Neoconservatism

[Russell Nash]

But I don’t want to be told I am somehow bigoted, racist, “homophobic,” misogynistic, environmentally fatalistic, and a member of the Christian Right solely because I happen to be a white male conservative Republican.

Pat,

Reading your opinions, I think your mislabeling yourself.  You seem conservative on the whole, but not conservative with respect to the party.  Just like most everybody else you seem like you're really in the middle.  A moderate conservative, a moderate Republican.  As such I'm sure if you laid out all of the issues, you'd find yourself on different sides depending on the topic.

I swing wildly in my political beliefs.  Fiscally, I'm an Eisenhower Republican, Pay down the debt as quickly as possible.  This is why I liked Clinton.  Education, I'm a radical liberal, massive resources for every student.  Clinton tried but didn't get enough here.  On Iraq, I've had the same opinion for almost four years and only one politician shared my ideas.  He had to start his presidential campaign by calling one of the other candidates "clean", so I think we can forget about his chances of bringing his idea to the front of the conversation.

[FNH]

That said democracy is about subjugating the minority's to majority opinion so I have no problems with religious groups or non religious groups enacting their democratic rights.

Does that mean it's OK to try to get there religious beliefs turned into law even when the majority do not belong to that religion?

Yes.  Thats democratic process.  In terms of democracy it's no differn't to any other "group" trying to get thier wants and desires into law.

[FNH]

While Clinton's impeachment trial was about purgory, that he was questioned under oath about an affair is ridiculous.  It shouldn't have been anyone's business except his, his wife's and the party(ies) he had an affair with. 

I disagree so strongly that that reading your post hurt my eyes.  The position of responsibility that man was in means that I want only the most honest and scrupelous of people.  I want someone I can trust.  If a man has an afair behind his wifes back he is not trustworthy.  A man who lies to his wife, would not think twice before lying to the public.  His "outing" proved that he was untrustworthy, and unfit to hold the position he was in.

Now someone out there is going to say, "They are all he same, so it does not matter".  You are wrong, they will only get away with it if "you" let your standards slide.

[lowky]

While Clinton's impeachment trial was about purgory, that he was questioned under oath about an affair is ridiculous.  It shouldn't have been anyone's business except his, his wife's and the party(ies) he had an affair with. 

I disagree so strongly that that reading your post hurt my eyes.  The position of responsibility that man was in means that I want only the most honest and scrupelous of people.  I want someone I can trust.  If a man has an afair behind his wifes back he is not trustworthy.  A man who lies to his wife, would not think twice before lying to the public.  His "outing" proved that he was untrustworthy, and unfit to hold the position he was in.

Now someone out there is going to say, "They are all he same, so it does not matter".  You are wrong, they will only get away with it if "you" let your standards slide.

It's not a matter of letting standards slide so much as journalism has become gossip as news, whereas in the past peoples privacy was respected.  It is widely known that Kennedy had affairs, as have many other presidents.  It's just wasn't made into sensational news.  I am not saying it's right for Clinton to have had an affair, I am saying it's nobody's business.

[ClintMemo]

Remember that voting is not a short answer essay question; it's a multiple choice question - pick the best answer from the ones provided.

Given a choice between candidate a) who lied about having an extra-marital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter and candidate b) whose lies have led to the deaths of 655,000 foreign civilians, which one do you vote for?

(Note: answer c) "none of the above" is not an option)

[SFEley]

Given a choice between candidate a) who lied about having an extra-marital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter and candidate b) whose lies have led to the deaths of 655,000 foreign civilians, which one do you vote for?

(Note: answer c) "none of the above" is not an option)

"None of the above" is indeed an option, because the choice has never been between George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  Further, both the events you cite happened after those presidents were already in office, and the shit really hit the fans in their second terms.  You can't find out about these things and then go back in time and change your vote.

What can you do?  Only try to predict what somebody might do in office, and the American voter is totally unequipped for that.  You're right that it's a multiple choice test, but it's a test with bad information; what real data you can find about the candidates has been massaged by their own side and mangled by the other side so that it says anything but who those people really are. 

[Swamp]

"None of the above" is indeed an option, because the choice has never been between George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  Further, both the events you cite happened after those presidents were already in office, and the shit really hit the fans in their second terms.  You can't find out about these things and then go back in time and change your vote.

Well said.

[wakela]

Candidates talk a lot, but they don't seem to write very much (until their term is over).  What I would like to see (and maybe it's out there and I just don't know about it) is media outlets submitting questionnaires to the candidates.  Unlike speeches, it would be much easier to assess their opinions and goals if they are printed and if the candidate doesn't decide the topic.  Unlike interviews, it would be more obvious when they avoid the question.  "What do I think about the economy?  Well, the economy depends on the situation in Iraq, and let me tell you about the mistakes my opponent made there." They can give long, rambling, vague answers and run the risk of frustrating readers.  Their answers would be scrutinized by the blogosphere and lies and inconsistencies will be found.  The New York Time's questions would have a liberal slant, and Fox's would have a conservative slant. 

