Dogs have four legs?

Why do you hate America, Brad?

Good thing the Democrats did all this stuff. I would feel terrible if the Republican’ts were to fall victim to a smear campaign that would try to connect the GOP to these events.

Good thing the Democrats did all this stuff. I would feel terrible if the Republican’ts were to fall victim to a smear campaign that would try to connect the GOP to these events.

Chuckles- are you filling in for Gary at Netvocates this week?

The Bush years: A seamless showcase featuring the foreign policy competence of the Soviets, the domestic platform of Iran with the fiscal integrity of Zimbabwe. USA! USA! USA!

I used to be a socialist before Bush got elected. Now I’m much more of a libertarian. Bush has single-handedly proved all those things right-wingers used to say about unchecked federal power to be 100% correct.

“Now I’m much more of a libertarian.”

Take it from one: the LP is currently and forseeably knife-in-toaster retarded. Randroid cultists hold every reign. Platform will remain radical extremist and party will remain irrelevant. (Badnarik over Russo? I’ll never get over the cluelessness – or (R) infiltration – neccessary for such a self-defeating move.) The two Real parties have (relatively) moderate platforms engineered for mass appeal. It seems to work for them somehow.

One of the things I used to resent most about the republicans for was turning me into a de facto democrat. But these days I’m starting to appreciate them for doing just that. Because frankly, “Don’t Tax On Me” makes for a pretty damn thin philosophical soup. Also I’ve had several nametag jobs in my life and let’s just say “Abolish OSHA” near the top of the platform is cobaggitude of epic proportions. So stay left and just focus on civil liberties (ALL 10 amendments, please.)

Man, I’m glad the Republicans are the party of national security. I’d hate to see what’d happen if our government wasn’t serious about protecting its citizens…

So didja see the report from the GAO?

:::Investigators using false identities were able to obtain more than $1m of sensitive military equipment from the US department of defence, according to a government report released on Tuesday.

The equipment included body armour, launcher mounts for shoulder-fired guided missiles, components for F-14 fighter aircraft, biochemical weapons protection suits, guided missile radar test sets and various sensitive surveillance technologies. :::

Take it from one: the LP is currently and forseeably knife-in-toaster retarded.

I’m not a big-L libertarian. In fact, I’m not a libertarian at all. But I’m much more libertarian than I used to be is all.

Just making sure it stays that way.

Of course holding a reign would be silly. Holding reins makes much more sense for the Randroid wackjob on the rise.

I guess I was still minus one coffee when I let that one by.

Thank you so much for ruining my morning.
I really didn’t need to see this just yet. Truly, ignorance is bliss, if only temporary.

—–
The sad thing is that this is really not surprising to anyone, is it?

Brad,

I look at the right to a living wage as a form of civil liberty, albeit one which uses government power to reign in the massive economic and political might of corporations (which they use against working people). So that’s quasi-socialist. Not eliminating the free market, just making it more equitable for the people most vulnerable to it. Restricting the rights of corporations to exploit their workers is OK for me.

The difference comes when the government tries and restrict the right of the individual.

And between Hunter Thompson, and the atrociousness of the Bush regime, I’ve come around enough on the logic of the gun nuts to relatively embrace the anachronistic lunacy of the Second Amendment, especially if tinkering with that would fuck up the rest of the Bill of Rights. The greatest gift that America has given the world.

Good thing the Democrats did all this stuff. I would feel terrible if the Republican’ts were to fall victim to a smear campaign that would try to connect the GOP to these events.

Chuckles- are you filling in for Gary at Netvocates this week?

Brad, based on the “Republican’ts” spelling and the correct use of the subjenctive mood, I’d guess that Chuckles was being sarcastic, satirical, or psychic. Shall we start a pool to see how long it takes the noise machine to start wheezing out this meme?

GoatBoy did a good job summarizing my take on the Libertarian Party. I’d somewhat half-libertarian, the kind who doesn’t scream “Commies!!” at the ACLU (perhaps the most patriotic of NGOs?). In other words, I have a similar mindset to that of JayB: Personal freedom and corporate accountability, to over-boil it down. (Yes, freedom comes with responsibility, etc. etc.)

The main problem with the loonies running the LP is the same problem many of the loonies running the GOP have: they get that formula exactly backwards: Corporate freedom and personal accountability. Then they conflate the two and try to call corporate freedom “democracy” and then cast all sorts of noneconomic personal freedom as something that only leads to crime and terrorism.

