Vote for Hillary or Obama. If a left wing socialist in the White House next year is guaranteed (as appears likely with McCain the presumptive Republican nominee. details upon request.) it’s better that person is one you can wash your hands of, so when the inevitable shit hits the fan you will be well-positioned in 2012. Think: “fresh start” and “vote for change”.
George W. Bush has been a Trojan Horse disaster for the party. You wanted him, now it’s time to take your bitter medicine to rid your party of his viral infection. The people are crying out for the purifying acid bath of an anti-W. Let them have it. The country needs to be brought to its knees before it can rise up again. Electoralshock treatment.
To those Republicans who still understand what the party stands for and are considering voting for McCain: If you have to sacrifice 100% of your principles in order to win, you have already lost.
Hillary the Harridan 2008!
The oft-repeated argument to the contrary is that the President picks Judges. McCain, of course, had nullified that last argument for holding your nose & voting for him when he declared Alito “too conservative.”
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To continue supporting Roissy’s argument, I’ll add that the Clinton years were a net positive for the conservative cause when compared with the GWB years.
The former gave us 1993 HillaryCare –> 1995 Welfare Reform.
The latter gave us dishonor and ruin.
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Cool quote of the day. It kind of fits, doesn’t it?
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.” – Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 – 1778)
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Does anyone actually believe that this country hasn’t ALREADY been brought to its knees, and that a democratic victory would be part of the rise back to normalcy, if not greatness?
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Have you seen the Democratic Party? Not capable of normalcy OR greatness far as I’m concerned. Not saying Republicans are great or anything right now thanks to the watered down conservatism that is compassionate conservatism, but Democrats are just lowest common denominator panderers right now, not a path to greatness.
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As PA said, Judges.
Whether you were a Dem who hated Clinton in 1992 or Repub who hated Bush (in 2000, or ’04 or McCain in ’08), you basically never switch for Presidential Elections.
I believe there are two judges who have been waiting to retire in hopes that a Dem will be elected in ’08: Ginsburg and Stevens.
Also, whoever gets elected in 2008 has a fairly good chance at getting re-elected in 2012 and two more Liberals (if you are a Repub) are likely to retire in that period: Souter and Breyer.
Or, if you are a Dem then there are two likely retirees from the Conservative side: Scalia and Kennedy.
So, there is an enormous amount at stake.
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Usually Lurking: the rest of my point was that McCain can’t be relied upon to nominate conservative judges.
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Oddly I wouldn’t mind a good Republican in the white house this time around. They got us into the mess so they should be the ones to get us out. McCain is great except for his stance on the war. That is what is going to cost him the election, not his political party affiliation.
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A good politician may not have been born yet.
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McCain is great except on the war? Are you on drugs?
He sponsored a bill to give 20 million illegal aliens a path to citizenship. He is a vindictive, mean man, just look at his campaign against Romney. On judges, the man who fought against Republicans more than he fought against Democrats will be about as bad as Hillary or Obama. Trust me. I’m rooting for him to lose, and Republicans can find their voice while Obama (hopefully) is President. Definitely with Roissy.
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Funny that. The hardcore conservatives hate McCain about as much as the hardcore liberals hate Hillary.
They got us into the mess so they should be the ones to get us out.
That’s an incredibly naive assumption. Fascism will not be stopped by reelecting a party member so close to the Bush family. The use of the term fascism is not an overstatement. Its definition:
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, autocracy and opposition to political and economic liberalism.
In other news, the USD continues its path on a downward spiral.
Quick trip down history lane. Towards the end of the 3rd century AD, not long before the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Roman currency experienced inflation and became devalued by about 50%.
Today it is not Christianity but a god of materialism that bred this indifference. Mass media entertainment and commercialism have made men docile. Feminine men vis-a-vis feminism — stronger women should logically result in stronger men (e.g. overly feminine women in Asia being weak resulting in weak Asian men vs. strong-willed European women resulting in stronger European men), not weaker ones.
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“Usually Lurking: the rest of my point was that McCain can’t be relied upon to nominate conservative judges.”
I understand. My point was, if you are a Conservative who dislikes, or possibly even hates, John McCain, you still need to ask yourself:
Who will I hate more, the Clinton/Obama Left-Wing Appointees or the McCain Appointees?
I think that most Repubs will roll the dice with McCain.
