A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Adder]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Adder already has US troops invade Syria and Iran by 2/20/06.

Trying to change the terms already, eh?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
I don't understand why people consider George W. Bush such a conservative. He is a little more conservative than me on the social issue. But on those he mostly just talks a lot and does nothing (e.g. not really pushing for the marriage amendment etc.).

He sings their song, even if he doesn't believe their lyrics. He's more conservative, socially, than any other president since the New Deal.

On foreign policy we see eye to eye, although I consider the whole neocon thing as following in the Wilson and Kennedy tradition. Aggresively pushing for democracy around the world is not a traditional conservative foreign policy position.

What about making happy noises about promoting democracy around the world? Is that conservative? The only big thing Bush has done to promote democracy is invade Iraq, and we' re only pretending that that was all about democracy because the other rationales have evaporated.

Usually the conservatives only do stuff that is in the national interest.

As opposed to the lefties, who like to give weapons to the Chinese (hi Hank!) and canals to the Panamanians?

On Fiscal issues I don't think Bush is conservative at all. He has not cut domestic spending significantly - he passed a rather small tax cut - and I would be pushing for much more drastic changes to social security. I would have never pushed the Medicare drug prescription thing.

He's redefined your movement, friend. Conservatism is no longer about small government. That pretense is O-V-E-R. Conservativism now means spending lots of money and borrowing to cover it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
For the doctors on the Republican Central Committee, their biggest complaint is malpractice insurance and trial lawyers. They all see that as the biggest problem. I am just reporting what they say. But even if $45,000 is what Obtraticians pay for insurance, that is still absurd.

Maybe it's the Republican doctors who bitch about this stuff. The doctor I'm related to doesn't bitch about it at all.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Let us not forget that Clinton took us into nation building programs in Somalia....

That was George H.W. Bush, actually.

...launched missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan...

I'm glad you mentioned that, because conservatives around here don't like to acknowledge that Clinton ever did anything to fight Al Qaeda.

The international community may have supported them, but they were not supported by international law - big difference.

If the conservatives are going to be doing the lecturing about international law, maybe black is white and up is down.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
No - I should know better, but I was repeating hearsay. I sit on the Republican Central Committee for Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) and the chairman is a doctor. He was once the president of the AMA. Anyway, most of the leadership of the Republican party here in the Bay Area is pissed off doctors. He is constantly telling me medical malpractice nightmares. If you want me to get you sources from him I can. If it is really important.

Hint: if they've jacked his premiums up to $350,000 while others pay $45,000, you don't want to have him delivering your kid.

Get a Democratic Doctor instead.

On a serious note, the overwhelming amount of malpractice is committed by a relatively small portion of the physician population. The less than 5% of physicians who have had multiple malpractice cases brought against them are responsible for over half the damages paid. See here. Right now, about the only way to push the worst offenders out of medicine is to hike up their malpractice premiums, an admittedly very indirect and inefficient way of doing it. Any malpractice reform needs to have some mechanism for dealing with problem physicians.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
That was great.......

Let us not forget that Clinton took us into nation building programs in Somalia and Haiti, pretty much took us to war against Serbia, launched missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan and repeatedly bombed Iraq.

Afghanistan attacked us during the Bush administration, and Iraq blatently violated the peace treaty ending gulf war one. None of Clintons actions were supported by international law. The international community may have supported them, but they were not supported by international law - big difference.

I don't think Bush fits into the traditional conservative way of thinking in many ways (e.g., he has been incredibly irresponsible in economic policy, adopting a borrow and spend approach that scares the daylights out of me). Both conservatives and liberals have always had different branches that were isolationist and internationalist, but I think you'll find motive counts: Clinton wasn't going into Bosnia for geopolitical gain, but for humanitarian reasons; almost anyone would have gone into Afghanistan, Iraq is a case where I believe Bush's motivations were based on the neo-con geopolitical objectives.

