Coulter’s Effusive Praise for Hillary Clinton Is Genuine
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=vwnYzjPtMc8[/youtube]
I hate Coulter but she makes some good points here.
Connect
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=vwnYzjPtMc8[/youtube]
I hate Coulter but she makes some good points here.
Connect with us on the following social media platforms.
Keep in mind the Republican machine has huge dossiers on Hillary going back to the Whitewater Days of her life and career.
What can Republicans say about Obama: Don’t elect a clean, articulate Black Man?
Sorry, that’s been tried.
Republicans have so much to lose if Hillary is not the Democratic Candidate, and they will say or do anything to make that happen….
Likewise so will corporate America which has invested heavily into her campaign, lose out (good) if she does not become the ultimate nominee.
Bottom line, it is still Ann Coulter, despite what she says…
Which points are these Jason?
Dear Senator Clinton:
RE: The Big Screen TV’s you discuss in “It Takes aVillage”
Please do not install any in Delaware. Thanks.
Dear Senator Clinton:
RE: Biometric Identification Systems for Americans & Rev. Sun Myung Moon
I have eclosed your comments:
To enhance security, Clinton explained, “there’s technology now available. There are some advanced radar systems. There are biometric and other kinds of identification systems that we’ve been very slow to deploy and unwilling to spend money on.”
Please make sure you do not apply this program in Delaware until you are out of office. It will give us all time to escape.
Also please explain your campaign relationship with Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
http://realsunmyungmoon.blogspot.com/2008/01/hillary-and-sun-myung-moon-strategic.html
When I first heard about these issues I thought that the uncontrolable shaking I was having was a result of a petit mal seizure, later I realized it was simply fear.
Dear Senator Clinton:
RE: Iraq
Please let me know how your position on Iraq that we must “go in to win and stay to make sur eit is always secure,” is categorically different from this position by Senator McCain:
“Increasing U.S. troop levels will expose more brave Americans to danger and increase the number of American casualties. When Congress authorized this war, we committed America to a mission that entails the greatest sacrifice a country can make, one that falls disproportionately on those Americans who love their country so much that they volunteer to risk their lives to accomplish that mission. And when we authorized this war, we accepted the responsibility to make sure those men and women could prevail. Extending combat tours and accelerating the deployment of additional troops is a terrible sacrifice to impose on the best patriots among us, and they will understandably be disappointed when they are given that order. Then they will shoulder their weapons and do everything they can to protect our country’s vital interests in Iraq.”
I know it may sound terrible, Hillary, but between listening to you and listening to him- one of you has given me an ulcer or some other gastrointestinal disorder.
Dear Senator Clinton:
RE: Previous Letters
Could the previous letters I sent you with my questions explain why Ann Coulter has endorsed you with such enthusiasm?
I know I saw a twinkle in her eye after Sen. McCain explained to us that “casualty counts will increase.” But I have never seen her so enthusiatic over a democratic candidate, I mean, she wrote an article called, “HOW THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY SOLD OUT AMERICA;” and the great classic we saw on the video above where she proudly proclaims that “all democrats want to be republicans, and they would be if they were intelligent enough.” So howe to explain the endorsement. Then I began exploring your positions.
But, I have to tell you, when I first heard her glowing endorsement of your campaign, blood sponteniously spurted from my eyeballs, now I think I am begining to understand things better.
To Glenn Back:
Dear Glenn,
If John McCain wins the republican nomination, and Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination may I please hang myself live on your show? I figure if Mike Huckabee wins we will have a theocratic state, on the other hand if McCain or Hillary win, as a young man, I am pretty much dead anyway- given Sen. McCain’s campaign promise to “increase casualty counts” on our side to ensure that we will never be able to vote again anyway. And there will be wars for over 100 years. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Ann Coulter is a loud-mouthed idiot. And yes I SAID THAT! But you are all quite missing the point of what she is doing. How egotistical to think this has anything whatsoever to do with deciding who the Dems elect. Quite frankly, I don’t see too many democrats deciding on which candidate they will vote for based on Ann Coulter.
The point she is trying to make is that McCain cannot win the general election, regardless of whether DevilWoman or Gomer Pyle wins your nod. You can sit here and claim until you are blue in the face that McCain is conservative (considering how far left most of you are that is not suprising, Marx himself looks conservative to some of you). But McCain is extremely moderate at best and yes, possibly even slightly more liberal than Hilliary (considering much of her liberal talk is just playing to the base).
McCain can’t win the general, which is WHY the MSM is propping him up so bad. Their little way of trying to insure a Dem victory. Romney cleaned his clock in the debate the other night. McCain looked frail and ineffective. He should have been knocked out of the race months ago.
Coulter knows this, and in her own, inneffective and provocative way, is trying to make that point to our side.
It really isn’t all about you.
Yes McCain is a liberal.
Have you seen his spending page on the John McCain 2008 website?
Please take time to do so. Go to issues.
He is quite liberal, liberal throwing young lives full of promise away, liberal borrowing money from China, Saudi Arabia, liberal taxing our elderly citizens. I wonder, who could not love a guy who promises to increase the size of government almost two times?
“Gen. Lu Yen: His brain has not only been washed, as they say… It has been dry cleaned. ”
Can anyone name the movie?
Brian – I should ahve given you props for pointing out that video.
Belated props to you.
Also- The manchurian Candidate. I had to look it up.
Thanks Jason. I apologize if these letters offend you or my republican friends in anyway. They are pure satire.
They are based in quotes from the campaign. But as young people we really need to be concerned about this.
If it weren’t for the war-mongering and I-want-to-work-out-my-Viet-Nam-issues-on-the-world-stage-as -President-of-the-most-powerful-nation-in-the-world thing McCain has going, he might qualify as a liberal.
But the interesting thing about the GOP selection of McCain as their nominee (which he will be) is how it shows the GOP rank & file is starting to get it: Conservatism doesn’t work. It has occasional usefulness as a minority critic of a progressive status quo, but as a ruling ideology it brings disaster across nearly every critical point of human life.
That image of Gov. Arnie, Rudy, and McCain standing in the solar power plant talking about solar energy and global warming and our responsibility to clean up our act–was it just me or did anyone else think that someone had slipped acid into their beverage? This is the GOP? I wondered.
(I bet history will record that was one the most portentous images signifying change in US history. But it will rank below the image of a woman and a black man sitting next to each other debating to be the nominee of their party for the President of the United States. I believe we are witnessing a national Gestalt shift, the beginnings of a yearning for a more humane, responsible, and sensible social contract as the basis for our nation.)
But then it made sense. At first the general answer came in 2 words: George Bush. Then I filled in the answer’s only nuance: the GOP majority Congress. Both together were the entire answer.
Of course, the GOP had their nominee in a solar panel factory. Bush & the GOP Congress had utterly repudiated conservatism. They had a huge chance and they blew it. Actually, they did more than just blow it. They made things worse than they have been in the memories of all Americans except the few who recall the Great Depression. They want nothing like that again. It’s over. They still have an insecure attachment to the word “conservative,” but their disgust with actual conservatism effectively placed their nominee in a solar panel factory talking about alternative energy with a passion and expertise one can overhear in a gathering of Green Party members.
But we know what the excuse is by the true believers. “Bush and the GOP congress didn’t represent real conservatism.” (Yea, whatever.)
I suspect the GOP rank & file is beginning to realize that Bush and the GOP congress really do represent real conservatism. I suspect their catching on to what all the conservative chatter about small government and tax-cuts-under-any-circumstances rhetoric is really about. It’s just the line the conservatives give to get into power. It’s the smooth talk of a political con man. The GOP rank and file has seen what these con men are really like. Once in power they loot the treasury and then cover their theft by charging the losses on our credit card. The deficit doesn’t go down. It increases. The national debt doesn’t decrease. It doubles.
Likewise, these con men don’t shrink government. They make it bigger. They must make it bigger because it requires many employees to help them loot the treasury through various means. For example, if you want to loot another nation’s resources, you have to hire many people to invade, occupy and direct the victim country. You can also loot the US treasury by creating opportunities to pay your friends’ companies to do a lot of expensive make-work in the occupied nation.
The looting, the expansion of the deficit and debt, and the massive expansion of government happened under George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Two conservatives. As they say, fool me twice…umm, umm, “you won’t get fooled again.”
Without being fully conscious of it yet, I believe the GOP rank and file are saying they won’t be fooled by GOP brand conservatism again.
That is, no doubt, the best analysis of McCain’s success that I’ve read.
I love all of Dana’s contradictions one sentence after another. ‘Conservatives are against big government’ but ‘real conservatives are really for big government’ but ‘actual conservatism is really what Bush and the GOP say it is’ but but but….
‘Yea, whatever’ is exactly right. Conservatism is whatever Dana wants to build his straw man to be. One thing is for sure, Dana, your ilk built the very fat ass uncontrollable government with the fat ass treasury you whine about being looted. If you don’t want people abusing the treasury how about shrinking it for a change? (Let’s start with our extravagant multi-trillion dollar foreign policy.)