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Civic virtue – the glue that holds societies together. This is exactly why this new pro-racism movement flooding the internet is the last thing we need. What good do you think emphasizing our differences will do?
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11 Hope
” stronger women should logically result in stronger men”
That’s a cool concept! Know where I can find a strong man? 😀
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What good do you think emphasizing our differences will do?
Thinking is a good first step.
A divided enemy is a weaker enemy. Instigating dissension is classic warfare strategy.
“Racism was artificially created in order to enforce the economic system…there are recorded instances of camaraderie and cooperation between black slaves and white servants in escaping from and in opposing their subjugation.”
Today the citizenry is divided along petty political lines along with racial, gender, religious, ethnic and cultural lines.
Ask yourself. For whom? By whom? To whose benefit?
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Hope, if “statism” is a component of fascism, as your citation suggests, then your Democratic party deserves to be called fascist as much as your Republican party does, in their present forms. (I say “your” because I’m Canadian and addressing a mostly American readership, I assume.)
As for Gibbon, he has been misread, it seems, partly because until recently his work was read mainly in abridged versions that emphasized his supposed anti-Christianity while cutting the parts of his book that showed him to be a believer, albeit an anti-Catholic one. There is a good article on the subject in The New Criterion. It’s a conservative journal and no doubt people will say it is biased, but the citations the author offers are quite convincing. (Here’s a link: http://newcriterion.com/archive/15/jun97/gibbon.htm.) Incidentally, the abridgment appears to have been carried out initially to emphasize those parts of Gibbon’s work that might help to justify England’s imperial adventures.
No doubt some people will proclaim that he inserted these comments to avoid persecution by the state – but he wrote in late 18th century England, a time and place when it was safe enough to be a skeptic, and certainly to attack Catholicism, if you made no direct attack on the Church of England.
But certainly we could all use a little more “civic virtue” – in the US and in the rest of the western world too.
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then your Democratic party deserves to be called fascist as much as your Republican party does, in their present forms. (I say “your” because I’m Canadian and addressing a mostly American readership, I assume.)
Precisely my point. Democracy is an illusion, and we are a captive audience while the illusionists work their methods of distraction from what goes on behind the curtain.
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Google “zeitgeist the movie”. A nice way to spend a few hours. Entertaining if nothing else.
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Hope: “That’s an incredibly naive assumption.”
No its not in any way. A lot of Conservatives would agree that there is nothing conservative about the current President’s policy.
“Fascism will not be stopped by reelecting a party member so close to the Bush family.”
I wasn’t aware that McCain was in any way close to the Bush family. Prove it b/c I don’t think so.
Jack: ” McCain is great except on the war? ”
Yes. Look Pops I’m a Green does that explain anything? But, and I think I’ve said this before, I have no faith that my party could competantly hold high office. They merely are an important voice on a key issue or two and would make good local government. Conservative independents however could save this country by creating a viable third option. The dude needs to go independent or Libertarian. We need some defectors who can give clout to the third party option. What I like about McCain is he nearly went broke with his self-imposed campaign finance rules. But he did it hiiiiiis waaaaay and no compromising. It’s just too damn bad about the war monger stance.
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A lot of Conservatives would agree that there is nothing conservative about the current President’s policy.
The party has not impeached Bush nor has it really aggressively pushed back on anything except the immigration issue. It would be folly to assume that the next president, Democrat or Republican, will actually do anything to scale back executive power.
I wasn’t aware that McCain was in any way close to the Bush family. Prove it b/c I don’t think so.
Google is helpful for these things:
NY Times article, International Herald Tribune article, Washington Post article, and USA Today article. There are more, but these are just the top 10 results.
Read more about McCain. He’s not who he appears to be.
Even Pat Buchanan, who is a self-described conservative, thinks McCain will continue the Bush legacy: article 1 and 2.
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Democracy is not an illusion, Hope, as long as leaders still feel themselves more or less obligated to follow the rule of law, and can be voted out when necessary. The fact that both political parties in the US seek statist solutions to American problems is a sign that this is what many voters want.
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No its not in any way. A lot of Conservatives would agree that there is nothing conservative about the current President’s policy.
But yet Bush was the Republican consensus candidate, wholeheartedly supported by the Fox News administration.
