Broken Toys

When’s the old red pickup truck going to head out of Tennessee and liven things up a bit?

Debates one year ahead of the election cycle are pointless, but funny. If Bush was a lame duck it would be different, but the Dems are actually making a mistake going at each other this early. They should be putting Bush up on the tee and doing everything they can to weaken him (and his party) in 2007, and then they can snap at each others necks in 2008.

Dividing their own party this early is a mistake, people have too much time to get very attached to ‘their’ candidate, and when the field is whittled down to just one of em, they will have a higher chance of being bitter, and pulled to the other party.

In other political news, you can find the tinfoil hat brigade already debating ‘if’ Bush will declare democracy over and just not leave… which is always a good laugh.

“They should be putting Bush up on the tee and doing everything they can to weaken him (and his party) in 2007″

Why bother? Bush is weakening his party so well all by himself. Ba-dump…TSHH.

Okay, I’ll bite – by what possible definition is Bush not a lame duck?

I think “enormously tiresome sloganeering pedant” is the best description I’ve seen of Kucinich.

The Congress and The Senate ?

Just a guess.

Well, of course you feel unrepresented. That happens towards the latter half of a Republican era . There was a brief period during Reagan where he was touted as the ‘middle class’ president, but by the end of Bush Sr., the rallying cry was ‘its the economy, stupid’.

The entire mantra of the party is ’smaller government’, which translates vaguely to ‘no social responsibility’. Latest move by Bush is to try to remove goverment health protection from lower class children on purely ideological grounds that teh gummint shouldn’t be messin’ with people’s affairs. It is the fulfilment of the Republican economic dream, donchaknow.

“It’s way less funny than you think it is. It’s an entirely believable scenario. Given the sense of entitlement as well as unshakeable knowledge that he is absolutely right despite reality contradicting him, it’s pretty likely that he won’t leave.”

You psychiatrist called, your are due for your next appointment.

In other political news, you can find the tinfoil hat brigade already debating ‘if’ Bush will declare democracy over and just not leave… which is always a good laugh.

It has always (or at least since the Civil War, maybe before then, I was a math major duh) been in the President’s power to declare martial law and suspend the constitution during a national emergency. I’m not yet cynical enough to believe our current administration would stage a national emergency just to retain power, but given their historical disregard for the Constitution (the President has called it “just a piece of paper”) I don’t think it’s crazy at all to think they would happily suspend the constitution given the opportunity, especially around elections or even after. No tinfoil necessary. 5 years ago you’d have been called a tinfoil hat wearer if you were to describe many of the constitutional abuses this administration has already performed.

More on-topic, for the first time since she announced her candidacy I was impressed with Clinton. And also for the first time since he announced his candidacy, I was disappointed with Obama. He seemed more evasive than I’ve ever seen him. I was very impressed with Bill Richardson, especially his answer on gay marriage, which was in effect “I’ll support civil unions because it’s attainable.” It’s unfortunate that he’s perceived as being unelectable, but a Clinton/Richardson or Obama/Richardson ticket would not be a bad thing.

The primary difference I’ve noticed is that the dems don’t tend to demolish every ounce of goodwill we have outside the US when they enforce their agendas. The republicans are a mixed bag of nice diplomats and “screw you all, I’ll do what I want”.

But anyways, I want a Gravel/Kucinich ticket, because damned if they don’t make me laugh.

I don’t get this shit at all. The only thing different about this debate was the YouTube questions. Every single candidate stood up there and gave one liners or dodged the questions while Mr Cooper vainly pointed it out. They all lied through their teeth and 99% of their promises are out of their control if they were to get elected into office. I am a pretty negative person, but I seriously wish these candidates could do something outside of look good on camera.

Hate Bush all you want, but at the end of the day we know where he stands. Elect Obama or Clinton into office and god’s know what position they will have.

It turns out that nobody ever fulfills 90% of their campaign promises–in the US and elsewhere. That feeling of not being represented occurs at the end of every era; that’s why the era changes.

The thing about international goodwill that the Democrats are so good at preserving is that it’s not worth anything in the breach. No matter how much they “like” you, other countries are not going to sacrifice their self-interest for yours. The Republicans are actually better at getting other countries to commit to their ideological positions, but they’re very poor at capitalizing on it.

