Let's impeach the president.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by dblanch66

Ok...
Campain fixing: Gore won 2000. Florida was the deciding state and...do I really need to go into it AGAIN?
Katrina: Federal response was non exsistent. You can't even begin to argue this one. It was a fuck up of monumental proportions.
Government Appointees: Uh...Alberto Gonzales. 'nuff said.
Health Care: How many Americans have it? How many that do have BIG problems? How about SOME SORT OF PLAN???
Immigration reform? How'd that work out for boy wonder.
Come on, dude...this is just too easy.
Oh..and the handbooks I've been reading are called "How to Completely Cluster Fuck Everything You've Ever Tried" by George Bush and "Let's Go Hunting Lesbians" by Dick Cheney.

The Gore won is old and by all counts Bush won even the liberal press counted the votes in FL. and every way they count Bush still won.
Do you know how much Federal assitance was given and went on after Katrina. That problem was a state issue and not the federal goverments.
Most Americans have health Ins. and it is working fine for them. The 40 mill who do not have it can be broken down into several groups. 1. Young people who feel they do not need health ins. 2. People who choose not to by health ins but instead go out and buy a new car. 3. the people who have health issues or cannot afford the coverage and that the group which is a problem but after taken out the first 2 groups that drops that 40 mill down quite a bit. So fix that and leave the system alone. I'm glade his imigration bill got voted down because I did not like how it worked.

[70Chip]

The press went to great lengths to try to come up with a re-count scenario that had Gore winning Florida and they weren't able to do it. They spent a lot of resources on it for about six months afterwards and they found sqaudoosh. Micheal Moore even had to put a fake newspaper headline in Fahrenheit to the effect that Gore wins Recount because there wasn't a real one.

And Popular Schmopular, Read the Constitution. Everyone knew the rules going in.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by dblanch66

Gore ran a shitty campain but still won the popular vote. Still doesn't dismiss the fact that Ken Lay and the sleaze machine did all kinds of tampering. I don't think I'm the only one who knows about this.

The funny thing is everytime the dems. loose an election all we hear is about election fraud. Funny when they won all those seats back in the last election the word fraud was never mentioned.

[Hog1]

Is it time to bring up the Illustrious proposed "Immigration bill" ?

[70Chip]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The funny thing is everytime the dems. loose an election all we hear is about election fraud. Funny when they won all those seats back in the last election the word fraud was never mentioned.

Yeah. If they were a football team it would be hard to get a handshake after you beat them. They always have a ready excuse. Which is ultimately to their detriment because it prevents constructive change. They call it denial.

[saden1]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The funny thing is everytime the dems. loose an election all we hear is about election fraud. Funny when they won all those seats back in the last election the word fraud was never mentioned.

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but here in the state of Washington there was a big hoopla about election fraud and how the election was stolen from Dino Rossi. Some have suggested U.S. attorney John McKay was fired because he didn't go after anyone. One thing is definitely clear though, he wasn't fired for performance reasons.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by saden1

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but here in the state of Washington there was a big hoopla about election fraud and how the election was stolen from Dino Rossi. Some have suggested U.S. attorney John McKay was fired because he didn't go after anyone. One thing is definitely clear though, he wasn't fired for performance reasons.

The reason we did not hear about this is because he is a republican! LOL

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by 70Chip

Would you be willing to give your definition of "neo-con"? I'm curious as to what different folks think it means. I first heard the word in 1985 from my 9th grade World History teacher and it seems to have undergone quite an evolution.

Beemnseven's definition of Neo-co:

"Neo" meaning 'new'; con, short for conservative. I believe it represents a recent shift in the philosophy of conservatism, specifically in the area of foreign policy. It used to be that conservatives were against foreign entanglements (Bob Taft was against the formation of NATO), intervening in foreign affairs (it was Wilson and the Democrats who were in favor of getting into WWI). Now, they seem content with interventionism of virtually any kind, and some go so far as to call it American Imperialism. In any case, they have dropped the isolationist banner that used to belong to them. There could be shifts in philosophy in some domestic issues as well, but it's my belief that the Republican Party and the country as a whole is slowly tilting towards Socialism.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

Beemnseven's definition of Neo-co:

"Neo" meaning 'new'; con, short for conservative. I believe it represents a recent shift in the philosophy of conservatism, specifically in the area of foreign policy. It used to be that conservatives were against foreign entanglements (Bob Taft was against the formation of NATO), intervening in foreign affairs (it was Wilson and the Democrats who were in favor of getting into WWI). Now, they seem content with interventionism of virtually any kind, and some go so far as to call it American Imperialism. In any case, they have dropped the isolationist banner that used to belong to them. There could be shifts in philosophy in some domestic issues as well, but it's my belief that the Republican Party and the country as a whole is slowly tilting towards Socialism.

The problem with your def is that you have conservative and the Rep as one in the same and they are not. Thats one of the reasons they lost so many seats last election is that the conservative base is ticked and wanted to make a statement. Consevatives feel that the Rep party has moved to far to the left and the party has abanded them. Also people get conservatives and the far right religous people mixed together as they may share some basic ideas main stream conservatives don't go that far to the right.

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

There could be shifts in philosophy in some domestic issues as well, but it's my belief that the Republican Party and the country as a whole is slowly tilting towards Socialism.

Wow...I don't see that at all.

[70Chip]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

Beemnseven's definition of Neo-co:

"Neo" meaning 'new'; con, short for conservative. I believe it represents a recent shift in the philosophy of conservatism, specifically in the area of foreign policy. It used to be that conservatives were against foreign entanglements (Bob Taft was against the formation of NATO), intervening in foreign affairs (it was Wilson and the Democrats who were in favor of getting into WWI). Now, they seem content with interventionism of virtually any kind, and some go so far as to call it American Imperialism. In any case, they have dropped the isolationist banner that used to belong to them. There could be shifts in philosophy in some domestic issues as well, but it's my belief that the Republican Party and the country as a whole is slowly tilting towards Socialism.

