The Lefty Boom

Redistricting is not what's driving "Southern Whites" from the Democratic Party. The radical, activist Democrats who have siezed the party are doing a fine job of that all by themselves ... and its not just the wasps that are evacuating the nest.

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Texas[/i][/u] is Liberal[/i][/u]??? Shocked

Surely you don't mean the bits that aren't Austin?

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It's definitely changing, Hobit. Even the Republicans I know in this area (a predominately Republican area) would be considered liberal by A2k wingnuts. Many of them are centrist Republicans and don't like what Bush is up to. Then, too, this area of Texas has become second-home and retirement paradise -- with a lot of non-Texans and Texans moving back to the state to retire. These are people with a broader, more questioning outlook and are often liberals or centrist Dems or centrist Repubs who call themselves "independents."

Where I differ with many estimates is that a great many blacks and latinos are middle class and upper-middle-class, professionals and small and big business people, members of the Chamber. Some of these will tend to vote Republican. Or perhaps just say they do! (who knows!)

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hobitbob wrote:

Texas[/i][/u] is Liberal[/i][/u]??? Surely you don't mean the bits that aren't Austin?

Texas might be the most conservative state in the Union (well, if you throw out Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and South Carolina).

But the tide has already turned; it will be a decade before it's obvious to the Republicans. There are many servicemen and women in Texas, active duty and retired and reserve. George Bush loses more of their votes every single day, as much as for his ill-advised hegemonistic military misadventures as for his callous disregard for veterans when he cuts their benefits.

The Pentagon and the White House invented an "imminent" threat from Saddam Hussein that didn't exist. They started a war at the risk of alienating our traditional allies and ruining our credibility at the United Nations. They invaded with insufficient force and planning. And now, when the peace is being lost and the costs are coming due, they have no plausible answers. That's why they're now going back to the UN, sheepish and hang-dog, asking for help.

Because Iraq is a quagmire.

All that crap about the UN being irrelevant, dead, etc. and now the neocons have to eat it.

Quote:

"Attacks on civilians and U.S. military personnel in Iraq have become so commonplace that a brazen assassination attempt last month on two military officers in civilian dress working for the Coalition Provisional Authority wasn't even reported at the time," writes Vernon Loeb in the Washington Post, who quotes a report prepared by Centurion Risk Assessment Services, "a British firm staffed by former Royal Marine commandos and British Special Forces personnel that counsels journalists and businessmen on how to operate safely in dangerous environments." Centurion's Aug. 27 dispatch warned: "Many incidents are not making the headlines." The report continued, "Most of them are not being reported at all by the forces involved as they are possibly trying to minimize the threats and play down the overall threat to all involved in working in Iraq."

The Vietnam parallel was invoked again yesterday by retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the president's former Mideast envoy, in a tough speech to members of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said the former general, who suffered serious wounds as a young officer there. "I ask you, is it happening again?"

Saying that the administration's Iraq policy was in "danger of failing," he added: "We certainly blew past the U.N. Why, I don't know. Now we're going back hat in hand."

Zinni's comments were met with sustained applause from the veteran officers in attendance. Here's a prediction based on many such anecdotes and my own e-mail from active-duty and retired military officers: There will be a shift away from the Republicans by Americans in uniform next year.

Joe Conason's Journal

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Quote:

(well, if you throw out Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia and South Carolina).

Always a good idea! Very Happy

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Meanie. I have a fondness for the south, even with All We Northerners Always Suspected about it!

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Italgato wrote:

In the meanwhile, the Texas re-districting, sure to occur, will net the Republicans five or six seats [..] losses in the House of Represenatives to come will be REAL

I dont really see how the Texas re-districting would work out in the Rep's favour, in the end.

Look at it this way: either they fail to get their redistricting through, and they'll look like an ass.

Or they'll succeed, and the Democratic states in the US will respond by forcing through redistrictings of their own.

Or are you gambling that you can trust the Democrats to remain the nice guys, and let Texas get away with being the only state in the US to force through a redistricting two (or three, what was it) years after the previous one, instead of the habitual ten years?

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I wish I could post here, Nimh, for your amusement, the map the Reps have redrawn of Texas in order to get their votes. Imagine a mile wide strip stretching from your front door to Strasbourg -- that approximates one of them!

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Quote:

The Vietnam parallel was invoked again yesterday by retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the president's former Mideast envoy, in a tough speech to members of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. [..] Here's a prediction based on many such anecdotes and my own e-mail from active-duty and retired military officers: There will be a shift away from the Republicans by Americans in uniform next year.

