BS: Mudcat Left, Mudcat Right

Subject: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right.
From: GUEST,Peter Woodruff
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 04:50 PM

The Mudcat Forum is an evolving animal...ofcourse by Intelligent Design. Mudcat has evolved out of the mud as its name suggests but lately it is mutatating back into the mud again...I didn't think that was possible after staying the course for what seems an eternity. I really would like to see...My Mudcat stop a needless war to save us all. Rapture Right, Intelligent Design.

Peter
The Baptsist

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 05:54 PM

Don't ever let any call you "scrutable", Peter.

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:01 PM

...let *anyone*

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:15 PM

I'd think that Carol may have caught that scrutability problem from Peter...except that I did understand what she was trying to say

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:15 PM

Buddhism advises the middle path. So does Taoism.

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:18 PM

As some people point out with relish, the middle of the road gets you run over...

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:19 PM

Peter, Be carefull mate cause as my old skipper says önce she grabs ye by the scrutibles yer heart and mind are forced to follow"

Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: GUEST,Peter Woodruff
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:37 PM

You all have grabbed my balls from the Left and from the Right. You may finish me with the "Big Sucking Sound." I need to know where the U.S. is going with this immoral war, this contrived war that didn't need to be faught. This war we were lied into. Is it OIL? or is it BLOOD?

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:40 PM

No it doesn't, Scaramouche...the middle of the right or left lanes on the road get you run over. The middle of the road itself is reasonably safe. I know this from plenty of experience as a city pedestrian. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 06:44 PM

Maybe the traffic is more civilised in Canada. In Israel, unless there's a wall in the middle, I wouldn't get feeling too secure.

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 07:02 PM

It's very civilized in LH's part of Canada. People will stop their cars if you even just step off the curb onto the edge of the road. I know... it happened to me while I was there.

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: CarolC
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 07:03 PM

( ...down around Toronto is another story altogether)

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: SINSULL
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 07:05 PM

Peter,
We all need to know where this is going. Our smarmy and pathetic excuse for a president appears to finally understand that the 'Merican people are not and never were behind him.

So now what?

The situation is impossible. We can't and won't stay in Iraq forever. When we leave there will be chaos and mass murder. We had no business going in in the first place. Thousands dead and thousands more to die. It is as if the last 40 years never happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Amos
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 08:58 PM

Peter touches on the biggest problem facing our country and democracy overall -- harmony under law.

Bypassing the law and breaking harmony beyond the systems ability to recover its center is destructive in the extreme. The lack of harmony and a commitment to higher law is what is preventing the resolution of Iraq AND the lack of resolution in our own badly divided country.

This requires reciprocal toleration, not scurrilous and larcenous libels from all sides.

We are really testing the main springs of our great social invention with the current stresses of war, economic malfeasance and sly PR as a substitute for genuine dialogue. Ou ronly way out is back to the center where deliberate process can come from.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 09:02 PM

Scaramouche, as I remember the quote (attrib. to Jim Hightower, former TX sec'y of Agric. and TX gubernatorial candidate) it goes:

"Ain't nuthin in the middle uh the road but yalluh stripes an' daid armuhdillas."    Tw

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 09:08 PM

If you don't hurry up and get Up Front,
you'll be Left Right Behind!

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 09:10 PM

Remember the Kurds and innocent Iraqis that were gassed and murdered by Saddam? The UN did nothing about these problems and remains totally inept and impotent as well as corrupt. Iraq has had a chance to reform itself due to the US action, but foreign interference, tribal hatreds and religious intolerance will surely reign supreme when you leave Iraq. So we progress in time and technology but with little wisdom.

yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: kendall
Date: 26 Aug 05 - 10:15 PM

As soon as we stop meddling in their business, Iraq will be another Yugoslavia.

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 27 Aug 05 - 12:24 AM

Amos,

You are real close to being correct in what you say. That's very right on! To my ears it does sound like you are decribing the good ol' bell curve. The hard part, these days, seems to be allowing the beginning and the end--along with the big mountain in the middle muddle, to do their thing without someone walking up to us and detonating themselves.

Comes down to live and let live!! The old golden rule!!!

But when chaos rears it's ugly head, as it will when we are unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the right/in-oportune time, we will cese to exist.

Super-novas happen!! And that's all she wrote...

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 27 Aug 05 - 01:10 PM

"There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines & dead armadillos." -- LBJ

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: The leader follows in front. :||

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: GUEST,Ron Davies
Date: 27 Aug 05 - 01:36 PM

Dave--

Sorry, vilifying the UN is barking up the wrong tree. If you believe any progress has been made toward constitutional government in Iraq (very much an open question, to say the least), it's due to the UN being willing to be an honest broker between the various Iraqi factions. That's how Allawi got in, which made possible the January elections. Do you honestly think the Iraqis would have been willing to accept a Bremer or other Bushite rule indefinitely?

In fact, that's one of the main objections many Iraqi delegates have to the current constitutional debate----it's perceived, with reason, as being manipulated by Bush.