This is a lot better than many definitions I've heard. You could certainly teach certain television commentators a thing or two.

The term seems to have been coined by a British socialist named Micheal Harrington in the mid 1970s to describe what was then a newish phenomenon- the conversion of ex leftists (mainly Trotskyists) to Conservatism. He was thinking of people like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and too a lesser degree, Milton Friedman. I think they were the driving force behind Commentary Magazine, but I'm just riffing here and could be wrong. This was somewhat alarming to the left because these guys gave Conservatism a kind of urbane, intellectual heft that it had been lacking. The Jewish ethnicity of most of these folks seems to have contributed to the faulty notion that Israel is the primary motivating consideration in the formulation of their worldview. Not so. They were primarily anti-communist and anti-Soviet Union, although there support for Israel which is easily understood, did reveal a gap between them and the "paleo-conservatives" like Taft, William F. Buckley, and more recently, Pat Buchanan. This was the context in which I first heard the phrase in 1985.

But I think terms and concepts evolve and certainly in the absence of an overriding threat from the Soviet Union, which glossed over a lot of these distinctions, your definition is fair enough for the current debate. Interestingly, it seems that it was the incesant use of the term, by Chris Matthews, in connection with certain Jewish last names combined with the insinuation that Israel was calling the shots behind the scenes that got Scooter Libby fired up to the point that he called Tim Russert to bitch. I watch Hardball fairly regularly and I do recall that Chris was on something of a tangent in the summer of 2003 in this regard.

I don't know why I waste the energy when it's stated much better here:

Neoconservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by FRPLG

Wow...I don't see that at all.

Here are just a few of my reasons for that statement...

-- Polls suggest that somewhere between 65-70% of the American people believe there should be a nationalized health care in some form.

-- Bush's call for the privatization of a portion of everyone's Social Security in an investment account went absolutely nowhere. Most Americans want the government to handle their retirement account. I find that unbelievable.

-- An apparent zeal from the American public to call for price controls or taxes on "windfall profits" from oil companies. When the People think it's just fine and dandy for someone to be called in front of Congress to answer for their profits, that's pretty scary -- and very socialistic.

Since the Republicans are in the business of getting elected, it's hard for them to hold true to their conservative-libertarian philosophies (assuming they ever truly existed in the GOP) when the people are leaning the way they are. So now, they are forced to follow suit.

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The problem with your def is that you have conservative and the Rep as one in the same and they are not. Thats one of the reasons they lost so many seats last election is that the conservative base is ticked and wanted to make a statement. Consevatives feel that the Rep party has moved to far to the left and the party has abanded them. Also people get conservatives and the far right religous people mixed together as they may share some basic ideas main stream conservatives don't go that far to the right.

Certainly conservative does not equal Republican, particularly today. But I think it's fair to say that there were more conservatives in the Republican Party 50 - 100 years ago than there are today.

And I agree, the 'Religious Right' are not conservatives, at least in the traditional sense, even though they like to call themselves that. I prefer to call them big-government, nanny-state authoritarian thugs.

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by 70Chip

This is a lot better than many definitions I've heard. You could certainly teach certain television commentators a thing or two.

The term seems to have been coined by a British socialist named Micheal Harrington in the mid 1970s to describe what was then a newish phenomenon- the conversion of ex leftists (mainly Trotskyists) to Conservatism. He was thinking of people like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and too a lesser degree, Milton Friedman. I think they were the driving force behind Commentary Magazine, but I'm just riffing here and could be wrong. This was somewhat alarming to the left because these guys gave Conservatism a kind of urbane, intellectual heft that it had been lacking. The Jewish ethnicity of most of these folks seems to have contributed to the faulty notion that Israel is the primary motivating consideration in the formulation of their worldview. Not so. They were primarily anti-communist and anti-Soviet Union, although there support for Israel which is easily understood, did reveal a gap between them and the "paleo-conservatives" like Taft, William F. Buckley, and more recently, Pat Buchanan. This was the context in which I first heard the phrase in 1985.

But I think terms and concepts evolve and certainly in the absence of an overriding threat from the Soviet Union, which glossed over a lot of these distinctions, your definition is fair enough for the current debate. Interestingly, it seems that it was the incesant use of the term, by Chris Matthews, in connection with certain Jewish last names combined with the insinuation that Israel was calling the shots behind the scenes that got Scooter Libby fired up to the point that he called Tim Russert to bitch. I watch Hardball fairly regularly and I do recall that Chris was on something of a tangent in the summer of 2003 in this regard.

I don't know why I waste the energy when it's stated much better here:

Neoconservatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah, that's definitely more intricate than my definition. The only point I would argue is the assertion that Milton Friedman was an "ex-leftist". Admittedly, I haven't done a whole lot of research on him. If I'm wrong on that though, I have certainly learned something new.

How do you describe yourself politically, 70Chip?

[70Chip]

Originally Posted by Beemnseven

But I think it's fair to say that there were more conservatives in the Republican Party 50 - 100 years ago than there are today.

I'm going ot have to go ahead and disagree with you a little here. I suppose it depends on how you define "Conservative", but if you apply the generally accepted usage, conservatives were not considered mainstream in the GOP until at least the Carter Admin.

Lincoln, not a conservative. Ditto T.R. and Milhouse. Ike worked very hard behind the scenes to destroy Joe McCarthy. I would say conservative ascendency began with the founding of National Review in the 50's and did not crest until 1980. But, again, it depends on your defenition.