On economic policy, Bush blatantly favors the wealthy, a hallmark of conservative policy, but does it in an irresponsible way. On social policy, I would argue Bush has been more successful at moving social policy debate to the right than any prior Republican president. So, I understand the conservatives not wanting him, but please don't stick us with him.

[Replaced_Texan]

From The Poor Man:

• There's a pretty interesting conversation going on at QandO (a very libertarian-leaning blog) about the current conflict between the various factions fighting for primacy within the "big tent". One comment really caught my eye:
  
  

  My theory is the differences you identify, John, are coming to the surface. And as they become more pronounced, so does the hate speech directed toward the politics of the left. In other words, rather than defining what the GOP is, those on the right are attempting definie itself by what it is not. The Right needs to gloss over the differences within the party by uniting the party against the left. And as the GOP becomes more powerful and the differences of its coaltiion more apparent, this becomes more difficult, as it does for any coalition in power. As the power of the GOP grows, the level, intensity and tone of scorn toward the left must accordingly increase. The GOP must define itself by what it is not. ("While we have our differences, at least we aren't a bunch of traitors like Hillary and Ted. Those un-American bastards. Why don't they just crawl back into the spider hole with Saddam and Osama because we all know they hate America.")

  This really gave me a new perspective on why the right-wing punditocracy and bloggerati have been using this line of attack more and more frequently. That's why Reynolds is willing to swallow the Kool-Aid about The Left wanting to destroy America. That's why Powerline can get away with prima facie ridiculous positions on Jimmy Carter's patriotism, even though many Christians agree wholeheartedly with his egalitarian worldview. The Reynoldses and Hindrockets (and Hannitys and Coulters) of the world recognize that there's simply no other way to maintain such a broad coalition for any length of time, so they choose an issue on which they all agree wholeheartedly - what they refer to as "national security" - and flog the notion that The Left's position on that issue is the polar opposite of what all the "grown-ups" and "sensible people" believe. They achieve this by hyper-focusing on readily-available walking targets like Michael Moore and Ward Churchill.
  
  I point this out not because recognition of the right's employment of these tactics is any great revelation; rather, what suddenly occurred to me while reading the above comment was that, quite literally, not only do most on the right not even believe in their own attacks on the left, but the more savvy ones have absolutely no desire to ever see these living straw men go away, because they allow the politically-convenient hawk/traitor dichotomy to be portrayed as the entire range of possible positions on the war on terror. Sure, they might identify an individual such as Churchill and honestly believe that he's a traitor, but the rhetoric that paints everyone who disagrees with the Bush Administration's radically proactive foreign policy as equivalent to Churchill is just that: useful rhetoric. It's empty. It's meaningless. And, most importantly, its target audience is not, as one might expect, just the undecided masses of those for whom the realm of politics is peripheral and nebulous. Rather, the primary target audience is the other members of the pro-Bush coalition. In some cases, it really is just red meat, a way to keep the individual soldiers of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders motivated and fired up. But the rest of the time, left-demonizing is like ideological make-up sex for Evangelical conservatives and hawkish social libertarians: we may not get along all that well, but at least we can still fuck the left together.
  
  And whatever rhetorical tools are necessary to carry out said fucking will continue to be used more and more frequently, with ever more reckless abandon - because otherwise, the paleocon-neocon honeymoon is over.

I'm beginning to understand why Bilmore loves the Democratic Underground so much.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
You should get a link to whatever site he got that list from. It's always reassuring to read reiterations of what you already believe.

