bblight said:
This is an enlightening statement to me. I cannot believe that anyone honestly feels this way. Granted, I paid zero attention to politics until the Republicans started their PR campaign to generate support for invading Iraq, and I never voted until 2004. However, since I have started paying attention, I would say that accepting blame and responsibility is the last thing that Republicans want to do. There's an excuse for everything that goes wrong, whether it be the economy, no WMD, lying about the cost of Medicare legislation, outing a CIA agent, running up huge budget deficits, etc. Somehow blame is always passed back and forth just long enough for a story to disappear from the news and have no one be directly implicated.
Edu - I think you're confusing blame and political ass covering - and I won't argue with you that the Republicans play the same tricks as the Democrats do - both sides are very guilty and deserve all of the blame for their mistakes.
You should recognize that media outlets like the NY Times will twist your words and do everything in their power to destroy you with those same words, which leads to ass covering and scape goating.
For me, it's that the Republicans most closely represent the way I think and what I want the government to do.
I don't like or trust government - government is my enemy - not my friend! Government will kill you if you restist it - look at the Black Panthers, Ruby Ridge and Waco. I see the Dems as embracing more intrusive government while I see the Republicans as embracing less intrusive government.
As for Iraq - both parties would have done the same thing - we need a permanent base in the middle east to protect our interests and our oil supply and Iraq is it! Without oil the US would quickly become a third rate country and everyone in power knows this.
The Dems use the Iraq war against the Republicans because it's in their political interest to do so. Don't dare to think that the Dems would not have gone to war - and don't be so foolish as to think that the war was not about oil.
You should recognize that media outlets like the NY Times will twist your words and do everything in their power to destroy you with those same words, which leads to ass covering and scape goating.
For me, it's that the Republicans most closely represent the way I think and what I want the government to do.
I don't like or trust government - government is my enemy - not my friend! Government will kill you if you restist it - look at the Black Panthers, Ruby Ridge and Waco. I see the Dems as embracing more intrusive government while I see the Republicans as embracing less intrusive government.
As for Iraq - both parties would have done the same thing - we need a permanent base in the middle east to protect our interests and our oil supply and Iraq is it! Without oil the US would quickly become a third rate country and everyone in power knows this.
The Dems use the Iraq war against the Republicans because it's in their political interest to do so. Don't dare to think that the Dems would not have gone to war - and don't be so foolish as to think that the war was not about oil.
bblight said:
I don't make any distinction between political ass-covering and passing the buck, which is what Bush does all the time. Some people like you might consider it ass-covering because you don't want to see your preferred party and leader be trashed in the media, but most people would consider it avoidance of responsibility for their own actions.
You make a good point about Iraq. The Dems do use Iraq against the Republicans for political purposes even though most of them voted to give Bush the eventual power to wage war. They didn't ask any questions about his intentions for the war and post-war planning at that point in time, and they are trying to cover up for their negligence now. The reason for this is that Republicans and their media outlets waged a successful campaign to attach the idiotic word "unpatriotic" to anyone who opposed starting a war, and few Democrats had the balls to oppose the war because it was a popular idea with the public at the time, even though they may or may not have bought into the idea. Not coincidentally, the PR campaign for war occurred during the run-up to the 2002 congressional elections, and the "unpatriotic" labeling was used successfully to smear Democrats who were up for re-election.
I don't know if the Dems would have gone to war or not, I don't think you can say definitively that they would have done it. Iraq wasn't even on the radar screen until Bush started to make noise about it in mid-2002, at which point it went suddenly from not being talked about to a "grave and gathering danger".
People who are opposed to the war see Democrats speaking out against it, and they think that these politicians have the same convictions they do, when much of what they say is for political theater. The same goes for Republicans - their supporters project their own values onto the people they voted for when in fact the politicians value anything that will help them get votes.
When you say that you believe the Republicans value less intrusive government, it depends what you consider intrusive. I consider anyone who wants to take their own religious dogma and use it to legislate social issues the most intrusive form of government that there is. The Patriot Act pales in comparison to this. I don't really know what conclusions we can draw from any of this anyway. Republicans and Democrats are going to continue to disagree, obviously. It would be nice if we had a leader who didn't encourage the acrimony between the two sides by taking a "My way or the Highway" approach to issues.
My conclusion: At this point in time there is no point in using the words "liberal" and "conservative" because they have no meaning. Everything has to do with partisan politics, and the attitudes of these scoundrel politicians have filtered down to the citizens who voted for them. Just look at the exchanges we have in this forum - it's constant mocking and one-upmanship, with very little of substance ever discussed. As the party in power, I feel that at this juncture the Republicans carry the bulk of the responsibility for the atmosphere that has been created. The smear tactic has been perfected by this bunch, and now it is commonplace, and the media buys into it and broadcasts smears from both sides. Their idea of balanced programming is to report a story, then get one "liberal" and one "conservative" on there and have them yell at each other for a while. And by watching this, the public learns that they should interact with people in the same manner. It's really sad.
ohhhh let him post Doc when he is drinking..i imagine it helps him justify his life!!!! my point with all these posters if you keep letting them post up they make themselves look like the narrow-minded clueless posters....looks like we have some free-thinking posters and that represents the biggest threat to their comfortable lifes....my job is to upset the status quo...i guess it seems to be working..huh....next stop D.C. !!!!!!
because its not part of the global agenda....the pace is quickening and the middle class is becoming like the tidy bowl man trying to catch his last breath as he swirls around the crapper ...america is being destroyed on all fronts and its just a matter of time before all hell breaks lose.....RobFunk said:
the only missing equation in all this is the suppression of freedom of speech and this new Blog internet stuff is happening quicker and quicker...my hope is they (elite) are totally under estimating the common person....
the only think i see that will stop these lunatics (reptiles) might be mother earth...she looks like she is pissed off big time.....
i suggest everyone take a few minutes and go hug a tree....
