Bush supporters' aftermath thread

george, timber and tico are base poltroons.

The US should never have given in on Fifty Four Forty or Fight.

Better yet, we should have supported the Fenians when they 'invaded' Canada after the Civil War.

I cordially invite you to occupy Saskatchewan.

Ok,but only if you promise to occupy New Jersey.

A little bit from Texas on folks of faith (though perhaps the wrong one)...

more

frankapisa has already accomplished the task.

They sentenced him to twenty years of boredom
For ragging on the system on and on
He's coming now, he's coming to upbraid them
First he takes Hoboken, then Saskatchewan


(Apologies to Leonard Cohen :wink: )

Honour to whom honour is due:
it was the
Chief Deputy Commissioner of the Reeducation Unit for Blindfolded Conservatives
who wrote that.

... I guess I deserve that. Good one, Walter

No apologies needed to anyone. That's very funny timber.

The thread turns into a marx bros movie.

Blatham


Blatham, here are some more:

Cowards in Congress
Karen Kwiatkowski
11.19.2005

As the House and Senate clamor to be seen as staying the [idiotic] course in Iraq, worrying like Mad Hatters that an American soldier or Marine might -- just might -- come home before he or she is "finished," we note that some things really do matter to our illustrious elected leadership.

They just voted themselves another nice, predictable pay raise.

Bob Herbert's alarming column about how the wheels really are coming off the U.S. Army is bad enough. But wait, there's more! Washington also offers a clear inability to effectively respond to hurricanes, to monitor our own borders, to take care of veterans from past and current military adventures, and to deal responsibly with a booming national debt.

Perhaps, with all these challenges, our beloved Congress really does need a pay raise, what with all those long nights of wise policy-making and making hard decisions. However, I'm inclined to believe now more than ever that H.L. Mencken was right when he said, "Congress consists of one third, more or less, scoundrels; two thirds, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons."

Naturally, I never knew what he was talking about, not understanding that strange word "poltroon." But I looked it up. It means "an abject coward." Mencken may have over generalized, but given the recent congressional herd reaction to Representative Murtha's suggestion regarding the Bush team's lie-based foreign policy and humanitarian disaster-by-design in Iraq, poltroon fits nicely.

I hope that the Congress really doesn't represent the country. If it truly does, we've fallen and we're not getting up anytime soon. But perhaps, like Mencken, I'm being overly pessimistic. Your thoughts?

One year after sweeping to victory,GOP struggling with power
Posted on Fri, Nov. 18, 2005
One year after sweeping to victory, GOP struggling with power
By Steven Thomma
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON

What's happened to the Republicans? After running the federal government with unprecedented discipline and unity for five years, they're falling apart.

Their vision of bold changes coming out of last year's election victories hasn't come true. Overhauling Social Security is dead. Extending and expanding tax cuts is stalled. Restructuring the tax code has been put off until next year, with prospects quite dicey. Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling is stalled, if not killed.

Instead of enacting big, bold changes, Republicans are finding it hard simply to run the government. Republicans in the House of Representatives finally passed a plan to curb federal spending early Friday, but still face a fight on it with Senate Republicans. On Thursday the House couldn't muster the votes to pass one of the 13 spending bills needed to keep the government running.

And the war pulls at them.

Senate Republicans passed a resolution this week urging President Bush to spell out an exit strategy from Iraq. They voted to ban inhumane treatment of foreign detainees and to allow those held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, access to federal courts. Some are moving to restrict the administration's police powers under the Patriot Act, while others are joining ranks with Democrats to try to block the Senate from even voting on the act's renewal.

Why the collapse of Republican unity?

Iraq, gas prices and the ineffective initial federal response to Hurricane Katrina turned the country anxious and sour.

Bush has lost his aura of invincibility. Polls put his job-approval rating in the high 30s, and a majority has lost trust in him, which opens the door for Republican lawmakers to disagree with and even flee him.

And Republicans approach the 2006 election year with trouble in the suburbs, where social issues and get-tough immigration talk can appeal to the base but scare off independents.

"They're distracted and in disarray," said R. Michael Alvarez, a political scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "It's not at all clear where this is going to go."

Things looked very different just a year ago.

Bush's re-election and his party's gain of seats in Congress for the second straight election - the first such consolidation of power since Franklin D. Roosevelt's Democrats in 1936 - suggested that Republicans were building an enduring majority akin to FDR's, locking in the means to deliver easily on their promises.

