Aug 08 2008
President Bush Pokes China In Its Oppressive Eye By Being At Olympics
President Bush, by personally being at the Olympics in China, is representing what the Chinese leaders fear most – Freedom. Â Freedom of speech, freedom to make personal choices, the neutering of government power compared to the independence of the individual. Â As leader of the Free West, Bush is doing the right thing by attending the Olympics so all of China can be reminded of the differences, and our greatness.
The Chinese leaders are reacting to each hint of a political jab by Bush, and it makes them look so small and cowardly in comparison. Â Bush represents the idea that government cannot fear expression, China represents how cowering leaders use government to stamp out free expression. Â What better foil to China’s cowardly oppression than to have the news following the leader of the free world, moving freely and expressing himself freely, in the capitol of China.
I salute Bush, who is not cowering back here in the states like so many others. He is up front and center representing America, cheering on our athletes, and poking the Chinese oppressor right in the eye. You can’t do that sitting here in America watching it all on TV.
WWS wrote:
Ray – more Americans live in small towns than live in big ones. I guess you don’t realize that.
I would have guessed sat 50% in towns below 10,000 without any conscious figures to go on.
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I first started to get the picture when a couple of Mormons on my doorstep years ago said THEY felt a bit lost in this relatively small city of 1 million. Later I found in an old atlas that 2 of our cities (Melbourne and Sydney) were the 16th and 17th biggest cities in the world. No wonder I couldn’t wait to get out of Melbourne.
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Ha, I just remembered a funny thing about my son getting booked for speeding out of Melbourne. The cop said “Why were you speeding?” He replied angrily “I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of the #%%## place!”
Ray
Americans support their country when it is “right” as it is now.
Like Reagan, this President understands “freedom” and its necessity. And he has been its prophet. You Euro Leftys always leave it to us when you get in trouble due to your pacifist ideologies.
And, our military tribunals accord more rights to defendants than they do at the Hague. So spare us the lectures.
True, our cities and towns don’t resemble those of ‘Old Europe.” Like they don’t resemble Disneyland.
If America doesn’t stand for freedom in the world, we will have missed an historical opportunity and responsibility.
Ray:
“Well you know what they say about stats, but in any case the figures per 100,000 seem to be about 5 times higher than most other places. They shot up like a rocket in about 1980. What the hell happened then?”
Oh, that’s easy: The War on (some) Drugs.
Well, okay, it’s not that quite simple. It also helps that we lock people up for things like writing bad checks.
Oh, and locking up about 5% of the black male population, too.
But hey – USA! USA! Rahhh!
The Macker wrote:
[….]
And, our military tribunals accord more rights to defendants than they do at the Hague. So spare us the lectures.
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That is a big whopper.!
Your own military lawyers and a chief prosecutor and thousands of other legal people say it is clearly a big fraud. So did the U.S. Supreme Court – which is why Bush, Cheney & Co changed the rules to try and BEAT the Supreme Court.
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It might pay to find out what a Military TRIBUNAL is and how many they have conducted at Gitmo.
Ray
breschau wrote:
Ray:
“Well you know what they say about stats, but in any case the figures per 100,000 seem to be about 5 times higher than most other places. They shot up like a rocket in about 1980. What the hell happened then?â€
Oh, that’s easy: The War on (some) Drugs.
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Well, okay, it’s not that quite simple. It also helps that we lock people up for things like writing bad checks.
Oh, and locking up about 5% of the black male population, too.
But hey – USA! USA! Rahhh!
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I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live there or any place like it. I actually go out of my way to mix with all other cultures when the opportunity is present, but I couldn’t handle living in an environment where there is so much racial tension, anger, poverty, firearms, gangs, ghettos, and redneck morons etc.
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I wouldn’t want to be outnumbered in my own SUBURB by Irishmen – and I’ve got an Irish name.
Ray
Ray:
What the hell are you talking about? I do not give a rat’s ass what some attorney general in Australia says the people in Gitmo have more rights than the average Chinese citizen has. They have lawyers, they have self righteous sanctimonious idiots from all over the world worrying about them. Of course those idiots are not responsible for them. Those idiots do not want them, will not take them, have no viable alternative as to what to do with them. Most of their home countries refuse to take them back. And here they are, all of them nabbed on the battle field where they were trying to kill Americans…in custody with the Red Cross and all sorts of people yammering about how awful it is.
If terrorists get picked up in other countries they just disappear and no one gives a damn. But if it is the US, why there they are whining like the fools they are.
