Associated Press 02/22/2008:

McCain defends lobbyist ties
Republican candidate says lobbyists who advise him are honorable

Fri., Feb. 22, 2008

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Sen. John McCain said Friday that while lobbyists serve as close advisers to his presidential campaign, they are honorable and he is not influenced by corruption in the system.

McCain, who has styled himself as an enemy of special interests, defended having lobbyists working for his campaign. He is the expected Republican presidential nominee.

"These people have honorable records, and they're honorable people, and I'm proud to have them as part of my team," McCain told reporters following a town hall meeting in Indianapolis.

- - Associated Press 02/22/2008

Then there were 3.

Lizzie Borden

Pa Kettle

Mr Jimmy Stewart Smith.

Lizzie would kill to win, both here at home and, selectively, abroad.

Pa would kill foreigners wherever he seen 'em, even if they were far away in their own country.

Jimmy has faith in and regard for people everywhere.

Lizzie and Pa have long strong connections to cartelocracy players.

Jimmy has ideals, principles, and vision.

Lizzie is married to ambition.

Pa divorced The Alamo, and then wed the O K Corral.

Jimmy wants to clean the sludge out of governmental gears.

Mr Lizzie has no principles.

Mrs Kettle has no recipes.

Mrs Smith is still skeptical, but sees an increase of caring in the nation.

Lizzie is counting on ignorance, prejudice, and intimidation.

Pa can't count, but his wife doesn't have to.

Jimmy can add, subtract and multiply, but dislikes division.

As to amnesty, Lizzie and Pa already got too much of it.

Jimmy doesn't need it.

I, therefore, choose Jimmy.

Good luck, Jimmy!

Thanks, Glenn.

Good night, Mrs Calabash...

Dissent is monitored in this country. Or rather, I should say, "left wing" dissent is monitored.

The irony is...

After they crack down and martial law is declared, while they are detaining you and me and ALF and ELF, some rightwingnut Timothy McVeigh militia clone will blow up another federal building.

Jimmy can add, subtract and multiply, but dislikes division.

Subtraction is division. The results of division can be obtained by repeated subtraction.

You owe me a fizzy beverage.

;-)

I already posted that Krudhammer column on lobbying upthread. My favorite graf was:

Good lobbying, on the other hand, requires no such larger contextual explanation. It is a cherished First Amendment right -- necessary, like the others, to protect a free people against overbearing and potentially tyrannical government...

Auprès de ma blonde:

http://beermania.be/beer_images/leff_blonde.jpg

Qu'il fait bon dormir.

Indeed.

Anthony Romero and others have some things to say about civil liberties and all that on Laura Flanders' GRITtv:

http://grittv.blip.tv/#937930

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-z3Djgjnr8

The evil, adnoto, comes in your not understanding the legitimate function lobbying might serve in a genuinely representative government. In doing so, you mistakenly claim as a cause of corruption what is actually an effect of it. But then you always do that; you're a reductionist, and an angry one at that, which is pretty evil in my book, pretty close in logic to kill them all; God will recognize his own.

What made your comment well-argued was the way you concentrated on the act of lobbying, while ignoring, or falsifying, the context in which it takes place. It was cleverly done, possibly even honestly done, but it ignored much.

L.W.M., adnoto's a reductionist, as I said, not an authoritarian. On the other hand, his reductionism would instantly make him an authoritarian if he were ever given, or ever assumed, responsibility for others. I'd pity his children, for example, if he had any.

The Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws. I know that in general this means that nobody can be charged with a crime for an act that was legal at the time it was committed, and was later prohibited by law.

However, I would think that telecom immunity would also be ex post facto, in that some of the acts of the telecom companies were illegal at the time they were committed. So how can a new law now make those acts legal?

Power is all it takes to make authoritarians of us all.

WT,

Like that stupid hat: "Instant Asshole, Just Add Alcohol".

"Instant Authoritarian, Just add political or military power."

I ignore the rhetoric and watch for cues from behavior.

Notice Krauthammer's rhetoric:

Good lobbying, on the other hand, requires no such larger contextual explanation. It is a cherished First Amendment right -- necessary, like the others, to protect a free people against overbearing and potentially tyrannical government...

Same rhetorical crap catapulted by any demagogue running for office. Bush in 2000. Maybe Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul, Kucinich or Nader, or even Bob Barr. Maybe even Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama. You go with your gut instinct on who is less likely to become an instant authoritarian. It's a potential quality, like a coiled spring, that only takes the acquisition of power to release it. Because of YouTube they are just a bit more circumspect these days. Thank the FSM for YouTube.

You just wait until 1996, then you'll see a real right-wing tyrant.

-- Pat Buchanan, just before he announced his candidacy for the 1996 presidential election in 1995

In spite of his namesake, I'd be surprised if Ché actually put anyone "up against a wall," unless in extreme circumstances when some situational exigency called for it. Adnoto, OTOH, I'd be surprised if he didn't, and it become the norm, by edict, during "peace time".

No!

No amnesty. illuminate what's sleazy. slobicious. borebratsible. flumetty. melblobious. huh.

Trees are not to be used either. Trees bleed sap. A slug will bounce off a brick wall. Save slugs and let slugs roam the garden. Haul them slime-crooks to jail after a fair trial. Let the 27,000 other people that Bush has captivated abroad ("extraordinary rendition") behind bars go scat at home for free. eena, meena, mona, me no smack.

Bush will celebrate Memorial Day Drunk? Remember.

Bush loves to turn truth upside down for Wall Street.

Bush goes to Saudi to swoon with filthy oil goons.

The Moon never phases some. Goons go into fits.

War mongers do not go to war. Souls do shake.

Bush loves to wink and wiggle woo the snakes.

The man's head is so jumbled and bad sublime.

Bush lives to hear the call~`Hate to interrupt.

Bush lives to hear the call~`Drunkards time.

If you are claiming there is a conspiracy afoot to keep a third party candidate down, you'll sound like one of the Pauliac kooks. There just isn't. Ron Paul got more press coverage than he deserved. He just doesn't speak to the majority of the electorate for any number of good reasons, and neither do Greens in Alabama. At least not yet. --lwm

I am having trouble believing my eyes. Did someone just write that the two major parties have not enacted laws and rules, both at the state level and the national level, that make it very difficult to mount a third party run at the presidency? Could someone here be that uneducated in our system and still post more here than anyone else?

This fact was common knowledge among educated adults long before this election cycle, so it is not the freedom lovers who support Ron Paul that came up with this idea.

Did any other politician's book hit the NYT best seller list and stay there? I ask because lwm claims that a fellow who got a million votes in the primaries so far and is still in the race with more money than Hillary got almost no coverage, but even that was too much for a paranoid big-government lover like lwm.

The only non-interventionist in the race and lwm wanted a total media blackout; you saw lwm's antics here at UT did you not?