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July 25, 2007 03:38 PM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 86 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

–Anonymous

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86 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

  2. http://www.washingto…

    I am going to claim that there is no difference between Bush’s 65 percent disapproval and Nixon’s 66.  Everyone with any knowledge of statistics – which excludes most “journalists” – knows that the above difference is immaterial.  Polls are not like lab thermometers, especially spread over 70 years.

    Anyway, this begs the question from this consistent, analytical liberal, HOW CAN SO MANY AMERICANS BE SO STUPID that they reelected this incompetent narcistic moron?  (Presuming the Ohio elections were honest.)

    Surely, historians will look back on this era and conclude that this was the greatest failure of democracy in the US.

      1. the outcomes of the civil war strengthened democracy in America. The onset of the war could be the greatest challenge our democracy has seen and if the South had won, who knows.

        But they didn’t.

        The Union persevered and democracy had taken a giant leap forward.

        1. nights ago about what this country would hypothetically be like if the south WON the war? Gets one to thinkin.
          Pretty cool although I fell asleep before the end.
          If the south did win, which could have easily happened, I would be forced to wear the stars and bars tattoos instead of the rebel flag……….

            1. That’s the one I watched a few nights back.

              I can’t help it. After living in Arkansas for awhile I just love the people and their layed back society.
              The humidity is the only reason I don’t want to live there again……….
              Unless they secede………

                1. adopted home but a everyone I ever met, and my folks ever met before they died, would rather she and her cheating plastic husband stayed far far away…

                  1. Of course, since Bill won both attorney general and governor of Arkansas for something like 20 years total, a lot of folks rather like him, didn’t they?

                    1. I’ve visited every single Southern state and except for parts of Texas and for Atlanta, you can’t beat the hospitality. OTOH the most dangerous and reckless drivers can be found in Birmingham AL.

                    3. I didn’t spend any time there, just stopped to gas up and eat. But I will say that my sister and I got a cool if not outright frosty reception at the SLC Pizza Hut so I can’t say they bowled me over with their hospitality.

                    4. …Denver to CA, both North and South, what strikes me is ordinary white kids working in the McDonalds and elsewhere, no illegals. 

                      There’s the real world response to “Who would do the jobs if not for Jose?”

                    5. visit the feedyard where the beef is raised or a farm where the potatoes are grown and count how many white kids there are compared to “Jose”

        2. I think something like 2% of the male population of the US died in that war (including at least 2 of my direct ancestors).  It was a terrible, awful, bloody tragedy.  I suspect that trying to combine slavery and a republic based on democratic ideals was not stable and never could have been.  The fact that the leaders of the time weren’t able to resolve the issues without a catastrophe like that indicates a serious failure by somebody.

          2. the industrial north developing and the agrarian south standing by their culture, you could argue there was no way for a peaceful settlement, too many factors outside the control of the diplomats at the time.

            Interesting to think about none-the-less.  Do you know where you ancestors died?

            1. To quote Jefferson Davis “Without slavery, there would be no war. With slavery there was no course but war.”

              And near the end when a couple of generals proposed offering slaves freedom in return for fighting the idea was squashed and hushed up because if it worked it would show that slavery was wrong.

              This was not a culture war or a type of economy war. This was over one group wanting to keep other human beings as slaves.

              1. not the only issue. Around it and expressed through it clustered the issues of states’ rights, how to incorporate the new territories acquired through westward expansion, and whether aggrarianism or industrialization were the future toward which we should dedicate ourselves. The Jefferson Davis quote is accurate, because slavery was the lynch-pin holding all of these peripheral issues together, and dividing the north and south fairly neatly on all of them. That does not mean that “the war was about slavery, and just about slavery.”

                Here’s another (approximate) quote for you: “If I could maintain the Union by not freeing a single slave, then I would do so.” Abraham Lincoln. It wasn’t just about slavery.

