[Rhodes22-list] For Ben C., from South Carolina - political

[Michael D. Weisner]

Ed,

You want to sue "unjust enrichment"?  That seems to smack of a Marxist 
viewpoint.  I am shocked!

Mike
s/v Shanghaid'd Summer ('81)
       Nissequogue River, NY


From: "Tootle" <ekroposki at charter.net>Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 
8:49 AM
>
> Ben referencec the following article alledging it was written by a
> conservative and 'Bill Buckley protege.'
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16brooks.html?hp
>
> What is a conservative?  To Ben C., from his rigid and blindfolded view, 
> it
> is one thing.  He keeps referencing a group of people as 'the
> anti-intellectual wackos and fundamentalist nut cases', as if his 
> viewpoint
> was perfect.
>
> I am reserving the comment to define conservative, neo-conservative, but I
> am responding to his reference to David Brooks' and the New York Times.
> When you move from the northeast corner of the USA you find Americans who
> believe that "all the news that is fit to print" is not now nor has been 
> for
> several decades an accurate description of the New York Times.  The people
> who write for the New York Times are MSM, ‘Main Stream Media’.  David 
> Brooks
> is MSM.
>
> This type of person is like Chris Matthews who gets tingles up his leg 
> over
> Obama.  Chris Matthews has in the past made demeaning and derogatory
> comments about people willing to do menial jobs.  These people have
> developed a holier than thou attitude.  The come across as saying that 
> their
> opinion is more right than others.  So, for the rest of us, those that 
> quote
> them as authorities of correct opinions must be viewed as fellow 
> travelers.
>
> David Brooks said, “If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt
> establishment, she’d be your woman.”  While the rest of the article bashed
> her and her supporters, this quote is what many of us want.  We want 
> someone
> to make a real effort to reduce and find corruption and wrong doing.
>
> Furthermore, we want to reduce those who use legal methods to fill their
> pockets.  This is illustrated in the Fannie May and Freddie Mack issue.
> There are many who made millions of dollars using legal methods associated
> with these institutions.  They made these monies by acting as consultants,
> lobbyists, lawyers, etc. for these institutions.  The monies paid these
> people exceed reasonable compensation to most Americans.
>
> Because something is legal does not make it right.  These people should be
> sued for ‘unjust enrichment’ if nothing they did was illegal.  Maybe such 
> a
> law suit would not win, but their activities and methods would become more
> public.  They would be exposed to ‘Sunshine’.
>
> The argument is offered that both Democrats and Republicans are involved.
> So what?  Expose the truth about all of them.  I guess lawyers like Ben 
> C.,
> would find employment defending their actions.  I would prefer that they 
> be
> placed on public exhibition in from of the courthouse is a cage.
>
> Again, because something is legal does not make it right.  “Making right
> choices in gray areas is difficult.  To be aware of the dilemma is not
> enough.   There needs to be a moral sensitivity which remembers to ask the
> right questions at the right time.  To know what is good is not enough?
> There is a difference between waking up and getting up. There must be
> specific decision for the right.  To be sensitive and aware is good.  To
> make proper decisions is better.  The way of victory is to maintain a 
> moral
> stamina which continues.”   Paraphrase of Bryan Crenshaw
>
> Ed K
> Greenville, SC, USA
>
>
> Ben Cittadino wrote:
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16brooks.html?hp
>>
>> What is a conservative?  To Ben C., from his ridgid and blind folded 
>> view,
>> it is one thing.  He keeps referencing a group of people as 'the
>> anti-intellectual wackos and fundamentalist nut cases', as if his
>> viewpoint was perfect.
>>
>> I am reserving the comment to define conservative, neo-conservative, but 
>> I
>> am responding to his reference to David Brooks' and the New York Times.
>> When you move from the northeast corner of the USA you find Americans who
>> believe that "all the news that is fit to print" is not now nor has been
>> for several decades a accurate description of the New York Times.  The
>> people who write for the New York Times are MSM, Main Stream Media.
>>
>> This type of person is like Chris Matthews who gets tingles up his leg
>> over Obama.  Chris Matthews has in the past made demeaning and derogatory
>> comments about people willing to do menial jobs.
>>
>> Robert;
>>
>> The above link is to today's NY Times column by David Brooks, who you may
>> recognize as the William F. Buckley protege' and conservative 
>> commentator.
>> It concisely sets out the problem with Palin that those of us who
>> represent the dying breed of "Rockefeller Republicans" (the political
>> philosophy of your Susan Collins and Olympia Snow) have.
>>
>> As the Party falls away to the anti-intellectual wackos and 
>> fundamentalist
>> nut cases (and they know who they are) we can only hope that the
>> overwhelming support of the new politics of hope among the youth (under
>> 40) folks will bode better for the future.
>>
>> Even though I hail from the Great State of New Jersey, home of John
>> Basilone (hero of Guadalcanal), I still consider the greatest American
>> hero to have been Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (teacher, Governor, and 
>> hero
>> of the 20th Maine).
>>
>> Fair winds and following seas.
>>
>> Ben C. , s/v Susan Kay. Highlands, NJ
>>
>> Robert Skinner wrote:
>>>
>>> Ed,
>>>
>>> Since you persist in making snide comments about the great
>>> state of Maine, this is to let you know that you have real
>>> opposition in Maine -- perhaps neither as bombastic,
>>> prevaricative, nor monomaniacal as you might find among
>>> your neocon fellow traveler comrade dittoheads, but at
>>> least equally valid [understatement].  As a professional
>>> musician once reminded me, volume is no substitute for
>>> quality.  And, by the way, repetition is no substitute for
>>> logic.
>>>
>>> I, for one, am paying attention to the issues, primarily
>>> the gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket state of the nation while
>>> in the care (using the term loosely) of the Grumpy Old
>>> Patriarchs, and the fact that a good house-cleaning could
>>> not produce any worse results.  As I see it, any group
>>> of teen-age mutant turtles could do better and cost a hell
>>> of a lot less.
>>>
>>> It doesn't make a lot of difference who is the master of
>>> the ship of state when it is on the rocks.  The question
>>> is who can get it off in one piece.
>>>
>>> OK, now that I've had my turn, you can have the soap-box
>>> back, Ed.  Please clean up after you are done, and put
>>> the seat down.
>>>
>>> /Robert
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
>>> Wednesday 10 September 2008
>>>   by: Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic
>>>
>>> Editor's Note: Historically a John McCain supporter, conservative
>>> journalist
>>> and blogger Andrew Sullivan takes on the issue of John McCain's 
