A Laundry List of the Latest Democratic Party Screwups

UG: Was not Congress, particularly its senior leadership, quite scared of what would come out in the wash -- who was bribing whom -- should all of Bill Clinton's sins be remembered? Seems to me only such fear prevented Clinton from being turned out."

Yep....I guess that is why the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committte caved and bypassed long-standing Senate rules to have AG Gonzales testify under oath on legal justification for the warrantless domestic spying program:

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.

The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove's message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.

"He's [Rove] lining them up one by one," another congressional source said.

Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.

Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.

So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove's tactics.

Some have raised doubts about Mr. Rove's strategy of painting the Democrats, who have opposed unwarranted surveillance, as being dismissive of the threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists.

"Well, I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican.

from the conseravite Washington Times/Insight: http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Rove2.htm

UG....are these the kind of thug tactics from a White House that meet your approval or just politicals as usual?

I, for one, believe in the value of independent and equal branches of government to ensure that one branch never oversteps its authority and tramples on the Constitution.

You do believe in the Constititution, don't you?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Richard Mellon Scaife kept a grey cloud of scandal over the Clinton Administration. He spewed out unsubstantiated accusations of everything, up to and including dozens of murders, knowing that with enough accusations, people would believe that something had to be true. If there had been anything real in it, the millions of dollars spent investigating by a hostile Congress would have found something. If Clinton had done what Bush has done, and refuse to testify under oath or allow anyone in his administration (or his pals in the oil industry) to, he wouldn't have even done the one thing they did ding him for. Put Bush under oath, and ask direct questions, and see how many counts of perjury you can rack up.

I'm having some difficulty calibrating my equipment...please stand by.

[tw]

From The Economist of 4 Feb 2006:

Running on Empty
Meanwhile, the Bush battleplan for the 2006 mid-term elections has begun to emerge. He wants to solve the Republicans' problems by focusing the troops on what they do best: laying siege to Democrats. Mr Bush's speech followed Karl Rove's address to the Republican National Committee on January 20th. The president's main political adviser promised an assault on the Democrats' weakest spot: the war on terrorism. America is at war, goes the argument, but the Democrats are obsessed with warrantless wiretaps. America faces a monstrous enemy, but Democrats are obsessed by blaming America. This doesn't mean that the Democrats are unpatriotic, observed a smiling Mr Rove. They are just wrong. It is a safe bet that we will hear a lot more about the “Defeaticrats” than health savings accounts in the next ten months.

[djacq75]

I didn't like Bill and I don't like Hillary. But she's going to "screw things up?" We're looking down the barrel of World War Three because of the redneck scum in the White House and our national Israel fetish. How much worse could it possibly get?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Redux

You do believe in the Constititution, don't you?

Not if it gets in the way of a good war, he doesn't.

[tw]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Not if it gets in the way of a good war, he doesn't.

No problem. UG already rewrote it.

We shouldnt be concerned about some unknown guerilla rewriting the Constitution when the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee had this to say about the separation of powers on Meet the Press today:

TIM RUSSERT: Senator Roberts, let me ask you a very serious question. Do you believe that the Constitution gives the President of the United States the authority to do anything he believes is necessary to protect the country?

ROBERTS: Yes, but I wouldn’t say anything he believes. I think you go at it very, very carefully. And that’s been done by every president that I know of.

Shades of Richard Nixon: "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal"

[WabUfvot5]

A sucks so I'm going to ignore everything bad B does because I don't agree with A at all. The real question to me is where are C and D and E and F and G? Oh yeah, we don't give those groups equal footing in American politics. Witness how fanatacism starts.

[warch]

Then I guess I'll never be scum, as my sense of ethics and morality are real, and much realer than you'd probably like. I bash Hillary C for being an unprincipled, mildly sociopathic Saul Alinsky-type socialist, whose political instincts were formed in a one-party State named Arkansas.

Can you push yourself to be even realer and non scummy? Give us please a (your) moral and ethical analysis of the "unspeakable creature" Hillary's colleague Senator Rick Santorum. Or maybe Tom Delay?

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Jebediah

A sucks so I'm going to ignore everything bad B does because I don't agree with A at all. The real question to me is where are C and D and E and F and G? Oh yeah, we don't give those groups equal footing in American politics. Witness how fanatacism starts.

I was discussing Doonesbury recently with a very Fox-news friendly associate. He told me he doesn't read Doonesbury because of his anti-Bush bias. When I told him that Doonesbury wasn't saying anything about Bush lately but that a character did just come back from Iraq and was recovering from being wounded, he told me that printing that comic was unpatriotic.

Realistically showing the cost and sacrifice of war is unpatriotic?

