Dammit, Wonkette, I haven't read the book yet!Originally Posted by The Wonkette
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
- Posts
- 1,625
Dammit, Wonkette, I haven't read the book yet!
Actually, that's not funny.
Nobody named me King, I'm just trying to enforce social decency here. I'm suprised Craig Cheslog didn't ban Zilch.
I am not in fantasy land, Mr. Easton. Do not insult me.
Most folks here have placed me on their "Ignore list" (which I consider a perfect compliment). Feel free to follow their example if you can't handle what I write.Nobody named me King, I'm just trying to enforce social decency here
Why, after being here for just a few weeks, do you come and tell us how we should act? No one named you king, but you're acting like one.Nobody named me King, I'm just trying to enforce social decency here
You know, I thought that to be the truth at first. I figured your politics were based on what you believed to be a practical method of dealing with foreign and domestic issues. I now see that you may just be a control freak who has delusions about the past. And I'll throw on a mad face to emphasizeI am not in fantasy land, Mr. Easton. Do not insult me.
Last edited by Matt1989; 08-14-2007 at 06:36 PM.
I am NOT a control freak. The past was a helluva lot a better than the present. World War I should never have happened, and I would prefer to go back to the prewar world.You know, I thought that to be the truth at first. I figured your politics were based on what you believed to be a practical method of dealing with foreign and domestic issues. I now see that you may just be a control freak who has delusions about the past. And I'll throw on a mad face to emphasize
Ah, the romantic past has no flaws of the present-day...
But that's when horses were still shittin' and pissin' all over the damn streets.
The New Castrati'
Nah, she was the real deal. Authentic to the core. Methinks you're a bit too wrapped up in the present-day liberal media spin machine.
But, you do have a point, castrated men do seem to rule the day. And those are just the kinda clueless dudes Hillary can lockup in a heartbeat.
I don't know how serious you are when you say that, but there are two serious problems with a craving for the past: the first is that we are all of us who we are because of our past, if we had lived in the past, grown up in the past, we'd be different people with different preferences and different desires.
The other problem is that nobody really prefers the past as it really was, we can't even fully grasp it, all we can percieve is a historical perception of the past through an number of conscious and unconscious filters. Nostalgia is not (except in its very simplest forms) about the actual past so much as a fantasy of the past.
World War I, in some form, could not not happen. It arose naturally and directly from the very conditions of that time and place.
Actually, odds are Hillary would eat Rudy alive. If he's the candidate, she'll run as a social conservative, and he won't be able to defend himself, and by the time her proxy attack machine gets done, his reputation as "America's mayor" will be in shreds. It'll probably work because his own side won't be all that enthusiastic for him. They've already started laying the groundwork for it.One, the Democrats are not socialists, stop writing campaign ads for the Republicans. Two, why would a white male automatically win the election(unless it's Giuliani
) Three, the only Republican who could possibly beat Hillary in the election is Rudy,
The only real harm Bush has done the GOP is his support for immigration amnesty, most of the rest is media spin.and the Democrats have a good chance of winning b/c Bush has damaged the image of the Repubs so badly.
It is too funny.
Seriously, why are YOU enforcing social decency? Your social decency kind of sucks, since I see women to be my intellectual equals and out of respect for them I expect them to bare-knuckle it a little bit.
I've been on the board for a few months now, and we have an etiquette that works just fine without your puritan imposition.
Alright, I admit it, I have just been a hypocrite. On an unrelated note, is The Wonkette really Ana Marie Cox?
Please tell me you don't eat it. Yuck, if you do.
Dazzledreams...
If people of that time had modern values, perhaps World War I wouldn't have happened. We have seen the World Wars and the Cold War. We mostly know modern conflicts between major powers are not cost effective, and have managed to avoid them. We are also beginning to learn that colonial imperialism isn't cost effective, but the tradition of using force to acquire wealth is so strong that nations keep trying it.
Thing is, the people of the early 20th Century didn't have 21st Century values. They fought that war, and the next war, and it took a lot of ugly for the values to change. That is the core of the Fourth Turning theory, from my perspective. People cling to old values until their culture absolutely falls apart and there is no choice but to change.