But oh that’s right, socialist paradise requires everyone empty to their pockets to the same organization that seems quite easily looted…no?
Here is the thing. I heard Tyler’s defense of Ron Paul on the radio yesterday and I have to say it was a cogent argument in favor of a certain type of “conservatism.”
Perhaps a more pure form of conservatism because it deals with “conserving” as opposed to squandering. I think this is pretty clear in Tyler’s approach to things like energy conservation and budgetary sanity.
But Dana is also right.
The GOP rank and file has come to the conclusion that the conservatism as practiced by the GOP over the past 20 years is a bunch of bull.
McCain harkens back to a GOP, in some ways, before it substituted single-issue hysteria (abortion, anti-gay rights,etc.) for actual “conserving” conservatism.
Now that hysterical, divisive conservatism has been absolutely laid bare and exposed as the fraud that it is a great many Republicans are saying, “now what?”
The push-back against McCain by Rush Limbaugh et al is the last gasp of a movement that (like collectivists communism) is over because it was tried.
“conservatism as practiced by the GOP over the past 20 years”
You nailed it Jason, in part, except that it is better stated as “purported conservatism purportedly practiced…”
Notwithstanding Dana’s attempts at scarlet lettering, conservatism cannot be hijacked, except in name only, as it has by the big government crowd that hijacked the GOP (with the name Bush stamped all over it).
You are either conservative or you aren’t. If you support sprawling, endless government dominance and largesse you AIN’T a conservative.
Bush and his ilk AIN’T conservatives, nor Falwell and his ilk, nor frankly most of the GOP leadership in the last 20-30 years (with exceptions like Newt Gingrich, Bill Roth, John East, Jack Kemp, and a handful of others). These posers may call themselves “conservatives” and of course Dana agrees with them. But it is a lie on both parts.
Their battle against the seemingly-limitless growth of government and its voracious appetites have never meet real success, only phyrric victories on the margins. I mean let’s just be honest about it.
Dana can have all the conniptions he wants screaming that Bush and other big government Republicans define “conservatism”, as if a politician or a political party can somehow define an ideological framework, instead of the other way around. It just doesn’t make it so.
It is kind of like saying “liberalism is the Democratic party” or “Hillary Clinton defines what a liberal is”. It is a horse shit argument in both directions and Dana is intent on making repeated round trips.
Apprarently Dana is correct on one issue….someone must have slipped acid into your drinks. Dana’s analysis is the most well written fairytale to emerge on this board this week.
Republicans have not abandoned conservatism, and most of us are actually feeling quite embarrassed by McCain being out there. The pols that have been endorsing him are doing so because he is (until Tuesday at least) the front runner. Ahnald supporting a liberal republican is hardly a shock. I like Ahnold but he is in the middle like McCain (otherwise he couldn’t hold on to control of such a liberal quagmire like California). New Jersey repubs endorsing McCain is hardly surprising as well. Not that their support amounts to anything. Delaware is about the only state where the GOP is less effective than NJ.
If we are seeing a last gasp, it is McCain’s. I am confident that things will look quite different by Wednesday morning. While I know Dana would love to believe that true Americans are buying into his fantasy that conservatism, even practiced correctly, fails…we won’t. We know that disaster lurks behind “liberal” policies, and know that it is liberals who truly embrace big government and high taxes.
If really want a Fantasyland that actually exists Dana, may I suggest a trip to Walt Disney World.
But be warned, lying behind all the trappings of imagination, is true blue conservatism and capitalism. Oh…I hope I didn’t spoil the magic.
“I heard Tyler’s defense of Ron Paul on the radio yesterday and I have to say it was a cogent argument in favor of a certain type of “conservatism.””
I appreciate that, Jason. I would simply say I was not arguing a certain type of conservatism, but conservatism plain and simple. It is why Ron Paul has been consistent in his message and his ideas for decades, not just the last 1 or 2. He represents conservatism, in direct line to its roots – limited government, traditional non-interventionist foreign policy, civil libertarianism, constitutional adherence.
There is a reason that those who think otherwise had to call themselves “neo-conservatives”. It is a BS attempt to expropriate conservatism for their own agenda (that runs directly counter to conservatism) and they know it. Dana just wants to lump it all together to suit his purposes.
Check out Justin Raimondo’s 1994 (or so) book “Reclaiming the American Right”, which is a fascinating look at the decades-long and now re-emergent struggle between the conservatives and the Trotskyite “former” left “neo-conservatives”. I lent it to Dana but, of course, he never bothered to read it. (Raimondo also runs the site : antiwar.com).
The “neos” had their moment in the sun, but they are now exposed and discredited. The general rubric of “conservatism” will be wrested from their oily grip in the days ahead.
“But the interesting thing about the GOP selection of McCain as their nominee (which he will be) is how it shows the GOP rank & file is starting to get it: Conservatism doesn’t work. It has occasional usefulness as a minority critic of a progressive status quo, but as a ruling ideology it brings disaster across nearly every critical point of human life.”
Dana
I would argue that McCain has risen to the top due to the perception he would make a strong Commander in Chief (his commercials highlight that point and that alone).
It is not a reason liberals would support him, but it is a reason conservatives would.
Conservatives “get it” – the war must conclude on our terms and that’s McCain’s message. That’s the ONLY reason he is on top at the moment.
Although he may win, I don’t agree that he is the inevitable nominee.
Syntax correction :
When I wrote “Their battle against the seemingly-limitless growth of government and its voracious appetites have never meet real success, only phyrric victories on the margins.” I was referring back to Gingrich, Roth, Kemp etc.
“But the interesting thing about the GOP selection of McCain as their nominee (which he will be) is how it shows the GOP rank & file is starting to get it: Conservatism doesn’t work. It has occasional usefulness as a minority critic of a progressive status quo, but as a ruling ideology it brings disaster across nearly every critical point of human life.”
Dana
I would argue that McCain has risen to the top due to the perception he would make a strong Commander in Chief (his commercials highlight that point and that alone).
As the party of a strong national defense, it makes perfect sense that some conservatives would support him.
Conservatives “get it” – the war must conclude on our terms and that’s McCain’s message. That’s the ONLY reason he is on top at the moment.
Although he may win, I don’t agree that he is the inevitable nominee.
If you support sprawling, endless government dominance and largesse you AIN’T a conservative.
Conservatives have had 35 years, and now they say they weren’t really trying, and now they need more time? “Vote Republican – we’ll get it right this time!!”
Interesting. I remember one of the common bits of wisdom in my parent’s Cold War generation was “Communism is a good system in theory, but…”
So it is with conservatism. The kind of perfect conservatism you are talking about, Tyler, is unimplementable like all utopian systems. In the real world, conservative politics is founded on deficit spending.
Reagan and Bush both gave us deficits as far as they eye could see. And, had they drastically cut spending as “conservatives” wish, they would have both lost their re-elections. So “real” conservatism does not succeed in a democracy. As Bush said, his job would be easier if this was a dictatorship. In a democracy, what conservatism is actually able to deliver is – national socialism.
John –
It is hard for me to fathom how out of touch you are with the sentiments of real Americans.
The “war on terror” is just another “abortion” or “gay rights” issue for the xtreme right. It is a wedge that they think they can use.
Only unlike “gay rights” the “war on terror” kaubuki dance has significant impact on the lives of everyday Americans – both through its plundering of the treasury and through its transformation of our country into an Empire with all the heavy handedness that empire requires.
If McCain get the nomination and goes “all in” for war and for “winning” in Iraq – you guys lose BIG. Very BIG.
I’ll put $100 (toward any charity you care to name) on it.
I’ll take that same bet, and am willing to sponsor one year’s dues to any sex club any GOP Senator wishes to join.
Whatever anon. You and Dana make a nice pair with your straw men arguments. You want to blur the lines, but I already answered your garbage. Big government Republicans are NOT conservatives, no matter what you or they say. But I am happy you agree with them on something.
Incidentally, what is utopian about : limited government, traditional non-interventionist foreign policy, civil libertarianism, constitutional adherence?
It is truly laughable to hear someone, with little more thought than being a rabid anti-Republican because they can’t stand that their big government was turned on them, call those who oppose big government collectivism “utopian”.
You said it yourself, they are not conservatives. They are, like you, national SOCIALISTS. You just have differing views of your brand of socialism.
I have to disagree with anon. I think Tyler’s small government conservatism, like pure marxism, is still a viable theory because it has never been tried.
You admit as much anon. It is the Rush Limbaugh, John Feroce style Republicanism that has been tried in our lifetime and has failed miserably.
Now – to turn it around a bit – what has been tried AND WORKED?
A: Liberal Democracy.
From WWII onward we had social and economic programs supported buy both (R’s and D’s) that created a social saftey net and balanced the rights of workers against the greed of free market capitalism.
The result was a 50 year expansion of the economy, a robust and growing middle class, high levels of social and economic mobility and security,
In short: Peace and Prosperity.
anon writes : “So “real” conservatism does not succeed in a democracy. ”
It is more like real democracy will not succeed without conservatism. (And by the way, we are a republic not a pure democracy.)
