Election thread

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, I hate to get into conspiracies, because usually I think it's more likely a matter of incompetence followed by a lot of CYA. I mean if those ( insert conspirators here ) could have managed that without leaving proof, they could have managed to do their jobs well.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. You could be right.

I don't go in for conspiracy theories, I really don't, but this is Cheney we're talking about.  I can't prove it, I deduced the hypothesis entirely on my own, but it's what seems to me to fit the observable facts.  I'll be shocked if I'm ever proven right, because this is treason, and not the sort of thing that makes it into even posthumous memoirs, or the sort of thing one would have commited to paper at the time at all.

I think that with some notable exceptions -COUGHBrownatFEMACOUGH- they pretty much did everything exactly the way they intended to.  Jr. isn't visibly bright enough to run more than a small-town's garbage collection competently, but Cheney is very smart and an old, old Washington hand who packed the Bush occupation with canny professionals who knew. their. business.  This wasn't a clown college of often-nutjob extremists with no one in charge like the Reagan administration.

I, a fair-minded person, or at least I try to be, initially defended those people several times to my sister - I hoped they'd actually pretend the Compassionate Conservative thing, and in pretending, not be too bad.  And Cheney proceeded to underperform my expectations every single time in every single way, for all the years since.  It was SHOCKING how corrupt he was, and shocking how blatant he was in his corruption and comtempt for everyone and the American way.  I was continually shocked that he, an unmasked ScoobyDoo bad guy, kept getting away with it.  He is an actual, honest-to-god, real life supervillain. He made Aaron Burr his [complaint or disagreeable woman].

[Rusty Edge]

No doubt, not doubt. 

I miss Ross Perot.  The mouthy little chimp was wrong about everything after his big topic, but he scared the big kids and made them class up their acts.  He would have made a terrible, terrible president, but I doubt Clinton woulde have been sumitting balanced budgets to congress without him.

I'm assuming by big topic you meant the deficit.

I don't think he was wrong about everything else. I liked his no-nonsense approach.

Example #1

Lobbying

He said one of his priorities was ethical reform in Washington. He had seen it from the government contractor's side. He wanted to make it illegal to give up a gov. paycheck and work for a firm lobbying the government. For 5 years domestically and 10
if it's a foreign interest.

Example # 2

Healthcare reform.
He said the worst thing we could was design a program in DC and roll it out across the rest of the country.  He said we should try our five best ideas, then test them in pilot programs with one large state and one small each. From there we could see what worked, and what didn't and fine tune it before we made a final decision and went nationwide.

Example # 3.
Gun control-
He said that crazy people shouldn't have guns, and people that use them to threaten others shouldn't be allowed to keep them.

Wouldn't we be better off if Clinton- Gingrich had endorsed those ideas too?


Oh. Yes, Cheney is an exceptional individual, with a blend of competence and self-righteousness that's pretty dangerous.  He seemed to lose his mind after 9/11 ( along with Dennis Miller and Ron Silver ) so that I didn't even know him anymore.   He did get exceptions approved for the Haliburton process.

All bets are off when it comes to him.

[Buster's Uncle]

I think Romney's experience as a governor without a legislative majority is an excellent qualification. I wish more presidents knew how to get things done without one.

I think credible qualifications are Governors, Senators, and major generals.  I also think that combat command experience  ( Truman, George McGovern, George the Elder ) makes a guy good in a high pressure emergency.   

Governor able to work with the opposition is an excellent qualification, but not nearly enough qualification.  I stand behind my previous remarks, but wish to add a list of high-level government jobs deserves partial credit - provided the resume' still includes some MAJOR elected offices, else go away until you're ready.  (Just ask Eisenhower.)  Don't let your ego play dice with the whole planet.

(I have a problem that I think is the price of my buggy spellcheck, that sometimes spontaneous things happen while I'm composing, and a magnifcent much-longer post just got eaten.  It's very annoying, and I'll maybe elaborate about Hilldog again later.)

[Rusty Edge]

Since I seem to fail at cutting and pasting, I'd like to show you my post election
analysis link.

http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?7140-Predict-the-next-President-of-the-U-S/page22

I don't know too much about the Eisenhower administration. I was born at the end of it, and my history books didn't get that far.

