[QUOTE=Liberal]
it’s just factually incorrect that the taxpayers of Mississippi will go without elective representation. The governor will appoint a replacement…
[/QUOTE]
You bet his sweet Republican ass he will!
He just can’t elect a replacement. Only the people of the state can do that.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
I am. I am a very tired guy. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of tired that a nap can help.
I honestly believe that, at this point, there’s no way to change the system to something that actually represents the people (or, more accurately, the people who vastly outnumber the few who can afford actual representation) without some sort of catastrophic uprising. I have a very bad feeling that a couple of more decades of corporatocracy is going to end in the small cadre of very rich people being very unpleasantly terminated by a WHOLE LOT of very poor people. I don’t want mob rule by people who’ve been living in hopeless poverty for decades any more than I want to live in feudal America, but it doesn’t look good to me.
[/QUOTE]
It took a catastrophe, but not an uprising, to replace the era of Republican corporate free-market hegemony with the New Deal.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
I don’t buy the “racist” charge. That whole thing was blown out of proportion.
[/QUOTE]
The Thurmond speech wasn’t the whole thing, ya know. Look up “Council of Conservative Citizens” and you’ll find a helluva lot more about Lott’s background.
[QUOTE=Squink]
You bet his sweet Republican ass he will!
He just can’t elect a replacement. Only the people of the state can do that.
[/QUOTE]
Well, some of the people — a plurality of those who vote.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
It took a catastrophe, but not an uprising, to replace the era of Republican corporate free-market hegemony with the New Deal.
[/QUOTE]
It’s not that leftists hate freedom; it’s just that they don’t know what it is.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
It’s not that leftists hate freedom; it’s just that they don’t know what it is.
[/QUOTE]
You’re so full of shit, I bet your eyes are brown.
[QUOTE=askeptic]
You’re so full of shit, I bet your eyes are brown.
[/QUOTE]
Your non sequitur notwithstanding, anyone who equates robber baron capitalism with a free market has a toad stool for a brain.
That’s got a pretty snappy, aphoristic structure, Lib, but doesn’t seem to mean anything in particular. I’m sure you aren’t suggesting that lefties are deficient in vocabulary. (We simply eschew obfuscatory sesquipedalianism.)
Since government by definition implies some restraint and restriction of freedoms, your crisp one-liner can only be reasonably interpeted as “Lefites don’t agree with me, that’s why they’re wrong. Or vice versa.” You’re still a libertarian, right? So it boils down to restricting a different set of freedoms, rather than some unitary, all-inclusive thing “Freedom”. You don’t seriously posit a condition of complete freedom, because its nonsense, unless libertarians are simply anarchists in suits.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Your non sequitur notwithstanding, anyone who equates robber baron capitalism with a free market has a toad stool for a brain.
[/QUOTE]
Speaking of non sequiturs…
[QUOTE=DoctorJ]
Lott is caught in an interesting little conundrum.
He is resigning now because Congresscritters who leave office after 2007 have to wait two years to cash in as a lobbyist instead of one year like they do now.
The problem is that the state GOP would really like to have the election at the same time as the general election, because screwy things happen in low-turnout special elections. But the law says that they can only schedule the special election along with the general election if the senator resigns in the same year as the national election; otherwise it has to be scheduled within 90 days.
In other words, if Lott could wait until 2008 to resign, they could have an election to replace him in November along with the Presidential election, but it gives him a whole year without that sweet sweet lobbyist cash. If he resigns in 2007, he can be lobbying by the first day of 2009, but the special election to replace him will have to be in March at the latest.
It’s a pickle.
[/QUOTE]
Well, unless something changed since I listened to (Mississippi)PR today, everything points to “The Governor is going to make it a special election on '08, and if you pussies don’t like it, we’ll let our lawyers fight about it”.
That may not be an exact quote.
-Joe
Your knee jerked so hard there, Lib, that it apparently prevented you from noticing that BG was specifically referring to “corporate free-market hegemony”, rather than a literal ideal free market.
