I need some serious backup...

[LiveWire]

I am a writer for the Daily Nexus, a local student newspaper at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Currently, our little newspaper is being bombarded with conservative nonsense, and we Campus Dems are sick at tired of it. It is time, ladies and gentlement, to fight back. Im posting an article that was in yesterdays nexus in hopes of recieving any and all help. I really need a muse on this guys, these Repugs are bleeding us dry.


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Daily Nexus > Opinion > Volume 85, Issue Number 79
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You’ve Been a Bad Boy, Lefty

Chris Rice
Published Tuesday February 15, 2005

In response to the column titled “The Romance of Republicans,” (Daily Nexus, Feb. 14) by Neil Visalvanich, I must object. Yet contrary to before, I must indulge myself this time and not get too heated and instead form a rhyme. To say the least, my dear liberal friend, you’ve raised the political bar once again. I read these words that you oh-so-eloquently have written and I feel that conservatives have brutally been smitten by the hand of a liberal who just thinks we buy the overpriced items that our government raised to the sky.

Yes, it is true that our economy is blue, and yes, I can say that we have paid dearly for the actions of our military. But aren’t you wary of people like Al Franken, who clearly are mistaken in their political perspective? Can’t we be protective of the values that we’re given and not always listen to the latest American liberals who couldn’t be less credible?

Do you seriously make sure that you buy the right car? Does boycotting SUVs neglect the war from afar? I suppose all these questions you’ve just brushed aside and now you’re back on word-skinning my hide. This I can take, for I have no regrets: what you see is simply what you get. What I don’t understand is how you make claims regarding American pride and your liberal disdain for the everyday consumer that walks our streets; once again, you’ve tripped over your own feet. You go to the store and you buy all the things that you’re writing about, so how can you cringe when a Republican does the same? I feel it’s a shame when hypocrisy is noted by a man who just voted for a candidate like John Kerry, the epitome of what’s scary in the world of politics.

You say that our country is moving back in time when we viewed hand jobs just like every kind of crime. We haven’t regressed in that sense; that’s just stupid to write in a newspaper that’s read where a degree is in sight. What exactly are you asking for, my liberal antagonist from the Nexus? You can’t always have the sugary cereal when your mom puts out your breakfast.

As a Republican, I can see the bigger picture and it’s pleasant, a far cry from Democrats stuck in their political convalescence, who question daily our country’s thoughts and beliefs and think our president is a liar and a thief. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: A person who does this is not our country’s friend. This is not to say that we can’t question our government, but it’s a belief of mine that we accept their covenant to safely trek through the Middle East, ridding the world of terrorists who feast on everyone not on their side, for it’s not in our best interest to abide by their rules of fear. Remember that opinions adhere with personal interests in mind, so it’s just not Republicans who selfishly confine themselves to particular political plans because this is done by both conservative and liberal hands alike.

Lastly, I’d like to discuss the national debt, which, no doubt, is due to inept politicians that spent money like it was candy when everything was just fine and dandy. This horrible situation needs to be addressed, but how can someone like you attest to a claim like a “credit card war”? There’s quite simply more to it, which I know that you see. For example, let’s use our Social Security. In World War II, with our nation in need, FDR accepted a plan that could ultimately feed our army’s supplies. I trust you read this with your own eyes. How did that work out, my Democrat-loving friend?

Did you not address this same topic, but fail to defend the political side that started it all? You calmly stated that it will not fall, that it’s not a crisis that needs our attention. Failing to listen to truth brings detention, so please watch your words. They’ve remained quite absurd in the eyes of smart people who don’t always listen to others. Maybe next time you should actually listen to your mother.

Chris Rice is a senior English major.

I need any major points you would like to point out to me. Any quips I can bring up to infurriate the Campus Repugs would be welcome, as well as any random facts I could add to my already growing article.

[paineinthearse]

1. Chris Rice is a senior English major.

I suggest Chris change majors.

[alcuno]

7. Or ask for his money back.

Now everyone knows
That writing in prose
Is a great waste of time
When you can't even rhyme.

[Cell Whitman]

2. Ask them to explain this.

http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[Cell Whitman]

8. tell them that they wouldn't be in power

without Moon's money, direction and for sure without his front groups. That is a FACT. Ask them how it feels to have Moon put them in control of our government.

No Moon No Bush, wouldn't have happened.

Then ask them if John 5:43 means anything to them.
___

Ask them what they think of this about their beloved Washington Times and if they say they don't read it, tell them every son of a bitch who tells them what to think does...


http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/2004/10/independent-washington-times.html

[Dookus]

3. What do you want from us?

It's unreadable claptrap. He needs someone to go in there and remove just about every adverb and most of the adjectives and then see if there's anything left. I doubt there will be.

[spanone]

4. "As a republican I can see the bigger picture" Don't waste your time

He blames the debt on Clinton. Bush has NEVER vetoed a spending bill. This guy is just full of himself & shit. He's also typical of the smug republican who thinks his shit doesn't smell. Go to www.truthout.com and check out the archives. Listen to William Pitt who writes for truthout. There are articles in there that will help you refute all of his claims. There is VERY LITTLE SUBSTANCE in what he has to say. And remember....he is a republican so he thinks God is on his side. "failing to listen to truth brings detention"...this guy has his head so far up his ass you might just be bumping your gums to even debate him. Personally, I'd tell him to go fuck himself, but that's just my debating style.