You sure nailed the reason why your ilk will be the undoing of democracy itself. To quote Alexander Tyler from 1787 :
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.
Sounds like this guy had you socialists all figured out over 200 years ago.
“that created a social saftey net and balanced the rights of workers against the greed of free market capitalism.”
I would have to say, Jason, that free market capitalism (a la Adam Smith) built the prosperity of this country and is not the source of the greed of which you speak. The greed came from the late 19th century rise of manipulative corporatism that sought anything but free markets and used raw power to achieve its ends, including controlling the government. It is still the biggest problem we all face.
Point taken.
The ” juristic personhood of corporations” and the extension of Constitutional rights to them been a net loser for society.
I tned to think that the status quo as always having been the status quo and in so doing impute a natural greed to “capitalism” when I mean “corporatist capitalism.”
In short: Peace and Prosperity.
Amen. One candidate has used these as the guiding principles of his campaign (with one addition).
When I started this campaign more than a year ago, I was a somewhat reluctant candidate. I knew our message of freedom, peace, and prosperity was the right one for our country, but frankly, I didn’t know how many people today would have ears to hear it. – Ron Paul 1-28-08
He wrote about in 2006 (posted on Raimondo’s site, interestingly enough) :
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=8334
And by the way, we are a republic not a pure democracy.
Cheap debating points. On the other hand, in a republic at least the corporations have fewer people to bribe.
real democracy will not succeed without conservatism
Actually, I agree. A liberal democracy needs a minority conservative voice as a brake on liberal excess.
The turning point for conservatism came in the first Reagan administration, when after Reagan’s first round of tax cuts, the true believers tried to cut spending to balance the budget, and found they couldn’t do it. Remember “ketchup is a vegetable?”
Reagan was forced to roll back his tax cuts (yes, Reagan increased taxes) and give up on balancing the budget, teaching the young Dick Cheney “deficits don’t matter.”
Small government conservatism died during the first Reagan adminstration:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0301.green.html
It’s conservative lore that Reagan the icon cut taxes, while George H.W. Bush the renegade raised them. As Stockman recalls, “No one was authorized to talk about tax increases on Ronald Reagan’s watch, no matter what kind of tax, no matter how justified it was.” Yet raising taxes is exactly what Reagan did. He did not always instigate those hikes or agree to them willingly–but he signed off on them. One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year’s reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan, who never came to terms with this episode of ideological apostasy, persuaded himself that the three-year, $100 billion tax hike–the largest since World War II–was actually “tax reform” that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn’t count as raising taxes.)
Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives–and probably cost Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection–Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.
Jason
I’m just given you my analysis as to why he is getting votes from conservatives.
If you noticed who led the polls on our side over the last year, it was Rudy because he was seen as the most effective at keeping Americans safe, he was succeeded by McCain who’s strength is that he would make a good Commander in Chief. They are the same voters.
“If McCain get the nomination and goes “all in” for war and for “winning” in Iraq – you guys lose BIG. Very BIG.”
We’re already “all in”. I do think there’s a chance Americans will unify on a “winning” view with a new leader. Don’t kid yourself, Americans don’t like to “lose” they just don’t trust why Bush went in or his management of the war, and that’s reflected in the numbers. They trust proven leadership (today viewed as belonging to GEN Petraeus, so everything’s quiet in the opposition’s front). With McCain, the public will be more willing to give him a chance to “succeed.”
Bush is not running in ’08. If you guys run against him and we are successful in our message that he’s not part of the future…then using your words,…”you guys lose BIG. Very BIG.”
GOP President and Senate.
Consider the bet taken (you too disbelief)
A liberal democracy needs a minority conservative voice as a brake on liberal excess.
LOFL. How does a “minority conservative voice” put the brakes on the majority-holding liberals and their excesses? Won’t they just get voted down? In fact, they have…consistently. It is why your worn-out “the Reagan era ended conservatism” argument is crap.
Can you ever make a consistent logical argument anon? Or is it always just “I hate Reagan I hate Reagan I hate Reagan”?
You remind me of a song….
Once I used to join in
every boy and girl was my friend.
Now there’s revolution, but they don’t know
what they’re fighting.
Let us close our eyes;
outside their lives go on much faster.
Oh, we won’t give in….
I left out the last line, the name of the song..which says it all for you.
Well John,
My charity is NCC Habitat for Humanity.
They will be glad to get the $100.00 that I know they will be getting based on he fact that your (and McCain’s) use of the word “winning” means that you buy into a continuation of the fantasy world thinking that people are sick and tired of.
Everyone (and I mean everyone except crazy true believers) knows that the seeds of our failure in Iraq were sown before the first bomb was dropped.
The only question going forward is, how many decades will we be haunted by Bush’s catastrophic screw up?
I can just here McCain in a debate saying that we can still “win” in Iraq – to a smattering of applause from a few crackpots.
“With McCain, the public will be more willing to give him a chance to “succeed.” ”
If by “succeed” you mean get the hell out of there as quickly as an immediate and orderly withdrawal permits, while our asses are still intact…sure.
John, you are barking up the wrong tree if you think the American public will tolerate more of this Iraq debacle, from anyone in ’08. It is a losing proposition all around. Get used to it. You are whistling past a fast-filling graveyard with such happy talk.
J – I have a comment hung up in your spam….(feel free to delete this one, once you release the other one).
Nonetheless it was Reagan and his men who proved that small-government conservatism wouldn’t work – but decided they wanted to keep power anyway.
Yeah they really managed to shrink that big ole government didn’t they?
Did you ever think the bleating big gov liberals threw any wrenches into the equation??
What a larf.
<iYeah they really managed to shrink that big ole government didn’t they?
It wasn’t for lack of trying. They proved it couldn’t be done (significantly shrink the government). As long as there are voters, it will be impossible to cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget.
Unless of course we revert to a low-income agrarian society funded by tariffs. Unfortunately the Midwest, California, and Texas will be in drought due to Reagan’s cancelling of the Carter alternate-energy programs. Remember Reagan ripping Carter’s solar panels off the White House?
Start building the irrigation systems now while we can still borrow money.
Did you ever think the bleating big gov liberals threw any wrenches into the equation??
So you agree with Bush, it would be easier in a dictatorship.
Oh yesssssss of course I agree with Bush, anon. Aren’t small government dictatorships the best?
You are becoming clownish.
Happy and I’m smiling, walking miles….
The only option available for the next President, is to leave once we establish an environment in which a stable Iraqi government can run things. That’s a fact.
If you think we will just leave and let insurgents take over the government, then that’s just crazy talk and my money is in the bank. Who’s going to be the leader in your scenario, the head of the insurgency in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian?
The fact is you can’t win the bet if you are relying on some sort of overnight exit…ain’t gonna happen…you know that.
Tyler
“succeed” means leaving on our terms not the enemy.
When our government decides we are ready to leave, we will. Right now it hasn’t come to that conclusion, there’s no arguing that. Bush is not keeping everybody in Iraq or Afghanistan by himself.
John I have heard those tired phrases over and over, but they don’t change a durn thing about what I said, which is that the vast majority of the public is fed up with it all.
I think that with the way things are going in this country at this point, with dire consequences on the horizon for all this guns and butter profligacy, people losing their homes and their shirts, that most don’t give a frog’s fat ass what the hell happens in or to Iraq if we get the hell out and give them their country back.
Your bogeymen could never get bigger than Saddam himself, who we all knew was no real threat in the first place. This “enemy” of which you speak is not believable any more. You are arguing with the wind, lad.
Nothing you say changes the facts Tyler.
We will leave when we’re ready to leave as a nation.
As a nation we have not made the decision to leave, I’m not the one arguing anything.
When you and the pro-war crowd actually face the facts, you will see that your positions aren’t facts, either.
So do you want the ’08 election to be a referendum on staying in Iraq? Be careful what you wish for, John.
I’m not pro-war Tyler but I know we won’t leave the Iraqi people in the hands of the insurgents and that’s a fact.
“Conservatism doesn’t work. It has occasional usefulness as a minority critic of a progressive status quo, but as a ruling ideology it brings disaster across nearly every critical point of human life.”
Hi Dana and Tyler,
The mistake you are making is a fundamental one. There is no easy way to state it. It is not the divide between conservative or liberal. It is the unquestioning belief that ideology is in some way a permanent phenomenon. It is not. Ideology like all of human history is subject to the laws of history which constantly are in flux and changing, there is a defined ratio that determines how history works. It does not end as Francis Fukuyama once said, “it is the end of history.” No. There is no such thing. History is not ideology alone. History is a vital and moving force.
The one thing that we hold, that no other nation in the history of this world has held is that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As Americans we declare these things, everyone else need not declare them for us to declare them. And they are a declaration we are in our legislation in our elitism and in our ideological presumptions proving wrong. This always ends in utopian thinking which in turns leads to death and suffering. Because we refuse to accept that the nature of life is hard, we make it psychologically hard while filling all the material needs people want. Now if we no longer hold these truths to be self evident, then we are on the way to utopia and disaster because the theoretical ideologies of either pure conservatives or pure liberalism replace the natural history that we were born for.