Also, as far as profits from Oil for Food abuses, as several others and I have pointed out, our own dear Dick Chaney, as head of Halliburton, was only too willing to belly up at the trough.

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 27 Aug 05 - 02:04 PM

Thanks, Joe F. Hightower probably was quoting. I heard him say it at a hearing once.    Tw

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: BK
Date: 28 Aug 05 - 09:34 AM

Haven't had much time to be here in recent years, but loosely, this is how I seem to recall an often complex, testy, vituperous evolution;

Years ago, when I first joined mudcat, it was an incredibly civilized, polite - and erudite - forum to exchange information, opinions, experiences & the joy of music, mostly related to & focussed on "folk" music (notwithstanding the never-ending, but mostly polite, debate about defining "folk").

Many folk (however defined) musicians (& songs) have humanistic inclinations & may be percieved by some as "liberal" which the propaganda machine has long ago made into a dirty word.

At some point Mudact was apparently discovered by folks who started posting (would that be like "blogging" today?) somewhat like wannabe ultraright wing media commentators. Extremely unpleasant change with many nasty tricks, posting in other's names, etc.. I suppose Mudcat's civilized demeanor suggested internet innocence & ripe fields for verbal rape & carnage to folks who appeared to get a kick out of it & presumably were already well practiced at flaming from other forums.

We were easy pickings. Flagrant, often really vicious, flaming became the order of the day. Lots of feelings were deeply hurt, others evidently got their kicks; prior to this we'd actually been civilized. Many good folks stopped coming around; possibly some, like me, maintained only an occasional/rare, sort of "ghost" presence.. Apparently it got better for a while? Generally these things cycle & beyond the flamers national & family splits are very real, massive & getting worse, more bitterly entrenched.

My own family allow me to see how very effective are the workings of the right/religious propaganda machine. Just touch them on any hot-topic issue such as evolution & out come the propaganda phrases, perfectly memorized. The machine has learned well how to manipulate (among many other things) the emotional keys of distrust, misunderstanding (sometimes bewilderment) & discomfort with complex technologies & scientific concepts few lay people understand. It's amazing & would be amusing if not so tragic. Might be part of why most of "our" newly trained scientists are from other countries. Many of them will stay here but also many will take the science & technology they learn here, mostly developed in the west, back to their third world, near-slave-labor-cost countries... & eventually if our good buddy "democracies" like china use them to make military technology... They are playing with fire to gain their political ends

Much of the flame war I saw on Mudcat was well before the current really ugly national situation, phoney war, etc, with vetrans like me - progressive, but, with all due respect, certainly not liberal, seeing the democracy for which we proudly wore a uniform (twice for me - officer [O-4] & enlisted [E-6]; 2 services) getting very scary, indeed. Many of us are deeply worried about the trashing of democracy, "multiparty" becoming a joke, etc, etc, etc, etc.. ad nauseum.

A perhaps sad reality is that it probably doesn't make too much difference, except to our feelings, what anybody says on the Mudcat. The internet might be one of the few remaining outlets for truth - certainly for diversity of information & so far not much censorship (maybe), but I doubt if more than a tiny percentage of Americans use anything other than the clearly manipulated (biased is too simple a concept) mainstream media for their information sources. (those few that actually try to "use" information).

BK

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 05 - 10:45 AM

STRENGTH

All your strength is in union.
All your danger is in discord.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: GUEST,Peter Woodruff
Date: 28 Aug 05 - 02:33 PM

You laugh and make jest, but this is serious business. We have a runaway president and administration in America now. We and the world are in grerat danger.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: GUEST,An Englishman Abroad
Date: 29 Aug 05 - 12:02 AM

I read and listen to both sides of any debate. I do not think it is possible to be able to have a conversation with someone of the other opinion unless you have an idea of where they are coming from. It is easy to spot the frantics and the idiots, unfortunately there are a lot about.

Our problem, by that I mean all of us, is that we discuss without full knowledge of the situation. We are told what governments want us to know not the facts. Now and again extra knowledge come out but by no means all of it.

There was a gentleman on PBS the other day saying that his nephew had been to Iraq and was now teaching at West Point. He has already received in writing the date he is to return to Iraq in two years time. This ties in with the reporting of permenant bases being built in Iraq. Yet we are being told the troops will pulled out.

We do tend to get ourselves into a lather about what we no nothing or very little about. Its human nature.

all the best   John

Subject: RE: BS: Mucat Left, Mudcat Right
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 29 Aug 05 - 01:56 AM

Peter, Sometimes I like to debate serious stuff on here, mainly because there are a lot of good intelligent people who enjoy debating important subjects. For the most part, its a music forum and internet cafe that is not all serious. Obviously you are very passionate about politics, and there are many threads on this subject for you to rant on. Personally, i'm avoiding getting too wound up on here, and like to have some lighthearted fun for a change. You should try and enjoy some music and comedy and lighten up a bit mate, lifes just too short.

Yours, Aye. Dave