I've been thinking about this ... even if the Vietnam parallel is increasingly more relevant, can its effects really be predicted to already emerge that forcefully next year in the elections?

I mean, how long had the US troops been in Vietnam before it really started to cause a backlash back home? Many years, right? And this has only been going on for a few months ...

To quote Robert Kaplan on "the utter stupidity of America's bloody adventure in Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s",

Quote:

The United States dropped more bomb tonnage on Laos [yes, that's Laos, not Vietnam itself, just a neighbouring country that figured in as a sideshow in the war - nimh] than on Nazi Germany, or three times as much as the US dropped during the entire Korean War [..] The bombng of Laos cost US taxpayers $7.2 billion, or $2 million every day from 1964 through 1973 - or, as one writer puts it, "one planeload of bombs every eight minutes around the clock for nine years" [again, thats just Laos, Vietnam itself is not included - nimh].

Whatever one can say about the things going wrong in Iraq now, they're nothing like what the US did in Vietnam. In Iraq, we're talking what, 200, 300 casualties over half a year? Not to belittle their tragedy, but its not the continuous mass flow of bodybags that "Vietnam" constituted. And as said, even "Vietnam" took years before its dimensions seriously started to impact the political choices of sizable chunks of the US electorate. So counting on that for 2004 might be a bit premature ... ?

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'65 to '68 - Johnson was a goner; Nixon said he would stop it, didn't and was hounded from office - We now know, at his own orders!

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I read P. Diddie's post and the post by nimh.

I will predict that the "progressive" Texas touted by Diddie will indeed lose five to six seats after re-districting and that any other redistricting in the states that are gaining population( almost all in the South and West) will not go to Democrats but rather to the Repubicans.

We shall see. I shall gladly eat crow if my prediction does not come true.

but will the left wing eat crow if it does?

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The Left eat crow? I doubt it. Recognizing, acknowleging, and addressing one's own shortcomings are not practices consistent with denial. November 2cnd '04 will serve not as a wake-up call, but rather will occasion allegations of fraud and conspiracy. As opposed to accepting the electorate's rejection of their agenda as the cause for their having having lost significantly, The Left will stridently whine that they "Was Robbed" ... something which bodes ill for their prospects in '06 and '08 as well; Americans don't take well to whiners.

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timberlandko wrote:

The Left eat crow? I doubt it. Recognizing, acknowleging, and addressing one's own shortcomings are not practices consistent with denial.

*lol* ... Yes, the Left is unable to "recognize, acknowledge, and address one's own shortcomings" and "eat crow if their prediction does not come true". The Right, of course, is.

Hey, I dont mind playing this game, if it's for one very last time ... Rolling Eyes

---

From the Left! <drumroll>:

nimh wrote:

hey, I musta said stuff about, say, thinking it likely that the war would last for months, thinking it likely that the US troops would meet dogged resistance, thinking it likely that the invasion would cost anything up to the tens of thousands of lives that Powell's "shovel tanks" buried beneath the sand back in '91 - and none of that came about. Each and all mistaken assumptions - happens.

From the Right! <drumroll>

Timberlandko, back then wrote:

"Iraq Scientist Says Saddam Hiding Arms Underground". This "Smoke Cloud" keeps popping up. [..] I believe we shall know for certain before very long.

Timberlandko, now wrote:

Again, PDiddie, I never said they were "just around the corner"

Timberlandko, back then wrote:

Confidently, [..] I would not be surprised to find there is a "Smoking Gun", and that that "Gun" is stamped "Made In France" and is loaded with German ammunition.

Timberlandko, now wrote:

I said I believed we would know more soon, not that WMDs would be discovered.

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nimh, you get no points there AT ALL. I SAID "I believe we shall know for certain very soon" ... OK, we still don't know, one way or the other. I believed answers, one way or the other, were imminent. That belief in near-term resolution of the question was unfounded. And I SAID "I would not be surprised to find ...etc". That such might yet become evident would still not surprise me in the least. Whether you like what I said or not does not change what I actually said. You are perfectly welcome to challenge my position. However, partisan interpolation and reading one's own meaning into statements made by another merely diminish the one who chooses to engage in such practice. I frequently indicated I believed we would discover evidence of prohibited WMD activity long before now, and I have frequently cited reports which lent credence to that assumption. That assumption has been neither borne out nor put away. We simply still don't know. While it is possible Iraq was in compliance, I am doubtful such was the case.

