Mickey

With regret, I disagree. I think there will just be a continuing contest to see who can move the furthest to the right. Politicians see that it works. The next guy will make Bush look like a flaming liberal. You can never wave the flag too much or proclaim your faith in God too much. There is always someone willing to be even more patriotic, even holier than the last guy. I have asked a couple times here how far would be too far to the right and have recieved very few answers. Where is the evidence that there are those on the right that have a line beyond which they will not go? When Bob Jones wrote a letter to the President talking about pagans who hate Christ, where was the reasonable right to tell him to, in Cheney like fashion, go eff yourself? Nothing, nada, zip. Specter, creepy though he is, is what passes for a moderate Republican these days. He was just publicly castrated and I heard not a peep from the reasonable right which apparently was struck dumb, trembling in the shadows and just glad it was happening to someone else. There is no physical law which demands that a swing too far to one side demands an eventual return the other way. This is politics, not a pendulum. Power begets more power.

So is Zel Miller, your point? All I am doing is taking her at her own words. She says she is pro-choice, she says she wants gays to be married yet she voted for the guy who wants to end choice and keep gays from getting married, even if he has to amend the Constitution to do it. I think voting for someone who you freely admit does not reflect the vast majority of your views is stupid. Her entire letter was an attempt to explain that somehow, despite all appearances to the contrary, that made sense. I don't agree. I find her explanations and excuses to be self contradictory and naive. Take the allies thing, we at least seem to agree that having allies is better than not having them. You say we had as many nations as we did in the Gulf War, she didn't. I don't know if 2 interpreters from Swaziland replaces a few thousand troops but if that is your measure of an ally, fine. When it comes to combat troops it was us, us, us, us and a the British. Was that the case in the Gulf War? I think that comparison is laughable but she didn't even manage that. Instead, her argument was some smart alek comment about what she learned in High School. If she thinks we did enough to get allies fine, that would be an educated opinion but it sounds to me that she just swallowed the Bush BS about "handing over our foreign policy to France". We will just have to disagree about Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest. You haven't had the pleasure of being called a baby killing, cowardly, immoral, unAmerican, femminazi loving, tree hugging, commie sodomite by them every day for the last 12 years or so. Live through a decade or so of dehumanizing deligitimizing rhetoric like that and come to me crying like a baby girl about the terrible Bush bashing that went on for all of 3 months. Boo-freaking-hoo. Maybe you didn't read Bob Jone's letter to Bush about the pagans who hate Christ? Maybe you missed Falwell saying that the 9/11 attacks were God's punishment of America for its indulgence of homosexuals? Perhaps you don't recall Limbaugh telling the NAACP to "get a liquor store and practice robberies" or when he called Chelsea the "White House dog"? Were you not around when Savage called asians "little soy eaters" or told a caller "you should only get Aids and die, you pervert." Tell me again about the left being vitriolic.

Well to be fair they did toss in a "liberal" helping of "family values, family values and family values" along with "flip-flopper, flip-floppr, flip-flopper" to name just a few choice morsels.

And I pointed out no less than ten different issues in which the democrats reflected exactly her views. It didn't matter to her. In your hurry to agree with her, you are not exactly using a critical eye for anything she says. Maybe if you read her post as closely as you read mine, you might see some of the contradictions which are so obvious I can't believe you are missing them. I can only conclude that you are just ignoring them as they might get in the way of your already made up mind. Her 6th and 7th point for instance complain about Bush haters and post election anger at the red states. Where is the balance? If this upsets her, then why was the same and even worse from Bob Jones, Dobson, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Schlesinger etc, etc, etc, etc, etc not enough to keep her from voting for the party she whose platform she says she rejects almost in total? That doesn't seem to you to be at all inconsistent? Tell me, since I don't get it and you do, why this is not inconsistent? Her 4th point, well Kerry said over and over and over and over that he wouldn't put our national security in the hands of any other nation. Not good enough for her. What was he supposed to do? Slice his palm with a switchblade and swear a blood oath? You don't see her comment that she learned in "high school" that you don't put stock in what other people think to be just a tiny bit dismissive and naive? Kerry wasn't talking about smoking a joint because your friends are, he was talking about having allies in a wartime effort. Any fool who has even a vague understanding of military history understands that all things considered, it is better to have allies than to not have allies. She is worried about taxing the rich yet she thinks all those programs that helped her poor friends were worthwhile. Again, you don't see an inconsistency there? She isn't explaining her vote to us, she is explaining it to herself so she doesn't have to take responsibility for the consequences of her vote, the election of a President and a party with which she entirely disagrees. I agree with her on one thing, that kind of sophistry really does need explaining. I can see why she felt the need to draft an open letter explaining why, although it looks on the surface that she is an idiot who voted against he own views, it is really the fault of the democrats for not finding a way to appeal to her contradictions. See, Bush isn't her fault and if Roe gets overturned and all this other stuff she does not want to see happen happens, these "dumbest ideas ever", it aint her fault now is it? She needs to take some personal responsibility, she voted for Bush, fair and square. I can live with it. So should she instead of rationalizing it and discovering that surprise, surprise, turns out it isn't her fault after all. She is no snake handling evangelical. She just votes like one so pardon me if I don't really care that deep down there is a difference. She is like all these "moderate republicans" who are pro-choice, against banning gay marriage and support separation between church and state. Who cares if they are or are not? Those are not issues important enough to them to effect their voting so who cares if they are pro-choice or not? Who cares if they are gay lovers or gay bashers? The result is the same.

