Rayne @ 172

… the engineers in my life would have had a hard time coming on line to have a discussion, let alone make sense of this situation. …

Think carefully about the complaints so many people made about Jimmy Carter as president. The usual complaint about engineers is that they are too blase about violence. …

Huh? The complaints about Carter seemed to revolve around his abhorrence of violence. …

I think some of us were surprised at the very one-sided treatment he got. By now we’re familiar with it and the “liberal press”. The real problems with Carter were Republican (or more properly, Bush) interference and dirty tricks. They probably made a deal with the Saudis to raise oil prices and push Carter’s economy into the ground. He’d been lowering unemployment and doing well for a couple of years and then boom, high oil prices. Add to that the hostage crisis and how the Repub/Bush team negotiated for Iran to hold them until Carter was gone and you have the basis for a one-term presidency.

Any modern president has to be aware of how the Bush family operates and a lot more people are aware these days.

Carter actually did a lot of good with the help of a Dem Congress. But, the press just wouldn’t give him credit.

Gnome de Plume @ 177

Rayne, you said the most important thing @161, that we should pound into the Dems’ heads: There are NO reasonable Republicans. … They have proven time and again that they can’t vote any differently. …

Here’s the problem as I see it, for persuading folks like McNerney:

Where’s the data?

You and I and most of the folks in this thread already know deep in our bones that every Republican is compromised. But where’s the data? …

To me it’s pretty simple: they vote to support Bush on EVERYTHING.

Despite their sometimes moderate talk they vote party line, like Communists did. They are all falling down for their caesar. Replace the top guy and the borg collapses.

NZ Expat, now in KS @ 102

I haven’t read the complete McNerney conversation, but I’d like to pose another angle. …

I concur; engineers are highly linear people, often have difficultly with non-linear problems. One has to build a linear line of progression for them, give them more data in doing so.

…

How do we make a logical, linear case? You can see he’s clinging to the logic of numbers when he’s hanging on to the veto-proof threshold.

He needs to know Dubya will NOT EVER bend to any number of Dems in Congress. Ain’t gonna happen. No threshhold.

The only real number we need is ONE: a Dem president to replace Bush.

[ Note: If we could replace him before the ‘08 elections (via impeachment and conviction) with a Repub who would let Dems take us out of Iraq that would be fine, but it’s not very likely. ]

So, we need to elect a Dem who will definitely get us out of Iraq. IMO that’s Edwards, though one of the less popular candidates would do it as well.

We elect a Dem president and we’re on the way.

It’s highly likely we’ll expand our lead in Congress, but to give more speed to getting things done it would help to have a larger Dem majority — especially Progressive Dems.

To achieve that we need to give money to BlueAmerica and ActBlue candidates and then vote for them.

That’s pretty linear. Think it’ll do?

There will never be a veto-proof majority during the Bush presidency. Even discussing it is a waste of time. What needs to be talked about is a tactic to end the war without one.

Again, MONEY.

Elect a Dem president and Congress and try to make them TrueBlue with our money. Yep, money is a big part of it, along with the Internet discussion of whom to support and good vetting.

Incidentally, is there any way Progressive Dems, especially Internet activists, can help BlueAmerica candidates with their campaigns, aside from just handing them money?

dakine01 @ 28

Because any oversight of the “faith-based” programs and community would be called “government interference with religion” and be against the “separation of church and state.”

…

…
Taxpayers demand OVERSIGHT. None of Bush’s assertions that churches do a better job at social services have been proved.

In the last Supreme Court decision, individual taxpayers who brought a case against Jay Hein, the Faith-based Czar (they are trying to make this into a Cabinet position!!!!), were told that because the billions were authorized by the Executive Branch, not Congress, they do not have standing in seeking investigation into dollars spent.

This Faith-Based Initiative was created by an Executive Order.

Catch 22: Because it was created by the Executive Branch, citizens have no standing in the dispensation of the billions, even though it’s taxpayers’ dollars.

Obviously the power of Executive Orders needs to be curbed by Congressional action. We can’t afford to have ANY president thinking they are above the law because they have an EO at their disposal.

Regarding the RS article, this is something that Randi Rhodes has been saying for years. They WANT chaos in Iraq so they can steal. Steal Iraq’s resources, steal the US treasury, there is SO MUCH MONEY being made it makes me wonder why the left has so much trouble framing the underlying issue to everythng that has happened in the USA in the last quarter century.

It’s the money. Oil money, corporate money, taxpayer money…money.

Well, if they could precisely show where the money has gone and who has it, then THAT would be a story. But, if it just disappears and nobody seems to have it, then is it theft or loss or what? Not much of a story in that case.

Again, once we have a Dem president and Congress we need to do some investigating and demanding some ’splainin’.

[ Note: kinda neat using an apostrophe at both the beginning and end of a slangy kinda word! ]

Spiritcatcher, a stick of butter is 1/4 cup. And a package of cream cheese 8 oz.

[Mod: stick of butter is 1/4 pound, not 1/4 cup]

which weight are these cream cheese packages (and which percentage of fat), and which weight are these buttersticks ? knowing that, i should be able to translate it all to grams and degrees celsius myself …