November Elections

[CptSternn]

I found this article on the upcoming elections quite brilliant.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1922824,00.html

It is one of George Bush's favourite frat boy pranks to grab people in a neck lock. That is appropriate because he and his party have had a stranglehold on America. The Republicans have occupied the White House since 2001. They've controlled the House of Representatives and for most of the time, the Senate as well. Thanks to the appointments made by Bush, the Supreme Court belongs to the right too.

Karl Rove, the grand wizard of strategy known as 'Bush's brain', seemed close to realising his ambition to create a Republican hegemony that would last for a generation. He had a dream of turning America into a one-party state and it was a dream that looked like becoming all too real. A country founded on the idea of the separation of powers has rarely witnessed such a concentration of might in the hands of one party.

Such hubris is always the midwife to nemesis. Suddenly that Republican domination is beginning to crack. This autumn the tectonic plates of American politics are beginning to shift under the feet of President Bush and an increasingly desperate Republican party. When I spoke to Stan Greenberg, the hugely experienced political consultant for the Democrats, he predicted an 'earthquake' in the mid-term elections for a third of the Senate and all of the House of Representatives. Even more tellingly, the Republicans themselves sound very scared that angry voters are about to punish them with a thrashing. Thomas Davis, a Virginian Congressman who is one of his party's most senior strategists, talks about the Republicans losing as many as 30 seats in the House, which would put that half of Congress into the hands of the Democrats for the first time in 12 years.

Some say it is the war. Some say it is the money. Some say it is the sex. Actually, it's all three, a triple-whammy of reasons for Americans to express their disgust with how they are being governed.

Let's start with Iraq. Any American with a television set and an IQ above room temperature has known for a long time that Iraq is far from becoming the pacified, liberal democracy that was promised in the original prospectus for the war. Most Americans were nevertheless prepared to tolerate the mounting carnage so long as they could believe that the ultimate outcome would be positive. There has been a big turn in the mood about the war in the past fortnight. John Warner, the Republican who chairs the Senate's armed services committee, came back from a visit to American troops in Iraq to warn that there had to be 'a change of course'. A commission chaired by James Baker, Secretary of State when Dubya's father was in the White House, is about to publish a report calling for a major recasting of strategy.

These rock-ribbed Republicans cannot be dismissed with the usual White House line that anyone who asks awkward questions about Iraq is an unpatriotic appeaser and fellow traveller of Osama bin Laden. Soaring up the bestseller lists is Bob Woodward's account of a dysfunctional administration presided over by a wilfully uninquiring Commander-in-Chief who will never acknowledge the scale of the blunders committed in Iraq.

President Bush has again tried to use national security as his trump card in this election. The terror of terror worked for the Republicans in 2002 and again in 2004. It is not working this time. The opinion polls all agree: a majority of Americans now feel that Iraq is getting worse, and that the war was a mistake which has left them less secure.

They still see Bush as a 'War President'. The difference now is that they see him losing his wars. The United States has invaded Iraq and not found any weapons of mass destruction while North Korea is acquiring the nuclear bombs which George Bush once pledged he'd prevent them from having. At a news conference at the White House, the President talked big about Kim Jong-Il but carried a small stick. The world's soi-disant hyperpower is reduced to suggesting that China should do something about it.

What is most alarming people, including senior members of Bush's own administration, is how the crisis over North Korea plays into the threat of a nuclear-tipped Iran. The more helpless that America looks in relation to North Korea, the more emboldened the Iranians will feel about defiantly pursuing their ambitions to join the nuclear club. The Bush presidency has expended squillions of dollars on warfare and military hardware. So much treasure and so much blood and Americans are left with a growing dread that they have ended up weaker in the world.

Then there's the sex. While his party shamelessly fanned homophobia to ramp up its vote, a gay Republican congressman was making advances to teenage male interns. Congressman Mark Foley has resigned his Palm Beach seat since his dirty computer messages were exposed and the fall-out from his cyber-stalking of teenagers could cost other Republicans their places in Congress.

As is so often the case, the Nixon rule of scandal applies. It is not so much the crime as the cover-up that has done the most damage. There has been a corrosive drip of accusations that the party leadership in Congress ignored warnings about Foley's behaviour. The Republicans are reeling from the impression that the self-appointed moral daddies of America harboured a sexual predator.