Unlike a lot of wouldn't-it-be-nice politics ideas, this one seems pretty easy to implement.  Newspapers, or even bloggers, just have to start sending in questions.   It's fine if the candidate is too busy to reply, but that is a reply in itself, isn't it. 

[wakela]

Given a choice between candidate a) who lied about having an extra-marital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter and candidate b) whose lies have led to the deaths of 655,000 foreign civilians, which one do you vote for?

Does anyone have a link to Bush actually lying?

[SFEley]

Candidates talk a lot, but they don't seem to write very much (until their term is over).  What I would like to see (and maybe it's out there and I just don't know about it) is media outlets submitting questionnaires to the candidates.  Unlike speeches, it would be much easier to assess their opinions and goals if they are printed and if the candidate doesn't decide the topic.

Many newspapers do this, and the League of Women Voters does this for candidates for most national, state and local positions every election.  I always go there just prior to election day to see if the candidates have responded and what they've said.

And yes, it is pretty easy to see who's evading the questions, and I cast my vote accordingly.

[lowky]

Candidates talk a lot, but they don't seem to write very much (until their term is over).  What I would like to see (and maybe it's out there and I just don't know about it) is media outlets submitting questionnaires to the candidates.  Unlike speeches, it would be much easier to assess their opinions and goals if they are printed and if the candidate doesn't decide the topic.  Unlike interviews, it would be more obvious when they avoid the question.  "What do I think about the economy?  Well, the economy depends on the situation in Iraq, and let me tell you about the mistakes my opponent made there." They can give long, rambling, vague answers and run the risk of frustrating readers.  Their answers would be scrutinized by the blogosphere and lies and inconsistencies will be found.  The New York Time's questions would have a liberal slant, and Fox's would have a conservative slant. 

Unlike a lot of wouldn't-it-be-nice politics ideas, this one seems pretty easy to implement.  Newspapers, or even bloggers, just have to start sending in questions.   It's fine if the candidate is too busy to reply, but that is a reply in itself, isn't it. 

http://votesmart.org/index.htm

[ClintMemo]

"None of the above" is indeed an option, because the choice has never been between George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. 

I was merely pointing out who is obviously worse - obvious to me anyway.

Voting is often described as picking the "lesser of two evils."  One of my coworkers called it the "evil of two lessers."

[Russell Nash]

If a man has an afair behind his wifes back he is not trustworthy.  A man who lies to his wife, would not think twice before lying to the public.  His "outing" proved that he was untrustworthy, and unfit to hold the position he was in.

According to a book written by (I believe) the head of the American History dept. at American University in D.C., the following presidents should have been removed from office using your criteria:

George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
James Garfield
Chester A. Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William H. Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton

This is only for "activity" while in office. Only Carter and Bush II haven't been caught. Oh yeah and the guy who died within forty days.

I always wondered how this could be and I came up with an idea. The same ego and charisma it takes to be president is also found in many serial filanderers(sp?).

[Russell Nash]

The wrongful firing of people because they disagreed with current administration, the "outing" of an undercover CIA agent,

Talk about your red herring issues. 

The first issue is a political fact of any administration for the types of jobs in question--presidential appointees.  Nobody complained when Rumsfeld was "fired".

Wow, this shows a total lack of understanding of how the system works.

The procedure is:
1)The president submits names to the Senate Judicial commitee
2)The commitee investigates the Nominations and makes recommendations.
3)The full Senate votes on each nomination.

This gives the parties the power to slant the views of the Prosecutors, but doesn't allow party hitmen to get through. If one of the attorneys then went out and only prosecuted according to party lines, he'd never get through the approval process again. Once the prosecutors are in place they are protected by law from political interference. It is illegal for any politician to ask them to do something.

What happened here is that eight prosecutors were removed for either prosecuting Republicans (Randy Cunningham) or for not prosecuting Democrats.  Then they were replaced using a new part of the "Patriot Act" that says in an emergency the president can appoint a replacement for a federal prosecutor without Senate approval.

First point, it's illegal to replace the Prosecutor just because you don't like who he's prosecuting.

Second point, just because you remove a guy doesn't make it an emergency replacement.

Third point, If there was nothing wrong with it, why didn't they just announce one day, "we're replacing eight US prosecutors today"?

[ClintMemo]

Second point, just because you remove a guy doesn't make it an emergency replacement.

This president seems to have an ever-relaxing view of what constitutes an emergency.

[Russell Nash]

Intelligent Design:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201686.html
Bush said that he was in favor of both ID and Evolution being taught, but that it was up to the school districts, not the federal government to decide.  Basically he was asked what he thought of the issue, gave an honest answer, and then said it wasn't up to him, anyway.  Also, the judge that rejected the teaching of ID in public schools in Pennsylvania was a Bush appointee.