The natural life history of each individual is conditioned by structures. These structures have two cycles that are dominated by ideology. They are a positive feedback cycle that leads to higher development through critical thought and human development or a negative feed back development which leads to diminishing returns and typically utopianism. Both are conditioned by a reluctance to change economic social and other structures and both typically in the long term context, end in disaster. Individual greed and the lust for power at the expense of the common good plays a huge role in that.
Either way you look at it in the end we cannot take what we have with us, it is a natural law. We may extend this life for some time, short or long, but we cannot live forever. So this belief that we are somehow more special and better than anyone else is a horrible tragedy.
Liberal democracy is as much an ideology as a conservative democracy. Democracy is majority rule. There is a very fine balance very rarely achieved in the history of the world when any people are capable of reaching a ratio between individual developments and developing supporting structures for the development of individual talent that is geared toward what is good. Not what is profitable. These times are marked by republican government. The other times are marked either by anarchy, democracy, oligarchy or monarchy. The beauty of our system was that is was developed to prevent this from occurring. So we must look at the laws and find and make being an American mean something or we must throw ourselves into the ideologies of power and death and destruction and bring on our own collapse and all the violence that goes along with it.
If I look at the history of civilization, the Sung dynasty in China, the Gupta dynasty in India, you see the common threads in each one. In their development a rise in personal initiative, ideas, thinking, philosophy, physics, art, cultural development. All of them collapsed as a result of increase complexity at the expense of sophistication (usually for pragmatism) that in turn give rise to both excessive refinement and distaste for all things, or excessive brutality. Either way, they grow too complex and their complexity destroys them without any enemies at all. On the other hand, those civilizations that retain their simplicity on the one hand and develop complex structures for their protection on the other last longer. The brutality of a system is typically its end. The humanity of a system and the liberty it afford its citizens, if they are responsible with it, is usually a good sign that it will last longer.
Once we enter into a negative feedback cycle, power becomes more important than virtue, money -an abstract expression of power- becomes more important than human life, and all these things are tied together through the ideological system and economic system we choose to believe in and use to justify our beliefs. But the ideology only expresses a tiny part of the material life of the people, the ground work or economics is always laid and the ideology follows on its heels.
The current crisis we are going through is one of ideology and systems. Are we a republic or will we continue to be an imperial power? No matter what we choose there are consequences. Primarily, if we choose to be an imperial power we can expect increased brutality, increased belief that theoretical knowledge is perfect and unchanging and expect much greater rates of horror from this utopianism. The scary thing is that it will come to us much sooner and our parents will never see it so they are fooled by it and we are blind to it and walk right into it and it will be terrible.
If we choose the way of critical thinking and republican government, we typically bypass the horror stage and move into a cultural renaissance.
It is as if you take a mirror and look at yourself you can adjust your hat; if you study the history of civilization you get a prelude to what your future will be. If you fail to do so, you condemn your family and your civilization to repeat its brutal lessons.
It used to be the job of government in our society to ensure that this would occur and any branch of theoretical knowledge or ideology would not dominate another. That they would critically examine the pre-existing paradigm and do what is best for the people, we in turn would contribute to people’s welfare and ensure that they were free to pursue a livelihood. It was never perfect, but the pursuit of absolute perfection was never a worthy goal of government and or of anyone except British aristocrats who believed that humankind was unworthy of living on earth because of their innate destructive capacity without a single thought that the systems they had created had become destructive of their own ends. It was their ideas that shaped our current utopian divide, you will never find an early American doing so, instead you always and only find Europeans doing so. It was not until the early 20th century that these utopianisms gained popularity in America, but we did experiment with them in 1880’s and 90’s to disastrous effect.
There is one truth in the history of utopian ideologies and it is this: WHEN PEOPLE BELEIVE THEIR OWN UTOPIAN IDEAS, THEY ALWAYS CREATE TRAGEDY.
All I hope is that we do not work so hard in our quest for power that we prove those aristocrats like Wells right. Unfortunately, I feel we as a society are conditioned to do this each day. With ideologies like progressive and liberal or conservative and corporatist we thrust ourselves into confusion, utopianism and ultimately tragedy all trying to build perfection in an imperfect world. This is the way power politics have been for thousands of years. They have not changed since the Emperor wanted to unite China.
It typically leads to dictatorship and removal of undesirables. Even if they are the most creative and intelligent people in society. This is just typical of utopian idealism, it is not because people are bad or good, liberal or conservative, and it is because we are striving for the perfection of an existing paradigm without thinking about it critically. Paradigm shifts either lead to renaissance or tragedy. It has always been this way.
In it paradigm, liberalism or conservatism (in the sense we are using them), people are outwardly discouraged by the public departments of society and economically or socially encouraged to use violence for pragmatism or expediency rather than rely on reason. Ideology becomes faith, and reason has no part in it, especially not when so much power or money is at stake.
Violence then becomes the pragmatic and expedient measure in street life, in social life, in public life and eventually permeates society until the people are willing to commit outrageous atrocities, as it was in the death of MLK or Gandhi or Jesus or any of the Western World’s heroes, and as it was in Germany and Armenia, and in Sudan today, instead of what it is meant to be, a last resort to protect those we love in our communities.
But even the idea that we can absolutely protect everyone forever is a terrible ideological extreme and it typically has been the justification for purge after purge and heaps of corpses. It has been this way since the Turks introduced the idea into political life: you do not like someone- eliminate them-someone else-eliminate them too. Our founders sometimes used this ideology too, except in Pennsylvania, until the federal government took over Indian affairs and made the expulsion mandatory during Andrew Jackson, so even they were not immune from these foreign and extreme ideas. The important thing to note is that the progression I discussed is the way that ideology begins. Increasing war and violence increases it and does not limit it as natural society normally would.
I deplore violence, economic, social, or physical. I loathe it from the bottom of my heart. I know for the protection of our community it is necessary and I also know how to contribute to that- but if we adopt these techniques on ourselves, in the end, we will find that the fate of those civilizations like India and China are not so different from our own and it may take us another several hundred if not thousands of years to reach a level of development where human beings can say with William Pitt in his discussions with Voltaire:
“We never go to war. This is not because we fear death. On the contrary, we bless the moment that unites us with the Being of Beings. It is because we are neither wolves, tigers nor mastiffs, but Christian men.
“Our God, who has commanded us to love our enemies and to suffer without complaining, would not permit us to cross the seas to slaughter our brothers, just because murderers clothed in scarlet, wearing caps two feet high, enlist citizens by making a noise with two little sticks beating on a stretched ass’s skin.
When after a victory, all London is lit up with illuminations, and the sky is ablaze with fireworks, and the noise of thanksgiving is heard from bells, organs and cannons, then we groan in silence about the murders which caused the public rejoicing.”
To which Voltaire answered: “We call one man who kills a killer, we call a man who produces millions of dead to the sound of trumpets a conqueror and praise him as the son of God incarnate.”
Whenever a society uses economic, social, psychological or physical violence on its own people, it does not fulfill its purposes and that is what we need to worry about. It in fact becomes destructive of its own ends in pursuing its own interests.
This is what happened to England, and I do not see how we are behaving any differently. And as long as we continue to do so, expect more horror, less liberty and greater potential for mutually assured annihilation between nations.
We do not need to discuss these radical utopian ideologies of progressive or conservative. We need to discuss how to ensure that we do not make all the mistakes of the past to prove our founding thesis wrong. We need to discuss how to become humane or we ensure that we will not be alive to give birth to the next generation. Or we can simply accept that theoretical models are the ultimate end and commence with the horror of living slavery conditioned for us by social scientists who think they can read the human mind and determine our intelligence based on our class or erudition or willingness to sacrifice for special interests and create a dystopia for all.
“You may make the concept of hell much sweeter” my ancestor wrote to the King in 1764, “by ensuring that the people only feel your power indirectly and not through sending out the bushy hat militia with their bayonets shining. It is still hell, but they may accept it.” Well, they did not and I for one am quite thankful of that fact. Because life with Penn was never materially easy, but we were never ever thinking about things like spying on each other to catch bad guys. I hate to say it but we have spent the last 50 years proving that Freud was right, we have moved so far into power politics at the expense of our liberty that we believe we can always have security and have created our own form of utopia by killing off the laws, ideas and people’s inventiveness that will give our country purpose and meaning for the future.
That is what we should be discussing.
John-
Winning is not an act of force through legislation against your own people. It is expressed outwardly. To create conditions where we will win, we have to have a paradigm shift in the way we think of warfare. I know about Asian warafare and it is always based on this concept. When we beat the pirates, we beat them through their techniques but we did not ever think of limiting oursleves in the process. Right now we are hamstrung by our thinking, and our military is stuck in a paradigm that will not last forever.
