I don’t think anyone would accuse Ted Nugent of being particularly intelligent. I mean, this is the guy who wrote “Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang”. He also lives, by choice, in Texas, the most backwards-ass hellhole of anti-intellectualism in the world.

But I like opinionated people, even when they are wrong. Ted has a little editorial for us called “‘Live and let live’ foreign idea to left“. And, yup, he’s wrong. Or at least mostly wrong.

First of all, he’s mad at Paul McCartney for firing someone for eating hamburger. I don’t know anything about that story but I suspect that Mr. Nugent and I pretty much agree on that subject. How about we all have whatever diet we choose? Seems reasonable to me.

Second, he’s mad because some of us want there to be places that are “gun free”. A major proponent of this is churches. Many of us would also rather not have to worry about being shot by drunks arguing in bars (something that happens a lot).

Third, he doesn’t like the estate tax. He falls back on the same old incorrect rhetoric that rich people use to protect their gross collection of assets:

The unfair, un-American, unconstitutional death tax literally destroys mom-and-pop businesses across the land. Think about it.

No, it doesn’t destroy mom-and-pop businesses. The exemption for the estate tax is millions of dollars. As I wrote elsewhere:

Make no question about it — the estate tax still leaves plenty of room for rich cry babies to remain rich cry babies. If you are worth a shit load of money when you die, your children will still have a shit load of money. What we are saying with the estate tax is that your wealth was not created in a vacuum and you have a responsibility to share some portion of your wealth with the country that made it possible after you are dead and don’t need it anymore.

The estate tax is fair, it effects very few people, it helps support the very society that makes extreme wealth possible, it is consistent with a philosophy of a meritocracy, it can be tweaked to protect farmers and small business owners, and we absolutely need it.

And finally Nugent thinks that conservatives stand for “live and let live”:

While conservatives “live and let live,” the left arrogantly thinks it knows better than we do and will burden “we the people” with more government control until we are taxed to death.

Hmm, let’s see. Conservatives want to put the police in the doctor’s office with women who may be pregnant. They want to make sure gay people can’t give each other blow jobs. In Texas you can’t buy a dildo. Conservatives want to do away with the separation of church and state. They don’t want to teach children sex education. They want to deny useful medications to the terminally ill. They want the largest military on earth but they don’t want to pay the taxes that support it. They want to teach Biblical creation myths is scientific fact.

No, Ted just likes his meat, his guns and his money. He doesn’t understand shit about politics or policy.

Tim Pawlenty, the governor or Minnesota, is a complete tool.

Here he is, where the buck stops, the top dog, explaining why it happened:

“When complaints come about provisions lost as a result of this veto, I would encourage people to contact DFL leaders,” Pawlenty said in a statement.

Here is a man who said he would work in bipartisanship after he narrowly won his job back. What that means is you have to take some of the good with some of the bad. You have to compromise. That is what the people of Minnesota asked for. He vetoed it, I hear, for mainly one reason: “he was adamantly opposed to a policy change it contained that would have required including inflation in the state’s budget forecasts.”

He vetoed it because of some math stuff.

Th Tool-in-Chief also threatened to veto a medical marijuana bill that “would have allowed patients with specified chronic debilitating conditions to possess … marijuana.” Now who in their right might vetoes bills which effect only people with chronic debilitating conditions? How much of a zombie ideologue do you have to be to not let doctors help very sick people in any way possible? Republican Steve Sviggum, who I disagree with on absolutely everything, cosponsored this bill!

We all know what is going on. Pawlenty is eying national politics. He’d rather look like a good Republican lap-dog who veteos taxes than let the people of Minnesota spend their own money on the things they think are important.

Tool.

I have an idea: everyone who still has a Bush sticker on their car, here in 2007, 3 years after the election and 5 years after this fiasco of a “war” in Iraq. All of these people should be rounded up, drafted into the Army and sent to Iraq. They can do their ra-ra bullshit right from the sidelines.

