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July 21, 2007 04:40 PM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 39 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Because Harry Potter is for kids.

UPDATE: and the handiwork of Satan.

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39 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

    2. Chickenhawk sums it up, doesn’t it?!  That side of the aisle loves to talk about the “elite” media, “elite” liberals.  Guess who’s fighting in Iraq – not the “elite” College Republicans apparently.  And it is amazing how many of them have health problems which prevent them from serving.  What a tragedy. . .  Perhaps it’s from being overexposed to something in their environment during childhood — like hypocrisy.

  3. …data on

    1) Total dollars spent on federal campaigns, preferably from 1940 on.

    2) Some measure of how intense the partisian fighting is between the parties, again preferably from 1940 on.

    I’m wondering if there is a correlation and if so, which started rising first.

    thanks – dave

    2. have to go through things such as the Almanac, etc. to find the amount of money spent.  As for the amount of partisanship, I don’t think that has changed as much as the nation has become more politically divided.  The first election that the re-alignment took place was the 1968 election, when Southern Dems started caring more about social issues, and shifted towards Republicans.

      Interesting question.  Is money the result of a problem or the cause?

      1. What “social issues” did Southern Dems suddenly start caring more about in 1968 which made them turn toward the Republicans? I remember 1968. I remember that Nixon’s southern strategy was to appeal to the Southern Dems’ who were about to be tossed out of office in the south because the Democrats had passed civil rights legislation and to offer them a home in the Republican party……and Nixon had a plan to end the vietnam war..

        So what were the “social issues” that repubs were championing that the dems were not?

  7. Paul Craig Roberts, Right-wing Stalwart, Tells Thom Hartmann “Another Attack’s The GOP’s ONLY Hope!”

    Roberts, made the startling (if you’ve not been paying attention) claim in the middle hour of Thom Hartman’s show on Friday.

    I just checked the archives, and it’s not up yet.
    But, it was quite an ear-opener: In his slow, careful, Texas drawl, Roberts repeats just about verbatim what I’ve been saying everywhere and to anyone who’ll listen or read, for the last three years: that the only salvation for the fascisti now in power is to permit, engineer, or orchestrate another, bloody, deadly, fear-inducing, terror act on US soil. Roberts–former Raygunaut and ur-Conservative pundit–actually exceeded me rhetorically, by claiming such an attack was the only hope of the whole GOP, not merely the Busheviki.

    Friends of mine always have dismissed my discourses along these lines as paranoid ravings: that, in the event of another attack, not only would the People NOT blame the Busheviki, they’d turn–well, be turned, by the willing, lap-dog SCUM parroting the Regime’s line–(probably violently) on the “Left” and “libruls, and Dems (i.e., ‘us’) as available scapegoats and surrogate terrorists, and blame ‘us’–perhaps even try to punish “us”–for preventing the Preznut from protecting them. “If the libs hadn’t tried to stop the war, if the civil libs guys hadn’t stopped the torture, if, indeed, WE’D ONLY TRUSTED THE FUHRER to look out for us, this new tragedy needn’t have happened.”

    Fuck me runnin’, this fascist shit just about writes itself (well, a passing acquaintance with Goebbels helps too). Dolchstosse, anyone?

    h/t walled-in-pond blog

    1. They’re only, repeat only, claim to power is they have prevented a repeat of 9/11. If we get hit again they then have lost any logical reason to be re-elected.

      I think another attack is Bush/Cheney/Rove’s biggest fear. If that happens we will be looking at impeachment with the country demanding they get booted out.

      – dave

      1. The repubs control the Executive and Judicial branches of government by virute of winning elections in 00,02, and 04.  The emerging danger to the Constitution is that there does not seem to be any way to curb the growing power of the Executive, independent of any events.  You are thinkingh policy and reason. It is about power

        Now, I must admit, I was absolutely surprised that the dems won in 06…..but there is no indiction that the current occupant of the executive is swayed by public opinon.

        1. To a large degree our problem has not been with the increased power of the executive. Our system normally works this way in time of war.

          Our problem is with how Bush has used that increased power. He is the first president to use it primarily for partisian political gain.

          But the system is reacting to this. Slowly to be sure. But it is happening. And the ’08 election will be another Dem landside. And that more than anything will teach the Repubs not to over-reach, at least for awhile.

          1. Nixon sought to expand the power of the executive and he used not only the war in Vietnam but the cold war as his justificiation. His purpose was to ensure his reelection and the strenghtening of the Republican Party.  Don’t forget Watergate happened in June of 1972 and Nixon was reelected, by a landside, in November of 1972.  Dirty tricks work.
              the dems in those days had a veto proof Congress (I think) and men and women in both parties who knew and were committed to the Constitution…or god knows what nixon and his young henchmen, cheney and rumsfeld, might have achieved…

            You assert as guaranteed that which has not happened…..there is NO guarantee that the dems will win in 2008…..that is not a fact, it is wishful thinking.

            1. An old saying – “God looks over children, fools, and the United States of America.” This country is far from perfect and goes down the wrong road many times. But it has always managed to figure out what to do in the long run.

              We’ll survive George Bush. We’ve survived worse.

            1. Only if they rule within the boundaries of the law.

              If they start coming out with “activist” decisions that blatantly override the Congress, Congress still has impeachment – assuming they’re willing to use it.

