Text 8847, 457 rader
Skriven 2006-09-24 10:04:00 av Robert E Starr JR (9344.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My presidential pick
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On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:15:26 -0700, "Vorlonagent"
<nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:

>
>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
>news:f6n6h2hs4qm1jo6gmrfp15gb3fh6ha1pke@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:36:39 -0700, "Vorlonagent"
>> <nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>>news:m5k3h2ln2kncl361i2e2eiv3ajodfd6cu5@4ax.com...
>>>
>>>> Why would they hold a grudge because someone chose to run in a
>>>> primary? Particularly since if they hadn't allowed Bush to steal the
>>>> primary and McCain had won the general election, the GOP would quite
>>>> likely be riding high today rather than licking its wounds.
>>>
>>>Bush had a massive war chest and no opposition had McCain not stepped
>>>forward.  Financially, he had an incredible shot at the general election.
>>>McCain forced him to spend it on the primary.
>>>
>>>They didn't like that.
>>
>> A lot of people felt the opposite way -- that McCain was much the
>> better man, that he was the front runner, and that Bush won because he
>> was backed by the machine and played dirty.
>
>McCain the front-runner?
>
>No.  Not at any point to my recollection.
>
>He was a johnny-come-lately who dove in to force Bush to earn the nomination 
>as opposed to having it handed to him unopposed.  In point of fact, I 
>actually liked McCain for doing that.

Just checked. McCain actually won the first primary, New Hampshire, by
a large margin, which put the fear of God into the Bush campaign and
led them to spend massively on misleading advertising (e.g., claims
that Bush was conservative while McCain was not and that Bush was a
"Washington outsider" (LOL) that would clean up Wasington (double
LOL), and to start their smear campaign.

>If you feel you must fault Bush, fault him for what he actually did.  He 
>built up a large war chest in 1999 that intimidated all other candidates 
>from the field before the first primary, thereby denying Repulicans any real 
>choice for 2000.  Until McCain jumped in.
>
>
>>>It's fashionable to allege Bush "stole" elections and perpetrated 9/11.
>>>Saying it doesn't make it so.
>>
>> Those two statements seem to me substantially different: the latter is
>> IMO outlandish, while there's some truth to the first if one counts
>> below-the-belt smear tactics (e.g., using a phony push poll to
>> convince voters in North Carolina that McCain had an illegitimate
>> black child), winning primaries through spending, and electoral hanky
>> panky as theft.
>
>Bush played dirty, no doubt about that.  I remember that push-poll.  Nor was 
>I particularly please with Bush for it.  It's worth noting that I've seen 
>the same or worse from other candidates, including democrats.
>
>That's not a "steal".  Not remotely.  That's just politics.

That leaves open the question of why, if it's "just politics," McCain
didn't do anything like it, or Gore, or Kerry, or even Ronald Reagan.
I think it's way below the belt even by the low standards of politics.
Bush I and Atwater set the integrity of American political campaigns
back by 100 years and Bush II and "Stinkblossom" set it back even
further. And the poison spread to both parties, since a candidate
who's smeared has to respond in kind or lose.

>>>That said, Ms. Clinton's crucial measure is if she can rise beyond the
>>>idology of her party to control terroism, which would be easier for her 
>>>than
>>>any republican.  There's a whol media establishment that will give her a
>>>pass that would never let up on a republican.
>>
>> I'm not sure that that's true. Clinton, after all, was stymied in his
>> attempts to control terrorism -- Trent Lott even went so far as to
>> claim incorrectly that he had time the attack on Bin Laden's camps
>> (think that's what it was) to distract attention from Monicagate. And
>> the press seems a bit more likely to go after Democratic presidents
>> and presidential candidates than Republican ones, who intimidate them.
>> They trashed Carter (not that he didn't to some degree deserve it),
>
>Carter deserved every bit of what he got.

Not every bit. I mean, the killer rabbit? Parting his hair on the
opposite side? The press smelled blood and it became a feeding frenzy.

>> gave Reagan a free pass
>
>....you're kidding right?
>
>You don't call someone the "teflon president" for no reason.  Nothing the 
>MSM threw at him stuck.  Well , very little until his second term.  Plenty 
>was thrown.  Some of it legitimate, some not.  The MSM pioneered its 
>"drumbeat of complaint" tactics against Reagan that we have seen against GW 
>Bush over his entire time in office an then some.  (also used against Bush 
>the Elder).

I saw no evidence whatsoever of that. They merely reported some of the
issues, while downplaying the Administration's corruption.
>
>As evidence for this, I submit the rise of Rush Limbaugh.  The MSM presented 
>only one point of view and it was leftist.  Rush shattered that hegemony.