What I know is that we have him to thank for the interstate highway system. I think that's a descent accomplishment for a president.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've read that.  It's why I thought of you.

What you say about Ike and the interstate is exactly the counterpoint I've made to Mylochka (Buster's Aunt) on her view that Ike was a lousy president.  He knew a good idea when he saw the autobahn, and he made it happen here.  And yes, that's legacy enough to call an otherwise-weak presidency very successful.  Good catch.

On Ike, I will also say that he was an extrodinarily gifted man, whose lone paper qualification of having been a General  was tempered by having adminstered an inherently political generalship.  Well.  He gave orders to DeGaulle that were often actually obeyed and managed to keep George and Monty from shooting at each other.  With those two egos under lesser oversight, it could have really happened.

[Buster's Uncle]

-Well, Ike kept Patton and Zhukov from shooting at each other, which really, honestly, realistically COULD have happened.  It's half a miracle Patton didn't get courtmarshalled, he wanted to so badly and loudly.

[Rusty Edge]

Yes, a general's job is very political at the top, and for that matter, you don't get to the top without playing politics.

Oh. Didn't know you lurked, but thanks.


I must admit I was surprised by the election. I figured to see a lot more FLA- OH style long counts. I expected Romney to win some of the battlegrounds.

What I haven't sorted out is guys like Carl Rove and Dick Morris.

Morris was predicting a Romney landslide

Rove organized some of the biggest fundraising /advertising efforts, and he was calling for a decisive Romney victory.

I havent decided if they are con-men, cheerleaders, or just guilty of malpractice.

Gotta go for a few hours. Great seeing you!

[Buster's Uncle]

The fair standard is to teach a variety of philosophies.

This is asking a lot of high school, and already the standard at any competent college, but sure.  Fair enough.  There ought to be at least a reasonable survey of many modes of thinking for decent students who will graduate able to read on high school level, at least.

And no.  I had never been in the physical presence of anything by Rand until years of knowing Randists in college had already poisoned me against her.  I've read about Rand and her ideas a fair bit, and talked to a lot of her cultists.  My reading habits tend to words assembled in a sequence, but there are limits.  That woman and what she taught was vile.

How can you actually know what she taught unless you read one of her fiction books?  Not second-hand accounts or summaries, but one of her actual ficiton books?  You label her vile without having read her work!?!  Start with "Anthem"; it is short, and can be read in 1 or 2 hours.  Try to read with an open mind.  Then can you explain exactly what you find vile about it?

By this standard, I should have never read anything by Marx or any other socialist or humanist work, because of rabid socialist and humanists in college with their closed-minded poison.  But I have read several works of these kinds, so that I can understand.

Okay, points to you.  You win this one.

By my own standards, I am no better than people who've never read the Bible, but think reading some articles about Jesus and his teachings and having talked religion with a lot of church people is the same as understanding what Jesus is about.  I can fairly claim to understand Randists a little, but not necessarily Rand.  If a copy of Anthem comes to hand I will read and think.

This does not constitute a consession that I'm wrong about teaching her to young people, but is an admission that my opinion may not be qualified.

Personally, I have rarely read a more vile statement than "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."  Though some claim that Jesus taught this, he taught no such thing.  This is a most morally bankrupt philosphy, that my ability becomes the basis of theft of my work, and that one's need becomes the authority to perform the theft. 

I am very scared that so many people in the world accept this as a valid philosophy of life!  They need to be exposed to other philosophical views.  Then if they still hold to that view, so be it.  But most hold it because they are told they can occupy the moral high ground using it, and they are not exposed to other philosophies that illustrate just how depraved this philosophy actually is!

I'm going to leave this part to our commie/socialist contingent to argue with you, but I find your assertion incredible.  I think you misunderstand the credo entirely.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, a general's job is very political at the top, and for that matter, you don't get to the top without playing politics.

Working at the Pentagon command level is definitely a qualification.  But again not enough qualification.  You're never going to have much luck dealing with politicians without understanding them, and the best understanding comes from the inside.  And the actual military part is very poor experience for dealing with non-miltary people.  It's a specialized job, and the President must have a wider experience base than that.