This was all he said, but the thing is that's all the ID people want. They want the right to teach this junk in a science class and then they hope that the science teachers or school principals will push it more than evolution.

However, ID IS NOT SCIENCE. That anyone could consider this crap was arrived at by any scientific process, proves that science isn't being taught properly in the schools. This idea (religious pipedream) hasn't been put through any of the scientific process. There is no data. There is no testing of the hypothesis. On a professional level they never published a real paper in a scientific journal to be peer reviewed.

It is ridiculous that this arguement has gotten anywhere. I blame this largely on the mainstream press. They always have one pro and one con person. It lets everyone think that it's an open issue. They never say over 99% of all geological, biological, and evolutionary scientists believe ID is garbage.

The rest of the educated world laughs their ass of at this whole discussion. Whenever I make a comment about Germany being backwards, one of my friends just says, "you Americans want to teach ID." Arguement over. I lost.

[Russell Nash]

Given a choice between candidate a) who lied about having an extra-marital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter and candidate b) whose lies have led to the deaths of 655,000 foreign civilians, which one do you vote for?

Does anyone have a link to Bush actually lying?

Do I have to link in everything from the yellow cake uranium from Niger?

[ClintMemo]

Given a choice between candidate a) who lied about having an extra-marital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter and candidate b) whose lies have led to the deaths of 655,000 foreign civilians, which one do you vote for?

Does anyone have a link to Bush actually lying?

Do I have to link in everything from the yellow cake uranium from Niger?

Presidentially, I think he started with saying something like "I don't think America should be involved in nation building"  sometime in 1998.

[SFEley]

Does anyone have a link to Bush actually lying?

Do I have to link in everything from the yellow cake uranium from Niger?

Actually, I'm with Wakela on this.  Calling that a straight-out deliberate lie may be a stretch.  Who knew what and when, and what conclusions may have been jumped to from what amounts of data, is still a horrendously complicated issue.

Calling it a monumental fuck-up, on the other hand...  Now that's simpler and a lot more defensible.

[FNH]

According to a book written by (I believe) the head of the American History dept. at American University in D.C., the following presidents should have been removed from office using your criteria:

George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
James Garfield
Chester A. Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William H. Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton

This is only for "activity" while in office. Only Carter and Bush II haven't been caught. Oh yeah and the guy who died within forty days.

I always wondered how this could be and I came up with an idea. The same ego and charisma it takes to be president is also found in many serial filanderers(sp?).

Your right about the ego thing.  I was upset to see Teddy in the list. If it was up to me, I'd put them all through lie detectors in front of the public and ask pointed questions before the vote.  Lets get the real deal.

[Heradel]

Your right about the ego thing.  I was upset to see Teddy in the list. If it was up to me, I'd put them all through lie detectors in front of the public and ask pointed questions before the vote.  Lets get the real deal.

Well, the ask pointed questions bit is supposed to be taken up with the presidential debates. The problem with this is that they haven't really had a structure to the debates that allows for a real argument over ideas and ideals.

As to the questionnaires, odds are the candidate only really checks off on answers written by the speechwriting staff and interns. While I wouldn't say they are inaccurate representations of the candidates views, most candidates don't have time, especially in the final months, to put a pen to paper.

[SFEley]

Your right about the ego thing.  I was upset to see Teddy in the list. If it was up to me, I'd put them all through lie detectors in front of the public and ask pointed questions before the vote.  Lets get the real deal.

You won't find the "real deal."  The "real deal" is unelectable.  In a world where the "real deal" counted for something, we'd be talking about Will Rogers's presidential legacy.

I used to worry about character too, but by now I'm jaded enough that I think it's much more realistic to simply assume that our leaders are going to lie to us, forget about character, and worry about competence.  You can still be a scoundrel and be competent and take the country in a good direction.

Jimmy Carter was an honest man and a lousy president.  Clinton was a dishonest man and a pretty good president.  I don't particularly care whether Bush lied; that he's horribly incompetent and his priorities are utterly out of whack with reality bothers me more.

I do not align myself with a political party.  I'll vote in 2008 for whomever seems less likely to make this train wreck worse.

[lowky]

I do not align myself with a political party.  I'll vote in 2008 for whomever seems less likely to make this train wreck worse.

Eley in 2008, Promises not to derail us further!

[Swamp]

Eley in 2008, Promises not to derail us further!

LOL.  I can see the bumper sticker:  Eley '08 - HAVE FUN!  With a slogan like that, you never know.

[SFEley]

Eley in 2008, Promises not to derail us further!

Heh.  Thanks, but I'll only be 34 next year, and therefore constitutionally ineligible.  Write in Ze Frank instead.  >8->