The Op-Ed piece by Pat Buchanan yesterday was interesting. The title "Republicans' troubles are piling up." From the third paragrph from the bottom of his piece: "Moreover, if the Republican Party looks like the New York Yankees in disarray, the Democrats look as if they have a mortal lock on the league celler. On the war, the economy, the Supreme Court, they have nothing to offer but negativity.
The left seems to be as unhappy with its leaders as the right is becoming, and there is no third party out there, and no primaries in which to pick new leaders for 2 1/4 years.
Houston, we have a problem."
Finn, tell you what, I'll work to get Hillary nominated in order to please you, and in the meantime you can work to get Joe Biden nominated to please me. And if that's not enough, please let me send you signed blank checks, I'm sure you would put the money to good use.
To revisit something we were discussing earlier (pages 42-43 or so), when we were wondering how many press conferences SINCE January 2005:
I saw a blurb on CNN today while doing errands (i.e., just the blurb as I walked by) that was something like "First Bush Press Conference since May." Just tracked that down:
Quote:DALE McFEATTERS: A rare Bush press conference
Scripps Howard News Service
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 02:57 PM (PDT)
(SH) - It's a sign of how much political trouble President Bush is in that he was willing to hold a press conference, his first since May. Bush is sparing with press conferences - the fewest of any modern president - and tends to hold them only when he has to.
Tuesday's nearly-hourlong session in the Rose Garden had a twofold purpose: Launching the campaign to win Senate confirmation for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers; and trying to reverse the political momentum that has been going against him - as is said in Washington, "to regain his swagger."
Rather than swagger, Bush at times seemed listless and tentative, not his usual buoyant self.
The defense of Miers, his White House counsel and onetime personal attorney, was unusual in that it was aimed, not at the usual and this time not very noisy Democratic partisans, but at his own Republican social conservatives, many of whom have found the appointment deeply unsettling. Even as he was speaking, conservative commentator George Will was dashing off a fiery column urging her defeat. "The president's 'argument' for her amounts to: Trust me." There is no reason to, Will concluded.
The problem - and it shouldn't be insurmountable - is that Miers has no judicial experience. The president insisted that this was a positive, but argued it in a curious way, extolling the benefits of inflexible views and on-the-job training.
"Twenty years from now," he said - indicating he expects Miers, 60, to stay on the high court into her 80s - "she will be the same person with the same judicial philosophy she has today. She'll have more experience. She'll have been a judge ..."
Bush said he was confident of her conservative views and judicial philosophy, although later he conceded that he had never had a substantive discussion with his longtime associate about such matters as abortion.
And, not that anybody has suggested that the demeanor of the current justices is anything less than sober, Bush argued for her on the grounds that "Harriet Miers will bring dignity to the bench."
Although this was not one of his better press conferences - only the subject of avian flu seemed to get him really fired up - when the president does them he does them well. He should do them more often. As he battles mounting political reversals, he may have to.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/24hour/opinions/story/2779855p-11395061c.html
We now have the answer on why Bush selected Miers:
Religious Background
In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void
By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON ROMERO
Published: October 5, 2005
DALLAS, Oct. 4 - By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.
The Miers Nomination
The Times's Richard W. Stevenson discusses the nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court. Plus video of the president and the nominee.
TRANSCRIPTS
President Bush | Harriet Miers But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night - with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.
"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.
She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.
It was a pivotal personal transformation for the woman now named for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, not entirely unlike that experienced by President Bush and others in the Texas political and business establishment of that time.
Ms. Miers, born Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat.
"There weren't that many Republicans in Texas in those days," said Merrie Spaeth, a director of media relations at the White House under Ronald Reagan who met Ms. Miers after moving to Dallas in 1985. "Harriet is what you would call a Southern lady. It is marvelous to watch her in meetings with huge egos, where she allows people to think good results are the product of their own ideas."
To persuade the right to embrace Ms. Miers's selection despite her lack of a clear record on social issues, representatives of the White House put Justice Hecht on at least one conference call with influential social conservative organizers on Monday to talk about her faith and character.
Some evangelical Protestants were heralding the possibility that one of their own would have a seat on the court after decades of complaining that their brand of Christianity met condescension and exclusion from the American establishment.
In an interview Tuesday on the televangelist Pat Robertson's "700 Club," Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said Ms. Miers would be the first evangelical Protestant on the court since the 1930's. "So this is a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court," Mr. Sekulow said.
But other conservatives were unappeased, looking for someone with clearly stated public commitments on social issues like abortion.
While Ms. Miers rarely wore her religious thinking on her sleeve, her gradual tilt toward conservative views resulted in some uneasy moments when she took a break from a lucrative law practice and delved into politics with a campaign for the Dallas City Council in 1989, running for a nonpartisan post. She appeared as a candidate at the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, but even though she said gays should have the same civil rights as others in society, she stopped short of endorsing a repeal of a Texas law criminalizing gay sexual activity.
Religion appears to have influenced her views on certain subjects. In a discussion with her campaign manager in 1989, Ms. Miers said she had been in favor in her younger years of a woman's right to have an abortion, but her views evolved against abortion, influenced largely by her born-again religious beliefs, said Lorlee Bartos, a Democratic campaign consultant in Dallas who managed Ms. Miers's City Council campaign.