                A problem with your characterization that the war was just about one group wanting to keep another group as slaves is that it begs the question: Why were the North and South divided on this issue? Do you imagine that the explanation lies in some bizarre, statistically improbable clustering of human evil in the South, as opposed to an equally improbable clustering of nobler spirits in the North? Of course not! There were structural reasons why the South was the South, and the North was the North. Identifying those reasons, which explain why slavery was tolerated and promoted in the first place, is more valuable than simply reducing the dispute to a morality play.

      2. The Civil War was democracy at its finest.  People in the South decided that they didn’t want to be part of a paricular government and attempted seccession.  Just like we did 80 years before with King George.

        Separately, as I have spent my years occassionally thinking about Lincoln and the war, I think it was a huge mistake.  Hundreds of thousands dead, hatred between the races and the regions that we are just now seeing diminishment of, for what? 

        I don’t blame Lincoln, he was a victim of his times and politics.  He essentially inherited this no-win position with his election.

          1. Were civil rights trampled?  Was his administration corrupt?  Those are the measures I was talking about.

            Whoever gets the White House in 2008 will have a similar, if not greater, mess to clean up. Better corner the manure fork market now…

            1. Suspended habeas corpus, spent money without Congressional approval, and imprisoned 18,000 Confederate sympathizers without trial.  Obviously there is no comparison.

                  1. One thing I’ve learned listening to talk radio and doing blogs is how often we humans hear/see something that wasn’t there!

                    No wonder humans are now usually the point of failure in so many systems.

        2. not answered by the constitution such as Can a state seceed? (No.) Are States’ Rights paramount? (No.)

          But the war was mostly the result of two competing economic ideas (agrarianism vs industrialism, with slavery being the lightning rod topic). Scratch the surface of any war and the motivation is invariably economic…

            1. Don’t kid yourself. Northerners, save for the abolitionists and other sympathizers who were not that great in number. weren’t concerned with the welfare of slaves. They opposed slavery for other reasons.

              Northern business leaders also viewed slaves as capital, and not liquid at that. They cost a lot more than so-called free laborers because they had to be housed and fed by their owners and you couldn’t risk them on truly dangerous jobs like mining and railroads. That’s by and large why they began to oppose slavery.

      3. The Civil War preserved the union, stuck the fork in slavery and started us on the road toward keeping the promise of our constitution that all would be equal in citizenship and under the law.  The damage that is being done to the Republic now while we just let it happen is getting very close to the point of no return.  if we don’t stop this administration’s relentless attack on our constitution (and the United States of America IS the constitution- nothing more, nothing less) we won’t have to worry about terrorists destroying us and our way of life.  We will have done the job for them. 

        After all, a country in which the President has dictatorial powers, can keep anything he chooses secret from the electorate, can secretly take anyone, citizen or non-citizen, off any street in the world for the purpose of indefinite incarceration WITHOUT charges or recourse to court but WITH the use of torture, is not the U.S.A. Anybody dying for such a country isn’t dying for freedom, democracy or anything else we’re supposed to be fighting for.

  4. Just a few minutes ago, the House Judicial Committee reported a 52-page report with contempt citations for both Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton to the full House.  Conyers says two days for amendments to be submitted for consideration by the full House – does this mean the full House votes to send statutory contempt charges to the DC USA on Friday?

      1. I think once we look back we will view this Democratic congress as one of the two greatest congresses ever (the other being the Republican congress during reconstruction).

        They have to bring the country with them. The house passing contempt or impeachment by 1 vote with just the Dem base strongly for it won’t work.

        So they are moving the country as a whole with them. Step by deliberate step they are getting the country to the point where a strong majority will support first contempt, then if necessary, impeachment.

        And when we look back we will see that they actually brought about an incredible change in what is actually a very short time for such a change.

        Pelosi, Reid, etc are saving our country.

