Sorry, but I just gotta try this yet again, because I think (a) it's funny and (b) it suggests something important to think about. Feel free to spread the meme (attributing the source) until SOMEBODY runs with it. (Maybe JibJab?)
-----
THE COMING YEAR'S (AND CENTURY'S) POLITICAL CHANT!
Remember the funny “This Land Is Your Land” routine - by Jib Jab - that got so much attention during the Kerry-Bush race?
Well here’s an idea foir a video that has potential of really catching fire! I’d be happy to help script it.
You start chanting with images of Ronald Reagan together with George Bush Sr. presented onscreen (witha a caption “1980”) and then again “1984.”
Then follow with one of George Bush senior by himself (1988)...
Here’s the first chant.
REAGAN-BUSH
REAGAN-BUSH,
BUSH!
You repeat ... and then take it forward three MORE administrations (showing pictures each time) :
REAGAN-BUSH,
REAGAN-BUSH,
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON, BUSH!
Can you already feel the rhythm? The pain?
Now repeat in a “round” - each time taking it a little farther, first ending in a querilous “Clinton”? Showing Hillary’s smiling face. (caption: 2008)
REAGAN-BUSH,
REAGAN-BUSH,
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON, BUSH,
BUSH... CLINTON?
Now with gusto!
REAGAN-BUSH,
REAGAN-BUSH,
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON, BUSH,
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON... (caption 2012)
...BUSH? (2016)
Now you’ve finished two Hillary terms with a final glimpse of ... Prez Jeb! And the audience starts to feel a chill.
Only the chorus is starting to really get into it. Using the names Bush and Clinton ad nauseam.
REAGAN-BUSH,
REAGAN-BUSH,
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON, BUSH,
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON, BUSH.
BUSH, CLINTON,
CLINTON, BUSH?
By now we’ve shown JEB’s SECOND TERM (2020) and then PRESIDENT CHELSEA CLINTON (2024 & 2028) and finally finished this round with a picture of president ... Jenna Bush... (2032)
And the singers are starting to look REALLY worried now.... even panicky, yet unable to stop...
I do believe this could be as bit a hit as the infamous “This Land is Your Land” skit during the Kerry race.
The title of the piece? Why... DYNASTY... of course. And that whirring accompaniment? George Washington, spinning in his grave.
======
Please. I like Hillary. I think she's smart and misunderstood. But we need a way out of this trap.And 8 more years of civil war ain't the route to anything but hell.
29 comments:
The link "And the privacy wars continue" in the third-most-recent article is still broken. I posted a comment to it while it was still current to that effect but nothing happened; must have gotten missed in all the other comments.
Anyway, the link does not lead to anything apparently relevant to the concept of "privacy wars"; it appears to be some kind of login page instead.
Most of the Times story ("And the privacy wars continue" is quoted here:
http://www.tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=2024
FYI, the New York Times ALWAYS wants people to log in.
Please. I like Hillary. I think she's smart and misunderstood.
She is an adequate Senator.
But we need a way out of this trap.And 8 more years of civil war ain't the route to anything but hell.
It doesn't matter who wins, the civil war will continue...
If a Democrat wins, expect a replay of the 90's.
If a Republican wins, expect another "Shrub".
I'm more optimistic than the previous poster about the disastrously destructive kulturkampf currently tearing America apart. Evidence seems to show that there's growing realization throughout the American population that the war against rationality and the war on science and the politics of mindless hate aren't working.
Remember that the politics of hate and the war against reason isn't some recent event -- it didn't just start in the last 6 years. We've endured a massive war against rationality for the last 25 years, ever since the Great Hater Ronald Reagan ("If it takes a blood bath, let's get it over with" -- Ronald Reagan 2 months before the Kent State massacre, 1970) began the whole downhill slide, and then Newt Gingrich ramped up the jinogistic witch-hunt against reason and logic and facts to an even higher fever pitch ("I want to say to the elite of this country - the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton, and I accuse you in Kosovo..." -- Newt Gingrich, 1999)
Dante reserved the deepest circle of Hell for those who trimmed their sails to the prevailing political fashions of the times. HIllary Clinton is one of these "trimmers." I would rather vote for Sam Brownback than Hillary Clinton. At least with Brownback, you know you're getting a straight-up foe of logic and reason and progress...whereas with Hillary, you get the same end result, but for different politically correct motives, wrapped inside a progressive-sounding exterior of the tyranny of good intentions. The brutal fact is that Hillary Clinton remains steadfast in her support for the Iraq debacle. By all evidence, Hillary is still on board with the Project For a New American Century, and if elected she will most likely escalate the war in Iraq, adding more troops instead of removing them.
