Comments on Lovely

If you can't see the difference you're beyond hope, Charles. I know you CAN see it, though.

I think we should go in, kill Mugabe and his top ten lieutenants, and go back out again.

i'm not sure we have the operational capability to topple another government at this moment fnarf. the best we could do is focused air strikes or covert special forces operations, neither of which will be likely to effectively remove mugabe. we might be able to nail a few of his lieutenants or limit his military capabilities, but at what cost? although, i agree it would potentially be a good strategic decision if we could pull it off...maybe.

Fnarf is right.

Charles you have jumped the shark.

The guy is killing political opponents and terrorizing a nation.

Do you blame this on global capitalism too?

Meanwhile the govt. of South Africa --you know the big neighbor, with a big army, industry, an economy, and democracy -- stands by and does nothing.

Charles right now it's Mugabe's fault, it's South Africa's fault, and it's the fucking OAU's fault for doing nothing.

Proving once again that people everywhere of every race are all equally fucked up.

Go ahead. This is the only comment you can make ...to suggest Mugabe is equal to Bush so.....gee,he's not so bad?

Sick.

Charles,

Bush won't murder people on their way to ballot boxes. It's as simple as that. There's no comparison.

Ugh, I hate so-called liberals who foam at the mouth and embarrass the rest of us. Bush is awful, of course, but he is not killing and mutilating citizens en masse. What a ridiculous and asinine thing to say.

but but but....people voted! and they had purple fingers! just like the republicans in congress after the iraqi elections! waving their proud, democratic purple fingers around on the floor of congress...

in charles' defense, i think it's safe to say that more people have died as a direct result of Bush's administration than Mugabe's.

@ 5: he's not killing and mutilating citizens en masse? really? iraq anyone?

sure, charles' post is hyperbolic, but it's important to remember that we're looking at at LEAST 100,000 *documented* civilian deaths since the occupation. the real number is probably up in the half million range.

I think your lack of perspective is "Unfuckingbelievable." Read the caption in the picture.

http://newmexiken.com/wp-content/images/2008/06/_NYTimes.png

@6 Very poor logic there. By that reasoning, all sorts of comparisons can be made that reduce thinking about the subject.

What about intention? Does Bush organize militia's to terrorize voters? Does he torture and kill his political opponents and their supporters on a vast scale? Does he systematically starve opposition supporters by taking away the food stamp privileges if they are registered for the wrong party?

what about cultural influences? For instance, to say that Bush is entirely responsible for all the deaths in Iraq, lets Americans who voted Bush into office twice, off the hook. It also lets the people off the hook, who didn't vote for Bush but didn't particularly act to prevent his election.

at least when Mugabe cheats he makes himself a large margin of victory. Bush couldn't even do that.

@6,7: Look, I hate Bush as much as anyone.

But you've missed the discussion entirely. Charles' rabidity comes from Bush calling the Mugabe government "illegitimate." At least, that's what he bolded, so it's only reasonable to assume that his point was that Bush is worse than Mugabe in that context. Which is simply batshit crazy and unsupportable -- whatever shenanigans went in in 2000, nobody was executed or maimed.

If you want to get into the moral equivalency of terrible (even criminal) policies that lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths versus organizing death squads to terrorize the citizens of one's own country, well, LMSW said it better than I could.

God, I hate knee-jerkers who only know volume-at-eleven outrage and hyperbole.

@9: obviously bush does not do the things that mugabe does. no one's accusing him of assassinating political opponents etc.

but he did come to power fraudulently and then defrauded a nation into war and used the most powerful and deadly military in human history to occupy a nation with the world's largest oil reserves, in the course of which, at least 4000 US soldiers and 100,000 iraqi civilians have been killed.

so i'd say he and mugabe are pretty karmically equal. by your rationale, we can't blame mugabe either, it's not like he's *personally* breaking baby's legs etc...

Every time a overexcited liberal compares Bush to an actual genocidal tyrant, Jesus kills a puppy.