Oh. Didn't know you lurked, but thanks.

Oh man.  I must not get into this.  Not in public.

Recently, any number of different things has forced me to go over there to look something up.  It hasn't done my composure any good.  However, I do miss all the people who deserved to be missed.  (Also, I was spying on Uno.)  I noticed that thread, and I was impressed enough by the quality of discourse that I actually read the whole thing the other day.  I kept wanting to post to yell at you and Arnelos.  That's something of a compliment.

I must admit I was surprised by the election. I figured to see a lot more FLA- OH style long counts. I expected Romney to win some of the battlegrounds.

Whatever else is true about the mass media, horse races sell newspapers.  This has been a truth in Romney's favor from before he won the nomination (although it also hurt him a lot earlier in the primaries.)

I know you read my essay on weak candidates and evil Republicans because you're the only one to respond directly to it.  Romney never had a fair chance.  He was the wrong man for a troubled party, and I was never concerned until after the debates, which got scary up to last Sunday, when they stopped pushing the horse race - it almost won it for him.

He would have been a bad, president, man - I say that as no reflection on him, but the party would have cut him off at the knees.

What I haven't sorted out is guys like Carl Rove and Dick Morris.

Morris was predicting a Romney landslide

Rove organized some of the biggest fundraising /advertising efforts, and he was calling for a decisive Romney victory.

I havent decided if they are con-men, cheerleaders, or just guilty of malpractice.

All of the above.

Both men are scum.  Period.  They are lowest common denominator huckster jerks in the Lee Atwater mode.  They are a central part of the problem this country is mired in.  Rove is a nazi.  Morris is a morally dispicable snake in his personal life as well as political.  I will hear nothing to the contrary.

[Buster's Uncle]

No doubt, not doubt. 

I miss Ross Perot.  The mouthy little chimp was wrong about everything after his big topic, but he scared the big kids and made them class up their acts.  He would have made a terrible, terrible president, but I doubt Clinton woulde have been sumitting balanced budgets to congress without him.

I'm assuming by big topic you meant the deficit.

I don't think he was wrong about everything else. I liked his no-nonsense approach.

Example #1

Lobbying

He said one of his priorities was ethical reform in Washington. He had seen it from the government contractor's side. He wanted to make it illegal to give up a gov. paycheck and work for a firm lobbying the government. For 5 years domestically and 10
if it's a foreign interest.

Example # 2

Healthcare reform.
He said the worst thing we could was design a program in DC and roll it out across the rest of the country.  He said we should try our five best ideas, then test them in pilot programs with one large state and one small each. From there we could see what worked, and what didn't and fine tune it before we made a final decision and went nationwide.

Example # 3.
Gun control-
He said that crazy people shouldn't have guns, and people that use them to threaten others shouldn't be allowed to keep them.

Wouldn't we be better off if Clinton- Gingrich had endorsed those ideas too?


Oh. Yes, Cheney is an exceptional individual, with a blend of competence and self-righteousness that's pretty dangerous.  He seemed to lose his mind after 9/11 ( along with Dennis Miller and Ron Silver ) so that I didn't even know him anymore.   He did get exceptions approved for the Haliburton process.

All bets are off when it comes to him.

Yes, of course I'm talking about the balanced budget stuff. It was 95% of everything he said -in baby talk, as if the nation's finances are best run the way I should run mine.  Not always true, but truer than the insane situation in place.  He raised the issue, and created a climate where capable sleezeball Clinton could go for it and get it passed.  We owe Perot for that.

I'm not willing to research Perot to refresh my memory, or care nearly enough, but you cherry-picked three things he said that make eminant sense.  His second-biggest issue was resucing the abandoned Vietnam solidiers like reality was Uncommon First Blood II Valor.  There's more where that came from, if I cared enough to look it up.  Not President material at all.


I don't know why your list of people traumatised by that thing that happened in New York is so short.  The entire Democratic membership of Congress was so frightened that they forgot their spines their jobs and the Constitution for 6 years.  Also the "liberal" media.  As if the Man is less dangerous to us all than Bin Laden with anything less than a pile of nukes. 

(Protip: Bin Laden didn't have nukes.)

