General Chat (Non-Music-Related)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -days.html

Cruz, Walker, Kirk and—especially—Bolton are furious at the world. Their solution: Declare war on it.
At the end of a week when many paused to reflect during Passover and Easter ceremonies, a question with no real answer seemed to crash into our culture with all the subtlety of a marching band in a funeral parlor: Why do so many Republicans seem so angry all the time at so much around us?

The fury of some like Ted Cruz is understandable. It’s fueled by his massive ego and outsized ambition along with his personal belief that he is so smart and the rest of us are so pedestrian that he can manipulate opinion to win the Republican nomination for president with the support of the mentally ill wing of his party.

“A real president,” Cruz the bombardier said last week, “would stand up and say on the world stage: Under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will either stop or we will stop them.”

Then there is the minor league Cruz, the tough talking, totally in-over-his-head governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, who is running to crack down on the salaries of teachers, cops and firefighters everywhere. Oh, he’ll also teach Iran a good lesson by throwing any deal out the window no matter what other countries might think. Imagine Scotty informing Angela Merkel of his decision while he wears his Cheese-Head Hat.

There are so many others too. There’s the kid who started the pen pal club with the ayatollah, Tom Cotton. There’s the mental midget from Illinois, Mark Kirk, who went right to the basement for his best thought on Iran, claiming that England got a better deal from Hitler than the U.S. got from Teheran. Kirk, not a history major.

But my personal favorite? In this corner, from Baltimore, wearing the costume of a true warrior, locked and loaded and ready to roll, the former Ambassador to the United Nations, John “Bombs Away” Bolton. He took to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times to declare war on Iran. After all, why waste time!

“The inconvenient truth is that only military action…” Field Marshall Bolton wrote, “can accomplish what is required. Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed.”

Bolton, of course, is one of the Mensa members who told George W. Bush that it would be swell to go to war in Iraq.
Bolton, of course, is one of the Mensa members who told George W. Bush that it would be swell to go to war in Iraq. Twelve years later things are really going well there.

At least Bolton knows war on a firsthand basis. At age 18 he was in South Vietnam where…OH, I’M SORRY…MY MISTAKE…that was another Bolton. That was Dennis Bolton from Bedford, Indiana, born two weeks before John Bolton was born in Baltimore in November 1948. Two different young men with two different tales to tell.

Dennis Bolton went to Vietnam. John Bolton who went to Yale. Dennis Bolton was killed near DaNang on April 19, 1967 where he served with the Marines while John Bolton finished his freshman year at New Haven.

In 1967, Bedford had a population of about 13,000. It’s a nice small town where Gene Hackman could have filmed Hoosiers, one of the great sports films ever. Ten young men from Bedford were killed in Vietnam.

Indiana, of course, is the state where Mike Pence and Republicans in the state legislature spent the week clowning it up over their lost fight to make it harder for some Americans simply to be happy. Make no mistake about it, their war was against same-sex marriage and they suffered a TKO when the country turned against them in the snap of a finger, an overnight knockout delivered with stunning speed. But I digress.

In 1967, Baltimore had a population of about 930,000. It’s a tough town with a lot of different neighborhoods, some dangerous, many working class, where Barry Levinson hadn’t made Diner yet and HBO hadn’t given us the gift that is The Wire. Four hundred and seventeen residents of Baltimore were killed in Vietnam.

Dennis Bolton’s name is on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. John Bolton’s name was on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times as well as on the lips of some angry, fevered lunatics whose principal policy option is to fight rather than talk.

Obviously, Bolton never made it to Vietnam. He joined the Maryland National Guard to avoid going to Vietnam and, hey, good for him. At least he served.

Of course, he blamed his absence from combat on the politics of the time. On liberals like Ted Kennedy and others, claiming they had already lost the war by the time he was ready to take on the North Vietnamese Army. I guess that explains the itch, the unfulfilled need, the frustration that guys like Bolton have lived with across the decades.

And today, “Bombs Away” Bolton still has a strong desire to light it up. And according to some pundits he's even considering a run for president. Obviously his platform will remain as unchanged as his thinking: Different time, different dangers, different countries but same selfish solution: Send someone else’s kids to fight and die while Bolton and others play with a lit fuse in a world more dangerous than dynamite.

Let me first answer the question you posed.

As a former liberal atheist and someone who works as a professional in the music business, I have a LOT of liberal friends. I've been telling them for years that their silence regarding the bullying tactics of this extreme leftist Administration is going to produce a backlash they will not like.

This nation was birthed in rebellion for one particular reason: These United States do not accept taxation without representation.

Where were you when HALF of the nation's elected Representatives were physically locked out of a vote held under cover of darkness which usurped 1/7th of the nations economy? Do you not realize that is taxation without representation?

Where were you when we were told that we couldn't read it, much less debate this monstrosity, until it became law? (like the Net Neutrality Act, like the current Iranian nuclear negotiations) Do you not realize this is taxation without representation?

Where were you when the IRS was using unlimited powers of the Gestapo (above the laws we are bound by) to harm anything deemed political opposition by this President, with the full-protection of the Justice Department? Do you not realize this is unprecedented powers of taxation being used against the rights of US citizens?

Where were you when Obama swore tax monies would not be used for elective abortions, and knew he was lying the whole time? Guess what? Taxation without honest representation.

How many times can a thief steal you blind under false pretenses before it makes you a little upset?





The article is about military strategy though. No matter what spin you put on it today, our enemies in the world respected George Bush...and hid until he was gone. They laugh at Obama, and the totalitarian murderers have taken back every inch that our boys died to liberate.

It's fair to question whether Bolton has his bolts too tight...but I believe his analysis could be right. The entire planet may wish they had listened when Iran gets a bomb.

Actually the question should be.... WHY ISN'T THE GOP OUTRAGED AT ALL THESE ATTACKS ON THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAW OF THE UNITED STATES of AMERICA!!!!

Stop thinking Republicans and Democrats and it makes more sense.

The UniParty is angry - one must assume that not because of loud talk but because of the destruction of the middle east: Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt (thankfully recovered).

Agitating for war in Ukraine. Agitating for war with Iran.

So which party is it that is against all this meddling in other's business? Neither. Which party is against the constant war that has raged my entire life - during which life I might add the USA has never been seriously at risk.

Neither damned party.

They are both all war, all the time. And they both ignore our national interests and both mock their constituents with much talk and no action. All these ridiculous wars and what have we gained? DHS. TSA. I feel so safe...

GOP? Who gives a sh*t.

Talbot