Blue Texan!

Issues that have loomed large in the GOP debate — notably immigration, taxes and moral values — pale by comparison.

republicans running on moral values is like fire trying to get elected as being wet

it’s a contradiction of terms

Being a Republican means never having to pay attention to those you “love”.

The issues are on our side. If we stick to them, we win.

Crossing fingers, but remembering past trouble staying on message.

trying to out-wingnut each other for their loony base on national television

Hi BT, good one! I. could. not. believe. my. ears.

Listening to Sleepy Thompson go on about the Arabs wanting to meet up with the 72 virgins, or whatever. What garbage! I thought I had truly entered the Twilight Zone.

Funny how the electorate does not trust the Rs on the issue of money.

LOL Perris, fire/wet.

Check out this platform statement:

We shall ever build anew, that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.

We believe that basic to governmental integrity are unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government. We shall continue our insistence on honesty as an indispensable requirement of public service. We shall continue to root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.

We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.

Care to guess where it came from? (No cheating if you listened to Thom Hartmann this morning.)

It really is surreal.

Let’s all praise Bush and say how great Iraq is. That’ll work.

Blue Texans - People are talking about issues they want to change. In Nevada I live in a very conservative area. They like to be Independents but they usually vote Republican. Not this election. They are reregistering Democrat because they are concerned about the economy (and they are upper middle class), the amount of money going out for war and more war. Healthcare is sick in Nevada. No matter how much money they spend on healthcare insurance, their coverage sucks.

People are not better off today than they were eight years ago.

Facts with their well known liberal bias, reality favors the Democrats.

Funny how the electorate does not trust the Rs on the issue of money.

They trust them to steal as much of it as they can.

Richard Nixon?

People are not better off today than they were eight years ago.

Ding!

Eisenhower, 1956. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.....?pid=25838

Delurking.

“The issues are on our side. If we stick to them, we win.”

You’re dealing with a bunch of Rove wannabes on the other side. They will stop at nothing to win. That’s if there is an election this year.

“People are not better off today than they were eight years ago.”

Well, except that the millionaires are now multi-millionaires.

You’re dealing with a bunch of Rove wannabes on the other side

I totally know what you’re saying, and couldn’t agree more. But this isn’t 2004, and it’s really, really not 2000.

It’s almost as if the country wants… oh, what is that word? Oh yeah, “Change”!

Americans are, and should be, worried about the economy, but I think the candidates are making a huge mistake in not taking the Repugs on every day about the war. The economy can’t get better until we stop spending billions per week in the war on terra so one should follow the other. IMO

What I still can’t grasp is how thoroughly the public rejects the current course and everything about Bush, but how comparatively close the head-to-head hypotheticals remain in the current polling. Are people not paying enough attention, yet? It seems to me that the Democrats have not yet done a very good job of demonstrating how little the Republican candidates differ from Bush on important policies.

you mean even if we give more tax cuts to the richest?

There’s always a return to the economics of the 60’s and early 70’s where we paid a fortune for a war -and- had growing social programs. Result, very high inflation and unemployment. Hope that incoming Dems can get a grip on the costs of the war.

For the GOP candidates to talk about real change in Iraq and the economy, they would have to identify what is wrong with the President’s policies thus the need for change. It would make them appear to be critical of the administration and so far none of them have been willing to do that for fear of alienating the base. I think a lot of them feel their Iraq occupation is just fine and don’t want to admit they would continue it indefinitely. I’ve never seen a republican in my memory that had a clue about the economic health of the nation or how it affects the middle class.

And the economy is excellent!

I worry about Huckabee on this issue. He has the non-Wallstreet type approach to the economy and could sucker some people into voting for the Republicans.

Proof once again the Republican Party is no more and cannot be resurrected from the dead. The Neo Conservative Party is alive and well. They buried Republicans. Only the name remains.

Puh-leeeeze, candidates! Stick to the issues!

Amen.

Seems Thompson is using a Rovian tactic of noting a strength as though it were a weakness: “That’s not the model of the Reagan coalition; that’s the model of the Democratic Party,”

Big cheers from the GOPness.

“Vote for me, I’m not a democrat (and just forget about what we did the last seven years…)”

Get us out of Iraq. Tell me how you’ll do that, candidates.

What position have the Democratic candidates taken on the twenty billion dollar arms sale to the Saudis that their employee, our Preznit, just negotiated? More arms to the Middle East make sense?

I am sure the GOPs think it’s just swell.

I don’t believe that is a policy issue they are concerned with.