The Early 20th Century also featured boom - bust economies. The government made few attempts to regulate the economy. The Supreme Court held private contracts to be sacred, and did not allow either the state or local governments to limit such contracts, which meant no worker safety, no minimum wages, no minimum work hours, child labor, and so much more. It took the Great Depression to break the boom bust cycles and begin to secure decent working conditions and wages.
In my youth, I belonged for a time to the Society for Creative Anachronism, which recreated the Middle Ages not as the were, but as they ought to have been. We held costume parties, and played sword sports. Sure, one can have fun recreating daydream party images based loosely on what once was. Do not confuse this with real history. If an SCA king got pretentious and arbitrary, we could just avoid royal events until the next Crown Tourney and coronation. Real history, kings practiced state sponsored terror, with torture, murder and war. Those were ugly times, and I would not truly wish them to return, save for a few hours on weekends for the purpose of recreation.
HC, you are a treasure. You're the only person I know who could make those two statements in the same post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
I don't think that was a spoiler. Everyone has to figure that there will be a climactic battle, and I didn't give away the outcome.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
I wouldn't want to live before certain things were available. These things are in chronological order, the telephone (1876), electric lights (circa 1880), automobiles (circa 1900), radio (circa 1920) and antibiotics (circa 1945).
Keep in mind that 98% of everyone who lives in any time period is going to be part of the masses. And the masses always have less of everything good and more of everything bad. You would not be a king, you would be a peasent. Sorry to bust your bubble. Even being in the elite back then sometimes meant an early painful death. Consider the fates of presidents Garfield in 1881 and McKenley in 1901.
Last edited by herbal tee; 08-15-2007 at 12:20 PM.
In a Jam
This article from Government Executive nicely lays out the box that the Democratic Congress is in vis-a-vis Iraq.
When congressional reporters swarmed around Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., outside the Senate chamber on October 16 for his regular Tuesday briefing, their questions focused on the issues dominating the week's news cycle: children's health care, confirmation hearings for the attorney general nominee, and government surveillance powers. But just before Reid took questions, he pulled out a large index card with the latest Democratic talking points about the Iraq war.
"General Casey, chief of staff of the Army, said Iraq has crippled our military to the point where we cannot respond to crises elsewhere in the world," Reid read from the card. "Our military is stretched so very, very thin. Our focus is on the wrong part of the world, the wrong part of the Middle East, and America is no safer than we were six years ago."
Although none of the reporters asked Reid about the war, Americans continue to tell pollsters that it's the No. 1 issue that lawmakers should be addressing, and it's a major reason for Congress's rock-bottom approval ratings. Anti-war advocates have kept up the pressure on Democrats to reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq, but Reid still lacks the votes to set withdrawal timelines, let alone cut off war funding. In the most recent test on the Senate floor, a proposal by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., on October 3 to end war funding by June drew only 28 supporters.
So, Democrats are in a jam. They can't pass major legislation forcing President Bush's hand on Iraq, but they can't ignore the war issue either. The next major battle will be over the White House's request for nearly $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the largest funding request for the war yet.
If that debate were held now, though, it could well play out the way the funding battle did in the spring, with Democrats passing legislation paying for the war but setting a withdrawal timeline, Bush vetoing the bill, Republicans upholding the veto, and then Democrats acquiescing on providing the money.
Anti-war liberals may press for -- and get -- another funding fight this year, but many Democrats want to punt that debate into next year, when the political climate may have changed. In the meantime, they'll argue their case by emphasizing three things: the strain the war has placed on the military, as Reid mentioned in his talking points; the Bush administration's mismanagement of the war; and the costs of the war in relation to domestic priorities, such as children's health care. They will continue to push minor legislation to highlight their war oversight efforts, and hammer both Bush and Republican lawmakers for sticking with him.
People "want to see change," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said. "I think they're starting to see, especially with the children's health insurance issue, the intransigence of the other side. People are starting to see who's blocking the efforts to make a change in Iraq. We'll just keep going back" to the issue, she said.
