posted February 27, 2006 06:15 PM              

quote:

---

Scorpio and Capricorn are supposed to be the only ones brave enough to give the Leo, "a good kick in the ass."

---

posted February 27, 2006 08:17 PM            

Mercury in Virgo...conjunct the Midheaven with Leo
Mars in Aries.

I'll bet you don't talk nearly so boldly in person acoustic. You've been grossly misinformed, the safest place for you is well away from the Lion cage.

posted February 27, 2006 08:23 PM              

Actually, I was not going to reveal any more of your chart without your permission because I feel I already overstepped my boundries....(sometimes my enthusiasm gets carried away with me...sometimes I forget to put on my brakes...I guess it's my Mars in the first house making me kind of impulsively Aries-like...*sigh*)

I apologize...

posted February 27, 2006 11:38 PM              

"Whew!"

Thanx

posted February 28, 2006 01:51 PM            

Yes, it does.. they do recruit in affluent areas in the US.

I would suggest you look up the military stats before you open your mouth about how many poor people are in the military vs those that come from wealthy backgrounds.

You will find that quoting a complete moron like Moore only makes you look like...well.. you get the picture.

Look through the threads here - a simple search will do on Military stats (I posted these two or three times to people JUST LIKE YOU that are brainwashed into thinking that the military recruits only poor people).

You will also find that 1) The minority population in the military mirrors the actual population percentages in America (plus or minus 2-5% for error- which is normal in any statistical analysis) 2) Those that enter the military are more apt to obtain a college degree that those who decide not to join from the same areas - specifically those poor, poor people you speak of. 3) Minorities are more able to move up without consequence (same with women) at a faster rate that minorities in other government or private sector jobs 4) Caucasions are more apt to STAY in the military over African Americans and Women 5) Africa American women are more likely to re-enlist than women of other colors.

Sooo....... what do you think?

jwhop...I think it is complimentary when someone cannot find fault with what you say (other than they hate it) so they have to lower themselves to posting part of your chart.

I am especially impressed by the idiotic jab about "what a waste of a scorpio rising with the Leo influence"....

LMAO...what a moron.

posted February 28, 2006 01:57 PM            

Oh please now.... Scorp and Cappy the only ones brave enough to take on a Leo?

ROTFLMAO... you have got to be kidding... Ever see an Archer and a Lion? Just because we don't need to sneak up on them and stab them in the back, or blow up their den - we manage to take them on just fine .

In fact.... not only can we tame them, but we make them love us as well. LOL... actually, it is all in how you approach someone - taking on someone based on their sign seems a bit juvenile (like all those fun "I hate X" threads.

btw.. I am NOT saying you are being juvenile at all, nor am I criticizing you, I am just laughing at the notion that only two signs are brave enough. LOL

posted February 28, 2006 03:43 PM            

-------------

Here's my chart Jwhop, though I'm sure you've seen it before.

Planetary positions
planet sign degree house motion
Sun Capricorn 05°16'40 direct (8th)
Moon Virgo 29°35'09 direct (5th)
Mercury Sagittarius 17°17'54 direct (7th)
Venus Sagittarius 10°10'47 direct (7th)
Mars Scorpio 27°27'50 direct (6th)
Jupiter Capricorn 16°38'36 direct (8th)
Saturn Gemini 15°40'09 retrograde (1st)
Uranus Libra 22°36'30 direct (6th)
Neptune Sagittarius 06°04'02 direct (7th)
Pluto Libra 04°23'45 direct (5th)
True Node Capricorn 16°51'40 direct (8th)

House positions (Placidus)
Ascendant Gemini 02°53'38
MC in Aquarius

posted February 28, 2006 03:43 PM              

quote:

---

I would be interested to know if the same kind of recruitment happens around the more affluent neighbourhoods as well?

---

'Interested' being the operative word here pidua - i.e. 'I don't know but would like to find out.' I made no claim about the ratio of people from poorer backgrounds to wealthier ones in the US military. I simply made an observation about something I'd seen and mused on further possibilities arising from that. If you have a problem with that pidua, may I suggest you don't use forums, for that is exactly what will occur; people will post observations, opinions, theories and thoughts in general. One would hope that they can find a way of expressing them in the most respectful way possible to one another. This kind of courtesy isn't always observed by everyone I grant you, but the jibing you seem to have taken offence at on jwhop's behalf is no doubt in direct reponse to his often acerbic style of expression. You reep what you sow and consequently if you are consistently rude and dismissive of other people's points of view, that kind of treatment will rebound on you. I've seen enough of jwhop to know that he's perfectly capable of defending himself and rest assured, I'm sure he will

quote:

---

I would suggest you look up the military stats before you open your mouth about how many poor people are in the military vs those that come from wealthy backgrounds.

