Letters to the Editor
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LWM
-Try thinking of it this way: A three party fight between the extremist right who have taken over the GOP, the left and right wings of the Democratic party. The former moderate Republicans are in the Democratic party now and that is causing this as much as anything. It happens. It happened to the GOP when the battle was to move it to the right, and it is happening now when the battle is over moving the Dems back to the center. Hillary is as much or more of a Republican as Nixon ever was. Milton Friedman thought Nixon the most socialist president of the 20th century. Obama is still just a moderate conservative by global standards. McCain is just the extremist right's candidate. Even Goldwater would vote for Hillary or Obama today. Probably Hillary. She used to be a college Republican and got interested in politics because of Barry Goldwater, then she flipped. This really is shaping up as a three party battle but with only two parties. DNC, DLC and GOP. That's because under our system, entryism, taking over an existing party from within, is easier than a third party becoming dominant.-
Good observations. I agree with your comments.
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How sad that the broadcast media and most of the print media
has been taken over by cheerleaders for the perceived interests of the wealthy, at the very time the most right wing billionaires are stubbornly lying to themselves about global warming, the ease in controlling petroleum resources in other, older cultures and other things. It takes massive prolonged tragedy to turn that juggernaut around and the instigators rarely pay the price millions of others have to. Now we can see that Walter Cronkite, Ed Murrow and Katharine Graham were rare exceptions in the fetid imperial media stream.
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bystander
Deep in my gut I suspect you are correct.
Damn.
I was hoping you'd have a compelling argument about why I've got it all wrong. I was hoping you could just brush me off with a couple of lucid facts and inscrutable reasoning that just devastates my whole position. But you didn't, and that presents a problem.
I'm concerned that if conditions are really as bad as they appear to be, behind all the happy talk, that it could be all downhill from here. I'm very concerned that we could be extremely bleeped in a lot of different ways.
The American people are getting brainwashed, robbed, lied to and insulted to their faces. You'd think they'd be more resentful, but fully a third of the victims are wingnuts who suck up the propaganda and most of the rest just put up with it, which are together more than enough to maintain the domination of corportists.
The US cannot afford its military imperialism and its middle class can no longer afford its accustomed lifestyle, not on an economy supported by unsustainable debt. In fifty years we could be eulogizing The Decine of America, and that would be truly harsh.
Nobody has had much of anything to say against any of the points I've made over the years in posts on a number of sites, all very negative, on the state of our politics, our economy, the planet we live on, the direction of our culture. I've been quite baldly rude about it. Thirty-six years a prophet of doom I have been, twenty-two years a voice in the wilderness, and always a Kassandra, never heeded, and never wrong.
But apparently not out of line: if it's all true, then how can anybody really argue against it?
And nobody has. That's scary.
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Can We Have Some Rules?
No member in good standing should ever mention anything about Joe Lieberman's tiny, shriveled and bologna colored genitalia.
Any mention of Shooter (!) and onanism, particularly if followed by a rapturous endorsement thereof by the troll in question, is punishable by brickbats and shrewish reminders forever.
Although no one should be expected to observe a "Family Hour," everyone should so some respect for the dinner hour, by avoiding such subjects.
Pedinska and I will be hosting monthly "Ewww Award" ceremonies for all violators.
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AmiBlue
-Specifically, where can I find these endangered critters?-
You can't go wrong with Washington Post's Dan Froomkin (White House watch)
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Joshua Norton
It would be almost worth it to let McCain deal with the cluster f**k that Junior is going to leave behind.
The good thing about conservatism is that it is inherently self-defeating and innately self-destructive.
The bad thing about conservatism is that they always arrange for the rest of us to take the fall for them. High-ranking Wall Street glad-handlers with bulging investment accounts won't be losing their homes, but millions of middle-class Americans will, because that's how they rigged it.
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@ walter_map
Some prefer to drill holes in the bottom of the boat, some prefer to sit in the stern and tell us tales of the Titanic. A few of us -- dullards all -- find rowing therapeutic, perhaps even useful.