Limbaugh is a partisan talk radio commentator, not a reporter. There
is no evidence that reporting in the responsible press has a
systematic liberal bias; accusations that it does are merely part of
the Republican strategy of attacking honest coverage with propaganda
that began in the Nixon years. And they do it because they can't
survive non-partisan coverage.

>> trashed Clinton at first, then gave him a
>> free pass after Gringrich came on the scene and proved a much juicier
>> target.
>
>Clinton stumbled his first two years, that's true.  You can't tell me he 
>handled gays in the military well, nor the appointment of his wife to chair 
>that health-care panel.  It wasn't the media that made trouble for Clinton 
>with these two issues.

I don't think he handled the gays in the military thing poorly -- I
think the country wasn't yet ready and the Republicans took advantage
of that. And while there were some missteps in the health care plan,
it was in fact ruined by a combination of bottom-feeding Republican
attacks (e.g., on how it was created "in secret," as if that meant
anything, given that Congress would have seen the bill and had every
opportunity to change or reject it) and insurance company propaganda
(those ads). The insurance company lobbyists are apparently
inconceivably vile.

But the main issue here is coverage, and the press trashed Clinton for
one excellent and one better than what we had initiative, for the
simple reason that he lost -- and in the distorted horse-race view of
the Washington establishment, winning and losing matter more than
fighting for what's right.

>The Republican Revolution, in fact, capitalized on those early missteps. 
>Once in power, they effectively broke any ability to get much meaningful 
>done in congress (the government shutdown that introduced Clinton to 
>Lewenski being the high water mark), which made it easy to give Clinton a 
>pass.  Clinton wasn't doing much of anything anymore.  Not until 1999, when 
>he woke up and realized he needed a "legacy" and ran around failing to 
>negotiate peace in ireland and between Isreal and the palestinians.

This seems to me a fairly biased analysis. Clinton accomplished a lot,
given what he had to work with -- a Congress that was not just
hostile, but out-and-out nuts. He deserves great credit for facing
down the Gringrichites and forcing a compromise that actually did some
good. Clinton's peace efforts in Ireland were important and necessary.
His peace effort in the Middle East failed, but so has every other
presidents, and I would much rather have a president trying to make
peace than one who, like Bush, limits his involvement to neglect and
rubber-stamp support of Israeli.

>At one time, I faulted Clinton's legacy-hunger for his failure at Camp 
>David.  I thought that Clinton was forcing the peace process before its 
>time.  The second intifada quickly dispelled that notion.  Arafat did not 
>want peace and never did.  Arafat was only there to gauge Israeli resolve 
>and what input the Americans were likely to have on it.

It was certainly Arafat who trashed the process. But I think the
reason he was there is that he was under pressure from the US and the
Israelis to be there. Beyond that, he was too much of a politician --
he didn't want to die for his beliefs, as (by his own admission,
allegedly) he would have had he actually negotiated a settlement with
the Israelis.

>> Trashed Gore and let Bush off the hook until Bush fell in the
>> polls, at which point they started trashing Bush.
>
>Gore trashed himself.  He tried to run the Clinton playbook when he didn't 
>have the charisma to make it happen.  That said, I don't remember the MSM 
>being particularly unfriendly to Gore.  I do remember them being unfriendly 
>to Bush.  I think about half of the bad feeling that remains from the 200 
>election comes from the MSM reporting everything it could find negatively 
>about Bush and his actions.
>
>It has ever been thus since, save for a 3 month lull after 9/11.

I'm not sure where you get that. The mainstream media did precisely
the opposite. It got so extreme that the host of the second debate
actually accused Gore of telling a lie, and then had to retract and
apologize in the third (never mind that millions of voters who had
heard the accusation in the second debate weren't around to hear him
retract it in the third). And it is even more dramatic given that
there was much more /wrong/ with Bush than with Gore -- viz., Bush was
a manifestly unqualified liar while Gore was highly qualified and had
a reputation in Washington as a /straight player./

>>>> I tend to agree that Sen. Clinton's centrism is a liability. The
>>>> national mood now, particularly among Democrats, is one of reform
>>>> rather than fence-sitting. With the right played out, the country is
>>>> ripe for a liberal swing: what the Dems need now is someone who is
>>>> progressive but not Deanish -- a populist or old-style liberal rather
>>>> than a New Leftie.
>>>
>>>The democratic mood is to ideologically purify the party and themselves of
>>>all centrists and other unbelievers.  While Mrs Clinton has a massively
>>>liberal voting record, her public support for the Iraq invasion hits the
>>>"purify!" hotbutton squarely, just as Leiberman's did.  We saw an early
>>>indication of this when Cindy Sheehan took it upon herself to scold Ms.
>>>Clinton about it last year.
>>
>> The left, yes, but Lieberman lost by a whisker, and in a very liberal
>> state. I don't think one can extrapolate from campus to the party as a
>> whole. If the Dean wing does gain the upper hand, the Dems are
>> history, as they were with McGovern.
>
>Leiberman did not just lose an election contest.  He was intentionally 
>targeted to be purged.  By, as you say, the "Dean Wing" (though not 
>necessarily by Dean himself.  I have no info that implicates Dean directly)

Yes, that's certainly true. But lefties tend to focus obsessively on
one or another target, and so they focused all their attention on
Lieberman. Mrs. Clinton is a much bigger target.