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You lost me when you said “vote for…Obama”
I would sooner vote for Tancredo.
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The south shall rise again.
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it’s better that person is one you can wash your hands of, so when the inevitable shit hits the fan you will be well-positioned in 2012.
roissy!
i wouldn’t peg you, of all people, as the cut-off-noses-to-spite-faces type.
such a strategy would likely be ineffectual, for two reasons:
(1) the national zeitgeist zigs and zags both left and right over short enough periods of time, but moves inexorably leftward over the long run. because of said leftward tendency, it’s much more likely that calls for ‘change’ and ‘fresh start[s]’ will appear legitimate if they come from liberals than if they come from conservatives.
(2) when ‘the inevitable shit hits the fan’ because of tinpot conservative policies, blame is usually assigned somewhat accurately (as in the many debacles perpetrated by the bush administration).
when said shit hits the fan because of tinpot liberal policies, though, the blame tends to go everywhere other than where it belongs. witness the almost universal reluctance to place proper blame for phenomena such as eating disorders, broken families, etc. on the obvious culprit, new-wave feminism. also, our heavy-handed attempts to foist first-world child-labor laws on third-world countries have led directly to increased child prostitution and human trafficking in those countries, but very few people are smart enough to connect the dots and realize that developing countries need developing-country labor laws, or even that a 12-year-old is better off as a sweatshop worker than as a streetwalker.
therefore, if left-wing socialists DO throw their shit at the fan, you’d need a pollyannaish degree of faith in the proles to think they’ll actually call the socialists out. instead, what you’ll almost certainly get is MORE left-wing agitprop, of the ‘our work is not yet done’ variety.
in any case, stick to your principles, and vote for whichever candidate reflects those principles most closely (or, in the worst case, for the candidate to whom those principles are least anathema).
i will now shut up.
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roissy, no comment on the new reality show coming to town?
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When that right wing he/she man Ann Coulter says she will not only vote for, but campaign for Hillary over McCain, isn’t the risk to Republicans that the legions of Americans who find her repugnant — many of them independents who might otherwise vote Democratic this year — will vote for McCain instead, ensuring his victory?
Same goes for Limbaugh and the other assholes.
McCain deviates 2 millimeters from so-called Republican ideology, and they’re ready to burn him at the stake.
Meanwhile Bush rings up the highest deficits in history, sells the next generation off to China, creates a terror-base in Iraq, tries to sell our ports to Dubai, supports the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, etc…, and Limbaugh still thinks he’s “conservative”…?
All from a party which idolizes a 1950s B actor as a god?
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To Lisa:
“A lot of Conservatives would agree that there is nothing conservative about the current President’s policy.”
Yet they support him all the way, and still do.
Limbaugh still supports Dubya today as much as he did in 2000, only today he doesn’t rant about it with as much fervor because it would be embarrassing.
“Fascism will not be stopped by reelecting a party member so close to the Bush family.”
Speaking of which…
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” – Sinclair Lewis
That last, btw, is a line often used by Ron Paul.
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Everything GWB borrowed is a tax increase. Everything borrowed = taxes to pay for it plus you have to pay interest on top of that. Everything GWB borrowed is a tax increase. The wealthiest Americans pay practically no taxes. You will pay the taxes. Everything GWB borrowed is a tax increase.
There is no good economic news.
The war is not over – it cost more than Vietnam in inflation adjusted dollars. The war is not over. Bin Laden has not been caught. The war cost more than Vietnam and it is not over.
There is no good economic news.
You will pay the taxes. The war is not over. There is no good economic news. The massive borrowing will be used to destroy Social Security and Medicare. There is no good economic news.
Cambridge Jan 2001 : GWB is going into Iraq.
Same sources say above.
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You guys say an awful lot about politics, but politics can be summed up in two words: fear and money. That’s the way it is, the way it was, and the way it will be and it’s not a bad thing either. It’s not a good thing, but it’s not a bad thing. Politics really has nothing to do with morality or ethics as far as I can tell. For example, if you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be cheaper to rehabilitate criminals, the government would do it.