And the one man who was tried will probably get time served. He will not be strung up by his toes.
The United States Supreme Court has even weighed on this. To say it is all a fraud is just plain wrong.
Ray wrote:
“All of this Tagging of people with funny names, some of which I don’t even understand, seems idiotic to me. It’s quite impossible for people to be one thing for a minute then the opposite in the next breath, just because the opinion seems to align with some political party or group.
It really IS idiotic.
It’s how 12 year old boys talk at school.”
That is the point I’m making by posing my question. What you may not know is that over the last 8 years it has become increasingly common Republican/conservative strategy to respond to criticism of Bush policies by labeling those persons as anti-american, jihadists, traitors. Read through the comments on this post and you will see it all the time. I find it hilarious because I’m fairly certain that many of these same people have previously and will continue to strongly criticize policies of Democratic presidents and other government officials. That was the purpose for me posing my question – to point out how ridiculous it is to accuse someone of being anti-american just because they don’t agree with certain policies adopted by our government leaders. The scary part is I truly think that a large number of these same people throwing around these accusations do not see the contradiction.
And Ray, if it was not for the United States, Australia, a former penal colony, would have been invaded by the Imperial Japanese.
Notice how the lefties like to side with anti American foreigners? Kind of makes you wonder why conman and his ilk to move to a civilized country like Australia.
small town/big town – I realize that those terms are far too vague to use. From places I’ve been and lived in, a stand-alone city of up to 100,000 feels pretty small, whereas a town of 10,000 tacked on to a larger metropolis qualifies as big. For instance, Kilgore, Texas, population 30,000, is a very small town as everyone who lives there or who has been there would agree. I would probably use the designation large = living in a metropolitan area in excess of 100,000, small is less than that. That excludes all of the major metropolitan areas – but I don’t really want to get involved in statistics. How about this – a majority of Americans live outside the major metropolitan areas. Texas alone has over 10,000 named towns. I’d be surprised if all of Australia came close to that.
Why incarceration rates went up in the 90’s was a response to what had happened in the 60’s, 70’s, and beginning of the 80’s.
A new judicial philosophy had begun to take hold in the 50’s and 60’s which was very light on jail time and first offenses, and only tried to punish the “big crimes” heavily. As a result, street crime – muggings, holdups, robberies, breakins, car theft – all soared through the 70’s and into the 80’s, making that the most crime prone time in this country’s history. This was exacerbated by the drug trade. (although whether or not the drug trade is being dealt with properly is a long topic for another time) Anyway, what happened next was driven from the bottom up, not the top down. People across the country began electing officials who promised to put an end to this crime explosion, and state legislatures across the country began passing tougher mandatory sentencing rules. Probation and parol rules were toughened up after every study showed that most parollees went back to committing new crimes within days of their parol. People decided they just weren’t going to put up with that level of crime, and they also voted to fund hundreds of new jail spaces to keep the criminals away.
And here is the part that no one bemoaning the incarceration stats ever gets – as incarceration rates went up, crime rates dropped dramatically. Exactly the opposite of what happened in the 70’s, and now US streets are safer than almost any European nation you can name – certainly far, far safer than the UK! For instance, I live in Fort Worth, about 500,000, and I would have to look very hard to find a I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking on by myself late at night. Downtown is a joy, a vibrant, fun place to be late into the night. You should visit some time.
So in my lifetime, we’ve tried it both ways. Early on, we tried letting most small time crooks go – crime soared as they just gained experience and got bolder and bolder. Now, we prosecute everything seriously. Bust your girlfriends lip because you were drunk? You’re gonna do 30 days in the county jail, buddy. That’s not a random charge – domestic violence and drugs are the #1 and #2 reasons for shorter sentences (a year or less) and usually the two are intertwined. (source: I have friends in the local DA’s office, although every DA’s office I ever talk to tells the same story) The key is cracking down hard on the misdemeanors, not just the felonies.
And the amazing part is born out by the long term numbers – if a local DA and police department ride the small crimes hard, the big crimes happen a whole lot less. That’s what’s happened since the 90’s, and since everyone here likes it, it’s not about to change.
conman:
Well maybe if the people making the criticism did not do in such a way that it was an attack on America it would not be something people would respond to that way.
For instance, Russia attacks Georgia today..and immediately people want to know what Bush will do about it. As if it were his job or something.
But Europe? They can not even get it together to send a few hundred troops to Afghanistan.
No, better to send Americans and then bitch about what arms traders they are.
Breschau is doing a very good job at convincing me that even the best Obama supporters truely despise this country.
