Some of you have noticed I have a strong spirited Anti-Bush pal who's been overloading my comments with the democratic rhetoric of the day (or that of 20 years ago).
I welcome the debate, in fact I am inspired by it and since Jeff's not a blogger, I have forgiven his ignorance of blogging etiquette and gone ahead and deleted his repetitive comments that were off topic (but didn't touch most of the ridiculous stuff he left behind.)
Of course this led him to accuse me of censoring, which I absolutely did, as is my right on my site. I reminded him of his own opportunity to start his own blog and post whatever he like.
I was tempted to delete all of his previous entries which listed a fake name or email, but since it's pretty much been established that it's him, I'll leave those up since it has been quite an entertaining exchange.
I will continue to manage any bogus comments going forward.
I encourage Jeff to stick around and own his beliefs (he fears an "influx of neocon rhetoric... " if he posts a real email). He give himself way too much credit. I think my readers will immediately recognize that Jeff is suffering from incestuous amplification and keep it moving.
But speaking of filling up inboxes, Jeffs's caused mine to become lopsided with all the left leaning spewage (note the sources) he's sent me...
Special Pentagon unit left CIA out of the loop LA Times
U.S. on Road to Bad Economic Health Albany Times-Union
The Iraq War did not Force Gadaffi's Hand The Financial Times
Iraq contract: Halliburton admits faulty pricing CNN
American Choices in the 'War on Terror' The International Institute for Strategic Studies
Changes Guarantee April 15 Surprises Washington Post
Why Legitimacy In Iraq Matters NRC Haddelsblad
Should the War on Terrorism Target Iraq? Implementing a Bush Doctrine on Deterrence Policy brief from The Brookings Institution.
When Jeff sent me these stories, he did not send links. Upon tracking them down I found it interesting that they ALL came from the same place, The Brookings Institution. He seems to have the utmost confidence in this organization which could be an effect of incestuous amplification.
Interesting, since he frequently applauds my efforts on getting news from all sources and sides.
Have I mentioned how much I love blogging?
a. forgive my poor blogging etiquette... never blogged... never would have were it not for the fact that tall glass of milk sits within earshot of my desk... and believe me folks, it's an ear full...
b. i don't give out my email to people i don't know... it's policy... people can post all day long in response and i'm happy to go a few rounds... jen and i trade e-mails and im's all day long (in addition to our jabs on drink this)... it's different... we know each other... and it's all done under the guise of work (ha!)...
c. the links represent several e-mails i fired off to jen (in short order) in response to several e-mails i recieved with links to newsmax.com, some other dude's blog, and the like... jen, like her friends in the white house, likes to engage in selective representations of pretend facts to prove her point...
d. the brookings institute is a highly respected non-partisan think tank which boasts some of the leading policy analysts of our time... including Kenneth Pollack who was one of the strongest proponents of the war with iraq... spend some time there... you'll get a variety of perspectives... it's slighty more in-depth and balanced than the afformentioned newsmax.com (please note sarcasm here)...
e. sorry i injected so much "anti-bush rhetoric" into this site... was just trying to make sure it didn't become an oasis of incestuous amplification...
f. i still think this site is wicked cool!!!
g. i am also inspired by jen's spunk!!! someday, perhaps, she'll see the forest through the trees.
h. check out the project for the new american century... there you will find the architecture of bush foreign policy in their own words... and it is chilling... (you actually have to read the long documents, not the bullets)...
thanks... let the bashing begin...
jeff
Posted by: jeff | March 18, 2004 at 03:20 PM
a. Apology accepted on behalf of this tallglassofmilk and my readers.
b. Understandable, but not acceptable at Drink this...
c. This is just a load of crap. Jeff KNOWS I get my news from many sources.
d. Curious why I only received links from liberal sources from a non-partisan think tank and not more "slightly more in-depth and balanced" links.
e. Jeff just wanted to use the word spy word of the day.
f. Drink that!
g. I'm inspired by the fact that my spunk took Jeff's eye off the ball, and into the glass, all day long. BTW, I believe the expression is "seeing the forest for the trees" and I see the forest quite well thank you. Especially ours, which religious fanatics would like to see burned to the ground.
h. You didn't mention Bill Kristol was the Chairman! Yea! Here's the linkage: http://www.newamericancentury.org/. At first glance this proves to be very chilling indeed for those who oppose democracy and appease terrorism.
i. Come on, Screenwriter, get a blog already. You know you love it.
