Contemporary Wars

Initials for Grand Old Party. Goes way back to the 19th century (?). Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, e.g.

And their symbol is an elephant Iama... If you
happen to see one, think about GOP...
By the way Steve, whats with the elephant? How come?

U HAD to ask. so u deserve this cut and paste job. hahaha interesting stuff, though. (btw, do u know safire? high caliber Republican "thinker"

the origin of the
Republican Elephant


by William Safire


This symbol of the party was born in the imagination of cartoonist Thomas Nast and first appeared in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874.

An 1860 issue of Railsplitter and an 1872 cartoon in Harper's Weekly connected elephants with Republicans, but it was Nast who provided the party with its symbol.

Oddly, two unconnected events led to the birth of the Republican Elephant. James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald raised the cry of "Caesarism" in connection with the possibility of a thirdterm try for President Ulysses S. Grant. The issue was taken up by the Democratic politicians in 1874, halfway through Grant's second term and just before the midterm elections, and helped disaffect Republican voters.

While the illustrated journals were depicting Grant wearing a crown, the Herald involved itself in another circulation-builder in an entirely different, nonpolitical area. This was the Central Park Menagerie Scare of 1874, a delightful hoax perpetrated by the Herald. They ran a story, totally untrue, that the animals in the zoo had broken loose and were roaming the wilds of New York's Central Park in search of prey.

Cartoonist Thomas Nast took the two examples of the Herald enterprise and put them together in a cartoon for Harper's Weekly. He showed an ass (symbolizing the Herald) wearing a lion's skin (the scary prospect of Caesarism) frightening away the animals in the forest (Central Park). The caption quoted a familiar fable: "An ass having put on a lion's skin roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings."

One of the foolish animals in the cartoon was an elephant, representing the Republican vote - not the party, the Republican vote - which was being frightened away from its normal ties by the phony scare of Caesarism. In a subsequent cartoon on November 21, 1874, after the election in which the Republicans did badly, Nast followed up the idea by showing the elephant in a trap, illustrating the way the Republican vote had been decoyed from its normal allegiance. Other cartoonists picked up the symbol, and the elephant soon ceased to be the vote and became the party itself: the jackass, now referred to as the donkey, made a natural transition from representing the Herald to representing the Democratic party that had frightened the elephant.

off topic: seen it, it is a large piece of sh.....

Thanx for the info Steve.
And no, I dont know Safire (though I can probably google him)... I know Snoopy though... does it help?

Thanx for the info Steve.
And no, I dont know Safire (though I can probably google him)... I know Snoopy though... does it help?

Yes..They are about the same level of political intelligence. hahahahah cheers.

Safire is a sniffy little right wing "pundit"...casts himself as "Mr. Language"

I didn't know that Scottish lawyer, Galloway. But he gave me the entertainment of the year : ripping a second asshole to senator Coleman in the middle of the US senate.

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaida. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people paid with their lives -- 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."

A man with guts, Galloway.

This post has been edited by Chandernagore on May 18, 2005 11:19 pm

Yup, I posted a link to some video of his statement at the bottom of this page:

http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...180&#entry33065

My question is -- this Galloway is British? And if so, how come he is questioned in the US???

People of all stripes testify before various investigative committees in U.S. Congress. In this case:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British parliamentarian George Galloway on Thursday agreed to testify before a U.S. Senate panel "with both barrels" to dispute allegations Saddam Hussein awarded him the right to buy oil.


The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a new report on fraud in the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program for Iraq, released documents saying Galloway got rights to 20 million barrels in oil, personally approved by ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

If you are looking for a textboook case of the adage "the best Defense is an Offense" here it is. These guys were up to their eyeballs in Iraq oil profiteering.

Chander; Puhleeze... at least provide some context when u shoot fish in a barrel.... thank you.

Call me a reductionist, but I dont care if Galloway drank oil cocktails... my point was how come he is questioned by the US Senate. Yes, he apparently "agreed", but that means somebody asked him to do it.

In comparison, another US soldier killed somebody in Romania while driving.
Craig Stevens Fisher, USS Navy.
The police requested an interdiction to leave Romania, but the magistrates turned it down. (!!!) [I expect him to be out of here in less than 48 hours, if he is around anymore]

http://www.adevarulonline.ro/index.jsp?pag...ticle_id=130435


So, obviously the cases are not fully comaparable, but nevertheless one has to wonder howcome a British MP is summoned before the US Senate to testify, while US soldiers seem to always avoid the consequences of their deeds.