What really swung things was the Sub-Prime Real Estate Bubble, IMO. For years the Pugs made this sector of the economy the principal reward for the Middle Class in Blue States and Districts. It was the zone where folks with a little money could invest and feel that they were getting richer (on paper) as housing values increased. Some even took extra doses of the kool-aid and bought additional properties on the equity that their current real estate carried.

Realtors, Estate Brokers, Contractors, Construction Workers, people moving into subdivisions, those already with homes who saw their homes skyrocket in value…all of these were more likely to vote Republican. Suddenly their “economy” has turned out to be the result of fraud (heck…some of them were actually pushing it…”free markets”), and the lack of Federal oversight has come around and bitten the dog on it’s own rear.

People at all levels are talking about socialistic government bailouts…the Big Five want the taxpayer to pick up their bad debt gambles. The homeowners want some sort of deal that will freeze or even rescind the heavy mortgage payments. Those being foreclosed upon want some kind of debt restructuring. Those seeing their properties lose appraisal value (and much of that was fraudulently pushed up by appraisers it turns out) want forgiveness of their property tax increases…after all they were based upon people actually lying about the values of the homes. Cities and counties are gonna see their revenues plummet as a result. Schools, roads, infrastructure will collapse in the ‘burbs…both as foreclosures and dimished appraisal valuations cut city/county tax revenues and thus services. Then, as folks move out of their homes, the businesses serving those areas will face diminished profits (also folks will have less disposable income)…watch as the malls start having shops boarded up…local kids on the street due to less employment. Abandoned homes with crappy maintenance and grounds-keeping…being broken into by those delinguent jobless youths, drug abusers and HOBOS! House fires…straining the Fire Departments…further diminishing property values.

And none of the Republicans seem to realize what is going on.

John Edwards could pick up how our current economic problems has the potential of making “Two Americas” into ONE, BIG IMPOVERISHED AMERICA!

Change Purge.

Uh-oh, McCain and Lieberliar in WaPo re Petraeus and the surge is working…money quote “gains can be lost” meaning “I heart endless war.”

Reno-Gazette poll (polled 500 Rep and 500 Dem)
January, 14, 2008

Democrats:
Obama 32%
Clinton 30%
Edwards 27%

Republicans:
McCain 22%
Giuliani 18%
Huckabee 16%
Romney 15%
Thompson 11%
Paul 6%

Yeah, Cheney got kiboshed:

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....8;r=680199

But God forbid that government should do anything about it! The “invisible hand” of the free market will make everything right.

Excuse me, this appeared in the Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news......83,00.html

I apologize to John Edwards. A few posts ago I called him a “Goody Two-Shoes” who likely was too afraid of breaking the law to experiment with smoking marijuana. I was wrong. John Edwards has admitted that he smoked pot, and so has John Dean and John Kerry. Dennis Kucinich has said that he never did…so his observations of UFO’s cannot be attributed to a fuzzy drug-addled hallucination.

Question? Were ONLY registered Democrats polled for the Democratic Primary vote? Or were those 500 Republicans included?

project much?

“This all smells of policy validation,” says David Wurmser, who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s top Middle East adviser up until this September. “These guys were State Department bureaucrats….It is hardly surprising that they now use their new positions to try to prove they were right.”

love the bureaucrat smear, read, does not own any halliburton stock, losers.

Change Purge.

Pusht!

We will win if the candidates stick to the issue which is that…

Under the watch of Bushco and the rubberstamp Republicans…we find that they have:

Dismantled the Constitution;
Created an economic crisis and bankruptcy for the people;
Outsourced American jobs;
Allowed one of our major cities to remain in ruins and evicted its inhabitants;
Attempted to rename the Homeland United States of America.

Pusht?

It’s almost as if the spooks said to Cheney, “Go fuck yourself.”

In fact, that’s exactly what they said.

Change Purge.

Pusht!

Uh, pucht is what we’ve been saddled with since late 2000…

I heard (CNN) bill schneider on sunday tell low dobbs that the immigration issue was polling on importance under 4% for Dems and was like 10th or something among issues.
Dobbs said he just didnt believe it from the conversations he was having and from his emails. Who does that idiot thinks goes to his events anyway–the average person?
What would you talk to Lou Dobbs about, anyway? he’s a one-issue guy.

None of the Democratic candidates seem to have digested that the NIE developed by 13 US Intelligence agencies have shown that there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Instead they all essentially ignore it and thus allow Bush to continue his provocative threats in the region. Why are Edwards, Clinton, and Obama not responding?

Are they all tools of AIPAC?

pucht?

Ooops Putsh or putsch

A coup-de-tat…usually from a sub-party or group within the government.

Thanks…I didn’t know what that was…

John Edwards has been right on the issues that matter to Americans and he was there before either Hillary or Obama.