You’ve hired a couple wackjobs for your top job in the past.
Take a chance and at least look at the lesser of the wackjobs.
Ones that at least seem to have your best interest at heart. Even if it’s slightly mislead on certain issues.

Brought to you by the Canadian Contingent for a more Relaxed Continent.

The stage got pretty grim when the parade of people victimized by the health care system came on. Good.

I thought they if they were “victimized” by anything at all, they were victimized by, you know, diseases. Those have been around for awhile; longer than HMOs, in fact.

In any case, wait until you see the parade of victims who are actually victimized by health care, once one of these clowns gets the political capital to push their fantastical healthcare slugocracy through Congress. And no, that’s not a cold-blooded reference to taxpayers, either.

you gotta admit that the comedy value alone of having Bill Clinton being the first lady is worth a vote or two

Uh? That’s an astounding comment, and it really shows your bias. Every president since Lincoln who’s presided during a period of conflict has issued one or more of those “disturbing and unconstitutional” executive orders. You may think Bush’s policies are terrible, but he’d have to put much, much, much more effort into eroding the power of the other branches of government before he could be in any way considered a dictator.

Way to exaggerate. Did you actually read the Blocking Property order? It’s not “anyone undermining his policies,” it’s anyone who commits an act of violence, materially supports (i.e. with cash, equipment, or actual guidance, yeah, that’s right, not just petty words), or is owned or controlled by some party which commits acts of violence. And blocking transfer of is not the same thing as seizure. If you actually did read it and merely assumed that he’d interpret (if he even can) the writing of that order to include all his domestic policy opponents… well, I don’t know what to tell you.

As for your other point, internal communications between the president and his advisors have always been considered confidential. That’s why we have the phrase, “executive privilege.” Of course, not everything is covered–which is why you should be asking what the hell it is Congress is subpoenaing before you get your righteous indignation going.

Angry.Bob: As a libertarian I agree that our current administration is dismayingly scary, but I have trouble counting as allies those of his detractors who were untroubled by our previous administration and who build their political coalition on a bedrock of admiration for FDR. Confiscating property is at least something that can be undone; after Ruby Ridge, the Clinton administration staked out the principled position that at the administration’s pleasure, government agents remain above the law when they outright kill someone. And while the Bush arbitrary detention (complete with whoops, of course some of them end up sorta dead, but who’s counting?) is scarier than that single incident, few governments have risen above the temptation of retail arbitrary detention given the provocation of serious terrorism. Conversely, even when given the provocation of full-scale war, lots of governments have managed to avoid FDR’s wholesale arbitrary detention of an entire ethnic minority. FDR also succeeded in getting the second, ninth, and tenth amendments demoted to dead-letter status, partly by threatening to pack the Supreme Court. While the Bush administration may aspire to comparable levels of chainsaw constitutional surgery, it remains to be seen whether history will judge them to be as effective as FDR.

Angry Bob :

Do not make the mistake of thinking im currently defending the current administration. They are as incompetent as can be.

BUT, please put aside the tinfoil hat for a few seconds, Bush is not the devil or the future dictator of the USA, he is onlyt a very very bad president. Has happened, will happen again.

We just have to make sure to elect somebody better next time.

Which is all fine an good, but I actually didn’t know what HitnRun said. As in, I didn’t actually understand him. I had no inkling, after reading, what the hell he was trying to say. I have no clue whether he was fur it or agin it and I have no idea what the ‘it’ he was talking about WAS.

Except that it was something to do with healthcare and, er, bad diseases…

Oh Good God.

Heres a selection of people that TPTB have pre-chosen for you to pick from, lets call them dog.
Heres another selection of people that TPTB have also pre-chosen for you to pick from, lets call them pony.
Next year you get to pick between a dog and a pony to run your show for 4 more years.

My money is on a Democrat president, Clinton or Obama (woman or a minority) to give that illusion of a major change and false hope that things will be different followed by a revolution before 2012 because things will actually get worse and a combination of peak oil, housing collapse, currency collapse and food shortage from trying to grow too much biofuel will piss off a critical mass of Americans.

If only the Dems’ only candidate with significant charisma weren’t also the one with the least knowledge of how to conduct foreign affairs.