Steele responded, "You have absolutely no reason, none, to trust our word or actions."

There aren't that many reasons to trust the Democrats either.

Um, the actual repercussion is that the bill that passed was inadequate and the entire process just empowered a handful of so-called moderate Republicans. If you want to see the same thing happen with every other Obama Administration initiative, then by all means be cheerful, but otherwise, not so much.

And yes, I understand the meaning of "cloture". But the president and the Democratic Party could take a far more forceful approach. For some reason Obama sat back and let Congress dink around, and only belatedly went on the road to advocate for his legislation. Next time around he's got to advocate first and advocate continuously, or he'll be hostage to those "moderates" again.

What Bill said.

After the 2010 election the republican party will be small enough to drown in a bath tub. They must have a death wish or they've all been infected with the stupid virus.

Hopefully the "Republicant's" have learned a lesson...and that is that a nation can't survive on individuality. Only group-think and communal living will win the day. The Republican Party is an infection that has to be cleansed from the airwaves.

I think what Steele means (speaking as a Republican) is that Republicans promised to reduce the size of government, and instead it mushroomed. And speaking as a Republican, I agree with him. I certainly don't agree with Democrats philosophically, but I also don't trust Republicans in government. So true conservatives (believe in limited government, reduced spending) don't really know who or what to vote for. Despite how much Democrats hated him for supposedly being far-right, the fact is that in domestic policies Bush wasn't a conservative at all.

Posted by: Steve Maurer | Feb 15, 2009 12:24:10 AM

No, Jim. Bush was the quintessential conservative. He was, in fact, everything that Ronald Reagan wanted to be, but couldn't - because the public elected a Democratic congress to keep him (Reagan) from destroying Social Security.

I guess I was naive and swallowed Goldwater's lines 100%, but that would be just the opposite of what I thought was a point he made perfectly well. Conservatives, as we always say, don't want government involved in anything. Reagan/Bush is about huge government intervention in everything! When he stomped out of the 1984 convention, muttering, "these people are going to ruin the party", his last statement on the subject was "conservatives don't have a social agenda". Would you say that Reagan/Bush doesn't have a social agenda, or that Barry Goldwater didn't know what it meant to be a conservative?

I would, previously, have called him a closet libertarian, but disgust at the way McCain handled what could have been rapprochment, leveraging Western politicos, instead of perverting the advantage by selecting Palin, and after seeing the best Portland had managed recently is Karshlock, I wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt. McCain taught us loud and clear that Reps aren't Libertarians until they turn, spit, sign-on and run. It's been covered; if you can get away from emotional connotations and stick with denotation, Reagan/Bush is best described as Fascist (see lestat, JVDW, et al., on any thread with the word).

So true conservatives (believe in limited government, reduced spending) don't really know who or what to vote for.

Peter J. Drucker, one of the more profound thinkers of the 20th Century and regarded by many as the father of modern management, had a theory that a successful society needed three components: private enterprise, government, and non-profit organizations. The trick is to define which elements from a society go where in those three slots. It is wrong to start out with a premise of small government or big government. A democracy needs to decide what is appropriate to government and what is not. If intelligence determines the consequence is big government, small or something in between, then so be it.

I saw Goldwater speak in Boston during the run-up to the '64 election. He said LBJ had so much power that his supporters didn't know whether to vote for him or plug him in. True enough.

Now, however, the truly imperial presidency designed by Bush and Cheney has passed on to the latest hegemon.

Goldwater is rolling in his grave, and we will be joining him if we don't renounce this anti-democratic turn.

"From their majority status in 2007 to 2009 and a Democratic President in the White House, the Congressional Democrats are not moving swiftly to repeal the ban on Uncle Sam negotiating drug prices from volume discounts under the drug benefit law. They are not moving to amend the Patriot Act, regain control of warrantless surveillance, strengthen the corporate criminal laws and enforcement budgets. Congress is not even pushing to require taxing Hedge Fund manager's income as ordinary income not as capital gains...

"The one-subject-at-a-time attitude is coming from the White House. 'Obama doesn't want it now' is a common phrase used by legislators to excuse themselves from exercising the separate but equal Congressional powers. This pretext applies to taking away some of the hugely expensive and unnecessary weapons systems like the F-22 aircraft decried by many military and retired military analysts. The vast, bloated military budget is sacrosanct on Capitol Hill as it is in the White House...