If elected, Hillary Clinton will also cut taxes even further on the richest 1% of Americans, she will crank up regressive taxes like the gasoline tax even further to crush the poorest of the poor Americans even more brutally, and she will enthusiastically exapnd the currently fascistic police powers of the Patriot Act. Under Hillary, we can expect that union demonstrations against scabs will not only be outlawed, but classed as "domestic terrorism" and union members will undoubtedly be dragged off to secret detention centers for torture sans trial. Under Hillary, wiretapping will reach new heights as every American gets bugged and surveilled; meanwhile, government secrecy under Hillary will skyrocket even beyond what we've seen with the current maladminsitration, courtesy of her paranoia about the "vast right-wing conspiracy." (The fact there truly is a "vast right-wing conspiracy" intent on destroying her and her husband doesn't help. The most dangerous paranoids are those who really do have enemies.) Under Hillary we can expect a savage crackdown against the American free press...all in the name of a pushback against hate-mongers like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin.
Hillary Clinton probably had good motives once upon a time, long ago, but she's been too badly scarred by the psychotic hate speech and massive right-wing lynch mobs mobilized against her and her husband for the past 15 years. Just one example: I saw a poster favored by right wingers that features a portrait of Hillary Clinton and the logo RE-DEFEAT COMMUNISM IN 2008.
She's been the subject of such envenomed verbal abuse and such crazed media witch-hunt efforts to destroy her and her husband (read "The Hunting Of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign To Destroy Bill and Billary Clinton" by Joe Conason and Gene Lyon, 2004) that Hillary will have to react with savage payback just to survive. Under Hillary as President, we'll see kulturkampf taken to new levels, with unimaginable vitriol aimed at her by the far right, and unspeakably savage counter-attacks by the liberals.
I don't get a Nelson Mandela vibe from Hillary Clinton. After being publicly lynched for 10 years by a huge right-wing gang of fringe lunatics fanatically intent on destroying her, she'll be unable to avoid hitting back at the Republican hate machine when she gets elected President -- and that blacklash will probably take out the last of our rapidly diminishing civil liberties.
That's the last thing we need, more kulturkampf, regardless whether Hillary is the one dishing out the pain this time around, as opposed to Limbaugh and his gang of crazed hate mongers. Hate is hate. It's the last thing we need. The public discourse is already polluted with name-calling and frenzied libel and hysterical calls for the violent death of political opponents ("We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realise that they can be killed, too." -- Ann Coulter, 2003. )
Hillary Clinton is even more despicable because she pretends to be a liberal and a progressive. A look at her policies shows she's anything but. I would rather vote for Torquemada than for Hillary Clinton. At least with Torquemada, you know you're going to get arrested without trial and tortured to death even though you're innocent, and the guy comes out and admits it, so at least there's the possibility for rallying opposition against that kind of monstrous evil. With Hillary, we won't be ablle to rally opposition against her politically correct soft fascism (the continuation of the far right's war against our civil liberties by other means, to mutate Clausewitz) until after the Homeland Security people begin kicking in doors on her orders and dragging out innocent citizens in black hoods in the dead of night. The fact that those innocent citizens will be Drudge and Limbaugh and Coulter clones doesn't make it more acceptable...though, sadly, I expect to see a lot liberals applauding Hillary's destruction of the constitution because the far right gets a taste of its own medicine for a change.
Current polls show an all-time low in public support for both Demos and Repubs. Hillary is not the answer. A third party is probably our best bet, along with a return to rationality and a rejection of the hate-mongering that's dominated American politics ever since the Cruel Hateful Man With the Kindly Smile, Ronald Reagan, inaugurated the Politics Of Hate in modern America.
Dr. Brin averred:
Please. I like Hillary. I think she's smart and misunderstood.
