Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Lola, Show me anybody other than GWBush that I can vote for that has a chance of winning, and he/she has my vote.

c.i., I agree absolutely......within limits

Lola,

Happy New Year to you as well.

Why the continuing concern about the Clinton Monica thing? Frankly, you appear to be equally as obsessed with so called Christian fundamentalists as those you accuse with respect to Clinton.

I can only speak for myself concerning Clinton. It wasn't the blow jobs or phone sex that annoyed me, but rather the reckless impulsiveness and what it implied for other decisions he might make. Even that was far overshadowed (in my view) by the hypocrisy of his defense and that of other Democrat supporters such as NOW, Rep. Pat Schroeder & Sen. Barbara Boxer, etc. when faced with such obviously exploitive behavior toward a subordinate in the workplace. However, it is old news. Why keep bringing it up?

The situation of the Democrats is worsening every day. The other principal candidates are ever more overtly attacking Dean in an increasingly desperate attempt to stave off what still seems to be his inevitable victory. This could change things, but there doesn't appear to be any alternative for them with broader appeal. I remain convinced that the various single issue zealots who make up the Democrat party will not be able to rise above their particular horizons to select a candidate who can mount a serious threat. Wes Clark will fade quickly if the spotlight is turned on him. He is a shallow opportunist and was widely known as one in the Army - he is merely a placeholder for Hillary in case George Bush stumbles badly in the next 10 months (I'll bet his nominating speech for Hillary is already written, just in case).

I left Washington on a sunny day last week for a holiday in San Francisco. It hasn't stopped raining since I got here. Not all bad though - the new roof doesn't leak; great new fitness center nearby and a new (to me) W. Puck restaurant to try out tonight. Cheers.

OK, now george, you've annoyed me on the very first day of the year! I did not bring up Clinton again or at all. Someone else was talking about Clinton and Monica and I said what I thought. Every time Clinton and the behavior of the house managers is mentioned one of you comes along and says the same sentence, word for word:



This line is developing into a mantra. Please try to think of something more creative to say in the future. It was a huge crime perpetrated on the American people and it should not ever be forgotten. And I'll talk about it as much as I want to. Why don't you want it talked about? Have you thought about that? You think we should just forget it and pretend we didn't notice. Well, not if I have anything to do with it we won't. We should remember until the end of time.

And believe me, I haven't spent one penny on a bunch of Marianne Goldbergs and what ever uglyface's name was, I forget right this minute, and Ken Starrs. I've placed no ads for "dish" on Bush or the Family Research Council. I don't have to. I know enough myself. Besides they lay it all out for us all to see. Why do they do that? Because they have not one little bitty inkling of insight into their fascist behavior. They are out of control and should be stopped. But people like you want to look the other way because you're afraid you'll lose a little money, feeding hungry children.

You should have been at my Christmas dinner table and listened to a conversation I heard. The subject was about a food drop in Harlem right before Christmas. Here was the wife of a great fundamentalist leader asking questions like, "were any of them white?" And, "how do they prevent more than one member of the same family from getting in the line and getting more than their share?" I thought, but did not say aloud in the name of family peace, "well, now that we've established how to insure that the black folk don't get more than their share of food for their families on Christmas, we can get back to eating all we want at our own table." The fundamentalists (like Karl Rove, who has made his sizable fortune in direct mail and TV fund raising for fundamentalist political organizations) are all flys on the back of the Lamb of God, so to speak.

I have not even come close to the obnoxious behavior or obsession displayed by Ken Starr, Scaife and their insipid holier-than-thous. They are a danger and I, unlike the house managers, advocate the solution at the polls (and this is the huge difference between me and them) rather than through some nasty Republican dirty trick, behind the scenes.

As far as:



goes, Pllllllllllllllease, george. You should have seen Bush's behavior in a Dallas restaurant when he had a huge mad fit in public and heard all the things he's said to various people I know over the years that were downright arrogant and mean. Talk about impulsive! Bill Clinton was an excellent president. And his behavior would not have been "rather recklessly impulsive" had the control freaks not been at his door, foaming at the mouth.

But since you do ask (again) I'll tell you why I contribute to the already started discussion about Clinton. And that is because I think we should not forget. We need to get rid of Bush in the right way, in the way that protects our democracy rather than threatening it's very foundations. I'm starting a "Let's Never Forget Ken Starr Club."