"At a time of widely perceived needs for Congressional action, with large corporations busy applying for corporate welfare and on the defensive, the Democrats are not generating any momentum for standing for and with the people." (It's Going to Take a Civic Jolt)

The one-subject-at-a-time attitude is coming from the White House.

Does anyone know where in the chain the insurance corporations' choice to replace the hapless Tom Daschle for HHS is?

The one-subject-at-a-time attitude is coming from the White House.

Usually implies a micro-manager at the head. LBJ?

(It's Going to Take a Civic Jolt)

Then there's Ted Turner saying we're headed towards cannibalism. Civic Jolt is 1/2 of it. The other 1/2 is that the suffering have the data/intelligence/time to think to see the connection between policy and outcome. The right is far better geared up to point fingers and raise the rabble, after social collapse as well. Civic Jolt wouldn't be a bad name for a folk/rock group, though.

Give the Rushies the finger, before they point it at you. I used to be a big call-to-action guy. I'm mellowing now that I think it's too late, returning to pacifism. Look on the bright side. Soon good intentions will be good enough, because nothing else will be possible.

I'm jealous Harry. I only got to see Bill Clinton in Boston. Not that I would have liked Barry back then. Scared me crapless. Might of had something to do with the girl on the "daisy commercial" being a dead ringer for my best friend at the time. Yes sir, political ads. used to have more substance. It doesn't mean they were better. And did Dems have cajones or what? "Vote or Die". That's a bit more direct than "Hope. Change." Funny how much more accurate both would have been, were history flipped and the other was used in each of those campaigns.

Then there's Ted Turner saying we're headed towards cannibalism.

The United States has been in a cannibalistic mode for some considerable time if not in the eating sense. Native Americans were slaughtered for expansion of the nascent empire. The Robber Barons treated their labor as expendables indifferent to their problems surviving and suffering under horrendous conditions. Workers who helped build corporations were tossed out the door when their employers found cheaper labor outside the country. More recently, the Bush Administration with the complicity of both parties in Congress and the Pentagon and its generals sent troops to fight in Iraq without adequate armor and turned their welfare in Iraq over to the likes of KBR that didn't give a shit about them. If soldiers were wounded and returned for hospital care, they soon learned that many people in the military and the armed services committees of Congress didn't care that much about them either. In other words, they were expendable like used parts on a car or pickup.

I often think of Captain Bligh of mutiny on the Bounty infamy who was set adrift with a few of his crew in a lifeboat and managed to survive a 3,600-mile journey. It is inconceivable that a lifeboat filled with American corporate capitalists could do the same thing without some tossing the others overboard.

Perhaps next time Harry Kershner quotes at length from Saint Ralph, he will tell us who he's quoting.

Bill Bodden's comments about cannibalism are apropos. Thanks.

Repercussions from Republican Obstructionism

Unfortunately, almost all Democrats have joined all Republicans but, I believe, Ron Paul in not only obstructing a peace settlement in Israel and the Palestine territories. Worse, still, these wretches endorsed the 22 days of war crimes in Gaza before Obama's inauguration. The only question about them now is the degree of their complicity.

Juan Cole's excellent commentary in today's Informed Comment - You Have Moved on, But the Injured and Burned Children of Gaza Have Not - is testimony to the inhumanity of most politicians in Congress and the people who support them.

"Apparently you only get punished for [war crimes] if you are weak or lose; it isn't the crime but the power of the criminal that matters." (from Bill B.'s link above)

And so it is with us as well as with the increasingly fascist Israel. The train of criminality that Obama has inherited from Bush makes certain that Bush et al will never be punished for their most heinous crimes. By focusing only on a narrowly defined "torture" by the previous administration, Obama allows himself the options of rendition, aggressive war, corporate immunization, etc. Those who worked for him must be proud.

The train of criminality that Obama has inherited from Bush makes certain that Bush et al will never be punished for their most heinous crimes.

This will be one of the great tests for Obama. Does he have the moral courage and the political skill to rise to the occasion? For that matter, it is also a test for the American people to give Obama the push and support he needs to do what is right.

Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained -- by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.

If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'

http://www.answers.com/topic/charles-l-mcnary

Charles McNary, famous Oregonian, worked in a bipartisan fashion with FDR. They agreed on some issues like public power and rural issues. They disagreed with each other and in 1940 McNary was the VP nominee against FDR. But there are some historians who say he kept the GOP alive on Capitol Hill during the FDR presidency.

He was not steamrolled, but then he had better political instincts than Boehner et al.

Great thread.