[Warpy]

5. It's facile garbage from a sophomoric sort

who throws out statements without offering any examples to back them up. He obviously is impressed with his own cleverness in throwing in a lot of assonance and calling it rhyme, but it's only tortured his prose to the point of being utterly unreadable.

I strongly suggest not competing with this bit of amateurish doggerel. Just let sleeping doggerel lie.

[htuttle]

6. Not sure, but you should definitely use the word 'bloviated' in your reply

My usual response to pompous nonsense like this is to hit them with 'a Truman', such as starting your response with something like, "What a pile of horse manure" or in more polite company, "What the heck are you talking about?"

Anyone else trying to read that guy's bloviated screed (oh, 'screed' is also a must have) is going to have their head spinning by the time they reach the bottom. You hit them with a Harry Truman line, pause for the tension breaking laugh (robbing aforementioned screed of much of it's impact), then start in on a simple concise explanation of why they are full of shit.

Pick out or two points from his long, Limbaughesque treatise to argue on. He's all tied up arguing some bizarre, useless partisan battle, when the real world falls to crap due to their actions. His paragraphs about Iraq and the national debt are useless and nonsensical, much like the Bush administration's policies on both.*


_{* Hey, that line is pretty good. The other thing is knowing when to stop.}

[cornermouse]

9. Dear Chris

I'm a mother. You're an idiot. I'm so grateful you're not my child.

What's that about a covenant? Did you accept Clinton's convenant to safely trek through Bosnia? What? You didn't? I'm shocked.

Where do you plan to get a job when you graduate? There isn't a large job market for an English major.

I wonder. Do you plan to be a teacher in our underfunded, overcrowded public school system? Perhaps you think you can find a job in one of the private schools? I hear they aren't all that well paid either. In case you haven't noticed, due to ongoing school closings, there are fewer teaching jobs.

In any case, the No Child Left Behind law is making things much more difficult for teachers. If teaching is what you hope to do, I look forward to hearing your view of the NCLB once you've actually gathered some experience from the up-close, inside position of actually working with it.

And how about that DeLay and Hastert duo. What a masterpiece of high standards and ethics they've proved themselves to be. If it looks like the law is going to hang you, you change the law. Voila'. No more inconvenience caused by ethics.

Oh and that National Debt? You're going to be paying it back long after I'm gone. It will be interesting once you get a little older, more experienced in real life, and wiser. You're going to find that home loans are somewhere between difficult to impossible. All that money Bush has been soaking up with his borrowing? Its going to prevent you from becoming a homeowner. I would really enjoy watching your anger and frustration once you realize just how badly Bush ripped you off.

[Laurab]

10. How hypocritical is this?

"but it’s a belief of mine that we accept their covenant to safely trek through the Middle East, ridding the world of terrorists who feast on everyone not on their side, for it’s not in our best interest to abide by their rules of fear."


First of all, I don't think we're exactly "safely trekking" through the Middle East, as I'm sure the dead soldiers and innocent civilians would attest, if they were able, nor are we ridding the world of terrorists - in fact, we're creating more LOTS more. God help us when we begin to try to "safely trek through" even more of the Middle East. "Covenant", my ass.

As for "feasting on everyone not on their side" - is he talking about the * white house? "abiding by their rules of fear" - again = * white house?

The whole thing is propagandaist bushit. Is this really a college student?

[intheflow]

11. Do you have a link to the column he's trying to rebut?

I can't get anything from this swaggering wind tunnel. He's all sneering, no substance.

"As a Republican, I can see the bigger picture, and it's pleasant."

Really? What, exactly, is this bigger picture these Regressives see? Because as a Progressive, the big pictures I see are global warming, globalizaton, and global militarization, none of which seem very pleasant.

[SpiralHawk]

12. Re-frame the whole debate to some legitimate point of view

Rather than the radical Republican point of view. And then say what you need to say.

If you let the radical Republicans set the terms of the debate from cloud loony, you cannot win.

There have been several fascinating DU threads on this theme in recent weeks.

So if you really want to go jaw to jaw, find out about reframing a debate, and then do so. That's my advice.

[politicaholic]

13. 1) This guy is stating opinion as fact, 2) he's a bad writer, 3)...

he's naive to think that a rosey outcome to a bad situation is ever going to happen.

How the hell can HE see the bigger picture? He's a friggin' 22 year old English Major. If he was a debate team champion possibly we could believe him, but the fact that he states no facts in his article shows his lack of capacity to gather a case, investigate his opinion, and qualify that opinion based on UNBIASED data.

Let me clarify the fact that he's a bad writer. His wording is pretentious, unexciting, and he shrouds the true meaning of the paragraph with infantile passive aggressive verbal gestures.