Shocked I am. Shocked I tell you.

People who abuse their freedom should be killed. Can we start with people who abuse their freedom of worship by shoving their fairy tales down our throats? That would be so kewl. Seriously, JFK was my boyhood hero and this thing makes be simply sick. Problem is, you just can't draw a law sharp enough to keep the good irreverent parody and black humor and get rid of the bad. The lines are too fine on the margins. The best thing to do is denounce it and all who would buy it. Make it not cool to have the game and no one will want it. Besides, isn't that the problem, not that there are idiots who would make such a game but that there are idiots who would buy it?

Silly me, I thought the President supported him because he thought he was the best man for the job, I didn't realize it was in exchange for some favors on the Judiciary Committee. I didn't realize that in exchange for that support he sold his judgment as to as yet unknown nominees. Thanks for straightening that out.

Lets see, to get her vote, all we have to do is fund those welfare programs she likes that kept her starving friends alive. Wait a second, we did. Oh, I see, we taxed the rich to do it and she doesn't like that. Maybe in her next letter she will tell us how to pay for those programs. We also have to be pro-choice and pro civil unions. Wait a second, we were. We have to be against privatizing social security. Wait a second, we are. We have to be for a higher minimum wage. Wait a second, we are. We have to be against flat taxes and a fed. sales tax. Wait a second, we are. We have to be pro-union. Wait a second, we are. We have to be strong on protecting the environment. Wait a second, we are. We have to be for separation between church and state. Wait a second, we are. We have to be for rolling back the excesses of the Pat. Act. Wait a second, we are. Oh wait, people were rough on the President unlike the kid gloves treatment oh so gentlemanly conduct of the Republican party. Ann Coulter writes a book accusing every democrat in the nation of treason and it is the left that is disrespectful. John Ashcroft accused everyone who thought maybe the Patriot Act went further than necessary of sympathizing with terrorists and it is the left that is vitriolic? Perhaps she is the one person in the world who has not heard of hate spewed by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones, Dobson, Coulter, Hannity, Liddy or Schlesinger over the last 12 years or so. Yeah, the left finally fought back and started to give as good as its taken, shame on them. We should just do what Bush did to get her vote. Take the exact opposite of every position she holds, eschew her every value, smile a lot, wave some flags and repeat 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. That ought to do it.

Which "left wing" view would it be that she "rejected"? She is pro-choice and thinks gays should be able to get married. She even goes on about how welfare saved the lives of her friends as they would have starved. Of course, she is also against taxing the rich to pay for the food her friends ate, maybe we should tax the poor instead? Her views, as she states them herself, are blatantly contradictory.

"party rules"? aaahhhh comrade Richio, Stalin would be proud of you. Now Specter knows to be a good little apparatchik if he wants to enjoy weekends frolicking at the Party dascha.

I wish I could e-mail the woman who posted that letter which seems more and more idiotic everytime I read it. She is pro choice and for gay marriage and yet voted essentially to over turn Roe v. Wade and ban gay marriage. Why? Because she was upset about the constant drum beat of Kerry's Viet Nam service. Hmmmm.......However, she didn't seem to care about the constant drum beat of 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 of the right. She was upset by all the "I hate Bush" stuff yet the swifties and flip-flopper attacks that dominated the conservative air waves for 3 months didn't seem to phase her. She thinks privatizing social security and elimenating the income tax are two of the dumbest ideas she has ever heard yet, she voted for the guy whose mission it is to make those ideas a reality. Why? Because she found Kerry's positons confusing. Ummm, okay. She had "confusing" on one side and "dumbest ideas ever" on the other and she opted for "dumbest ideas ever". She has wept at the sight of innocent Iraqis killed in this war by bombs built with her tax dollars but, so what? She still thinks it was the right thing to do. She doesn't agree with Kerry's interest in allies because she learned in school that other peoples opinons don't matter. Apparently she slept through history class and never learned the value of allies in war from the Revolutionary War where the help of France was the deciding factor and the Civil War where the lack of allies billsfanone the South. She voted for Bush because he has clearly defined values even though they are values with which she does not agree. Pleeez. Sounds like a guilty conscience looking to rationalize having voted for a whole mess of things she is against. When Roe v. Wade is overturned I guess she will blame Kerry for that because he was a Viet Nam vet.

