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5.02.2004
Gloves Off Neologic :: Fanatics, Crooks and Fools Considering the hatchet job on Max Cleland in Georgia, a war hero who lost limbs in Vietnam, it wouldn't matter how badly Kerry was wounded or how many medals he won or how many lives he saved in combat -- the Chickenhawks and their media cohorts know just how to neutralize real service to this country and make it equal to George's documented cowardice. I don't want to re-quote Bear's entire post but its worthy, that's for sure. I say.. gloves off. By now I can safely say that people who don't care about politics get a pass. The rest of you that keep informed and follow what's going on around the world are on the ball here. What kind of moron do you have to be to equate an act of conscience to an act of irresponsibility? You can't run around using phrases like "brave men and women fighting.." in one breath and ignore Bush's lack of commitment to his own military service on the other. You have a man that actually served in Vietnam and earned medals for bravery and then upon returning opposed the bad policies of that same war. He could have just as easily said "I'm out, screw you guys". But no, he put his ass on the line to try to end the war and bring the rest of the guys fighting home in one piece. Then he runs for political office and serves in the Senate for four terms. I'm not the type of guy that thinks being in the military is proof that a man is fit to be President. My requirements do however include honesty and the ability to speak and think coherently. The same traits that I look for in a car mechanic are the same ones I look for in a President, he must be able to see problems clearly and fix them. He must also be willing to listen to reason and not have his judgment clouded by ideology and his own sense of moral righteousness. I've had car mechanics like Bush. I once took a car to a guy to have it checked out. The battery was draining while the car sat. I had replaced the alternator just in case but I suspected that I had a short somewhere in the electrical system. We had noticed that there was a constant pull on the battery even when the key was off but we didn't have the time or the expertise to hunt down the source. We figured it was electrical and hoped a mechanic would know where to look. So we took the car to this mechanic and before I even had a chance to explain the problem he was already explaining how I needed a new alternator. I asked him if the battery would still drain while sitting if the alternator was bad. He once again started to explain that I needed a new alternator. I turned and left. This guy had no interest in hearing any information that I might provide to him that would help him discover the problem with the car. He was already convinced that he knew the problem and wasn't going to listen to anything that I had to say. Sound familiar. If you find a mechanic that is not willing to listen to what you have to offer -- run, don't walk out of that shop. Because even if you don't know much about cars you can provide good clues to help them diagnose the problem. A good mechanic can sometimes discover the problem from simply listening to your description of the symptoms. Had I left the car there I would have returned to find a new alternator installed and the problem not fixed. I might have even drove off and been abandoned with a dead battery a few days later. I know this because I later left the car with another mechanic that had agreed to keep it until he had discovered the problem. I also know this because I know what an alternator does and how it works and I had already eliminated it from the equation. Sadly, this new mechanic concluded that there was indeed an electrical short that would be difficult to track down as it could be in any number of places throughout the car. The moral of the story? Patterns of behavior. We all draw from various experiences that we have in our personal lives to help us make decisions in matters that we are not as well versed. We've all been on winning teams and losing teams. We've been in workplaces that ran smoothly and others that were chaotic. Hopefully we have come to learn what makes a person a good leader and what makes a person a bad leader. We've seen what kind of behavior produces good results and what kind produces disaster. We learn to recognize these traits in the doctors we trust and the mechanics we leave our cars with. Or maybe we haven't. Let's look at Bush from a management perspective. Imagine if Bush had been appointed CEO of a huge billion dollar corporation. For four years he had been predicting that his management would increase the stock prices. Twice he has predicted a meteoric increase and both times the stock continued to plummet. Nearly four years later the stock has stopped dropping and had inched back up a few pennies. Would the stockholders be happy with that performance? No way. Let's say that CEO Bush gambled on a buyout of another company. He went before the stockholders and predicted that this new company would make the company huge profits. Even though many of the stockholders who had done their own research were skeptical the management team produced charts and graphs and slideshows and documents that "proved" that buying this company would result in mega-profits. A year after the buyout the company is still losing money and the new acquisition is hurting revenue. Would the stockholders be impressed with this performance? No way! Its a flawed analogy, but I was hoping that putting Bush's behavior in a different context, away from our biases about party and government would make the case more clear. But its been clear for so long now that I can only assume that if you haven't got it yet that you're just... Dense. I agree with Bear. Who said it better than I can: What kind of support base would put up with this? Why, the self-proclaimed moral guardians of this country, that's who. The Christian Right. And let's not forget the crooks getting richer from Bush's patronage. Nor should we underestimate the seemingly unlimited supply of fools. Bravo my friend. Gloves off!! | |
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