Posted by: tallglassofmilk | March 18, 2004 at 05:28 PM
d. the "liberal" sources were used to counteract the "neocon/fascist" propaganda
e. if anyone is guilty of incestuous amplification, it's the pentagon office of special plans
g. (i) i'm not making a habit of this... just happened to actually have time on my hands at this crazy job (ii) which religeous fanatics are you talking about... the ones in islamabad or the ones in the whitehouse (they both claim God's blessing in killing people)...
h. speaking of bill kristol... read this... from newsmax.com of all places:
Sunday June 8, 2003; 12:56 p.m. EDT
Kristol: Bush Made Misstatements on Iraq WMDs
In comments sure to be seized upon by Bush administration critics at home and abroad, one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq said Sunday that President Bush may have misstated the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. attacked.
"We shouldn't deny, those of us who were hawks, that there could have been misstatements made, I think in good faith," Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told "Fox News Sunday."
Asked, by whom, the leading Iraq war backer explained, "By the president and the secretary of state, [statements] that will turn out to be erroneous."
Kristol stressed that he didn't believe charges from Bush administration critics that the president had deliberately distorted WMD intelligence.
But the leading neoconservative writer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle added, "I hope [the WMDs] are found but I'm very skeptical.
"We have interrogated a lot of people and we haven't found a single person who said he participated in disposing, destroying the stock of weapons of mass destruction. Or in hiding them."
Kristol said that Saddam probably "did bluff a little bit" when it came to acknowledging he possessed WMDs in 1998, saying that "[U.S.] intelligence estimates were wrong, too."
"I don't think we need to be apologetic about the war," Kristol insisted. But he said the U.S.'s inability to uncover significant quantities of Iraqi WMDs means that the war may not have been as necessary and urgent as previously believed.
"People like me, who were hawks, said the war was both just, prudent and urgent," he said. "I think just and prudent - fine. But it is fair to say that if we don't find serious weapons of mass destruction capabilities, the case for urgency, which Bush and Blair certainly articulated, is going to be undercut to some degree."
Kristol, who made his comments just minutes after Secretary of State Colin Powell said on the same broadcast that there was no doubt Saddam had WMDs when the U.S. attacked, did acknowledge, however, "There has been evidence that they had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction program, I think, even if they did not have as large a stock of the weapons as we thought."
poor bill... hard to eat crow when you consider all the crap they had been putting out to the contrary... talk about incestuous amplification... even he had to admit that their suppositions were bunk...
sooner or later, you will come around... iraq was strategicly unsound detour in the war on terrorism that makes us less safe... bush got it wrong at the very least... and potentially committed high crimes... that is why i won't vote for him... though i state for the record that i'm not a huge fan of kerry (how's that for disclosure)...
jw out
Posted by: jeff | March 18, 2004 at 06:13 PM
Heh - I won't comment on the rest of it (Newsmax is not my favorite source for any news, but that's simply my opinion). Email addy's are a different thing though. Anyone can create an anonymous email thru Yahoo or Hotmail. Use it for blogging only. Then you can save your home and work email for your friends and business.
With hotmail, if you start getting annoying emails from people, you can ban their address so they can't send you anymore. End of problem.
Posted by: Teresa | March 18, 2004 at 06:23 PM
d. Enough. I read just as much propaganda from the left hand side and everything in between. You've commended me on this on more than one occasion. Your attempt to imply here that I am some kind of far right nut is insulting and, I would have thought, beneath you. On the other hand, I did just learn from the republicans on Wednesday that democrats often resort to name calling as a defense mechanism. Who would have guess you'd prove the right right?
e. You just wanted to use the word spy word of the day again. I have already conceded that I am skeptical of the pentagon's activities and have been since I've been reading novels, regardless of who's been in office. Did you just want me to pour that out loud? You should get over to the Center for Cooperative Research and put your money where your mouth is. They need funds urgently.
g. (i) Teresa made a good point but I guess you're too busy to hang around. Too bad. It's been stimulating.
(ii) How can you even compare radicals killing because of some perverted interpretation of their holy book and a government eliminating those radicals as a threat to millions of people it took an oath to protect?
h. I'm proud of a lot of the things my friends in the White House have done regardless of the fact that no stockpiles of WMDs have been found in Iraq. Saddam was found. He is enough WMD for me. Plus, I know you concede their existence, Saddam used them to exterminate thousands. The only thing from preventing that from happening again (timeframe is irrelevant--one cannot predict when the evil mind will commit to such heinous acts) was Saddam's will or ours. I'm glad we prevailed. Once again, as I have many times before, I will concede that I do not agree with 100% of the decisions that this administration has made. Nor will that ever be the case for anyone.
