Dan Rather vs. Saddam Hussien

[george]

did anyone else see this last night?

saddam reminds me of bill clinton. i hate them both very much. but man they can talk with a silver tounge.

saddam was very clever in working God into almost everything he said (although he is about as Muslim as i am), and did a very good job of taking up the points of the many reasons that the Western world is against the US attacking him.

Also, his nationalistic, WE WILL DEFEND OURSELVES against the American Bully was good, it was hard not to kind of admire the balls to defy the US military war machine. that is until you remember that he is a hideous cruel person that would just as soon kill his own people as look at them. Rather did a good job of reminding the viewers of that.

all in all an interesting interview, and well done by Rather (who i have always thought was regarded way more highly than he deserved).

[ranxer]

except for the god rhetoric i feel the same way about george dubya's speeches :/

[george]

i agree with you there. i liked a lot of the ideas W had starting out (his administration that is). i was all for legalizing the mexicans that come here to work, and was against Kyoto treaty.

but, he has gone crazy. i think he sees himself on a mission from God, and that scares me a great deal. when people start assuming that they have a mandate from some almighty ruler, they are able to justify all sorts of nutty shit (like attacking Iraq at this point in time).

we are doomed.

[Ronnie Raygun]

What has he done to make you think that, George?

[mburbank]

As negative as I've been of late, I do not think we're doomed. I think we are in serious danger, I think there's some very bad stuff on the horizon, but there are ways out.

I think a bucketload of folks in Iraq ARE doomed, and this is beyond tragic. But I think there are two serious possabilities to avert doom here. One is that Bush doesn't get a second term. If the economoy stays in the crapper, If we grab the oil, if the war is not quick and easy for us, if Afganistan is still a shambles... Plus, the anti-war movement is already underway and could grow dramatically if America suffers on the battlefield. A second Bush administration is not a foregone conclusion, as the HUGE # of democratic Presidential contenders shows. Most of those guys wouldn't put their money out there if they thought they had only a snowballs chance in hell.

I also think the more we flex our muscles, the more Europe will turn against us and the balance of power will normalize. The European leaders who supprot our olicy toward Iraq may wel find themselves out of office in the next elections.

On the other hand, I sometimes have nightmares about a tow term W. followed by a tow term Jeb followed by their Hispanic cousin and by then our brains will be so softened and our civil rights rights so eroded they'll be able to crown Jenna an her twin co-empress.

[george]

for being doomed:

i think the gap in wealth in this country is creating more than a small cultural rift. the poor are getting poorer, and there is less and less opportunity for them to achieve financial sucess. the education system is not up to educating people anymore because the idea of teaching kids real self esteem by competition and hard work has been replaced with a "you are fantastic" no matter what mushy non competitive atmosphere.

also, the world around us is shifting, and i do not think the US is capable of handling all the danger in the world, and Europe traditionaly does Jack shit but sit in their intellectual tower poo pooing anyone who tries to stop the slide.

i think it is only a matter of time before the social unrest in the US becomes truly manifest and the riots, etc start. on the other side i think that China is biding their time to go after Taiwan, and when that happens the world is going to go beserk.

for George W:

all he ever talks about is god this and god that. i have not heard one speech by him lately that he did not give the impression that he had a personal connection to god. i may be oversensitive on this point because i have issues with religon in the first place, but it makes me highly suspicious of Georgies actions.

[Ronnie Raygun]

"....I think there are two serious possabilities to avert doom here. One is that Bush doesn't get a second term. If the economoy stays in the crapper, If we grab the oil, if the war is not quick and easy for us, if Afganistan is still a shambles... Plus, the anti-war movement is already underway and could grow dramatically if America suffers on the battlefield......"

Thanks for showing the real you. You don't the economy to improve and you want American's to die on the battlefield. Then you can regain your precious power.

I'm shocked.

[sspadowsky]

You are the most willfully ignorant son of a bitch I've ever seen in my life.
________
LovelyWendie99

[BombsBurstingInAir]

makes me feel better...

[ItalianStereotype]

jesus george....thats a pretty bleak view of americas future.

i dont think the gap in our wealth is our biggest problem. upward mobility has always been rather mercurial, just like the economy. of course the europeans are going to stay in their ivory tower, being supremely arrogant, until some kind of catastrophic event pulls them directly into things.

you might be right about the social unrest, this cultural revolution that we have been going through since the 60s is really beginning to damage our social structure and we are losing cohesion as a nation.

[george]

italian i dont think you really realize just how bad things are on the low end in this country. my wife recently had to quit her job in a poor neighborhood cause a guy threatened to kill her. the neighborhood was a pretty bad one, but the frustration these people live in is amazing.

and i saw in the paper yesterday that the company that owns Giant food stores (a big supermarket chane round here) is being investigated because they inflated profits ala Enron and MCI. there is another shit load of hard working people that will end up losing their pensions and jobs with nowhere to go and work at again. how many times does it happen before the middle moves down and forces out the poor?

how long before those poor people that are already frustrated with the world they are in now get shoved further down and they decide to say fuck it and start rioting and such?

[Vibecrewangel]

George, I'm sorry to hear about that.
Sadly, it has been happening more and more. And it's getting worse.

I've been through riots in Oakland.
I've been in gang fights in SF (long time ago.....bad teenage years)
I worked for GYROS World of Terror for several years, and there were times when I was on security that I was scared for my life.
I've had a gun pulled on me more than once.

The people who do these things already feel they have very little to live for. And that makes them dangerous. Pushing them any farther down is going to make it a lot worse. It is going to increase their numbers and turn an already bad situation into a pressure cooker ready too blow.

[Vibecrewangel]

It's actually really odd in the Silicon Valley. We don't have as many "poor" "middle" and "upper" neighborhoods as many other areas of the country. We have places were upper-middle class are next door to a low income housing apartment complex.
We have blocks that are very run down with one or two absolutly amazing houses on them.

It is a strange dynamic to say the least.

[ranxer]

We have places were upper-middle class are next door to a low income housing apartment complex.

dang! whats up with that? all over the place now.. not just inner city, north of chicago they call it section 8! i still can't believe our government uses that name for public housing. how the hell do you expect anyone to regard the help thier government gives back for our taxes if its called section 8 to start?!(says a lot to me)

its made broken for reasons that are mostly derived from the corporate persuit of profits and using all the power/persuasion that they can to get it. our cities and states are being raided by corporations, the public will be fighting it out amonst themselves as much as they can manage it.. racism, classism, ageism its divide and conquer folks.
it would be a lot worse right now if it werent for people fighting for thier/our rights over the years