Think this war is important? Then a) PAY FOR IT and b) show up and man a checkpoint.

micadelic said:

There is progress in Iraq. Most of the country is pacified. The people are now working with our troops more than ever providing intelligence on weapons caches, insurgent locations and movements, etc. There is no denying this. To say no progress is evident is not accurate and I’m confused as to why the left wants to not admit it when we do make progress.

If we are making progress it means we are in a better position to leave now than ever.

That’s the thing with this, you can’t have it both ways. Progress means that our withdrawal date should be approaching. The Democrats are trying to nail down how much progress we’ve made, have benchmarks, if you will, as that progress progresses and then leave when it is logical to do so.

I am one of those who thinks leaving now is better for the Iraqi people and better for the American people. We solved the Saddam problem easily but we can’t solve the “civil war” problem. For that to happen it cannot be seen as an American effort. (You see, that is the key problem here: we’ve undermined our ourselves in the region such that too many interests are working against us no matter what we do.)

C’mon, this is a really weak argument Michael. The enemy is those that oppose our goals in Iraq. The vast MAJORITY of the Iraqi people actually are with us, they want peace and stability. Sectarian violence has been steadily decreasing actually, it’s the Al Q’aeda type violence that’s been on the rise and so horrendous. The car and truck bombings specifically. These are designed to cause chaos and kill as many people as possible, regardless of their flavor of Islam. And it doesn’t make sense to tell them when we’re pulling out, they mark that date on their calendar and they just wait to hang on until that day comes. And it’s Pelosio and Reid and company that give them hope.

I don’t buy it. We don’t know what is cause and what is effect. Using your logic, a surge may make things worse. The more we fight them the more they use our occupation and bloodshed against us and the more it is in their interest to cause violence. Where is their “mandate” if we are not there? They justify their existence by fighting the Americans. Take that excuse away.

What we need is a primarily Iraqi force backed up by the UN and if necessary NATO or something. We need to take the imperialist Christian thing out of it, make it an international effort and give the Muslim world no reason to believe this is about America, oil or Judeo/Christianity. Then we need this international effort to provide security and get the power and water turned on and the markets open and keep it on and keep ’em open. We need to make it obvious to the Iraqis that Al Queda is the enemy, not America.

To me a strategy of transition is obvious. A reduction of the American occupation in concert with increased international involvement and a greater direct share of responsibility on the Iraqis themselves. It’s gotta be done. We should start thinking about it, and acting on it, now. The President is stalling until he gets out of office for political reasons. You should be outraged.

It is time to talk of a vote of no confidence in our President. We have an administration in disarray. They have spoken continually of progress in Iraq yet no progress is evident. They have changed enemies mid-war, first fighting Saddam Hussein’s army and now fighting to rebuild it.

Their track record is horrendous when it comes to Iraq. From “mission accomplished” onward this has been a litany of failures. There was the chaos immediately after the fall of Saddam. Their priorities were obvious when the protected the oil ministry while museums were looted and hospitals abandoned. There was the fiasco of Abu Ghraib. There was the constant rose-colored glasses — statements based on wishful thinking and now provably false: the “last throes”, “treated as liberators”, “progress”, “progress”, “progress”. What progress? Even after the surge Baghdad is in chaos. The government is impotent and the Iraq defense forces nowhere near adequate.

When he vetoed the recent bill that would continue funding of the war Bush said:

the Senate passed a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.

The President, the Commander-in-Chief, is a politician. He is supposed to be providing clear and obtainable goals to the military. The judgment of the military is used to achieve these goals. The military does not set policy goals. You see, the President has it backwards. This is the problem when the goals shift under your feet without you realizing it. Bush is waiting for the military solution to work. With no evidence whatsoever that it is working, the military is doomed to slog through Bush’s inept vision.

American can do better. When you don’t get the job done in the U. S. of A. you get handed a pink slip. When your leadership is ineffective you get put on the bench. We do not and can not tolerate ineptitude in our nation’s highest office.

I know many of you believe that Bush has noble goals at heart: an independent, self-sufficient and Democratic Iraq. I agree, this is a fine ideal. However, what reason do we have to believe that we alone can impose this vision on the Iraqis? Democracy must be nurtured from within, not imposed by the bullets of Marines. Bush’s vision for Iraq is the problem. I wish I had a pony but wishing doesn’t make it so.