Just to play along, however, I'll offer the following actual PREDICTIONS (as opposed to merely stating beliefs or expectations), with actual time requirements, and to make it easy for you, I'll make them multi-part ... bookmark this and call me on them, any part of them, when I am proven wrong:

1) A clear picture of clandestine Iraqi participation in prohibited weapons programs will be presented well before the end of this year, and there will be embarrassment therein for France and for Germany

2) Both pre-war and contemporary involvement of International Terrorist Organizations in Iraq will be proven before the end of this year, including incontravertable evidence of longstanding high level Regime liason with Al Queda

And go ahead and bookmark my immediate prior post ... we'll know on Nov 3rd '04 who came up short on November 2cnd ... and we'll be starting to get the flavor and tone of the ineviitable disappointment, regardless to whomever that disappointment may fall. I have my expectations and beliefs there too, and at the very least, there is a date certain on which the matter of domestic political current will be resolved.

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You know though, Timber. I have never seen (doesn't mean it hasn't happened) but I've never seen the left (or at least enough of the left of center and the middle from center as well as the others) claim voter fraud and conspiracy until it was true. You'll have to admit the last election was a tad close and decided by a conservative Supreme Court. I know these guys in control. The Jerry Falwells and John Ashcrofts and Roves - especially the Roves. I know them very well. It's a conspiracy alright. Have you ever heard of Tom Hicks? As far as I'm concerned, these guys in power now have not been true trustworthy Republicans (and I know there must be a some, I've even met a few) in a very long time. They've been in bed with the devil of fundamentalist religion so long now, it's very hard to separate the one from the other.

I don't get the impression that you're a fundamentalist, Timber. But do you know any of these folks personally? They are not to be trusted.......you know what Larry Flynt says about it, don't you? He says he has a message for all the "borned agains." He says, "take your lithium and you'll get better." But to tell you the truth, I think most of them are beyond even that hope.

I hope I haven't offended you, Timber........but thems the facts as I see em. And I have a very up close view.

At least GWs poll ratings are down.....or they were before the speech....I haven't seen what happened after. I've had my head in my writing project and couldn't even come up for air.

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Lola, I sure as hell ain't no fundamentalist ... obviously, you've missed my comments on the Religion and Sprituality threads Mr. Green

I'm no Republican, either, nor am I particularly fond of Bush the Younger and his coterie. I just dislike and mistrust them less than I dislike and mistrust any of the present Democratic Leadership. While The Republicans are not my ideal, they appear the lesser of two evils.

Oh, and as near as I can tell, Sunday's speech had essentially no impact ... much like the Democratic Debates. Those few who pay attention to such things this early on already have their minds made up, and those who pay little or no attention at this stage of the game didn't watch either of them. If either had been a New Season TV series, the programming execs would already frantically be contacting advertisers and screening replacement shows.

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Well, you're right there, timber. Sunday's speech had no impact. Considerng this is the first one since March, I would have expected someting with far more meaning and fervor.

But - I hate to nitpick. There was also a ballyhooed special on Sunday about Bush, about which Ive seen nothing. From the very few write-ups I've seen, embarrassing would seem to have been the best word used. Where is that speial, and what happened to it?

I've read enough about what you've written to take you for a pragmatic republican with belief. But "eat crow" is something I would suggest you stay away from. One of the fast-developing traits, noticeable enough to be written about even by such conservatives as David Brooks and Bill Krystol, is the republican inability to ever say they were wrong.

And applying "whine" so much to the democrats is mush like using that old canard "tax and spend." Doesn't happen, doesn't work. Whining is what the Teas republicans are doing. Also pouting.

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timberlandko wrote:

Just to play along, however, I'll offer the following actual PREDICTIONS (as opposed to merely stating beliefs or expectations), with actual time requirements, and to make it easy for you, I'll make them multi-part ... bookmark this and call me on them, any part of them, when I am proven wrong:

bookmarked Cool

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I particularly like, "participation in prohibited weapons programs," a considerable dimunution of the original claims made by the admin, a phrasing Rove would be proud of.

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On The Diane Rehm Show - today, Rep. Dennis Kucinich calls Bush a Bush - the liar he is and perpetrator of fraud on the American people. Is a call for prison time far behind Question

Whiners, the righties are a bunch of sniveling whiners, get a new act!

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