Letters to the Editor
Frankly, my dear, ...
Published Letters: 579
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Blue Dogs may be the new Republicans
[Read the article: How telecoms are attempting to buy amnesty from Congress]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are lucky you have two.
Some people just have one. Some people prefer it that way.
— L.W.M.I'll presume that everyone knows that we're talking about political parties here just so there's no confusion.
Since brand Republican has become so noxious thanks to the efforts of people like George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and his entire DOD, Gonzo and his entire DOJ, Rice and her entire DOS, and multitudinous bit players like Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and all the rest of the unindicted co-conspiritors, the Republican Party may very well be on the verge of implosion. When McCain starts campaigning in earnest and really starts making one mistake after another on a daily basis rather than only once or twice a week as he has been during his grace period, Republican support may well drop off to practically nil. And, of course, the more Bush hits the campaign trail and tells the people, of which 81% think the country is on the wrong course, that McCain is the best person to continue his policies of the past 8 years, the worse McCain's numbers are likely to get.
Political strategists like Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh saw a while back that the only way for McCain to have a chance is to be dissociated from brand Republican. Hence the 'no one has done more to hurt the Republican Party than John McCain' rhetoric and the constant pushing of the 'maverick' label. It's not going to work.
Support for the Republican Party after the election will be so low that it will probably be difficult to find candidates willing to stand as Republicans for the 2010 mid-terms. This is the void that the Blue Dog Democrats could probably fill. They would be ready to take over the traditional role of the Republican Party as big-business friendly, low taxation, strong military, weak government social safety net conservatives. In fact, that's pretty much where they are now. They probably wouldn't call themselves Republicans (unless they opted for "The Sane Republicans") because the Republican brand has been rendered worthless by those who have used it to try to turn the United States of America into a state modelled on the People's Republic of China.
So as the Blue Dogs begin to expand their caucus, the most rational way to view it would be as an embryonic political party.
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And Einstein agrees with both of you
[Read the article: How telecoms are attempting to buy amnesty from Congress]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But you are the one that made the analogy between math and politics. Do you now mean that that analogy does not work very well? If so, we agree.
— Mike Sulzeras far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality
— Albert Einstein, address to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, January 27, 1921: http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~ncrato/Math/Einstein.htm -
WT
[Read the article: How telecoms are attempting to buy amnesty from Congress]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had rather thought that the title of my post "Blue Dogs may be the new Republicans" suggested the direction I expected the movement to take. Silly me. I don't see the Blue Dogs being able to take over the party infrastructure of the Democratic Party, especially not as long as Howard Dean is in charge.
I also don't expect any of this to happen overnight. There will have to be a gestation period before any new party is born out of the Blue Dogs. However, after the election this November I expect the Republican Party infrastructure to be a shambles. I anticipate that sometime between then and the 2010 mid-terms that the Blue Dogs will assimilate whatever may be left of the RNC infrastructure into a new party apparatus. Whether they will call themselves Republicans or whether the Republican Party will go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs is another question, but that is just a matter of labeling.
But as of now, the Blue Dogs amount to a party within a party, and a situation like that cannot long endure. If they're as smart as they claim they are, they'll be looking for a way to break out and I expect the Republicans to provide it to them by self-destructing.
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I fully expect ...
[Read the article: Scott McClellan on the "liberal media"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... the White House defense against McClellan to be:
He was lying then and he's lying now. You can't believe anything a White House spokesperson says.
Are they stupid enough to do that? Yeah.
Is the press complicit enough to print it without comment? Yeah.
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Gee, Arne
[Read the article: Interview with former "Donahue" producer and MSNBC pundit Jeff Cohen]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Arne: Well, for one, the G-forces are a bit uncomfortable.
As long as your projectiles aren't manned, there are no G strings attached.
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Just to keep the record straight
[Read the article: Interview with former "Donahue" producer and MSNBC pundit Jeff Cohen]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Völkische Beobachter does not mean "People Watcher". A reasonable translation would be "Popular Observer" or "People's Observer".
But while we're on the subject, let me inject a snippet from what the USDOS thinks is the role of a free press in a democracy:
Press outlets should establish their own editorial boards, independent of government control, in order to separate information gathering and dissemination from editorial processes.
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/principles/freepress.htm
Is there some way in which the media could be taught the role of a free press in a democracy? Short of re-education camps, I mean.