Other than that, how are you anyway? Glad to hear you're having a good time in San Francisco.

An update by Krugman on the upcoming election.
***********
January 2, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

In the 2000 election, in a campaign that seemed driven more
by vanity than by any realistic political vision, Ralph
Nader did all he could to undermine Al Gore - even though
Mr. Gore, however unsatisfying to the Naderites, was
clearly a better choice than the current occupant of the
White House.

Now the Democratic Party has its own internal spoilers:
candidates lagging far behind in the race for the
nomination who seem more interested in tearing down Howard
Dean than in defeating George Bush.

The truth - which one hopes voters will remember, whoever
gets the nomination - is that the leading Democratic
contenders share a lot of common ground. Their domestic
policy proposals are similar, and very different from those
of Mr. Bush.

Even on foreign policy, the differences are less stark than
they may appear. Wesley Clark's critiques of the Iraq war
are every bit as stinging as Mr. Dean's. And looking
forward, I don't believe that even the pro-war candidates
would pursue the neocon vision of two, three, many
Iraq-style wars. Mr. Bush, who has made preemptive war the
core of his foreign policy doctrine, might do just that.

Yet some of Mr. Dean's rivals have launched vitriolic
attacks that might as well have been scripted by Karl Rove.
And I don't buy the excuse that it's all about ensuring
that the party chooses an electable candidate.

It's true that if Mr. Dean gets the nomination, the
Republicans will attack him as a wild-eyed liberal who is
weak on national security. But they would do the same to
any Democrat - even Joseph Lieberman. Facts, or the lack
thereof, will prove no obstacle: remember the successful
attacks on the patriotism of Max Cleland, who lost three
limbs in Vietnam, or the Saddam-Daschle ads.

Mr. Dean's character will also come under attack. But this,
too, will happen to any Democrat. If we've learned anything
in this past decade, it's that the right-wing scandal
machine will find a way to smear anyone, and that a lot of
the media will play along. A year ago, when John Kerry was
the presumptive front-runner, he came under assault - I am
not making this up - over the supposed price of his
haircuts. Sure enough, a CNN host solemnly declared him in
"denial mode."

That's not to say that a candidate's qualifications don't
matter: it would be nice if Mr. Dean were a decorated war
hero. But there's nothing in the polling data suggesting
that Mr. Dean is less electable than his Democratic rivals,
with the possible exception of General Clark. Mr. Dean's
rivals may well believe that he will lose the election if
he is nominated. But it's inexcusable when they try to turn
that belief into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let me suggest a couple of ground rules. First, while it's
O.K. for a candidate to say he's more electable than his
rival, someone who really cares about ousting Mr. Bush
shouldn't pre-emptively surrender the cause by claiming
that his rival has no chance. Yet Mr. Lieberman and Mr.
Kerry have done just that. To be fair, Mr. Dean's warning
that his ardent supporters might not vote for a
"conventional Washington politician" was a bit close to the
line, but it appeared to be a careless rather than a
vindictive remark.

More important, a Democrat shouldn't say anything that
could be construed as a statement that Mr. Bush is
preferable to his rival. Yet after Mr. Dean declared that
Saddam's capture hadn't made us safer - a statement that
seems more justified with each passing day - Mr. Lieberman
and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Kerry launched attacks that
could, and quite possibly will, be used verbatim in Bush
campaign ads. (Mr. Lieberman's remark about Mr. Dean's
"spider hole" was completely beyond the pale.)

The irony is that by seeking to undermine the election
prospects of a man who may well be their party's nominee,
Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Kerry have reminded us of why their
once-promising campaigns imploded. Most Democrats feel,
with justification, that we're facing a national crisis -
that the right, ruthlessly exploiting 9/11, is making a
grab for total political dominance. The party's rank and
file want a candidate who is running, as the Dean slogan
puts it, to take our country back. This is no time for a
candidate who is running just because he thinks he deserves
to be president.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?ex=1074050398&ei=1&en=de6e7d96bbf8ee97

For some reason, the following joke reminds me of the current majority of Americans.
**********************
A blonde, a brunette and a redhead were walking along
the beach. A seagull flies over and poops all over the
blonde.
The brunette says in a disgusted voice, "Hang on; the
bathroom is just up the hill. I'll go get some toilet paper."