Yes maybe I should. But I thought that it was beyond the point. Galloway's one man show was self explanatory

This too would be beyond the point :

Because what this guy said and the way he said it where 100 times more important than the hollow search for UN program scandals (that has become one of the white house main battle horse - pretty derisive in itself). I understand that this modern witchhunt is "the mother of all smokescreens", to borrow from Galloway, used by an administration to cover it's own f**k up in Irak. "The best Defense is an Offense" applies to the US senate at least as much as to Galloway and probably much more. This might still fool the 51 % of US citizens who voted for war (and didn't need further "prooves" anyway), but few other people on the globe.

Then why couldn't Coleman proove anything ?

Fact is Galloway won an incredible personal and political victory. He's going back to Britain like a Highlands clan warrior, with Coleman's head hanging to his belt

This post has been edited by Chandernagore on May 19, 2005 08:44 am

Yes maybe I should. But I thought that it was beyond the point. Galloway's one man show was self explanatory

This too would be beyond the point :

Because what this guy said and the way he said it where 100 times more important than the hollow search for UN program scandals (that has become one of the white house main battle horse - pretty derisive in itself). I understand that this modern witchhunt is "the mother of all smokescreens", to borrow from Galloway, used by an administration to cover it's own f**k up in Irak. "The best Defense is an Offense" applies to the US senate at least as much as to Galloway and probably much more. This might still fool the 51 % of US citizens who voted for war (and didn't need further "prooves" anyway), but few other people on the globe.

Then why couldn't Coleman proove anything ?

Fact is Galloway won an incredible personal and political victory. He's going back to Britain like a Highlands clan warrior, with Coleman's head hanging to his belt

ok; i'm not gonna defend the indefensible; for the record, I despise the Bushies and imo their war is a tragic mistake at best, a cynical oil grab itself, at worst.

One of the things I like about this forum is the European eye view it gives me on the U.S.

I hate to tell you this, but G's testimony, scorching as it was made barely a ripple here, so don't get too pumped up by his "returning hero" image in your tabloids. (Significantly, only Murdoch's NY POST, normally war cheerleader, here adapted that lingo.)

It's interesting to me as a clash of political culture; wierd role reversal...Congress here is oh-so- polite in public, bare knuckle fights behind the scenes, and the British is the exact reverse. Coleman didn't know, joke is on him....good I'm glad anytime a Republican takes it up the ***.


Agree they got caught in their own smoke this time; that doesn't mean Galloway is innocent; the jury is out. I'm not a U.N. basher, but this wouldn't be the first time that U.N. ran a stinky op. Note the French equivalent of Galloway avoided even the appearance of conflict of interest. Who knows? Point is; there are few Snow Whites in ANY of this.

Chander; can you make a post with OUT parsing each and every sentence of the previous one? This quote feature is overused, imo. Can we try and have a normal conversation here.....not a u said, i said, then u said, then i said....ad infinitum, ad nauseum. thank you

He was summoned because the US Senate (or more properly, some US Senators) felt that they had evidence he was involved in trafficing oil for the Hussein regime. The choice to attend was his... it's not like he was grabbed in Parliament, hustled to the airport and thrown on a plane. He felt it would be an opportunity to score points against a regime he disagrees with. Personally I can't believe anyone changed their mind about the war because of any of this. And you can certainly think the invasion was a mistake (as I do) and still think that Saddam was trying to buy influence with his oil any way he could. Whether Galloway was involved personally, I have no way of knowing.

As for Fisher's traffic accident, it's too soon to tell what form justice will take, or if it will be done. From what I read, he was on duty, driving a van at the head of a convoy, when he hit an old man who was crossing or walking along the road.

Any country that hosts foreign troops needs to have procedures to deal with incidents like this, because they will happen. I can certainly understand why people would resent the appearance that foreign soldiers are above the law, but nobody forced Romania to agree to these rules. If you don't feel they are in your interest, they can be changed. For an example of this, just look at Japan and South Korea, where the status-of-forces rules have changed substantially over the years.

