The Prophet Speaks

tabs · 01:22 AM

I'm tired of the spin.....basically the spin doesn't serve America well at all...it just makes both sides pissed off at each other...for lying...

I thought this time Bushy pulled it off....he was forcefull etc...and was angry that Kerry was making it sound like he could do nothing right... But that is so much Kerry BS...becuase when yur sitting in THE OFFICE if you don't make 10 mistakes a day your not doing the job....being President on average takes 5 years off a mans life...it is a very hard job ....

I think if style were the deciding factor Kerry would have won....but Kerry displayed no substance.....his own words betrayed him ....

When asked about abortion Kerry hemmed and hawed and made no definative answer...

When asked about Stem Cells Bush gave you a straight answer and stuck to it...he had to balance ethical considerations with science...

There you have it , your choich.

Further...Kerry said he had a plan for this and a plan for that...I would really like to know what some of those plans entail...he was dreadfully short on details..what am I saying there was no detail ...just I have aplan.....

Now Kerry looked right into the camera and said he would NOT RAISE TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS....so exactly how is Kerry going to pay for all these plans he has....Kerry is not going to be able to give AMericans cake and let them eat it to...they are going to have to pay for these plans...so either the plans get carried out and taxes are raised or he doesn't carry out his plans....

Boyz the dilemma I just posed is inconsistent enough to make it clear Kerry will not be a good president...and is also the basis of why I thought he lost the debate on substance rather than style...

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Now I don't mean to be an alarmist....but I don't think the American people have been told the truth about how close 911 was to being a KO punch...Bushy let something drop during the debate which I have alluded to in previous posts....he said that if he didn't lower taxes when he did the recession would have turned into a
DEPRESSION...
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I have read a fair amount of History....in the past a Democratic form of government usually has lasted 200 to 250 years....before they slide into dictatorship....

Ancient Rome and the United States match up as being the 2 most powerfull Repblics that ever existed...so as I watch events unfold in America I compare them to similar events that happened in Rome....

What I think happens to a Democratic society that gains great power is that they become so rich that they don't know what to do with all the money..so they begin to be extravagant and wastefull ... blowing the money on all kinds of things like unnecessary wars and social programs....at some point the extravagance catches up with the country and because they are so used to being wealthy they continue on being wastfull and can't take care of business anymore...as the country progress on down the slippery slope the Political process becomes more and more frayed, with the factions fighting over who gets to feed at the trough, because both sides can no longer feed at the same time.. Eventually the people get so tired of the political instabilty they opt for a restoration of order at the expense of Democracy....

The United States really started being extravagant and wastefull in the late 1960's with the war in Vietnam and the Great Society....By the 1970's the strain was becoming apparent...In the 1980's US businesses looked like they were on the ropes and started to become lean and mean...downsizing their managerial work force...the 1990's freed up money the US was spending on the Cold War along with a boom in tech related industries...Today it is apparent that there is a slide in the standard of living in the USA that basically started back in the 1960's when the Tax laws were changed to promote spending over saving. So now it's come down to the realization that both political factions can no longer feed at the trough anymore... the Peace dividend is blown and the US is now faced with an enemy that can bring the house of cards known as our financial system down not with a major military effort but a small group of dedicated people.

Most people think that the 2000 election showed just how strong American Democracy is ..in that we didn't have rioting in the streets and rule of law prevailed with the Supream Court decision....I felt it was a nail in the coffin of American Democracy...because for the first time in American History a political faction disputed an election based on the mechanism of the election process itself...in a sense one faction was saying the the car/machine was broken...when in fact this very election mechanism was called good for umpteam election cycles... the very way votes were counted was called into dispute, this has never happened before...the rules of the election mechanism had never been called into question before...both sides had abided by it's decision in the past..flaws and all...and if you recall the major issue wasn't about election fraud, and the places where this political faction said the mechanism was broken was in the very counties they controled... This political factions people were the ones who were running the election mechanism that they said was broken. Simply put the damage that was done was to the trust that both political factions had in each other to abide by the results of the election machine..now neither political faction trusts the other.

Now we have seemingly smoothed over the differnces of 2000 but the vemhence that is being displyed between the political factions in this election cycle does not bode well...with the spin factor and the media egging both sides on American Democracy is in peril...especially if the election mechanism is called into question again by a close vote. The American people could take another recount of the votes debacle again....but if it happens a third time and with the ever present threat of terrorism....someboby is going to invoke National Security to restore order... and boyz thats it for American Democracy...

