I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

RetiredLibby

Lassie, I remember raging at the television when Bush was clearly fabricating his fantasy case for invading Iraq. I was in the State Department during Gulf One, and we all knew why Bush 1 didn't press on to Baghdad -- because there was nobody to replace Saddam Hussein and no way for us to ensure an orderly transition to a democratic government because there was no cohesive opposition movement inside Iraq. Saddam Hussein was too efficient at killing them.



When Bush 2 lied us into that war, I was beside myself with rage and anguish at the death and destruction that I knew would follow for years. We have him to thank for the rise of Iran now -- removing Saddam Hussein as a counterweighted threat to Iran's nuclear and expansionist ambitions is just another legacy of those morally-bankrupt policies. Although I strongly support Israel, I don't support the U.S. being someone else's tame bully ... And the evidence is NOT yet clear that there is indeed a nuclear threat from Iran. President Obama has shown he is not afraid to order troops into battle or use of deadly force when necessary. I trust his judgment.



L

alexandria58

The Netanyahu thing pisses me off so much.  He is playing politics here, trying to help his buddy Romney into the presidency.  And as a Jew, I'm particularly offended by the idea that we will fall into lock step with whoever spouts the most right wing position on Israel and therefore getting the Jewish vote for Romney.  There are many voices in Israel cautioning against a rush to war, which may in the long run do more harm than good.   Yeah for Roger Cohen for calling it correctly.

Sun, I agree with you on what happened to me.  

Athena, I might be in Silver Spring on Thursday.  Are you available at any point?  PM me.

ananda8

Kerry lost the debates because he looked and acted wooden.  My husband calls him "Lurch".  This could be a problem for Romney as well.  Independents are looking for an excuse to vote for or against someone.

I watched all of the Republican debates and they were hilarious.  How can someone not listen to Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann? 

It was the audiences that were absolutely frightening.  The booed a active duty soldier who had served in Iraq and asked a question about Don't Ask Don't Tell.  This is the party of flag pins and hands over their hearts!

Another audience shouted "Let him die" at the thought of someone without insurance falling into a coma and needing treatment.  You can't make this stuff up.

crazy4carrots

Further indication that Romney doesn't know anything about the middle class:  From Sunday's 60 Minutes interview --

 

"What I would like to do is to get a tax reduction for middle-income families by eliminating the tax for middle-income families on interest, dividends, and capital gains."

 

So tell me, how many middle-class families making in the neighbourhood of $50K - $100K actually HAVE investments where the interest, dividends and capital gains are taxed?  They should be so lucky.  This guy is truly tone-deaf. 

 

 

1Athena1

I PM'd you, Alexandria.

Notself, no, I can't watch that circus - it makes me depressed to see who I co-habit with as an American.

gardengumby

I get so confused sometimes, as what I always thought were supposed to be guiding Christian principals included love of neighbor, but these people who claim the high moral ground because they are "Christian" are so incredibly hateful.  I really don't get it.  And to be clear, it's not that I don't "understand" the mind-set and teachings, because I was raised in a fairly hard-core fundamentalist type religion.  What I don't get is that the people who are in the religion cannot see the gigantic gap between what Christ taught and what is coming from their pulpits.  Though, to be honest, my "gotcha" moment was caused by someone outside of my former faith.  Maybe it simply cannot come from within.  Maybe the control is too complete.

crazy4carrots

Speaking of religion:

 

Courtesy of Fox News:

More than 1,000 pastors are planning to challenge the IRS next month by deliberately preaching politics ahead of the presidential election despite a federal ban on endorsements from the pulpit. 

The defiant move, they hope, will prompt the IRS to enforce a 1954 tax code amendment that prohibits tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, from making political endorsements. Alliance Defending Freedom, which is holding the October summit, said it wants the IRS to press the matter so it can be decided in court. The group believes the law violates the First Amendment by “muzzling” preachers. 

“The purpose is to make sure that the pastor -- and not the IRS -- decides what is said from the pulpit,” Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the group, told FoxNews.com. “It is a head-on constitutional challenge.” 

