I happen to like glenn beck as well. He is a good, God-fearing human being who seriously cares about this country. You can tell he aches for wrongs to be righted, and justice to be just. He is also quite a character giving a good laugh every now and then.
Mitt Romney quits
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I happen to like glenn beck as well. He is a good, God-fearing human being who seriously cares about this country. You can tell he aches for wrongs to be righted, and justice to be just. He is also quite a character giving a good laugh every now and then.
Guy-jin
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I'm a good human being who seriously cares about this country, aches for wrongs to be righted and justice to be just. And I'm quite a character who gives a good laugh quite often. And hey, I'm not an alcoholic! So why don't you like me equally?
He goes on the same pile as Lou Dobbs, O'Reilly, Hannity, and Olbermann. They're all fictional characters. The characters they play on TV and write about in their books are meant to sell ad time and paper. They aren't real, and I honestly feel they are damaging to our country.
And Dobbs and Beck in particular have started this crusade to identify themselves as Independents like we're some unified party of people like Democrats or Republicans. And as an Independent, I have a major problem with that, because I certainly do not agree with them on many things.
Much of the threads of conservative hate talk on this board centers around people who blindly support George Bush and see no fault in what he has done. This is a far cry from people who are conservative and wish for various outcomes in the political arena that support their views ( e.g.: which would be lower taxes, the right to bear arms, as such).
I've encountered in life (as opposed to board postings), people who routinely dismiss Bush's failures as "being in the past", while being unable to let go of any democratic failure or slip up. This is just hypocracy.
My view is Bush is a dimwit. There are good intelligent conservatives who dismiss Bush and his administration. Bush has made me miss the evils of Richard Nixon.
I'd like to hear McCain and Rush Limbaugh discuss their repective Vietnam experiences.
I've encountered in life (as opposed to board postings), people who routinely dismiss Bush's failures as "being in the past", while being unable to let go of any democratic failure or slip up. This is just hypocracy.
My view is Bush is a dimwit. There are good intelligent conservatives who dismiss Bush and his administration. Bush has made me miss the evils of Richard Nixon.
I'd like to hear McCain and Rush Limbaugh discuss their repective Vietnam experiences.
You may be. I never got into specifics. I'm just sick of Sean Hannity on a daily basis referencing the heritage foundation and their "what would Reagan do" section. Hannity and his ilk are trying to elevate this man to the position of deity with themselves as the only ones qualified to interpret that deity's ideologies. They want to be the popes or high priests of the Reagan religion, and I think much like most other prominent religious leaders in history they are twisting the message to suit their own purposes.
For instance, the war in Iraq, which Hannity is and always has been the biggest shill for. He is frequently citing national defense as one of Reagan's strong points, implying some corollary between Reagan's firm stand against the USSR and the current "war on terror." Saying stupid shit like he's a pro-defense Republican.. oh wait.. he should start calling himself a pro-Freedom Republican. (this is actually something Hannity said when he was thinking out loud on the air one day)
First of all, declaring war on countries that haven't and will never attack us is not defense. Also.. those who are against senseless wars are anti-freedom? Fuck you, Sean Hannity.
But to get back to Reagan... Reagan's policy concerning the Soviet Union was basically to outspend them. He DID build up our military, to unprecedented levels, which probably did (you can argue the point if you want) contribute to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. But just because Reagan built up our military... didn't mean he was a war hawk. He actually went to great pains to, even while combating Soviet interests, keep us OUT of a direct war. I applaud the man for that. If Ronald Reagan were George Bush the cold war might have ended with us invading and occupying Iceland. That is if we didn't all die in a nuclear holocaust. Compare the successful (albeit controversial) and relatively painless US military action in Grenada to the massive fuck-up of Iraq. He picked his battle more carefully and intelligently and didn't overextend us.
For a second point, take immigration. Amnesty has now been positioned as a dirty word by the pundits. But Reagan's '86 Immigration Reform act granted exactly that to over 3 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States. His words: "The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans." sound more like John Edwards than anyone in the current Bush administration.
There also wasn't any baloney with religious initiatives during the Reagan era such as this BS with vouchers for people to send their kids to parochial schools.