After she leaves, the blonde begins to laugh. The redhead
says, "What's so funny?"

The blonde says, "Well, blondes are supposed to be so
dumb and look at her. By the time she gets back with that
toilet paper that seagull will be miles away!"

Type "miserable failure" into Google, and see what you get. ;(

This is what I'm talking about. The Democrats have nothing as developed as the "right-wing scandal machine" to which Mr. Krugman refers in the above quote. And we should be proud of it. However, I agree wholeheartly with Krugman's analysis and recommendation that the obvious losers in the race stop attacking the obvious front runners. But I fear they will not.......for what reason, I don't know.

Well Lola, sorry to have annoyed you so early in the year, however, please don't blame me for the bad behavior of some of your dinner guests. Have you considered the possibility that many Christian conservatives are wiser and better behaved than some of your relatives?

You did indeed run on at great length concerning Clinton/Monica. You use elaborately contrived conspiracy fantasies in an attempt to cloud the basic facts of the matter. He got into trouble as a result of a readily detectable pattern in his behavior, which finally led him to perjury in a sworn deposition when (properly) questioned about another, similar matter. Both matters also involved the misuse of the prerogatives of political office, the first as Governor, the second as President. Any politician of any stripe would have found himself in great difficulty under these conditions, with or without Ken Starr or Karl Rove. That your expressed views in this matter are a part of the cant of some Democrats is beyond question, but it is fantasy that defies common sense.

Surely you will not suggest the Democrats who cultivated Watergate and even George W's event in the Dallas (?) restaurant, do not themselves possess an efficient "scandal machine".

Come on, guys, both sides are guilty. One side sees the other side's scandal as worse than their own. So what else is new?

One question, c.i.; Who stands convcted and impeached, and against whom are levelled unsubstantiated partisan allegations? If and when GWB is convicted of wrongdoing, there is no record of wrongdoing. Emotions are immaterial. Verdicts are what matter. Laying charges is not the same as validating them. History will judge, and I have my suspicions which way the findings will fall.

george

Happy new year. Perhaps 2004 will see you retire from your place over there in the corner, with the spanking new awareness that a fool's cap provides less protection than you had hoped.

A prediction...you will not ever research this matter (well documented). That you won't, and the fairly transparent reasons why you won't, wouldn't be quite so depressing if I didn't like you. You really ought to challenge your own ideas more, cowardice being unseemly in a naval officer.

Of course she has. They aren't the problem, nor are they the subject here. Many big hairy people with motorcycles are wise and well-behaved but we'd probably be a bit stupid to allow the Hell's Angels to account for 40% of Presidential voters.

GWBush ain't finished with his term yet. Besides, he's one of the most secretive presidents we've had in recent history. If there are things that this administration has done "illegally," I'm sure the opposition will find them - sooner or later.

I'm sure Gels won't mind my copy and paste from another forum.
**********************
Quote:


I think I'm getting the picture. North Korea breaks all its nuclear agreements with the United States, throws out UN inspectors and sets off to make a bomb a year, and President Bush says it's "a diplomatic issue". Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of its weapons production and allows UN inspectors to roam all over the country, and – after they've found not a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids – President Bush announces that Iraq is a threat to America, has not disarmed and must be invaded. So that's it, then.

How, readers keep asking me in the most eloquent of letters, does he get away with it? Indeed, how does Tony Blair get away with it? Not long ago in the House of Commons, our dear Prime Minister was announcing in his usual schoolmasterly tones – the ones used on particularly inattentive or dim boys in class – that Saddam's factories of mass destruction were "up [pause] and running [pause] now." But the Dear Leader in Pyongyang does have factories that are "up [pause] and running [pause] now". And Tony Blair is silent.

Why do we tolerate this? Why do Americans? Over the past few days, there has been just the smallest of hints that the American media – the biggest and most culpable backer of the White House's campaign of mendacity – has been, ever so timidly, asking a few questions. Months after The Independent first began to draw its readers' attention to Donald Rumsfeld's chummy personal visits to Saddam in Baghdad at the height of Iraq's use of poison gas against Iran in 1983, The Washington Post has at last decided to tell its own readers a bit of what was going on. The reporter Michael Dobbs includes the usual weasel clauses ("opinions differ among Middle East experts... whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction"), but the thrust is there: we created the monster and Mr Rumsfeld played his part in doing so.