You apparently never saw Tony Greene, Robert James or Nate Odomes play?

Four division winners go and two wild cards. The Division leaders in the AFC are NE, Pitt, Den and Indy. The wild card contestants that are ahead of the Bills right now are SD 7-3, Balt 7-3, Jets 7-3 and J'ville at 6-4. At 4-6, it looks near impossible but, looking at the schedules, it is not as bad as it would seem. SD's remaining opponents are a combined 34-31, J'ville's are 32-28, Balt's are 34-25 and the Jets' are 36-23. Buffalo's are only 24-36 and that is with the Steelers at 9-1. Take them away and our remaining opponents are a pathetic 15-35. We get the Steelers at home on the last game of the season. There is a chance that they will have locked in home field advantage by then so they could be resting their starters. Even if they aren't, if we we're lucky enough to be playing at home on the last game of the year with a shot at a playoff birth, I'd like our chances. The Ravens have games left against Indy, Pitt and NE on the road. Those teams are a combined 24-5 and have only lost one game at home all year. J'Ville has tough games left at Minn and GB. They also have to play Pitt at home. The Jets have Pitt on the road, NE at home, Seattle and St. Louis. San Diego has games against Denver and Indy as well as always tough Tampa. By contrast, the only teams with winning records we play are Seattle and Pitt. If we can pull off a road win against Seattle, things really get interesting. Just for starters, figure that J'ville loses next week to Minn on the road and Balt loses to NE also on the road and we pull off a win in Seattle. That puts us at 5-6, J'Ville at 6-5 and Balt at 7-4 (with road games ahead at Pitt and at Indy). If we win the following week at Miami (1-9) and J'Ville loses to the Steelers which isn't hard to imagine, we will be at 6-6, tied with J'ville. That isn't at all impossible and at that point J'ville would still have an away date with the Packers. We don't have to beat out all 4 of those teams, just 3 of them. Yeah, it is one huge long, long shot but as the saying goes, we 'aint out of it yet.

He has been groveling for days trying to hang on to his precious Chairmanship. It was embarassing to watch. I think the metaphor fits. Some links: Specter pledges loyalty :"Is it ironic that judicial nominees may not speculate at their confirmation hearings about how they will vote in future cases, but the chairman of the Judiciary Committee himself cannot be seated until he's pledged in advance to confirm those unknown nominees?" Also, Specter Pledge Would you consider this Specter's finest moment or a shining example of his independence? You would have to be pretty partisan to see this as anything other than the public shaming of a Senator by powerful special interest groups from outside of his own state. Would a Senate where the members have pledges regarding their future votes rammed down their throats be closer to or further away from becoming a set of executive rubber stampers? Power doesn't corrupt all in one day, it does it one formerly independent legislator at a time. As for my Dad, Kerry is the first Democrat he has voted for since Kennedy.

Specter signed a fealty oath basically promising to approve whatever person the President should nominate for the Supreme Court in exchange for remaining the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Essentially, he sold his vote in advance and not just one but all future votes on Bush nominees without even knowing who they might be. Bush could nominate Lance Ito and Specter is already pledged to support "any idividual President Bush finds worthy of nomination." Specter's testicles, now being preserved in a pickle jar, will be on diplay at the offices of the Family Research Council as part of their "Death to the Independent Judiciary" display on public view until Christmas.

That is certainly true but they were the ones who passed the rule to demonstrate their moral superiority. They set the standard, they oughta stick to it. This way, they get the benefit of strutting their holier than thou stuff and now get to jettison their "high falutin" ways now that it is no longer convenient. You can't reclaim lost virginity.

