Like the writer, I believe that we should be as positive as we can be, rather than look at the negative aspects of this new administration (yikes!). Much akin to the self fulfilling prophecy we all learned about in psychology class. Nevertheless, I will still refer to him as Shrub - but only in a nice way.

Keep well, Reen (formerly Rowana)

Subject: NOT
From: katlaughing
Date: 15 Jan 01 - 01:45 PM

Please, Joe, if you can change the title of the thread to "BS" etc., please do so. Thanks! kat

Written for a more general audience, still I thought I'd share this with you, my friends:

"All the best" for the good of our country

I've a radical thought for our future. Ever since it came down to Gore or Bush, then Bush, I've debated, read, and listened to dire predictions. I've gleefully joined in, like Cassandra foretelling the pillaging of Troy; I've readily agreed that a Bush presidency will ruin our country and all of those things I hold dear.

This is in direct violation of my own spiritual beliefs. I believe we are what we speak, think, and believe in. If we think we are sick or poor or happy or wealthy, we are opening a door, in our minds and hearts, to accept either manifestation, for good or bad. We are programming our subconscious to "make it so" as Captain Kirk used to say on Star Trek. I do not believe we automatically become those things just by saying it, or thinking it, but I do believe it sets a propensity within us towards those things. We do have free will and can overcome our own best intentions quite easily.

By extension then, I believe the mass consciousness of our country, even our world, can have tremendous effect on how things go. Of course this is so or advertising would not exist. Planting the seed of illness is easily done when one is inundated with pharmaceutical ads urging one to ask their doctor about a specific prescription drug for whatever symptoms are appropriate. An interesting study would be to see how many people then create, with their own belief, such symptoms. Unchecked, such beliefs can and do become real ailments.

Certain physicians have recognised the efficacy of this theory and have put it into practise. Some surgeons have their patients visualise healthy outcomes before going under the knife. Others use it in their daily practises, in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Because of the irrefutable evidence I've experienced in my own life; because I believe we are each responsible; because I believe each one of us can have an impact on the collective consciousness of humankind and thus, on the way of things in our world, I am turning my words and thoughts to the positive in regards to our country's politics for the next four years.

I do not believe in hiding my head in the sand and chanting vacuous affirmations in a Pollyanna sort of way. I don't like Bush, I don't have much hope for him. I will vigorously defend those programs and such that I believe our country needs to nurture and maintain.

I will do so without denigration. That may sound like a tall order for an op/ed writer, but I believe I can do so and I hope others will join in with me. To that end, I will give thanks on a daily basis that our country's leaders are guided to take right action; imbued with wisdom; and, willingly put aside their own ambitions to bring about that which is for the highest good of all concerned. In this way, I believe we can effect the outcome of the presidency; we can know that whatever supreme being one might believe in, is being given a clear shot at helping us to help ourselves, for the good of all our country's peoples. If one doesn't believe in a higher being, then at least they will be acting positively and would hopefully feel some benefit from doing so.

My Irish friends usually sign off their emails and such with "All the best." I'd like to wish President-elect Bush all the best, while letting him know he will be watched with an eagle eye. I hope he likes racking up karmic brownie points as much as I do!

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