Those are just a few points. There are more. It irritates me the way the talking heads like to go on and on and on about how much integrity they have and about how their core conservative values are set in stone and unchangeable and how their consistency is their strength. All the while building up Reagan as a Conservative God and implying that the man was perfect in every way, and therefore that his ideas and policies must have aligned perfectly and in every way with every stupid thing these idiots support. Obviously (to me, anyway) neither argument holds water.
Also compare Reagan's approval ratings, which rose and fell but for the most part hovered around 60%, to Bush's, which just fall and fall and fall, with the only notable exception being immediately after 9/11/2001.
I am somewhere to the left of Karl Marx and I like McCain. I have a Jewish liberal frined who likes McCain. I think what we are all sensing is that out of all the possibilities, he is real.
Sure he may drag us into some crazy wars, kicking and screaming for what America needs to keep up this lifestyle. But he will do it honestly. With McCain, it feels like we wouldn't have the kind of corruption America has grown used to. Ahd I am not just talking about Bush. Or just Clinton. I am talking about the past several generations who feel it is OK to be slimy.
It is a huge social issue. Bush is representative to a widely prevailing fucked up attitude regarding what matters in life. Few realize how deep this shit runs.
Look at Barry Bonds. People would say he was a slimeball for taking steroids. Well then it came out that something like 8 out of 10 ball players have done them. WTF?
I remember one corporate job I had. Everyone was corrupt. Before I left after 3 years, there was only 1 person who didn't get fired, and she got fired eventually too. I had been stealing from the place too. Just not thousands of dollars of merch like my coworkers were doing.
If this system is going to work, people need to be honest.
Bush is representative of a world that not only wants to keep up an unrealistic lifestyle, but also wants to cut all sorts of corners in their personal lives so that they can have more than the guy next to him that already has way too much.
McCain seems out of a history book. He is from another world. The pre-ME generations world. He reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt. People have said the same thing about Bush, but with Bush, that was just some PR Bullshit that they could pull off because he was an imperialist from old fashiopned all American Texas. McCain is the real deal.
I like what skullmason said about small minded, racist, theologists and the like being a dying breed. It is so true that their kids are home playing video games and getting high. I know those kids.
That said, I think the new problem is how big corporations have gotten, the political entanglements with said corporations and the fact that the poeple running the whole machine are from a very ME oriented world.
I think what people who aren't even republican are feeling when they say they like McCain is that he seems to be the antithesis of that.
I don't think this really has much bearing on the adults they'll eventually turn into. My dad is a pretty hardcore Republican now, but when he was a teenager he was practically a hippy. People almost always become more conservative as they get older. I've moved in the opposite direction but I'm weird.
this has little to do with Romney, but it's goddamned funny:
YouTube - Conan O'Brien's Run Through Tour Of Nightly News SNL & MSNBC
YouTube - Conan O'Brien's Run Through Tour Of Nightly News SNL & MSNBC
Mr. Snakey
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I wish I had your faith in McCain's integrity. But I don't. I like him better than the rest of his party, but that's not saying much. I find his aforementioned "kowtowing to every last undesirable wing of the extreme nutjob right," as NIC put it, really worrisome.
I've never understood why so may otherwise liberal/left-leaning people are so enamoured with McCain. A lot of people I've spoken with share NIC's sentiment of "kind of liking" him. Here's my take on him: I suspect that in many cases, he knows the right thing to do. But I have no faith that he will actually do it. Instead, he will remain true to his party, in all it's corruption, even when that means failing to be true to himself and to what is in the best interests of the American people. I think this is an unacceptable quality in a president (frankly, it comes across as a bit weak), so I really don't understand why many otherwise liberal people would be OK if he won, and would even support him over Clinton.
I cannot stress enough that the Republican party needs to lose this election, for all the reasons that have already been mentioned in this thread and which don't need to be reiterated here. That's the only way they're going to clean house and expel Hannity, Coulter, and the rest of that ilk. And I do mean that they're going to have to be expelled; they're not going to leave on their own because, in spite of their talk about not supporting McCain, these people have been playing politics too long to just walk away from the table and make themselves obsolete. If McCain wins, they'll support him if only to oppose the Democrats, all the while saying that McCain and his administration aren't conservative enough. No, the Republican party has to recognize that if they can't win elections without the support of right-wing extremists, then maybe they don't deserve to win. Maybe then they'll reassess who they are and what they really stand for.