We need John Edwards to keep winning delegates to the convention in Denver. Give John some Green Love. he’s not taking the big stuff.

HELP GET EDWARDS TO DENVER!

A coup d’etat. There’s an accent aigu on the e, but this place codes it all wrong.

Thanks BT. You are right, the times have changed. Biggest problem then for a stay on point strategy will remain the MSM.

Hear, hear.

someone on the net was promoting a big $7 million in one day strategy for Edwards to raise cash and get some media awareness…I think it was on KOS.

Who needs issues when we are having a field day with gender and race.

We should be pounding away and damned incompetence/illegalities of bushco at every chance instead we are we are acting as though we are the “Spears” party of sex and coke.

Edwards seems to be the only one that has any bloody clue about what issues are of importance to the American voter but of course as long as corporate america pulls the strings HRC and OB will do their bidding. I despair.

I don’t know how to spell the friggin’ word! Until the Bushista Coup it wan’t part of the American vocabulary, at least in terms of what happens here.

here’s the link, this blogger “kingoneeye” says January 18. read on http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/13/171722/549

When you vote, you don’t vote directly on the issues. Rather, you vote for a candidate.

So an advantage on the issues does not necessarily translate into an advantage in the Presidential election.

OT but… ET are the trials still going on in Alaska? Are we any closer to more indictments?

500 reg Dems and 500 reg Repub

A China expert and onetime gymnast, Mr. Fingar began his career as an academic at Stanford University and was the director of its U.S.-China Relations Program. His colleagues describe him as enraptured by the East, displaying in his office Asian art and photos of his younger days in East Asia.

In 2002, Mr. Fingar vigorously quizzed his analysts’ assumptions on Iraq, according to people who took part in the process. He particularly liked running “red teaming” exercises where competing groups sought to expose flaws in the bureau’s judgments. Mr. Fingar told top State Department officials, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, what his analysts had concluded: Saddam Hussein didn’t have an active nuclear-weapons program. In particular, they disputed evidence cited by the White House relating to Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes, purportedly for use in making weapons-grade nuclear fuel.

Seems like Fingar has somehow started to influence Condi…just as he tried to do with Powell. I’m wondering if the Stanford ties are important there, Fingar may have pulled academic (or intellectual) rank on Condi…or at least she may have found someone that had on the ground views that could, and enjoyed, challenging her.

I was just wondering how Senator Toobz is doin’ Do tell, ET.

OT Froomkin up “Bush chooses what to believe”

Thing that annoys me is, when are we gonna figure this out? This is the same TYPE of crap — although worse — that we were dealing with at the end of the Reagan/Bush administrations, and before that, Nixon! You elect Republicans, you get corruption, an economy in the crapper, and a military botch left for the next administration to clean up.

So how many more years will it be until the American electorate says “Well, sure, slamming our national head in the car-door of the Republican party hurt LAST time, but maybe THIS time it won’t be so bad!”

Criminy…

Unfortunately, large numbers of voters don’t consider “the issues”, going with the candidate they just feel good about. That’s why they vote against their own interests so often.

Anybody still have that link to where the Navy ships are currently deployed?

OT but… ET are the trials still going on in Alaska? Are we any closer to more indictments?

I was just wondering how Senator Toobz is doin’ Do tell, ET

nomolos and dosido,

possibly closer to indictments, and Ted is as blind to his fate as the rest of the GOP.

AP - President Bush, on his first visit to this oil-rich kingdom, delivered a major arms sale Monday to a key ally in a region where the U.S. casts neighboring Iran as a menace to stability.

John McCain tells NEWSWEEK he’s just getting warmed up.

PM: All options legitimate to block Iran from nuclearizing

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday he had told President George Bush that Israel could not reconcile itself to a nuclear Iran, and that the government is “ruling out no options in advance” in barring Tehran from obtaining atomic weaponry.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/944586.html

I consider the Middle East an issue of importance to Americans. Seems to me that one could seperate the Democratic Candidates stands on Israel and Iran with tissue paper.

Edwards is a pro-Zionist supporter of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and entrenched stands regarding Palestine. Check out his Herzliya Speech from last year. He has consistantly held that the US must take a hard-line stand against Iran’s (now non-existant, or perhaps never existant) nuclear programs. That completely ignores the NIE, and wasn’t even valid when that report came out.

And his solution to the situation in Iraq is to leave two brigades* still there? OHHHHH! They would be “non-combat” and simply used to defend humanitarian and reconstruction projects and the Vatican-sized embassy-complex. There would be “no permanant bases”, but he would establish a Rapid Strike Force “over the rainbow” “over the horizon” in Kuwait, ready to attack al Qaida or to meddle in a Civil War in Iraq if need be.