When I spoke to Andy Card, who for five years was Chief of Staff to President Bush, he calculated that the election would ultimately come down to which side could mobilise more of its supporters in the last 72 hours. The Rove vote machine has been heavily reliant on evangelical Christians, precisely the group most repelled by what it sees as moral degeneracy on Capitol Hill.

And then there is the money. A rising stench of corruption surrounds the Republicans. The scale of the kickbacks made to politicians by Jack Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist, are awesome even by the standards of American bribery scandals. A defining theme of the Bush era has been Republicans who preach fiscal abstinence while practising recklessly unprotected spending. The surplus inherited from Bill Clinton has been blown and turned into a staggering deficit. The richest and most powerful country on the planet is now in the strange and dangerous place of being hugely indebted to the rest of the world. Put it all together - and I get the sense that Americans are finally putting it all together - and the Republicans look like a party that is jeopardising their nation's moral, strategic and financial future.

You have to say, it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of people. Lynn Westmoreland is running for re-election as a Republican congressman in Georgia. His sole legislative initiative has been to press a bill requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in the House and the Senate. He then had to confess on television: 'I can't name them all.' In fact, he could barely name three of the commandments that he was so keen on. Voters in Iowa have on offer the Republican Steve King. He wants to keep out illegal immigrants by constructing a 700-mile wall along the border with Mexico. Better still, he built his own model of this 'Tortilla Curtain' out of cardboard and wire which he demonstrated to Congress in Blue Peter fashion. That is outdone in the crazy stakes by the Texan Republican Sam Johnson who offered personally to fly an F-15 to nuke Syria. Afterwards, he said he was: 'Kinda joking.' Don't you love the 'kinda'.

Don Sherwood, a Pennsylvania Republican, is famous for paying an undisclosed sum to his former mistress, who had accused him of repeated assaults, to settle her lawsuit against him. He has been forced to broadcast campaign ads denying that he tried to choke her. Down in Florida, Katherine Harris, who achieved world notoriety over the hanging chads which gave Bush the White House in the first place, is running for the Senate. According to her: 'God is the one who chooses our rulers.' Mmm. If the Great Returning Officer really does bother himself with deciding elections, then God must be mighty pissed with America to have chosen rulers like these.

And yet you have to be a little cautious about predicting that the Republicans will suffer the sort of wipe-out that natural justice says they deserve. America is in a febrile state. There are three weeks left before election day and the polls have yo-yoed depending on the sleaze or terror headline of the hour.

While America's mood is volatile, its democracy is becoming atrophied. And by design. The gerrymandering of seats to permanently fix their political complexion has made it extraordinarily difficult to dislodge incumbents.

The story of this election is one of Republican collapse rather than any great enthusiasm for the Democrats. They don't have a clear message delivered by a popular and plausible leader. One of the Democrat's best hopes for the presidency - Mark Warner of Virginia - has just backed out of the race for 2008. It is in the nature of the American system that the executive can speak with a single voice - that of the President - while the opposition talks in a cacophony of tongues.

George Bush is set to spend his last two years in the White House besieged by searing probes into his presidency. That would be a fitting fate for a President famous for his unwillingness or inability to focus on detail and his lack of curiosity about the consequences of his own decisions. The neck lock will then be on George W Bush.

[Crying_Crimson_Tears]

Interesting article. Hm, most of the things mentioned in this article are some things I very much agree with.

[TSW|Abaddon]

I'm still not sure who to vote for. New jersey is a fickle state. We can be so liberal yet so convervative at the same time. My only hope is to find a candidate that holds the majority of what I feel to be right. I don't vote on party lines. No single party has the right answers. I wish more people would think before they vote, hell I'll settle on people actually voting.

[Crying_Crimson_Tears]

I'm not old enough to vote yet, but I do know who is our best candidate up here in Vermont. Bernie Sanders. I think he would be our best bet.

[CptSternn]

I.R.S. Going Slow Before Election

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/wa...syahoo&emc=rss

The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light.

“We are very sensitive to political perceptions,” Mr. Everson said Wednesday, adding that he regularly discussed with his senior staff members when to take actions and make announcements in light of whether they would annoy a powerful member of Congress or get lost in the flow of news.

The tax agency has broad discretion to change filing deadlines in the case of disasters and has traditionally eased off tax collections before the December holidays.

But four former I.R.S. commissioners, who served under presidents of both parties, said that doing so because of an election was improper and indefensible.

Mr. Everson issued the order to delay enforcement in an Oct. 10 conference call with some of the career civil servants working on tax enforcement in the areas that were devastated by the 2005 hurricane.