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ronin · 10-09-2004, 12:45 PM

island911 · 10-09-2004, 01:18 PM

Wow tabs! . . quite the write-up. Though don't expect a job offer from READERS-DIGEST.

anyway, in all that, I'll pick an easy item to respond to:

"Further...Kerry said he had a plan for this, and a plan for that...I would really like to know what some of those plans entail...he was dreadfully short on details..what am I saying there was no detail ...just I have a plan.....

Well, perhaps you missed the details, but it goes like this:

Kerry (and Edwards) will do whatever Bush did right. . .but they will do it B E T T E R.

wait-wait, that's not all. . .. . . .If you vote for Kerry Edwards in the next 24 days, they also promise to take whatever Bush did Bad and do less of that.

See, highly detailed. I hope everyone could follow the compexities.

tabs · 10-10-2004, 10:50 AM

Yeah.....Island......But Kerry keeps on saying Bush had NO PLAN for reconstructing Irock...so does that mean that his plan is to have no plan at all? It really is very confusing all this planning...maybe if my thinking were fuzzier it all would make sense....

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

I know "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it", and that the US-Roman empire analogy is a current fave (and certainly has some pertinant cautionary tales). But there is one HUGE wild card that exists today that never has before: digital communication. Not only does this change the rules for business, but it is reshaping the very core of society and culture, for the most part before we can even begin to get a handle on how, let alone what the ramifications are.

We are already seeing that traditional might is not enough to win in a decentralized "war on terror." The balance/dynamic between hard and soft power is very much in flux. So what will be the response of those who currently hold the hard power? To shut down the avenues that allow soft power to flourish? Unfortunately, these are the same capabilities that drive entreprenurialism and innovation. What's interesting is that the US has pushed hard tof those things in the business sector, but fights tooth and nail to keep them from the social sector. And that will be where the ultimate battle and (likely) failure of the US government will begin. If you want a minicosm of it, look at the last 20 years of the recording industry in light of p2p.

The times they are a changin'....

island911 · 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tabs

...so does that mean that his plan is to have no plan at all? It really is very confusing all this planning...maybe if my thinking were fuzzier it all would make sense....

Yeah, I think that might do it.

Im sure that the Dem's are COUNTING on fuzzy-thinking. . ..

HUH-HUH-HUH-HUH.. ."WOOD". . .HUH-HUH-HUH-HUH . . ."BUSH". . .HUH-HUH-HUH-HUH

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

and remember in Caddyshack, it was at "Bushwood" country club. And Rodney Dnagerfield just died. Coincidence? I think not....

Seahawk · 10-10-2004, 12:51 PM

Nostatic (FM),

What is "soft power"? I am not being flippant and respect your views..."soft power" is a new term for me.
BTW, if I am close to your definition in my own thinking, then I think we may agree on your postulate. If not, then we always have Paris.
All the best.

ronin · 10-10-2004, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by nostatic
and remember in Caddyshack, it was at "Bushwood" country club. And Rodney Dnagerfield just died. Coincidence? I think not....

absolutely not. it is a definite conspiracy. and all evidence of said conspiracy leads to...

THIS MAN!

(insert shrieking violins here)

the jig is up! how did I track you down, you ask? elementary Watson, you still can't spell

Dnagerfield, I mean really

tabs · 10-10-2004, 01:33 PM

So long as the American people are given BRead and the Circus they will be happy children....Americans have grown apathetic with the Political process they see it just as more of the same regardless of who gets into power....in a sense the System has taken over and codified the political process....nobody from outside the system can be elected to High Office...the weeding out process is vicious...Howard Dean is the latest casuality...remember ole Jesse Jackson....

Make no mistake the US government /system knows very well how to use Soft Power.....Even though it's unbelieveable to some people the Bush Administration operates more with soft power than hard power...the proof is how the administration handled Afganistan...with the use of less than 200 ground troops and some airpower....the Bush administration overthrew a government in less than 2 months... they got Pakistan to become our Ally in the war on terror.... then there is Libya etc...

What is so ironic is that the Osama has discovered tht using the hard power of a bomb he can destroy the soft power upon which American Capitalism stands...thus they can bring the US down... Simply they will creat a run on the liquidity of the financial system...

Further the Bush administration knows that the USA is fighting for it's very system of government and capitalism...if Kerry should be the next occupant of THE OFFICE he will soon realize the gravity of the situation and the actions it requires (so far he hasn't strayed from what the system wants to hear from a canidate...I'm just going to do it better than Bush, indicating that he isn't really going to do anyhting different). However if Kerry should prove to be indecisive the System will soon use it's SOFT POWER to marginalize him....

