A friend of mine, sent me the below article and
response to a Lawrence O'Donnell post on the Huffington Blog.
I found it so astonishing, especially the
respondent's vision of the Powerful Bush Dynasty. Please read both the article
and the retort and judge for yourself as to the power that still may remain
within THE BUSH CABAL. thinkingblue
My friend, Judy emails me,
Carolyn, I know you read the H. Post, but in case you missed this...I
thought it was a WOWER! Judy
Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidacy is the best thing that will happen for
the Democratic candidates this year. He's going to lose. Yes, I know he's the
Republican frontrunner in some polls, but Howard Dean was the frontrunner for a
while in the last contested presidential primary season.
On his way to losing, Giuliani is going to divert a lot of money away from the
inevitable Republican nominee, John McCain.
Giuliani's losing campaign is also going to pull a lot of pro-choice,
independent voters away from McCain in the general election. McCain has had very
strong appeal among those voters for years because, among other things, they
don't quite realize how hard-core his anti-abortion position actually is. When
Republican primary voters discover how liberal Giuliani has been on social
issues--along with how many wives he's had and how many gay men he has lived
with while waiting for a divorce to come through--they are going to abandon him
faster than Democratic voters fled from Howard Dean. But the only way they are
going to "discover" Giuliani's record on social issues is for John McCain to
tell them about it. McCain's campaign has the most vicious attackers in politics
today, including Bush campaign graduates and the Swift Boat attack team. They
are going to make Giuliani look very bad to conservative voters, but, in the
process, they are going to make McCain look bad to moderates he will need in the
general election.
The attacks on Giuliani are also going to make the Democratic nominee look
better. Only the New York press (which includes the national press) thinks being
The Mayor is adequate preparation for being president. McCain's attacks on
Giuliani will include double underlining Giuliani's lack of experience in
federal government. Giuliani's experience with the biggest items in the federal
budget--Social Security, Medicare, and Defense--is nonexistent. The McCain
campaign will do the Democrats the favor of showing that the current Republican
frontrunner has less relevant governing experience than Senators Obama and
Clinton, who will owe McCain a thank-you note.
No mayor of New York has been promoted by voters to higher office in my
lifetime. Big city mayors don't play well with voters outside their city
anymore. Just ask John Lindsay, Ed Koch, Kevin White, Tom Bradley, Dick Riordon.
Rudy Giuliani is no exception.
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` GET A LOAD OF THIS RESPOND FROM...TJTelecaster, Lawrence; I respect you greatly, but Jeb Bush will be
The Republican Candidate for President, when Cheney steps down and Bush appoints
him Vice President..
Then Jeb runs as incumbent VP..
The Bush Mafia as you know screws everyone who has ever been taken in by them,
even Colin Powell even Karl Rove is expendable in the end as well..!
Cheney's days are numbered..
He'll step down due to "health reasons" of course, but The Libby Trial will be
the last straw, and he'll have to go..
This Unitary Dictator is also putting much of his Iraq debacle off on Cheney and
Rumsfeld, as if they mislead him or he was ill-advised by them, you'll see..
Also The President Swore Cheney and Rumsfeld be there until Bush leaves
office..!
So just like Rumsfeld that very day I knew they were both out...
Cheney and
Rummy..!
It's not about The Republican party or what's best for America by any means,
it's about The Bush Family Mafia and nothing else..
Maybe it's my Roman heritage that makes me see the obvious when others do not..!
The Democrats have to go with Edwards because only he, can maybe beat Jeb Bush..
You'll see:
"It's in the contract Yossarian..!"
By: TJTelecaster on February 06, 2007 at 01:34pm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOODNESS, COULD TJ BE RIGHT????
thinkingblue
Why do they call a no-win situation a "Catch-22"? --Nick Gabaly
SDSTAFF Dex replies:
You know you're old when people ask about the origin of phrases that were
introduced in your lifetime.
The phrase "Catch-22" comes from the book of that name by Joseph Heller
(1923-1999), published in 1961. Catch-22 is a wonderful book, full of
dark humor and absurdity, satirizing war, military bureaucracy, and by extension
modern life and the ways in which they destroy the human spirit.
The word "catch" of course is used in the sense of snare, snag or
entanglement.
