I'd buy that, except I heard Chertoff in denial.

Post #223,086 by mmoffitt 9/6/05 9:54:45 AM Reply	I'd buy that, except I heard Chertoff in denial. Yesterday, on NPR's All Things Considered, Robert Siegel didn't get medieval on Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, in part because the microphones there are specially fabricated to decant all emotion from the voices of their reporters. But Siegel aggressively blocked every escape route that Chertoff took to evade hard questions about "corpses" and "human waste" piling up at the city's convention center, where thousands were stranded without provisions. (Siegel gets tough at about minute four in the audio clip.) Siegel kept asking Chertoff how long it would take to serve or rescue these people, and a couple times Chertoff answered that the government was doing a great job at the Superdome. When he cautioned Siegel about the danger of relying on "anecdotal" "rumors" of people in dire straits, Siegel said, no\ufffdthese are facts presented by reporters who have covered war zones. There are 2,000 people at the convention center in need, he said. Having finally broken through the steel plate that is Chertoff's skull, the secretary confessed he hadn't heard those reports\ufffdreports that the television networks were documenting, live, with their cameras. Chertoff promised he'd look into the matter. [link\|http://slate.msn.com/id/2125581/device/html40/workarea/3/?nav=ais\|http://slate.msn.com...rkarea/3/?nav=ais] I heard this live and it was unbelieveable. NPR has a guy on the ground at the Convention Center and ~~Jackoff~~ Chertoff is telling Siegel "not to believe in rumors". Then, about 1/2 hour after the interview Siegel said that Chertoff's office had called to report that "the secretary has just received a report" confirming what the secretary was denying during Siegel's interview. With everything that happens, this administration reminds me of the Soviet response to Chernobyl. Be it the ignoring of the warnings in August, 2001 or the warnings in August, 2005. The lies, from Rice's "No one could have imagined that people would use airplanes as missles" up to and including Dub's own, "No one could have imagined the levies breaking." These guys are flat-out the most incompetent leaders in the world today who have time and time again shown a proclivity for lying that would make any Bolshevik blush. bcnu, Mikem It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
Post #223,102 by Silverlock 9/6/05 11:18:47 AM Reply	They're not incompetent These guys are flat-out the most incompetent leaders in the world today who have time and time again shown a proclivity for lying that would make any Bolshevik blush. You persist is assuming they have any interest in "leadership". You keep forgetting one all important fact. The Bushies don't do government. The do politics. In that arena, they are very competent. Until the lack of actual ethics turns around and bites them in the ass. Every single decision and action they do is controlled by how it works politically. No thought is given to good government. ----------------------------------------- George W. Bush and his PNAC handlers sent the US into Iraq with lies. I find myself rethinking my opposition to the death penalty. --Donald Dean Richards Jr.
Post #223,263 by Ashton 9/6/05 8:47:08 PM Reply	There may be quite more to these absurd choices than that.. When I get a round tuit, I'll post in Reviews my notes on watching a (actually, The First) Conference entitled, "Examining the Religious Of the Far Right". First, that is - without a political / social agenda - but about purely information gathering and presentation. I'll try to find some printed summary, as must exist. Neither polemic nor yuk-fest nor excoriation, this was about Understanding the nature of the what the SIXTY-THREE MILLION purchasers of the Left Behind novelettes are THINKING and acting upon. Each speaker made efficient use of his/her short alloted time, in an effort to explain the sub-cultire (which we tend to lump together as Fundies, etc. etc.) When the definitions, aims, goals are sorted out, digested + some idea of the %pop as well as a few indications of %influence in the present Cabal: it can look pretty scary, for any non-members of this Club. Which would be: most people that there are, alive on the planet just now. In brief: attributing Stupid- stupid decisions to mere sloth, ignorance, ineptness, retardation or even - just Desire-for-Empire would be to miss explanations which offer a more cohesive picture of Patterns since Inauguration. My 3 Raptures worth
Post #223,267 by mmoffitt 9/6/05 8:51:11 PM Reply	That's granting too much, I think. In brief: attributing Stupid- stupid decisions to mere sloth, ignorance, ineptness, retardation or even - just Desire-for-Empire would be to miss explanations which offer a more cohesive picture of Patterns since Inauguration. Medieval superstitious religions of fear are indicative of underdeveloped minds, no? What more do we need to know of this ilk than "they are true believers?" bcnu, Mikem It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
Post #223,280 by Ashton 9/6/05 9:17:13 PM Reply	Quite a Lot more - if you are to counter them. It's fun to ridicule the ridiculous. But %some of 63M is no longer deterred by being laughed outta the play (especially when the script is a LITERAL interpretation of Revelations. (And this despite: in the Second Century .. the general understanding was formalized in some Concordat, or whatever these Editing meetings label themselves). 'Rev' was never intended for literal! any more than Psalms and other poetic dreamweavings as are sprinkled throughout this self-contradictory collection of human works + the humans' God-imaginations. ie Even by their own concepts of the Bible-as-Unix-Handbook -- these-All are Revisionists! (too) The Fright/Rage aspect is too complex for sound bites, as is the more-subtle thread to the jelloware of the Neoconmen .. I'll save that for the Review thingie. Aux barricades. ..Sans i-Pod, you idiot!
Post #223,290 by Silverlock 9/6/05 10:30:58 PM Reply	Beg to differ Many are, shall we say, taken under the wing of a religious faith for the moral touchstone it gives them. Others have other reasons but this is one I have some intimate contact with. My oldest sister had already had a baby by the tiime she was 15, gave it up for adoption, became a groupie for friggin' bar bands in hawaii and was well on her way to being someones pass around toy for the coke he could supply by the time she was 17. She got saved. I know she uses the phrase in a different way than I do but the end result that matters to me is she is still alive. Her faith in what I consider superstition saved her life. I spent many an evening at her church watching in awed wonder at the speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands and other "spirit filled" bug-nut craziness. These people are crazy; my sister is still alive. I can condemn them for many things but my sister is still alive. ----------------------------------------- George W. Bush and his PNAC handlers sent the US into Iraq with lies. I find myself rethinking my opposition to the death penalty. --Donald Dean Richards Jr.
Post #223,353 by mmoffitt 9/7/05 6:50:46 AM Reply	Interesting. I also personally know of cases similar to your sister's. They exist, to be sure. An interesting thought occured to me as I read your post. Christianity, I think, may be just like computer technology. By that I mean that both have contributed some to the human condition, but both are a net negative on society. YMMV, of course. bcnu, Mikem It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
Post #223,383 by jb4 9/7/05 10:02:20 AM Reply	One might interpret your observations thus: I spent many an evening at her church watching in awed wonder at the speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands and other "spirit filled" bug-nut craziness. These people are crazy; my sister is still alive. I can condemn them for many things but my sister is still alive. You sister found a group of bug-nut crazies (great phrase, BTW) that complement her bug-nut craziness. The difference is that the group she found values living over self destructive behavior. You sister is no less whacked than she was when she was snorting coke off the backside of some bass player somewhere. The only difference is the company she now keeps. IMHO, she found a better class of whack jobs; the price of entry was a spiritual-based superstition. Not a bad trade, all things considered. jb4 shrub●bish (Am., from shrub* + rubbish, after the derisive name for America's 43 president; 2003) n. 1. a form of nonsensical political doubletalk wherein the speaker attempts to defend the indefensible by lying, obfuscation, or otherwise misstating the facts; GIBBERISH. 2. any of a collection of utterances from America's putative 43rd president. cf.* BULLSHIT

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