---

I believe though that my original post was asking how much canvassing goes on in the more affluent neighbourhoods as opposed to the poorer ones - my point being that I wanted to know if it was an eqaul amount. Your opinion of Michael Moore and/or his film is not really an answer to that (and again if you re-read my post you'll find I didn't quote him, merely mentioned his film.)

May I also suggest you read things properly before you assume things about me. You say that

quote:

---

I posted these two or three times to people JUST LIKE YOU that are brainwashed into thinking that the military recruits only poor people

---

posted February 28, 2006 04:04 PM              

quote:

---

jwhop...I think it is complimentary when someone cannot find fault with what you say (other than they hate it) so they have to lower themselves to posting part of your chart.

---

Pid...this was between jwhop and me, and we'v worked thru it....kindly back off!

I don't apprerciate your snide remarks about somebody "lowering themselves" by posting part of someone's chart.

Jwhop, gentleman that he is, did not resort to "name calling" but instead told me that it was quite alright. So quit already...

posted February 28, 2006 05:07 PM            

Yeah, I remember the thread about heavy military recruitment in inner-city and minority community areas.

Let's see, how did that go? The evil, sly, racist Bush Administration was trolling for recruits among the poor, the ignorant, the desperate in the inner-city. Object, to use them for cannon fodder in an evil, racist, illegal, unjust, immoral war against their murderous little Stalinist thug dictator friend, Saddam Hussein

I also remember charges that minorities were over represented in the military...when compared to the racial demographics of America as a whole. You blew that BS up with factual information.

Here's some more; part from a piece on Michael Moore's lies...for those prone to having Michael Moore moments....and some from the official statistics of dead and wounded in the current Iraq War through June, 2005.

Far from Moore's allegation that the rich and powerful in America, Congress which authorizes war but wouldn't risk themselves or their children, the truth is that Congress is actually over represented in military service...when compared to the overall population of the US.

Congressman war sign up
Moore lies about congressman's willingness to have offspring in war........

Excerpt
"Are Congressional children less likely to serve in Iraq than children from other families? Let’s use Moore’s methodology, and ignore members of extended families (such as nephews) and also ignore service anywhere expect Iraq (even though U.S. forces are currently fighting terrorists in many countries). And like Moore, let us also ignore the fact that some families (like Rep. Castle’s) have no children, or no children of military age.

We then see that of 535 Congressional families, there was one (Brooks Johnson) with a child who served in Iraq. How does this compare with American families in general? In the summer of 2003, U.S. troop levels in Iraq were raised to 145,000. If we factor in troop rotation, we could estimate that about 300,000 people have served in Iraq at some point. According to the Census Bureau, there were 104,705,000 households in the United States in 2000. (See Table 1 of the Census Report.) So the ratio of ordinary U.S. households to Iraqi service personnel is 104,705,000 to 300,000. This reduces to a ratio of 349:1.

In contrast the ratio of Congressional households to Iraqi service personnel is 535:2. This reduces to a ration of 268:1.

Stated another way, a Congressional household is about 23 percent more likely than an ordinary household to be closely related to an Iraqi serviceman or servicewoman.

Of course my statistical methodology is very simple. A more sophisticated analysis would look only at Congressional and U.S. households from which at least one child is legally eligible to enlist in the military. Moore, obviously, never attempted such a comparison; instead, he deceived viewers into believing that Congressional families were extremely different from other families in enlistment rates.

Moore ignores the fact that there are 102 veterans currently serving in Congress. Regardless of whether they have children who could join the military, all of the veterans in Congress have personally put themselves at risk to protect their country.
http://www.slimindustries.com/~bowling/fahrenheit911/warsignup.htm

posted February 28, 2006 05:27 PM            

Veterans in Congress?