It explains a lot – especially Obama’s fading poll numbers as ordinary people begin to realize this.
There are 306 million people in the United States. There are 25 million people in Canada. That just sort of gives people an idea as to what we are talking about here in regards to population. And then there is diversity. But the truth is more people want to come here than anywhere in the world, and if it was as awful as people like Ray seem to think it is, why are we talking about building walls to keep people out?
And I am glad Bush went to China and stood up for the right of the Chinese people to have personal liberty. It is a cinch that no one else in the world will do or say anything to support them. That is for sure. They will be too busy worrying about a few hundred terrorists at Gitmo to waste a moment on millions of Chinese.
Terrye wrote:
Ray:
What the hell are you talking about? I do not give a rat’s ass what some attorney general in Australia says the people in Gitmo have more rights than the average Chinese citizen has. [….]
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Well you’re part of the problem then.
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If terrorists get picked up in other countries they just disappear and no one gives a damn.
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The U.S. bought for $1000 each, about 1000 “terrorists” then kept them for years, then let nearly all of them go because they got ripped-off by some Afghan crooks. They couldn’t even get convictions in crooked Military Commissions – and that’s WITH torture AND hearsay evidence. Talk about keystone cops.
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Still Australia is not innocent. We nailed a very good doctor last year and gave him a hell of a time. Even our equivalent of the CIA kept insisting that the doctor hadn’t done anything wrong – except for being brown skinned, Indian and Muslim.
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He’s suing the government now and exposing the madmen, then he’ll get back to treating patients – at the hospital where management and staff are eagerly waiting to see him again.
Ray
WWS:
Breschau is doing a very good job at convincing me that even the best Obama supporters truely despise this country.
Umm… yeah. You mean like when I wrote this a little earlier: “I think America is, by far, the greatest country in the world”?
I love this country. I also like large parts of Europe – to visit, but not to live there (drinking single malts in Scotland was fun, and the Germans certainly know their beer and sausages). And I really didn’t enjoy my time in Afghanistan, and have no intention of going back.
I’ll try and make this simple:
Criticizing the Bush Administration does not mean I hate the country.
Criticizing the War on (some) Drugs does not mean I hate the country.
Saying “America does [X], and [X] is wrong” IS NOT EQUIVALENT to “I hate America.” Is your brain truly incapable of comprehending that?
I love this country, but by no means is it perfect, and I think it’s gotten significantly worse over the past 8 years. I simply would like it to be better.
And I’d really appreciate it if you would quit questioning my patriotism, thank you very much.
Ray:
Bought??? Are you daft? One of your own citizens was nabbed in Afghanistan trying to kill Americans. Spare me the moralizing preachy and utterly ill informed nonsense.
35 million people died in the Soviet gulags with a lot less moral outrage from the left. The Khmer Rouge was just wondeful until the Killing Fields, and they they were just forgotten.
The self styled protectors of liberty and human rights on the left and in much of the world have ignored or tolerated the deaths of tens of millions of people at the hands of dictators and mad men.
But ohh, how they suffer for the poor innocent of Gitmo.
If we were half as bad as people like you claim we would have killed those people long ago and you know it. But nooo, not us. We will give them lawyers and put up with all kinds of backstabbing crap from all sorts of people.
cinman wrote:
“That is the point I’m making by posing my question. What you may not know is that over the last 8 years it has become increasingly common Republican/conservative strategy to respond to criticism of Bush policies by labeling those persons as anti-american, jihadists, traitors. Read through the comments on this post and you will see it all the time. I find it hilarious because I’m fairly certain that many of these same people have previously and will continue to strongly criticize policies of Democratic presidents and other government officials.”
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Yeah, and this is what happens in a shonky war. In a REAL war 99% of people do the right thing and don’t rock the boat. In a real war, sedition and treason laws are used – but in PRETEND wars the government uses half the citizens (via propaganda) to TRY and control the other half.
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So when these war-mongering con-artists are chucked out of office, the U.S. will be able to get back to normal and disagree without disgusting allegations of treason by fellow citizens.
Ray
breschau:
No body said it was wrong to criticize the Bush administration or any other president for that matter.
So, what do you want to do with the folks at Gitmo? Turn them loose? and if they kill more people are you okay with that?
Oh, but they are innocent and we are guilty, right?
If Obama gets all hot and heavy in Afghanistan like he says he plans on doing, what do you think he will do with the people who are taken into custody? Turn them loose to go back to fighting the men he says he will send over there?