Contributors

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

What In.....#$#%#$% Tarnation?

I was watching the news today and saw, with what can only be described as shock and awe, that Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for president.

Would someone please tell me if I have entered a parallel universe?

I am completely at a loss for words and this news, monumentally stunning as it is, has caused me to not put up the post regarding my plan for Iran.

At this point, I don't know if I like Rudy less or Pat more...it's all so confusing...someone please help!!!

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's called....we hate Hillary so much that we are going to be completely hypocritical on our morals and back our man.

Will you now see how awful Giuliani is?

Mu said...

...It does force one to 'pause for thought' doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

...people from the right are equally as befuddled.

Anonymous said...

Robertson is scary, he want's us to assassinate Chavez... I mean it's not a bad idea; but it goes against American policy. The more people endorse Giuliani the more I worry about what he would be like.

Mark Ward said...

Yeah, I must admit I do have concerns about Giuliani but so far they do not outweigh my concerns I have in regards to Hillary.

Anonymous said...

Mark, you are easily swayed by emotional arguments and symbolism. Giuliani is dirty; he pals around with guys like Bernie Kerrick. Like McCain, he's sold his soul to Pat Robertson, the NRA and the anti-abortion crowd.

If the Republican party isn't forced to reform itself (by losing the next presidential election), the criminals and thugs who run it will be rewarded. There will be no investigation of the crimes committed in Justice during the last election cycle (fraudulent prosecution of Democrats), and there will be more and more dirty tricks in electoral politics. They will make sure they control all the levers of power and make it impossible to be voted out.

Most importantly, if a Republican is elected president, the Supreme Court will be packed with right-wing nuts and the United States will enter a new Dark Age. The Republican machine will demand their nominees and they have enough dirt on Giuliani to ensure that he delivers.

A vote for Giuliani is a vote for a Supreme Court that doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights.

Anonymous said...

That's pretty looney. Remember it was Kerry who flew out of the Hamptons to Ohio for the "goose hunt" in 04. You won't see any politician of either party going after the NRA much because that is a losing issue for them and they know it.

Dirty tricks in elections? Notice that when democrats win elections (like in 06), all of a sudden there seem to be very few claims of voter fraud, voter intimidation, claims of ignorance as far as the ballot goes, etc. Jesse Jackson doesn't have to go on TV complaining about voter disenfranshisment either. Coincidence?

Anonymous said...

Wow, blk, you're nuttier than squirrel droppings...but then again, I'm sure this isn't the first time you've heard that.

Mark Ward said...

Actually, blk has a point but I don't think he is right about Rudy. I think it is more a case that the right can see Hillary winning and Rudy is the only shot of defeating her. It has nothing to do with what is right or wrong for the country--it is a power struggle between two warring factions.

RLD, there was no cry of voter fraud in 06 the fraud that was going on (by the Republicans) didn't matter. They got their asses kicked anyway. There was voter fraud in 2000 and in 2004. Go here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election%2C_2000#Florida

and here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election_controversy_and_irregularities

Now, you tell me, after reading all of this--everything was on the up and up?

The people that are currently running the Republican party are criminals. It's just that simple. The Democrats have other problems but stealing elections, and threatening people to get ahead isn't one of them--at present anyway. Democrats of the past were certainly like that, though, as the election in 1960 was stolen by the Mob. One could also make an argument that the Hillary machine is like that.

But Democrats in general, no sir. They don't have the balls to be that evil. It's obvious who does, though.

Anonymous said...

This is eerily similar to another retort you had recently where you posted a link that in actually refuted your own point. Again with this Wikipedia link. I read every line of link-1 and nowhere does it present the slightest proof as to any fraud. Why did you put it there to support a case on fraud then? The 2nd link provides link after link of innuendo by the DNC and various fringe groups with unsubstantiated quotes by the likes of UFO nut, Dennis Kucinich, but provides no proof or even verifiable examples. It goes into minute detail on voting machines that maybe, could-be, might have some security flaw that only a NASA scientist could hack (except that the systems weren’t connected to the internet (doh!!)…Kinda hard not to notice someone taking the machines apart in a voting booth) or a software irregularity that benefitted nobody. And a few examples of people too stupid to vote in the first place…oh, should the GOP help the opposition vote?...And be called criminal for not driving you to the polls? The best a conspiracy theorist could legitimately garner from these posts is that lines were longer in high population areas? Wow!! What a shock!!
Now, if you want to do a whole post on the history of election fraud in the modern era, I’m more than willing to stack up the case of Donkey Vs Elephant. We can discuss Democrat pollsters paying people, attacks on Republican headquarters, slashing tires of GOP “Get-Out-The-Vote” vans, voting for the dead, multiple votes in different districts, ignoring Florida Supreme Court guidelines on how the 2000 recount ballots were to be reviewed, ignoring military ballots, etc. I can do this all day, baby. Enough!!...You lost the election! Buck up and try again next time.

