ctembreull

Again with the ad hominems as a lead. Your intransigence awes me, sir. At any rate, to paraphrase... "Republican is as Republican does."

Um... what changes did George II implement? How is this "his" force structure? The military is almost totally compliant to the Clinton-era design of a smaller, more mobile military.

It. Is. Clinton's. Force. Structure.

By the way, are you a military spokesman? Is it your intent here to speak for the entirety of the service? I doubt it. Which makes your sweeping generalizations somewhat inappropriate. Not to mention that it matters little who they credit for the military... it matters who actually constructed it. That, by the way, would be the Big Dog his own self.

...

(stuff about service member ages)

You miss the point entirely. It matters not who's in the army. It's a volunteer army and as such has turnover rates higher than any conscript army in the world. The point here is force structure.

(son of a preacher-man stuff)

That's nice. You're not the only one with parents who served. Personally, I consider your paternal unit's unwillingness to render honors to his former C-in-C a disgrace. Mind, that's just my opinion, but then, I'm a service kid, too.

So tell me, how does Dad feel about saluting a guy who got a politically-motivated sweetheart chance at the Texas Air National Guard while the rest of the country's youth was dying in Vietnam, then skipped a drug test and physical, got his flight status revoked, and *then* went AWOL for well in excess of a year?

Hmm.

But it's not about military service, right? It's about getting a hummer.

(Stuff about Reagan being intelligent)

Reagan was, pardon my language, a freaking lunatic, a senile old fruitcake, a downright poor statesman, and a reckless brinksman who felt no compunctions over carrrying the world to the very brink of a nuclear war in order to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Oh, and he lied about Iran-Contra, too - and then pardoned Ollie North. Marc who?

(Stuff about ballistic missile tests)

Not one of those tests has yet worked, at a total expenditure of TRILLIONS (that's thousands of billions) of American taxpayer dollars. Not one of the tests has yet been a success. Don't tell me future programs. Remember the V-22 Osprey? Yeah, that was supposed to be great too.
Show me a *working* ABM system, and THEN tell me how that's gonna stop the guy with the suitcase nuke. In short, Star Wars/ABM is an utterly inappropriate response to current world conditions. It's nothing more than a big payout to military-industrial complex campaign donors.

(Stuff about Kyoto)

So according to your logic, we should let businesses pollute all they want because they're employing people? Way wrong answer, dude. See, there's that whole Global Warming thing again, which as I pointed out before, is real. Unless you're George II, in which case, reports from your very own hand-picked science panel which state that global warming exists and is a danger.

So tell me again why Kyoto was such a bad idea, if we're the only industrialized nation on earth not signatory? Yep, we need to cut CO2 emissions. Yep, corporations are the big polluters. I fail to see how those two statements mean we should be the only industrialized nation on earth not signatory to the treaty. Unless you're trying to make the point that business profits should take priority over... oh... 100 million people on both coasts in the United States alone. Or how it should take priority over... oh... a worldwide climate shift on a scale not seen for millions of years.

Business über alles, hmm? It'll cost businesses money, so we can't do it. Great logic. Really great logic.

*applause*

(Stuff on corporate malfeasance)

Corporations, my good son, have been cooking books for time immemorial. It's a climate of deregulation that allows them to do it. Somewhere, some knucklehead free-market conservative decided we should limit oversight over corporate earnings reporting. Guess what happened? Enron. See, when you have deregulation, that pulls the SEC's teeth. They can't do anyhthing, they can't even ask to look at the books anymore. That's why the onus has fallen upon corporate whistle-blowers, because we've deregulated to the point where corporations are very nearly running the world. The SEC only comes into play now when there's evidence of market fraud. That's why Andersen-izing your corporate ledger is so popular now, because it takes years and years and years for the effects to become apparent. It's the dumb ones, like ImClone, who get caught for such low-rent corporate crimes like insider trading.

(Clinton and Microsoft stuff)

Clinton's DOJ filed, litigated, and WON its antitrust suit against Microsoft because Microsoft was a predatory monopoly, buying those companies it could not muscle out of business, and pulling pretty much every geeky dirty trick in the business. I can guarantee you, I know *all* about that stuff. I was there. Funny bit, this: Clinton's DOJ won its suit, and moved to the remedy phase of antitrust litigation. Strangely enough, once Bush took office, the DOJ changed its tune and played softball.

Business über alles. Good thing Microsoft doesn't sell oil or electricity. Bush might have had Gates coronated instead.

Here's a note to George II: Just because there are terrorists abroad in the world is no excuse whatsoever to ignore things on the domestic front.

(Kenneth Lay stuff)

To get his fair trial, that requires that George II's DOJ actually attempt to prosecute him. There's a veritable mountain of evidence against him. In fact, he was either called to testify or indicted, one of the two, then fled the country - and that was just about the last time you heard about any legal action regarding Kenny Boy. I'm waiting eagerly for Ken Lay's fair trial, but somehow, Bush and Ashcroft don't seem all that eager to prosecute their good friend and campaign donor, Kenneth W. Lay.

(Terrorism rant)

Yeah, yeah, yeah... the 'War On Terra' (catch the pun?) is a difficult thing. But then, if Bush is such a steely-eyed-rocket-man-with-the-codpiece-of-three-men, then why hasn't he gotten the job done? Why hasn't Rumsfeld, who's such a badass in your view, gotten it done? Oh, yes, Rumsfeld served. Pity Bush didn't. But what am I saying, the real question is,

Where the bloody blue hell is Osama?

Dead or alive. Yeah, right.

(Guantanamo Bay stuff)

Congratulations, you know that the military installation there is called Gitmo. So do I. No applause for you. But there's that nasty little bit about nobody being able to stop Ashcroft from naming ANYONE an "enemy combatant". See, all he has to do is go before a secret intelligence court and promise cross-his-heart-hope-to-die that so-and-so is a nasty terrorist sympathizer. And then he gets to go ahead and scoop that person up, regardless of evidence, regardless of the veracity of Johnny Fundamental's claims. And off they go down to "Gitmo" to be subjected to sleep-dep and interrogations and other such horrors.

So much for that fourth amendment, eh? By the way, as far as the Geneva Accords go, we might as well abrogate those, too. That whole thing about posting pictures of combatants and killing civilians, you understand. Trust me, the last thing you wanna wrap yourself in is the Geneva Conventions.

(The Famous 16 Words)

It's a great deal more than 16 words, dude. What about those weapons labs? What about that "He has the weapons, we know where they are"? What about 45 minutes from being able to turn us all into slightly glowing piles of carbon sludge? What about the fantasy connection between Iraq and Al-Quaeda (refer to the just-published Senate report on 9/11).

You see? It's more than sixteen words. It's an entire house of cards built on a foundation of lies.

(more rambling about the military here. Omitted for brevity and coherence.)

I've preserved this part verbatim, though, because it's just *such* a spiffy little bit of rhetoric, I expect to see it in every university debate team's manual of style within a few years. Such a gem.
Republican is as Republican does. And man, are you doing.

Cheers!