"To say the least, my dear liberal friend, you’ve raised the political bar once again." -spineless-

"I feel it’s a shame when hypocrisy is noted by a man who just voted for a candidate like John Kerry, the epitome of what’s scary in the world of politics." -baseless-

"As a Republican, I can see the bigger picture and it’s pleasant, a far cry from Democrats stuck in their political convalescence, who question daily our country’s thoughts and beliefs and think our president is a liar and a thief." -clueless & a run on sentence-

"In World War II, with our nation in need, FDR accepted a plan that could ultimately feed our army’s supplies. I trust you read this with your own eyes. How did that work out, my Democrat-loving friend?" -I guess history or economics is not required for an English degree-

"Maybe next time you should actually listen to your mother."-oh god, why am I still writing about this moron-

All in all, I envision this person as somewhat overbearing. A classic immature ideologue with a few facts and a lot of pretty words to present with which to present them. People probably have commended him on his ability to formulate his opinion by the way he presents his argument, but ultimately he wouldn't survive an argument with a smart 17 year old who loves to read the paper and collect the truth through proven unbiased sources.

Poor kid, maybe someday he'll learn that when he's out of college, bullshit WILL walk.

[noamnety]

14. Do you have to reply to that?

If you have a regular gig where you are forced to respond back and forth directly to each other, I guess we could help, but really that was dreadful writing with very little content other than childish insults and vague finger pointing.

If you don't have to respond to it, don't. Just pick a current topic (social security? gannongate? rejection of judges under Clinton and Bush?) and cover it in a professional manner.

A rebuttal to that isn't something you want in your resume, imo.

[LiveWire]

15. This is the link to my Democratic collegue

http://www.dailynexus.com/opinion/2005/8982.html


Valentine’s Day is a day dedicated to celebrating the love between a man and a woman — or a man and a man, a woman and a woman, whichever your poison. But after spending the past weekend gouging out my wallet in the pursuit of material representations of love for my girlfriend, I think I’ve just about had enough of that kind of love. So instead, I’m going to dedicate this column space to the often-neglected love between a citizen and his country. This is better known as patriotism.

What we often associate with patriotism now is the sort of blind patriotism that has infected this country since 9/11. This is the kind of patriotism that leads you to believe that if you put an American flag decal on your SUV, you’re somehow absolved from making your country a better place. If you can sing the national anthem, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, shop at Wal-Mart, hate the terrorists and eat an entire bucket of fried chicken while watching the Super Bowl, then doggone it, you’ve done your part. This sort of blind patriotism puts the unconditional love into the relationship but none of the responsibility.

Al Franken said it best: “Conservatives love America like a child loves his mommy, and mommy can do no wrong. Whereas love America like an adult loves someone… always working to appreciate what’s there, being critical of what’s wrong and trying to help and make it better.” Of course, Franken is generalizing. But within Franken’s sweeping partisan generalization lies a more poignant point - what ever happened to trying to help make America better? What happened to loving - and I mean really loving - America?

Some people seem to think making America better means turning back the clock some 50-odd years, back to the day when it was thought that giving someone a hand job would not only get you pregnant but would probably cause your head to explode. Others want to rewind even further, back to when corporations could treat workers like indentured servants and get away with it, all in the name of the almighty buck.

While the right loves to wax nostalgic on what a great country America was before the supposed excesses of the 1960s, I say that if we want to know real and genuine patriotism, we should look even further back, back to the era before the Civil War, back to the idea of civic republicanism. Civic republicanism was the crazy idea that it was a citizen’s duty to set aside personal interest for the common good - the good of the nation. Needless to say, today’s Republican Party is hardly loyal to the concept that is their namesake. Our relationship with our country has regressed into a relationship of neglect and abuse. Instead of “what you can do for your country,” it has become “what you can do for yourself.”

If you want examples, all you need to do is look around. While war rages on in the Middle East, this is the first time in American history that the American people have not been asked to make sacrifices. The Bush administration has chosen not to pay for the wars it starts. Instead, it puts it on a credit card, and not only that, it cuts taxes for the richest of us. The message is clear: We don’t need to pay for this war; our children can. In addition to that, families of dead veterans of the war in Iraq are paid a paltry $11,000, barely a subsistence annual living, and attempts to raise these benefits are routinely blocked by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his cronies.

Only in America could you pretend to wear a flag on your lapel in “solidarity” with the troops all the while working against their interests. Every Hummer you see represents more oil money being funneled to Middle Eastern regimes that hate us, all because some jackass thinks it’s cool to drive a car that gets seven miles to the gallon. We live in a society where it’s OK to give multinational corporations welfare but not provide basic health care necessities to our very own citizens.

Citizenship means more than the obligation to spend and consume. It’s time to ask ourselves what we can do for our country after we’re done waving the flag.

Neil Visalvanich is a Daily Nexus columnist.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LiveWire]

17. hey...

I had the article done, I was just interested what other people thought. Is that a crime?

[Catherine Vincent]

18. you must've struck a nerve....

heehee

[dsc]

19. Let's just say that if I had been as poor a math major as this guy is an

English one, I would still be taking Calculus 153.

[hunter]

20. Why waste the ink on a "response?"

Geeeez,

Write about "bulldog" sex in the White House press room or something.

Maybe you should ask yourself, "What would Meghan Palma Do?"