Congressional Republicans supported Bush's proposals more than any party had backed its president before in modern times, according to voting studies by Congressional Quarterly. More than the Democrats did for Bill Clinton, more than Republicans did for the elder George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. Returning the favor, Bush never vetoed a single bill from Congress.

Their style of governing in lockstep looked more like a European parliamentary system in which one party governs the executive and legislative branches rather than the American system of checks and balances.

But the promise of Election Day is gone.

"The tension they're having is driven by the polling," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Bush now is poison to Republicans. They're trying to put as much distance as they can between themselves and him."

They're strained on both policy and politics:

- Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., said recently that he wouldn't want Bush to campaign with him right now.

- Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who's locked in a close re-election contest, kept a previous appointment rather than appear with Bush during a visit to his state recently.

- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked Bush to stay away from his recent campaign for several initiatives, which failed anyway.

- Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said this week that "the vice president and the president right now are probably not helpful in a lot of marginal House" campaigns.

Davis, who headed Republican political operations for House candidates in the 2000 and 2002 campaigns, said he saw several reasons that his party was struggling.

First, he said, is Iraq.

"The war is a huge overhang. ... It would be great if we could start bringing some troops home next summer."

Second, the party hasn't been able to deliver.

"Our team has to get an agenda together," he said this week. "We've got to show the American people we've passed some legislation that's important to them."

Third, recent Republican losses in Davis' home state, Virginia, illustrate a growing problem with independent voters, particularly in suburbs, where many close House election contests will be waged. Statewide and local candidates who stressed issues such as abortion and immigration lost the suburbs. "Independents are much less into the culture war than the right or the left," Davis said.

It's not just the war or Bush's low standing, though.

As several analysts noted, Republicans aren't delivering on pocketbook issues, whether it's health care, retirement security or taxes. That clouds the political horizon even as the economy performs well.

And criminal indictments and investigations are distracting some of the party's top strategists and enforcers, including White House political guru Karl Rove and Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

"There's been an erosion of power at high levels," California Institute of Technology's Alvarez said. `They're not able to focus on maintaining the kind of cohesion that has been their hallmark since 2000. They're not able to put the energy into cracking the whip."

One can't let lovely words like that just disappear. I am resolved to use it at least once a week.

That comes somehow as a surprise to you?





Our government is constantly expanding to meet the needs of an ever-expanding government. While its true we have the best politicians money can buy, the thing for which we should be most eternally grateful is that we get nowhere near the government we pay for ...
Will Rogers

I am very much afraid that Bumblebeeboogie has missed some rather important points.

l. The Republicans, under George W. Bush passed a quite important bill which revised the Bankruptcy laws. I am sure BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal

2. During Bill Clinton's eight year tenure, the Congress passed and Clinton signed NAFTA. I am sure BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal.

3. The Republicans, under George W. Bush, passed a vital bill which made it quite difficult for the rapacious trial lawyers to press "class action suits" in local courts. I am sure BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal.

4. During Bill Clinton's eight year tenure, the Congress passed and Clinton signed Welfare Reform. I KNOW BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal.

5. The Republicans, under George W. Bush, passed an extensive tax cut which is benefiting ALL AMERICANS WHO PAY TAXES. I am sure that BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal.

6.The bumbling Bill Clinton, as leader of the Democratic Party, caused the House and Senate to BE LOST to the Republicans . never to be regained so far. I KNOW BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal

7. The Republicans, under George Bush, passed the Patriot Act. It will with some modifications, be passed before the end of the year. I KNOW BBB does not think this was a left wing proposal.

8. The Republicans, under George Bush, passed CAFTA. I am sure that BBB does not think that this was a left wing proposal.

BBB's litany of stalled programs is impressive only if one compares the HUGE list of programs completed by Bill Clinton with the programs completed by George Bush.

After all, Bill is and was so much brighter than George. He should have produced double what George has produced. Bill's problem, I am very much afraid, was succinctly expressed by Dr. Fred I. Greenstein, Presidential Scholar from Princeton and an eminent authority in leadership studies who said:

"The defective impulse control of Bill Clinton led him into actions that led to his impeachment"

Defective Impulse Control!!!! How well put.

Mortcat doesn't seem to have the ability to understand much of anything. He's still talking about Clinton.

Why yes, Cicerone, I am still talking about Clinton. And in France, they still talk about Napoleon and in Germany they still talk about Hitler and in Russia they still talk about Gorbachev and in Italy they still talk about Mussolini.

Mortkat
Good grief, Mortkat, have you no sense of shame to spread the evidence of your scope of intelligence and education all over A2K?

BBB