has repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to lie
“I … did not have … sexual relations … with that woman …”
spread unfounded innuendos
Such as?
steal elections
If you don’t understand how the electoral college works by now you probaby can’t be helped.
make blowjobs a topic of political discourse
The issue was perjury, not getting his dick sucked.
but damned if I think the Dems should let themselves be pushed into political irrelevance
The Dems ARE becoming politically irrelevant. Ya know why? They have no ideas. The only thing they are capable of doing now is shooting down anything the Republicans come up with and making silly cartoons. Maybe if they actually used their brains and tried to come up with, oh, a vision, they wouldn’t get their asses kicked on election day.
Yes, Clinton lied about his sex life (although I know women who don’t count men they’ve done anything short of sexual intercourse with in their “count” of men they’ve had sex with). That’s a bad feature in a lover or potential lover. I happen to consider lying (pretty much compulsively) about public policy matters to be a little bit of a worse feature in a President.
We don’t need to get off on this tangent, but go see the thread titled “Hey…how do pro-democrats on the SDMB feel about this” or go to www.gregpallast.com
On this point, I agree with you somewhat. The Dems need to articulate a positive vision. Of course, I happen to think that just not destroying environmental protection, not cutting whatever small vestiges we have of progressive taxation, not bankrupting the government, and not curtailing civil liberties are more than good enough reasons to vote Democratic. But, the American public does seem to want to hear a more positive message.
I’m not entirely happy with the Repulican party at the moment, but the Democrats aren’t any better, IMHO. Most politicians lie and spread unfounded innuendos. I’m quite sure that at some point in the history of the United States, a democrat has stolen an election.
And let’s face it…if it had been a Republican president who had claimed not to have sexual relations with an intern when he in fact did and had lied about it in front of a grand jury, the Democrats would have pursued it just as strongly.
As for the asshole comment, it is my humble opinion that the assholes in politics are not separated from the non-assholes by a party line. YMMV.
Color me also completely confused here, Shodan. You seem to have lost the distinction between feelings and actions. If minty actually did what he said or threatened to do what he said, I would be the first to condemn him. However, such is not the case.
Bush actually did mock a woman’s plea for clemency. Even if the woman is evil incarnate, that’s still pretty sick in my book.
[By the way, didn’t Michael Dukakis get in trouble in the election exactly because he answered a question about what he’d want to do to the perpetrator if his wife was raped with a very wooden statement of his views on the death penalty rather than saying something like “I would want to tear his fuckin’ heart out of his chest… And, yet, that does not mean I feel we as a society should endorse this.”]
This cartoon is a desperate gasp that would be worthy of Lyndon LaRouche. It is a grand statement that the Democratic Party no longer considers itself to be in the least bit worthy of leading this country. Instead, it has voluntarily relegated itself to a loony fringe.
Nobody said that. What they said was that Dubya’s mockery of a woman begging for her life was disgusting.
The Pubbies have no business criticizing the DNC cartoon while they work hand in glove with Republican pundits who spout the GOP party line with absolutely no respect for the facts. As long as the Pubbies feed their propaganda through the columns, books, and TV shows of Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Ken Hamblin, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Robert Novak, and Bill O’Reilly, they have no business dissing a cartoon that, as crude as it may be, is essentially telling the truth.
The Bush adminstration has already shown their economic bias in favor of the ultra-rich, their contempt for civil liberties, and their dismantling of environmental protections, and their willingness to start a war and kill American soldiers using manufactured evidence. The DNC is just revealing what the GOP would prefer to keep hidden.
The Dems do have some ideas, but their leadership is failing them badly at the moment. Specifically, a total lack of balls on the part of the DLC. Like I said, we need people who’ll jump in the mud and fight it out with the Repubs blow for blow … so to speak.
Don’t forget them kicking puppies, knocking down the old man on the mountian, faking the moon landings, and causing all this rain we have been having lately.
Gosh, Debaser I didn’t really expect you to be so dishonest. Nobody accused Bush of kicking puppies or any of that other nonsense. In fact, I’m sure that he likes dogs.