Mark Ward said...

I think when you read the links they present a balanced look at what happened. I wasn't trying to prove or disprove my point. I didn't think a moveon.org link would have been unbiased.

I wanted rld to examine the evidence and tell me if there is smoke and fire, in his or her opinion.

You'll get no argument from me about the history of corruption in the Democratic party. Now, as in the present, it's the Republicans that are criminals and make a routine habit of breaking the law.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but the problem is that you characterize as “criminal” what constitutional scholars and the Supreme Court cannot even figure out…so, at best, it’s a gray area. When I call a Democrat a criminal, I’m very careful as to what I’m referencing. Sandy Berger, for example, is a criminal beyond a shadow of doubt. It’s not political bickering; it’s not something that one side can characterize 1 way and the other side characterize another…he’s dead bang guilty. (And so are some Rep., but that’s not what you’re referencing here is it?)

…and I specifically referenced “this era” for a reason. You don’t have to go back 50 years to find Democratic shenanigans. I can find 2 to 1 or better against Dems in relation to voting irregularities in the current era. Heck, pick up the paper any day and you’ll find some new skid row bum who just donated $20 million to Hillary.

Mark Ward said...

I'm sure Sandy Berger is guilty. But so is Dick Cheney. Neither is grey to me.

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Alan Dershowitz, in his book Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 said that "the decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial oath."

Anonymous said...

What is VP Cheney verifiably guilty of?

Alan Dershowitz has a very well documented history of liberal bias. The Florida Supreme Court tilted left and voted that way...nobody on the left complained when they ignored state constitutional law and precedence to make a ruling that favored the outcome the left wanted. The US Supreme Court simply called them on their neglect of their own laws.

Mark Ward said...

He is guilty of outing a CIA agent.

Anonymous said...

Really? And you have proof of this?

This has been thoroughly debunked.

Mark Ward said...

Really?

On July 14, 2003, a newspaper column entitled "Mission to Niger" by Robert Novak disclosed Plame's name and status as an "operative" who worked in a CIA division on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This was 8 days after Joe Wilson's column, What I Didn't Find in Africa, appeared in the New York Times.

Here is a picture of the column with Cheney's handwriting on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cheneysnotes.jpg

which he then gave to Libby who then talked to Armitage and then Novak. By asking the question, "Did his wife go with him?" Cheney was quite clever in letting underlings appear, as they would have asked "Who is his wife?", to be the ones that originally let her name out. Yet, HE was the one who first mentioned her name indirectly, as he wrote it on July 8, 2003. The law is pretty clear on this. You don't leak the name of a CIA undercover operative. It's treason.

I think he knew full well what he was doing and was pissed off that Wilson caught him in one of his bullshit lies so he basically threatened Wilson by putting Plame's life in jepoardy. What is terribly ironic about all of this is that Plame's job was to track loose nukes--the very thing that we are supposed to be supporting given the threats we face. And yet, because she and her husband, both Republicans btw, didn't want to drink deeply from the Kool Aid container, they got burned for it.

And so have we.

Anonymous said...