Stanley said pastors attending the Oct. 7 “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” will “preach sermons that will talk about the candidates running for office” and then “make a specific recommendation.” The sermons will be recorded and sent to the IRS.  

QuinnCat

Alexandria - I wanted to share with you that my two nieces are novelists. From what I understand, it is the getting published part that is difficult and they both found unique ways to arrive there.  One of my nieces has a passion for India and British history and romance novels.  She put them together to write historical romance.  She had sent off manuscripts, but no takers.  Then, her younger sister entered one of her manuscripts into a Romance writing contest and the prize was a book deal.  She's now on her 7th or 8th book and seems to have a deal for life.  Honestly, these are paperbacks, so not sure how much money she makes at it, but she is also pursuing a Phd, so she has a different lifelong career in mind.

So the younger sister, who entered her older sister's book into this contest, was apparently secretly writing her own manuscripts, but unlike her sister, not really telling anyone about it, including her parents or her sister! One day on Twitter, an agent was soliciting for YA novels and my niece thought her writings fit, so she sent one in....they asked her to submit anything she had written and after asking her to rewrite this bit or that, they bought a trilogy from her.  This one is a hardback and 20th Century Fox has bought the movie rights (I think this was the more lucrative part of the book deal.)   The movie would be along the lines of The Hunger Games - no guarantees the movie will be made, but if the book sells well.....

Maybe you already have an agent? I don't know.  My brother (their father) wrote a couple of books, decades ago, and I remember he used my father's connections (way pre-internet) to get them read by an agent at Double Day. One was published. He never really made a career out of it.

alexandria58

Garden:  as someone who does not believe in the divinity of Jesus but respects his teachings - I have often been at a loss to understand how his teachings of love, understanding, and community are so ignored by those who so claim loudly their main voting motivation to be creating a more Christian society. 

lindasa: remember that Romney defines middle class as those earning between 200,00 and 250,000, not people making 50,000.  He probably classes those making 50,000 or so in the group that he doesn't have to be concerned about.

not: I agree that there were many funny moments in the debates, but I couldn't watch it live.  The highlights delivered by Maddow or Jon Stewart were enough.

Wabbit

Romney really came off as ... 'would have been nice if she could just have opened the window to air out the place - but airplane windows don't open so that caused a problem.'   Not that he didn't know why the windows don't open ... but not a 'jokey' delivery either.  More like just stuff that was percolating in his brain and shooting out through his mouth without much thought.  And if anybody was going to even try to joke about an experience that no doubt scared her badly it it should have been her not him IMO.

Raining here this morning too.  I'm still glad to see the rain even though we have been all greened back up for quite a while now.

lassie ... I too grew up in a military family and worked for the Navy for several years.  Both ex and current husbands served (Marine and Army) during Vietnam.  I get incensed at the idea that we should send our military men and women out to maybe get maimed or die ... on a whim or just because some other country thinks it would be nice if we did so for them.  That is a sacrifice that should only be asked after it has been determined that it is absolutely necessary and there is no other alternative.  We've had enough experience (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, now Afghanistan) with no-win situations that we certainly should know better by now than to think we can just blast in and out with no problem.  

ETA ... I go get coffee and then get sidetracked in the middle of a post and by the time I get back and submit you guys are 2 pages down another road    

  

1Athena1

I beg to differ on Romney having any resemblance to Gore and Kerry, even in demeanor.

Gore is a great statesman who would have made a good president - he did not become president because SCOTUS gave it to Bush - he won the popular vote nationwide.I never understood why explanations of his likeability surfaced, as though he'd actually lost. Gore did not lose.

And it depresses me that likeability should even be a factor in a president. I don't have to like my leaders - I do have to feel respect for them.

Kerry DID lose the election, because he allowed himself to be intimidated by Karl Rove and was scared to say what he really believed. He was a political scaredy-cat and, in the end, not very bright.

Romney will lose the election because he has no heart.

