"Jerry Foster" wrote in message
m...

"Pete C." wrote in message
...
"F. George McDuffee" wrote:

snip
Frivolous tort lawsuits, like the McDonald's hot coffee fiasco,
don't
fly in the UK.

We get a few. I can't bring one as frivolous as the hot coffee affair
to
mind, though.
snip
By itself it appears this was a frivolous suit. However taken in
total as the latest in a series of accidents involving [too] hot
coffee, the verdict was justified, i.e. you are only allowed to
injure only so many people with your "safe" product before it
costs you. You also need to remember the number of people who
were injured by coffee sold in the cup and implicitly "ready to
drink," which was in fact scalding. This may have lead to
traffic accidents when the driver took a big swig.

Wasn't said coffee heated to the temperature required by the local
health dept.?

rest of message snipped

As I recall reading, the local health inspector had, on more than one
occasion, warned McDonalds to turn down the temperature of the coffee
before
someone got hurt. In any case, friends in the food business have told me
that the health codes generally require that hot foods be held at, as I
recall, at least 135 degrees. The McDonalds coffee was at something like
190 degrees. But, since this complied with the health code (exceeded it
by
55 degrees...), the inspector couldn't, and didn't, cite them for it.

Jerry

In the MacDonalds case many people had been burned by their coffee and they
had been sued repeatedly for damages. It wasn't until this case where the
woman was severely burned by their coffee that it made the headlines. This
woman was burned so badly that she spent weeks in the hospital being
treated. MacDonalds had been warned repeatedly that their coffee was too hot
and presented a hazard but they disregarded the warnings. The award to the
woman burned was the amount of money MacDonalds made from the sale of coffee
for just one day. Needless to say it was millions of dollars. Had MacDonalds
simply stopped selling scalding hot coffee they wouldn't have been out a
penny and no one would have been hurt. It seems so simple it's a wonder why
they had to do it the hard way.

Hawke

"Doug White" wrote in message
...
Keywords:
In article ,
wrote:
snip
Frivolous tort lawsuits, like the McDonald's hot coffee fiasco, don't
fly in the UK.

We get a few. I can't bring one as frivolous as the hot coffee affair to
mind, though.
snip
By itself it appears this was a frivolous suit. However taken in
total as the latest in a series of accidents involving [too] hot
coffee, the verdict was justified, i.e. you are only allowed to
injure only so many people with your "safe" product before it
costs you. snip

That doesn't explain the guy and his suit against the lawn mower company.
He lost his fingers when he picked up a running mower by the edges of
the deck to try to trim his hedge.

The biggest problem is that there is no longer any such thing as personal
reponsibility, and any time anything bad happens, it must be someone's
else's fault, preferably someone you can sue. The lawyers are largely
responsible for this attitude, because they make lots of money this way.
It's gotten to the point where parents are suing schools because little
Johnnie's grades aren't up to snuff. I think there are definitely
companies that need to be taken to task for irresponsible behavior, but
the attitude of most folks is that selling ANY product is irresponsible
in some fashion if it doesn't suit their fancy, or if they've found a new
& dangerous way to abuse it. The government tends to support this by
trying to regulate safety to a fare-thee-well. I work in the defense
industry, and folks are now having all sorts of meetings to make sure
that there will be no lead used in the next generation of our nuclear
missiles. Excuse me!!???

The next time you take an aspirin, thank the diety of your choice that
the stuff came on the market before all of the drug testing laws got put
on the books.

Doug White

You're right about stupid Americans suing for just about any damn thing
regardless of whether they were to blame for the damage in the first place.
Just look at the families of the miners who died in Virginia. They were told
erroneously that their family members were rescued alive only to find out
hours later the announcement was wrong. What was their response to finding
out the information they first received about the miners was wrong? You
guessed it, they were going to sue. Can you imagine that? They got some
wrong information and they want to sue. I wonder how they're going to figure
out how much the mine owners owe them for misinforming them about the fate
of the miners? Let's see, my feelings were hurt very badly. I think about
$500,000 ought to cover it.

This case is a good example of the problem with frivolous lawsuits. You need
goofy plaintiffs to have one. The lawyers don't start these cases on their
own. It's the people that come to them asking them to sue that are the
problem, not the attorneys. I think that's worth remembering next time you
hear about a frivolous lawsuit. The plaintiff is at fault every bit as much
as the attorney, more if you ask me.

Hawke

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Ted Bennett" wrote in message
...

American [sic] is shifting so far right, soon:
1) School books will be devoid of subject matter and just contain
Intelligent Design pictures.

I wanna see an Intelligent Design picture and explanation of a lamprey or an
African child with bilharzia parasites.