But really, I can't believe anyone who isn't a die-hard Republican could seriously be considering supporting McCain. The Republican party has had 8 years in the White House and they've made a royal mess of things, far beyond my worst expectations when GWB first took office. Seriously, people, if the Republican party does become TEMPORARILY divided, we have a real chance at taking back the White House and starting to undo the damage they've done. Please don't blow it.
If you really want the Republican party to get it's much-deserved comeuppance, which might just goad it into some much-needed reform, then you must ensure their defeat by supporting the Democratic nominee, whoever that is, even if it's Clinton <gasp!>
Radical leftists? Where? Certainly not on this thread? If people here were radical leftists they certainly wouldn't be talking about liking McCain and wishing to restore the GOP to it's former glory. No, the views that have been expressed here strike me as slightly left-leaning, swing-voter centrism. I suspect the problem here is that people on the extreme right frequently don't recognize the center when they see it, and they mistake it for the radical left (hence all the complaints about the "liberal media," which is actually fairly conservative). I haven't seen any truly leftist views expressed here, let alone those of the radical left. If you think the people on this thread are leftists, you have no idea how far left the left really goes.
LOL, I know..this thread has not been THAT bad..I was speaking mostly of the many other threads around this site that are just plain ridicirous...yes so ridiculous it doesnt even deserve the right spelling 
It would be lovely if Hannity and his ilk would go away, but I don't think they will anytime soon. No matter who is elected, they will continue their shrill, right wing ranting against the center and left. Actually I think they may secretly hope for a Democratic victory. Having a "enemy" to scream against will probably increase the ratings.
kalipygian
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The local R's are a bit discommoded, they went 43% for Romney, then he quit the next day. Paul was a somewhat distant second, and McCain last.:biggrin1:
B_VinylBoy
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I see no reason to vote for any of the Republican candidates this year. We've had 8 years of right-winged politics that has driven this country down severely. And I refuse to vote for any candidate that openly supports bills that discriminate against minorities or the sick.
The only way I see the right wing nut-jobs in the media going away is if McCain wins in November.
There are a lot of moderate conservatives in the republican party who feel that need to pander themselves to the christian fundamentalists to stay in office. McCain is despised by these very fundies and if he can pull off victory without having to heavily rely on this segment, it will re-define the republican party as we have known it for the last quarter century. Once this happens it will be the party that will have sent the message across that these people are no longer needed and that is the only way to ensure that most of them will go away for good.
There are a lot of moderate conservatives in the republican party who feel that need to pander themselves to the christian fundamentalists to stay in office. McCain is despised by these very fundies and if he can pull off victory without having to heavily rely on this segment, it will re-define the republican party as we have known it for the last quarter century. Once this happens it will be the party that will have sent the message across that these people are no longer needed and that is the only way to ensure that most of them will go away for good.
Good luck with that...He is ALREADY kissing their constipated asses. I am afraid he can't have well-adjusted Republicans AND so-called independent voters AND religious extremists and eat them too.
One group is bound to cry fool and abstain from voting period, even if they HATE Hillary/Barack.
Hey I never said I was voting for McCain. I toyed with the idea because I have a very real fear that the democratic party and the republican party are the same fucking thing just presented to people so that we feel like we still have options. So I toy with the idea of supporting the guy who seems less full of shit.
I truly feel that if we are to keep up the American quality of life, we probably do need to do some of the things that the Republicans want...such as invade countries and start putting tracking devices in our IDs so that we have to walk a certain line.
But my own personal ideology and belief is that what we really should be doing is changing how we live so that we don't need Republicans to enforce our right to have a 5000 dollar credit line and a 3000 square foot house. It is excessive and uneccesary.
In all honesty I am much more likely to vote for a democrat but will probably vote for Cynthia McKinney.
Ok I am lying. It is going to take personal strength and willpower to NOT vote for Hilary or Obama. I have voted democrat in every election since I turned 18 in 2002. I am similar politically to my Dad who has voted democrat in every election since 1944 when he voted for FDR.
I just think that both democrats and republicans are representative of a big fucked system.
I wish I had as much faith as you that the Democrats will really do something.
No matter how I vote I will be proud if a black man or a woman comes in to office.
I feel it is a step in the right direction.