>The "purge" element the only thing to impact the national elections that 
>came out of the CT senate race.  The rest is an incumbent trying to hold 
>onto his seat.
>
>>>As for the public mood...that's harder to judge.  I don't think they're
>>>particularly happy with either party.  The democrat purrists are mor
>>>concerned about civil rights for terrotists and cuttin and running in Iraq
>>>than confronting terrotists and the Republicans are revelling in 
>>>pork-barrel
>>>budgets, with corruption as an issue for both parties.
>>
>> I take strong exception to this. I know of few if any Democrats, even
>> those on the far left, who aren't concerned about confronting
>> terrorists. They simply believe, as do I, that the United States
>> should not break its own and international law and ignore its highest
>> principles and traditions by employing torture, denying habeas corpus,
>> and running kangaroo courts.
>
>Then you need better PR.  The focus of Democrat rhetoric is on the rights of 
>bad guys and how evil the US actions are, not winning the war.  I went all 
>through this with Amy.  No need to do it again.

The Dems have said this again and again. The record speaks amply to
it. The problem is the effectiveness of Rovian spin. Rove's tactic is
to identify an opponent's strength and attack him on it. Thus:

        Dems: We oppose torture and believe in the rule of law

        GOP lie: The Dems care about the rights of terrorists rather
than fighting them

        Dems: The Bush Administration is incompetent

        GOP lie: The Dems have no program of their own

And so forth. The technique is stunningly effective: about the only
thing that can be said about the Democrats is that they're either too
honest or too weak (depending on how you look at it) to retaliate in
kind. They might, for example, attack Bush, who's perceived strength
is his toughness on terrorists, by claiming that he is coddling
terrorists. But they won't. Today's Democrats don't think that way.

It's an example, I think, of one of the main problems in American
politics today: the parties have grown too far apart. The Dems have
lost the corrupt street smart toughness of the old urban machines. The
Republicans have lost the educated, moral, sophisticated intelligence
of their progressive wing. Result: the Dems can't win elections and
the Republicans can't govern; the Dems are too soft on foreign policy
and the Republicans too mindlessly bellicose and bottom feeding. The
parties have become like good Kirk and bad Kirk, with the same
strengths and weaknesses.

>> As to cutting and running in Iraq, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11
>> and nothing to do with Al Qaeda and it is hard to see how our botched
>> occupation of that country has been anything but a disaster from the
>> perspective of the actual fight against terrorism, or how our current
>> course will change that.
>
>Regardless of its origins, it is the main front in the war on terror NOW. 
>(I maintain that it always was, but we've done that to death)
>
>How are you going to win in Iraq?  Exiting Iraq next week is not winning 
>there, it's thowing up your hands and saying you can't win.  I belive the 
>american pulic wants to know how to win there.  (as an aside, I believe a 
>win *is* possible, but I'm not sure the Bush admin is going about it the 
>right way)
>
>Bush is weak here because he keeps even high level policy under wraps.  But 
>without a coherent plan from the democrats, it will remain an unexploited 
>weakness.  I gave additional detail talking to Amy about this also.

I just don't see any way to win, and I don't think the Dems do,
either. It's a matter of damage minimization. Hence, no talking
points.

(Note that Nixon faced exactly the same problem -- but being Nixon, he
claimed he had a secret plan to end the war. Once he did took office,
he did develop a plan -- which failed miserably.)

>> Corruption is much more of a problem for the Republicans right now
>> than it is for the Dems.
>
>Agreed.
>
>
>>>If the democrats dumped the lar-left anti-war stand and stepped solidly
>>>behind the war on terror and on winning in Iraq, they'd have a peach of a
>>>shot at the House and Senate this fall.  But it's too late for that now.
>>>They're comitted.
>>
>> The Dems have never been anything but solidly behind the war on
>> terror, and most people know that -- the polls (just saw an article
>> this morning) show the public seeing the Republicans as having only a
>> small lead in the war against terrorism..
>
>That makes sense.
>
>The republicans fare badly because of the apparent muddle that Iraq is.
>
>The Democrats fare badly because they aren't engaged on the issue of 
>"winning".