I have been discussing that with David- ask him to send you the summary I sent him by e-mail. It is the new paradigm. There is a wisdom in war we need to use to win and keep ourselves American and not descend into the power politcs, suspicions and fear of a European country. Otherwise we all lose.
Good points Brian.
“Winning is not an act of force through legislation against your own people.”
The fact is though that legislation if enacted IS the will of the people.
John not always. Corporate lobbying is an act that has nothing to do with the people.
One would expect influence that trumps the will of the people would result in the replacement of the legislators.
2006 elections resulted in a new party in control of Congress, yet we are firmly committed to follow through in Iraq.
That has been reaffirmed by a number of Congressional votes in 2007.
“Bush and his ilk AIN’T conservatives, nor Falwell and his ilk, nor frankly most of the GOP leadership in the last 20-30 years (with exceptions like Newt Gingrich, Bill Roth, John East, Jack Kemp, and a handful of others).”
Discerning readers will notice the one conservative that Tyler Nixon left out of the list: Ronald Reagan. Yet Regan’s & Bush Jr.’s records are virtually identical:
1. Aggressive foreign interventionism in nations that opposed no imminent threat to the USA but were deliberately hyped as huge threats. There are many examples, but perhaps the most laughable was Grenada. There is zero daylight between Bush’s & Regan’s foreign policy on the US as the world policeman.
2. A BIGGER budget deficit when he left office than when he entered. (Of course the GOP blames that on the Dem Congress, but the real truth is that Regan submitted budget bills that had they been passed w/o alteration would have de facto grown the budget deficit.)
3. A borrow and spend approach to financing the government. Like Bush will, Reagan left office by saddling taxpaying families w/ a greater national debt than he inherited from the previous administration.
4. Massive tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the rich and massive borrowing to cover the looting of the treasury.
5. Looting the treasury through expanding Defense spending thereby benefiting rich corporations, even on projects that were entirely made-up and had no real defense value whatsoever: “Star Wars.”
Why does Tyler keep Reagan off the list of false conservatives? Well, Reagan was the GOP hero of his youth. Like many in the GOP, Tyler doesn’t respond to the Reagan of History but the Reagan of Conservative Mythology and Faith.
Tyler is a perfect example of the “conservative” hangers-on, the conservative true believer. And like true believers of any ilk, Tyler and those like him have to ignore a considerable amount of reality to keep the faith alive. The support for Ron Paul illustrates the point perfectly. We could ask and get a reasonable answer to the question “What would Ron Paul REALLY do if he became President” based on his record.
Consider Ron Paul’s incessant grumbling about the use of earmarks in spending bills. He brags constantly how he voted against spending bills w/ earmarks. But what he doesn’t advertise is how he actually places earmarks for his district in the spending bills he votes against, knowing that his dissenting vote won’t kill the bill. It’s a fraud designed to bring home the bacon to please the voters back home but to also foster the “illusion” that he’s a “real” conservative who votes against excessive government spending. In short, he talks like a conservative and engages in the symbolic behavior of a conservative but what he really does behind the scenes is loot the treasury on behalf of his special interest. (Also, he says he believes in term limits for Congress but is unwilling to term limit himself.) If he became President, he’d act just like Bush & Reagan: talk the conservative talk but not walk the walk. It takes a considerable degree of deliberate blindness not to see Paul’s massive hypocrisy on these matters.
But Ron Paul does seem to have some astonishingly progressive ideas, especially about foreign policy. But on closer examination it turns out that his “progressive” ideas don’t spring from compassion for others or from a robust sense of the sovereignty of other nations, but from a textual fundamentalism about the US constitution. According to Paul, fundamentally the Iraq war is wrong because it is unconstitutional. It’s not chiefly wrong because it’s immoral. No, that consideration only has passing relevance.
Paul doesn’t concern himself with moral questions about the relations among nations. He is so unconcerned about basic human morality in our relations with other nations, he opposes foreign aid regardless of how dire the circumstances or how well equipped we are to help. If people are starving in Africa, it’s not our affair. Nations can trade with us, but unless it is about business, we haven’t any reason to relate to them. That’s why he thinks the UN is useless and wants to get us out of it. But once one discovers that Ron Paul has been a vicious white supremacist for about two decades, his apathy about any suffering we might alleviate in the world isn’t the least bit surprising. Ron Paul doesn’t care. Ron Paul doesn’t want us out of Iraq because he cares but because he doesn’t.
But Tyler Nixon isn’t a white supremacist. Quite the contrary, in fact. Yet he supports one for President and even served as his surrogate at an event in Newark. How is that possible? It’s only possible by understanding that in one important respect the rank and file of the GOP has grown past Tyler. The scales of the illusion that there is something named a “real conservative” has just fallen from their eyes. But in Tyler’s case, like for many Paulites, the scales are still firmly intact.
Consequently, Tyler’s case is yet more evidence of how a Gestalt Shift has occurred in the GOP psyche. Whereas just two years ago we were all praising Tyler as a remarkable exception to the rule of typical Republicans, now (that scene in the solar power plant punctuates it) Tyler in this respect is already old news, a hanger-on to a GOP fairytale, someone teetering on the brink of being dismissed at best as quaint and at worst as antiquarian. That’s as remarkable jump for the GOP. If they can make someone like Tyler in two years become a Republican lagging behind, they haven’t simply evolved. They have made a LEAP forward. And we owe it all to the colossal failures of real conservatism afforded by George Bush and the GOP Congress.
“Conservatives have had 35 years, and now they say they weren’t really trying, and now they need more time? “Vote Republican – we’ll get it right this time!!”
Exactly right. They are just continuing their con. It’s like the guy who keeps wanting to borrow money from you and always w/ the promise “I’ll pay you back this time” but never does.
“You said it yourself, they are not conservatives. They are, like you, national SOCIALISTS. You just have differing views of your brand of socialism.”
Isn’t it laughably ironic to be called a national socialist by someone who led the effort to place on the DE ballot a candidate for president who is actually supported by REAL national socialist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aympZ8ILGSI
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:MxSXA7gyWykJ:www.davidduke.com/general/register-republican-by-october-12th-or-you-cant-vote-for-ron-paul_2877.html+David+Duke+our+king&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
LOL!!
“We will leave when we’re ready to leave as a nation.”
If we operate w/ that attitude, we’ll leave Iraq precisely as we left Viet Nam: lifting off the helipad just as the enemy victors are crashing through the gate.
“If we operate w/ that attitude, we’ll leave Iraq precisely as we left Viet Nam: lifting off the helipad just as the enemy victors are crashing through the gate.”
And just how do you think we will leave if we “immediately withdraw”. It seems to me that the immediate withdraw being suggested by the so-called “moralists” has a greater chance of recreating the Vietnam exit than “leave when we are ready to leave” mentality will.
A man who deigns to tutor us about the dangers of ideology and presents himself as free of its influence tries to exempt from the critique of ideology this indisputable ideological bunk:
“Because we refuse to accept that the nature of life is hard, we make it psychologically hard while Because we refuse to accept that the nature of life is hard, we make it psychologically hard while filling all the material needs people want.”
Of course, you could go to Sweden and find the most ardent social democrat in the nation and s/he will never say that society is obligated to “[fill] all the material needs people want.”
Yet, s/he will point to his own nation and say correctly, “Your nation is more economically conservative than mine but our citizens enjoy a better standard of living than yours.”
Helping people w/ their needs, assisting them to help themselves to get ahead, is not ideological. It’s sensible. It’s the pragmatic thing to do. And it works. The models provided by the social democracies are extant. Yet others want to fight straw men while trying to claim they aren’t ideological and have both feet planted on the ground.
It’s a sneaking lie.
“Looting the treasury through expanding Defense spending thereby benefiting rich corporations, even on projects that were entirely made-up and had no real defense value whatsoever: “Star Wars.””
Apparently, in Dana’s mind, the “Cold War” was some GOP made up apparition. I guess nuclear threat was all a ruse. Thanks God your hero JFK recognized its legitamacy or else there is no telling where we would be.
I understand that Star Wars never saw its true completeion, but that is more due to political and economic pressures than anything else. Quite frankly, it was a very sound idea at the time. And while at this point it history it may not be as useful, there will come a time in the near future when we will wish we had it deployed. With China growing in power everyday and Russia deciding to make another go at it. It makes you kind of wish we had seen that one to completion. But then again, if we blow of nukes while they are still in space, we will be polluting space, and that wouldn’t be very green of us. It might lead to “cosmic warming”….particular as you draw closer to the sun.
“Helping people w/ their needs, assisting them to help themselves to get ahead, is not ideological. It’s sensible. It’s the pragmatic thing to do. And it works. The models provided by the social democracies are extant.”
One of those “theory vs. practice” things again. Helping people is pragmatic. But the problem is it never stops with just helping them. The left’s desire for power then leads to abusing that system and making people dependent on government handouts rather than truly helping them get ahead. Just look at some of the huge social problems CREATED by the welfare systems. People who decide its just easier to take the handouts, even if they aren’t all that much, and try to survive on that, rather than standing on their own. Programs which don’t focus enough on training, education, and job creation to actually FIX the system. You say that signs are all around that it works, but there are plenty of signs that show how devastating it can be when not practiced correctly.