Economic freedom, however, is OK for individuals, but only if it flows up against the trickle-down. It’s damn hard to make any money, but there’s no shortage of ways to spend it, lose it, or have it stolen. Perhaps it’s just entropy rearing its ugly head, but do we really need to help it along? And shouldn’t freedom mean much more than choosing from six brands of soap?

Eh, I got all confukt in the center part there. I know what I was trying to get at, but it went a bit awry. I think faster than I type and blew over a bunch of stuff that would make it make more sense. So if part of my above post strikes you as BS, it’s because I screwed it all up.

“Among the contracts that went awry were deals for hiring airport screeners, inspecting airport luggage, detecting radiation at the nation’s ports, securing the borders and housing Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

Phew! At least the corrupt contracts aren’t for anything important.

I look at the right to a living wage as a form of civil liberty, albeit one which uses government power to reign in the massive economic and political might of corporations (which they use against working people).

Living wage is something I support as a principle, but it’s also something that’s very difficult to make work practically. The better way of doing this stuff is using public assistance programs to boost their income via taxes.

That’s a nice country youse got there…be a real shame if anything happened to it…

Yeah. Call me a dirty pinko or whatever, but I am at least as convinced the market requires regulation and oversight as I am the government does–especially since we don’t get to vote on who runs the corporations or how they do it, and with the increasing drumbeat of privatization of government functions.

And I doubt it makes me a libertarian, but you can keep your damned guns. To be honest, I think human beings are too fucking stupid to own sharpened sporks, but an armed citizenry is not what’s ultimately going to kill us all. It’s the money, baby, not the bullets.

Sidhe- as I explained to Gavin one night, my expectations for government have changed dramatically over the past six years. I used to think the government should provide health care for people, ensure living wages and regulate corporations. While all those things still sound nice, my ambitions have been scaled back. Now I only want a government that will not actively try to destroy the world. Needless to say, our current crop has failed miserably in this seemingly simple requirement.

my expectations for government have changed dramatically over the past six years. I used to think the government should provide health care for people, ensure living wages and regulate corporations. […]Now I only want a government that will not actively try to destroy the world.

Brad, that’s exactly what the current folks in charge are after: they are consciously fucking up governing so badly that people learn this very important lesson: government doesn’t work, you can’t rely on it for social improvement, so we should just scale it back to the bare minimum.

That’s Grover Norquist’s whole “drown it in a bathtub” bullshit in action.

That’s the point of sabotaging the public schools with No Child Left Up Your Behind and other unfunded, statistically impossible mandates: we prove that public schools don’t work, then we can disband the school districts and force students into private schools, first starting with vouchers, then eventually cancelling the voucher programs.

That’s the point of the whole Social Security bamboozelment: first convince people that Social Security is doomed and won’t be there for them (and hide the reports from the Social Security Board of Trustees that contradict you), then champion privatization–oops, I mean “personal accounts”–to “save” what isn’t in critical danger. (Josh Marshall has some really good, detailed reporting of all this issue at talkingpointsmemo.com).

Medicare D? Let’s pass a perscription drug benefit that is an absolute disaster, and in the future we will use this as Exhibit A in the “Why Government should stay out of Healthcare” trial.

This group of robber barons currently in charge of the government is like a team of muggers: Mugger 1 beats you and beats you and beats you, then Mugger 2 steps in, chases off Mugger 2, and takes your wallet. You’re so grateful to end the beatings that you don’t mind Mugger 2 stealing your wallet so much–heck, you might even thank him. Then Muggers 1 and 2 go have a beer and split up your money, all the while laughing at what a total idiot you are and scoping out their next mark.

These jokers are looting the treasury, scamming taxpayers left and right, mortgaging our future to China, destroying our physical, economic, and social infrastructure and transforming a once-great nation into pathetic, poverty-stricken pustule of fear, all so they can hand out trash bags filled with cash to their incompetent cronies (literally, in Iraq).

And now we’re supposed to fall on our knees and be thankful them because they haven’t nuked Iran yet? Fuck that.

Counterexamples: sky, Dogs, and…hmmm, I can’t seem to find one for government corruption.

Now I only want a government that will not actively try to destroy the world.

