For Dems only.

[southsider2k5]

A question I'd like to discuss:

 

Why is it that it's forbidden to both be wealthy and to promote policies that would benefit those less wealthy than you?

 

The source doesn't matter?

 

Would you take enviornmental advice from US Steel? Would you not wonder about ethics advice from Ken Lay? How about some family matters advice from Elijah Dukes?

[Balta1701]

The source doesn't matter?

 

Would you take enviornmental advice from US Steel? Would you not wonder about ethics advice from Ken Lay? How about some family matters advice from Elijah Dukes?

So, what you're telling me is that you feel it's a bad thing for a person to become wealthy in this country? Because each and every example you compare this to is one of a person doing something bad or illegal.

[southsider2k5]

So, what you're telling me is that you feel it's a bad thing for a person to become wealthy in this country? Because each and every example you compare this to is one of a person doing something bad or illegal.

 

Well the first part is what I keep getting told around here... but anyways since that is obvious hyperbole, I'll ignore it for the main theme, and that is it is much harder to take advice from someone who saids, "Do as I say, not as I do" versus someone who actually walks the walk. It rings hollow and opportunistic if you ask me.

[Balta1701]

Am I allowed to quote Paul Krugman in reply?

Rich liberals who claim they'll help America's less fortunate are phonies.

 

Let me give you one example- a Democrat who said he'd work on behalf of workers and the poor. He even said he'd take on Big Business. But the truth is that while he was saying those things, he was living in a big house and had a pretty lavish summer home, too. His favorite recreation, sailing, was incredibly elitist. And he didn't talk like a regular guy.

 

Clearly, this politician wasn't authentic. His name? Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

 

Luckily, that's not how the political game was played 70 years ago. F.D.R. wasn't accused of being a phony; he was accused of being a ''traitor to his class.'' But today, it seems, politics is all about seeming authentic. A recent Associated Press analysis of the political scene asked: ''Can you fake authenticity? Probably not, but it might be worth a try.''

Times Select

[southsider2k5]

Am I allowed to quote Paul Krugman in reply?

Times Select

 

So when George W Bush talks about the enviornment, that doesn't bother you at all?

[Balta1701]

So when George W Bush talks about the enviornment, that doesn't bother you at all?

If he actually supported legislation that meshed with some of the words his folks use (healthy forests, seriously?) or kept to even his own promises (i.e when he promised in 2000 that CO2 would be regulated and flip-flopped on that immediately after the election) then I would have no problem with his background as a failed texas oil man. I have a problem with his background as a failed texas oil man because of all of the policies his administration supports which wind up helping texas oilmen at the expense of the rest of the country, for example.

[Balta1701]

Newsweek: 26.

[kapkomet]

Overall, 63 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, including 60 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Independents. Apparently, voters aren’t happy with anyone in Washington these days.

 

You know what really makes me sad about this? When it comes right down to it, when almost every politician in Washington needs cleaned out and sent home, a lot of these morons (from both parties, mind you) will get re-elected. And it's a damn shame.

[Balta1701]

You know what really makes me sad about this? When it comes right down to it, when almost every politician in Washington needs cleaned out and sent home, a lot of these morons (from both parties, mind you) will get re-elected. And it's a damn shame.

Congress #'s were like 15 or 20 points higher before the Dems caved into Bush on the Iraq funding bill.

[Balta1701]

And in case you were going to say Newsweek was an Outlier...ARG, 27%. With an even higher disapproval number.

[Balta1701]

Ed Schultz, the top liberal voice on American talk radio, on MSNBC last night:

 

SCHULTZ: When you are talking about the spoken word, it influences a lot of people and it influences election in this country. There is no question. We are talking about market opportunities. Right now the liberal progressive format in this country — we are all fighting over the same 100 stations. Michael, I offer to you that ownership is an issue.

 

There are conservative broadcast companies in this country that do not broadcast one single second of liberal talk radio.

 

SMERCONISH: But Ed, I have to tell you something –

 

(CROSS TALK)

 

SMERCONISH: CBS would fire me in the morning and replace me with a communist if that communist would get them more revenue. It’s all about the scratch.