All Quiet on the Western Front, The Best Years of Our Lives, and any number of movies have been through this. Some movies are anti-war, some like The Green Berets are staunchly anti-pacifist if not pro-war. None of them pull any punches about the true cost of war. The stated purpose of all US wars is to protect the Constitution and a free and open society. A real discussion about the costs of any conflict are necessary and a real test to find if the Constitution is in danger from forces from within.

BTW, while moving through LAX last night, my more right wing coworkers were confronted with their first celebrity sighting, Ed Asner. Being near an approachable celebrity who was definitely left wing posed a moral dilemma for them. I moved on to my gate but one of the guys I worked with actually struck up a conversation with him. I was asked why I didn't go and talk to Mr. Asner since he was a 'fellow traveller'. Someone mentioned that he supported Mumia, which I don't know anything about. It is funny how people react to celebrities and how people will give them more leeway when it comes to politics.

[xoxoxoBruce]

"My mind's made up...don't confuse me with facts"?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by richlevy

...a character did just come back from Iraq and was recovering from being wounded, he told me that printing that comic was unpatriotic.

Realistically showing the cost and sacrifice of war is unpatriotic?

That depends, richlevy, of course, on how you define "patriotism".

An argument could be made reminders that "being wounded" as "cost and sacrifice of war" could be detrimental to the morale of the reader, either a soldier or a civilian and so depress their warfighting or support efforts. If war is viewed as a zero-sum game, this reduced effort could be seen as a net gain for the enemy. Behavior that benefits the enemy is unpatriotic. [/devil's advocate]

Having heard and read these kinds of comments myself, and in an effort to give the author of the comments the benenfit of the doubt that they speaking earnestly, this is the best line of reasoning I can come up with. I do not agree with it however. It has many major and fatal flaws.

1 -- It is unrealistically simplistic.

2 -- Even though the steps are few, they are LARGE.

3 -- I have never heard someone make an expression like the one you described whose motives for saying so were not mixed at best.

Simplistic. Only the first link in my chain is remotely likely to be true. I do find demoralizing the thought that many soldiers (a *much* higher proportion than in previous wars**) will be wounded. It's sad to think about that. I'm not alone in this opinion, I'm sure. How one responds to that objectively bad news makes all the difference. Some are excited to new heights of warmaking energy. Some are depressed and lethargic. The range of reponses runs the gamut. It's not a lock that bad news is demoralizing.

LARGE steps. War is not a zero-sum game. There are countless examples of this. Something can be good for both sides. Something can be bad for us and bad for them. Something can be bad for us and neutral for them. This idea "you are either with us or you are against us" is just not true.

Mixed motives. The speaker of such may believe it's true, superficially, but the intention for saying such a thing has a large portion of misdirection inextricably embedded in it. "I don't want to talk about that soldier's wounds, so I'll soothe myself and heave the conversation over to *your* faults, you unpatriotic menace, you!" I can't be the only one familiar with this attempt at conversational judo.

Such a statement is a reflection of a lazy and uninformed character. Lazy for being unwilling to make the effort to understand the complexities of our society, and the complexities of war, for that matter. You should use your own judgement in such situations to determine the appropriateness of any attempt to comfort the poverty of the speaker's ignorance. The only hope for our beloved republic lies in the elimination of such poverty.



** I expect to be challenged on this remark. I have not looked up the figures to support it. I base it on the reports I have heard about the higher survival rates for the same kind of trauma thanks to better first aid and trauma recovery technology. If fewer are dying, more are living, living wounded.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

What bothers me most about the anti-war activists, over and above a chronic problem with confusing "surrender" with "peace," is the antipatriotism that oozes through the lines of their arguments. It doesn't make for clear thinking or fair criticism.

They just never get that we're the democracies, in a struggle with blatant non-democracy.

Non-democracy is the source of our troubles; we don't get into donnybrooks like this with democracies.

V, re your footnote above: the first time we really ran into this where it made a difference was WWI -- better survival rates of multiple amputees. WWII did not experience this paradigm shift because it was an evolution on the previous experience, less the first war's difference in kind than difference in degree.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Non-democracy is the source of our troubles; we don't get into donnybrooks like this with democracies.

Define 'like this'.

Supported Contra insurgents in Nicaragua.
Helped overthrow elected prime minister of Iran in 1953-54.
Provided aid to Pinochet after his coup of elected Chilean government.

In many cases we love non-democracies, if the democracies they are replacing are too far left.

[WabUfvot5]

I love people who conveniently forget or disbelieve anything they need to in order to support a given position. I hate Bush. I hate Hillary. The enemy of your friend is not always a friend.