I’ve already chosen sides….yours and every other U S Citizens…they can take their political parties and stick em where the sun don’t shine.
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Pyst and everyone else…if you’d like to know why Liberman is in trouble talk to my left wing liberal Connecticut friend Kevin Wiess look for sellitman at Google’s I Hate Bush Fan Club blog. He can give you his personal slant on it. Turd was mentioned.

PING:
TITLE: Will Lincoln Chaffee Be ‘The Payback For Lieberman’?
BLOG NAME: The Left Coaster
Reports are circulating that a conservative group has announced they are targeting Lincoln Chaffee’s reelection to the Senate from Rhode Island. CNN is showing their ‘reporters’ discussing Chaffee and Lieberman being centrist ‘moderates’ of a certain kind, while a columnist…

Any government that has all three branches of power held by the same party doesn’t hear the voice of the opposition. Making the situation so much worse is what Joe is talking about-the lack of tolerance within the party for differing points of view. Thus we have a party that until recently supported the President in lock-step.
And make no mistake- Tom Delay sought to build a permanent Republican majority through his K Street project, which ensured that Republican candidates received an ongoing flow of money from lobbyists. Taken together with gerrymandered districts, incumbents now have an almost unbeatable advantage. This was the group that came in in ’94 advocating term limits for themselves.

It feels as though we are losing our great democracy-bit by bit-between the erosion of our civil liberties and the autocratic way the Republicans have ruled. I can no longer chance voting for a Republican in a national election.

I post on this blog instead of the left-wing blogs I used to because of mindless partisanship that finally turned me off.

At the same time, I’m one of those calling on you moderates to choose sides when for whatever reason you’d rather not.

I can only conclude that we have a different view of what the sides are, especially of what risks (and rewards?) are involved with picking one side or another. But more than that, what the risks are of not choosing sides.

The right wing unquestionably has a huge advantage in finances and political resources. They have radically altered the universe of political discourse. They have demonstrated the ability to work the US government so as to initiate a war on America’s behalf we now know we didn’t have to be in, and to do so with relatively little noticeable domestic opposition and almost no real debate.

Meanwhile, critical government agencies such as the CIA and FEMA (and many others) have been gutted of career professionals in the course of turning the entire govermnment into a political empire.

Do you think people like Paul O’Neil, John Dean, Richard Clarke, Larry Johnson (CIA), James (?) Wilkerson (Powell’s second in command), etc., are excessively partisan?

More importantly, are they making any difference? Do you think they should?

What if all the opposition to the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush doesn’t really make any difference? So far it hasn’t done much more than slow them down, and not that much.

Presumably the Democratic Party is in charge of providing opposition, and dominated as their leadership has been since ’92 by third-way types while the GOP has become increasingly shrill and radical, you’d think the Dems would have stemmed the right wing tide by now. Obviously, you’d be wrong.

I was, and in truth still am, a Deaniac. Howard Dean, who governed in VT as a centrist, is seen as crazy and radical for adopting views and rhetoric much like Harry Truman. He’s for fiscal responsibility and health care reform, and thought maybe the Iraq War wasn’t such a good idea. I’ll never understand why his rhetoric, silly as it sometimes is, is such a big deal when his political positions are mostly very sensible.

When the dominant party has consistently acted on the view that bipartisanship is like date rape, is it really sensible to refuse to take sides with the opponents unless the opponents satisfy you that they will, in effect, unilaterally disarm in the face of a hostile, dominant force?

Does it really make sense to you, Joe, not to take sides with our government the way it is? Sorry if we partisans sound crazy to you sometimes, but do you really blame us? Does it really matter that much?

Perfecto Snarky…the pendulum does swing. Wish it would swing no more than about five degrees to the left and right off dead center. Its a dream but it would be sweet if it happened.

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Salmenio wrote: The republicans own all three branches of government and YOU want the Democrats to “get along” with them? You loosely recite history as supporting dogma.
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Sal…the left had better find some mutual ground to stand on with the right, or the next two and one half years (or longer) are going to be a worsening living hell for us, and just about everyone else on the globe.

Infact , how timely todays NPR should feature this

NPR : Liberal Radio

Talk of the Nation, February 20, 2003 · Rush, Dr. Laura and other conservative talkers hit the airwaves everyday and draw big audiences. So where’s the Liberal Limbaugh? Join guest host Lynn Neary for a look at a new attempt at a liberal voice on the talk radio scene.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1169811

“Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.â€? -Joseph P. Kennedy

NPR? last time I listened to them, they sounded distinctly right wing.