David Kopel & the Fahrenheit Fact blog also notes that a large number of Congress people are veterans. Moore's thesis relies on U.S. Congress people being wealthy, ignorant aristocrats who send poor soldiers to die in a war zone to which they will not commit their own children. (FF):

However, a bit of research shows us that our representatives and senators may not be as aloof as Moore implies:

According to a tally compiled by Richard Aragon and John Rossie, 101 of the men and women sitting in the House of Representatives formerly served in the military. Of these, 17 saw active duty in combat zones. When we consider that there are 435 seats in the House, we see that close to a fourth of them gave a portion of their lives to the U.S. military.

The Senate numbers are even more surprising. Of the 100 U.S. Senators, 36 of them are former military servicemen (9 of whom saw combat duty). That means a little over a third of America's senators once served in the very vocation Moore implies they know nothing about."
http://www.slimindustries.com/~bowling/fahrenheit911/warsignup.htm

US wounded and killed...through June, 2005.

Total Dead....1592
White.........1181
All others.... 411

Percent White..74.2%
All Others.....25.8%

Total Wounded 13181
Total White....8091
All Others.....5098

Percent White..61.3%
All Others.....38.7%

Ummm, I did the math, feel free to check the numbers

On pages 21&22 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf

It would seem white folk are over represented among the wounded and killed in Iraq and not minorities. One interpretation of the data would suggest whites are more likely to be in combat units, as opposed to support roles.

posted February 28, 2006 05:36 PM            

Cardinalgal - yes, you did hit a nerve because we are talking about our service people giving their lives for our freedom. I am extremely protective of our soldiers and law enforcement because for some insane reason, people seem to think it's open season when it comes to bashing them.

I HATE when people like MOORE refuse to get the real information and then spread lies to the masses in order to convince them of something that is not true. We had recruiters in Orange Co. Calif just like they did in El Centro, Calif. From the rich to the poor, the military is more concerned with numbers and getting their ranks full and not trying to go out and find the poor minorities to give up for slaughter in a foreign land.

Rainbow,

I didn't even know it was you. I was more intent on the person that decided to slam jwhops rising sign since he is a Leo. I hate that crap. I know that you were only posting what his real signs were, so maybe I should have clarified that with (Rainbow only provided the correct information and this is geared towards another)In any case, it only seems to take on slight offense for you to start going off on me.

No worries... I can take it

posted February 28, 2006 07:05 PM              

quote:

---

Cardinalgal - yes, you did hit a nerve because we are talking about our service people giving their lives for our freedom.

---

Pidua who is it that you feel is trying to opress "your freedom" ? And that is a question before you decide to leap down my throat and accuse me of launching 'open season' on the military.

And just out of interest, can you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Michael Moore for instance (as you use him in your example) was "spreading lies to the masses"? There was a particularly interesting point of view put forward in his film by a US soldier's mother. Her family had always been in the military and tragically, she like so many others had lost her son in the Iraq conflict. She was a great supporter of the troops and wouldn't have a word said against them, (quite right seeing as they are giving their lives and merely following orders from above,) however after he had died she was of the opinion that the government should never have entered into this war and sent US troops to fight for such a cause. She didn't say that about any other conflict her family members had been involved in - you could argue that because it was her son she had taken it badly, or you could see the corrolation with so many other families of soldiers killed in this conflict who are disgusted that their relative lost their lives for this particular cause.

Similarly, can you also prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the information released into the public domain by the Bush administration is the God's honest truth or the 'real information' as you choose to put it? Without all the information and evidence neither of us can prove anything, so I think it's safer to say that we make educated assumptions based on the information at hand and more than a little on our individual political and moral bias.

Maybe we should let the people who do have access to the 'real information' speak - they are the ones who are actually in Iraq and it's their word that I would trust more than anyones. Now Pidua and jwhop you will no doubt dismiss these accounts as they come from Michael Moore's website, but just do me a small favour and read the words of each person. A few haven't given their real names but those who have could, I suppose, be traced if you wanted to ascertain their validity.

The War is Killing My Friends and I'm Sick of It

From: SPC Fish
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 12:22 AM
To: soldiers@michaelmoore.com
Subject: I can't sleep

Thank you! Thank you for caring about us, speaking for us, and telling the truth. A British coalition soldier gave me his copy of Fahrenheit 9/11 while I was serving in Afghanistan. That soldier was involved in a suicide car bomb this month and we took care of him at the hospital. I just got back yesterday and looked you up. I've always been a liberal girl, and it ticks me off to no end that Bush is going to try to take away my rights and screw America over with his Christian-influenced "leadership." And what makes me even more angry is that all my friends and my husband are serving in a ******** war in Iraq. I served in another ******** war as a nurse in Kandahar.