Big government is not equipped to handle this. The aid has to be be offered, rendered and managed on the local level, where the people administering and offering that aid, know the people receiving it. They then have a truly vested interest in helping them get to a point where they no longer need that help (if possible). That is why I think the faith-based programs are the best way of reaching people (I don’t particularly care what that faith is, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi..etc.). But you guys would never go for it. The politicians want the purse strings so they have the power.
Well, we can list Chris as one still committed to the standard GOP line and lies.
Star wars was a good idea, he says. GEEZ. What more evidence does one need that he’s a true believer probably permanently out to lunch.
“Star wars was a good idea, he says. GEEZ. What more evidence does one need that he’s a true believer probably permanently out to lunch.”
This from one who spends his life out to lunch. Sorry Dana. Not biting.
Chris
““Star wars was a good idea, he says. GEEZ.”
So answer the question than. Was the threat of the cold war one big giant hoax. Seems that goes right to heart of your political sanity. If the threat was real, please explain how placing machines in orbit to destroy deadly weapons in the highest levels of our atmosphere instead of melting our populus….was a bad idea.
Leave by helicopter, leave by truck,
I don’t really give a fuck.
Leave by train, leave by plane,
First leave Mosul and then leave Bahrian.
Leave next moth or leave today.
Only lunatics want to stay.
This war is crap.
this much we know…
It is not IF but WHEN we go.
I wanted to put it into words even Chris could not misconstrue.
“If we operate w/ that attitude, we’ll leave Iraq precisely as we left Viet Nam: lifting off the helipad just as the enemy victors are crashing through the gate.”
Dana and Chris- you both are wrong about this. History will prove how wrong you are. If you want to prove to me that you are right, go to Iraq instead of pontificating. I would show you if I could but I am still injured from my work overseas. The goal of withdraw is not to release control, it is to consolidate our forces. That way the people of Iraq with their government sort the issues out, without us there to invite terrorism. Our forces there, whether we like it or not, are a magnet for extremism and for the sources of extremism. Please examine your assumptions of what is the right course of action and think about what I am saying. There is a wisdom needed for fighting this kind of war which we are not pursuing as much as we could.
To people in the middle east, they perceive rightly or wrongly what we do as occupation- their leaders are all imported from other places and we are still talking about democracy and flowers in the street. Please take some time to think against the convential wisdom. Without that we will not win in any meaningful way.
“The goal of withdraw is not to release control, it is to consolidate our forces. That way the people of Iraq with their government sort the issues out, without us there to invite terrorism.”
I believe this will go down as the very FIRST comment I have ever seen on this blog (other than mine) that contains useful logic.
I don’t know that my view and your differ greatly. I have never said that the way we are doing it is correct, I just know that summarily packing up and going home would be disasterous. I think your suggestion of slowly consolidating the forces and turning over more and more control to the Iraqis makes perfect sense. Then you are right we could focus efforts in other areas as well. But if you listen to people like Dana and Jacey boy, we should bring all our troops home, melt down our weapons, hold hands and sing “We are the World” and all our positive thoughts will make the bad people in the world leave us alone.
“Leave by helicopter, leave by truck,
I don’t really give a…”
Don’t give up your day job. The arts community has enough problems.
Thanks for the psychoanalysis Dana. You really are an idiot, but I am thrilled to know how obsessed you have become with me. Oh joy.
By the way, Genius Garrett, my list was not of false conservatives but REAL conservatives. Think about it, before you spew again : Gingrich, Roth, Kemp….you really are a dense one.
Incidentally you didn’t answer anything I wrote, just right into your tired revisionism and ad hominem. Reagan Reagan Reagan Bush Bush Bush. You and anon make a nice pair.
By the way your shameful lie that has now slithered down into just outright saying “Ron Paul is a white supremacist” is still complete and total bullshit. But then pretty much everything you say these days is.
As I said before you are a charlatan and argumentative sleight-of-hand artists. But we all know that already.
One last thing. Dana is just feeling the heat that the GOP will soon be free of Bush et al because, in his typical convoluted hypocrisy, Dana is as guilty as the fellow Democrats he accuses of having no message other than that GOP candidate ___________ is from the party of Bush (or Reagan).
I am glad you finally woke up this afternoon to chime in Dana. It is always entertaining to see just how bizarre your ramblings can become. Please, do tell me more about the inner workings of my own mind not to mention any candidate I work for, not to mention my political party. Please do treat us again.
(For the record, if you notice that Dana Garrett has taken to singling me out for his unique style of pseudo-intellectual fantasy attacks it is because I am daring run this year against someone who is full-time on the union payroll. Can’t go there with Dana or you are just another “gooper” worthy of his acid. Sorry Dana but you won’t be forcing your kool aid on me.)
Tyler,
Do not worry. Dana likes power poltics and he does not like to change his positions often. He spends time attributing intelligence to himself and dispariging all the rest of us for kicks. It is his style. It is “gotcha”. It is ok. His allegations are false and his argumentative style is similar to the spohists of ancient Greece who could argue about everything but had no idea of how to protect anything. So “when Athens burned the sophists with their books in their hand ran around faces cast toward the ground not knowing what had happened to this Athens, the greatest power in Greece.”
Chris- So how does this line up with the 100 years of war and not enough casualties of Sen. McCain?
“Was the threat of the cold war one big giant hoax. ”
Pretty much, yes. But don’t believe me. Believe the former “real conservative” Sen. Taft.
Gorbachev cut the USSR’s military spending, but Reagan continued to increase ours.
You don’t know what you are talking about.
“Gorbachev cut the USSR’s military spending, but Reagan continued to increase ours.”
Why did Gorbachev do this? He was in a war wiuth Afghanistan.
Why did Reagan do this? We were not bogged down in the Middle East.
What are China, Russia and India doing today? What Reagan did then.
You draw the conclusions.
“If the threat was real, please explain how placing machines in orbit to destroy deadly weapons in the highest levels of our atmosphere instead of melting our populus….was a bad idea.”
Oh, because it didn’t work and couldn’t work for a lot of technical reasons.
You really need to catch up on the official Reagan legacy talking points, Son. The official line now is that the Reagan admin knew it didn’t work but spent the money anyhow to create the illusion it did to cause the USSR to spend so much on its military to make the nation collapse. It’s bullshit, of course, since Gorbachev slashed military spending.
Star wars was a lie used to loot the treasury on behalf of military contractors.
SDI provided some valuable technological advances for peaceful uses in its wake, something that can be denied only by Luddites or nasty partisan ideologues. What was developed to spot rogue missiles is now used to spot cancer cells, for example. Oh how horrid!! What evils!!!
Was there likely a lot of waste and padding? Sure, but the bigger the government scheme, the more you will find and certainly not limited to defense expenditures.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/maney/2004-06-08-star-wars-initiative_x.htm
“SDI never got built, mostly because the program’s existence hastened the decline of the Soviet Union, which meant it was less likely someone was going to fire hundreds of warheads at us. As the years went on, some SDI technology made its way into civilian life…
SDI developed technology that would’ve helped identify “live” warheads among hundreds of dummies the USSR might’ve launched. That’s now being used to spot rogue cells — i.e. cancer — among the millions of cells on a microscope slide.
X-ray lasers, which might’ve been used to blast missiles out of the sky, show promise as a much more accurate mammogram. No one has tried to use the technology to disintegrate back hair, but who knows?
In 1999, educational software company Heartsoft found a use for SDI image-processing technology. SDI’s computers, looking at images coming in from satellites, would’ve had to instantly analyze the shape, size, color and composition of every object. Well, if you take the same software and tell it to look for certain naked body parts instead of missiles, it could instantly identify images coming in from the Internet that might not be appropriate for a grade-schooler. Out of that, Heartsoft developed the KidsBrowser.
Joe Allen, president of the National Technology Transfer Center, cites dozens of SDI technologies that have made their way into the private sector, but most of those aren’t as tangible as a cordless drill. SDI technology helps pilots avoid rough patches of air. It helps analyze streams of chemicals in factories.
And then there’s the Farmatic Robotic Sow. Pig farmers rely on it to nurse piglets. It uses miniature heat pumps that NASA developed for satellites and comes in two models: eight nipples or 16 nipples.
So for the Robotic Sow and anything else that might come out of the SDI years, we salute you, President Reagan.”
Dana,
That is not true. We both spent money that way.
If you do not beleive me you can get the FOIA, and look up the records at the National Archives. Unless you are not allowed to anymore.
“Star wars was a lie used to loot the treasury on behalf of military contractors.”
Part of it was, part of it was not.
“I just know that summarily packing up and going home would be disasterous.”
This is the thing I do not get. Winning a war today is not about control of territory. There is a whole different skill set needed to be successful in an asymetrical war. You cannot win a 21st century war with 20th century thinking. To save even part of the system we have to got change it.
