"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

When I see the naked contempt people have for the government and
for Obama, I assume they really have the same naked contempt for the
entire country.

How about the naked contempt for Bush or even Reagan? Do you assume the
same naked contempt for the entire country.

I said government, too. It may be the crummy economy, but levels of hate
and belligerence are way up from anything I remember. Bush never took the
sort of abuse that's been heaped upon Obama. I started thinking about why I
drifted away from the Republican party. I campaigned for Goldwater as a kid
and wrote a paper saying why the US had to threaten to use nuclear weapons
on any country that tried to build an A-bomb and that we should (then -
196X) immediately forcibly disarm Russia while they still had a limited
nuclear arsenal.

I used to think every Dem president since FDR thru Clinton was a joke, each
in their own way. I also don't think much of the Rep presidents since FDR
either.

Along the way I mellowed but the world around me has grown more strident.
You might think members of party that lost the last presidential election
would be looking to make converts. Instead, they seem quite content to ****
people off by the boatload. I smile whenever a Republican here loses
control of his tongue and starts insulting people. There can't be any
better agents for the Democrats than rude Republican boosters that make the
more sane members of their party stand up and take notice.

How could they not? They don't seem able to respect the fact that they
were outvoted and the majority has spoken. If they can't respect the
outcome of an election how can they really respect the institution of
democracy? They can't. They want everything to happen their way
and consider any other viewpoint, even the majority's, as wrong and
needing correction or obstruction. And they're not shy in saying so. )-:

See above.

I don't think so. Obama worked very hard to try to be bi-partisan and
include the Republican voices. The *Democrats* themselves complain about
how he wasted so much time trying to work with people who were determined to
thwart every initiative he brought forth. I don't see any reciprocal
bi-partisan efforts from the Republicans. All I here is "we have to STOP
him" coming from the minority that lost the election. There's been a
sea-change and a bad one and a person has to be pretty blind not to see all
the (mostly) bad changes that have occurred in the last decades.
It used to be that a political party wanting to change U.S. policy would try
to achieve that goal by building popular support for its ideas, getting
elected to office, then implementing those ideas through legislation. Our
Constitution designed our system to work that way. But somewhere in the
last couple of decades, all that changed.

Republicans decided the form of government that the Constitution dictates
wasn't good enough for them to achieve their goals. They then discovered
there's no reason to have bargain for enough votes to pass a bill, they
could tangle the Congress in procedural knots (as in the massive increase in
the use of the filibuster by Republicans in the last two years). They could
use all sorts of political tactics, some dirtier than others, to get their
way. They've discovered they can override the will of the electorate and
get what they want by threatening to hurt the country if their demands aren'
t met. While some will take offense at the term, it's the classic
definition of terrorism. "Do what we want or we'll hurt something you care
about."

They were willing to risk a downgrade of our credit rating by holding the
debt-ceiling increase hostage, even though much of that money was earmarked
for the post 9/11 wars and the security fever that followed. Now it's
happening over disaster aid with Mr. Cantor using hurricane victims as pawns
in the budget battle.

We'll see what happens as the Republicans in the states hardest hit by Irene
are faced with proving they don't need "Federal help for anything" by
turning down the government's disaster relief money. If they're anything
like Rick Perry, they'll take the money and run, principles be damned. It's
almost biblical. To remind Mr. Cantor of just how much Virginia might need
the Feds one day, God not only sent hurricane Irene. He sent a nearly
magnitude 6 earthquake centered in Mr. Cantor's home state.

--
Bobby G.