 

SCHULTZ: That’s not true. Michael, that is not true. I have got one of the top talk shows in Seattle, and I am only on one station in the country with Infinity. That’s not true. We are not being given the fair market opportunity.

 

SMERCONISH: I just don’t see it that way. I think it’s totally demand driven. And if were there a demand for whatever the program happened to be, believe me, they would put it on the air, because all they want to do is sell advertising and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

SCHULTZ: You know, Michael that’s almost insulting me. I beat Sean Hannity in Denver. I beat him in Seattle. I beat him in Portland. I beat in San Diego. How many markets do I have to beat Hannity in before I get 200 or 300 stations? It’s an ownership issue. Salem Radio, Infinity does one, ABC owns Hannity. It comes down to ownership. Actually, Clear Channel has been better than any of them.

 

The fact is, it’s market opportunities and liberal talkers, progressive talkers are being held to a totally different standard than conservatives.

[Balta1701]

Am I the only one who remembers months and months of the Republicans whining about how Tom Daschle was an obstructionist up to the point they finally got him out of office?

 

Republican Whip Senator Trent Lott in a Roll Call article dated April 18, 2007:

 

“The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail ... so far it’s working for us.”

 

FACTS ON REPUBLICAN OBSTRUCTIONISM

 

* Senate Republicans have obstructed almost every bill in the Senate – even ones with wide bipartisan support.

 

* So far, in the first half of the first session of the 110th Congress, there have been THIRTEEN cloture votes on motions to proceed – each one wasting days of Senate time. (110th Congress, Roll Call Votes #44, 51, 53, 74, 129, 132, 133, 162, 173, 207, 208, 227, and 228)

* In comparison, in the first sessions of the 108th and 109th Congresses combined, there were a total of FOUR cloture votes on motions to proceed.

[Mplssoxfan]

Am I the only one who remembers months and months of the Republicans whining about how Tom Daschle was an obstructionist up to the point they finally got him out of office?

 

To quote one of our esteemed fellow posters, "It's different. It's always different."

[kapkomet]

Am I the only one who remembers months and months of the Republicans whining about how Tom Daschle was an obstructionist up to the point they finally got him out of office?

 

Yea, those Pubes got him out of office, not the voters of South Dakota.

[jackie hayes]

As it is July 4, I think it is an appropriate time for Democrats to stop and reflect on our nation and its ideals. For over 200 years, the United States has persevered, as a beacon of liberty to all those outside the country, as a refuge for those who suffer from persecution, political and religious, abroad, as a place of economic opportunity, as a champion of equality and democracy, as an idea. So now on this our country's birthday, when we celebrate the willing of our independence by the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, I ask you this one question, Democrats.

 

Why do you hate America?

[NorthSideSox72]

As it is July 4, I think it is an appropriate time for Democrats to stop and reflect on our nation and its ideals. For over 200 years, the United States has persevered, as a beacon of liberty to all those outside the country, as a refuge for those who suffer from persecution, political and religious, abroad, as a place of economic opportunity, as a champion of equality and democracy, as an idea. So now on this our country's birthday, when we celebrate the willing of our independence by the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, I ask you this one question, Democrats.

 

Why do you hate America?

[Soxy]

Interesting Editorial from the Trib

 

The right's dance with Islam

Some U.S. conservatives share disdain for where freedom leads

 

By Cathy Young

Published July 8, 2007

 

Some years ago, I heard an amusing exchange on a right-wing radio show. A caller railed against feminists, homosexuals, atheists and other usual suspects.

 

The host enthusiastically agreed, whereupon the caller expressed hope that they could join forces -- in supporting the establishment of Islamic law in America. The twist left the host sputtering incoherently.

 

Yet the question of whether America's mostly Christian social conservatives should ally themselves with conservative Muslims is more than a radio prank call.

 

In his recent book, "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza maintains that the political left has helped make the United States the target of Islamic extremists. "A decadent American culture" and "an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular values," D'Souza writes, has made Muslims feel that "their most cherished beliefs and institutions are under assault."