I have sent soldiers with missing limbs, with vents breathing for them, with malaria infections, and with burns from IEDs and land mines back to Germany and I don't know why this had to happen in the first place. We will never find Osama, it's a lost effort. In Iraq, we are only breeding more terrorists because we won't leave them alone and let them fix their own problems. We just want to storm on in and make "functional governments" within the Middle East so we can profit from them and their oil. The war is killing my friends and I'm sick of it, I want my husband to come home alive. I'm sick of thinking about the soldiers screaming in the trauma bay before we took them to surgery, and I haven't even seen combat, only the effects. I watched C-SPAN today and saw my senator, Barbara Boxer, ask Condoleeza Rice why we're still there if no progress is being made. She could not answer it, her reply was a tap dance of excuses. It made me cry. Thank you for listening to us.

- SPC Fish

I am the spouse of a military recruiter.

From: Jocelyn
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 15:32:49
To: soldiers@michaelmoore.com
Subject: Army Recruiting

I am at a loss when it comes to finding help. I just stumbled upon this website and thought hey--it cant hurt. I am the spouse of a military recruiter. Army to be exact. I have been writing members of congress and even the President himself and I am not finding help or support. My husband who served in Iraq was selected for recruiting. This life is not his choice. We have been relocated to a city where we have been stripped of all our military customs, commissary and PX and housing, and there is minimal compensation. I do not see my husband until Sundays. He is so exhausted from day to day that I fear something is going to happen to him. The hours are horrid, the pressure on him is outrageous and the mental change that he is going through is unacceptable!!! Iraq changed him to begin with and now the recruiting assignment is changing him even more. We are completely broke living paycheck to paycheck, which we have never done. We are in a town that IS NOT affordable for a military member. We have no family time and the kids and myself are suffering. We have no hope of owning a home anytime in the near future and that is ever if my husband doesn't enter a mental facility. I started writing people long before the whole recruiting scandal. I am yet to find a report that shows how much pure HELL the military recruiter goes through himself. Nothing has been shown on how much the family that is behind him suffers either. The hours are so long and tiring that recently there was an incident where a recruiter was in accident because of lack of sleep. Luckily he or anyone else was not injured but what about next time? I don't want that to be my husband!!! I have not spoke to a spouse yet that is happy with their husbands lifestyle as a recruiter. I just want people to hear a different side to the story. Not to dismiss what the recruiters are doing wrong but to help reform recruiting in general so they don't have to be lying scum. My husband is a wonderful soldier that would rather go back to Iraq than be here recruiting. I am so outraged and at a loss. I am doing my best to be there for my husband but I am ready to give up. He doesn't have a choice in this matter. In fact he was forced to either reenlist indefinitely before this assignment or get out of the military and never be able to enlist again. And flush that 13 years that he has giving to this country down the drain. I am sick of this scandal, I am sick of those head honchos acting like they didn't know what the recruiters were doing when they are the ones putting the pressure on the soldiers to get the contracts. I don't appreciate it AT ALL! The recruiters cannot even speak up in fear of punishment. Even us as spouses should keep our mouths shut in fear that it will be taken out on our spouse. I will not keep my mouth shut. The country needs to know!!!

Recruiting the Amish

A response to Jocelyn, the spouse of a military recruiter, who wrote in last May.

Dear Jocelyn,

Thank God, I am out of that mess that you are describing so eloquently. My husband was a Navy recruiter. Oh the hell we went through! (We are now divorced.) My husband had it the same way as your husband does. He was even told to work on Sunday. If they didn't meet their goals, they had to stay at the recruiting station and sleep on the desks. My husband had a very bad back at the time, and suffered even the more. He would come dragging in at midnight sometimes and be up before the sun was up all the way.

What was terrible is that he was saddled with Amish Country. Tell me how you get the Amish to join the Navy! When it came to having his 20 years in and getting out, he was "ordered" to stay in and go overseas. (This was not when we were at war.) He said "screw you" and got out! Well, before that happened, they made it hell for him. He was brought up on charges, (10 to be exact) and was scheduled for a Courts Martial. After me losing our baby because of nerves, and him getting VERY ill, he was cleared of all charges and they found they were "trumped up". BUT, they wouldn't give him his retirement because he wouldn't stay and do what they said he had to do! We fought for three years. We had no money. My husband was disabled with his back problems. We lived in the worst part of town, ate macaroni and cheese, and suffered for those 3 years like no one could imagine! After the 3 years was up, we won his retirement! It was retroactive and we finally got a CAR! We had none!