"She was someone whose view had shifted, and she explained that to me," Ms. Bartos said.
McTag wrote:Finn d'Abuzz wrote:
Are the Democrats suicidal? No.
Are they out of touch with reality? Yes?
Please, please, please...nominate Hillary!
Yes, let's have more of this:
"The White House is still struggling to recover from its faltering response to Hurricane Katrina. The Republican Party is busily trying to wave away a scent of second-term scandal. The relentlessly bloody insurgency in Iraq continues to weigh heavily on his presidency. And no president can retain his political authority for long if he loses his claim to the center.
"The swagger is gone from this White House," said Charles E. Cook Jr., editor of The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, citing a litany of other difficulties afflicting the administration, including high gasoline prices and the failure of Mr. Bush's push to overhaul Social Security. "They know they have horrible problems and they came up with the least risky move they could make."
"
Yes please, let's have more of this...nominate Hilary...please!
glitterbag wrote:Finn, tell you what, I'll work to get Hillary nominated in order to please you, and in the meantime you can work to get Joe Biden nominated to please me. And if that's not enough, please let me send you signed blank checks, I'm sure you would put the money to good use.
No deal.
I intend to work to get Hilary nominated.
Not that I think a pompous, plagiarizing peacock like Biden has a chance of winning, but because I would like to see a stake driven through the vampiric Clinton heart.
I thought Bush was a conservative? How do they explain this? With more bulls**t. The let there ideas and party get highjacked by a corrupt idiot. Thats why there not worth listening to.
Finn, you are one of the many Republicans who hate Pres Clinton and his wife with a rare passion.
But what did he do? He had sex with a junior, and lied about it.
A lot of time, money and effort were expended by anti-Clinton interests to make other more serious charges stick, but despite that, they failed.
Compare that to Bush's record (unbiased details on request). This man, whom you seem still to support, is an international criminal who has dragged his country down to the lowest point in its history, all considered.
I don't understand you.
Keltic, that last quote you used is not from something I said, sounds like some of Finn's obstructionist goals. I have changed my mind, I will contact either Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson and see what I can do to get them to seek the Republican nomination. I belive the republicans should get what they seek in such a desparate manner, someone in the White House who has more creds when it comes to being an uber-Christian.
We can forgive Pat for deciding to marry when his girlfriend turned up with child, but we need to spend, what was it, 80 mil, to finally discover a young woman spurred on by the motherly/saintly Linda Tripp (who encouraged her behaviour) to actually have a BJ in the Oval Office with her boss.
Just out of curiosity, a question for the women. I met a lot of creepy, all hands old guys when I was a younger woman in the workforce. Sadly, now even the old guys will even hit on me occassionally when the younger women show no interest. I never felt a need to flash my underwear at my boss to instigate whatever the hell she thought she needed to instigate, even at the tender age of 21. It would have been vulgar and more importantly, wrong. Monica acts like a trollop in heat, and folks act as if she was the one victimized by the smooth, compelling older man. Rubbish, Clinton should have known better, should have had his staff move the opportunistic young woman to the State Department or somewhere else. But he didn't. So gals, ever feel a need to show your male co-workers your fancy underwear?
"So gals, ever feel a need to show your male co-workers your fancy underwear?"
Um, yes, but we were married, and I was his boss. And, Bear was the one trolloping in heat, so not exactly the same scenario. And what else would we all expect from the Bear??
But, I take your point, Glitter.
We have about 23 co-workers at the moment. In the breakroom the other day someone said they would vote for Hillary along with several unkind statements about Bush. Everyone in the breakroom agreed that they would vote for Hillary.
There are two middle aged, middle income, uptight white guys that said negative things about Hillary ("You think she's smart?" and "Yeah, waste your vote on Hillary.")
Not an official survey, but Hillary had at least 21 out of 23 votes just in our breakroom. Not bad for a red state.
Well I married my husband after meeting him at work. And I suppose we showed each other all kinds of things. I just think, from time to time, how difficult it was waaaaaaaaay back for women to get into positions of responsiblity and be respected and then along comes Monica and Linda Tripp. Sets us back a great big bunch. I'm not making excuses for Bill, but the idea that he took advantage of a minor frosts my balls, if you will excuse the notion.
By the way, I like Hillary also, and I think she could absolutely be a wonderful president, I just don't know if I have the stomach for the all the moral high-ground that will be trumpeted by her opposition. But on the other hand, if Jesus Christ was a Democrat, he would be nailed to a cross all over again so that those who consider themselves Christians could maintain office. After all, they have a hammer lock on how someone is supposed to think,,,,,,,and God loves them more than he does Democrats.
Cearly, Jesus Christ was a republican.
I don't have a copy of his voter's registration card, but I think Pat Robertson does. He got it from Jimmy Swaggart.
They should put that on display and charge all the people that wants to see it about $14.95. LOL
It was the Holy Spirit who rigged Ohio...and you clowns were gunning for Diebold.
Bob, you must forgive us. It's hard to think clearly after you learn that God doesn't love you, so sayeth the rigtheous.
God loves beer. Unless you're beer, you're screwed.
I'm sorry but beer is proof that God loves us (I mean, some of us). But if you're right it wouldn't be my first time.
God let Nixon into heaven. What the hell?