And once again, just for the record, I didn't vote this adminstration in, but I'm gonna vote for them to stay and finish the work they've started.
And it's not because I'm a neocon / fascist / conservative / republican / Bush lover / religious fanatic or any other label you want to try and pin on me. Heh - try as I might, I can't seem to get right of center on any of those damn political spectrum quizzes.
It's because this administration believes that national security is our nation's highest priority and what world peace is attainable by exterminating, not appeasing terrorists. It's because they've liberated two oppressed countries, lead to the disarmament of others and because it can nuture a long-suffering relationship with a country like Pakistan and end up with dead terrorists.
That and the fact that I respect Marx's theory and will stay the course that keeps that wheel from turning.
Besides, John Kerry is too ugly to be President.
Posted by: tallglassofmilk | March 19, 2004 at 01:03 AM
Hey, you should check out the weirdo's I manage to attract, lol. ;-)
Posted by: Donna | March 19, 2004 at 10:06 AM
Jen/Teresa... i can appreciate your perspective on email... but to me, that seems to be the point of the blog... people post comments, people post retorts... everyone can comment on everyone's comment... keeps the debate in a workable and balanced forum... i like that... i prefer it... i'm not saying you're wrong... that's just where i stand...
Re: your position on the political spectrum and where you get your sources, etc... I used the words neocon and fascist sarcastically as a retort to your trying to paint me as a so called liberal kerry lover... which i find funny considering the fact that i am arguing for a classically conservative position (namely a balanced budget)... Of course you're going to say that we're at war and must deficit spend but I contend that the previous surplus would have absorbed the damage done to the economy after 9/11 and the opening salvos of the war on terrorism while keeping us in the black (without having to deficit finance with foreign capital and weaken the dollar)...
AT ANY RATE... I won't paint you as a right wing wacko... okay... but here is a fact you cannot dismiss... the current policy positions of the whitehouse with regard to the war on terrorism are representative of the far right faction of the republic party. Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Pearl/etc. represent the far right. They have always been regarded so... and they have been calling the shots (for better or worse)... advocation of their policies is an advocation of the far right...
Am I to the left of them... hell yes... does it make me a "liberal"... hell no... I am much much closer to the center than Rummy (and by default Bush)... so... accuse me of labeling you all you want... but you do just the same (and first i might add) when it suits your needs...
as a matter of fact... i've been called lots of names for (correctly) questioning the rational and intelligence leading us into the war with iraq... i was called anti-american... traitor... commie... saddam-lover (despite the fact that i was bitching about saddam when we were lobbying against UN sanctions on Iraq for gassing the Iranians)... that's one of my bigger beefs with GWB's administration... they begin with suppositions... shape and discard information to support their case... demonize all dissenters... and reframe the argument when it turns out their supposition was (admittedly) incorrect... to me, this is highly remeniscint of another time and place that i hope history never revisits...
with regard to the war on terrorism... it's an assymentrical war and should be fought that way... we attempted to conventionalize the conflict when we attacked iraq... i think that was a bad move... you can accuse me of being soft on terrorism if you like... you're wrong... i argued in defense of GWB right up to the point he started peddling his weak rationale for invading iraq... to be effective, we need to fight an assymetrical war with the terrorists... and, like it or not, this has to be done in concert with other nations (b/c terrorism, like every other business, has gone global)... iraq has bogged our military down, lessened our ability to seek out and destroy cells, lessened our ability to marshall resources (both our own and the world body's)... and, if history is any indicator, will test the strength of our economy in ways I think the average american is not prepared for... if this makes me a sandal wearing commie... so be it... i can live with the label (god knows i've been called worse)...
so i guess we have a lot in common then... we both agree that national security (which is inexoriably linked to our economic health) is america's top priotity... i just happen to believe that attacking a highly contained non-mulsim secularist leader (who was once our antidote to islamic extremism) and who has no demonstrable links to our current foe happened to be a strategical misstep that will cost us dearly down the road...
that's all for now...
ps: to the girl who inferred that i'm a weirdo... i dare you to dispute anything i've written...
Posted by: jeff | March 19, 2004 at 02:52 PM
Jeff, trust me. My comment had nothing to do with you...Really. I was referring to several unsolicited e-mails I've been receving today. That's all.
Posted by: Donna | March 19, 2004 at 09:11 PM
don't mind me... i wrote my last post after getting home from jury duty...
i am brudgingly doing my civic duty but it's left me a little testy...
Posted by: jeff | March 21, 2004 at 10:01 PM