Sure, all of us, liberals and libertarians alike, can happily agree that if ideal free markets really existed in the real world, they would be much more efficient at producing a smoothly productive economy than clunky bureaucratic government regulation is.
However, since ideal free markets don’t actually exist in any reliable form in the real world, we sane liberals are entirely within reason to critique the shortcomings of economic systems that merely pretend to be free markets. Such systems include the “corporate free-market hegemony” (or “robber baron capitalism”) that BG was talking about.
I await your well-deserved apology for your reflexive and ill-considered gratuitous leftist-bashing, but I ain’t holding my breath.
Two more links on Lott’s alleged walks on the wild side. (When Larry Flynt takes an interest in you, you know it’s time for a lateral career move . . .)
Seems like he might be involved in that Alaskan scandal, too.
The VECO oil thing.
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
Seems like he might be involved in that Alaskan scandal, too.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12353
The VECO oil thing.
[/QUOTE]
It would be rather a refreshing change, at this point, for a pol to fall for some old-fashioned reason like a money scandal.
They’re moles, under the direct orders of the Homintern, advancing the gay agenda.
Proof? You want proof? OK, just one example!
First Some Like It Hot, then Bosom Buddies, then *Will and Grace * and then Brokeback Mountain.
Wake up, America!
Oh hell no. I think it’s about as safe a seat as you’ll find. It’s just that if the Dems have any chance at all, it’s in a sparsely-attended wintertime special election. In politics the difference between a sure thing and an almost sure thing is huge, and that’s especially true for the Republicans right now since the wind is blowing in the Democrats’ direction.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
I await your well-deserved apology for your reflexive and ill-considered gratuitous leftist-bashing, but I ain’t holding my breath.
[/QUOTE]
Well, if he indeed meant what you say then, despite that the meaning you took wasn’t at all clear to me, I do indeed apologize to BrainGlutton. There really is no reason, however, to use an oxymoron like “free-market hegemony” when a more descriptive phrase like “robber baron capitalism” will do.
As for your preachy bit about the ideal versus the real world, I would remind you that the real world is the place it is because of choices you make — like the choice to settle for a hegemonic economy.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
As for your preachy bit about the ideal versus the real world, I would remind you that the real world is the place it is because of choices you make — like the choice to settle for a hegemonic economy.
[/QUOTE]
Pfft. You’re no different than the guy sitting across the street from the White House with his little pavillion of “Anti-USA” and “Anti-Nuke” placards.
Just a lone nut, gibbering in the corner.
-Joe
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I meant those Southern pols of a type capable of admiring Strom Thurmond for all the wrong reasons (and there ain’t no right ones).
[/QUOTE]
I admire his lifespan.
Sailboat
With respect (and gratitude for your gracious apology, btw), I think that there is. “Free-market hegemony” is a recognized technical term that takes its name from the claims that the advocates of such systems make for them, and as such is useful and informative. (Not that a more colorful term such as “robber baron capitalism” isn’t also useful and informative in a different way, natch.)
I understand that you personally would prefer to reserve the term “free-market” to apply only in the context of true, ideally efficient free markets, just as you personally would prefer to reserve the term “liberal” to apply only to the context of the political philosophy of classical liberalism. However, in both cases your preferred meaning happens not to be what most people understand by the term in question, so we are to some extent stuck with the resulting ambiguity. I don’t agree that the ambiguity is enough of a problem to justify giving up the more “standard” and commonly understood usage.
The real world is the place it is partly because of choices we make, and partly because of certain fundamental facts that we can’t realistically expect to be able to change.
I might “choose” to stop “settling for” the tyranny of universal gravitation, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound or jump out of airplanes (sans parachute) without plunging to my death. We all have to accept that there are things about the real world that are not ultimately subject to our choices and preferences. Yes, economic and social realities are somewhat more subject to our control than gravitational ones, but not entirely so.