The Talking Points by Devilstower Mon
Sep 24, 2007 at 07:03:13 PM PDT
Listen up, stenography pool.
While Bush is playing hookey from the global climate change summit after
expressing his support for anarchy as the preferred means of handling
international affairs, these are the talking points you'll be using to describe
the really important progress made during Ferris Bush's day off. And don't worry! A Siegel has already provided the full
length version, so this is just the Cliff Notes. You can fit them in fully authorized tasty thirty second
sound bites of joy.
Here's the description of Mr. Bush's prom for those countries too
hip to attend the real prom, provided by Martin E. McGuinness, Special
Assistant to the President:
Launch a
process for identifying a long-term global goal to reduce greenhouse gases.
Translation: Champagne corks are going to fly as we... launch a
process to identify a long-term goal.
Then we'll discuss a proposition to examine a non-binding
referendum. We might even study a
plan to consider a proposal while we're at it. Take that, people who said this meeting was just a way to
dodge making a real commitment at the UN gathering!
Discuss
technology pathways and near-term national strategies to promote energy
security and reduce greenhouse gases.
Translation: No-bid contracts are available for the first ten
Halliburton spin-offs that claim to have a gizmo, gadget, or enough cool
technobabble we can hide behind.
Construct work
programs for key sectors, such as advanced coal and transportation
Translation: More coal, more cars, more money.
Agree that we
should strengthen emissions reporting and harmonize how we measure our
reductions
Translation: If everyone agrees to cheat the same way, then no one
is cheating.
There you have it, a sound program of voluntary measures, plus
funding for for coal and oil. Join
us next week when we discuss the plan for creating a long term strategy for
developing a vision of dealing with imported pet toys. The basic idea: a strong program of
voluntary measures, plus more funding for coal and oil.
Update [2007-9-24 22:25:58 by Devilstower]: As A Siegel reminds
me, I left out the best part.
These talking points require no translation, as they are pre-packaged
parody.
* This
Administration has done more for the environment and addressing energy security
and climate change than any other in history.
* The President treats
climate change seriously and is taking aggressive, yet responsible action to
reduce our greenhouse gases based on the best available science.
* In 2006, it is
estimated U.S. absolute CO2 emissions declined 1.3% while the economy grew
3.3%.
On that last point, can we just say, hurray! The Bush administration has proved that
you can lower greenhouse gases while improving the economy, exactly the thing
they've said was impossible. So
the next time someone talks about the "cost" of cutting greenhouse
gases, have this one handy.
=================================
Bush Lies About Senator William Fulbright and Vietnam
http://www.waxingamerica.com/neocons/index.html
In his speech August 22, 2007 President George W. Bush, displaying
a profound and dangerous misunderstanding of American History and our
involvement in World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Vietnam War, took a
sentence from Senator J. William Fulbright's The Crippled Giant and mangled it
out of context.
In 1972, one antiwar
senator put it this way: "What earthly difference does it make to nomadic
tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos,
whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar
in some distant capital that they've never seen and may never heard of?"
...The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be...
It has been over thirty years since I read the book. If memory
serves me correctly, Senator Fulbright asked a rhetorical question and was not
dismissing the aspirations "nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence
farmers." His point was that
in the desperate struggle to survive, the battles for control of the government
"in some distant capital" was not the focus of their daily lives.
Fulbright went on to say that he hoped that one day the democracy
would be attainable for them.
When I have the book in hand, I will post the remainder of
Fulbright's thoughts, HERE.
Update:
8/23/07 at 6:15 PM. Anthony provided the entire quote in his comment below. Now
that I have had the opportunity to read it in context, Bush's distortion is
more egregious than I imagined. The most moderate history professor would give
the speech a failing grade based on this one distortion.
Nor does it matter all
that terribly to the inhabitants. At the risk of being accused of every sin from
racism to communism, I stress the irrelevance of ideology to poor, peasant
populations. Someday, perhaps, it will matter, in what one hopes will be a
constructive and utilitarian way. But in the meantime, what earthly difference
does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers, in Vietnam or
Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a
socialist commissar in some distant capital that they have never seen and may
never even have heard of?
At their current stage
of undevelopment these populations have more basic requirements. They need
governments which will provide medical services, education, birth control
programs, fertilizer, high-yield seeds and instruction in how to use them. They
need governments which are honest enough to refrain from robbing and exploiting
them, purposeful enough to want to modernize their societies, and efficient
enough to have some ideas about how to do it. (emphasis added) Whether such
governments are capitalist or socialist can be of little interest to the people
involved, or to anyone except their incumbent rulers, whose perquisites are at
stake, and their great-power mentors, fretting in their distant capitals about
ideology and "spheres of interest."
As you
can see, Fulbright made the point that a socialist or capitalist government was
not important but that what was needed was, "...governments which are
honest enough to refrain from robbing and exploiting them.." In this day
and age of no bid multi billion dollar contracts to Haliburton, that sounds
pretty democratic to me.
It is despicable that a United States President would twist the
words of a heroic United States Senator and portray Fulbright as suggesting
that democracy is of little consequence to impoverished people.
If Bush wished to quote Fulbright, he might have noted:
*
We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem
to do it about every 10 minutes.
*
We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly
cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by
any means available to outsiders.
*
The rapprochement of peoples is only possible when differences of
culture and outlook are respected and appreciated rather than feared and
condemned, when the common bond of human dignity is recognized as the essential
bond for a peaceful world.
*
The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of
power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of
impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
*
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own
government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on
them.
*
Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly
susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring
upon it a special responsibility for other nations - to make them richer and
happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.