But I feel like it is sort of like trying to walk through a tsunami (futile and symbolic at best)
I may end up voting democrat...but I tell you that in life I try to go against the grain...and everyone else can do the same. The power to change is in YOUR hands. The best thing you can do is to throw your credit carsd int he fireplace. Don't shop. Make your own stuff. Buy only what you need.
Otherwise they own you.
And big brother will be watching over you making sure you pay back.
Seriously...don't get a state ID after May of this year...they will have radio frequency tracking chips//the political machine is taking steps to make sure everyone falls in line with what will be a system of corporate slavery. So that the few in power can retain whatever power they have.
My personal thing is that however I vote, I will continue to consume as little as possible. Everyone else should do the same...and for chrissakes don't let them give you tracking chip ID's
invisibleman
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invisibleman
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It is too bad that Mitt Romney quit. I thought that he was one out of three Presidential candidates that were really nice looking. Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Mitt Romney are hot looking.
I wouldn't have voted for him though. He has no backbone. I keep looking for Jeff Dunham. Hehehe.
I thought that he was one out of three Presidential candidates that were really nice looking. Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Mitt Romney are hot looking. I wouldn't have voted for him though. He has no backbone. I keep looking for Jeff Dunham. Hehehe.
He seems much more realistic to me than the current administration. I think his "straight talk express" has been replaced with the "straight talk with a hefty side of bullshit express" lately, as I already mentioned, but I think that this is all about him trying to secure the Republican nomination. He is a pragmatist and understands that the way our stupid primary system is set up, a true centrist (like Ron Paul) has no chance at all of making it past the primaries. Obama is acting more liberal lately than he normally would to try and help his performance in the primaries, McCain has been trying to make a case for himself for years about how conservative he is in preparation for this run to the presidency. I think. I hope.
The reason I like McCain has mostly to do with the fact that when he talks about reforming Washington, I actually believe him. Romney heard that every time he said "Washington is broken" it boosted his poll numbers so he started repeating that three times during every interview, but I never once believed that he intended to do something meaningful about it or address issues with the brokenness of Washington that I cared about. McCain on the other hand has been pretty consistent in being very outspoken against lobbyist interests and pork-barrel projects and stupid partisan bickering and he has not simply talked the talk he has also walked the walk. His voting record and time in Congress reflects these positions.
I think and hope that you are wrong. The very reason why Hannity, Limbaugh, et al HATE McCain with a passion is that he has done the exact opposite of what you claim he will do in the future. He has done what he believes to be right, even when it went against the White House or against the brainless rhetoric of the neo-cons. McCain-Kennedy showed that he was able to think of the immigration issue in realistic terms, even when the bill was extremely unpopular in BOTH parties. McCain-Feingold showed his commitment to battling corruption and standing up for campaign finance reform (Hannity says it demonstrates that he is an opponent of free speech, as if corporations buying the presidency is constitutionally protected speech). McCain did not support the Bush tax cuts, citing that they were unfair for the middle class and also that we shouldn't be cutting taxes when we are at the same time raising federal spending to unprecedented levels. The first half of that argument makes it clear that he is able to think outside of the party box, and the second part makes him seem like a much better champion of real conservative principles than the bastard NeoCons. One of the reasons I used to lean conservative and no longer do is because they used to be about reducing the size of the federal government, something that McCain believes in but that he is incomprehensibly still attacked for by his opponents on the right.
GWB ran on being a uniter not a divider, but once in office he did the exact opposite. The only time that Bush was able to work with Democrats was when he was in Texas, and the Democrats in Texas aren't exactly representative of Democrats in general. McCain on the other hand has actually spent years doing exactly that: reaching across the isle on issue after issue. He is a man of compromise and pragmatism and principle, and this is exactly why the extreme right hates him so much. They don't feel that he will shit all over the country to favor the Republican party and conservative movement the same way that Bush has done.
For all the reasons above I wouldn't be too stressed if he won, even if I would like to see the Republicans lose. The only way the Republican party would change due to a loss is if it was a humiliating catastrophic loss for them, and I don't think that is going to happen. If it did, then shifting public opinion from the outside would force change within the party. On the other hand I think that if McCain won he actually has a reasonable chance at changing things from the inside.