The system doesnot like instability..and the divisive political atomsphere in the USA where both poitical factions no longer trust one another will cause the system through the use of soft power to obviate the political process as we know it to maintain stabilty due to National Security concerns...

tabs · 10-10-2004, 01:37 PM

BTW: Nostatus I gues U are my Target audience...LOL

tabs · 01:56 PM

Also remember Gore Vidal said that the US became a National Security state in 1948...That with the advent of Nuclear weapons and their potential for destroying mankind....The US ....World could no longer afford to have a WILD CARD occupying the office where so much power resided.

further the NAtional security State was required to keep certain information secret from the public it served, because of the gravity of situation it was faced with...Nuclear Weapons.

That taken into context one can understand why McArthur was sacked, and the Vietnam war was fought in the way it was...Both N Korea and China as well as Vietnam were client states of the USSR...and both the USSR and USA wanted to avoid confrontation at all risks.....because of Nuclear Weapons...

It should well be remembered that in 1964 China became the 3rd real player ( The US and Brits had them) with Nukes...and the result was that Khrushev was outsted from power one month after the Chinese exploded a bomb. (The Chinese with Nuclear capability was no longer reliant on the USSR to provide a Nuclear shield and could go thier own way). Also with the advent of the chinese joining the club it meant that the USSR was also at risk form the Chinese as well as the USA...

France, Israel and then India then aqquired them.....It is ilittle known that the Indians developed their weapons in response to the Chinese and the Pakistanis in response to India...

island911 · 10-10-2004, 01:58 PM

"The US ....World could no longer afford to have a WILD CARD occupying the office where so much power resided."

enter; John Manchurian-candidate Kerry.

tabs · 10-10-2004, 02:03 PM

Kerry even looks like Raymond Shaw....

nostatic · nostatic's Garage

soft power was coined by Joseph Nye at Harvard (http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2003/nye_soft_power_iht_011003.htm for an op ed piece talking about soft v. hard and terrorism). Basically, it is anything that is the opposite of hard power, ie military might. This usually refers to cultural and economic means. For instance getting McDonalds and CocaCola into every country in the world is a way of the US exerting soft power to bring people around to our way of life/thinking.

But in these digital times, soft power has expanded in ways not originally forseen. The blogsphere is an example of soft power. Dean cam out of nowhere to almost win the democratic nomination largely based on his use of soft power within the network. Moveon.org (largely despised here) makes excellent use of soft power to try and advance their agenda. As NGOs and other organizations go online, we're seeing other examples of this phenomenon. Swarms and other tactics are all made possible by the network, and are soft power tools.

So I have a slightly different take on soft power, but I think it cannot be denied. And if the government ignores is, or worse yet, tries to use it without understanding the cultural needs and implications, they will be in for a rude awakening.

tabs · 10-10-2004, 06:19 PM

Soft power is as little as a bureaucrat putting a priority document in the In Box along with all the other low priority documents.... or sending it back because it lacked a box that need to be checked...

Also I know Howard Dean use of the Internet propeled him to a early lead....but it was also soft power of the party grass roots leadership that got the vote out to XXXXX Dean....

Soft power can be almost anything...just the way I for instance insert a word in a sentence can change the whole complexion of it's meaning...

tabs · 03-30-2012, 12:57 AM

Let us Bump another one...remeber this was Posted BEFORE THERE EVER WAS A PARF

red-beard · red-beard's Garage

The best of Tabs

Mo_Gearhead · 03-30-2012, 05:37 AM

Mother do you think they'll like my blog?
Mother do you think they'll like this song?
Mother do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Momma should I paint the hall?

Mother should I mock the president?
Mother should I trust the government?
Mother will Charley Rose ever acknowledge me?
Momma am I really sixty-three?

Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.
Mother's gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mother's gonna put all her fears into you.
Mother's gonna keep you right here under her feet.
She won’t let you blog, but she might let you tweet.
Mama will keep Tabs cozy and warm.
Ooooh Tabs ooooh Tabs oooooh Tabs,
Of course mama'll help paint the hall.

Mother do you think they’re good enough -- for me?
Mother do you think they’re disrespectful-- of me?
Mother will they tease your little boy again?
Mommy when does the adulation begin?

Hush now Tabby, Tabs don’t you cry.
Mama's gonna check out all the Pelicans for you.
Mama won’t let any dirty-birdies get through.
Mama's gonna wait until you get back.
Mama will always find out just whom you’ve attacked.
Mama's gonna keep Tabby breast-fed and mean.
Ooooh Tabby oooh Tabby oooh Tabby,
You'll always be Tabby to me.

Mother, did I try to fly too high?

( * with apologies to Pink Floyd. )

FLYGEEZER · 03-30-2012, 06:17 AM

I'm startin' to think some of you people ain't got enough to do.