There was a study done where with the right approach, 80% of criminals in a study were long term rehabilitated and able to return to society as functioning citizens. It’s a pretty humane thing to do if you think about it. I mean, for that 80%. BUT, the fear factor set in, and people ended up being more paranoid about the 20% who were not. In effect it would have saved money in the long run and added to the employed tax payers, but you know…the fear thing. So it’s money or fear. Same with war. War is always a result of fear. Fear of lack of resources, fear of an economic threat, fear of terrorism, etc. That’s a case where it’s money AND fear driven. When people are more evolved we won’t need to waste so much time on all this crap.
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For example, if you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be cheaper to rehabilitate criminals, the government would do it.
You are right on about the money, but wrong with your conclusion. The government wouldn’t do it because jailing criminals is lucrative for the business complexes that are building and running the jails.
When people are more evolved we won’t need to waste so much time on all this crap.
Evolution is exerting its forces on the world right now, all the time. In any case, anything that people do is “wasting time,” since we’re all going to die sooner or later. Earth itself won’t be around some time in the future.
But knowledge of what goes on in the world is important to us, for now. It’s not so different from knowing “game.”
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For example, if you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be cheaper to rehabilitate criminals, the government would do it.
right on. because governments never, like, waste money and stuff.
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Yay! “Gordon Gekko on a Bicycle” (i.e. Mittens Romney) quits the race today.
It’s funny to watch the so-called conservative “Hitler youth” in their rep ties and loafers sobbing openly at his concession speech.
And isn’t it hilarious how “conservatives” are always ranting about the need to be strong and resolute, with all that macho posturing they do, and now they’re crying like a 4 year-old boy whose puppy dog fell into the sewer?
Which only proves what I’ve always known about “conservatives” and their so-called “movement”.
Seems to me like nothing more than a bunch of cretins afflicted with Authoritarian Personality Disorder, in search of a strong Daddy figure.
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31 Hope.
“The government wouldn’t do it because jailing criminals is lucrative for the business complexes that are building and running the jails.”
Your point is well taken. I should revise that to say that if you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be LUCRATIVE to rehabilitate criminals, the government would do it.
“But knowledge of what goes on in the world is important to us, for now.”
I agree, to a point. It’s one thing to know what’s going on (and I’m woefully ignorant on current events) and another to obsess over it. After all, a lot of what goes on in the world is not considered ‘news worthy’ because it’s not sensational.
People are attracted to the negative, the violent, the perverse–but thanks to evolution as you pointed out–less and less, as people are spending less of their lives in front of the TV. I noticed today that there is very little violence on the street where I live. In fact it’s peaceful 99% of the time as far as I can tell. I don’t think my street is a huge anomaly either.
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Come on, Joe T., stop pussyfooting around and tell us how you really feel about conservatives.
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….daddy?
*giggle*
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My strategic take is that *if*, despite our best efforts to the contrary, comprehensive reform passes anyway, I’d rather have a democratic president and congress do it. Then they will own the blame for the horrific consequences that I expect to follow, re-enforced by building momentum from our already bad demographic trends that will occur and are occurring regardless of whether or not comprehensive reform passes. I don’t say that as just a partisan hack. Americans need to have a clear eyed view of a pro-third worldization party and an anti-third worldization party (two of the latter would be even better, but that’s just dreaming). People like McCain and Bush muddy the waters and make third-worldization impossible to stop. Americans are very uninformed about politics. Without a clear-eyed view of two opposed parties on the issue, they just will not do the homework necessary to “vote the candidate” and thus will never be able to halt america’s immigration disaster. That is why McCain should lose.
If a total Democratic government passes amnesty and ratchets up legal immigration, maybe americans will wise up and finally able to rally around a resurgent restrictionist republican party and finally halt the increasing damage from the mistake of 1965. McCain must lose for us to have a chance.
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Dear PJ: Reagan.
You know what the ideal situation would be is to have liberal local government that cares about its constituents and spends most of the tax money and then some tight fisted isolationist fuck you if you’re not USAmerican conservatives in federal government.
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Lisa, Reagan was elected a mere 15 years after the immigration act of 1965. The deleterious effects of massive poor and hispanic immigration hadn’t shown as much yet because we just hadn’t had anywhere near as huge a hispanic population. Reagan helped give amnesty to a mere 3 million people. Now we have a gigantic 48 million strong and rapidly growing hispanic population. Reagan really showed he wasn’t very foresighted by supporting such things, but who was? Now though, it it is a lot less forgivable to be pro-amnesty for 12-15 million people and pro-massive poor immigration.