In the House this month, Democrats have passed three Iraq-related bills aimed at accentuating their oversight of what they see as the administration's inept war management. One bill would make contractors in Iraq, such as those in the Blackwater scandal, subject to U.S. law. The second asks the Defense Department to provide Congress with plans for drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq. The third criticizes the State Department for withholding documents from Congress related to corruption in Iraq.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said on October 16 that additional Iraq measures will be hitting the floor in coming weeks. He mentioned two bills in particular, one sponsored by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., setting a timeline for troop reductions, and the other sponsored by Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., seeking to give troops more time at home between deployments.
"We think the readiness of our armed forces has been substantially undermined under this administration," Hoyer said in response to a question from National Journal, echoing Reid's talking points that day. "We have no, presently, rated-for-full-deployment units in the United States if there should be a crisis somewhere else in the world."
In the Senate, a proposal similar to the one the House passed instructing the Defense Department to provide troop withdrawal plans has been gaining traction. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who has been trying all year to come up with bipartisan legislation on Iraq, is the lead sponsor. He has attracted co-sponsors from both parties, ranging from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who has criticized Bush's handling of the war but has not voted for Democratic-crafted withdrawal timelines, is also a sponsor. "I want to get something done," Voinovich said. "The piece of legislation that passed the House didn't go as far as I'd like it to go, but I've joined in with Senator Salazar and Senator Clinton and other senators to support fundamentally what the House proposal does, and I think we're going to get a vote on it."
Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told NJ that he also supports the planning proposal, which would be coupled with hearings to review the Pentagon's plans. "I don't know that it would do much," he said, "but it certainly starts the Department of Defense thinking in terms closer to my own position."
In the run-up to the next Iraq funding fight, Durbin and other Democratic lawmakers, along with liberal interest groups, regularly contrast Bush's call for nearly $190 billion more for the war against their $35 billion children's insurance bill and the $23 billion that they want to spend on domestic programs in fiscal 2008 above the president's request.
"The public wants an end to the war, and they want health care for kids," said Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. "That's the messaging we're pushing right now. It really makes clear the upside-down priorities of the Bush administration."
Durbin said it's possible that the Senate will take up the war funding request this year, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., has called for temporary "bridge" funding to keep troops supplied through the beginning of next year. Obey has threatened to delay crafting a war funding measure until Bush commits to a plan to draw down troops over the course of 2008.
"The Pentagon doesn't really need this money probably until early spring, but certainly not before February," said Scott Lilly, a former Obey chief of staff who is now a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. "I don't think they'll get it before then."
A key question facing appropriators in both chambers is whether to provide war funding for the entire fiscal year, or for just a few months at a time. As part of the war spending bill that Bush signed in May, the House acquiesced to Senate demands that the money last through September 30, the end of fiscal 2007, given that there were only a few months remaining anyway. But the new fiscal year has just started.
"I don't know what approach we're going to use with the House in terms of the length of the supplemental" war funding bill, Durbin said. When the stopgap continuing resolution that is funding all of the federal government, including the war, runs out in November, "we'll be faced with the next funding issue, and whether or not that raises a debate, I don't know. The House has made clear they don't want to go the whole fiscal year, and so we have to find out what period of time we'd be working toward."
Anti-war liberals in the House want to take a hard line against Bush in the coming months. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has gone so far as to call on Democrats to refuse to provide any more war funding and instead tell the president to use what money he has to bring troops home. A broader coalition of 89 members, led by Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., has sent Bush a letter saying they will support additional appropriations only if the money is used solely to withdraw troops.
Republicans, for their part, are prepared to criticize any attempt to delay funding for the troops, a strategy that in May helped to force Democrats to provide the money the administration wanted. "We need to get them the money that the troops need as soon as possible," Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said.
GOP lawmakers are also emboldened by reports that the situation in Iraq is improving, including a front page Washington Post story on October 15 suggesting that Al Qaeda is largely defeated in Iraq. Republicans point to the decline in violence as a sign that the president's Iraq war strategy is working and will be sustained through the end of his administration.
"There's an Iraq war in January 2009," said Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "I'm almost willing to bet the mortgage on it."
