Letters to the Editor
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Shocked!
I was shocked by Carter's apology, considering he had shown so much courage in standing up to the Israel Lobby's smear campaign and attacks on his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid".
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Carter’s wimp-out
Carter’s wimp-out was yet another disappointment. It makes you wonder, what kind of behind-the-scenes pressure is inflicted on people who dare to speak the truth. Perhaps the corporate fascists that control this country threatened his family. In any case, the democrats should stop wasting time with legislation to bring the troops home, as long as Bush is in office. There is only one way to end the Republican War: IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY.
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Testify Brother Bill!!!
Bill Maher has the right idea.
The Democrats in congress and nearly all their presidential offerings from my lifetime (I'm 42) are PUSSIES!!!
Let me say it again. THEY'RE PUSSIES!!!
That's why they keep getting their asses handed to them by morons like Reagan and both Bushes. I keep waiting for a new Harry Truman or FDR, and I keep getting Carters, Mondales, Dukakises, Gores and Kerrys.
Reagan and Bush, Sr. should have been impeached over Iran-Contra! The Whitewater Witch-hunt would never have gotten to the point it did if only the Dems in congress would have stood up and called it for what it was.
Kerry bent over and took it up the ass from Bush, Jr. without a fight over the election returns.
Don't get me started on Gore. Did he even try to win that race?
And what about the Democrats who voted for that war in Iraq? Don't give me any shit that they were fooled by Bush and (as Hillary Clinton said) would have voted different if they knew the truth.
I got kicked out of three high schools and was a "C" student all through college, but even I knew that Bush was full of shit. How such well-educated people like Clinton, Kerry and Edwards can say they were fooled doesn't ring true to me.
I honestly believe that it is not the views, but the complete wussie-ness of the Democratic party and especially its presidential choices that turns people off of that party.
As for me, I've given up on waiting for them to grow some balls and fight. This country's fucked! I'm already looking at rural land so I can wait out the coming storm that's going to make the Civil War and the Great Depression look like a Sunday in the park.
But the sad part of it is, it wouldn't have happened if the Democrats had stuck to their ideals and fought like hell for them.
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Democrats are what's wrong with this country
And I don't mean that in the neo-Conservative, feed the rich political agenda, idiot redneck way.
What I mean is the Republicans have trancended politics, at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way, while all the Democrats can do is think about the political ramifications of everything they do, and everything the Republicans do. As inept, destruictive, stupid, dishonest, and arrogant as the Republicans have become, they have identified problems (wrongly, in nearly every case), devised solutions (stupid ones, in nearly every case), and done everything in their power to implement those solutions (clumsily, and with little regard for the law, in nearly every case).
Meanwhile, the Democrats have taken all the momentum and Congressional seats they have gained from the growing hatred of our President and all his buddies and turned it into... nothing. The Republicans are still in charge because they have moved the game to a playing field the Democrats are completely unfamiliar with - actually doing something instead of philibustering and intellectualizing. They worry more about getting re-elected than doing what's best for their constituents, par for the course but they have yet to realize or they just don't care that the stakes have become much, much higher in the last 7 years. They cave in the face of Bush doing things that would send an ordinary man to prison on his way to the 7th circle of Hell in the name of "saving the Republic" (anyone remember the 2000 election?) while ignoring the fact that the Republic is well on it's way to being destroyed right now and we need them to do something about it right now.
The entire federal government deserves to be impeached.
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Carter didn't "wimp out"
He merely realized how bad it looks when you make fun of retards. Very bad form!
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Jimmy said it first
I had the honor of hearing President Carter speak at Eckerd college when he was campaigning for Clinton. He said one thing that stuck with me. "Democrats are nice people".
That's the problem. Every time we slap the Republicans they cry. We feel bad. We stop slapping them. They snicker. It's time to take the whole darn bunch of them to the woodshed.
When is just one of those Bushes going to pick up a gun? Stop the retoric. Support the troops. Pick up a rifle. Let's get one of those Bush granddaughters or grandsons on the front line. That's supporting the troops. HW Bush is a hero. But, Granddaddy can't fight this war. Let's call a coward a coward. Let's stop being nice to the wrong people.
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True
Bill, you made me mad with your defense of Imus (I appreciate loyalty to friends, but you blew off what he did as insignificant) but this was great, especially the opening. And true - it will never become accepted for non-politicians to openly state a negative opinion until those in power (past, present, possible future) push aside the gentlemen's agreement they have that ultimately protects them all, and tell it like they really see it. I'm not talking about mean spirited, ad hominem and straw man attacks, mastered by conservatives and for which liberals are in their apprenticeship, but fair, reasonable, criticism that doesn't give in. "Respect for the office," blah blah blah, but we all need to remember that they work for US.
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Mr Cart - er
"Worst in history," as the great statesman from Georgia has to know, has been the title for which he has himself been actively contending since 1976. I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."
Many people in retrospect think Bush did a good job in assembling a large multinational coalition, under U.N. auspices, for the emancipation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. But Jimmy Carter used his prestige, at that uneasy moment, to make an open appeal to all governments not to join that coalition. He went public to oppose the settled policy of Congress and the declared resolutions of the United Nations and to denounce his own country as the warmonger. And, after all, why not? It was he who had created the conditions for the Gulf crisis in the first place—initially by fawning on the shah of Iran and then, when that option collapsed, by encouraging Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and by "tilting" American policy to his side. If I had done such a thing, I would take very good care to be modest when discussions of Middle Eastern crises came up. But here's the thing about self-righteous, born-again demagogues: Nothing they ever do, or did, can be attributed to anything but the very highest motives.
Here is a man who, in his latest book on the Israel-Palestine crisis, has found the elusive key to the problem. The mistake of Israel, he tells us (and tells us that he told the Israeli leadership) is to have moved away from God and the prophets and toward secularism. If you ever feel like a good laugh, just tell yourself that things would improve if only the Israeli government would be more Orthodox. Jimmy Carter will then turn his vacantly pious glare on you, as if to say that you just don't understand what it is to have a personal savior.
In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president's dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House "Bible study" sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia. It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.
Hahaha - read the rest of Hitchen's bitchslap on Carter on slate.