I listen to NPR all the time. I’m a member of my local NPR station. They’re the best news network on the air, IMO. However, I have no illusions as to their political leanings. Sincere and talented, yes, but definitely left of center. Listening to their letters column (on Thursdays) I find NPR gets labeled right wing not when they come out with a right wing story, which they do rarely, but rather when they miss an opportunity to emphasize the left wing viewpoint. In other words, any time they stray into the center.

Might as well just become a republican. No need to stand up for what you believe in at all. Just placate, bow and scrape because Joe would rather get along than have his own belief.

Joe your whole premises is to suppress debate and dissent for the sake of “tea time” politics which does nothing but support the republican Master Party by cowering to their power.

Surrender Joe, with nothing to stand up for but neighborly advice debate and dare not complain dissent shall never take center stage. It’s just to risky.

I don’t know what country you came from Joe, but mine has a history of fussing and fighting all the way back to 1775. We INVENT new ways to argue!

So please keep calling b^llshit!

I call BS on this. What progressive talk? AA? Not even close. The righties will tell you AA is not a drop in the Bucket compared to Rush, Hanity, Sevage, Ingrham, et al. NPR? last time I listened to them, they sounded distinctly right wing. Nope, the righties own this one.

Try again. I’m sure you dream up something

And giving the Presidency and both houses of congress was lunacy. Who’s idea was that?

I don’t support eradication of the Republican party. I spent most of my life believing I was one. But I do advocate that people who care about that party do some housecleaning.i dont care about them anymore as they completely sold out the conservative principals that I do hold. You know, fiscal sanity, respect for privacy, things like that. At least Joe, you got the sequence right about who did what.

Enter Karl Rove and the “mobilization election� where you aim to get YOUR side out and don’t worry about the center.

Which has worked handsomely. Which begs the question of why change, if a thing has proven to work. And it would have never worked without enablers. And I am pretty sure those enablers were not in the Democratic party (excluding Joe Lieberman of course) A big tent is a wonderfull thing, but I hardly think someone who likes to throw rhetorical bombs more damaging to his own party than the other should find much welcome there.

If you dont think old Karls strategy is the right one, then how about taking the high road? If that was a winning strategy, how come it wasn’t president Kerry at teh G-8 showing that he at least knew how to chew with his mouth closed, and not talk while eating?

I know you find my determination not to take being lectured due to yet another act perpatrated by the opposing party with the good graces to nod and agree, to be frusterating. But I feel as much frusteration in your determination to keep doing it.

How about this. Why dont you lecture the Rs when they do something you find untolerable, and my side when they do the same. We know for instance, that you dont approve of the voters in CT deciding that Holey Joe doesn’t represent their intrest anymore. I maybe could do something about that, although I would much rather throw gasoline on him to hasten the end of his trainwreck of a career. If that makes you go out and pull the lever for R, than I don’t know what to do for you, but so be it. If the Moderates want to form a third party…please do. have dreamed of third and fourth parties all my life. Put up a good canidate, and I will vote for him in a New York second. But the so-called left learned a valubale lesson about all that in 2000. So this is the world Republicans have made, te world that they feel they can win in (and they are correct), so it is the world that the Dems must now operate in. I dont like it. In fact I hate it. But if 15 second ads and Jingism is what it takes to capture the elusive middle, then we will just have to man up and do it that way.

But doctored 9/11 ads? I doubt there is anything I, or anybody I know in the reformest Dem heirarchy could do about that. Maybe if we ask real nice, but that hasn’t shown great results in the past. I think maybe the partisans on the R side could do something, but I think it more likely they will ignore you and keep with the strategy that has been working for them.

Joe I too long for the unity that we temporarily had after 9/11, but their are certien elements who place their own selfish agenda above that. I think a better use of your limited time would be to shine the light on those people. Of either party.

In one respect I am so completly on your side that no one could ever seperate us apart. When someone does some sleazy crap like what DeWine did, vote them the heck out of office. Punish them instead of rewarding them. Of either party! That is the only way to make it stop.

Thank you for the Bandwith, and I look foward to your reply.

PS, I am not trying to analyze you but give an honest assesment about how I feel about your piece.