You may want to think again, sir:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1177514487245&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
Courtesy of Brad DeLong:
A Proposed Pecking Order for Honest Conservatives
What I would like is a list of "honest conservatives" who fit into the following categories--and let me try to give an example of a person whose existence is recognized by the mainstream media for each class:
*
Class of 2000: People who in 2000 said, "George W. Bush is not qualified to be president, and we should be really worried about this."
*
Class of 2001: People who in 2001 said, "I supported Bush in 2000, but George W. Bush is not listening to his honest conservative policy advisers, and we should be really worried about this."
*
Class of 2002: People who in 2002 said, "I supported Bush in 2000 and 2001, but 911 has unhinged the administration; it's detention and other policies are counterproductive; it needs to be opposed."
*
Class of 2003: People who in 2003 said, "I supported Bush over 2000-2002, but enough is enough. That's it. I supported the invasion of Iraq because I was certain there was evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons program--otherwise invading Iraq was just stupid. Well, there was no advanced nuclear weapons program. Invading Iraq was just stupid. Plus there's the Medicare drug benefit. These people need to be evicted from power."
*
Class of 2004: People who in 2004 said, "I've been a Bush supporter. I'm a Republican and a conservative, but I've had enough: I'm voting for Kerry."
*
Class of 2005: People who in 2005 said, "I voted for Bush in 2004. But I made a mistake. A big mistake."
*
Class of 2006: People who in 2006 said, "I know I supported Bush up to last year, but that shows I'm not the brightest light on the clued-in tree."
The class of 2007--people who are now opposed to Bush only because they think Bush will drag the Republicans down in 2008--doesn't count. Dead-enders who are still claiming that Bush is Teddy Roosevelt don't count. They aren't honest conservatives. They are only worth scorn, and fit objects for nothing but mockery. One just doesn't joust with them in honorable intellectual combat. It's not done.
And the reply:
Honest Conservatives Should Shut the F*** Up: Hoisted from Comments on "A Proposed Pecking Order for Honest Conservatives"
I think that when the "honest conservatives" reject Bush they're just setting up their assault on the Democratic president they expect to see elected next year. Their way of digging themselves out from under the Bush disaster (and obscuring their own massive role in that disaster) will be to swear that "Never again can an American President be allowed that kind of free hand!" This will justify their fighting the new Democratic President tooth and nail for every inch of ground.
Class of 2004: Richard Viguerie.
Class of 2005: John Cole, Victor Gold.
Alas, I can't think of any from 2000 through 2003.
Re: Privacy Wars link -- links posted here should lead directly to a relevant article; never to some BS like an ad or a login page. The article of course therefore has to be freely readable -- and that doesn't just mean you don't have to pay money, but also that you don't have to bend over and say "Oh yes! Spam me harder!" and fork over an email address or any other personal information either. Or jump through any other hoops. It must be simply "click link, start reading article".
@anonymous: You can't make up rules for someone else's blog. The NY Times has been doing this login nonsense since the 1990s. It's nothing new. Smart people just set up a free account. Smarter people use BugMeNot, so they don't have to give out personal info:
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.nytimes.com
About honest conservatives, there's also Paul Craig Roberts.
And Arianna Huffington, who saw the light long ago.
Look, they are conservatives. Hard to budge. Able to ignore the LONG chain or past positions that were wrong wrong wrong - yet now keep Martin Luther King's picture on the wall and deny EVER opposing him.
Or spent decades blaming "meddling by clueless politician amateur draft-dodging morons" for the loss of Vietnam, yet somehow fail to see the irony right now, when the Officer Corps is bleeding and bleating about exactly that.
Just because I repeat that reaching out to honest conservatives is the vital tactic, right now... THAT does not mean that I find them an admirable class.
Just as most "libertariants" could not give a fig about liberty, only about "hating government." (Hint, the former is a pragmatic process, the latter is a self-doped drug high.)
Still, I repeat again ! Reaching out to honest conservatives is the vital tactic, right now! Because when you do, you will automatically draw into the democratic tent the real victims of this administration, including much of the civil service, most of the intelligence officers, most of the professional law folks like the FBI and nearly all of the US Officer Corps.
These people NEED our help. They need our hand. Moreover, if we give them shelter, they may gather the guts to stand up to the monsters and save us all! That is a gamble worth swallowing a little anger and pride.
---
Both Democrats and Republicans have their blind spots their Ostriches. I think we can see that both parties are dead and have to evolve. They have in the past Jeffersonian Democrats would not recognize the Democrats of today.