 

According to D'Souza, the best way to resist radical Islam is to make common cause with Muslim traditionalists who reject Western decadence and secularism but also shun violence and extremism.

 

This is quite a reversal of the stance taken by many conservatives -- including President Bush and Newt Gingrich -- who have invoked women's rights and even gay rights among the causes we champion in our battle against "Islamofascism."

 

Though most conservatives reject D'Souza's thesis as a right-wing version of "blame America first," some observers are expressing concern.

 

Commentator Andrew Sullivan argues that American "theoconservatives" have become a politicized "Christianist" movement. He sees many similarities to radical Islamic ideology, with D'Souza's book as a sign of a "Christianist/Islamist alliance."

 

And it is true that some elements on the American social and religious right have long expressed guarded sympathy with the radical Muslim critique of Western decadence.

 

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher asserted that the honest answer to the "Why do they hate us?" question lies in the coarseness and destructiveness of "our sexual culture" -- in contrast to traditional Islamic societies, where "the family system ... works" despite being regrettably oppressive to women and children.

 

Around the same time, Christianity Today Managing Editor Mark Galli editorialized that conservative Muslims hate the West for bringing "hedonism and materialism into their very homes through television, enticing Muslims to become religiously lazy and morally corrupt."

 

In 2004, in the same magazine, Watergate felon-turned-evangelical minister Charles Colson warned that the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States would help Islamic terrorists by making "our kind of freedom abhorrent" to Muslims.

 

In May of that year, former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan wrote that on such issues as homosexuality, "conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats." Chiding Bush for urging Muslims to embrace the modern American version of liberty and equality, Buchanan wrote, "Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?"

 

In effect, D'Souza, Colson and Buchanan agree that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms -- only to conclude that our freedoms ought to be curbed.

 

Of course, they would say that they are talking not about freedom but about its excesses. Excesses that, according to D'Souza, include the notion that "men and women should have the same roles in society" or that "freedom of expression includes the right to publish material that is sexually explicit or blasphemous." (While D'Souza deplores Taliban-style subjugation of women, he explicitly defends patriarchy with the tired argument that it allows women to exercise power within the home.)

 

Yet there is no reason to believe that Islamic radicals or even most Muslim traditionalists oppose merely the "excesses" of, say, women's liberation. At heart is the basic notion of female equality.

 

Radical Muslim fundamentalists have directed their ire not just at "The Vagina Monologues" but also at beauty pageants. And in many countries, even modest steps toward women's emancipation have been met by violence from fundamentalists. Nor does D'Souza say much about the hostility not only toward secularism but also toward other religions that is prevalent even in the mainstream of many conservative Muslim societies such as Saudi Arabia.

 

At the opposite extreme from social conservatives who urge an alliance with traditionalist Islam are right-wing polemicists (such as writer Robert Spencer, author of several books, including "Islam Unveiled") who portray Islam itself as a violent, terrorist-breeding ideology.

 

"There is probably no better way to repel traditional Muslims, and push them into the radical camp, than to attack their religion," D'Souza writes. Yet he shares some of the anti-Islamic polemicists' assumptions: for instance, that Islam is inherently incompatible with secularism and irrevocably wedded to a literal, fundamentalist reading of the Quran. Only, for D'Souza, these are not vices but virtues.

 

It is true that, in the age of militant Islamic terrorism, it is not very helpful to tell millions of peaceful Muslims that their religion is inherently violent, evil and oppressive. It is equally unhelpful of D'Souza to deny the obvious: The best hope for peaceful coexistence is for the Islamic world to embrace modernization and individual liberty, not for the West to turn its back on those values.

 

----------

 

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

[Soxy]

Duckworth won't run in 2008

Excerpt:

"Was it because I wanted the Congressional seat or was it because I wanted to make a difference? And if it was about taking care of health care and taking care of veterans, I'm doing that now," said Duckworth in a phone interview Sunday. "I think I have probably done more for veterans in the last seven months than Congress has, especially my opponent, but that's ultimately why I decided not to run, because I think we are making a difference."