So Jocelyn, I really DO understand what you are going through. The problem is, you cannot fight them unless you have the time in and you can tell them as we did, to go to and stay put. (By the way, my husband put up with this for 2 years as well!) It destroyed us and I am hoping for your sake, it won't destroy you. I know many recruiting families that are afraid to "come out" and tell the truth. I have nothing to lose anymore. They ruined my life and I will tell the world all about it now!

With heartfelt love,
V. Kipp

Will I re-enlist? Hell no.

From: Joel Bottem
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2005 5:41 AM
To: soldiers@michaelmoore.com
Subject:

Dear Honorable Moore,

After several years out of the military, and many months of hearing the media reporting how bad the National Guard and Reserves needed people, I signed up for 1 year. It is an option the National Guard offers to Prior Service personnel. It took me a year-and-a-half after 9/11 to convince my wife I was needed, and that I had more to give to the service of our country.

I joined for the 1 year, singing up as a mechanic with the 951st Maintenance Company out of Camp Murray, Tacoma, Washington. With just 3 months remaining on my contract, my unit gets activated, and I am put on a "stop-loss." My executive officer laughingly told me President Bush has turned my "try-one enlistment" into a "try-two-and-a-half." I am now attached to the 152nd Maintenance Company, from Maine, serving in Baghdad, Iraq.

To add insult to injury, when our maintenance company arrived into Kuwait, we were informed that the unit we were to be attached to in Iraq no longer needed mechanics, so we would be doing "force protection." So we have an entire maintenance company of approximately 240 soldiers, aside from maybe 20 personnel, pulling guard duty, while KBR mechanics make $140K and up to do the work we were brought over to do.

I just turned 40 in July, my birthday was spent pulling guard duty on an ammo holding area very near Baghdad. Will I re-enlist? Hell no.

Thanks for all you do!

Joel Bottem
Currently in Iraq, not Seattle where I should be

"May God forgive us all..."

From: roland tellez
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 3:18 PM
To: Michael Moore
Subject: another disheartened troop...

Dear Mr. Moore,

I just wanted to thank you for showing the world that some of us, while serving our country with pride, serve our current president and his administration with sadness and remorse. It is not easy to speak out against this meaningless war when you are serving on a remote tour and the only thing giving comfort to your fellow servicemen and women is the false reality that we are fighting for a great cause. This false reality that once brought comfort to my mind now injects anger, sorrow, and fear through my soul. May God forgive us all.

Roland Tellez, Sra. U.S.A.F.

"I solemnly swear to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

*In this next letter, the words in bold are ones that I have selected to be in bold type - not the author. CG

From: "super sco"
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 3:22 PM
To: soldiers@michaelmoore.com
Subject: To inform our citizens

To whom it may concern,

I am a Senior Airman in the United States Air Force. I wish to share a little bit about myself so that you may better understand my concerns over America's current precarious place in history. I enlisted in the Air Force for many reasons. Among them was education benefits, pay, travel opportunities, but most importantly, I simply wanted to wear the uniform. I viewed enlistment as an important act that young men had been undertaking for over two hundred years to protect our people. Imagine my surprise when, upon reaching Lackland AFB, TX for Basic Military Training, I looked at my fellow "trainees" and found nothing but children. I saw not a group of patriotic Americans, but a political rally of apathetic shock troops with no notions of what the Constitution stands for or the oath we took.

I have echoed the words of that oath as a warning to fellow members of my squadron every single time I have heard an undemocratic syllable from their mouths. I quote, "I solemnly swear to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The last two words are key: and domestic. To all who read this, I urge this warning: the single greatest danger to America and our way of life is ourselves. No foreign power can dictate your oppression. No foreign army can impose martial law upon us. No foreign dictator can remove the precious right that I am exercising at this moment. Militaries do not keep people free! Militaries keep us safe, but it is we citizens who ensure freedom! Every time we voice our opinion we are promoting freedom. Stationing our armies, navies, and air forces in distant lands and toppling weak regimes does not keep us free. It is through political action and dissent over injustice that we remain free! I say this now to inform concerned Americans of what I have witnessed firsthand as citizen soldier in the U.S. Air Force: your soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines need instruction on what government by consent means; they need a refresher course in Constitutional government; they need to be reminded that their loyalties lie not to the person in office but to the ideals of the Constitution.

