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#1
10-19-2005, 05:53 PM
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Delay to be arrested! What has made *your* day?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/....ap/index.html
Arrest warrant issued for Tom Delay. Suddenly I walk with a spring in my step and a song on my lips. 
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#3
10-19-2005, 07:00 PM
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Ooooh, now that is so sweet! Oooh, I can just taste the schaeudenfreude-it is delicious.
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#5
10-19-2005, 07:42 PM
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(Mixed emotion on this, though. We've had quite enough of this BS, but weren't hammered like New Orleans/Biloxi-Gulfport/etc., but hate it hitting anybody, not wishing bad things on anyone)
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#6
10-19-2005, 10:20 PM
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#7
10-19-2005, 10:52 PM
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So?
Delay was indicted. It stands to reason that he show up for booking. He's choosing the non-voluntary approach (an arrest warrant) just so he can play his martyr hand. What I see is a gaggle of media waiting outside the courthouse. Delay emerges after booking and shows the ink on his fingertips. Great media coverage. Scores sympathy points. Sure makes the prosecutor look like the Big Bad Man. Any trial will take jurors to ultimately decide Delay's fate. The key is to get a majority of jurors who don't like inked fingers caused by The Man. The Fat Lady is far from singing.
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#8
10-19-2005, 11:04 PM
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Personally, speaking as a pretty solidly right-wing Republican, I really don't care whether DeLay is forced out of his post or not. He's a pork-barrel specialist, not a conservative ideologue, and his departure won't break many hearts on my side of the aisle.
Just a few things to note: 1) Austin D.A. Ronnie Earle is a dunce and a grandstander with a long, proven record of going after big prey and then backing down because even HE knows he doesn't have much in the way of evidence. There are only two possibilities here: A) that Earle has managed to flip a key insider, and has gotten that insider to spill some big secrets, or B) that Earle is just trying once again to make a name for himself. I lean toward B, but we'll see. 2) Liberals tend to personalize politics, and that isn't healthy or useful. They've built up Karl Rove into an omniscient, onipotent puppetmaster, and they've built up Tom DeLay into the Godfather of the G.O.P. Syndicate. In their own fantasy world, they've convinced themselves if they can just "get" Rove or "bring down" DeLay, the Republicans will be finished. Well, I hate to break it to you, Libbies, but you know what: practically nobody outside Washington knows or cares who Karl Rove and Tom DeLay are. So, even if they both went to jail (they won't, but I'm happy to humor you for a second), it wouldn't make the slightest difference in the 2006 or 2008 elections. The Dems will NOT win back either house of Congress in 2008. (They COULD win the Presidency in 2008, of course; they weren't far off in 2004, and all they need is one or two states to swing a TINY bit differently... but DeLay and Rove won't be issues or factors in the race by then.) When they lose both houses again in 2006, I can't help wondering: who will they blame their failures on THIS time?? Who's the next Republican they'll demonize and curse and hold up as the root of all their problems?
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#9
10-19-2005, 11:30 PM
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Not enough for me. Not nearly enough. I want a failure to surrender. I want officers dispatched to effect the arrest. I want a barricaded office door. I want the shout "You'll never take me alive, coppers!" and a threat to hostages (who will be quickly identified as DeGuerin, Jack Abramoff, an unnamed DeLay aide and two oil lobbyists, so as not to cause unnecessary anxiety). I want DeLay to refuse to negotiate until officials remove the pink dragons from the building. I want a tearful Maxine DeLay pleading with her boy to "put down the drugs and guns and cooperate." I want tear gas, followed by a rooftop scene in which DeLay, clad only in a small flag and swinging a ball-peen hammer, is lassoed and hog-tied by a Texas Ranger and lowered down the side of the building into an improvised cage on the back of the flatbed truck that will take him to jail. I want his removal from that cage, on arriving at the jail, to prompt another escape attempt through the sewers of Fort Bend, and his recapture and pressure-washing by a troop of campfire girls. I want his last words at arraignment to be "I'd have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!" I won't even try to describe what I want the trial to be like. And I want the Hammer's prison nickname to be "thumbtack."
And I want it all on live TV, and I want it on tape. On a serious note, I've never set foot in D.C. and I know who Tom DeLay and Karl Rove are. I've never been in Texas and I know who Earle is, and that yours is not the only opinion of him. Not that Texans don't elect the occasional grand-standing dunce. I don't think personalizing politics is inherently characteristic of either liberals or conservatives (remember Bob Dornan?) but it does lead to some interesting places. And actually I don't want anyone who hasn't committed a serious crime to go to jail. But I feel a little better these days, because the right-wing dependence on the ignorance of the voters may not be justified next time.
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#10
10-19-2005, 11:31 PM
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#11
10-19-2005, 11:40 PM
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The realization that I set the curve on my Economics midterm.