We now have another generation and a half of hispanics here so we can see that the vast numbers of 4th generation hispanics that have crappy socio-economic-status variables. You can see that they *still* have the knowledge in 12th grade that whites have in 9th grade. They *still* have an average IQ of around 92. Their illegitimacy rate is now up to 49.9%. They are incarcerated at 2.6 times the white rate. The mexican incarceration rate goes up 8-fold from the first to the second and third generations. Can you say “permanent underclass”?
“Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality”, by Ruben Rumbaut and Alberto G. Gonzales of UC Irvine:
excerpt:
“Second Generation
Incarceration rates increase significantly for all US-born coethnics without exception. That is most notable for Mexicans, whose incarceration rate increases more than eightfold to 5.9 percent among the US born; for Vietnamese (from 0.46 to 5.6 percent among the US born); and for the Laotians and Cambodians (from 0.92 percent to 7.26 percent, the highest of any group except for native blacks)…..
Thus, while incarceration rates are found to be extraordinarily low among immigrants, they are also seen to rise rapidly by the second generation. Except for the Chinese and Filipinos, the rates of all US-born Latin American and Asian groups exceed that of the referent group of non-Hispanic white natives.”
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=403
Lisa, how does it help US citizens to have a liberal federal government that wants to let a gigantic new ever-expanding underclass move here? However generous and rich your local governments are, they can’t be rich enough to cover that. The thing liberals need to understand is that there are 5 billion people poorer than the average mexican. You *should* be utterly horrified at the massive numbers insane liberals want to bring here.
*If* you are saying that a tightfisted “Current US-Citizen” centric federal government combined with a generous local government is the way to go, then I kind-of agree. I’d get behind that before I get behind our insane current immigration policies.
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Re: reagan, I am talking about the how I want the republican party to be: I *want* it to be immigration restrictionist, to make a last-ditch effort to rally americans that care about their descendants living in a first world country more than they care about the 5 billion poor of the world. I realize the GOP is not there yet. I wasn’t asleep through McCain’s rise and Romney’s demise. I want McCain to lose in november.
Oh yeah, and at least in Reagan’s time they were honest to americans and explicitly called it amnesty.
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Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known were illegal immigrants, in spite of the fact that they made a fist to hold a pencil and didn’t speak English very well. Also I happen to enjoy a lot about their culture, “crappy socio-economic status” as it is. That said..
The problem with amnesty is this: 1 legal citizen can open the door to a whole flood of illegal extended family and friends to come over. One name on the lease equals 8 guys living in the apartment who are planning to bring their wife and kids. Because whether they want to be US citizens or not, they are principally loyal to la familia.
My friend, the only way to stop them coming over here, if that’s what you want, is to stop the demand for the workers. That’s it, that’s all you can do. You have to go after the companies that hire the laborers. And good luck, its not going to happen. Do you know why? Because more and more there is a notion that success equals doing as little work as you can for as much money as possible. If you break a sweat you are not living the American dream. We all sit at computers all day long. That’s all we have left in this country b/c even if we wanted to make products it has all been outsourced. We have 3 industries left in the US: We do computer shit, sell food to each other and cut the grass. 2 of the 3 are work currently held (and held at low prices) by illegal immigrants.
But I tell you this, even third world countries are catching on to this theory of non-work as a measure of success. We’re outsourcing technology jobs to India and Mexico.
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The GOP has grown more restrictionist in over the last 3 years, so they have shown that they aren’t *totally* in hock to the rich. People that hire illegals need to be imprisoned, but we have a long way to go towards that. The Democrats on the other hand haven’t shown much recent penchant for restrictionism. They are our biggest foe, with their addiction to new voters and visions of a permanent majority due to the growing hispanic population, and maybe a few misguided good intentions toward the 5 billion dirt poor of the earth. But the republican party is the least of that which shall be swept away. The US as a first world country will eventually follow. I believe that the GOP has started to and can finish completely telling the farmers, hotel owners, slaughterhouse owners etc. to go to hell and that wise americans can then rally around the GOP in a last ditch effort to preserve our birthright as a first world nation for our descendants.
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“People that hire illegals need to be imprisoned”
Great! We need more people in prison.
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Sure lisa, letting everyone out of prison would solve all of our problems.
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Ron Paul = our last hope
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