Bush also said:

It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing. All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq.

With all due respect, Sir, what enemy? Are the Iraqi people our enemy? They want their country back. They are tired of the check points and the raids and the arrests. Are we fighting for one side of the other in the civil war? Are the Sunnis or the Shia our enemies? Who is our enemy? Al-Qaeda? They weren’t in Iraq until we destablized it. Do you really think that US Marines can force the Iraqi people to set aside their generational conflict?

The President wants to believe that we can achieve anything we set our minds to. He is willing to spend any amount of lives and money to prove that. We were defeated the very day that the President was made to believe that he could decide what the Iraqi people want.

The war in Iraq is already over. The terrorists didn’t win. They are simply feeding on the scraps of our occupation. The Iraqis didn’t win, they are devastated and destablized. The US didn’t win. Sorry, George, we didn’t. The military victory was easy, it’s the nation building that is hard. That’s why an earlier George W. Bush said “I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders“. He also said “I just don’t think it’s the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you.”

Too bad he didn’t listen to himself!

No American can sit by and claim that we are on the right path. It’s time to bench the quarterback.

If you assume my premises are true in the previous post, then my outrage is justified. I’m not calling Bush names to vent, I’m trying to accurately describe him. He is a coward because he is more interested in looking good than being a good leader. He is an idiot in that he makes illogical statements and decisions. His comprehension of the dynamics of the situations is flawed. This has resulted in the loss of time, lives and money.

We have a political opportunist at the helm and he sucks at his job and the Right is too loyal to their side to admit. That is changing. Righties are coming out and saying that this administration is and has been incompetent. I want this trend to continue not for political gain but for the sake of the country. This incompetence is obvious and if the Right can’t admit it because they are more interested in their side “winning”, we have a hard long slog ahead of us.

Yes, I could be more effective at convincing Righties. Maybe I’ll try that in the next post.

Chuck “The Blogumentarian” Olsen sums up beautifully why Bush is a fuckwad.

The Left has whinged about this since the beginning. We need the Right to step up and help us smack this president down.

We know exactly what he is doing: he is trying to protect his political legacy and make a partisan move by saddling the next administration with his mess. He’s a coward, an idiot and he has demonstrated that he is not capable of managing this. He is going to stall until there is a new president.

I think Congress should override this veto. We need the Right to help do that.

This is a great interview with Jon Stewart by Bill Moyers on PBS. Watch it, but here is small tidbit for you.

JON STEWART: But war that hasn’t affected us here, in the way that you would imagine a five-year war would affect a country. I think that’s why they’re so really — here’s the disconnect. It’s sort of this odd and I’ve always had this problem with the rationality of it. That the President says, “We are in the fight for a way of life. This is the greatest battle of our generation, and of the generations to come. “And, so what I’m going to do is you know, Iraq has to be won, or our way of life ends, and our children and our children’s children all suffer. So, what I’m gonna do is send 10,000 more troops to Baghdad.”

So, there’s a disconnect there between — you’re telling me this is fight of our generation, and you’re going to increase troops by 10 percent. And that’s gonna do it. I’m sure what he would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can’t, because he doesn’t have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country’s not so damn busy anymore. And then they really fight back, and then the whole thing falls apart. So, they have a really delicate balance to walk between keeping us relatively fearful, but not so fearful that we stop what we’re doing and really examine how it is that they’ve been waging this.

What Congress is (hopefully) saying to Bush:

Yes, Mr. President, we know you disagree with us. We don’t give a shit. Your leadership has been abysmal, your judgment has been poor, your Vice President has been completely fucking wrong on everything he has said for years now. Your credibility is shit. We no longer think you are the man to handle the job. So, you can either cooperate with our agenda, which the American people completely support, or we can up the ante a bit and impeach your incompetent ass. Choose.

Jon Stewart and John Oliver eviscerate Alberto Gonzales’ performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and reveal the real strategy of the White House.

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