(As for the issue of the personalization of politics: It's been around in the US since at least the 1830's, all sides and parties use it, and none but the fool think it'll go away anytime soon.)
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#12
10-19-2005, 11:48 PM
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Well, you asked what made my day.....
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#14
10-20-2005, 01:51 PM
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When my sister called and to tell me that our Mom was only sufferering from a little diverticulitis (that can easily be controlled with diet) and would be going home from the hospital today.
The 2nd best thing that made my day was reading about Tom DeLay's arrest warrant.
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#15
10-20-2005, 02:22 PM
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If he's guilty of the crimes I'm glad the prosecution is progressing as it is.
I'm not happy, though. Democrat of Republican I don't think it's good for democracy for this kind of thing to happen. If DeLay is guilty then that means we've got a criminal in elected office and I can't feel anything but bad about that. If he's innocent then we have a political witch hunt, and again I can't feel good about that. As it is I've not seen compelling evidence either way. I can't even get a good idea as to which way this is leaning from the news I've read. If I had a better idea as to whether or not he was guilty/innocent then I may have different feelings about the prosecution. But from all that I've read this prosecutor does seem sort of suspect to me.
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#16
10-20-2005, 02:46 PM
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I just breezed through a review and audit of my department. They happen every 3 years and are generally a bear, this one was done in only 5 hours. I'm on vacation tomorrow and Monday, so I'm leaving early today to celebrate. This isn't just something that made my day, this is something that is dreaded for weeks...and it's over.
I thought it was customary to be arrested upon indictment. I served on a grand jury before, and I seem to recall arrest warrants being issued for the people we indicted. SO it might make headlines, but I think it's SOP (I guess unless you turn yourself in after reading about it in the paper, the people we indicted probably didn't know about it until they heard a knock on the door).
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#17
10-20-2005, 04:17 PM
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Well, he's got a few more ethics investigations going on in house if this one doesn't pan out. I'll take a WAG and say that the folks in Texas have heard of DeLay....
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#18
10-21-2005, 08:19 AM
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Mmmm.... yes and no. If your point is that conservatives can develop insane, irrational hatreds that lead them to say and do all kinds of idiotic things to destroy their perceived enemies, you're absolutely right. And the end results are typically as futile and self-destructive as liberal vendettas. The difference is, while conservative hatred of Bill and Hillary Clinton was often deranged and irrational, well, Bill Clinton WAS the President! If you're hell-bent on attacking your "enemy," you may as well start at the top. And while the loonies of the GOP failed miserably in bringing down Bill Clinton, at the very least, you can see why they thought bringing down the President would be a major feather in their caps, and might lead to a big turnaround in the next election. But Karl Rove? Tom DeLay? Liberals have fixated on these guys for years, and STILL seem obsessed with destroying them, even though: 1) George W. Bush is a lame duck, which means Karl Rove is a lame duck, which means that (worst case scanrio for liberals) the supposedly omniscient, omnipotent Rove will be sitting at home twiddling his thumbs from on January 21, 2009 until the day he dies. His star was hitched firmly to George W. Bush. He has no future without George W. 2) Rove and DeLay don't even appear on most American's radar screens. So, even if you succeed in taking them out, it will make ZERO difference in future elections. A Democrat running for the Senate or House will get a few cheers and a lot of blank stares if he tries to raise the issue of DeLay or Rove's supposed corruption. The thing that loonies in both parties never grasp is that you're supposed to learn something from your losses. When you lose an election, you're supposed to take stock and ask, "What did we do wrong? Have we alienated our base voters? Did we pick a bad candidate? Did we emphasize the wrong issues? Do we need a new message, or a shift in our policy priorities?" Lately, though, nuts on both sides (but the liberals are a little more paranoid and delusional, I think) have given up asking questions like that. When they lose, they tell themselves "We were 100% right, they were 100% wrong. So, if they won, they must have cheated! There must be some sinister power making it happen! Let's see, George W. Bush is too dumb to orchestrate such a fiendish plot, so... ROVE! It had to be Rove! And DeLay!! THEY'RE the ones who made us lose!" Okay, fine. Make Rove and DeLay the issue. Just remember to come up with a new Enemies List after you lose the House and Senate again in 2006. Now... using my crystal ball, I can see the Republicans going nuts in a similar way in 2009, IF, say, a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket beats a John McCain-Rudy Giuliani ticket. IF that happens, I can see the far right making George Soros the new target ("How did we lose? It couldn't have been the bad economy, or the Iraq War... it MUST have been that evil foreign billionaire financing the Democrats!"). And liberals who couldn't see the idiocy of demonizing Rove and DeLay will clearly see the idiocy of demonizing Soros.
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#19
10-21-2005, 08:23 AM
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That'll teach me to use cliched poetic allusions.
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