Otherwise it is not going to work and things will contiue to work against us as a nation and against us financially.
We need to fundementally change our policy assumptions in the middle east. Once we do that for the region, offically, we begin military disengagement and increase the things that are going to be beneficial. You never hear middle easterners in the streets saying “death to China” but China takes much more oil than we do sometimes.
What they object to is our intereference in their governments, social structres, propping up warlords and dictators and importing their leaders.
So, once we change the way we do things and start playing the issue like China is in some ways, I really think we are going to be able to dominate AQ and marginalize them and really make meaingful progress. That means we buy controlling shares of their oil companies and other key industries. We exerpt infleunce through threatening to withdraw any support of the regimes there, etc…. Until we do, we are going to keep wasting young people who would be much better here at home protecting our borders and working for FEMA and doing all the creative things to keep us competitive throughout the next century.
This old assumption that warfare means controlling dirt has got to go. It will breed enemies not influence. And we will never be able to meet any of the challenges to our national securtiy during the next century or two.
Sen. McCain’s plan is full of this old way of thinking about war and I fear is going to lead us to a global war. And this time I have a feeling it is not going to be pleasent at all. If we get in a global war we are in a terrible situation. For Example see the DE Libertarian blog’s article about China.
“This is the thing I do not get. Winning a war today is not about control of territory.”
The territory is not the issue, the people who live in it are.
According to Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch
“The mission changed from transition to securing the population.”
more
“Once you’re there, the local citizens come forward and ask two questions: `Are you gonna stay?’ If the answer is yes, they say: `How can we help?'”
That is how U.S. forces began recruiting local men to help provide security and rebuild towns, Lynch said. Variously known as Awakening Councils, Concerned Local Citizens or the Sons of Iraq, Lynch said he now has 32,000 Iraqi civilians on his payroll manning 1,500 new checkpoints, in addition to the more than 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and police under his control.
http://www.startribune.com/world/15133076.html
Tyler, no one is obsessed w/ your life except perhaps your family. That’s the truth for most of humanity and, frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would want it differently. But it is odd thing about you, Tyler, that when someone likes me writes something you disagree w/ that has nothing to do w/ you (like I did w/ my post on McCain & conservatism), you take it personally. You think it’s directed at you and you respond w/ ad hominem attacks and smears. But when the person you attacked personally returns fire, you take that as evidence they are obsessed w/ you. That’s quite ill.
That Ron Paul is a racist can’t be doubted by anyone the least bit interested in telling truth. I suggest readers read this article and follow the links. You can see Paul’s writing for yourselves.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
There are plenty of pdf files of his writings that appear under his name across many years. They are some of the most scurrilous vicious racist writings I have ever read:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74978161-f730-43a2-91c3-de262573a129
Also, I don’t care who you run against, Tyler. That Gerald Brady is a union man means nothing to me. I don’t plan on supporting him because I care for you. I would have supported you, but given that you persist in your support of the white supremacist Ron Paul, I won’t support you either. I don’t know how you can possibly look into the faces of the African American people in your district knowing that you put someone who hates them on the ballot in DE to be president. I know that you don’t hate them, but how you can expect them to trust you when you haven’t denounced Paul given the evidence of his racism escapes me.
Now as far as my connections w/ unions are concerned, it’s true that I might work for them but only doing research. They have told me explicitly on at least 3 occasions, my blog and my political activity are my own affair. I will be hired to do a job for them: research. That’s it. While I believe in unions and would love to live to see the day when unions represent, say, 80% plus of the workforce, I don’t agree w/ them on all matters. (The truth is they often don’t agree on matters among themselves.) They have told me explicitly that they never want me to hold myself out as their spokesperson. And who can blame them? There’s no predicting what I might say.
So you can cut the union crap, Tyler. It has nothing to do w/ them. It’s about you attacking me personally. When you attack me personally, I hit back harder and don’t stop until you do. It’s the same rule that applies to everyone. You want to talk about issues, fine. There’s nothing personal about that. But attack me personally, it’s thermo nuclear war and if there is one thing I’m good at, it’s thermo nuclear war.
John,
I do not disagree with that approach, but once we look at what is happening to the troops in general we need to make some snap decisions on how to get them out to make the transition. Still if we continue to think about control of ground and not infleunce I think we are missing the point. The soft way of doing this works better than the boots on the ground way. We should not do the dirty work of Europeans or of others and we should not have a policy that encourges us to get involved in too much dirty work at all. If we can use financial levers (purchase of key industires, ownership of strategic areas like ports and marinas), that is going to save more lives on both sides and genuinely make us good guys.
Invasion makes our people targets for AQ. We want influence the region, and target AQ with covert actions. Not boots on the ground campaigns which, if we stay the course are going to become increasingly difficult to mount.
Dana,
Chill ok. It is one thing to act like a teenager and play power politics games. God knows we all do that on these blogs. It is another to get into libelous or potentially libelous areas.You spend so much time disparaging people’s politcal reputations it makes me wonder. What will you do when things start to get much worse for us all? Will you continue to attack people in this way or will it humble you when we all have a lot less? You truly beleive that politics is like theater. It is ok. It is a way of thinking. But you have to understand that this is not going to serve you well. I am glad you can find scurrilous racist writings grrr. And you are angry….I can see that. It takes time to grow out of that. Just keep my quote about the sophists in mind and you can kick yourself later.
“If people are starving in Africa, it’s not our affair”
Hi Dana, I hate to tell you this. It may a shock. You have a relatiovely privlidged life I imagine.
People are starving here Dana. Until we address that, I do not want to think about foreign aid. We cannot build a strong nation unless we care for our own and stop thinking of the rest of the world as if they were our own. If you note, Paul has argued that any monies we have left over after a dropping the budget by 150 billion dollars are for transition programs for the poor here.
Thanks for not caring about the poor and starving of you own nation.
Sorry Garrett, but your various attacks on me as well as on Ron Paul demonstrate a sick mind at work. Your behavior is obsessive because it is so persistently impervious to any facts or reason and always makes my support or my beliefs the central underlying target, whether you are dredging up personal points, breaking confidences, or just spouting off unsubstantiated garbage.
I never once mentioned Ron Paul in this post, yet you spent 2/3 of your lengthy diversionary comments on your same tired handful of fabricated issues you have repeated over and over about the man, only with more embellishment each time. Even the most adamant liberals in here, while questioning the history of the Paul newlsetters, never were so loony as to call Ron Paul a “white supremacist”, an allegation so baseless and fantastic as to defy sanity. It really is so tiresome and repetitive and irrelevant, and frankly so are you.
You obviously cannot operate in the world of fact or reality. Your repetitions of such fictional nonsense reflect some sort of mental block you have to hearing anything but what you have pre-determined to be your version of the truth. Chalk it up to getting old.
Spare me the patronizing attitude and attempts at sounding reasonable. How dare you tell me whose faces I can look upon, African-American or otherwise. The people I know and meet, of all stripes, have none of the imperious bile of which you have become so accustomed to spewing, nor your incredibly offensive and overbearing self-righteousness.
You care for your own triumphalism and besting (and blasting) everyone else, at any cost and without exception. (You should consider going back, perhaps during a moment of clarity, and reading some of the stuff you have written. Believe me, I am not the only one who finds it increasingly disturbing.)
When it comes to the personalizing of these arguments I think most people who read these blogs know I don’t take that tact, unless someone personalizes it to me, as you have repeatedly. I doubt any reasonable blog reader believes for a second that you heap such vile bogus scorn on Ron Paul because you are some self-anointed racial avenger.
Your particular viciousness towards Congressman Paul is very much based on my support for him and for the ideas he puts forth, which contradict your view of the way people should think and emote. Ditto that with Romney and Dave Burris. It is your not so sneaky little tactic to get your digs against “goopers”.
Quite bluntly, the level of disrespect you display for people who disagree with you or refuse to bend to your views is beyond appalling.
But do your worst. Just steer clear of me please. I hate to be the one to disabuse you of your grandiose sense of self-importance, but your “support” has proven the kiss of death for every candidate I can recall, so thank you for sparing me that unwelcome gift.
Also, I do not take kindly to your threats. As far as “thermonuclear”, do us all a favor and try to keep your meltdowns to yourself.
“The territory is not the issue, the people who live in it are.”
John, for a gooper you are awfully paternalistic. For, oh, the last 3 years, the Iraqi have said repeatedly in poll after poll that they want us to leave , that we have made things worse for them, that they were actually safer under Sadam.
Now when we invade a nation that posed no imminent threat to us and occupy it against the people’s consent, we commit a war crime under international laws a treaties we have signed. We are even in violation of the Nuremberg principals we we used to prosecute the Nazi war criminals. That is how low we have stooped in this misadventure.
Statements in Ron Paul’s writings:
“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”
An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” would be better alternatives–and says, “Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”
In the course of defending homophobic comments by Andy Rooney of CBS, a 1990 newsletter notes that a reporter for a gay magazine “certainly had an axe to grind, and that’s not easy with a limp wrist.”
