Letters to the Editor
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starrhopping @ fixes
"Failing that, can we at least, at some point, talk about a way to fix the system so we at least have a chance of selecting better candidates?"
imo, simple answer--Campaign finance reform. We all know this. We've all said it. It's not as if the solutions were not known. They are clearly and widely known. We are lacking the clear tactics, and a clear strategy, on how to get there.
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The Serious ones...
Glenn,
The Democrats in congress are moral cowards and have been for a long time. They have no balls to take on Bush and his henchmen because when it comes right down to it, the Democrats like the Republicans don't care a tinker's damn about the country.
All they ALL care about is getting themselves re-elected. That's why terms limits should be implemented. Two terms and sayonara, guys.
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@ mrkcohen
I can't find any fault with your reasoning, or your perceptions. I like Gore too; I'm just cautious. I haven't yet decided who to support in the primaries, although I've sent money to both Obama and Dodd, largely to encourage particular certain threads in their professed views which I don't want to see disappear too early in the campaign. (Obama's idea of what might constitute a way to bridge the ideological divide and, of course, Dodd's stand on the FISA revisions.)
Come what may, though, the Democrat who wins through to the nomination will have both my vote and my support. That's not partisanship; it's just the only kind of good sense allowed us by the political realities.
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One more thing -- slightly more personal
In a triumph of hope over common sense, I've spent a very large percentage of my discretionary income over the last couple of years since I retired on various political causes, at a time when that income has been shrinking.
I don't regret a penny of it, but I do sometimes feel like the pious little old lady bilked out of her savings by the slimy televangelist. No one likes to be a dupe, but what the hell.... If it improves things even marginally for our posterity, or buys them the time to wake up and start taking care of business themselves, I guess I don't really have a complaint.
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And the 4 fallacies in Glenn's analogy are...
Fallacy #1 in Glenn's analogy is that the banks were acting on their own initiative in greedy pursuit of greater private profits whereas the telecomms were acting at the request of the federal government to prevent thousands of Americans from being slaughtered in one go by foreign extremists.
Fallacy #2 is that the damage to the economy from undoing the mergers was hypothetical, whereas the threat of thousands of Americans being slaughtered in one go by foreign extremists is very real, despite the rantings of Truthers/Salonistas/Kos Kidz unhinged by Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Fallacy #3 is that primary news sources, such as the New York Times, usually refer not to "American citizens" being targeted, but "American residents" or "persons in America". In other words, code phrases by our pro-immigration MSM to sanitize foreign (immigrant) extremists phoning home to Waziristan.
Fallacy #4 is that the Constitution does not require warrants, it prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Surveilling foreign extremists phoning home to Waziristan strikes me as eminently reasonable.
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Where's the Difference? I Can't See the Difference!
From up here in Canada, the dems and the repubs look pretty much the same. The dems promise health care but the republicans "block" it. The republicans of course don't even promise health care, that's WalMart's job. Either way you don't get it.
If the democrats are not trying to stop the war or to bring back the 4th amendment, or the 1st for that matter, it's because they don't want to. And why don't they want to? To me the answer is obvious, because they are beholden, no wait, not strong enough, controlled, by the same interests who control the republicans.
Hillary too, looks the same as Bush to me. She said she can't promise to take the troops out of Iraq. It's safe to read that answer as, "The war(s) will go on".
And didn't Obama threaten to attack Pakistan? Remember that? I do. The Pakistanis do too, and they have nukes, the only proven America off on the planet.
People make all kinds of unconvincing excuses such as they don't want to look soft on the war or terrorism. It's pretty clear most Americans and certainly the rest of the world want you out of Iraq. We most certainly don't want an unprovoked (in the old sense of things anyway) attack on Iran. I look at Pelosi who said she would not impeach. Jesus, isn't there like an entire laundry list of impeachable offences? Of course there are, but the dems are as complicit as Bush, an impeachment hearing would compel testimony indicting the dems at least as much as the repubs.
As for the sainted Al Gore... Did he not pick Lieberman as his running mate? Was Lieberman his Cheney? Where has he been the last few years? I can't remember him saying much about the war, before or during. And if he is the great hope for the great city on the hill, why doesn't he run? Win, lose, steal or draw, would not a moral man run regardless? If there is even a chance that he can bring democracy back to America, then he has to run. Personally I don't care if he does. It won't make any difference. America has to crash completely before it can come back. And it's going to. It's going to.
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WT @ giving all his money away
WT, I dearly hope you are not giving so much away that you are depriving yourself of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.
re: the "sainted" al gore (using Bill Owens term), I don't know if you have read "Assault on Reason" yet, but I recommend it. After going though his speeches since 2000, reading the book, and watching Inconvenient Truth, I've concluded he is best qualified.
His mannerisms turn many in the public off. He can seem pedantic. Big ego. Most of all, the man sweats like a lawn sprinkler when he speaks publicly. Jesus Christ on a Bicycle, that man needs a towel 15 minutes into every speech he's ever given.
But he's the best we've got. Or so it seems to me.