And we’ve already establsihed that Bush was lying when he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which he was making available to terrorists.
Now are you going to address the issues like an honest man, or are you going to follow your fellow Pubbies by dismissing with irrelevancies what you cannot defend?
The tax plan cuts taxes across the board. It saves the rich more money because they pay more. That makes sense.
The Bush administration isn’t doing as much for the environment as you like. They are hardly “dismantling” environmental protections. If you’d like to make a case otherwise, go ahead and start a thread showing which protections have been “dismantled”.
The civil liberties thing is my favorite.
Among the 22 bulleted items from the link you cite we can find:
A radio DJ who was fired by the management at his station. So what.
Ashcroft sends a memo to federal agencies stating “When you … decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis.” So what.
“Bush issues an executive order authorizing the creation of military tribunals to try noncitizens alleged to be involved in international terrorism.” Sounds like a good idea to me. So what.
“Bush signs into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which requires all people who work as security screeners at airports to be U.S. citizens.” Seems reasonable to me. So what.
"Ashcroft issues a memo announcing the use of special visas for those who provide information relating to terrorists. " Where is the civil liberties that these good ideas are somehow affecting?
It talks about the patriot act of course. Alleging that it:
bolding mine.
This is just blatantly false. The patriot act doesn’t do anything like this. Judges don’t have to grant anything they don’t want to.
Plus, we had a thread on the Patriot act recently that no one could even come up with a single reasonable complaint about it. The hampsters aren’t letting me do a search now for it, though.
Oh, and if Bush was lying when he said that Saddam had WMD’s then I suppose Clinton, Kerry, et al were lying as well when they said that he had them also?
Oh, saints preserve me. I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to go over this until everyone catches on. Clinton pressed to have inspectors sent to Iraq in 1998. Saddam kicked the inspectors out, so Clinton bombed Iraq. Because Saddam violated the UN mandate. Intelligence held that Iraq probably did have weapons of mass destruction, and it was a fair bet that that was so at that time.
It was also a fair bet that that was so in 2002, when Bush pressed Congress on the matter, holding that he held information that was so damning that we had to not only go after Iraq again, but actually remove Saddam Hussein from power. The monkey wrench in Bush’s plan this time was that the Hussein regime was actually complying with the UN weapons inspectors, who were looking for weapons of mass destruction. They didn’t find any, so Bush ordered the invasion. American and British inspectors haven’t found any weapons, either, and Bush is getting so frustrated that he’s attempting to revise history by talking about how this was about saving the Iraqi people and about destroying their weapons program, which they surely had, even though there have yet been no weapons of mass destruction of any kind found in the country.
In short: Clinton said Saddam wasn’t complying, which was true. Bush said that we’ll definitely find weapons of mass destruction, based on evidence that his administration possessed, which was a lie.
Fuck that shit. I’m telling you what I’d be tempted to do to any such s.o.b. If you’re so daft you can’t tell the difference between temptation and action, that’s your problem.
Ya know what? Sometime tomorrow, I actually have a slim chance of having somebody do and say what was described above. I seriously doubt you’ll hear anything about a lawyer who went nuts and stuck a ballpoint pen through some state actor’s throat.
Nitpick – Saddam didn’t kick the inspectors out. They left of their own accord after Saddam complained about American/Israeli spies within their ranks (an allegation that was proven true).
Thanks, rjung. I’m a little harried these days. I remember the bit about the spies. The overall feeling was, “How dare he make such an accusation?” But the fact is that we simply pulled out after the fact following the complaint… sorta like slinking away with our tail between our legs.
Upon further reflection and six hours of sleep, my “daft” comment above was inappropriate and beneath the dignity of the forum. My apologies, Shodan. The subject is, shall we say, a rather sensitive one for me.
Well, as the guy who basically started us down the road that led to your outburst, let me say that I liked “Fuck that shit”.
The real answer, of course, is that if everyone who made an insensitive remark were declared “inhuman”, then there would be no humans on the face of the earth today. But as I said earlier, if it makes anyone feel better to call Bush “inhuman”, then go right ahead.