        2.   Absolutely correct.  I’m old enough to remember 1974.  The reason we as a nation were successful in getting rid of Nixon was because Peter Rodino, the House Judiciary Committee Chairman at the time, and the rest of the House Democratic leadership painstakingly put together a bipartisan coalition to get rid of Tricky Dick. 
            I’ll never forget the anguished statements made by some of those Republicans on the Judiciary Committee about the soul-searching they went through before voting to recommend impeachment.  Today, of course, they would be labeled “traitors” and “gutless RINOs” by the wing nuts.
            Conversely, the “blow job impeachment” in ’98 was doomed to failure precisely because it was pursued purely as a partisan effort.  Not only did the Republicans fail to pick up a single Democratic Senator favoring conviction but five GOP Senators voted to acquit on one count and ten on the other! 

  5. Mayor Mike Bloomberg is keeping his whisper campaign for the Presidency going with the launch of a new website all about him.
    http://www.mikebloom…

    Most notably, the site features the Time Magazine article with Arnold, portraying them as the “new” action hero’s in politics.

  6. Someone running for the Dem nomination has got to wake up at some point and realize that most Democrats in this country are moderate or conservative, NOT liberal.  There is wide open space in the middle for a moderate Democratic candidate, but no one seems interested in those voters.  Strange.

    1. The DLC is a totally useless Beltway insider, keep-the-consultant-money-flowing, organization.  (And their political perspective is highly similar to the Independence Institute–not broadly “mainstream” as you characterize them.)  It’s a wonderful thing that the Democratic candidates have finally recognized their irrelevance and are ignoring them.

      1. I think the DLC bears quite a bit of responsibility for the Republican victories in the 90’s. They convinced a lot of Dems that their way was the way forward for the party and all that was was a detour.

        They had some good points. But as a governing philosophy they were and are very lacking.

    2. Hillary is the moderate choice, particulary when compared with Obama, Edwards, Kucinich, and Gravel.  Maybe that’s why she’s doing so well in the polls nationally against all the GOP candidates.

      1. is a “moderate”, you really mean she is wishy washy on her views, right?
        Doesn’t “moderate” really mean “take no firm stance on any issue”?
        Otherwise why can’t she just call a spade a spade and say it like she means it?…….

        1. Quoted outside his senate office today:

          “I think what is irresponsible and naive is to have authorized a war without asking how we were going to get out — and you know I think Senator Clinton hasn’t fully answered that issue”

          Gecko, does this mean you’re an Obama fan now?  Chaing Kai Sheck did say the enemy of my enemy is my friend, ya know.

            1. when she was the one voting for it.  Obama is calling her out for her vote on the war without asking critical questions, so I don’t know she could be the one criticizing herself, although I have seen some pretty good verbal gymnastics from Clintons in the past…

        2. Moderate means someone who doesn’t drink the kool-aid either side is peddling. Hilary has very solid opinions and stands of various issues – economic conservative, social liberal, to over simplify. Which is why she’s the most popular – most people are economically conservative but socially liberal.

        3. Granted, she is a politician and like every (and I mean every) successful politician, she does watch what she says and what she stresses.

          But the fact that someone take a moderate position does not mean they are lying. They could be like the majority of people in this country – moderate.

          I guess for your fantasy of Hillary as the villan-goddess she must be ultra-left. And in that case anything she says that does not match your fantasy must be a lie.

          But the fact is – Hillary is moderate, just like Bill is.

          1. It is clear she is a moderate.  It is probably a combination of her beliefs and her natural caution and self control.  Personally I’m with Thomas Paine.

            “Moderation in temperament is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

            People often confuse the two and I’m not sure which applies to her.

      2. How can Hillary now be the moderate.  Why cede that territory to her, when she has such baggage with those not enthralled with big government solutions.  She’s the queen of massive, big government health care (though her image on that is somewhat unfair).

        Bill Richardson or John Edwards could make a legit claim to the center, as they have both won in swing states, unlike the rest of the Dem field.  Why they don’t try, I find baffling.

        1. What I find baffling is your belief that Edwards could make a legitimate claim for the center, which I view as slightly to the right (exactly where the DLC is), or why he would want to.