That is soooooo stupid.

a) “Caught him in BS lie”…what lie was that? The yellow cake lie? In fact, the only lying person in that scenario turned out to be Joe Wilson. Just about everybody on the face of the earth except Wilson and you accepts that Saddam was trying to acquire uranium. This isn’t propaganda from Karl Rove’s desk, but the conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Report, Lord Butler's report in the UK, MI6, French intelligence, other European intelligence agencies and THE ORIGINAL CIA REPORT BASED ON JOE WILSON'S OWN BRIEFING TO THEM.

b)“Life in jeopardy”. What a joke. Even Wilson admitted on a CNN interview that she’d not been in any type of covert role for over 6 years.
c) Plus, she’d already been outed by Joe himself years before this and even inadvertently outed by the CIA itself long before that. This was laid out by 36 media news organizations in their “friend of the court brief” in US Court of Appeals in Washington in defense of NY Time’s Judith Miller and Matt Cooper to show that since she was already outed that no crime could have even been committed. The news organizations noted that there is an exception to the 1982 law in question (on revealing the identity of a CIA agent) that explicitly states that it is NOT a crime if, "the United States has publicly acknowledged or revealed" the covert agent's "intelligence relationship to the United States."…which the CIA had inadvertently done to both the Russians and the Cubans.

Man, give up already.

Mark Ward said...

Dave,

I don't know where you are getting your information about Plame but I have seen her on several shows since and has not said anything of the kind. She doesn't talk much about the nature of her work because its still classified. In fact, large portions of her book have been redacted for purposes of national security.

Your view of events is typical of the times. It's not breaking the law when conservatives do it. Everything is excused, washed away, and chalked up to "politics." I don't have a problem admitting when Democrats break the law.

There is no doubt in my mind that history will record this time as the most corrupt in American History and I won't give up as long as people have the misguided belief that men like Dick Cheney are acting in the interests of our nation.

Mark Ward said...

One more thing I thought about over night. There really is no "truth" anymore. These days, an event happens and, depending upon your political bias, it is perceived in so many different ways across a broad spectrum. It doesn't matter what actually happened because the "truth" is manufactured.

I don't think I can recall a time in my life where things were more bent out of reality.

Anonymous said...

Is my information inaccurate? Which bit? And your source? You think Plame doesn’t have a bias in favor of herself? Plus, I never questioned whether her “work” was classified. That’s irrelevant.

Well, what can I say? It’s not breaking the law because no law was broken. That’s the point of my comparison with Sandy Berger. With Berger, it’s not a matter of policy or political viewpoint; he’s guilty, plain and simple. But when you characterize this administration and Cheney in particular for this Plame incident, it IS a matter of policy. You disagree with the administration’s policies so you characterize as criminal what is not even a crime. You disagree with the Terrorist Surveillance Program, so you characterize the administration as criminal yet constitutional scholars, supreme court judges and congress itself is divided on their views of the 4th amendment…so you can hardly call it clear cut criminality…it’s politics.

Well, you may be right about history, but I don’t think so. Time will tell. 20 years from now, I believe history will tell a very interesting story. Adrian Peterson will have led the Viking to 3+ Super Bowls, Global Warming will be laughed at even more than the “ice age” alarmists of the 80s and Bush will be held in as high of regard as Reagan.

I will agree with you last statement. I don’t recall a time where reality has been as bent. …but I suspect we make this comment for different reasons.

Mark Ward said...

To me, the cases of Berger and Cheney are pretty clear cut. The question is why would Berger do what he did? Is it as simple as trying to protect his and his bosses reputation? Or is it more?

See, if I played politics, I would say the Berger thing was politically motivated, like most of the liberal blogs say. In the end, it doesn't matter. Berger still broke the law. Pretty clear cut to me.

So did Cheney. His office is where the leak originally came from, not Armitage. This is the point we have gotten to now...where people who are tying to help our country (who disagree with Cheney) are screwed over.

All of these problems we have now have an origin point, Dave, and it certainly isn't the liberal media, the Hollywood elite, the Democrats, or me. There is a tremendous wrong being done to our country right now and guess where it's coming from? It's irrelevent to me that they are Republicans. It's the behavior....which I abhor and you inexplicably excuse.

Anonymous said...

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to see/hear the tree falling, did it actually fall? If you run a red light but aren’t caught, are you guilty? If you steal protected documents and are caught, is it politically motivated prosecution or are you simply guilty regardless of politics?

Case 1: I see and hear the tree fall. It fell. It is lying on the ground. There is no doubt. You contend that it ‘may’ have fallen, but it’s politically motivated of me to notice that it fell.

Case 2: You don’t see or hear the tree fall, but you’re sure that it did. I say, “Show it to me”, but you cannot. But you are still sure the tree has fallen and expect me to believe it has fallen as well.

… in the end it comes down to such different root beliefs & world views that it, as always, causes me to wonder why I bother.