“We just spoke with commissioner on the enforcement issue in the gulf,” wrote Beth Tucker, the I.R.S. executive in charge of dealing with Hurricane Katrina victims, in an e-mail message to her team obtained by The New York Times. “He prefers that we do not resume any enforcement actions until after Dec. 31 due to the upcoming elections, holiday season, etc.”

*snip*

Thats right, the bush admin is planning on hitting the Katrina victims with late fees, new taxes, and all sorts of shite - but not until after the elections. They want to at least appear to care prior to November - but then the day after expect to see the headlines where bush goes after the Katrina victims.

[Gnossos]

Originally Posted by Crying_Crimson_Tears

I'm not old enough to vote yet, but I do know who is our best candidate up here in Vermont. Bernie Sanders. I think he would be our best bet.

I like Bernie, too; I've been voting for him since 1986. I miss those good old Vermont days when you could support and elect a Democrat, a Republican, and an Independent to national office. You could cover all the ideological bases at one fell swoop.

Unfortunately, those days are long gone.

[TSW|Abaddon]

Agreed. Partisan politics has become absolutly absurd. I blame both parties though. The liberal movements of the 60's caused a massive neo-conservative backlash. It started picking up towards the end of the Clinton Administration and the 2000 election was the match in the powder keg. Ever since then the US has been locked in a strick left-right war while serious issues fall through. Its like a epidemic of idiocy swept through the country if not the world. Look at sternn for example. Never before have I seen someone so angry at the right that he ignores anything that doesn't support his beliefs. If Jesus Christ himself ran for the Republican party Sternn wouldn't vote for him. It's not just far left people like Sternn though that cause problems, the right does nothing to stop it. People like Bill O'Reilly are just as bad. I can only hope that in the next Presidential election we elect some moderate individual that will collectively pull the head out of every pundits ass.

[CptSternn]

This article is worth a look...

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/05...7af&ei=5087%0A

For those who missed the Lynn Cheney contreversy on CNN, it was like the write says worthy of The Daily Show.

Here is a my favourite part..

The pretext for this improbable dust-up was a last-ditch strategy by the flailing incumbent Republican senator of Virginia, George Allen. Desperate to resuscitate his campaign, Senator Allen attacked his opponent, Jim Webb, for writing sexually explicit passages in his acclaimed novels about the Vietnam War. Mr. Webb fought back by pointing out, among other Republican hypocrisies, Mrs. Cheney’s authorship of an out-of-print 1981 novel, “Sisters,” with steamy sexual interludes suitable for “The L Word.”

When Mr. Blitzer brought up “Sisters” on live television, Mrs. Cheney went ballistic, calling Mr. Webb a liar. The exchange would have been a TiVo keeper had only the CNN anchor called Mrs. Cheney out by reading aloud just one of the many “Sisters” passages floating around the Internet: “The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage — no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were.” But you can’t have everything.

Even without Eve and Eve, this silly episode will stay with me as a representative sample of this election year. It wasn’t just that the entire Cheney-Blitzer-Webb-Allen fracas had nothing to do with the issues that confront the country. It was completely detached from reality. Mr. Allen, who has been caught on video in real life spewing a racial epithet, didn’t attack Mr. Webb for any actual bad behavior, but merely for the imaginary behavior of invented characters in a book. As if it weren’t enough for Mrs. Cheney to regurgitate Mr. Allen’s ludicrous argument, she fudged the contents of her own novel, further fictionalizing what was fiction to start with. Then she turned around and attacked CNN for broadcasting nonfiction — a k a news — like her husband’s endorsement of waterboarding in a widely disseminated radio interview.

The incessant shell game played with fiction and reality turned this episode of Mr. Blitzer’s program, “The Situation Room,” into a sober inversion of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report,” in which Stephen Colbert’s satirical Fox-style TV blowhard interviews real-life politicians. Here the interviewer, Mr. Blitzer, was real, but the politician, Mrs. Cheney, was bogus, shamelessly making everything up and hoping her playacting would make her outrageous fictions credible. Maybe in some precincts it did.

Yes, Allen, the man who openly attacked blacks and non-white ameriicans on camera by using european neo-nazi slang demoralising blacks, then following up with 'welcome to america', to further humiliate a non-white in his audience (an american non-white who was born and raised here), has been trying to attack his opponent with a whole new technique - going after characters written about in fictional storeys.