HL: I remember that run-up to the War of Choice - I had this sense of dread and foreboding that Iraq was going to be for us what Afghanistan ended up becoming for the Soviets. An empire over-extending itself and then collapsing from its own contradictions. Sadly, I think that is when US decline began. Rumsfeld the sociopath and Cheney the fanatic succeeded in making us smaller.

gardengumby

lindasa - I've long thought the churches in the US should be paying income taxes.  The church people want to pretend that the "separation of church and state" was supposed to protect the churches from the state.  Not so.  The intention was to protect the state from the church.  Who owns the people's minds and hearts and thereby controls their actions?  For sure it's not the state.....

pupmom

The Republican debates were absolutely hilarious! That's why I question Romney's debating skills. Who wouldn't look like a master debater among those clowns? When he's up against Obama it will be a whole different ball game.

QuinnCat

I believe Gore had the highest favorability rating for any candidate, Republican or Democrat, from WWII til now.  Part of this can be explained because 2000 was a good year for America (soon to be ruined by Dufus), and he definitely had the Clinton glow.  In any case, he won the election, but Katharine Harris, Jeb Bush et al and the SCOTUS stole it from him, and America.

QuinnCat

Yorkie - right on. I watched all but one of the Republican Debates -- for entertainment.

RetiredLibby

Afghanistan was long part of "the Great Game," between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. Known as "the graveyard of empires," the old saying about Afghanistan was "you can swallow Afghanistan but you can never digest it." That has proven true for millenia, even with modern weapons.





L

gardengumby

WR - to be fair, he was probably pretty scared, too.  I know from my husband and my experiences, that sometimes the person who actually lives through the crisis is less affected (at least initially) than the person whose loved one experiences the crisis.

Athena - I don't disagree that Gore is a great statesman, but he did (at least to my husband and myself) come across as stiff and a bit unhuman during the election.  After it was over, he seemed very relaxed and at ease.  I did not mean that he did not become President due to any deficiency of his own.  It's true that he won the popular vote, but he made mistakes as we all know.  The biggest one being that he didn't demand a full recount in Florida.  As a result - well, we all know the result.   The other mistake he made (in my opinion) was attempting to distance himself from Clinton.  People loved (and still love) Clinton - in spite of his warts - or maybe sometimes because of them.

I also agree completely that likeability shouldn't be a factor in the Presidential election, but - well - unfortunately, what should be and what is are way different kettles of fish.

It is also possible that Romney could win the popular vote and still lose the election.  In the red states - well, they are REALLY red.  Rachel Maddow last night showed the swing states and the NOT swing states.  I saw exactly the places where I'd never want to live...  I thankfully live in a NOT swing state, that is nice and blue.  IMHO the Republicans have never wanted to get rid of the electoral college because more people in the US have usually been Democrat - also they would have been unable to ever claim a "mandate" as they did with Reagan, as he really did win most of the states, but when you look at the actual vote - well, not so much of a "mandate" there....  If Romney does win the popular vote but loses the election it will be interesting to see what happens in the future with the "states rights" folks.

gardengumby

Yorkie - do people think Romney is a good debater because of those crazy Republican debates?  He may have won the nomination - but that was mostly because of attrition.  I actually didn't think he "won" a single debate (and I watched them all).  My brain just died on me, so I can't remember his name - oh yeah - Newt Gingrich.  He probably won most of the debates he was in - but even though he cannot abilde Romney, he still threw in with him in the end.

Wabbit

Not going into religion much here but I also think if churches want to participate in politics they should pay taxes.  Things that make you go ummm ... there is such a disconnect nowdays between the teachings of Jesus and what modern churches are doing and saying that there is actually a project underway to rewrite the Bible to be more 'conservative'.  If there is a Judgement Day that could get very interesting.