Consider this personal example. In the recent presidential election, I made my opinion very clear and I will make it now. I did not support George W. Bush because his speech on March 17, 2003 mislead our country to war. In hindsight, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. The intelligence community has publicly admitted to making a mistake in their reports. I personally feel we have been lied to, and when I expressed this opinion I received the greatest injury of all. I was told I was not to share my opinions in the workplace, which is an Air Force installation. I was told to give up our most precious freedom, the freedom from which all others stem: the freedom of speech. It was on that day that my tolerance for the injustices I sustain in the Air Force withered. The attitude of others in my squadron was that I was being disloyal. If I had a nickel for every time they said to me, "What's wrong with you? Are you anti-military? Are you a pacifist? You don't like your president?" I would never have to work again. The greatest threat to our freedom is the prevailing attitude in the military. The view that we should be personally loyal to the president, not to the Constitution; the idea that the president should not be accountable to public opinion polls.

Your soldiers have forgotten the oath they swore. The Constitution established a separation of powers, and placed a civilian at the top of the military for a reason. Throughout history, no lesson can be more apparent than the old adage, "Power corrupts." How many kings, tyrants, and dictators used their militaries to usurp power from the people? How many used the military to force citizens to consent to authoritarian rule? The number is astronomical. Our Founding Fathers listened to the voice of history, and knew this lesson well. We must teach it to our children, your future soldiers, again. Never blindly trust authority! This is the heart of the ideals behind the Constitution. Government, if left unchecked, will work to further its own agendas. We must keep government in check to ensure they follow our agenda. And that is the heart of the ideals behind the oath we soldiers take. This is what our soldiers have forgotten. I caution all Americans to keep a watchful eye upon your soldiers. Their hearts and minds are being won over by politicians. They are barely loyal to the Constitution, or the ideals of freedom. Many would rather sacrifice a few of your personal liberties that are "taken for granted" for their personal security. They have forgotten that security stems from personal freedom: the security against oppression lies in the powers that freedom grants. The power I speak of is the power to say "No" and not to comply. I fear dark days for our country and our people. Listen to history, go back and read and reflect upon the atrocities that tyrants and the militaries under their control have inflicted. Then perhaps my warning will have personal significance for all of you.

Christopher R. Atkins
Senior Airmen
United States Air Force

posted February 28, 2006 07:41 PM              

My heart breaks everytime I think about all our young lives that were wasted (and continue to be wasted every day), on that grisly, never should have been, war! And then there are the ones who's lives will never be the same because of their war injuries...*sigh*

posted February 28, 2006 08:09 PM              

I served in another ******** war as a nurse in Kandahar.

I have sent soldiers with missing limbs, with vents breathing for them, with malaria infections, and with burns from IEDs and land mines back to Germany and I don't know why this had to happen in the first place.....

I'm sick of thinking about the soldiers screaming in the trauma bay before we took them to surgery, and I haven't even seen combat, only the effects....

SPC FISH

I just wanted to thank you for showing the world that some of us, while serving our country with pride, serve our current president and his administration with sadness and remorse. It is not easy to speak out against this meaningless war when you are serving on a remote tour and the only thing giving comfort to your fellow servicemen and women is the false reality that we are fighting for a great cause. This false reality that once brought comfort to my mind now injects anger, sorrow, and fear through my soul. May God forgive us all...

Roland Tellez, Sra. U.S.A.F.

posted February 28, 2006 09:33 PM            

Not only is Moore's fantasy movie a fraud but Michael Moore is a fraud personally. The man from poverty stricken Flint is not from Flint but rather from Davison, an upper middle class suburb.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth Moore displays over outsourcing of American jobs is typical of Moore's blather. Moore outsources his own graphics work to Canada.

Moore attempts to come across as a staunch supporter of minorities, especially African Americans but Moore doesn't employ any African Americans on his own staff.

The bloated toad castigates corporations and declares he doesn't own a single share of stock. He's right, he doesn't own a single share, he owns 10's of thousands of shares through a holding company which is in his and his wife's name. You would be surprised to know what stocks Moore owns; the very same companies he constantly bashes.

This foreign policy, domestic policy, economic policy expert/college dropout is nothing more than a lying intellectual pissant. Moore is the kind of leftist other leftists get exercised over because he gives them all and their movement a black eye with his transparent lying.