Thats right folks - Allen says his opponet for Senate is unworthy because a character written about in one of his novels was degrading to women, therefore he obviously is not worthy of being a senator because he wrote a few novels with bad-guy protaganists who were, well, bad-guys.

This is in stark contrast to allen himself who flys a rebel flag in his office, supports 'white rights' and on more than one occassion, and on tape, has made racial slurs against black, in real life - not in a book.

To back him up though, he brings in Cheneys wife, also a writer - who trys to help allen by claiming that people who write fictional storeys are actually acting out their own inner desires and that Webbs book is his own sick fantasies come to life.

Of course what she didn't know was that the internet has been alight with comment about HER earlier works of fiction - ranging from drug addicts to a book on lesbian lovers - so when the CNN anchor pointed out the fact HER books were about drug addicts and lesbians, she flat out LIES on international teleivsion and claims she never wrote ANY BOOKS of that sort, which later in a back page article a week off she admits that was her. Of course not before spending the whole news segment denying the truth, claiming someone was setting her up, that it was all lies, and someone had their fact checker wrong - for a good 10 minutes.

You can't pay for entertainment that good.

Of course like the article points out, how many people watched the CNN clip and missed the page H7 article in selected papers on how she later recanted and apologised? How many people will think she was 'setup' by the 'liberal media' instead of the fact she outright LIED and called the anchor a slurry of various insulting things along with the other people working in the studio. I mean, who are they to point out the glaring truth? To show up HER hypocrisy?

If she is the vice-presidents wife and wants to say everyone else but her who writes fiction is acting out some inner desire, with the exception of HERSELF who has NEVER done that, who is CNN to question HER?

Heh, funny.

[DarkHeartedDemoness]

Last November, despite the fact that I didn't agree with either the Republican nor the Democrat candidate for president, I chose to vote for the "lesser of two evils" and vote Kerry. Obviously, he didn't win. This year, I'm not voting for anyone I don't believe in. I examined each of the candidates' platforms, and ended up voting independant in many cases.

[we_are_138]

Originally Posted by TSW|Abaddon

Agreed. Partisan politics has become absolutly absurd. I blame both parties though. The liberal movements of the 60's caused a massive neo-conservative backlash. It started picking up towards the end of the Clinton Administration and the 2000 election was the match in the powder keg. Ever since then the US has been locked in a strick left-right war while serious issues fall through. Its like a epidemic of idiocy swept through the country if not the world.

I would say that the massive backlash started with the 94 Gingrich Republican house sweep. And now the Republicans have gotten too careless with their words and hyped up on their power and ability to do whatever they want. (simply because the people let them). This has made them vulnerable, and I really do think that the Democrats will take the House this time. But the question is, Will it really change anything?

I have not voted since the 2001 presidential election. I feel the same as most you on here, and probably like a lot of the people in our generation. There are no representatives who represent me. Neither Republican nor Democrat. I think that's a pretty good indication that the system isn't exactly working as we had planned. However, we are partially to blame, as we have become too complacent and apathetic to do anything about it. I myself don't write to senators or voice my opinion, probably because I feel it's hopeless.

I voted today. I just got back. I voted down Democratic party lines because it was the only option offered to me in my district besides Republican. Politically, I fall on the left, but Democrat isn't the word that would describe my beliefs. And here in Pennsylvania I think it really does mean something to get Rick Santorum out of office. How sad is that? I didn't vote FOR someone, I voted AGAINST someone.

[CptSternn]

...Dems take the house, the major governorships, and looks like they will sweep with the senate as well.

I guess I'm not the only one out there who thinks bush and his cronies are shite - the 1# reason driving the elections according to exit polls was political corruption.

Ironic, that in america was not the economy, the crime rate, nor the president that in the end had the most effect - it was the level of corruption that got the people to finally drive out the republicans.

Watching the various news channels this morning thats what they are on about - the fact more republican congressmen were either arrested or investigated in the past few months than all the past elections combined. All this coming from the same administration who initially got elected on the platform of 'bringing ethics back to the white house'.

[we_are_138]

it is indeed incredibly sad that sex scandals and corruption will bring down the party, while an unjust war will just slide on by....

(that's not entirely true) there were two main issues in this election: The war in Iraq, and gay marriage (let alone the economy, health care, education, the environment) people are sick of hearing the argument on gay marriage (that and all of the "gay scandals" among all the preachers of the anti-gay) and it is also strange that it has taken about 6 years to win the house and (hopefully) senate back. But we did it, didn't we? YES WE DID!! WHOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO

It feels like Christmas in November!!!