I see the internet where nothing is hidden and everything is remembered as driving the change. The ease in which political meetings driven by the people are enabled. The sheer ease of organizing political meetings and protests. The ability to disseminate a candidates policies without relying on the Mainstream media and their penchant to try to distill something into 10 second sound bites.
Hopefully this will allow a more realistic approach to government than the current dogmatic one.
Transparency and accountability.
The only problem is one you have mentioned ,
will the entrenched powers of all stripes allow it to continue?
At one level you are right.
See
http://www.davidbrin.com/gerrymandering1.html
where I condemn the professionals of all parties, for entering an adversarial relationship with the citizenry.
And yet, there is simply no comparison. The vast majority of Democratic officeholders and leaders are NOT owned by a cabal of fanatics and would-be feudal lords. The other party is.
More direct is this. Under Clinton, governmental secrecy DECLINED. Dramatically and unambiguously. And, despite many turgid and absurd accusations and investigations costing billions, NOT ONE Clinton era official was even INDICTED for malfeasance in the performance of his or her office. Not one.
(The first time that EVER happened, by the way, and not for want of the Bush Administration trying, e.g. ordering FBI agents OFF of anti-terror postings in fruitless searches for even one Clintonite "smoking gun.")
In contrast, the GOP is nowadays all about accountability-avoidance, skyrocketing secrecy and - despite massive obstructionism at all layers and a quiescent press - an endless series of revealed corruption, malfeasance, and outright treason. The ratio of bushites to clintonites sent to jail for such things is already infinite.
Let me repeat that. The ratio is infinite. Hence, I think it really is time for you to re-evaluate your pat cynical nostrum about the parties being similar.
That is one more refuge of ostriches. But it stinks down in that hole.
At the risk of seeming to caricature one of the two major political parties, there's also the very real issue of institutionalized criminality in the Republican party.
Nixon's administration was an outright criminal conspiracy. The vice president went to prison. Dozens of White House staffers went to prison.
The Reagan administration was even more overtly criminal. Fer cripes sake, Reagan's Attorney General, Ed Meese, went to prison! More than 114 members of the Reagan administration were indicted. That's not even counting Iran-Contra, which was not only a criminal conspiracy but a massive subversion of the constitution. It was, technically, in a legal sense, sedition.
Now we get the current maladministration, which has raised criminality and subversion of the constitution to new heights.
I really think the Democrats need to start pointing out that there's a pattern here. They need to start printing bumper stickers saying THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS THE PARTY OF CRIMINALITY and REPUBLICAN OFFICEHOLDERS ARE THE ONLY DISTINCTLY AMERICAN CRIMINAL CLASS.
There's something deeply, horribly wrong when essentially every Republican presidency since 1968 turns out to be a hotbed of felonies and unconstituional high crimes and misdemeanors. This is more than a coincidence. At a certain point, we have to conclude that the Republican party really is the party of lawlessness and treason. The only problem with pointing out that documented fact is that it sounds so extreme it's hard to believe it's actually true.
My favorite bumper sticker so far this year still has to be "Bill Clinton for First Lady"
I dunno about "Bill Clinton for first lady" myself.
Hillary just doesn't strike me as the Lorena Bobbitt type...
Heya! On a Century of Amateurs:
http://invasivespecies.blogspot.com/
The recent groupthink effort is exactly what you've been talking about.
Nope Can't give you a bye on that one.
I am and never will defend the Current Administration.
But, a big one, The democrats are complicit with the administration along with the Republicans in Congress for the greatest sustained attack on our liberties with excessive "Security Theater". For not declaring war for knuckling under and funding the supplemental war appropriation.
So Bill Clinton was a superb administrator, what have the Democrats done for the country today?
Resting on Laurels doesn't do it for me.
The DNC says that there is no problem funding this country. They assert that Social Security and Medicare are not Bankrupt because of an accounting trick calling money spent a "Trust Fund" HA! If there was a trust fund it would not have gone into the general revenue stream and been return as IOUs to a government in a spiraling out of control Print and Spend monetary policy.
That my friend is an Ostrich of the largest Kind.
Again I did not defend the republicans but your knee jerk defense of democrats is suspect.
Suspect of what?
You raise a vague and general spectre of "overspending" and use that to wave away the stark facts.