Either one should be quite a picture.

Well, Lampreys are easy: fish need holes put in 'em so that they're
lighter in weight. Less weight means more agility. Also, it's a great
diet program. As soon as somebody figures out how to make lampreys
breathe dry air we'll start sticking them to fat people like there's no
tomorrow.
Now mutilated children is a bit harder to explain. The lord (oops,
"Lord") works in mysterious ways.

--
B.B. --I am not a goat! thegoat4 at airmail dot net

On 9 Jan 2006 18:20:50 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

It was interesting to note, that within hours of the Hurricane hitting
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the right wing talk shows were full of
exhortations to donate, information one where to donate, where to
volunteer, etc. But the left went straight to blaming Bush for not being
omnipotent enough to steer the hurricane.

And within minutes of the news that the president was busy
breaking the law by wiretapping US citizens with the NSA,
about 12 thousand right wingers joined together in a single
chant: "We Don't Need That Amendment."

Then they all joined in to a rousing chorus of "in bush we trust."

Jim

For Jim...things havent changed any in the last 3 yrs....


Democrats Go Off the Cliff
From the June 30, 2003 issue: Powerlessness corrupts.
by David Brooks
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41


ACROSS THE COUNTRY Republicans and conservatives are asking each other
the same basic question: Has the other side gone crazy? Have the
Democrats totally flipped their lids? Because every day some Democrat
seems to make a manic or totally over-the-top statement about George
Bush, the Republican party, and the state of the nation today.

"This republic is at its greatest danger in its history because of
this administration," says Democratic senator Robert Byrd.

"I think this is deliberate, intentional destruction of the United
States of America," says liberal commentator Bill Moyers.

George Bush's economic policy is the "most radical and dangerous
economic theory to hit our shores since socialism," says Senator John
Edwards.

"The Most Dangerous President Ever" is the title of an essay in the
American Prospect by Harold Meyerson, in which it is argued that the
president Bush most closely resembles is Jefferson Davis.

Tom Daschle condemns the "dictatorial approach" of this
administration. John Kerry says Bush "deliberately misled" America
into the Iraq war. Asked what Democrats can do about the Republicans,
Janet Reno recalls her visit to the Dachau concentration camp, and
points out that the Holocaust happened because many Germans just stood
by. "And don't you just stand by," she exhorts her Democratic
audience.

When conservatives look at the newspapers, they see liberal columnists
who pick out every tiny piece of evidence or pseudo-evidence of
Republican vileness, and then dwell on it and obsess over it until
they have lost all perspective and succumbed to fevers of incoherent
rage. They see Democratic primary voters who are so filled with hatred
at George Bush and John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney that they are pulling
their party far from the mainstream of American life. They see
candidates who, instead of trying to quell the self-destructive fury,
are playing to it. "I am furious at [Bush] and I am furious at the
Republicans," says Dick Gephardt, trying to sound like John Kerry who
is trying to sound like Howard Dean.

It's mystifying. Fury rarely wins elections. Rage rarely appeals to
suburban moderates. And there is a mountain of evidence that the
Democrats are now racing away from swing voters, who do not hate
George Bush, and who, despite their qualms about the economy and
certain policies, do not feel that the republic is being raped by vile
and illegitimate marauders. The Democrats, indeed, look like they're
turning into a domestic version of the Palestinians--a group so
enraged at their perceived oppressors, and so caught up in their own
victimization, that they behave in ways that are patently not in their
self-interest, and that are almost guaranteed to perpetuate their
suffering.

WHEN YOU TALK to Democratic strategists, you find they do have
rationalizations for the current aggressive thrust. In 2003, it's
necessary to soften Bush up with harsh attacks, some say. In 2004,
we'll put on a happier face. Others argue that Democrats tried to
appeal to moderate voters in 2002 and it didn't work. The key to
victory in 2004 is riling up the liberal base. Still others say that
with all the advantages Bush has--incumbency, victory in Iraq, the
huge fundraising lead--Democrats simply have to roll the dice and
behave radically.

But all of these explanations have a post-facto ring. Democratic
strategists are trying to put a rational gloss on what is a visceral,
unplanned, and emotional state of mind. Democrats may or may not be
behaving intelligently, but they are behaving sincerely. Their
statements are not the product of some Dick Morris-style strategic
plan. This stuff wasn't focus-grouped. The Democrats are letting their
inner selves out for a romp.

And if you probe into the Democratic mind at the current moment, you
sense that the rage, the passion, the fighting spirit are all fueled
not only by opposition to Bush policies, but also by powerlessness.