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
Are things getting better or have we, in our usual way, just gotten more use to the idea?GOP lawmakers are also emboldened by reports that the situation in Iraq is improving, including a front page Washington Post story on October 15 suggesting that Al Qaeda is largely defeated in Iraq. Republicans point to the decline in violence as a sign that the president's Iraq war strategy is working and will be sustained through the end of his administration.
Of the six major time periods ( http://icasualties.org/oif/periods.htm ), the Surge period remains second only to the initial invasion as the most deadliest (at 3.03 death per day versus the 4.02 rate of the invasion).
http://icasualties.org/oif/
As you may recall, back in July and August, we were told US deaths were down. But, these two months were being compared to earlier months of 2007. If compared to similar times of previous years, our casualties were about the same or higher.
As the graph shows, this October may be the first big change. Thank God! Let's hope it's not a statistical outlier. We are now entering the half of the year (Nov - April) that has been the more deadly.
"The Devil enters the prompter's box and the play is ready to start" - R. Service
“It’s not tax money. The banks have accounts with the Fed … so, to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed. It’s much more akin to printing money.” - B.Bernanke
"Keep your filthy hands off my guns while I decide what you can & can't do with your uterus" - Sarah Silverman
If you meet a magic pony on the road, kill it. - Playwrite
Another two cents
One important thing to remember about congressional approval ant its impact on next years' election is that it will be tied to the presidential race. Once the two nominees are determined, their ability to rally their base and attract independants is going to be crucial. Right now, it seems like both parties are determined to nominate New Yorkers who alienate the middle. If things play out the way they currently look picking a running mate who doesn't lose one votes in the VP slot may prove important. There's still a year to go and a lot can change, but that's what I see as an objective observer , to the extent that I can be one, as of now.
I don't see the two front runners the same way that you do.
On the GOP, it's the Christian conservative base, not the moderate swing vote, who is turned off by Giuliani and threatening to bolt; Giuliani supports abortion rights and is more liberal on other cultural issues than many of the base can stomach.
On the Democratic side, it's the netroots who are turned off by Clinton for various reasons (ranging from being upset about her initial support of the Iraq war to a concern that she is too polarizing and not electable. I believe that most will end up supporting her rather than bolting.It is the GOP base who is most enraged by the idea of another Clinton in the White House. Clinton is positioning herself to appeal to the moderate middle, and I believe she will succeed.
Giuliani's got a trickier task, because he has to placate the GOP base, as well as reach out to the swing voter.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
I'm with Wonkette here. Both candidates are running for the middle (not the moderates, but the middle) in an early "I'm suitable for the General Election" strategy; they're not running to rally their party's bases.
The leadership of the Religious Right are up in arms about a Giuliani candidacy and are making serious threats of supporting a third-party candidacy (probably the Constitution Party) if he's the nominee. Unfortunately, the leadership and base can't agree on an acceptable alternative. Romney would be OK for the leadership, as he's pro-business and religiously conservative--but the Baptists and Pentecostals consider the LDS to be a non-Christian cult (I know this from first-hand experience, having dated one Baptist and married another--I'm not going to make that mistake again!), so the rank-and-file may not vote for him for that reason, not because of his prior history as a liberal Republican and recent history of opportunistic flip-flopping. On the other hand, the rank-and-file will support Huckabee. As for the business wing of the Republican Party, I think they'd be happy with Giuliani or Romney. Watch for either one of those two as the nominee with Huckabee as his running mate to keep the Religious Right part of the base in the fold.
As for the netroots' opinion of Hillary, I can attest to that from first-hand experience. I am a registered member of DailyKos, and she is not very popular there; the majority there would much prefer Gore, Edwards, Obama, Kucinich, or even Dodd over her. They are very suspicious of her strong ties to corporate donors and the Washington establishment and think that she'll be a "business as usual" president. However, they will generally hold their noses and vote for her if she is the Democratic candidate.
Your local general nuisance
"I am not an alter ego. I am an unaltered id!"
Democrats Plan Shorter Workweek
It's obvious that they and the Republicans will need more time to go fundraising in an election year.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