[* a brigade consists of 3-4000 personnel including troops and support staff].

Just how different is this from Hillary’s position? Or Barack’s? All these folks are still into using US Forces into projecting “force” into the Middle East.

Froomkin’s opening:

President Bush has apparently found a way to reconcile his bellicose views of Iran with the recent National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Michael Hirsh writes for Newsweek that “in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. ‘He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views’ about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity. . . .

“A source close to the Israeli leader said Bush first briefed Olmert about the intelligence estimate a week before it was published, during talks in Washington that preceded the Annapolis peace conference in November. According to the source, who also refused to be named discussing the issue, Bush told Olmert he was uncomfortable with the findings and seemed almost apologetic.”

Facts? Who needs ‘em?

OT - John Solomon named executive editor on Moonie Washingon Times.

I am aware that it was at this conference that PM Ariel Sharon gave his courageous speech outlining his disengagement. He helped Israel face some of its major challenges.

Throughout his career and public service Sharon has shown courage, including his historic decision to evacuate Gaza. More than anyone else, Sharon has, in my judgment, believed that a strong Israel is a safe Israel and that Israel needs to defend itself against security threats…

At the top of these threats is Iran. Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world. Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons. For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse. To a large extent, the US abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake. The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats.

Once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile.

Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table…

Absent this partnership, Israel not only has the right to defend itself, it has an obligation to defend itself. This means continuing to ensure Israel’s military strength, diplomatically and economically. The hurdles are clear.

John Edward’s at the Herzliya Conference January 2006

submit questions for the MSNBC debate

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22574335

Should be “of“

Howie’s upstairs…

Some thirty-odd years ago a sign appeared on a bridge over the Charles river, between Boston and Cambridge.

It read: ‘If Voting Could Change Things, It Would Be Illegal.’

How much change are we really all expecting from our current ‘crop’ of politicians?

Their behaviors range from the infantile to the adolescent.

Where are the grown-ups?

Sure does Bush didn’t go to the Middle East to bring peace that was the cover story. Bush went there to beg for cash for our troubled Banks and financial companies.
Bush had to sell them weapons to sweeten the deal. I wonder how Holy Joe feels about this? Joe has to know that given our economy and his turning on the Democratic Party that Israel might not get their cash if a Democrat is elected.
Selling aid money to other countries when we can’t even Aid our own with National Healthcare is going to be a tough sell in a recession. After decades of welfare/aid what do we have to show for it.
Cut the aid force Israel to make some hard choices. Israel bulldozing people’s homes has to stop.
Plus I believe that there are more Muslim voters in America now than Jewish ones, Israel would be wise to make a peace deal now before we withdraw support.

Where are the grown-ups?

This grown-up is not giving up on Kucinich.

Dennis Kucinich was right about the war in Iraq, he is right on impeachment, and he is right on single payer health care.

Edwards, Obama, and Clinton were and are wrong on all three. And not one of them has stepped up to offer anything but carefully crafted speeches - full of sound bites, lacking fury, signifying nothing.

This may be the real “fairytale”. Americans don’t vote the issues but rather their emotions which the Republicans play like a violin. When Americans begin to “hate” the Republicans the way they have been manipulated to “hate” the liberals then maybe the Dems will have a chance.

Americans don’t vote the issues but rather their emotions which the Republicans play like a violin.

You may be right, blue, but I think Americans actually do vote issues when things are really screwed up.

We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.

Care to guess where it came from? (No cheating if you listened to Thom Hartmann this morning.)

Putin’s Russia maybe?

And the economy is excellent!

I haven’t looked recently, what’s the median household debt up to?

How much has household income risen in the past 30 years?

How much is our government in debt compared to 8 years ago?

There are lots of stats which show we are not in great economic shape. Pick one.

the twenty billion dollar arms sale to the Saudis that their employee, our Preznit, just negotiated?

George senior made a similar arms deal in his last year (1992) to try and boost the economic numbers. Nobody cared because they read his lips.

…
Israel not only has the right to defend itself, it has an obligation to defend itself. This means continuing to ensure Israel’s military strength, diplomatically and economically.

John Edward’s at the Herzliya Conference January 2006

You continue to quote his speech as if there’s something bad in there. All he’s saying is Iran has been a threat to Israel (and there’s plenty of evidence they support countries and terrorist groups which attack Israel) and Israel should defend itself and receive help from us. I don’t understand your argument.

I suppose foreign policy is supposed to be a weak point of Edwards because he doesn’t talk about it much. Oy.