But no American – or British – newspaper has dared to investigate another, almost equally dangerous, relationship that the present US administration is forging behind our backs: with the military-supported regime in Algeria. For 10 years now, one of the world's dirtiest wars has been fought out in this country, supposedly between "Islamists" and "security forces", in which almost 200,000 people – mostly civilians – have been killed. But over the past five years there has been growing evidence that elements of those same security forces were involved in some of the bloodiest massacres, including the throat-cutting of babies. The Independent has published the most detailed reports of Algerian police torture and of the extrajudicial executions of women as well as men. Yet the US, as part of its obscene "war on terror", has cozied up to the Algerian regime. It is helping to re-arm Algeria's army and promised more assistance. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, announced that Washington "has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism".

And of course, he's right. The Algerian security forces can instruct the Americans on how to make a male or female prisoner believe that they are going to suffocate. The method – US personnel can find the experts in this particular torture technique working in the basement of the Château Neuf police station in central Algiers – is to cover the trussed-up victim's mouth with a rag and then soak it with cleaning fluid. The prisoner slowly suffocates. There's also, of course, the usual nail-pulling and the usual wires attached to penises and vaginas and – I'll always remember the eye-witness description – the rape of an old woman in a police station, from which she emerged, covered in blood, urging other prisoners to resist.

Some of the witnesses to these abominations were Algerian police officers who had sought sanctuary in London. But rest assured, Mr Burns is right, America has much to learn from the Algerians. Already, for example – don't ask why this never reached the newspapers – the Algerian army chief of staff has been warmly welcomed at Nato's southern command headquarters at Naples.

And the Americans are learning. A national security official attached to the CIA divulged last month that when it came to prisoners, "our guys may kick them around a little in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath (sic)." Another US "national security" official announced that "pain control in wounded patients is a very subjective thing". But let's be fair. The Americans may have learnt this wickedness from the Algerians. They could just as well have learned it from the Taliban.

Meanwhile, inside the US, the profiling of Muslims goes on apace. On 17 November, thousands of Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Bahrainis, Eritreans, Lebanese, Moroccans, Omanis, Qataris, Somalis, Tunisians, Yemenis and Emiratis turned up at federal offices to be finger-printed. The New York Times – the most chicken of all the American papers in covering the post-9/11 story – revealed (only in paragraph five of its report, of course) that "over the past week, agency officials... have handcuffed and detained hundreds of men who showed up to be finger-printed. In some cases the men had expired student or work visas; in other cases, the men could not provide adequate documentation of their immigration status."

In Los Angeles, the cops ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men off to the lockup. Of the 1,000 men arrested without trial or charges after 11 September, many were native-born Americans.

Indeed, many Americans don't even know what the chilling acronym of the "US Patriot Act" even stands for. "Patriot" is not a reference to patriotism. The name stands for the "United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". America's $200m (£125m) "Total Awareness Program" will permit the US government to monitor citizens' e-mail and internet activity and collect data on the movement of all Americans. And although we have not been told about this by our journalists, the US administration is now pestering European governments for the contents of their own citizens' data files. The most recent – and most preposterous – of these claims came in a US demand for access to the computer records of the French national airline, Air France, so that it could "profile" thousands of its passengers. All this is beyond the wildest dreams of Saddam and the Dear Leader Kim.

The new rules even worm their way into academia. Take the friendly little university of Purdue in Indiana, where I lectured a few weeks ago. With federal funds, it's now setting up an "Institute for Homeland Security", whose 18 "experts" will include executives from Boeing and Hewlett-Packard and US Defense and State Department officials, to organize "research programs" around "critical mission areas". What, I wonder, are these areas to be? Surely nothing to do with injustice in the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict or the presence of thousands of US troops on Arab lands. After all, it was Richard Perle, the most sinister of George Bush's pro-Israeli advisers, who stated last year that "terrorism must be decontextualized".