The June 1990 issue of the Political Report says: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”
From the August 1990 issue of the Political Report: “Bring Back the Closet!”
A January 1994 edition of the Survival Report states that “gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense,” adding: “[T]hese men don’t really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners.” Also, “they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”
The October 1992 issue of the Political Report paraphrases an “ex-cop” who offers this strategy for protecting against “urban youth”: “If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).”
In an undated solicitation letter for The Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report, Paul writes: “I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me. Threats or no threats, I’ve laid bare the coming race war in our big cities.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74978161-f730-43a2-91c3-de262573a129
*Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action.”
* Although “we are told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.”
* “Black males age 13 that have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”
* “The Earth Summit is the creepiest meeting of politicos since the first gathering of Bolsheviks. Officially known as the UN Conference for Environment and Development, it will be held in Brazil in June; bad guys from all over the globe will attend.”
* “Why do we need the federal government? There’s no Cold War and no Communist threat. Many other nations are breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. The centralization of power in Washington occurred in a different time. Why not think about getting rid of the federal government, returning to the system of our Founders, and breaking up the United States into smaller government units?”
* “There is good news after the L.A. riots. Statewide, gun sales are up 45% over the same period last year. People have been purchasing a record number. If the cops are not going to take care of the problem, the people will.”
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol16/issue9/pols.paul.si
Yes, Tyler and the rest of you Paul cultists. Given that you support a man who could make these statements, I am a better person than you…much, much better.
Don’t bother, Garrett. It was refuted, rejected and has no foundation in Paul’s lifelong public record. The articles you cite were written by Lew Rockwell not Ron Paul. But I doubt the facts will ever get in the way of your agenda.
Do you even realize how you just validated what I wrote above and do so with every new absurdity and thin piece of attack propaganda you lay down? You call yourself a “researcher”? Please.
How about we all just let Dana Garrett know he is a “much, much better” person than the rest of us. Maybe he will go and inflict his infallible superiority on another unsuspected audience.
It is quite amusing how Dana Garrett, the Chomsky cultist, is also such an unoriginal thinker. Does any of this over-the-top hanranguing sound familiar?
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=41283§ionid=3510203
Chomsky: US acts like Nazi Germany
Prominent linguist Noam Chomsky bashes the ‘imperialistic’ foreign policies of the US, likening Washington to the Nazis in Germany.
Chomsky compared US foreign policies to the conduct of Nazis within Germany, citing the Nuremberg trials as an example of the contradictions between US political speech and government-sanctioned actions.
“I think the ironies of United States deployed treacheries in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are self-evident,” The Daily Free Press quoted the Pulitzer-Prize winning author as saying at Roxbury Community College.
He also condemned the abusive actions of General David Petraeus and US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, against the Iraqi nation.
“Lord Petraeus has initiated tyrannically destructive policies, including, but not limited to, the surge proposed on Sept. 11, 2007 in a despicably theatrical manner before Congress,” exclaimed the MIT professor.
Chomsky also referred to the ill deeds of other US administrations, slamming Ronald Reagan for causing the overthrow of the legally elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua in 1984.
“Reagan was a thug and a coward, he managed to physically diminish a democratically-elected government and throw a nation into civil chaos for well over a decade . . . because the Sandinistas didn’t back US trade policies,” he expounded.
For those reading the newsletters published under Ron Paul’s name, compare those writings to the below, written by Lew Rockwell roughly contemporaneously (1991) with the inflammatory newsletters (88-92). Rockwell edited and was directly involved in publishing the questionable newsletters under Ron Paul’s name.
I would urge anyone to find anywhere a single statement or writing attributable to Ron Paul himself that even comes close to the sentiments in the newsletters, or this similar editorial from Rockwell.
Rockwell is a long time friend of Ron Paul’s. Paul did not want to lay the blame on his friend, so he chose to refute the sentiments without embarrassing his friend. Paul is old school in that he believes friendship means not throwing your friends under the bus for any political expediency or advantage. Would that others had the same sense of friendship as to take such vicious personal hits rather than throw a friend to the nasty attack wolves…
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/02/02/lew-rockwell-on-rodney-king-in-the-la-times/
IT’S SAFE STREETS VERSUS URBAN TERROR; IN THE ‘50S, RAMPANT CRIME DIDN’T EXIST BECAUSE OFFENDERS FEARED WHAT THE POLICE WOULD DO.
March 10, 1991
Los Angeles Times, Sunday edition
By LLEWELLYN H. ROCKWELL
If you offer a small boy one candy bar now or 10 tomorrow, he’ll grab the one. That’s because children have what economists call a “high time preference.” They want it, and they want it now. The future is a haze.
The punishing of children must take this into account. One good whack on the bottom can have an effect. A threat about no TV all next year will not.
As we grow older, this changes. We care more, and think more, about the future. In fact, this is the very process of maturation. We plan, save, invest and put off today’s gratification until tomorrow.
But street criminals, as economist Murray N. Rothbard points out, have the time preference of depraved infants. The prospect of a jail sentence 12 months from now has virtually no effect.
As recently as the 1950s — when street crime was not rampant in America — the police always operated on this principle: No matter the vagaries of the court system, a mugger or rapist knew he faced a trouncing — proportionate to the offense and the offender — in the back of the paddy wagon, and maybe even a repeat performance at the station house. As a result, criminals were terrified of the cops, and our streets were safe.
Today’s criminals know that they probably won’t be convicted, and that if the are, they face a short sentence — someday. The result is city terrorism, though we are seldom shown videos of old people being mugged, women being raped, gangs shooting drivers at random or store clerks having their throats slit.
What we do see, over and over again, is the tape of some Los Angeles-area cops giving the what-for to an ex-con. It is not a pleasant sight, of course; neither is cancer surgery.
Did they hit him too many times? Sure, but that’s not the issue: It’s safe streets versus urban terror, and why we have moved from one to the other.
Liberals talk about banning guns. As a libertarian, I can’t agree. I am, however, beginning to wonder about video cameras.
Dana,
Your agenda is so glaringly apparent. It reminds me of the time you perhaps remember- there was an emporer playing a violin and could think of nothing but the pleasures of this life; outside he smelled smoke, when he turned and looked Rome was on fire. He said, “Oh, don’t those people have buckets?” His slave tody him”No Sire, Rome is burning.” He said, “I shall then play my violin while the city burns around me.” Such was the profound arrogance of this offical that he was never recorded kindly in the history of the world, in fact his quest for power so far outstripped his desire to help the people that he was blinded to the sufferings they endured. And when his power collapsed, the people rejoiced. When we reach that point Dana, I want you to think about all these things and remember the quote about the sophists; becuase while your elocution is not bad, your rhetorical skills are not bad, your ability to understand complexity and look objectively at the actual nature of things needs work. If you live in Wilimington, go down to 6th street some time see all the people who are seriously disadvantaged and then tell me what you are going to do about it. No answer is no way to appraoch the problems that the city, the state and the region face. Let alone the nation.
>>At several points in the 1990s’s Paul admitted to writing them. Two weeks ago, his spokesman told me that Paul had granted “various levels of approval” to what appeared in the newsletters, from “no approval” to instances where he “actually wrote it himself.” Last week, after the most damaging quotes were publicized, Paul denied not just that he had ever wrote for the newsletter, but said that he didn’t even know who was writing, editing, or publishing them and that he hardly ever read them. To believe that Ron Paul had no knowledge of what was being written in his own name, in his own office, for 20 years — and that he didn’t even read his own monthly publication — not only “stretches credulity to the breaking point,” it actually requires believing bald-faced lies. <<
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/01/15/the-reckoning-over-ron-paul.aspx
Dana,
I apologize but these are poltical smears. I am relatively sure you are going to shange your tune later so I am not even going to bother trying to refute your position and your inherent hostility. So hopefully you will be happy with the new RFID National ID card and your secure life in a world where corporations and speical interests dominate what you do, think, say, feel and understand. I have hoped to be wrong, but I know your smears and accustaions are just making a mess. I appreciate your ability to use the internet and find these smears, but I think you are going to find that even that becomes more and more limited in the near future. You can go to the legilsation page for congress and look up the legislation that is pending to ensure the internet is vigorously controlled and censored. So, use it while you can.
Oh well gee wiz, another hit piece from the same garbage source (TNR) for the first smear job makes it all true dontchaknow. But notice now Ron Paul is no longer a racist but a liar now too.
Sorry, Garrett, your garbage has been tossed. Call Ron Paul a liar all you want, but he is not a racist much less a “white supremacist”.
Brian – Dana will admit nothing because as I have said facts will never get in the way of his smear agenda.
I know Tyler,
He seems as angry as can be. But that will all change after we realize this:
Please watch the video below and please send it to governor minner and to others to ensure that this kind of outrageous behavior never happens in Delaware. We will never have any success in the 21st century unless we prevent this kind of politcal stagnation. I never want this to occur, ever, in Delaware. Please send this to Governor Minner. Please restore Habaes Corpus.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CJ8uUOiXcCo