You are probably thinking about Prof. Henry Brady, a Pol. Sci. professor at Berk. There was a different flap over the votes Bush received in certain counties in comparison to the number of registered Republicans. Typically only around 14% of democrats voted for Bush in Florida so if you add that to the registered republicans in a county, you should get something close to his actual total but in fact, he has much larger numbers. Brady, along with some other academics from Howard and Cornell showed that there was in fact no hanky panky suggested by that data. The study that started this thread however is an entirely different analysis which hasn't, at least in my little corner of the media stream, been vetted by many experts yet. It would be easy to confuse the stuff Brady debunked with this new allegation which has yet to be verified or trashed. Well, at least not so I have noticed. The weekend is young yet.

It doesn't result in any reductions, they just borrow the money. Now, if they had to pay for it, if they couldn't borrow the money, they would have to raise taxes through the roof and then people would sure sit up and take notice. Then they might demand reductions, even in programs that benefit them. Why should they if they can have the programs and the tax cuts at the same time? Get rid of the borrowing and then people would be forced into making the responsible choice of paying for what they take or doing without. ...or, you could just raise the debt ceiling and continue the fantasy of lower taxes without lower spending through the magic of borrowing.

That is the type of "can't do" attitude that Americans are known for.

It was all over the news yesterday. They even had some fun with it on the Daily Show last night. Their defense is that with that rule still there, any DA in any county in the nation could force a congressional leader to step down just by filing an indictment. Thing is, a DA can't just file indictments on a whim, he has to go before a Grand Jury, show them what evidence he has and see if they will return an indictment. Further, their objection in this regard was just as applicable as it was when they passed it as a way to show how much more moral and responsible they were as compared to the democrats when it was the democrats that had leaders under indictment. Now that it is their head on the block, suddenly the rule doesn't seem so smart. You can't hardly beat this one for the most blatant act of hypocrisy in Washington lately. Gee, do you think it was just a coinkydink that this little bit of corruption didn't get done until after the election?

AD, there is probably not a single issue where our views are any closer than this one. If that is not an indication that this crap really is out of control, I don't know what is. I don't blame the politicians strictly on this. The American voter is the real drunken sailor here. Just try and cut the "reward my constituents with pork" program in Congressman Pig's district and watch those constituents raise holy hell. Typical mentality: Pork=any program of the government that fills the pockets of the other guy. Vital National Security Program=Any program that fills my pockets.

Greenspan's comments regarding the deficit are both sobering and long overdue. I hope the Republicans are listening but I am not confident. We basically finance the deficit by selling T-bills to large institutional foreign investors. That helps keep the dollar strong against other currencies which helps those nations keep their exports high, primarily China and Japan. A sinking dollar would make their goods being sold here more expensive. The problem is that they can't do that forever, especially with our deficit getting worse and worse and worse. At some point they will stop buying those notes unless they are offered with a higher rate of return which means higher interest rates all around. That, of course, means less capital available for financing everything from a new home to a new factory. Further, that increases the part of our deficit that is essentially interest payments. It is the samething that happens when you minimum monthly payment on your interest card goes up, it costs you more to carry almost the same debt. The whole mess can spiral. A slower economy due to tighter capital markets produces less tax revenue leading to a higher deficit requiring more borrowing to keep it afloat leading to an even tighter capital market. And so on. The only way to fix this is to lower the deficit and that can only be done two ways: A) muster the political discipline to raise taxes and lower spending or B) a visit from the prosperity fairy, ie, an economy so prosperous that the increased tax revenue generated creates a surplus or close to it. Some articles: Fed Reserve Gov. Ed Gamlich on the Deficit Greenspan on the Deficit Gamlich says the way out is "fiscal austerity" for the United States. I don't see it happening. Politically, this is up to the President to deal with. He has another 4 years, majorities in the Senate and House and a pocketful of political capital. He needs to get it done, no excuses. I don't expect any President to waive an economic wand and fix global economies the world over with nothing more than a "bippity-boppity-boo". However, what can be done must be done. Some sort of demonstration of political discipline would go a long way towards calming the growing fears over our deficit. Greenspan, not known for hyperbole, is right, the situation is growing "increasingly less tenable".

It brings a tear to my eye, *sniff*, every time.

Whether Kwanzaa is silly or not is not for me or Ann to judge. By the same token, whether or not Christmas is silly is not really for non-christians to pass judgment on. We have a right to whoop it up if we want and so do those who think Kwanzaa is the best. Mocking them for what they believe is just as bad as mocking us for what we believe. Free speech is free speech so people like Coulter have the right to be creeps but there is no need for the rest of us to pile on. I don't care if Kwanzaa was invented by the NAACP, I respect other peoples beliefs even in public even if I think they are pretty silly in private.

Pearls before swine, my friend, pearls before swine.