Occasionally we hear from viewers who don’t share (or understand) our perspectives and purposes.
You are trying to project your own fears upon your audience—wasn’t it Franklin D. Roosevelt who said that the only thing to fear is fear itself? Why then are you portraying George Bush as some unstoppable monster, when it’s clear he has already become a lame-duck president?
The time to fear the power of the President was in the 90’s, when President Clinton and Attorney General Reno decided to kill American citizens and destroy private property in Waco, Texas.
Are you guys afraid of government surveillance? How long was Randy Weaver spied on? All he did was attempt to sell a shotgun, and he ended up losing his wife and child in an FBI/ATF shootout. And then, Ms. Reno struck again in Florida, when she and Clinton authorized a military exercise to remove a young Hispanic child from his relatives’ house. The real reason for the invasion was that the government suspected a cache of arms was hidden somewhere in the house. It was faulty intelligence that led to that egregious invasion of privacy and unwarranted search and seizure.
Yes, the 90’s were years to fear the government. While the Clinton administration hounded American citizens, it did nothing to stop terrorist attacks against American interests. The World Trade Center was first bombed in 1993. Remember? Our Marines were attacked abroad–remember? How about the attack against the USS Cole—does that ring a bell? And, I still have the article I clipped from the Dayton Daily News, revealing that the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center were actually planned in 1996! What was our government doing about that? Maybe they were just too busy chasing and killing Americans.
Sandy Berger, former Clinton security advisor, said in 1997 that “Clinton might look like a hero to rally-’round-the-flag Congressfolk if he hit Iraq. It would zoom his ratings, spruce up his legacy.”. When France, Russia, and China hesitated to support the use of force against Saddam Hussein, John Kerry bellowed “Where’s their backbone? It’s very disappointing. They’re permitting Saddam to think he has the right to do as he pleases.”. So, Clinton would have been the hero for taking out Saddam, but Bush is the bad guy for doing it. Go figure.
I would rather live under the Bush administration any day, rather than return to the oppression of Democratic leadership. They seek to strip personal rights and ownerships (such as the Constitutionally-protected right to bear arms), while they try to appease those who seek to destroy us. We don’t need another over-sexed paranoid running this country, and we need fewer Chicken Littles telling us the sky is falling. We need another Charles Martel, who defeated Islamic radicals at the battle of Tours, or another Winston Churchill, who predicted the rise of both Nazi fascism and Soviet Communism, and suggested we stand up to them both.
God bless Republican America.
Dear Viewer,
If we believed George W. Bush to be an “unstoppable monster” we wouldn’t bother to pursue the remedies that we are applying to the problem of his quasi-legal presidency. Bush is not a lame-duck president. By definition, a lame-duck in politics is someone whose successor has already been chosen, but has not yet taken office. Unless you know something we don’t about the progress of the ongoing subversion of the democratic election process in this country, you cannot accurately refer to Bush as a lame-duck. There are still many reasons to be gravely concerned about the fact that Mr. Bush occupies the White House. His unconstitutional usurpations of power and reckless disregard for both diplomacy and the politically inconvenient realities of intelligence data threaten the freedom and security of all Americans, even those Americans among the boards of his transnational corporate sponsors. He is very likely the most irresponsible man to ever hold the office of President of the United States.
Regarding Bill Clinton, it never ceases to amaze me that some people assume that anyone who is critical of the Busheviks must therefore be an admirer of the Clintons. It should be clear from the values of democratic republicanism that we consistently espouse on UnCommon Sense TV and on the ustvmedia website that we found MANY flaws with Clinton’s presidency, and that we disagree with most of what both he and Mrs. Clinton have done since they left the White House. That said, I for one am EXTREMELY TIRED of the Busheviks’ pathetic attempts to blame their failures on Clinton and justify their choices and ensuing consequences by comparing them to the politics and policies of the Clinton administration (or more commonly to their own alternate narratives and spin about the Clinton Presidency). This pusillanimous finger-pointing is both whiny and intentionally deceptive for reasons whose numbers are too vast to address in an email (a large wonky book of facts and analysis might be adequate to the task).
By the way, the time to pay attention to abuse of the power by a President, legitimately elected or otherwise, is ALL OF THE TIME! (not just when there is one in office who philosophically discomforts you)
Yes, I do remember when our Marines were attacked abroad. It was in Beirut in 1983, right before Reagan orderd them to CUT AND RUN. I also remember that after Clinton ordered bombings in Somalia and Afghanistan, Republican mambers of Congress were saying that Clinton exaggerated the threat and using the spin/buzzphrase “wag the dog” to build “political capital” for their treasury-draining impeachment boondoggle. Then there is the fact that during the Clinton administration the CIA and the State and Defense Departments had relentlessly compiled a huge database of information about Al Qaeda and other terrorist threats which the incoming Bush cabinet failed to act on and almost entirely ignored.
There, you see? Anyone can play “gotcha” with foreign policy. The truth is that all foreign policy is based on risk, because it involves people and governments whose economic and political interests often conflict with ours. That is why we need to make certain that we do not make decisions that could have long and profound consequences without doing the HARD WORK of careful analysis.
Another global threat to our values of freedom and security is global corporatism, which has done at least as much damage to our nation as foreign terrorism and has in fact stimulated the development of Islamist terrorism around the globe. This damage by global corporatists includes, but is not limited to, the many deaths and maimings of Americans and others, the loss of our reputation in other nations because of corporate abuse of their people and resources, and the corruption of democratic processes both here at home and around the world.
And don’t even start trying to spin the above list of facts as “liberal whining.” These are problems we can actually solve, simply by reigning in the avaricious impulses of corporations with policies that protect the PUBLIC interest and the political commons and punish those who attempt to subvert them.
These corporatist crime syndicates (oil companies, tobacco companies, financiers, arms manufacturers . . .) try to deflect attention from their behavior by using the media they own (all the major networks, the majority of newspapers, and the major internet service providers) and the politicians they own (the Republican Party, the Democratic Leadership Council, Bush and his cabinet, etc.) to distract us with spin and celebrity pablum.
If we hold these unpatriotic, un-American, selfish, greedy, deceivers accountable, not only can we restore and expand on the democratic institutions and traditions of our country, but we can go a long way toward disproving the propaganda that is spewed about us by the likes of Al Qaeda. By the way, where is Osama bin Laden?
- Ed Lacy
USTV Media
