Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Scrat?

You have a complaint against Bush. Please elaborate................go on for as long as you like, I'm all ears.

If I had written that from the point of view of a voter down here, I might have added "deliberate disconnection" when speaking of the administration itself, and "dangerous disconnection" when speaking of its tenacious followers...

.....Fealty...what a wonderfully descriptive word. Completely innapropriate in what is ostensibly a democracy, but quite descriptive of the position many on the far right feel is appropriate in politics.

The California gubernatorial recall was launched by a group called the People's Advocate, an anti-tax organisation operated by Paul Gann and Ted Costa, the alleged brains behind the 1978 Jarvis Amendment, a.k.a. Proposition 13 (the granddaddy of California referendums, bonanza for property owners - see over page), and the outgoing state Republican chairman, Shawn Steel. In accordance with Article 2, Section 14 of the California Constitution, Gann and Co were obliged to collect signatures equal in number to 12 per cent of the last vote for the governor's office, an effort that initially floundered. But in May 2003, Congressman Darrell Issa of San Diego started his own recall effort, with a view to becoming governor himself, bankrolling the petition drive with $1.3 million of his own money, or at least what he claimed was his own money. What had begun as a quixotic canard then became a surrealist juggernaut, culminating in the ousting of Governor Gray Davis and the risible election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, action figure, as the custodian of the world's fifth largest economy.

Like Schwarzenegger, Congressman Issa has a piquant history. In the early 1980s, his car-alarm company, which did work for a much larger firm, Joey Adkins's A.C. Custom Electronics, lent Adkins $60,000, then called in the loan. Issa went to court, and wrested possession of Adkins's firm. Three weeks after Issa quadrupled the insurance on parts and equipment in the building, the electronics facility burned to the ground.

In 1973, Issa pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered firearm, which he tended to brandish at his employees, purportedly in jest. He was arrested twice for grand theft auto. In his unsuccessful 1998 run for the Senate, he claimed that he had been a member of Nixon's security detail during the 1971 World Series. Nixon did not attend the 1971 World Series. After a 2001 trip to the Middle East, Issa, an Arab-American, announced that Hezbollah is not a terrorist organisation.

hobitbob wrote:

.....Fealty...what a wonderfully descriptive word. Completely innapropriate in what is ostensibly a democracy, but quite descriptive of the position many on the far right feel is appropriate in politics.

Remarkable the extent to which the PC thought police are fascinated with word choice. Perhaps that explains the explosion of absurd euphemisms that is infesting our language. Even Torquemada was not so particular about the hidden significance of such overtones in words. Why is it that the liberal zealots so love the chains that bind them?

Resolution in such situations is often more important than curiosity, humor, or humility.

While you are perhaps bewildered by the fealty others show for Bush in the face of your criticism, recognize that others are just as bewildered by the strange intensity of your antipathy. One could even describe it as dogmatic and unyielding in its partisanship.

"[A]s you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."

......Er...I'm not the one who is pledging total loyalty and obedience to one man, George, you are.

While you are perhaps bewildered by the fealty others show for Bush