Dems have faults coming out their wazzoo. I hate some of them and fully respect only a few of them. Some are doctrinaire fools or hypocrites. But...
...but when dems are in charge the laws get enforced. The professionals in the FBI and Justice ACTUALLY ARE ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOBS.
Very very few dems get indicted or thrown into prison (even when the Bushes committed treason by yanking FBI agents off of counter-terror duties to seek indictable offenses)... while this is a routine habit among goppers EVEN WHEN THEY HOLD THE REINS OF POWER!
You DARE to raise the issue of deficits, after Clinton paid off debt and the GOP saddled us with a mountain of it?
Above all, there's the issue of secrecy. Ther is no bigger or better litmus test. It is THE determiner whether a group is sincere (if sometimes a bunch of jerks) or a caste of criminals avoiding accountability in order to rape us.
Secrecy goes DOWN under dems and UP under goppers. Period. Hugely. Diametrically and totally. You and other cynics cannot wriggle out of that one, fundamental fact.
Listen, I consider myself to be a libertarian who must support the dems because they are the only hope of my civilization... and because "my" Libertarian Party (I keynoted one national conference!) is controlled by absurd and hopeless and utterly useless romantics.
I wish Rob Paul luck and hope all decent rebublicans support him. But realistically, our only hope is a dem landslide.
But please, no senators.
Kneejerk? You said "kneejerk?" !!!
After I listed stark and verifiable and huge basic differences, that you won't even refute?
Feh
David
I too can't give you a free pass today.
Let me see if I can follow your logic thread.
1. Quite a few GOP administration types have been indicted, convicted etc.
2. Few if any recent DFLsters have been so disgraced.
3. ergo, the GOP is an institutional criminal class, and the DFL the only hope for civilization.
Well, I will give it some thought.
But since you have on occasion asked us to consider some far fetched alternatives...
Perhaps the Dems are better at skirting the edges of legality. I have absolutely no data to back me up, but traditionally the GOP turns to the business world for "talent", while the DFL may have more of a "professional politician" pool to draw from.
Or, perhaps the news media (don't bring Fox into this, they are just bad entertainment) are looking harder for evidence of Republican malfeasance,which I admit is not hard to find.
My concern is this.
If the notion becomes general that Democrats are, by their very nature, Saints, then we have a serious problem. Will legitimate criticisms be dismissed, and often harshly, as Right Wing Hatred, as anti- (black, woman, labor union, fill in the blank)?
Particularly at this time, when a DFL candidate stands a very good chance of election, we need to watch them closely.
David, I am counting on you. If reasoned criticism of Democrats and Republicans can't be on an equal footing, well, I will just find some other place to have my Conservatism ridiculed!
Tacitus2
I would just like to point out it doesn't matter WHO the Democrats end up running. The GOP is going to break out the same talking point Mad Libs Attack Book, with just a few names and adjectives changed.
And and I'd also like to point out the current GOP is involved in a massive mix of disgusting and criminal activities. Such as, oh, say, torture.
Nixon got pardoned and got off scott free. Ollie North got off scott free and now writes books and has a radio show. I could go on. But the point is there have been NO CONSEQUENCES for the massive instutional corruption of the GOP and their allies (Enron, anyone?) in my entire lifetime. No wonder they think they can get away with anything, because for years, they have!
Please, I never called the dems "saints". In fact, guys, bear witness! DIdn't I lay out a fairly broad set of opinions about them, ranging from admiration to contempt for a great many of them?
Indeed, when it comes to issues like gerrymandering, they's my foe!
They are a spectrum of politically active Americans, some unpleasant and many sincere-but-flawed.
They also span a VAST range of political inclinations from moderate and even fiscal/market conservative to downright pinko.
And that's the point! THE DEMS ARE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS and THE GOP IS THE HOUSE OF LORDS. The lower house is where genuine political wrangling can take place and the upper defends the pig -wallow of the aristocracy.
Look, I am not weighting things or playing semantic games here. The Clintonites weren't simply "better at hiding things." That's the lame excuse of a right wing that tried for FIFTEEN YEARS to find something to pin on the Clintons.
Dig it, in the nineties they spent a BILLION dollars tring to find a smoking gun and could not send even a junion cabinet UNDER secretary to jail! Not even an indictment for actual malfeasance in office.