I don't especially like Hillary and never have. I can't believe the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot this bad by seriously considering her candidacy at all. At this point, with public opinion so against Bush, I think the Democrats could run almost anybody and win against any Republican. Though the Republicans are very smart in picking McCain, as he is the strongest candidate they've got in a national election, I still think Obama or any number of other candidates could beat him. But I doubt that Hillary could. Hillary is not a viable national candidate. She is far too hated, even within her own party but especially outside of it. I know and understand that some of this has to do with the years of coordinated character assassination that the right-wing radio shows have been performing ever since the first Clinton presidency, but that doesn't change the fact that she is disliked and in some cases despised. Of the three serious frontrunners: Obama, McCain, and Clinton, I do think she would be the absolute worst for uniting the country or bringing us together. She would be every bit as much a polarizing figure as George Bush was. Obama and McCain want to work with the other side, Clinton does not and will not. She may help fix many of the things that Bush broke or destroyed, but I don't have enough confidence in her abilities as a leader to be very effective at fixing many of them. I don't think she'll be able to rally enough support to ever be an effective president and get much done. I also think some of her policy ideas are terrible. I don't like her healthcare plan, I think Obama's is much more reasonable. There's also the issue of the war in Iraq.
Concerning the Iraq war, my feelings: it was a huge, huge, pitiable mistake to invade the country in the first place. It has wasted ridiculous amounts of money and human lives, and all for no good reason. It has actually made us FAR FAR LESS safe than we were beforehand. It continues to bleed American lives and American dollars even while it continues to hurt our international reputation and needs to be resolved and put behind us in a bad way. It has taken our focus away from where it should have been, and also completely destroyed our capacity to fight terrorism by engendering extreme international animosity and distrust, especially among Islamic nations.
That said, I don't think Hillary is right. At this point, I think immediate hasty withdraw of 100% of US forces would be the wrong thing to do. Again, I think Obama probably has the right idea. McCain's outspoken support of the war at every stage is one of the issues I disagree with him on, but again, it's not something that he has remained in lock-step with his party on. At the onset of the war, McCain was an outspoken critic of the way we were handling things. When every Republican out there, presumably for the sake of party solidarity, could not fess up to the fact that things were going much much worse than any of them had predicted or stated they would, McCain was one of the few willing to admit to the obvious. Then, when public opinion started to go SO much against the president, and most Rep.s started to speak out against the war, too (around the last mid-term, go figure) McCain did not. McCain argued for a change in strategy and for the "surge," which seemed like a dumb idea to me at the time, but it has been working to some degree.
I think I would probably disagree with McCain on the way Iraq should be handled from this point onward. I don't think we should be building permanent military bases over there, for one thing. But.. I also believe that McCain will prosecute this war in a way that he believes is good for the country. I believe he will continue to be a pragmatist and realist and weigh each option as it comes up. I believe that he is a man able to change his mind and admit mistakes. He's not the stubborn obstinate dim-witted asshole that Bush is. He's not the scheming deceitful liar with ulterior motives that Cheney or Rove are.
I think you know I would like to see this happen as much or more than you would. But I don't think it will happen the way you are saying it needs to. These guys thrive on being the victim. They need to be seen as under attack and marginalized. That's why, when Fox News is cleaning up in the ratings and destroying the networks in revenue and viewership, they STILL insist on painting themselves as the little guy, at battle with the mean nasty liberal big media. Even when white male heterosexual Protestants hold something like 95% of all available elected positions in Washington, they STILL insist that Christianity is under attack by the government, that immigrants are taking over the country, that traditional values are facing extinction at the hands of the homosexual agenda. Even when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress they STILL had to pretend like they were somehow disenfranchised. Playing the victim is and always has been part of their M.O. The verbal and mental acrobatics they've had to go through the past many years to arrive at this were remarkable, but if they lost an election it would only make it easier on them. They would still be around, screaming just as loud if not louder.
I agree that the Rep.s should reconsider their base and look forward to the day when the bigots, hawks, and nuts are all marginalized and don't have either party to go to. I just don't think electing Hillary is the way to do it. If anything, she's going to bring renewed solidarity to the Republicans, and after 4 years of her suffering through the aftermath of the big dump Bush took on the nation, trying to sift through the problems he left her and being unable to effectively address any of them because of her inability to win significant support from a partisan congress, I fear we'll have another big conservative resurgence and might be looking at a Romney presidency in 2012 or something worse.
agreed. Someone's been Hannitized.