Or because they're out of office and so can't do anything and the
Republicans portray them as weak on terror?

>> There's no evidence that we
>> can "win" in Iraq: we /did/ win, and then made a mess of things by not
>> handing things over to the UN when they asked for it or to the Iraqis
>> and getting the hell out.
>
>This is a policy discussion and we're talking what hits the mind of the 
>average american.
>
>The UN image has been sorely tarnished the last few years.  I don't think 
>there's much confidence abroad in the UN, especially after their non-role in 
>lebanon was aired.
>
>Personally, if you really want to see a mess in iraq, by all means hand it 
>over to the UN.  I'd rather Bush's silent plodding to the circus of national 
>and personal self-interests that the UN would bring to Iraq.

We can't hand it over to the UN -- they won't take it now. We /could/
have handed it over after the invasion, when they asked for it, and we
would not now be in this intractable mess.

>> To "win" at this stage we'd have to send a
>> lot more troops, and people aren't going to volunteer or accept a
>> draft to get in the middle of another country's civil war. Hell, it's
>> questionable whether we'd win even if we lined the country with
>> wall-to-wall troops at this point: look at what happened to the
>> Israeli occupation of Lebanon. At best, it would take a long,
>> festering conflict, as in the Phillippines. This White House managed
>> to ignore history as thoroughly as we did in Vietnam, with the same
>> disastrous results.
>
>There are limited similarities.  The shiite exremists are being funded by 
>Iran just as the North Vietnamese were getting money channeled to them (from 
>china or the Soviet Union I forget now.  I think the soviets).

Both -- along with Soviet fighter pilots and a huge number of Chinese
troops. We weren't just fighting the North Vietnamese.

>  I don't know 
>what effort is being made to limit this flow of money and supplies.  It's 
>ticklish because there are lots of  pilgrims coming to Iran to visit holy 
>sites in Iraq.
>
>Squish the support from Iran and Syria and it's a whole new ballgame.  That 
>might require more troops, perhaps a draft.  The problem is that the Bush 
>admin could be anywhere from asleep at the switch to all over this issue but 
>isn't telling us.  It's impossible to gauge.

We have no more troops -- we can't even meet current obligations. See
forex:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/world/22army.html?pagewanted=all

There's no support for a draft, given that people don't see Iraq as
crucial to the nation's future. And Bush won't even raise taxes to pay
for the current war -- is he really going to finance a wider effort?

We have no legal cause to invade Iran and Syria, and doing so would
earn us the implacable enmity of just about every other country in the
world.

And even if we did send in far more troops it would likely be a mess
unless we adopted unconscionable "destroy the village in order to save
it" tactics. It's too late in the game. The mistakes have already been
made, and we can no more root out the resistance than the Israelis
were able to root out Hezbollah.

>If the Democrats had a coherent plan for handling these and similar issues, 
>they'd be sitting pretty.  But no.  For them, cut 'n run is all they have on 
>offer and all I'm getting from you.

"Cut and run" is a freighted GOP propaganda term, and AFAIK an
intentional misrepresentation of the position held by most Democratic
legislators:

' "What I want Democrats to be discussing is what the president's
policies have led to," Emanuel said. He added that once discussion
turns to a formal timeline for troop withdrawals, "the how and when
gets buried" and many voters take away only an impression that
Democrats favor retreat.

'Pelosi last week endorsed a plan by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to
withdraw all U.S. troops in Iraq within six months, /putting her at
odds with most other Democratic leaders and leading foreign policy
experts in her party./' [Emphasis mine]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601707.html


As to my position, I don't really have one. It's a mess. I have, as I
said, seen no good solutions offered by anybody and I can see only a
few possible alternatives given current constraints: settle down for a
decades-long Phillippines-style slog while the real war -- the war
against Al Quadea -- goes unfought; or divide the country into three
independent or partially federalized states; or start withdrawing and
let the Iraqis and their neighbors sort things out, as they
undoubtedly would once we stopped playing Great White Father. I am
confident, though, that a competent administration would do better
than the current one -- and just about any conceivable administration
would be more competent.

>> As I understand it, the Democratic prospects in the senate and the
>> house are limited by electoral circumstance rather than public
>> opinion, e.g., during the Gringrich sweep about 100 house seats were
>> contested but in this election it's only about 40 thanks to
>> redistricting that's given more incumbents safe seats.
>
>There is some point to this but with the people unhappy with both parties, 
>strange things are possible.

I'm bugged by the fact(?) that people are unhappy with the Dems /when
the Dems aren't in power./

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
                                                                               
  
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