Then, in this century, the Bushes committed bona fide treason, re-assigning federal agents from duties watching out for us, to sifting every filing cabinet searching for anything, anything at all.
A pliant news media. OMG. Except fr PBS and CNBC, find a network that isn't in their pocket? They've controlled every branch of government, quintupled secrecy, intimidated and browbeated the professional prosecutors and also had access to plutocrat billions of private money...
...and STILL the ratio of Bushites to Clintonites who have gone to jail for malfeasance in official duties is... and please pay attention to this ratio, because it is pretty damned hard to downplay...
...the ratio is INFINITE!
The mind boggles. How can you see this fact. That Enemies of the Clintons have spent billions and turned every light of government to a vendetta that turned up absolutely nothing? Does not you mind reel over the stunning fact that the 90s federal government... YOUR government... was so astonishingly clean?
Are you really able to simply wave that fact away, by blithely assuming "they must have been dirty but really good at hiding it?"
Can you not ponder, even briefly, the remote possibility that a miracle happened in your lifetime. An actual clean government, and you are too cynical to even notice??????
The caricaturing of Dr. Brin's position that's been going on here is truly hallucinatory.
At no point has anyone said or implied that the Democrats are saints. Political cocrrectness, overspending, excessive concern about special interest groups like environmentalists (snail darters stopping dam construction), paranoid fear of nuclear power and genetically modified foods, lack of support for basic scientific research, a love of gerrymandering... The Democrats have plenty of faults.
What Dr. Brin is saying is simply that these faults pale in comparison with the incredible criminality of the Nixon and Reagan and current administrations. Politically correct censorship on campus (of which the left are guilty) is trivial compared with setting up Guantanamo and kidnapping and torturing innocent American citizens without ever arraigning or indicting them in a court of law.
Pandering to the unions or to environmentalists is a trivial fault compared to lying America into a disastrous unwinnable war of aggression.
The claim that "the democrats are complicit with this administration in the greatest attack on civil liberties" is simply not true. Q: Which party has offered a bill to restore habeas corpus? Demos. The Democrats were systematically shut out of the entire congressional process while our civil liberties were destroyed from 2001-2006. Democrats in congress were not even permitted into the hearing rooms at which the bills were marked up.
Tacitus2 remarked: Perhaps the Dems are better at skirting the edges of legality. I have absolutely no data to back me up...
If in doubt, what does a sensible rationa person do? Look at the data. Fact: the number of criminal indictments in the Republican administrations since 1968 have numbered in the hundreds. The total number of criminal indictments in the Democratic administrations since 1968 have numbered in the tens, and under Clinton, zero. This, despite a massive 8-year-long investigation under Ken Starr costing 20 millino dollars...an investigation which found no criminal wrongdoing whatsoever.
Massive numbers of indictments on the one hand, a handful of indictments on the other, and no indictments at all under Clinton. What do the facts suggest? Which political party is more institutionally criminalized?
Please bear in mind, tacitus2, that if you're claiming the only reason Demos never get indicted is that they're so superhumanly clever they never leave sufficient evidence of their crimes to be indicted, that is an unfalsifiable claim. It is therefore wholly void. It's exactly the same kind of vacuous character assassination as if someone were to accuse you, tacitus2, of being a serial killer so supernally clever that you never leave any evidence of your crimes. How can anyone refute such unfalsifiable attacks?
That's nothing but McCarthyism. Let's study the facts. The facts show a clear difference in behavior between Repub and Demo presidencies since 1968.
[Please note also that the pathologies and dysfunctions in the GOP only start in 1968. Einsenhower was one of our best presidents. Teddy Roosevelt was honest to a fault and an excellent president. Herbert Hoover was not a great president but was extremely honest, and he actually became famous in the 1920s for his humanitarian work on disaster relief. Republican criminality only became institutionalized starting with Nixon, and it appears to be a systemic problem, not due to "one bad apple."]
No time for a lengthy reply, gotta get to work.
I put forward a couple of admittedly less than plausible scenarios. Inspired, perhaps by
Dr. Brins Manchurian scenario which I regard as less plausible.
And to look forward.
If in a generous frame of mind I conceded your point....does this exempt Dems from criticism in the next administration? And will those who criticize be part of that Right Wing Conspiracy of Haters?