As for the so called letters to moveon.org you posted, I won't be going too far out on the limb by declaring them phonies too. They're entirely too good to be true, perfect syntax, perfect spelling, perfect punctuation and such imagery. All I can say is wow. One shouldn't expect to find that kind of perfection in any random sampling of English usage, not even among the English. Certainly, one could scour this site and not find such uniform perfection. And this from the downtrodden, the ill educated, those who had no future, no hope, no choice, except to join the military to be used as human cannon fodder for the evil imperialism of George Bush.

So, like everything else about the bloated lying hypocrite, I would challenge the authenticity of those letters too.

I'll let a noted and celebrated leftist, Christopher Hitchins report on the authenticity of Moore's overheated fantasy film.

But while I'm on this subject, Richard Clarke was the collaborator with Moore on this fantasy piece. Even Clarke says Moore got the story wrong about the Saudis and who authorized them to depart America. Clarke says he authorized the flights and that Moore knew that in plenty of time to edit his stinking piece of trash but chose not to do so.

posted February 28, 2006 09:43 PM            

Moore: Trying to have it three ways

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

posted February 28, 2006 10:00 PM            

Clarke claims responsibility
Ex-counterterrorism czar approved post-9-11 flights for bin Laden family
By Alexander Bolton

posted March 01, 2006 09:38 AM              

quote:

---

I suppose my old DI was right and there's always that 10% who never get the message.

---

Well yes jwhop - since most people seem to be against this conflict, one could easily say that it is people who believe as you do who are in the 10% "who never get the message." Perception is a very moveable feast and as such, saying that one group of people are wrong in their perceptions, only leaves you wide open to the same claim.

Now then what did I predict in my last post?

quote:

---

Now Pidua and jwhop you will no doubt dismiss these accounts as they come from Michael Moore's website, but just do me a small favour and read the words of each person.

---

Well suffice to say you have reacted to the information I posted in exactly the way I presumed you would - by ignoring the content and instead, going off at a tangent about Michael Moore in your inimitable fashion of barking up the 'Leftist tree' with an almost religious zeal!

Michael Moore is a film maker; if you read my posts again, you'll find I haven't cited him as the one true voice or the font of all knowledge - I'm fully aware that a film (with it's edited scenes/content) should be subject to keen scrutiny. It made for interesting viewing and raised some questions that need to be answered. In actual fact what I said was,

quote:

---

Without all the information and evidence neither of us can prove anything, so I think it's safer to say that we make educated assumptions based on the information at hand and more than a little on our individual political and moral bias.

---

As I said, I knew you would take issue with the letters being from his site, but by saying,

quote:

---

They're entirely too good to be true, perfect syntax, perfect spelling, perfect punctuation and such imagery. All I can say is wow. One shouldn't expect to find that kind of perfection in any random sampling of English usage, not even among the English. Certainly, one could scour this site and not find such uniform perfection. And this from the downtrodden, the ill educated, those who had no future, no hope, no choice, except to join the military to be used as human cannon fodder for the evil imperialism of George Bush.

---

And by disbelieving that there are members of the US military with such grammatical prowess, aren't you going some way to unravelling Pidua's careful argument (see quote below) about the US military providing the opportunity of better education for it's servicemen and women?

quote:

---

Those that enter the military are more apt to obtain a college degree that those who decide not to join from the same areas - specifically those poor, poor people you speak of

---

But as per usual jwhop, you're so consumed with bashing the 'evil loony left' as you seem to perceive it, that in pouncing on anything related to it you manage to miss enormous swathes of the point someone was endeavouring to make. Honestly, you approach it with such verve and venom that sometimes I can just imagine you dressed as REPUBLICAN MAN - off to save the world from the evil Leftist genius, dastardly Ted Kennedy, clad in tights, a cape and a little cowboy hat just like Ronald Reagan! But seriously though, just as not all Republicans or Conservatives are evil lunatics devoid of all common sense, compassion and morality, (this will shock you,) but not all Democrats/Socialists are either! Unless you (and I on occasion, I admit) are able to look beyond our perceived stereotypes of each others political beliefs, it seems unlikely that we can ever have a truly open debate about these issues which is a shame. And much more tragic than that, we will miss the 'real information' that each of us is trying to share. There is a grain of truth in everyone's argument... even yours!

Con't over page...