Sorry honey, but that was off the top of my head.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
From The Poor Man:

• There's a pretty interesting conversation going on at QandO (a very libertarian-leaning blog) about the current conflict between the various factions fighting for primacy within the "big tent". One comment really caught my eye:
  
  
  
  This really gave me a new perspective on why the right-wing punditocracy and bloggerati have been using this line of attack more and more frequently. That's why Reynolds is willing to swallow the Kool-Aid about The Left wanting to destroy America. That's why Powerline can get away with prima facie ridiculous positions on Jimmy Carter's patriotism, even though many Christians agree wholeheartedly with his egalitarian worldview. The Reynoldses and Hindrockets (and Hannitys and Coulters) of the world recognize that there's simply no other way to maintain such a broad coalition for any length of time, so they choose an issue on which they all agree wholeheartedly - what they refer to as "national security" - and flog the notion that The Left's position on that issue is the polar opposite of what all the "grown-ups" and "sensible people" believe. They achieve this by hyper-focusing on readily-available walking targets like Michael Moore and Ward Churchill.
  
  I point this out not because recognition of the right's employment of these tactics is any great revelation; rather, what suddenly occurred to me while reading the above comment was that, quite literally, not only do most on the right not even believe in their own attacks on the left, but the more savvy ones have absolutely no desire to ever see these living straw men go away, because they allow the politically-convenient hawk/traitor dichotomy to be portrayed as the entire range of possible positions on the war on terror. Sure, they might identify an individual such as Churchill and honestly believe that he's a traitor, but the rhetoric that paints everyone who disagrees with the Bush Administration's radically proactive foreign policy as equivalent to Churchill is just that: useful rhetoric. It's empty. It's meaningless. And, most importantly, its target audience is not, as one might expect, just the undecided masses of those for whom the realm of politics is peripheral and nebulous. Rather, the primary target audience is the other members of the pro-Bush coalition. In some cases, it really is just red meat, a way to keep the individual soldiers of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders motivated and fired up. But the rest of the time, left-demonizing is like ideological make-up sex for Evangelical conservatives and hawkish social libertarians: we may not get along all that well, but at least we can still fuck the left together.
  
  And whatever rhetorical tools are necessary to carry out said fucking will continue to be used more and more frequently, with ever more reckless abandon - because otherwise, the paleocon-neocon honeymoon is over.

I'm beginning to understand why Bilmore loves the Democratic Underground so much.

Bush wants an endless war with a stateless enemy-

Michael Moore working an Orwell quote-

I though he meant nameless foreign thugs, but your guy thinks it extends to the Dems. Wow!

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Sorry honey, but that was off the top of my head.

no to mention the way their asses treat Ty's blog quotes like tablets from the one true god- geez- Fringey's post was the most hypocritcally funny post in the last few weeks.

[megaloman]

Originally posted by Spanky
I used to work in Asia and in Europe with a great many European attorneys. We all keep in contact on line. I just sent them all this letter. I can hardly wait for the responses. I will let you know when I get anything.

Bring it on Sparky! Just make sure to tell your Euro friends to pull their heads out of jacques and gerhard's asses, respectively-it will make it easier for them to read the letter.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
That was George H.W. Bush, actually.

No - I think it was Clinton. The whole Black Hawk Down incident occured during Clinton's first few years.


If the conservatives are going to be doing the lecturing about international law, maybe black is white and up is down.

I wasn't lecturing, I just found it Ironic. For the record, I supported each and every Clinton decision to use force (even Somalia). The operation may have been a failure but at least he tried.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Sorry honey, but that was off the top of my head.

Impressive.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
For the record, I supported each and every Clinton decision to use force (even Somalia). The operation may have been a failure but at least he tried.

The operation was a clusterfuck, and it was Bush's.* I'm glad that we were trying to help the Somalis and all, because they certainly need the help, but we went in without giving much thought to the political dynamics there, and then got into a shooting war with one faction without even realizing it.

Two books about this from different perspectives, both very much worth reading:



Bowden's book is from the perspective of the U.S. military. Hartley is African and was a journalist in Mogadishu.

* eta: I didn't mean this to be nearly as harsh as it sounds. Bush got us into Somalia. Clinton inherited the mission, and by all accounts didn't pay much attention to it until things turned sour. The strategy of fighting with Aidid's clan belonged to military commanders, and can't really be attributed to either president.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The Supreme Court didn't sound too receptive to your side in the Connecticut eminent domain case yesterday.