          He supports labor, civil unions (give it time and Im sure gay marriage), universal health care, repealing NAFTA, pullout of the Iraq war. He is a trial lawyer. He leans left because he is a left candidate; I wouldnt support him if he were not.

    3. Dems won where their candidate took a decidedly populist stance.  This moderate/conservative crap is a construct of Fox “News” and the RW talking heads trying to explain away their losses. 

      If anything, Dems are liberal to middle of the road.  We are reclaiming our heritage.  When we became Republican-Lite, what happened?  We lost everywhere.

      1. You seriously think that Dems succeeded in 06 by running populists, and don’t count on moderates to keep them in power?  I can point to at least three moderate to conservatives in the Senate, without whom Dems would remain in the minority – Ben Nelson from NE, Bill Nelson from FL, and Joe Lieberman.  Not to mention Salazar, and several other Southern Dems.

        Dems won in 2006 because Republicans lost the election based on Iraq, scandals, and Mark Foley, not because of some magic mojo that their “populist” candidates had.

        Ideology has been key to elections long before Fox News even existed, and remains so today.

        1. …were not elected for the first time in 2006, or didn’t run. Incumbent reelection is not the same thing as the incumbent getting the boot.

          Yes, populism.  Economic populism, regular folk starting to see what 18 years of Reaganomics has done for them.  The war didn’t hurt, and that could be put under the mantle of populism, “the people” voting for their own interests instead of the corporatists. 

          Where a DLC blessed candidate went up against the more populist, they lost.

          1. Was decidedly conservative.  At least the ads he ran on the Mobile, AL stations (that are run in VERY conservative NW Florida) were.  They were, quite literally, indistinguishable from the most hardcore conservative Republican’s commercials, right down to the explicit support of “family values.” 

            But I hope you fellas keep beating that hard core populist horse.  It’ll at least keep the GOP close.

        2. Tammy Duckworth and Harold Ford. And Lieberman lost his primary and won because the republicans absolutely threw their candidate under the bus.

          1. If that playboy ad hadn’t run he wouldn’t have lost.

            The weak response by Tennesee surogates doomed him.  The outrage in the rest of the country (outside of the south) shows how limited that strategy is.

            Tammy lost in an overwhelmingly conservative district and made a credible run.

            1. If I remember correctly Harold Ford and his challenger whose name escapes me were pretty neck and neck. So, it is debatable if he would have won or not, although I do believe the “call me” at the end hurt him. The whole white women/black men thing.

              Tammy did make a credible run, but her opposition said she would effectively cut and run in Iraq. The disgusting irony is obvious. I think she was defined, and like her amputee predecessor, Max Cleland, it ultimately cost her the election.

              One of my biggest problems with the DLC are its leaders, or founders. I thought the fifty state strategy was so simple it was genius. When Carville blasted it I was floored. When Lieberman was shoring up congressional Dem support as an independant candidate I was livid. Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emmanuel’s fickle financial support, I think, hurt many candidates.

                    1. But I am not reading gambling addiction. I am reading gambling under an alias, and being thrown under the bus by republicans.

                    2. For failure to repay debts?  Sure, it may be semantics, but that kinda says “addicted” to me.

                    3. I also noticed that he payed back those debts with interest. Now, did you notice the part about not being endorsed by the president or his state party, or how many republicans turned to Lieberman? That sounds like thrown under the bus to me.

                    4. Would he have gotten more support had he not had baggage, which came out after he declared his candidacy?  The world may never know…

                  2. …..I guess he was “feeling lucky” last Nov. and that this “roll of the dice” would go his way.  He ended up with about 10 percent which no doubt would have gone to Lieberman had Schlessinger dropped out.

              2. Just to vent, Republicans aren’t the only ones that use race baiting.  Did you see the article about LA dems using Bobby Jindal’s “Indian” first name to try and remind voters that Jindal wasn’t a white guy?

                  1. Like the Edwin Edwards and David Duke election.  The choice is easy, but it’s sad when your choice for governor is a crook and a racist.

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