Still Sven,

Whenever Bush denounces other leaders as dictators and blithers on about their illeagal elections, doesn't "President Kettle has a lot of Chuzpah to chastise Dictator Pot" pop into EVERYBODY'S head?

every time a jaded moderate defends the Bush presidency, Joe Lieberman gets a hemmorhoid.

This is why The Stranger has no credibility.

It sometimes attempts to do actual reporting -- as in calling sources, doing research.

Then it has inane posts such as the one by Mr. Mudade, followed, of course, by inane posts from the regulars on Slog.

Then it also prints just crap that is supposed to ironic/just kidding/we're so cool so like, can't you take a joke.

Then it has staffers who proudly publicize their credentials as drunkards and druggies.

Well, that's all great if your main audience is people who don't read anything serious, anyway, and couldn't manage to get past the first paragraph of any kind of substantive story.

But the problem is that this reverbarates through how readers perceive all stories in The Stranger.

Is this a for-real story?

Or is this a joke story?

What a reader ends up doing is not trusting any Stranger story, which is too bad for the few stories in the paper in which an actual effort was made.

bush is a hypocrite and a sleaze bag and is responsible for thousands of deaths, but he happens to be right about mugabe. the guy is a menace and he's killing his own people. i'm not sure what charles' overall point is supposed to be (assuming there is one), but i think mugabe and his government are clearly worse than bush, and i wouldn't let my dislike for bush let mugabe off the hook so to speak, and you shouldn't either chuck.

sheesh mr.astonished, lighten the fuck up. most of the stranger's audience probably read more serious, substantive material. the stranger is an outlet that provides a looser approach to the various stories covered in the media, at least it is for me anyway. i don't expect "credibility" from a free weekly rag.

Right, brett@13, pointing out that Bush *hasn't* dropped the life expectancy of his citizens from 60 to 37 (34 for women!) is the same thing as defending his presidency.

I think the point being missed is, how many more people in Zimbabwe are going to die with these tactics? Do you think making the nation even poorer is going to work? It's not going to effect Mugabe, is it? He'll be fine. All it will do is plunge more citizens into poverty, unemployment, illness and death. Well done Bush on thinking through your actions.

I also think it should be noted that South Africa's lack of action is because who the fuck fought with them while white people made every black person a second class citizen in their own country? Yeah, Mugabe has lost his fucking mind but he used to be a well-respected ally, basically a fucking hero to the cause of independence.

He's nuts now. That needs to be fixed. A million things have caused the problems in Zimbabwe (need I mention the AIDS crisis? Half the people there are dying anyway) and clearly Mugabe is not a good leader. But 1 - it's actually none of our fucking business and getting all imperial on their asses is only going to strengthen his support and 2 - it needs to be done carefully, gently, and in a way that is not damaging to the citizens of Zimbabwe. Or shall we go in, ignoring all the *actual* politics of the place, and cause a civil war?

Charles,
Clearly, enough people have said on this Slog that what you said is foolish. Obviously, a flawed Bush is better than a "good" Mugabe. The overwhelming majority of these sloggers aren't fans of him or his administration. That said I pose a question to you, would you rather return to your native Zimbabwe under Mugabe or retain your residency here under Bush? Last time I checked you're still here.

Say "YES" to War on Iraq by Dan Savage Oct. 2002

"War may be bad for children and other living things, but there are times when peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is one of those times."

"The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves."

Washington Post June 27, 2008

"Bomb Kills Marines, Iraqi Tribal Leaders
At Least 40 Die in Two Separate Attacks"

I thought I read somewhere that Mugabe was going to a meeting of the African nations in Egypt pretty soon. Sounds like a great chance to grab him to me; who would really be willing to stand up for the tyrant?

This is completely histrionic.

Charles only posts shit like this to rile up the Slogsters -- he himself doesn't even believe the crap he posts. His entire M.O. is to be perceived as a dreamy, pseudo-philosophical agent provocateur, like a middle school kid who has discovered he can push his parents' buttons by using big words whose meaning he doesn't really know.

@22 You are soooo boring. Why don't you spend some time looking at yourself? Or is that why you spend so much time finding fault in others? You can't stand what you see in the mirror? Ugly, huh?