[CptSternn]

Isn't it ironic that the people in america who yell the loudest and most often about certain issues are turning out to be the ones most invloved in such issues?

In the past few weeks we have seen...

-The head of the congressional organisation to stop child abuse involved in child abuse

-The preacher who rallied against gays coming out as gay

-A group of firefighters who asked the nation to help find the source of strange fires found out to be serial arsonists

-A group of police who known as some of the heaviest handed anti-drug officers to be running their own drug syndicate


Just goes to show those who protest the most publicly against something can many times be the ones who are involved the most in the same activities.

[Linen]

Woohoo! I'm a Democrat, but unfortunately the new Senator in my state is a Republican. :BAH: At least Nationally we did very well.

[Born Again]

I consider myself more of a Republican, but I am happy to see that the Democrats won the majority in the House and Senate. Our country was in serious need of balance, I just hope to God this will calm their asses down and help some of them to start thinking logically. This calling names and pointing finger hypocrisy seriously needs to end.

I hope that the Democrats don't make Bush's life hell on everything he tries to do, he's made a good start, by firing Rumsfeld. Don't get me wrong, but Rumsfeld was screwing up a lot of shit in Iraq, and we needed a bit of a refresh. I highly respect Rumsfeld, he has given a huge contribution to our country.

God be with us, Nancy Pelosi has power.

[Vega`]

Originally Posted by Born Again

God be with us, Nancy Pelosi has power.

Haha. Yeah. It's John Kerry, part deux. Takes an extreme stance one day then waffles on it another to appear moderate or to appease a certain audience. Now she's adopted a system of "double talk" so that she can say one thing and mean another.

[CptSternn]

Originally Posted by Vega`

Haha. Yeah. It's John Kerry, part deux. Takes an extreme stance one day then waffles on it another to appear moderate or to appease a certain audience. Now she's adopted a system of "double talk" so that she can say one thing and mean another.

You mean the double talk like bush is famous for, and and done so so much they have multiple video clips of him doing this everywhere.

One of the best clips you will ever see of someone actually doing this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHB_NRIojho

[Born Again]

You're going to back that accusation up with a John Stewart video? Even if he was trying to be non comical, the video is still incredibly bias.

What were the questions that were asked to Bush? The Bush presidency and governor questions could have been completely different, in result, equaled different answers.

[Delicate_Torture]

[TSW|Abaddon]

Did someone say double talk?

http://www.gop.com/demfacts/ThenNow.aspx

I'm not saying one party is better than the other but I don't like the dems "holier than thou" position.

[Godslayer Jillian]

And, of course, that site's run by the Republican National Comitee.
See, that's the problem with a two-party form of government.
It's nothing but a battlefront.
The only thing they really accomplish is calling the opposite party a "no-good shit"
They will disagree with each other more often than not for the sake of disagreeing
If you choose one party, you have to stand both the things you like and the things you don't like, because in America, it's not about being "pro/con" something; it's about being a Republican or a Democrat, and they decide what are you in favor of and what are you against.

[Born Again]

I wouldn't so boldly use the oh-so-large word "Democrats" here. It's better to use the term "Far Left EXTREME Democrats" or aka "LIBERAL Democrates." Very big difference in this dang age. Not all Democrats have this tendency, just Hilary and the gang.

[Born Again]

If you choose one party, you have to stand both the things you like and the things you don't like, because in America, it's not about being "pro/con" something; it's about being a Republican or a Democrat, and they decide what are you in favor of and what are you against.

So where can the sometimes-ignored Libertarian or Independent fit in? They may not admit it, but I think there are more "Independents" than either of the other parties.

[TSW|Abaddon]

In that case we should also refer to far right extreme republicans. Its only in todays government that its so polarized. It's not the system thats flawed, it's the people within the system. Our two party system has given freedom to slaves, given women equal rights, helped to end Nazism and facism, and managed to continue to adapt itself succesfully after two centuries.

[Vega`]

Originally Posted by Born Again

So where can the sometimes-ignored Libertarian or Independent fit in? They may not admit it, but I think there are more "Independents" than either of the other parties.

True, but I don't think it's a problem of them not admitting it. More-so a problem of them not knowing it or not acknowledging it. Realistically, it's not like you have many choices these days between blue and red... unless you live in Connecticut. But as many analysts have been saying, most of the Democrats elected this year in the midterms aren't exactly your typical blues.