Hope? Nope.
Future president George Bush,Firing up the crowds at Andover
Are we going to get a sensible conversation
about tax policy?
The Taxes is Too Damn High!
There's your analysis!
--Hope Against Hope, Tom Toles (11.1.10)
The voters have spoken.
They have gone back to Casablanca, for the waters.
Perhaps they were misinformed, again
--Watering Can Massacre, T.T. (11.4.10)
____________________
Apres-election thoughts:
- Hope sure does have a short shelf-life
- Both parties spend political capital that they don't have. This is why the party balances in Congress swing so widely. America wants middle ground leadership, but neither party delivers
- Richard Blumenthal was elected even though he lied about being a Vietnam veteran. His original claim was not a misstatement, nor was the revelation of such "dirty politics". When one seeks and receives five (5) deferments and finally serves stateside, that is not a mind-slip.
- Regardless of the party, the voters accept liars as leaders. If outright liars are acceptable leaders, what does this say about the electorate? About our cadre of leaders?
- In Florida, Don't ask, Don't Tell is alive and well at the Gubernatorial level.
Is there any predictive value in the results of this election? Steven Higgs said concisely, "Barack Obama and the Democratic party failed to understand that they were elected to act" (Don't Act Don't Sell). Ranger ventures the following:
If the Republican party acts responsibly and from a centrist position, and if they can both keep Mrs. Palin off the ticket and produce a Presidential candidate that can interest the non-affiliated voters or those stricken with ennui, disgust and/or anger, Obama's a one-termer.
It would be a salve to the nation if the 1012 elections produced candidates committed to ending the entrenched polarization the U.S. system currently suffers. We need leaders, not cheerleaders. The U.S. has not achieved that lofty goal since ca. 1960.
One thing the last half-century of U.S. politics teaches is that the two-party system is dead as a doornail, far as producing viable leadership.
Labels: election 2010, election policy, partisanship, polarization
posted by rangeragainstwar at 2:03 PM
7 Comments:
"If the Republican party acts responsibly and from a centrist position..."
Haw! jim, you whacky nut, you - this is the funniest thing I've ever heard you say.
This IS the GOP we're talking about, right? Party of tax-cut-borrow-and-spend? Torture? Useless foreign wars? Throwing Gramma's Social Security to the banksters? Cutting kiddies off medical coverage, cutting teachers off salary, cutting their noses off to spite their faces?
What a knee-slapper.
Obama's willingness to suck up to these fuckers will probably coast him re-election, but "acting responsibly" doesn't get you elected in the GOP anymore, you know that.
Yes, that "if" is well beyond the boundries of hope and deeply into the realm of ridiculous fantasy.
Repub. SOP is to do as much damage as possible in the time available and then sit back and watch future administrations try to undo it - which they [the future admin.s] can't totally do even if they try - and thus cause the country to inexorably creep farther and farther to the right over the decades.
avedis
Chief,
You always play nice with Lisa, but you gotta bang my one remaining ball.!
Well i plead temporary insanity- i was listening to John Lennon singing -IMAGINE. That and a liberal dose of IPA lager.
Well , i am sorta a knee slapper. That's a promotion from what some people call me.
jim
Its time to actually start listening to the voices that warned of the impending collapse of our society. People on both the 'Left' and 'Right' have been warning for a while about the dangers we are now facing. Ben Bernanke's QE2 is going to eat regular American's for breakfast with inflation that will eventually reach a tipping point into hyperinflation.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-ben-bernanke-sentenced-poorest-20-population-cold-hungry-winter
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/10/25/20101025USDA:-Food-inflation-to-accelerate-into-2011.html
The simple fact is that we are broke and The Federal Reserve is now monetizing our debt. This is what Weimar Germany did in the 1920s and Zimbabwe did in the 00's. There are both Republicans (yes, I do not lie) and Democrats in Washington that want to shut Ben Bernanke down. There are a handful incoming that will attempt to fill the gaps where we lost allies (I didn't like Alan Grayson ramming healthcare down my throat, but I wholeheartedly applauded and cheered his co-sponsoring Ron Paul's HR1207 Fed Audit and his own The War is making you Poor Act).
Listening to assclowns like Paul Krugman and the other Keynesian jackasses is going to ensure systemic financial collapse. This is not hyperbole. Its time to stop feeding the beast. If the government extends the Debt Ceiling its all over. We've GOT to cut military spending and, sorry, but Entitlement Spending HAS to be on the table as well. There is no reason to have a Federal Department of Education (people wonder why our schools are awful need only to realize its because of Federal intervention). The answer is NOT to throw more money at the problem. If anything about 'Rebuilding Iraq' teaches, more money just leads to substandard results and lots of graft.
[NOTE: I have taken the liberty of publishing this comment anon., as it was removed by its author. It is so powerful and accurate that it needs to be posted. Esp. for it's last line, which is the sustaining mantra of every Ayn Randian Objectivist/economic anarchist out there: They want the entitlements gone,
"because the truly rich are allowed to garner wealth and power without limit"
Everyone likes to think they'll be in that number.
_______________
The post:
And just like the Fairy Queen in pantomime, here's Rushbo (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/rushing-to-repeal.html) telling people how HORRIBLE it is that terrible guv'mint has forced your your insurance company not to just let you go fuck yourself if you really NEED health care because you are already sick. Because everyone knows that you can just go to the emergency room, right?
These people are fucking nuts, jim. There's a hell of a lot of them that really WANT to go back to 1928, when 25% of the American public lived and died in real, serious, crushing, too-poor-to-have-a-pot-to-piss-in poverty, when getting sick meant dying in a ditch, when your company got to make you live in a shithouse shack and forced you to buy your food at the company store. That's where they're coming from. And that's where we're going, if they can make it happen.
Christ I despise the Defeatocrats, running like scared bitches from the great popular traditions of that old liberal autocrat FDR. But even they aren't batshit Gilded Age crazy like the GOP.
And that's even without their insane need to gin up the 15th Crusade with the entire fucking Muslim world.
The problem I have with the American people is that, like the whiny titty-babies they are, like the stupid teens in a slasher flick, they ignore the obvious signs of what will be in their own best interest and demand to go into the woods where the GOP tells them they will all be rich and happy...because the truly rich are allowed to garner wealth and power without limit.
yep, I second that anon. post you resurrected, Lisa.
Too bad your state lost Grayson. He says the nearly the same thing your commenter had to say about "Defeatocrats".
http://tinyurl.com/2885vzd
bb
"Everyone likes to think they'll be in that number."
_______________Well, I allready know i ain't in that number, or this 1 .I'm allready on the wrong side of that equation. And, i ain't going to be on the right side of it any time soon.('with words they try to jail you", sting/the Police.) (Sorry, ayn rand won't capture it,or simplify it for you.) RE. the ressurected anon. comment, allthough the sentiment is well meaning, the analysis is flawed & emotional.
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