The story is set in Italy in World War II. The main character, Captain
Yossarian, is a bombardier (as Heller had been) who wants to get out of
flying potentially deadly combat missions. So does his tent-mate, Orr. The
easiest way to get out of flying more missions is to plead insanity. Heller
writes:
There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a
concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate
was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All
he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and
he would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions
and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them
he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had
to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause
of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
In short, Catch-22 is "heads I win, tails you lose." If you can, you can't,
and if you can't, you can. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Whenever you try to
behave sensibly in a crazy world, there's a catch.
Heller writes:
Yossarian strode away, cursing Catch-22 vehemently even though he knew
there was no such thing. Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but
it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed,
and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or
refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to
shreds, trample upon, or burn up.
In fact, Heller originally wanted to name his dilemma Catch-18, but a book by
Leon Uris called Mila 18, historical fiction about the Warsaw ghetto
uprising during WWII, had just been published, and the publishers were afraid
there would be confusion. (Mila 18 was a street address.)
So, there really isn't a Catch-22, despite its pervasiveness--and that's an
example of the catch, of course. Circular dilemmas of this sort appear over and
over in the book. Sometimes the Catch is mentioned explicitly, more often not.
Some other examples of Catch-22 in action, from the book:
Major Major is a commander who doesn't command. He hates dealing with
people, and is somewhat frightened of them. He therefore instructs his
receptionist/orderly that, whenever he is in his office, any visitors should
be told he is out. When he leaves his office (sneaking out the back window),
the receptionist can send visitors in to see him. In short, the only time you
can see Major Major in his office is when he's out. If he's in, you can't see
him. It's an example of Catch-22, although the catch is not explicitly
mentioned in this connection.
Doctor Daneeka is a doctor who responds to patients' complaints by telling
them his own troubles.
The military police chase the girls away from Yossarian's favorite haunt.
When asked what right they have to do this, they reply, "Catch-22." Catch-22
says they have a right to do anything that you can't stop them from doing. And
if you ask to see Catch-22, the law says they don't have to show it to you.
What law? Catch-22, of course.
In the hospital, the Soldier in White (in a plaster cast from head to toe)
has a bottle of plasma going in and a bottle of urine coming out. The nurses
routinely switch the bottles around, in an endless cycle.
The Chaplain, when cornered, lies. He knows that telling lies and
defecting from duty are sins. He also knows that sin is evil and that no good
can come from evil. "But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous.
Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty
could not be sins."
Heller goes on, "The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition,
the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his
discovery."
So, that's the essence of the Catch. The book was ahead of its time,
according to the CNN obituary of Joseph Heller from December 13, 1999,
"seemingly written for the generations that followed in the turbulent 1960s and
1970s."
During the Vietnam era, the phrase "Catch-22" became a buzz-word for being
caught in a no-win, circular dilemma and has now become common usage. The
Oxford English Dictionary defines Catch-22 as "a set of circumstances in
which one requirement, etc., is dependent upon another, which is in turn
dependent upon the first."
You've probably encountered similar experiences yourself. I had a colleague
who was transferred to the U.S. from Australia. His final exasperation was car
insurance: in order to get car insurance in the U.S., based on his age, he
needed to have evidence that he was insurable, which means he needed to have
prior insurance with a U.S. insurer. He couldn't get insurance because he didn't
have insurance. I said to him, "It's a Catch-22," and he knew exactly what I
meant.
Evan Morris, THE WORD DETECTIVE, at
www.word-detective.com,
comments that his "personal favorite" example of Catch-22 is "needing to be rich
to avoid paying income tax." I leave it to you to find other examples in your
daily life.
The book Catch-22 is both hilarious and profound. In his walk through
the streets of Rome, Yossarian sees suffering and poverty and murder, and has a
lengthy soliloquy:
What a lousy earth! How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich
men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were
unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men
traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of
trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never
had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many
best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people?
When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only
the children, and perhaps with an Albert Einstein and an old violinist or
sculptor somewhere.
Heller once said, "Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy.
Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts, and the question is: What does a
sane man do in an insane society?"
Robert M. Young, writing about Catch-22, answers, "For the most part,
what they try to do is survive in any way they can."
--SDSTAFF Dex
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board (SOUNDS LIKE THE IRAQ WAR TO ME! thinkingblue)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IN MEMORY OF MOLLY IVINS
How Giuliani Will Help Elect the Democrat
Thinkingblue