HotSoup.com: Mm-Mm-Good?

There’s a new opinion website coming to the web, boasting a multi-faceted team of editors and operators from opposite ends of the political spectrum. www.hotsoup.com is not operational as of this date of writing, but promises to be a virtual melting pot of ideas and solutions to the world’s problems that the people we hired/elected to do the job have failed to solve.

HotSoup’s founding fathers are the chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, Matthew Dowd, and Carter Eskew, whom you may remember as Al Gore’s chief strategist in the 2000 race. Also at the keyboard will be the former head political writer for the Associated Press, Ron Fournier, and Joe Lockhart, respected former press secretary to Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush’s marketing wizard, Mark McKinnon is also on the electronic masthead.

What’s to keep the soup kettle from becoming a boiling cauldron?

HotSoup conducted a poll last month from it’s “under construction” home page, asking who we-the-people most turn to for answers or solutions to big problems. Peers were picked by 60% over family, friends, clergy, and co-workers. Only 5% looked to business leaders for guidance.

The website hopes to capitalize on a growing trend of online social networking in generating keys to solving basic issues of why government doesn’t work anymore, ethics in American society (or the apparent lack thereof), and how to address the emergent perception that national leaders and mainstream media are no longer relevant to most Americans.

That’s not too surprising, when the most we can get from our national leadership is finger pointing and blame-naming for societal ills and economic conundrums.

Billionaire investor and political mood-maker George Soros blames President Bush for inflaming the North Korean nuclear issue by branding the country as part of an ``axis of evil.''

Former President Jimmy Carter, who brokered a peace agreement with Kim Jong Il’s Pappy a dozen years ago, says Mr. Bush has pretty much thrown that agreement in the trash.


Hmmm…let’s think about this for a moment:
Who broke the agreement by building and testing a nuke last weekend?
Who has been building and testing ballistic missiles, boasting of their ability to reach the US continent?

President Bush is guilty only of telling it like it is, unlike financier Soros, who pretty much made a poor investment by sinking $27.5-million for the losing team in the last presidential election; and our revered former president was so disrespected by Iranian terrorists that they denied the release of American captives until his administration ended, and Ronald Reagan took office.

Whom do you believe is more credible?

Soros has not demonstrated any canniness in devising a workable plan to difuse the North Korean dilemma, and Carter’s trump card is another round of appeasement roulette.

Granted, unlike British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated “peace in our time” accord with Adolph Hitler, which only lasted a few months, Jimmy Carter’s work-out with the North Koreans endured a dozen years. But the bottom line is that with thugs, despots, bullies, and terrorists, you cannot bargain or barter for peace. The only thing such ilk understand is brute force.

We didn't quite learn that lesson in WW-II--there are still apologists for how the United States ended the war in the Pacific--and we still live with the consequences of Chamberlain's heritage of appeasement.

Which means that in the recipe for whatever may be brewed on HotSoup.com, along with the soft, chewey vegetables of peace, and the tender meat of freedom, better stir in a few ham bones for stoutness and resolve.