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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (65916)	5/15/2008 10:14:32 PM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 543683

Two points. One, presidents should never but never go to a foreign parliament and air dirty laundry about political divisions at home. The Israeli parliamentarians know where Bush stands at home, and what a cheap shot he was taking while speaking in their house as an invited guest. It was poor form all around. Second, your last assertion assumes that Bush being twice as partisan and aggressive would have made him more successful. Since he destroyed the popularity he enjoyed after 9/11 precisely by being bullheaded, intolerant and disdainful of other opinions, I don't see your assumption as plausible. We could make a long list of quotes where Bush abused Democrats the last six years. The end result is an impotent president reduced to snide shots, with no political capital left at all. Whatever might have been different, I want to see that whole game discredited and left on the junk heap of Beltway history. It has taken us precisely nowhere the last many years.

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (65916)	5/16/2008 11:51:35 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543683

Bearcatbob, re: "I salute Bush for taking the offensive in his speech. IMO he has been too much a gentlemen during his presidency. He has allowed the Republican bums in Congress to run amuk and he has not challenged the Dems in their foolishness. While it is late in the game - it is good to see. The result is a ruined presidency and a coming Democratic land slide." If only he'd have been more aggressive in attacking Democrats and had exercised more control over his Republican allies, his "ruined presidency" and the "coming Democratic land slide" would have been avoided? It must be comforting to have views so deeply internalized that no matter what the facts reveal the underlying assumptions never change. I say that because it seems glaringly obvious that the real problem with the failed Bush presidency and the Republican plummet wasn't that they weren't aggressive and confrontational and it certainly wasn't that they failed to march in lockstep. The problem was that their aggressive, noisy and lockstep march into the future was charted based on a view of reality that was simplistic and deeply flawed. The actual truth is that they sold it well, they moved ahead full speed, they had partisan unity, they overwhelmed their wimpy Democratic opponents and it was those factors that have resulted in their undoing. Now you want them to shout louder, push harder down that dead end path and show more solidarity. At a time when we should be anticipating the elections of a Democratic President and substantial Democratic power base in the House and Senate, the last thing we need is to have the two party system fail us completely because of a Republican Party that's so ideologically crippled that it can't or won't learn. The deadliest enemies of the Republican Party are those like you who cling to discredited notions and continue in your vain attempts to breathe life into the rotting corpses of long dead policies. Think about it. Ed

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (65916)	5/16/2008 12:12:47 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 543683

The Judiciary, with their ruling on the marriage issue, has given marriage a new angle and has steered it away from the concept of a "union between man and woman". Wonder why the Govt. registers a title deed for land plots irrespective of land type but refuses to register a union or bond between two people with alternative lifestyles and bestow it the same privileges of inheritance etc. ========================= Married by God or Government? While today is a happy day for those of us who strongly support gay marriage rights, the ruling by the California Supreme Court comes with a big anxious sigh. So far, the presidential election has managed to (mostly) stay out of the territory of divisive issues such as abortion and gay marriage and stick to legislative changes that will affect all of our lives constantly, daily and hourly, like health care, the recession, and the war. Maybe this makes me radical, but I don't want my politicians debating God's law or referring to the Old Testament. You know where the whole back and forth about marriage being between a man and a woman -- not Adam and Steve -- belongs? In church. (Or talk radio!) What's hard these days as a youngish person is the sense that progress is immediately interpreted as perversion. Of course I understand that one woman's progress is another's going to hell in a hand basket. But where I think we as Americans can find common ground is a place called privacy. Our founding fathers bestowed a right to individuality and equality through our amazing constitution. The nascent nation was incredibly denominationally diverse and they knew that in order for there to be peace there had to be this combination of privacy and equality. As far as California's governance over marriage is concerned, my feeling is that if marriage is something the government is granting, then all tax-paying citizens of all orientations should have the right by law to receive it. And by the same token, I think people who believe that homosexuality is against God should be respected for their beliefs. The leadership of their faith group should come to its own stance through debate and make their own call on how they recognize and sanctify marriage. Meanwhile, they shouldn't be forced to watch anything with Ryan Seacrest or wear Thom Browne suits. Done. What would make me sad would be if we saw a repeat of the culture war mentality that ensued following the Massachusetts ruling in 2004, when it became the first state to uphold gay marriage. Fear was incited, and religious and conservative voters felt they had no choice but to vote for Bush. Now I don't really care who people vote for but it just would be a pity if just when this country was teeter-tottering dangerously in its economic vitality and its role as a global leader, we put everything aside and worried only about whether Adam and Steve were sanctified by the state. An ort: I just came home from my friend Dan's 35th birthday dinner. Dan is gay and on the macho side of emotion but when we all clinked glasses to toast him he said quietly that this was a really special day for him because of the ruling. I know his mother is a deeply religious Catholic woman who goes to mass every day and who is also Dan's best friend. I'm guessing she's happy for him. newsweek.washingtonpost.com