He was summoned because the US Senate (or more properly, some US Senators) felt that they had evidence he was involved in trafficing oil for the Hussein regime. The choice to attend was his... it's not like he was grabbed in Parliament, hustled to the airport and thrown on a plane. He felt it would be an opportunity to score points against a regime he disagrees with. Personally I can't believe anyone changed their mind about the war because of any of this. And you can certainly think the invasion was a mistake (as I do) and still think that Saddam was trying to buy influence with his oil any way he could. Whether Galloway was involved personally, I have no way of knowing.

As for Fisher's traffic accident, it's too soon to tell what form justice will take, or if it will be done. From what I read, he was on duty, driving a van at the head of a convoy, when he hit an old man who was crossing or walking along the road.

Any country that hosts foreign troops needs to have procedures to deal with incidents like this, because they will happen. I can certainly understand why people would resent the appearance that foreign soldiers are above the law, but nobody forced Romania to agree to these rules. If you don't feel they are in your interest, they can be changed. For an example of this, just look at Japan and South Korea, where the status-of-forces rules have changed substantially over the years.

Amen.

i have to agree with steve with the last part. the quote me quote you stuff in getting old.

now, getting to the subject:

FACT - the europeans do not have so much love for the US. as a matter of fact, the further down east you go....and this is explainable: we waited for you people to rescue us for 50 years, and when you came, you brought some flowers and a "Hello" postcard...

FACT - Galloway versus Coleman is just another Clinton versus Starr. both men lost becasue they thought they were smarter than the other. and they were wrong

Quote from Gallowat to Coleman - "Now I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice"

i love this guy. imagine the expression on that old republican fart Coleman. kodak moment!!


Braveheart over Washington.

also, i see that the gap between the US and Europe is widenign by the day. quite strange...and the fact that recently there have been voices saying that the whole plan for US bases in RO is going bust , since Bulgaria might prove a less costly endeavor. and i truly agree.

too bad for Mr Basescu/ copy-pasting the declarations of Bruce Jackson over the black sea area and running to Bush did not seem to work no more. the sailor seems to have lost the wind under its saild and with the terrible handling of the hostage situation things will get worse. Nastase would have obviously bribed the bastards until now


about the UN - well this organisation is less usefull to the world politics than a spinster gathering. Disney corporation holds more power taht they do, so i imagine it is obvious that, since it is open to all, well, all got in, in all sorts and flavours....

bottomline: i am glad about Galloway. good for him. it seems it is due time the republicans brought some balls into the equation!

call Ann Coulter!!!!

JEFF,

it is obvious you have never lived in a shit country in your life, because if you did, this would probably be the most unbelievable post i have ever read.

if you do not like the laws, change them? why did you agree to those laws anyway?

i am sorry to tell you, but when you are hungry anf have no clothes on, i truly do not believe you would stop to read the fineprint. and even if it said that the US soldiers are allowed to run over one person each week, still we would have signed. because that is what you do when a imperialist power asks it of you.

also, you are very naive in believing that that guy will be punished. no, he will not. he will be quickly be sent home and everybody will shut up or else. and that is becasue the US wants it. what you believe is of no importance. as citizen you do not represent the country. as i have seen the argument used in the movie called " the corporation " i will put it here. the institution is monstruos, not the individuals inside it.

we could have one civilian murdered each week by a US soldier and still nothing will happen to them. it is just the way it is. thinking differently makes me place you into the ranks of stiff liberals that protes the war without ever having seen a dead body.

yes it is bad, bla bla bla....well how long will it occupy your mind today? or in about a week from now that a US solier MURDERED a romanian CIVILIAN and will get away with it? i am sure that not long

i am sorry for the rough tone, it is not directed at you specifically, i know you are not responsible for your imbecile government.

Interesting observation. I mean he is basically a sailor, and hence his obsession with the Black Sea.
Unfortunately for him, he seems to ignore the fact that having a coastline on the Black Sea and trying to group several GUUAMs together doesnt make you the master of the pond. You need a... FLEET for that. And we all know what the word "fleet" means for this shipmaster!
And now that he hasnt one, he tries to make the Romania his flagship and pull it into the sea altogether... ooops, Timisoara region is already on schedule...