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Democrats must be cautious
by JR Mooneyham
| Apr. 19, 2008 |
Rep. Woolsey admits Democrats
in Congress are giving up on Iraq
If the Democrats raise a stink about Iraq while they literally can't muster sufficient votes to get past a Presi-
dential veto (plus the Republican Supreme Court waits just past that line to smack them down), all they would accomplish is making themselves easy smear targets for the main-
stream media, and end up losing the coming elections to Republicans again. They MUST be cautious in some matters, if they ever hope to regain true power again. The recent debate travesty at ABC seems proof
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If impeachment were feasible, I think the Democrats would have done it.
Their razor-thin Congressional majority though -- diluted still further by Lieberman and a few others -- plus the Republican
-dominated Supreme Court, and the Republican-owned mainstream media, would simply make a real impeachment effort on the part of Democrats worse than futile: it would likely help the mainstream media to hand the next election over to the Republicans in a landslide. |
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enough that the mainstream media isn't going to give them any breathing room election-wise.
And so long as our elections are privately financed by the same people who run our media, excessive boldness will more often than not get Democrats kicked out of office. Even a real world political phenomenon like Barack Obama has trouble running that gauntlet.
I wonder sometimes if some of the so-called liberals out there shouting that Congress go for broke on something aren't really just Republican plants trying to get the Democrats to step out onto a limb so they can saw it off. Campaign finance status and the mainstream media are nothing but minefields for good guys these days.
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Yeah, and that's why I hate politics. To win, a candidate has to soft-pedal the truth and hope to offend nobody, and the kind of people who can pull that off successfully tend to make crappy statesmen and women.
Some things are bigger than politics, though, like the Democrats' complete stonewalling on impeaching the most obvious criminal ever to sit on the Presidency. Some things demand simple integrity from anybody who has any integrity, and the Democrats have shown none at all.
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With the present-day campaign finance system and virtual total control of the mainstream media by Republicans, it's far easier for Republicans to stay in control indefinitely than for anything else to happen. And all that helps Republicans-calling-themselves-Democrats to get elected, too.
If enough true Democrats ever actually get the Presidency and substantial control of Congress again, we might be able to fix these things ... but until then, we're an army short on ammo, surrounded on every side and outnumbered. The only way we might possibly survive, let alone win, is to carefully pick our battles...
If impeachment were feasible, I think the Democrats would have done it. Their razor-thin Congressional majority though -- diluted still further by Lieberman and a few others -- plus the Republican-dominated Supreme Court, and the Republican-owned mainstream media, would simply make a real impeachment effort on the part of Democrats worse than futile: it would likely help the mainstream media to hand the next election over to the Republicans in a landslide.
Democrats are going to have a tough enough time as it is, with Republicans still full of enough dirty tricks and election scams to tilt a sizeable vote margin, and if Nader siphons off a big fraction of Democrat votes again, like he did in 2000.
I believe the Republican machine possesses the power to dial up as big a margin of election fraud as they need to win. Their main problem is the higher they turn up the margin, the more likely they'll be caught red-handed. So it's still a balancing act. In the last election they underestimated the margin required to win, and so didn't dial it up high enough to overcome the voter sentiment of the moment.
Also keep in mind they have a powerful long-term strategy in place as well: dumbing down average Americans to the point that 'liberal' or progressive ideas are considered stupid, crazy, extremist, cowardly, unpatriotic, or sinful -- just by the label. So often they aren't even examined or considered at all any more. Long term control of the mainstream media enables them to pursue that course handily. They've already been remarkably successful. For just look at how wild and insane Bush-Cheney and their cronies have been, and yet gotten away with it.
To have any chance to win, Democrats first have to survive. The odds remain stacked against them. I suspect there's a far greater danger of us still having a Republican-dominated government after the next election than most believe.
And though lots of us cheer when Obama says something like he'll launch investigations into Bush-Cheney after he gets into office, I also personally feel a chill. Because Bush-Cheney et al have committed so many awful crimes, they MUST already be feeling queasy about ever giving up power. And they've systematically set things up so they wouldn't necessarily have to. If they get too scared of retribution, we're likely to have some sort of 'terrorist' strike or other scare they'll use as an excuse to 'postpone' elections, or maybe something more creative and subtle (remember they have the best corporate analysts, marketers, and idea people money can buy). Or maybe the candidate they fear most -- like the Kennedys decades before -- would be subtracted from the equation another way. I wouldn't put anything past Bush-Cheney and their underlings.
Don't forget that integrity is -- at best -- irrelevant in contests where there are no rules. At worst, it's simply used against you.
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I agree with just about everything you've said here, tick, tick, tick, down the list. The Republicans will lie like it snows in winter, the smears will make the Clinton-
Whitewater-Foster era seem like Mayberry RFD, the ballot box will be rigged to the highest percentage they think they can get away with, Obama will have to soft-pedal everything that makes him borderline acceptable to people who wish he was a leftist instead of a centrist. We may think we've seen skunky, slithery politics in the past, but te Republicans are going to play so down and dirty and in the mud that this election will make all America want to shower thrice daily.
But still, even granting all that, and even as pessimistic as I want to be, I still don't see how even the most gifted liars and the most corrupt media will be able to convince Americans that they've voted for John McCain over Barack Obama.
And yes, sadly but almost certainly, if it looks like Obama's going to win there will be either another war or another terror attack. The people running the Republican Party truly hate everything that the rest of us call American values, and they have no human decency holding them back. So whatever it takes to make the brain-dead among us (who comprise, at last count, 28% of the electorate) think they're Republicans and vote for McCain, count on it, it'll happen.
And still I cross my fingers, because I see one factor the Republicans maybe didn't anticipate: Barack Obama. He's a milquetoast Democrat by any pre-2000 standard, but he doesn't seem to be quantifiably corrupt, and he doesn't seem to be carved out of pure evil, and he has an enormous talent for cutting through Republican crap to explain things in a way ordinary people can understand and relate to.
And, crossing all my fingers and toes, I think there's a chance that, if the campaign is interrupted with yet another war or another terrorist attack, with all the mainstream media's cameras on him, Obama might say what it takes to make a significant number of Americans overcome the brainwashing. That'll be a make-or-break moment, for Obama, for democracy ...
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Helen & Harry
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NATO admits mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban| |
Excerpt: The coalition helicopter had intended to deliver pallets of supplies to a police checkpoint in Ghazni, a remote section of Zabul late last month.
By mistake they were dropped some distance from the checkpoint where it was taken by the Taliban, the Internal Security Affairs Commission of the Wolesi Jirga -- the Afghan parliament's lower house -- was told. |
We supply the bullets (and our soldiers as targets) for the Taliban.
*** *** ***
HPV-related oral cancers rise among younger men
Inherited cancer mutation is widespread in America
The more we learn, the better universal healthcare in America sounds...
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