I believe the "Dems as more competent cheaters" scenario somewhat less than Brin likely believes the Manchurian line.
And I think the nature of news media/communications is changing so fast that whatever may once have been true is obsolete.
Tacitus2
Not that it matters but Eisenhower wasn't really a Republican, especially anything masquerading as a Republican now. He considered both parties, and might very well have gone with the Democrats, had they assured him an uncontested nomination.
Also, what are his tangible achievements? domestic infrastructure (interstate highway system) and expanded new deal programs like social security and integration.
The current administration might want to take a look at the nation stabilizing "Operation Blue Bat"
Tacitus2 said...If in a generous frame of mind I conceded your point....does this exempt Dems from criticism in the next administration? And will those who criticize be part of that Right Wing Conspiracy of Haters?
Of course not! Stark-raving Dem that I am, criticism is what keeps us going in our American Experiment! I would hope that any Democratic administration is criticized... but criticized justly.
For instance, criticize Hillary's shortcomings re: foreign policy... but don't refer to her as "the Israeli President" just because she supports Israel (not meaning you in particular, but rather the usual mud that passes for political discourse these days). Criticize John Edwards' proposals for rural renewal and encouraging labor unions, instead of carping on his haircut, or the fact that (heaven forbid!) a rich man has a big house.
As David is so fond of saying, Criticism is the Only Known Antidote to Error.
What's being leveled at the GOP these days are fact-supported. Not spun, but fact. Honest disagreements are great! Criticism is great! It leads to Good Government, something sorely lacking these last few years.
Eisenhower was very much a Republican 50 years ago. The parties shifted in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Republican party is shooting itself in the foot. What emerges from the self destruction will be a more rational pragmatic party more devoted to liberty and free markets if it doesn't splinter into too many pieces.
The Democratic party faces the same pressures.
The forces are what we are talking about here on this blog. The outcomes of these forces of transparency and accountability will be much more directed at philosophies and policies than at criminal behaviour.
Because it is the philosophy of the government being in control not the people that is the most important thing.
That any president be held to the Constitution for the United States that there be no imperial president that the powers assumed or given to it by the Congress and the Court be stripped from the executive.
Accountability to the Court will be enforced by shining a bright light on it when it makes policy or laws. The Court should review for Constitutionality that is it. The Court has no jurisdiction in criminal law except in the limited crimes stated in the Constitution.
The Congress must be held accountable also. They make the policy the president carries it out. If a law is unconstitutional then they should repeal it.
Transparency and accountability have to be applied to the performance of any officer of the government. The officers committing abuse of power, abuse of trust and out right illegal even criminal acts should be censured by impeachment and prosecuted in a criminal court if needed. They will be if we the people take back our sovereignty from the government and the corporations on the gravy train.
Because that is what abuse of power and abuse of the public trust is, it is a high crime and or misdemeanor. What impeachment is supposed to do is remove people from any office of public trust forever. It is not a criminal proceeding. They are found to have used their power in a manner contrary to what we expect of high officers.
Any political party in the future will be held to a higher standard.
Every policy that is in existence will be subjected to the pragmatic ideal of does it do what we the people want? Can we afford it? Is this policy self destructive?
That was my point, not a cynical observation that all parties have crooks and liars, but that the 'times they are a changing'. The parties are stuck back in the industrial Main stream media age. They are dead as they stand, unless they change.
We have a glimmering of the new information age parties. Look at the methods being used by Ron Paul. He has used the internet to drive his campaign and most important the people who support him have been driving the process without his immediate control. They are able to do this because he has a clearly articulated platform and the communication is two way.
I see this a good and hopeful thing, that is if authoritarians of all persuasions are stopped from interfering. The tyrannies of good intentions as well as the tyrannies of power and greed.
I was (not that I'm famous of course-- like our host here), against bush in 2000. I felt that the election was a sham, and that was continued in 2004 in Ohio's Election that was also stolen see here
But I have a few questions for Dr. B.
1) IS A former senator acceptable?
Hilary and Barak really don't "float my boat", but Edwards really still has my vote so far, what do you say?
2) How can we overcome this congress?
Is simply not passing any more leglislation a possibility?
I will be posting a few more political poems at my main poetry blog in the next few days...I am about a month behind in putting them up again...
Mark B. Still worrying in NJ
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