[Buster's Uncle]

I have spent my. entire. day. typing about politics.  Half of it was emails with someone.  I want to share a tidbit I said in those emails.

(We have an old, long-standing, argument about MSNBC setting up as the Anti-Fox.  My corespondent is a big fan, but if I deplore Fox as a right-propaganda organ, it would be intellectually dishonest of me not to hate it when the same is done on the other side.  -Also, Fox is, leaving the horrific bias aside entirely [and no one ever should; they've completely stopped even pretending these days] a terrible awful lowest-common-denominator sensationalist excuse for journalism, deriving as it does from Murdock's former stable of syndicated trash "news" shows like A Current Affair and Hard Copy.  No coincidence almost all of those shows disappeared right before Fox News appeared.  Fox is the worst model for any self-respecting "journalistic" TV channel to ape, no matter how little MSNBC had to loose.  I loved Keith Obermann and his show, but he was slowing the rotation of the planet just like Bill O'Reilly. 

And at any rate, you should try to get your news somewhere that's trying to play it square, and don't lie to yourself about CNN; they are trying.  Anyway, I said this.):

I must tell you that I've been flipping on the news this week when I went for coffee.  I strongly believe that MSNBC as the (leftist) anti-Fox is a bad thing, right?  But I gotta tell you - Wolf Blitzer is bland to the point of coming off stupid, or at least vacant.  That's pretty much the trend at CNN, aside from Anderson Cooper, and he's a little soft-news, for all of being an appealing and very bright guy. 
 
If you want GOOD wonky, thoughtful, civil, rational talking-head action, as long as you avoid Ed and Al Sharpton, MSNBC is the place.  Part of being the anti-Fox is thoughtfulness, obviously, and THAT part is a very, very good thing.  Hard to beat Dr. Maddow, Larry, and even Chris Matthews compared to all competiton. 
 
And Morning Joe provides a lot more political balance than Geraldo being at Fox, not even counting how much airtime each gets, which is a huge gap.  Gerry is only a liberal about the things he's liberal about, to Joe's consistent not-all-that-moderate conservatism.  And Joe mostly doesn't make decent adults want to throw up, something Geraldo can't claim.

Much smarter news channel, MSNBC.  And not nearly as hopelessly partisan, in my very biased opinion.

Folks, Keith hasn't worked there in a long time now, and some good people doing some smart, thoughful shows have florished in the sunlight no longer blocked by his giant head.

(I later mentioned Fareed Zakaria on CNN's behalf, and want to mention now how pathetic it is that MSNBC is airing a prison documentary as I type instead of news.  I haven't checked, but it's Saturday night on MSNBC I'm talking about, so pretty sure, and that's contemptable for a "professional" "news" operation.  But try it in the middle of the day, or wait til a weekday.)

[Rusty Edge]

Okay I'm back and caught up on the reading.

Good. As long as you can agree that Perot had more than one common sense idea we should have implemented, I can agree that he would have made a bad president.

What else? Oh, 9/11 flipouts, well I was in a hurry and those names came to mind as people who lost their reason permanetly.

As for flipped out democrats, well we still have Gitmo and the Patriot act ( comparable to Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus ,  don't you think? ) in spite of democratic one party rule 3 years or so ago.

My wife and I made two roadtrips from WI to PA this year, and got to sample a lot of Fox Spews and MS-DNC on satellite radio. As a hearing impaired person, I hate them both for their combative talk-over-each-other style, even when it's 3 people who agree. It's very frustrating. VERY.

I heard tonight that Fox Spews was touting themselves as the "most listened to election night coverage". Proof  they have no shame, after misleading the masses with regulars like Rove & Morris.

Chris Matthews turns my stomach after his remarks about being glad  Hurricane Sandy hit because it helped Obama. At least he had enough shame to apologize .

[Buster's Uncle]

You can't hear either?   Huh.  Interesting.

[Buster's Uncle]

Good. As long as you can agree that Perot had more than one common sense idea we should have implemented, I can agree that he would have made a bad president..

I still think you're way too easy on the man.  I appaud what he achieved, but think not so much of the him - if he'd had his head on straight, he should have run for Governor of Texas and established a track record.  He shouldn't have set up his attempt at a third party as the Perot show, then walked away and let clowns like [Sleezebag] turn it into a pie-fight and a joke and then dead. 

