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well, I can understand your resentment of Bush's spending. Funny though, the dems never argued with his spending, it was always an anti-war bashing. Now, I can't understand why you are "impressed" with Obama. he has spent way more than necessary, and we got nothing in return. i'd rather have doughnuts for dollars than what he's given us so far
And, while it seems like the GOP is the party of no, what choice do they have? name 1 policy that the repubs should have voted for that they didn't? The people have spoken, and Obama & the dems are losing.
If you don't believe me, just wait til November 2nd.
Seems like the GOP could have voted to support higher taxes for companies that send American jobs overseas.
I'm right there with you. It seems like regardless of what most politicians say on the campaign trail, once they get to Washington the money takes over and nothing really changes. The only people who seem to do any good at all are the genuine deal makers like Clinton and maybe Reagan (I don't remember much about Reagan, but I seem to remember him working closely with congressional democrats to get things accomplished.) Anyone who runs on a promise of "change" in Washington is sure to be a disappointment.
Does anyone have high hopes for (or feel threatened by) the TEA party fringe winning control of congress next fall? Well if they win, I predict that any hopes or fears about the TEA party will be proven to be groundless. Once the campaign is over, the TEA party candidates will be shown for what they are: just one more group of politicians, completely indistinguishable from the people they're running against.
whether or not you agree with the tea party, they have shaken up the system. the dems have proven that they do not listen to the people. they have already proven that they value their political interests over the people's interests.
so, maybe our country runs better with a balanced attack? maybe too much power for one party leads to corruption?
But, it's a no brainer in my mind to vote GOP this Nov... for the simple reason that the reasonable dems will NOT stand up to Obama. And, they have little power to stop Reid & Pelosi who are just as bad as Obama.
The current policies are KILLING US!
That's a GREAT point! I think having a true balance of power between the executive and the legislative is the only way our country can get out of the mess we're in. I just wish the stupidity and corruption of the dems could be balanced by someone other than the equally-if-not-more stupid and corrupt republicans. Republicans win back the congress? Well here's to another decade of bogus presidential scandals and stupid politically motivated impeachments.
whether or not you agree with the tea party, they have shaken up the system. the dems have proven that they do not listen to the people. they have already proven that they value their political interests over the people's interests.
I agree with you about the Dems, but you're writing as if the TEA partiers/republicans are somehow a better alternative. I'm saying that they're all a bunch of corrupt idiots. All I want is honesty: if a politician would run for office and were to say to me that he'd do his best to represent my values but can't promise that he'll be able to accomplish anything, I'd probably vote for him.
That's a GREAT point! I think having a true balance of power between the executive and the legislative is the only way our country can get out of the mess we're in. I just wish the stupidity and corruption of the dems could be balanced by someone other than the equally-if-not-more stupid and corrupt republicans. Republicans win back the congress? Well here's to another decade of bogus presidential scandals and stupid politically motivated impeachments.
hey, nobody forced Clinton to do anything.
What I would like to see happen is that politicians will start listening to the people. If they realize that their job depends on it, then there is hope
I agree with you about the Dems, but you're writing as if the TEA partiers/republicans are somehow a better alternative. I'm saying that they're all a bunch of corrupt idiots. All I want is honesty: if a politician would run for office and were to say to me that he'd do his best to represent my values but can't promise that he'll be able to accomplish anything, I'd probably vote for him.
well, most of the "tea party" are new candidates. And, their platform is (for the most part) that they will work for us. The dems on the other hand keep telling us that their plan is good for us even though we don't want it.
This is not kindergaden The democratic leaders have chosen their fate
True, but you won't convince me that the Monica Lewinski affair was an existential threat to the nation. That was politics at its lowest and most vicious. Wasting the country's time on that bit of tripe was about as bad as getting a Beejay in the Oval Office if you ask me (which you didn't.)
But it would definitely be nice to have a group of politicians that listened to the people. I don't believe that such a group exists. If they exist they aren't running for National Office.
True, but you won't convince me that the Monica Lewinski affair was an existential threat to the nation. That was politics at its lowest and most vicious. Wasting the country's time on that bit of tripe was about as bad as getting a Beejay in the Oval Office if you ask me (which you didn't.)
But it would definitely be nice to have a group of politicians that listened to the people. I don't believe that such a group exists. If they exist they aren't running for National Office.
I'm not jumping for joy at the tea party. The best thing is that they are bringing in average (i.e non-political) americans into the process. More people are aware of the current crop of corrupt politicians. Sometimes politicians think they know best...
