Prissy Roasts Chickenhawks
Bush's Iraq Victory Strategy is here for your amusement: www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Iraq%20National%20Strategy%2011-30-05.pdf
Words of Wisdom from our Dubya: "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, to attain their own freedom and to make their own way."-President George W. Bush, January 2005" “"One of the most important ways to fight terrorism is to promote democracy, and one of the most important ways to promote democracy is the rule of law."”
-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, July 2005"The principal task of our military is to find and defeat the terrorists, and that is why we are on the offense.
And as we pursue the terrorists, our military is helping to train Iraqi security forces so that they can defend their people and fight the enemy on their own."”
Someone needs to tell Dubya we are on the defense- and have been for quite some time now...he and Gonzales should try the rule of law here, before they attempt to impose it there.
Excerpt from A Patriot's Handbook by Caroline Kennedy. Readers, this is a wonderful book. The selections and speeches are truly inspiring.
C. 1900 by Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Twain wrote this essay in opposition to the American imperialism he felt took place in the Philippines.
As Regards Patriotism It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not. In Austria and some other countries this is not the case. There the state arranges a man's religion for him, he has no voice in it himself.
Patriotism is merely a relgion-love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.
In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper. The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured patriot often gags in private over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he can. Blessed are the meek. Sometimes, in the beginning of an insane shabby political upheaval, he is strongly moved to revolt, but he doesn't do it-he knows better. He knows that his maker would find out- the maker of his patriotism, the windy and incoherent six-dollar subeditor of the village newspaper-and would bray out in print and call him a traitor. And how dreadful that would be. It makes him tuck his tail between his legs and shiver. We all know-the reader knows it quite well-that two or three years ago nine-tenths of the human tails in England and America performed just that act. Which is to say, nine-tenths of the patriots in England and America turned traitor to keep from being called traitor. Isn't it true? You know it to be true. Isn't it curious? Yet it was not a thing to be very seriously ashamed ot. A man can seldom-very seldom-fight a sinning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy. For many a year-perhaps always-the training of the two nations had been dead against independence in political thought, persistently inhospitable toward patriotism manufactured on a man's own premises, patriotism reasoned out in the man's own head and fire-assayed and tested and proved in his own conscience. The resulting patriotism was a shopworn product procured at second hand. The patriot did not know just how or where he got his opinions, neither did he care, so long as he was with what seemed the majority-which was the main thing, the safe thing, the comfortable thing. Does the reader believe he knows three men who have actual reasons for their pattern of patriotism-and can furnish them?
Let him not examine, unless he wants to be disappointed. He will be likely to find that his men got their patriotism at the public trough, and had no hand in its preparation themselves.
Training does wonderful things. It moved the people of this country to oppose the Mexican war; then moved them to fall in with what they supposed the opinion of the majority-majority patriotism is the customary patriotism-and go down there and fight. Before the Civil War it made the North indifferent to slavery and friendly to the slave interest; in that interest it made Massachusetts hostile to the American flag, and she would not allow it to be hoisted on her State house-in her eyes it was the flag of a faction. Then by and by, training swung Massachusetts the other way, and she went raging South to fight under that very flag and against that aforetime protected interest of hers.
There is nothing that training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach or below it. It can turn bad morals to good, good morals to bad; it can destroy principles, it can recreate them; it can debase angels to men and lift men to angelship. And it can do any one of these miracles in a year-even in six months.
Then men can be trained to manufacture their own patriotism. They can be trained to labor it out in their own heads and hearts and in the privacy and independence of their own premises. It can train them to stop taking it by command, as the Austrian takes his religion.
Hot Links
Bruce suddenly wants to be a real soldier, but alas, he's too old. This midlife crisis hit Bruce shortly after his ex-wife marries the 27 year-old Ashton Kutcher. Act as macho and silly as you want Bruce, it is amusing- apparently Demi tired of it-Prissy notes her new man doesn't have to strut around proving his stuff.
Here is, as Granny says, the same old stuff warmed over...check back later for updates-Prissy is having technical problems with publishing today news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051130/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq;_ylt=ArJ14qK9SVFZSf2dKaOSLGys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-
Bush Urges Patience With "Iraq Training"
In a speech defending his policy, Bush said that Iraqi forces have not always performed well in combat but have made substantial progress in the past year.
So take their brightest out of the country, train them and send them back. Someone tell the Bush administration their credibility gap is now larger than the Grand Canyon...
www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-elect29nov29,1,4820903.story
LA Times-Schwarzenegger Cannot Appoint Successor to Cunningham
SAN DIEGO - Once Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger receives official notification of the resignation of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe), he has two weeks to call a special election in the 50th Congressional District. Unlike a Senate vacancy, he cannot appoint a successor.
www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001611706
Editor and Publisher-'Doonesbury' Strip Showing Bush Defending Frat Torture at Yale is 'Fact-Based,' Says Garry Trudeau Trudeau, a Yale grad, added: "I did a week on this in the strip back during the 2000 election. The reason I revisited the episode is that it's gained in relevance with the president's reluctance to forego torture in intelligence-gathering."
The branding, which was exposed by the Yale paper, was first covered by The New York Times in a Nov. 8, 1967, article. Trudeau much later told Rolling Stone in an interview that he drew his first editorial cartoon for the Yale Daily News during the branding controversy. According to that 1967 Times article, "The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied a 'hot branding iron' to the small of the back of its 40 new members in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately a half inch wide, appeared with the article." It added that a former president of Delta revealed that "the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is 'only a cigarette burn.'" This week's Sunday strip www.ucomics.com/doonesbury/2005/11/27/ shows the Mark Slackmeyer character mentioning that Bush's alleged support of torture has roots in 1967 Yale. The Universal Press Syndicate-distributed comic then switches back in time to show screams emanating from the true-life Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
Shouldn't surprise anyone. This is the president who enjoyed inserting firecrackers into frogs to watch them explode as a child. The boys Prissy questioned about this were disgusted that the president would do such a thing to animals.
With Prissy's background working with troubled juveniles- should a mother have come to Prissy, telling her that a nine year-old was doing such activities-Prissy would urged them to seek counseling! This is a red flag for sure.
wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1123231&tw=wn_wire_story
Miami Police Take New Tack Against Terror
MIAMI (AP) -- Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.
Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.
"This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It's letting the terrorists know we are out there," Fernandez said.
The operations will keep terrorists off guard, Fernandez said. He said al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plot attacks by putting places under surveillance and watching for flaws and patterns in security. Another reason not to let Jeb Bush near another public office if this is the kind of "protection" he provides-PP