I am so sick of pie-in-the-sky optimists like you. With your purges and ideological blinders, you represent all that’s wrong with the Democratic Party.

[/BullMoose]

I just read this thread and I was going uh huh, yep, agree with that, that’s true, uh huh…But in a sense, it’s all idealism and ideology. It’s over, the Terrorists won. I mean, really, what was their goal? If it was to reduce America to a police state, destroy America’s standing in the world, make us violate the very principles that made America special, and to destabilize the country politically and economically, well, shoot, I’ve got a white flag laying around here somewhere. I cannot see how it is possible that it is NOT beyond recovery. Our economic positions is so fragile and out of our control. Our diplomatic power, the power of the pupit, if you will, is gone. Hell, even STALIN denied his government tortured people. Our guys? Admitted it. Checks and balances built in by our founding fathers, the three co-equal branches of government, the Judiciary, oversight? Forget it. All gone. Bill of rights? Well, it’s got some pretty ugly holes burned in it now, especially around the first and fourth, but pretty much all over the place. And now, did you see, we’re blocking a UNSC Statement on Israel’s destruction of a UN post and killing 4 UN observers?

I ask myself, ok, but what about when a democrat takes the white house? All this new unfettered presidential power? I think it will be a case of “We’ll show you just what kind of a monster you created, and let’s see you make one fucking peep about it”.

It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens when a superpower collapses, and yet continues to have the most powerful military in the world, by a whole lot. What will we do then? Make war and loot? Sell our military “services” to the highest bidder like some kind of supersonic mafia?

I don’t know about you guys, but I sure can’t come up with a believable scenario for it getting better…

mikey

“and yet continues to have the most powerful military in the world, by a whole lot.”

They’re working on this as well with the DU munitions. Send home the military sick and/or dying. Next generation, you say? Well their parents are radioactive so even if they are born without severe defects, they’ll probably be physiaclly unfit to serve by the time they’re of age.

Easier to pull governmental shenanigans of an even grander scale once you’ve hamstrung the citizen volunteer armed forces.

I used to think the government should provide health care for people, ensure living wages and regulate corporations. While all those things still sound nice, my ambitions have been scaled back.

Ditto here in Canada too. Bastard conservatives.

Dorothy and MCH: Genius. Cogent, punchy. And depressing as hell. Fuck you for bringing it up…

Dorothy’s exactly right, mikey’s right and seriously depressing, and Brad, I sympathize completely. These days I vote for the candidate least likely to be caught singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” as he pushes the big red button.

My comment was not to reprove you but, like GoatBoy, to provide antidote to what currently seem like perfectly reasonable libertarian tendencies. As I said, I don’t even entirely care about guns anymore, and you’d never have caught me saying anything like that pre-Bush. Libertarians, in my experience, are too willing to see markets as a check on government. I’d like to see public oversight as a check on them both.

It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens when a superpower collapses, and yet continues to have the most powerful military in the world, by a whole lot. What will we do then? Make war and loot? Sell our military “services� to the highest bidder like some kind of supersonic mafia?

We’ve already seen it happen….Russia’s nuclear technology ended up in the hands of Pakistan, Iran and North Korea via some of the predominently Muslim territories in their old federation.

I suppose we can expect a similar delight if we implode.

Someone *ahemBradR.*ahem* had better start waving their flag a bit harder

mikey- unless its Hillary, no Democrat would even try to follow in the Unitary Executive footsteps of Cheney/Rove, and even if she tried it she would still spend her term the way her husband did, just fighting to keep the office against a never-ending hurricane of lies and investigations built on lies and manufactured scandals (picture those people in the farmhouse in Night of the Living Dead, and you have your image of the HRC administration).
oh, and don”t believe for a second that the Ruling Party is going to let a little thing like “elections” stand between them and their grip on power- between voter suppression and electronic vote-flipping, they have already demonstrated a willingness and an ability to fix any “election” we try to have. Tyrannies only fall through either a crisis of confidence within the ruling party (see the USSR) or outside conquest- note that successfull revolutions (not too likely here) fall under that first category, more often than not.

Why do you assume Hillary would want an unbounded presidency? I’m just asking, because as far as I can tell, neither she nor her husband have ever been averse to a compromise.

Who said the foreign policy competence of the Soviets was not good? It was almost perfect for their purposes ’til the late 70’s… Dubya can’t even compete with _that_.