He had people's attention, he could get on TV at will, and he could have accomplished something lasting.  But he refused to pay his dues, and he had no interest in cultivating good people for establishing something lasting that wasn't merely about him.  From the Wikipedia on Perot:

Later in the 1990s, Perot's detractors accused him of not allowing the Reform Party to develop into a genuine national political party, but rather using it as a vehicle to promote himself. They cited as evidence the control of party offices by operatives from his presidential campaigns. Perot did not give an endorsement during Jesse Ventura's run for governor of Minnesota in the 1998 election, and this became suspicious to detractors when he made fun of Ventura at a conference after Ventura had a falling out with the press. The party leadership grew in tighter opposition to groups supporting Ventura and Jack Gargan. Evidence of this was demonstrated when Gargan was officially removed as Reform Party Chairman by the Reform Party National Committee.
 
In the 2000 presidential election, Perot refused to become openly involved with the internal Reform Party dispute between supporters of Pat Buchanan and of John Hagelin. Perot was reportedly unhappy with what he saw as the disintegration of the party, as well as his own portrayal in the press; thus he chose to remain quiet. He appeared on Larry King Live four days before the election and endorsed George W. Bush for president. Despite his earlier opposition to NAFTA, Perot remained largely silent about expanded use of guest worker visas in the United States, with Buchanan supporters attributing this silence to his corporate reliance on foreign workers.[39] Some state parties have affiliated with the new (Buchananite) America First Party; others gave Ralph Nader their ballot lines in the 2004 presidential election.

I read that after typing my preceeding remarks, not before.

What else? Oh, 9/11 flipouts, well I was in a hurry and those names came to mind as people who lost their reason permanetly..

Just saying it was a very long list that, I, a rural Southerner far from likely targets, resent deeply.  Don't erode my freedoms because of your low-probability hypothetical events, you silly people.  Getting born is 100% fatal, and we need a decent place to live in the meanwhile, not a police state.

As for flipped out democrats, well we still have Gitmo and the Patriot act ( comparable to Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus ,  don't you think? ) in spite of democratic one party rule 3 years or so ago..

I do think.  I think it's very, very wrong.

However, I must point out that the congressional Democrats rather engergetically did what they always do in that situation; formed firing squads in a circle.  They cut off Clinton at the knees and paid for it in the first election that came along the last time they had both houses of Congress and the White House. 

The only difference is that this time Hilary's health care package passed.  Obamacare is the same plan.

There's something about Gitmo that's never come out - Bakrama is Commander and Chief, and the Pentagon can only drag their feet so much in the face of the executive order he signed on his first day in office.  Something that hasn't become public yet is going on there.

Renewing the "Patriot" Act?  Well, I didn't vote for him this time.  I've never sat out an election before, but I didn't set foot out of the house Tuesday.  I had a strong preference, but the only protest I could make was to vote by refusing to to vote for either of those men.  I stayed home, I've never do that before, but Bakrama has lost me several times over.

[Rusty Edge]

The left is half gone from noise damage having been  a farmer and a shooter ( yes, I used hearing protection ). The right has meniere's disease, so it's half gone and going, and not a lot to be done about it.

While I'm posting personal, don't hang around today on my account. I've got things to do today, a mother-in-law to visit, winterization chores for her. There are some things I'd like to do today at my house, while the weather lasts. My wife is having her second knee replacement next month, and I know I won't get much done after that.

I see you typed about Perot. Well, I remember reading wikipedia about Perot, but I don't recall the Reform Party years.

Actually, I was a Republican precinct guy who turned traitor to work in the Perot campaign, figuring such opportunity to make a difference might only come along once in a lifetime.   

Bringing  everybody together and organinzing them was the hard part. When we lost the election, we were calling for the formation of a permanent political party.

Instead Perot ( the autocratic control-freak) called a Press conference and announced a new watchdog group, United We Stand, which would make endorsements.  He was directly asked if he were forming a new political party. He said "No, if we have to do that, we've already lost. "

I took him at his word, and when United We Stand didn't work and he announced a party, I gave up on him, and ignored him.