              1. When’s the last time a supreme court justice was impeached? And then to replace a staunch conservative with a staunch liberal (the only way, really, to successfully change the composition of the court) would raise one helluvan uproar (from all conservatives and many independents).

                Truth is, the justices have very broad discretionary power without risking impeachment.

                1. But I expect that courts overturning laws firmly tied to the Constitution – or just Making Shit Up – would be sufficient.

                  We’ve got a long way to go to that point, even with how far we’ve already gone.

                  1. that they are the final arbiters of what the constitution says. Whatever decisions they make will be couched as legitimate interpretations of the constitution. Though what you’re saying is true in principle, it is an exceedingly high bar to reach in practice. And they know it.

                    In many ways, I’d love to see congress challenge THIS court. But, then again, THE court has been this republic’s anchor: Reeling it (the court) in (i.e., diminishing its power) creates some enormous risks. Despite the buggaboo of some of our disgruntled fellow bloggers, a powerful, independent court is our bulwark against tyranny (or dictatorship). Lest anyone make the mistake of thinking that the American public would rise up against tyranny, they should study the history of Rome, whose venerated republican institutions continued in name centuries after they had disappeared in practice.

                    We tend to be a bit too complacent about our nation’s relative political stability, which has exceeded all modern historical norms. But the one thing we can be sure of is that all political entities have eventually crashed and burned, and it’s very likely that at some point we will as well. Until there is something more attractive waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces (for me, that would be some form of decentralized but effective global confederation), I’d like to postpone that eventuality as long as possible. Being careful not to neuter the court, as much as I’d like to neuter THIS court, is probably a necessary compromise to that end.

                    And I think that a wide-spread recognition of this fact among our representatives raises that already high bar mentioned above even higher.

      1. And that by itself says so much about this disastrous administration.  I can’t think of another time in US history in which people could have believed that their own leaders might orchestrate an attack on US soil, or at the very least passively allow a threatened attack to take place. 

        Even without benefit of access to Bush/Cheney secrets, we know that needed preventive efforts (such as increased port security) have not been implemented.  And now we’re told our security chief has a “gut” feeling??!!  I trust my gut feelings a whole lot more than I trust theirs — and mine tell me that Congress needs to begin impeachment proceedings, that we cannot allow the abuse of power to continue until January 2009. 

        1. To this day there are people who think the FDR knew it was coming.

          Or when the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor? Pretty quickly those in charge realized it was probably just an accident with the ships boilers – but it was the excuse to go to war with Spain.

          This has happened before. Doesn’t make it good, but it has happened.

          1. I’ve read some of the on line, in depth material alleging his knowledge of PH.  And I have to say, the evidence is pretty overwhelming, lots of detail about telegraph messages, things like that.

            Of course, only FDR really knows, and he’s not available for a summons. 

            Perhaps he let it happen but never in his wildest dreams would have thought it was so disastrous.  Just a thought.

            And long timers here know that I revere FDR.

            1. MacArther, the general, my family and most men who served under him love to hate, did not do anything to protect his men and machines in the Phillipines from attack….whether he knew or not…..his trademark is always that his men get trapped; and he plays the hero. But, I think that is egotisical and not subversive.  As for FDR, I just can not believe that he would risk the desruction of the US pacific fleet in order to get us into war with Japan.

              The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is probably the only verifiable ruse to get the United States more involved in war….

              I still fear a preemptive strike against Iran more than a concocted strike in the US…already the wardrummers on republican radio are talking about the Iranians killing our soldiers in Iraq and taking others hostages…..that is the theme to follow…closely.,

            2.   Read Joseph Persico’s book, “Roosevelt’s Secret War.”  There was information available to our military re:  Japanese fleet movement in the days immediately before 12/7/41 but because of competition between Army and Navy re:  delivering intelligence to Roosevelt (they literally shared the responsibility on alternating days!), the service branch with the info. wasn’t scheduled to deliver it to Roosevelt until after 12/7.
                Conservatives have a valid point in stressing the need for a competent and reliable intelligence agency.  It just doesn’t need to be done at the cost of the Bill of Rights.  We can have both!

              1. You are absolutely right.  The intelligence apparatus in the United States has been hampered by rivalry, incompetence, and people just ignoring its finding……the FBI had field  agents who were on to something going on in the summer of 2001, they just couldn’t get to the right people in time…

                TIME magazine had an article on Kennedy a while back….It was hard to read because it was so evocative of that time.  Kennedy learned from his mistakes.
                The CIA failed to give him accurate predictions about Cuban people’s response to the Bay of Pigs. He was surprised by the Berlin Wall going up four months later…but, when the Cuban missile happened, he had developed ways to get excellent intellgence and acted on it…I guess that is all we can hope for.

          2. While it’s fun to believe in government conspiracies, I believe that many intelligence fubars are due to “group think” where an agency reports or emphasizes what it believes it’s political leaders want to hear.  Group think was identified as one of the major problems with the CIA in its assessment of WMD in Iraq.

            In the corporate world, a video titled “The Road to Abeline” or the Abliene Paradox was popular in illustrating the issues associated with group think and how groups will do things that no one agrees with simply because it take courage to express one’s opinion in groups.

            If you’ve not seen the video, here it is …

            http://www.rctm.com/…

  8. Long magazine article in the New York Times about Congressman Ron Paul and his campaign:

    http://www.nytimes.c…

    From the article:

    “But what is ‘Ron’s message’? Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.”

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