[Gregory Pratt]

I really enjoyed writing my latest political entry. It's posts like these that I'm proudest of.

 

(Spin) Doctor Doctor

 

I regretfully inform you, Dear Reader, that I've been hired by the Office of Internet Relations in the White House Office of the Press Secretary by the acting secretary to the White House Deputy Press Secretary on orders of the White House Press Secretary to provide commentary on the President's behalf in order to maintain an informed and orderly nation. Before I begin, I must ask you, Dear Reader, to turn up the classic song, (Spin) Doctor Doctor, Give Me The News: I've Got a Bad Case of Trusting You and become an informed r(R?subliminal)epublican citizen.

 

(Spin) Doctor Pratt (not to be confused with TV Doctor Pratt) on the news that the President ordered Harriet Miers not to testify before Congress despite their summons: "The President is committed to the advancement and success of women in free and soon-to-be free societies everywhere. To that end, he has requested that former Counsel Harriet Miers not appear before the Congress. Many Americans have criticized the President as 'stubborn' and reluctant to learn from, let alone concede to, his mistakes, but this shows us the President refuses to set women back another fifty years. He learned from the first time he set them back fifty years: with Miers' nomination to the Court."

 

(Spin) Doctor Pratt on the news that the military clumsily posts sensitive, classified information to the public via the Internet: "The President is committed to democratic values everywhere. To accuse the military of endangering our military with malice or incompetence is to misunderstand: the President is endangering our soldiers with liberal thought, and so we can trace the 'problems' to the Founding Fathers though it must be re-stated that we don't believe there to be any problems: the President simply believes in the first amendment, as do his critics, which makes their criticism a baffling one."

 

(Spin) Doctor Pratt on the news that the former Surgeon General (under President Bush) is leveling the Administration with criticism, including the claim that Bush made him mention Bush three times per page per speech; forced him to attend political meetings; suppressed his reports on stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues, and second-hand smoke; and, most disturbing of all, told him to avoid the Special Olympics because Ted Kennedy and his family were involved with the organization and, "Why would you want to help those people?": "The President has no comment."

[BigSqwert]

That war on terror seems to be working quite well.

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes, according to a senior government official who has seen it.

 

Despite a campaign of military action and counterterrorism operations, al Qaeda has regained its strength and found safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the report says, according to counterterrorism officials familiar with the report.

 

Full article

[Gregory Pratt]

That war on terror seems to be working quite well.

Full article

 

Taking this news as proof that the war's going poorly isn't exactly accurate. Success in the War on Terror will be a very hard thing to measure.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Success in the War on Terror will be a very hard thing to measure.

 

Indeed, the resolution of our measurement instruments is not fine enough for such micrometrics.

[Gregory Pratt]

The man who has The WMD Job in the CIA -- keeping WMD out of terrorist hands -- was told when he took it, "Congratulations -- you're f***ed! If nothing happens, it has s*** to do with you. When something happens, you're fired."

 

Truth is, the War on Terror is an amazing thing. The intelligence that goes into it, the resources. From the Treasury to the Department of Agriculture to intelligent services worldwide to interceptions. The things we've found, the lies we've been told, the truths we've dismissed, the ever-present threat.

 

The War on Terrorism is vital. It's very important. It's too important for anyone to politicize. Just read a book -- any book -- about the duties of those in government and the work they do to try and prevent and find out about attacks. It's mind-boggling work.

[Balta1701]

The First 6 months of 2007 are either the first or second hottest since temp. recording began, depending on who's numbers you look at (.01 degree C difference)

[Balta1701]

From the "Clearly, both sides have gone off the deep end and all the problems in Washington are the fault of both sides" file:

 

 

This year Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before, a pattern that's rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

 

The trend has been evolving for 30 years. The reasons behind it are too complex to pin on one party. But it has been especially pronounced since the Democrats' razor-thin win in last year's election, giving them effectively a 51-49 Senate majority, and the Republicans' exile to the minority.

 

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

 

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they've fallen short 22 times so far this year. That's largely why they haven't been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

 

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

 

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

 

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.