Not to worry, though...we won't insist that anyone else take an oar, and if by some miracle we happen to be headed somewhere besides the bottom, neither will we expect any thanks on that distant day when we arrive.
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A footnote on navigation
None of us actually knows where we're headed. The navigator, if there is one, stopped talking to us long ago.
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Cocktailhag
No member in good standing should ever mention anything about Joe Lieberman's tiny, shriveled and bologna colored genitalia.
Excellent. This is a very credible suggestion.
I recommend that a blue-ribbon panel be appointed to study the matter in detail and to make a full report on each of the related issues, to include all points of view, and particularly to ensure full public transparency on the actual medical evaluation. A real-time documentary should provide information more than sufficient to justify finalizing the adoption of this proposal.
I'll get geared up to issue rebuttals.
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On Leadership
versus Style.
I know a lot of folks are disbelieving the polls showing McCain even with or ahead of either Hillary or Obama, but I'll take a step over the edge and suggest that if anything, they understate McCain's election standing right now. If the election were held today, I suspect he would win handily, though for the sake of the children, let alone humanity in general, he absolutely should not.
And if things keep going the way they are going, he's going to win in November, too.
One of the reasons that he is doing as well as he is, despite his numerous handicaps, is the media love affair with their Warrior Princess. And I use that term advisedly. He is as fragile as a glass figurine, as haughty as a débutante, he is explosive if he isn't loved up all the time, and he is as exotic as a hot house flower in his constant "maverickism."
The media treats him as the Incumbent Princess, no less, one who is merely standing for "election" out of some silly sense of public duty, but who already holds the title. Neither Hillary nor Obama can compete on the Princess's territory. Sorry.
Another reason that McCain's pathway to the Palace seems to be getting smoother rather than rougher is that little matter of Leadership.
Now, of course McCain was a naval officer, a pilot (don't get me started) and his father and grandfather were admirals, so a certain, how shall we say, official "bearing" comes naturally to him. (Though if you saw him on The View coyly seated in the middle of those shrieking harpies, and imagined him in a Scarlett O'Hara gown saying "Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!" you'd have a somewhat different idea of his "bearing." But I digress.)
As an officer it is natural for him to take the lead in any number of endeavors, which he has done, and at least in some cases has done so admirably. In the Senate he is well-known and highly regarded for his leadership role. He has brought together coalitions, got them to sign on to measures and processes they might not have if he didn't ask them, he's gotten reforms passed, he's been all over the place, generally leading some faction or other or pressing some idea of what is "best."
He's had this reputation for years and years. People know him, and know him well, as a Leader.
Neither Barack nor Hillary can match his leadership in the Senate or anywhere else. Both have the potential to be leaders, perhaps outstanding leaders, but so far, neither has demonstrated it in the Senate where they have a platform, and where they could -- if they wanted to -- take a leadership role. Yes, it is actually possible for a Senator who is not in the Leadership to assume a leadership role on issues they believe in. McCain has done it many times. Barack and Hillary haven't.
That was part of John Kerry's problem with the voters. He'd been in the Senate forever, but what had he done? What issues had he led on? What programs, what legislation, what reforms had he set in motion and shepherded through the process of enactment?
Uhhh...
And McCain is perhaps the only Republican candidate who can be guaranteed to peel off a significant number of Democrats in the general election -- at least as things stand now. He's got a whole deck of cards to appeal to disaffected Democrats.
And the way the two Democratic candidates have been playing the primaries, essentially doing their best to alienate the other's constituents and partisans, driving them out of the electorate altogether or over to McCain, is breathtaking in its epic failure mode. This can't be happening. But it is.
Eek.
So. McCain starts off with a remarkable set of advantages, which the Democrats in their eagerness to demonize the other and the other's supporters merely reinforce.
And because McCain has been recognized by the public as a leader in the Senate for years, his "suitability" for the Presidency is already secure in most people's minds. They don't even question it, the way they might with regard to Obama or Clinton.
But Bob Dole had all those advantages, too. And he never made it to the White House, so there is hope yet.
I just wish the two Democratic candidates were better leaders on the issues, or had led at all, in the Senate.