>>> integrity
>>> as
>>> he strives to win the presidency. - vh/TO
>>>
>>>       For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the
>>> past
>>> ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or
>>> fish
>>> or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I
>>> knew
>>> about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as
>>> every
>>> sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that
>>> Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end
>>> this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless
>>> Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?
>>>       So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do
>>> so.
>>> And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for 
>>> him.
>>> On
>>> core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had
>>> to
>>> pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W.
>>> Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald
>>> Rumsfeld
>>> quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, 
>>> John
>>> Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can
>>> ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first 
>>> ahead
>>> of
>>> what he knew was best for the country.
>>>       And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and
>>> end
>>> the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear
>>> choice between good and evil, and chose evil.
>>>       He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United
>>> States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than
>>> the
>>> torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the
>>> White
>>> House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly
>>> deserve.
>>> The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's
>>> honor,
>>> has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is
>>> not
>>> the man I thought he was.
>>>       And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive
>>> debate
>>> against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall
>>> campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began
>>> his
>>> general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd 
>>> MTV-style
>>> attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his
>>> opponent's patriotism.
>>>       And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago,
>>> he
>>> threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman
>>> who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down
>>> Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war
>>> as a
>>> last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a
>>> massive
>>> bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.
>>>       Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things
>>> about
>>> him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who
>>> cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who
>>> knows
>>> nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this
>>> country's
>>> safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because
>>> she
>>> polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed 
>>> that
>>> the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as
>>> his
>>> veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it 
>>> at
>>> the time.
>>>       McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not
>>> have
>>> the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it 
>>> is
>>> more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next
>>> president.
>>> The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has 
>>> proved
>>> it.
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/1156080,091008ebertpalin.article
>>>
>>> Roger Ebert on Sarah Palin: The American Idol candidate
>>>
>>>
>>> September 11, 2008
>>>
>>> BY ROGER EBERT Sun-Times Movie Critic [How appropriate!]
>>>
>>> I think I might be able to explain some of Sarah Palin's appeal. She's
>>> the
>>> 'American Idol' candidate. Consider. What defines an 'American Idol'
>>> finalist? They're good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny
>>> personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they're 
>>> darned
>>> near the real thing. There's a reason 'American Idol' gets such high
>>> ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that
>>> could
>>> be me up there on that show!
>>>
>>> My problem is, I don't want to be up there. I don't want a vice 
>>> president
>>> who is darned near good enough. I want a vice president who is better,
>>> wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an
>>> opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn't repeat bald- faced lies about
>>> earmarks
>>> and the Bridge to Nowhere. Someone who doesn't appoint Alaskan
>>> politicians
>>> to 'study' global warming, because, hello! It has been studied. The
>>> returns
>>> are convincing enough that John McCain and Barack Obama are darned near
>>> in
>>> agreement.
>>>
>>> I would also want someone who didn't make a teeny little sneer when
>>> referring to 'people who go to the Ivy League.' When I was a teen I
>>> dreamed
>>> of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, 'Boy, we don't
>>> have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can 
>>> go
>>> to
>>> the University of Illinois right here in town.' So I did, very happily.
>>> Although Palin gets laughs when she mentions the 'elite' Ivy League, she
>>> sure did attend the heck out of college.
>>>
>>> Five different schools in six years. What was that about?
>>>
>>> And how can a politician her age have never have gone to Europe? My dad
>>> had
>>> died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local
>>> newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to
>>> Europe. I had Arthur Frommer's $5 a Day under my arm, started in London,
>>> even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later,
>>> I
>>> was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.
>>>
>>> You don't need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need
>>> curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has
>>> the
>>> money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country
>>> once,
>>> on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin's travel record is that of a
>>> provincial, not someone who is equipped to deal with global issues.
>>>
>>> But some people like that. She's never traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa,
>>> South America or Down Under? That makes her like them. She didn't go to
>>> Harvard? Good for her! There a lot of hockey moms who haven't seen
>>> London,
>>> but most of them would probably love to, if they had the dough. And
>>> they'd
>>> be proud if one of their kids won a scholarship to Harvard.
>>>
>>> I trust the American people will see through Palin, and save the 
>>> Republic
>>> in
>>> November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered
>>> herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment.
>>>
>>> __________________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
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> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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