Meanwhile, we are – on that very basis – plowing on to war in Iraq, which has oil, but avoiding war in Korea, which does not have oil. And our leaders are getting away with it. In doing so, we are threatening the innocent, torturing our prisoners and "learning" from men who should be in the dock for war crimes. This, then, is our true memorial to the men and women so cruelly murdered in the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001.



Source

george,

You are speaking out of ignorance. And Blatham is correct.......I fear it is self imposed. My dinner guests are not Christian conservatives, they are Christian fanatics, those I've been telling you all about. They are in fact members of my family and because of this, I know a lot about this sub-culture. They are not small in number. I am obviously not worried about the average Christian conservative. As I've told you so many times now. If you would stop suggesting that I'm paranoid for a moment and actually consider that I may be (and am) a reasonable, rational person who knows a thing or two about what I'm saying and consider what if it's true, you might be alarmed yourself.

In any case, I don't like being put down or minimized as you are doing. It's not respectful to me. Do I tell you that you don't really know anything about the Navy or about business? Of course I don't because you seem like a well informed person on these subjects. This is a subject I have a lot of experience with. You should consider that.

And c.i., I think you're wrong about both sides doing this equally. The Democrats do not have a scandal machine like the Republicans do. Watergate was about Republican dirty tricks. Whitewater, filegate, etc, etc, and the Clinton impeachment were about Republican dirty tricks. Nobody set Nixon up, or spent a fortune trying to find anything they could about him personally that they could use. Scaife advertised for months for anyone who had information on Clinton and his personal life. Larry Flynt tried this with a few Republicans, and he found out plenty. But he didn't continue. Do you know why? Not because the information isn't available.

Both sides do try to use anything that comes along to their political advantage. I not only don't deny this, I think it's within reasonable boundaries of politics. Bush did have that tantrum in Dallas at a Mexican food restaurant. There were many witnesses to it. It's not made up. No one, that I know of, sent someone around to spy on him until they caught him. He just simply behaved that way all the time for everyone to see. The Mexican food restaurant was by far not the only incident. It's common knowledge.

What is it george, do you simply refuse to take anyone's word for something if it's something you don't want to believe? Do your research, and then come talk to me. If you don't want to, then simply admit your ignorance and don't behave as if you know. Because you do not.

International Herald Tribune via Tocqueville Connection

Lola, Blatham,

If you will reread our colective recent posts on this (and other) thread(s)I think you will find that it is not I who is casting insults or calling my respondents fools or ignorant. I believe both of you are a bit blind to your own actions in this area.

I'll admit to a deliberate and pointed wisecrack with respect to Lola's dinner guests. However forgive me if I note that in her reply she affirms that she speaks ONLY about Christian "fanatics" - and not about mere conservatives - while in the next moment the two of you are suggesting they make up 40% of the electorate. You can't have it both ways.

I know (and care) little of Billy Graham's son. However, he has the same political rights as Ralph Nader and Howard Dean.

Berautiful morning here. The sun is shining after several days of rain and clouds. Going up to the Marin Hills to hike over the Dipsea trail to Stinson Beach.

george

You're right on the 40% crack. Should have known you'd catch that. Actually, I had to get out the door quickly and my normal standard of enviable sophistication was set briefly aside. It may have returned now, but we aren't sure yet.

True, the 'evangelical' self-descriptor (the 40%) contains more than folks precisely like the individuals we've pointed to. But whatever that foggy figure might be set at, it's not insignificant in the US polity, and particularly, in the Republican machine as now evolved.

You keep focusing on 'rights'...it's the wrong focus. Everyone has rights. But that avoids any discernment of the value or danger of political ideas and consequences of those ideas to the polity.

Membership in some community (the Broadway Street Mennonite Church or the ACLU) if it is politically active, changes things. The approriate target for discussion becomes not simply the individual, but the group as well.

If the Catholic church or the Mennonite church or the Rotary Club begins to organize and move towards certain political goals, then they become valid targets for counter-opinion and action.

Though the Rotarian Club may include members of divergent views, the group of them yet have a cumulative voice and power.

Lola,

Well said. articulate, dignified, and appropriately assertive.

Lola:

george simply isn't capable of intellectually defending his position. Don't hold that against him personally (I know that's difficult).