work on lots of peoples lincolns that run into the thousands on suspension systems…and i went outside… Sounds like the compressor is bad or blown fuse but it could also be some other…

Bush is the one who never grew up- he really sounds like a spoiled frat boy- in a recent speech overseas he told an Australian audience that we are “kicking ass” in Iraq. That sounds just as immature as his “bring it on” and “dead or alive” comments that he later regretted making. He just lacks the dignity of a diplomat- and comes across like a small-town high school football coach to me (apologies in advance to high school football coaches everywhere, lol)

Or maybe its the part of the GOP that feels the need to reflexively label their political brethren RINO’s in the first place because of disagreements that has driven them out. Basicaly they don’t want to be lumped in with reactionary, politically craven people that think you can run a country cowboy style.

There was a post about the ENRON corp awhile with a quote from someone who works with the Ayn Rand institute about having the integrity to do business with the world as it is instead of as you wish it were. About mistaking real methods of production with imagined ones spawned by arrogance and wishful thinking. That to me summed up the entire Bush administration and indeed many of the far right’s worldviews and methodology. Neocons are incapable of making lasting contributions to the success of this nation because they simply can’t get over that hump.

Not if your eyes and mind are functional.
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Thanks. My point thas been rpoved.

‘Most Americans’ seem to be an extremely motley crew, changing from assertion to assertion.

Not if your eyes and mind are functional.

He really is/was a functioning Democrat on most any issue I can recall.

Exactly. Look at his record. The same behavior as well as values are found in Collins, Snowe, Specter…and in much of the Northeast where people haven’t awoke (or grown up) and you still see bloated governments which rule over their fiefdoms, and delusional people who say Bush or Republicans are “reactionary” (as I heard once in Albany, itself synonymous with “dysfunctional,” a place that even has the US’s equivalent of a Communist-era-style monument to government, Empire State Plaza).

It’s odd how what ‘most Americans’ are always coincides with the views of the observer. ‘Most Americans’ seem to be an extremely motley crew, changing from assertion to assertion.

“It’s not my party any more,” he said.

He’s not conservative, nor moderate (any more than so many liberals on here are “moderate” [sic]). He indeed is, or was, a RINO, as are Collins and Snowe and at times, Specter. He’s a liberal dinosaur out of touch with conservatives and (real) moderates and a poster child for liberalism in this country that’s alien to most Americans, not merely to his “fellow” Republicans.

Too many of those people have what an author of a fine new book calls the “Massachusetts virus” in them.

“The Democratic base feels that its members in Congress have caved in…..”
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That’s true at the moment. If they handle the withdrawal recklessly, the public will desert them in a nano second. The public wants success, and even what they demand today will be cause for disapproval if the results are poor.

I’m not sure what the ‘base’ of the Democrats is. The progressive ‘withdraw yesterday’ crowd id the loudest, but a lot of Democrats are looking at this with quite rational fear and trepidation. There are risks that many Democrats acknowledge; they simply weigh the risks of staying against the risks of withdrawing and come out on the side of leaving.
Others, however, ignore the risks now, but will beat the Democrats over ther head with any negative conseauences, ignoring that those consequences are the result of what they demanded.

At any rate, war and wiretapping are not the only issues. It’s a matter of deciding whether they want to achieve a respected and responsible manner of handling controversies or they choose to give in to partisan excessrs. If the latter, they will be repeating the mistakes of Republican rule and will, likely repeat the Republicans’ declme.

It’s funny in that Chafee you actually get the literal definition of RINO, not just the connotation of socially moderate. He really is/was a functioning Democrat on most any issue I can recall.

Chafee never voted for a tax cut that I ever recall……I believe that is a unique “accomplishment” in the history of the Senate Republicans.

Most Republicans who disagree with Bush or with the GOP hardliners ( like Chafee, Bloomberg, Warner and Hagel) are either changing their party status or choosing not to run again in ’08. They will not be around to change the party’s rigid ideology.

Yes, I know that Rove thought that he could find niche issues to attrack black and hispanic voters. However, history has shown is was a fool. That 44% number has been discredited. Bush probably received less than 40% of the Hispanic vote and the Hispanic support did not translate to any down ballot support for other Republicans.

Also, the Republicans have realized that they are stuck in that any pander that they do to get black or hispanic votes loses more middle class white voters than it does in gaining minority votes. That is one of the main reasons that the Republican Party will quickly go out of business.

The real quesiton is once the U.S. only has one political party what will the effects be. One theory will be that the Democrats will become more moderate when all of the current Republicans start voting in the Democratic primary. Another theory would be is that in sort of moderation created by the two party system will end and the extreme left will become dominate.

The Democrats have chasms of differences within its memberhisp, and the longer they are in power, the wider those chasms will grow. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an icreasing number of defections to Independent status from its membership over time.

Partly this disaffection comes from general disgust with the way politcs works in Washington these days (lobbyists, pork and earmark exesses, etc.), but patly it comes from the new trend of no one wanting to compromise about anything. As evidenced by the failure to pass an immigration bill, everyone seems to have the same ‘my way or the highway’ attitude as we see in the WH.

To hold things together, it will take a strong showing by the moderates in each party. The Republicans have a Pete Abel initiative. The Democrats need something similar, IMO.

And no, I don’t believe That having a three or more party system will help.

Better late than never, but congratulations, Senator Chaffee.

“If blacks and Hispanics vote at the same rate as middle class white church goers, the Republican Party would be irrelevant today.”

Must be why Republicans have devoted so much effort to suppressing the black vote.

When he (Chafee) claims that the party left him, I read that the party of country club elite whites was taken over by truck driving, church going middle class protestant whites.

The last election was the precursor of the tables-turning election coming up in 2008. By dint of lying, cheating, stealing, queers-and-smears dirty tricks, swiftboat liars, $200 million and an army of shyster lawyers, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all the little bushes and cheneys managed to defy political gravity twice. They managed to buy and bully their way to the greatest suspension of disbelief since Hitler wowed Germans in the 1930′s.

Don’t look down, because gravity is asserting iteself.

In 2000 and every year since, polls consistently show a clear majority of Americans disagree with Bush and Cheney on most major issues.

An unprecedented 70 percent of Americans think Bush’s Iraq war was a mistake to begin with and has been mismanaged beyond redemption. Yet, every one of the GOP candidates put on tinfoil hats, gulp the Kool-Aid and promote the same loser open-ended war in Iraq, stupidly equating that with winning the war against terrorists.

Last but not least, SD, IMO and I think in the opinion of most Democrats and liberals, truck-driving, churchgoing, middle-class Protestant whites are smarter and more practical than you or radical right-wing Republicans give them credit for being. There’s ample reason to believe these American have finally had it with being taken for granted, with being treated like sheep and suckers.

In the Republican Party, The Decider and his cronies, like dirty-tricks meister Karl Rove and secretive, “F-you” Dick Cheney, have all the say. They’ve shown who they’re willing to listen to and who they’re willing to shower money and advantages to: their wealthy friends, families and backers.

Democrats believe a president should govern openly, honestly and in the longterm best interests of all the people.

I credit truck-driving, churchgoing, middle-class Protestant whites with being smart enough to know when they’ve been had, whose really looking out for them, and to make their political choices accordingly.

It’s something else to say the problems of the Republican Party are based solely on demographic trends.

But it’s completely different to say that someone who leaves the Republican Party detests all white church-going Protestants, simply because he’s leaving the Republican Party.