Athena ... me too.  Any student of history should have known better.  And I do credit Bush Sr. because he did know better and did not cave into the neocons who were pressuring him. 

alexandria58

I credit Ralph Nadar and wrongheaded progressives with the Bush years.  I do think that Gore won the election which SCOTUS gave to Bush, but had Nadar not been in the race, enough of the 90,000 votes that went to Nadar in Florida should have gone to Gore to prevent the issue from even going to the Court.  I think one of the problems in that election is that some progressives thought there was little difference between Gore and Bush - so they voted for the third alternative - a disasterous mistake in judgment.  I personally knew a number of people who voted for Nadar here in Jersey, and I couldn't persuade them otherwise.  Gore would have made a great president in so many ways.  We would not have gone to Iraq.  He wouldn't have been able to stop global warming, but we might be further on the road to fighting it.  It just makes me ill to think what could have been.

pupmom

GG, I also think Newt was the best debater of the bunch, but Romney was pretty good too. Newt is repulsive and has a disgusting personal history, so that killed his chances, .

I believe the pundits talk about Romney's skills relative to Obama's but I think they are overestimating him (Romney). He's smart, but boxed into totally untenable positions. He has to flip and flop constantly to both keep his base and attract Independents. I think it will be very interesting how he handles his contradictions in the debates. I really hope the moderators call him on them.

1Athena1

Also,  if Palm Beach county had designed its ballots differently, hundreds of elderly folks would not have voted for Buchanan. Remember the "butterfly ballots?"

It really took a perfect storm for Bush to become president. The wreckage will be with us for a long time.

Wabbit

I just hope another 'perfect storm' is not being engineered as we speak.  I'm not at all sure the working class or even the upper middle class can survive another round of wars and greedfests.   

QuinnCat

To bounce of Yorkie's post, EVERYTHING depends on the debate questions.  For instance, last night on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell brought up 3 different videotapes of Romney contradicting his position on getting medical care from Emergency Rooms.  There was nothing unclear about the three statements, nothing taken out of context.  O'Donnell usually follows this sort of segment with a suggestion this should be asked about at the Debates.  

I think Bob Scheaffer and Marth Radich could go there, but I think Candy Crowley will just cave.

The problem is, and as Lawrence O'Donnell said last night, how do you pick amongst Romney's lies?  How do you make one lie/flip flop more important than another, there are so many they drown each other out.  How as a Debate questioner do you not appear like you are not bullying Romney with all of his contradictory remarks because while Obama may have made some of these, they are born of rationality - for  adjusting his policy to fit new information, rather than Romney who adapts to polls or the rightwing base by out and out lying.

Wabbit

You have to wonder which way Romney would 'flip' on all these things if he actually got elected.  Just how 'owned' is he ... and by whom? 

alexandria58

BTW, speaking of the perfect storm - don't forget the various actions in Florida under Jeb Bush to suppress the black vote in 2000, people taken off the roles, road blocks, etc.  that also contributed to the storm.  And the worry for me is that  we don't know what will happen with the various voter suppression actions across the country.   One nightmare is that the Republicans actually steal the election by suppressing Democratic votes.

pupmom

Kam I am really worried about Crowley. I've always thought she is solid Repub. Her bias toward Dumbya in 1999 was glaring.

QuinnCat

WR - yeah, who knows.  This is the problem the Republicans have these days, why their party is imploding.  They are trying to walk the line between the traditional economic conservatism of the 20th century and this "get this government off my back" hate ideology.

How can someone vote for Romney because they'd have to wonder where he stands on anything.  They like to think they know (e.g. believe him), but what version are they choosing to believe?  I don't get their vote - other than hating Obama.

ananda8

WhiteRabbit, I agree with you.  The IRS is not preventing preachers from speaking from the pulpit about specific candidates.  It just says if one does, then the tax free status disappears.  I can't wait until this case goes to court. It will probably be several years before it hits the SCOTUS and by then the discussion about this support of religion with Federal tax dollars will become a wider conversation.

Non-religious church properties should be taxed.

http://www.businessinsider.com/movement-to-tax-church-gains-momentum-2012-9

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p2

QuinnCat

Alexandria - look up "True the Vote"

The true voter fraud happens during the count of the vote (not directed to members of this thread).  Look at 2000. 

Think about it ("you people").  The incentive of one person (one vote) illegally voting up against the incentive of a local voting official changing many votes.