When Ross Perot Calls…
Not surprisingly, McCain sees it differently. He has told me several times over the years that the myth of live POWs was a cruel hoax on the families. He chaired hearings into the issue in the 1990s and found nothing. "The committee did an exhaustive job and pored over thousands of records and every claim of a sighting, no matter how outlandish," says Salter. "It was all untrue."
Perot says he intends to vote for Mitt Romney in the Texas Republican primary on March 4, citing Romney's experience in business and his family values. "When I went to the Naval Academy and met my first Mormons I asked why so many were excellent officers," Perot recalls. "I learned it was because of their strong family unit."
When I asked about Barack Obama, Perot said he admired his eloquence but thought it "a little odd that we would be less concerned about his background than being a Mormon." Perot was pleasantly surprised when I told him that Obama was a Christian, not a Muslim, and relieved when I informed him that the e-mail Perot (and untold others) received about Obama not respecting the Pledge of Allegiance was a fraud.
Perot isn't a Hillary hater, but he's not a fan either, relating the bumper sticker he received that reads: "Monica Lewinsky's Ex-Boyfriend's Wife for President."
The founder of a data-processing empire is still sharp in diagnosing what ails the United States. "The situation in 1992 was not nearly as bad as it is now," he says. "If ever there was a time when it was necessary to put our house in order, it's now.
"It's like having cancer and being in denial. The conduct of the House and Senate is an embarrassment to the nation." President Bush, Perot says, is a "decent person, but you can't say the same thing about the people around him."
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Posted By: iridescent cuttlefish @ 05/04/2008 12:38:10 AM
Comment: Old men declare war because they have failed to solve complex political and economic problems. ??? Arthur Hoppe
Or because it's an extremely profitable enterprise, even when "we" lose. (Vietnam and Iraq share many similarities, including the enormous, really obscene profits they generated for certain "American interests").
So this is what a mainstream media outlet looks like...could it possibly be any shallower, any fluffier, any more misdirecting? How is it that Perot's POW/MIA experience isn't mentioned in connection with McCain, while all this superficial celebrity "Last time I talked to John...gosh, Ross has these really big ears" crap is the heart of the piece? Let's face it, folks, they're all whores: the politicians, the "journalists"--everyone associated with the political process in America is a lying sack of...well, you know. And you do know this.
And yet you still get sucked into voting for the right wing or the left wing of the Party, arguing the relative merits of "our representatives" when you don't even have a democracy to begin with. We used to laugh about the Soviet Union's one-party elections--are we really so much more sophisticated when we know that the same coffers sponsor both "sides" in our elections? Or did we imagine there were no strings attached?
Here are a few modest suggestions for actual, substantive political discourse in this land of collective make believe (and no, they will never, ever be addressed, a sure sign of their validity):
* the drug war~~why are drugs illegal? what's the cost/benefit analysis? who profits and how from the prohibition, especially on cannabis? (Dr. Melamede's "Harm Reduction: the Cannabis Paradox" http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/2/1/17 is both an eye and a mind-opener, as is any old link to the prison economy http://impiousdigest.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=72 )
* secrecy~~what are the (theoretical) checks & balances on the apparatus of the National Security State? (Okay, it's a trick question because there are none. Zero. Not operationally, not budgetary...nothing. My favorite quote here comes from a senator, but it could just as well describe the conscience of a nation:
In 1956, when Senator Mike Mansfield sought to establish a joint oversight committee on intelligence, Senator Leverett Saltonstall, advocating the ostrich???s position noted, ???It is not a question of reluctance on the part of CIA officials to speak to us. Instead, it is a question of our reluctance, if you will, to seek information and knowledge on subjects which I personally, as a Member of Congress and as a citizen, would rather not have??? (cited in Britt Snider monograph).
Good luck, America! (Oh, one last link to the war hero's other biography: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8221 )
Posted By: newvoter @ 04/21/2008 6:17:46 AM
Comment: Lincoln, unfortunately, did not include the Civil War in his platform and I for one would probably not have voted for him if he had. Makes me wonder what Obama could really be planning with an unrepentant terrorist, a bigot pastor and a Mafia connection.
Posted By: NBKrupp @ 04/14/2008 12:59:07 PM
Comment: If you want to know more about POWs - and possibly why Perot feels as he does - read: "Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington's Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union" by James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter, and R. Cort Kirkwood and "The Men We Left Behind: Henry Kissinger, the Politics of Deceit and the Tragic Fate of POWs after the Vietnam War" by Mark A. Sauter and James D. Sanders. "The Men We Left Behind" regarding the Senate Select Committee on POWs convinced me that John McCain is not presidential material. This leaves me no one for whom to vote for the first time in my life. I will not be voting for president.