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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Vosilla who wrote (80271)	3/23/2007 5:00:34 PM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 110194

>>Clinton and Rubin were around with a Republican Congress.. Those weren't such bad times. I think the impeachment trial was a great miscalculation on the part of Congressional leadership (though to be fair it was just reprisal for the Bork takedown, which itself was just reprisal for Bork's role in the Saturday Night Massacre), as it has only deepened the partisanship that has always been a feature of American politics, but (in the 20th Century) stopped short of incivility. So, back to the more raucous, 19th century norm, this time with talk radio, TV, and the Internet to aid in spreading the scurrilous rumors and spin. The partisan rhetoric creates the illusion of a "left" and "right" in struggle, and at the fringes of each party there are indeed ideologues who have a pure vision of the possibilities for political action (or inaction, as the case may be). But such people rarely make it to the center, and don't become part of the elite by dint of their purity. The secret of the American political system is that the two parties are different only in their appearances and bluster. All of my reading of history confirms my suspicion that had Al Gore been elected in 2000, the events of the past 6 years would have been much the same: the war in Iraq (the Iraq Regime Change Act of 1998 was passed by Congress and signed by Pres. Clinton, making regime change the policy of the US, and the intelligence was what it was, neocons or no neocons), tax cuts (though the cap gains cuts might have happened in 2001 under Gore instead of 2003, with the income tax cuts happening in 2003 instead of 2001), Medicare drugs, an energy bill boondoggle, and a Katrina cluster****. But instead of arrive at these conclusions, the mainstream and partisan media focus on rhetoric, the "struggle" of town/country, red/blue. Such drama! We have a simulacrum of choice. Who shapes the legislation that rules our lives? Our rulers look like lions, but we do not see who moves them.