Thats the beauty of our system. If we don't like the job they are doing we can call in Donald Trump, and give them a big fat YOU'RE FIRED
Bigjon much as so many of you mean to elevate Reagan to heroic proportions, the grievances remain steep in large swaths of population and you need to understand why. The tangible experience for the rest of us receiving his cure for a disease was the creation of 5 more diseases and utter neglect of a quite a few we had already managed to keep down to a dull roar. If the boss stands tall believing his job was satisfied but it was accomplished in a way that tied the rest of our hands behind our backs and the company fails to thrive, or worse, used as scrap for a chop shop, he is no hero. The experience of many- he was another brand of spendthrift 20x's removed from the tradition of long view stewardship I (and many others) have always admired in true conservatives. We didn't get what we voted for and haven't since.
And that's fine. I just feel that too many don't look at the context of what he was dealing with. From double digit interest rates to an energy crisis things on the home front weren't all that hot. And, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist point out, "The U.S. arsenal peaked at about 30,000 warheads in the mid-1960s and the Soviet arsenal at 40,000 warheads in the 1980s, dwarfing all other nuclear weapon states." On three different occasions the red button was literally only seconds away from being pushed in which at least 1,000 war heads on each side would/could have been launched within 10 minutes.
Two cases where we almost pushed the button both included computer mistakes. Ours was one where our military was changing shifts and they left a training disc in the system and when first shift took over from 3rd shift they came in to what looked like a massive offensive. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed but there was only a few minutes to think about that one. The other case is chronicled here:
Part of Reagan's four part war, a strategy that everyone around him (and is documented in his NSDD's) gave only him credit for, was to fight them with money through oil deals and having them spend billions in Afghanistan and still fail. The other was militarily by a massive $1.5 trillion military buildup over 5 years and a 600 ship Navy that didn't quite make it there. The other was Psychological by using our CIA funded radio stations in Europe to talk of the atrocities that the Atheist Communist had inflicted on its religious population which is well documented. The last was technological in which the Soviets had no more money to compete with the US. The CIA had concluded that the Soviets had an economy of about the size of California and that 60% of their income was being used for its military industrial complex. That left the idea of missile defense impossible for them to compete with.
When any one of those parts of the war were at stake or asked to be negotiated on Reagan refused and in the case of SDI he doubled spending. This matched exactly what he called for on Monday, May 15, 1967 when, at a meeting with R. Kennedy, he said: "I think it would be very admirable, if the Berlin Wall, which was built in direct contravention to a treaty if the Berlin Wall should disappear, I think that this would be a step toward peace".
Nearing the end of his presidency he was able to say this:
Quote:
At the same time, we should remember that reform that is not institutionalized will always be insecure. Such freedom will always be looking over its shoulder. A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back. And that is why, in my conversation with General Secretary Gorbachev, I have spoken of how important it is to institutionalize change—to put guarantees on reform. And we've been talking together about one sad reminder of a divided world: the Berlin Wall. It's time to remove the barriers that keep people apart.
In 1980 all this was put in context by Carl Sagan in "Who Speaks for Earth?"
Quote:
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 70,000 people. In a full nuclear exchange, in the paroxysm of global death, the equivalent of a million Hiroshimas would be dropped all over the world. And, in such an exchange not everyone would be killed by the blast and the fire storm and the immediate radiation. There would be other agonies. The loss of loved ones; the legions of the burned and blinded and mutilated; disease; plague; long-lived radiation poisoning the soil and the water; the threat of stillbirths and malformed children; and, the hopeless sense of a civilization destroyed for nothing. The knowledge that we could have prevented it and did nothing.
Carl Sagan / Who Speaks for Earth -- 1980 (http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_cosmos_who_speaks_for_earth.html - broken link)
So to each their own, but I see Reagan as being someone who didn't stand around and just talk about it, he did everything in his power to reduce this risk. Not someone so much of words but more of deeds. Do others, or I, see him as a hero? Maybe, but that's no worse than all the people who saw FDR or Lincoln as a savior and they all provided, sometimes reluctantly. Some people are just have their place in history and are not likely to ever be copied.
what happened is that you thought you were a "Liberal" and never was!
I have never claimed to be, nor thought of myself, as a liberal. Some of my views could be considered liberal, some could be considered conservative. There is (or used to be) moderate Democrats. That's what I considered myself to be for many years.
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The democratic leaders have chosen their fate 