Republicans have controlled the White House before, but up until now
Democrats still had some alternative power center. Reagan had the
presidency, but Democrats had the House and, part of the time, the
Senate. Bush the elder faced a Democratic Congress. But now Democrats
have nothing. Even the Supreme Court helped Republicans steal the last
election, many Democrats feel. Republicans--to borrow political
scientist Samuel Lubell's trope--have become the Sun party and
Democrats have been reduced to being the Moon party. Many Democrats
feel that George Bush is just running loose, transforming the national
landscape and ruining the nation, and there is nothing they can do to
stop him.

Wherever Democrats look, they sense their powerlessness. Even when
they look to the media, they feel that conservatives have the upper
hand. Conservatives think this is ludicrous. We may have Rush and Fox,
conservatives say, but you have ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times. But
liberals are sincere. They despair that a consortium of conservative
think tanks, talk radio hosts, and Fox News--Hillary's vast right-wing
conspiracy--has cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology
delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out.

When they look to the culture at large, many Democrats feel that the
climate is so hostile to them they can't even speak up. During the war
in Iraq, liberals claimed that millions of Americans were opposed to
war, but were afraid to voice their opinions, lest the Cossacks come
charging through their door. The actor Tim Robbins declared, "Every
day, the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled
threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent.
And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this
weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear." Again, conservatives regard
this as ludicrous. Stand up and oppose the war, conservatives observe,
and you'll probably win an Oscar, a National Magazine Award, and
tenure at four dozen prestigious universities. But the liberals who
made these complaints were sincerely expressing the way they perceive
the world.

And when they look at Washington, they see a cohesive corporate
juggernaut, effortlessly pushing its agenda and rolling over
Democratic opposition. Again, this is not how Republicans perceive
reality. Republicans admire President Bush a great deal, but most feel
that, at least on domestic policy, the conservative agenda has been
thwarted as much as it has been advanced. Bush passed two tax cuts,
but on education he abandoned school choice and adopted a bill largely
written by Ted Kennedy. On Medicare, the administration has abandoned
real reform and embraced a bill also endorsed by Kennedy. On campaign
finance, the president signed a bill promoted by his opponents. The
faith-based initiatives are shrinking to near nothingness. Social
Security reform has disappeared from the agenda for the time being.
Domestic spending has increased.

Still, Democrats and liberals see the Bush presidency in maximalist
terms. "President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday
marked a watershed in American politics," wrote E.J. Dionne of the
Washington Post. "The rules of policymaking that have applied since
the end of World War II are now irrelevant." The headline on a recent
Michael Kinsley column was "Capitalism's 'Deal' Falls Apart," arguing
that the Bush administration had revoked the social contract that had
up to now shaped American politics.

In short, when many liberals look at national affairs, they see a
world in which their leaders are nice, pure-souled, but defenseless,
and they see Republicans who are organized, devious, and relentless.
"It's probably a weakness that we're not real haters. We don't have a
sense that it's a holy crusade," Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told
Adam Clymer of the New York Times. "They play hardball, we play
softball," Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile added. Once again,
Republicans think this picture of reality is delusional. The Democrats
are the party that for 40 years has labeled its opponents racists,
fascists, religious nuts, and monsters who wanted to starve grannies
and orphans. Republicans saw what Democrats did to Robert Bork,
Clarence Thomas, and dozens of others. Yet Democrats are utterly
sincere. Many on the left think they have been losing because their
souls are too elevated.

When they look inward, impotence, weakness, high-mindedness, and
geniality are all they see.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Robert Kagan published a book, Of Paradise and
Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. Kagan argued that
Americans and Europeans no longer share a common view of the world.
Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus. The essential
reason Americans and Europeans perceive reality differently, he
argued, is that there is a power gap. Americans are much more powerful
than Europeans, and Europeans are acutely aware of their
powerlessness.

Something similar seems to be happening domestically between
Republicans and Democrats. It's not just that members of the two
parties disagree. It's that the disagreements have recently grown so
deep that liberals and conservatives don't seem to perceive the same
reality. Whether it is across the ocean or across the aisle,
powerlessness corrupts just as certainly as power does. Those on top
become overly self-assured, emotionally calloused, dishonest with
themselves, and complacent. Those on the bottom become vicious.
Sensing that their dignity is perpetually insulted, they begin to see
their plight in lurid terms. They exaggerate the power of their foes.
They invent malevolent conspiracy theories to explain their
unfortunate position. They develop a gloomy and panicked view of the
world.

Republicans are suffering from many of the maladies that afflict the
powerful, but they have not been driven into their own emotional
ghetto because in their hearts Republicans don't feel that powerful.
Democrats, on the other hand, do feel powerless. And that is why so
many Democratic statements about Republicans resemble European and
Middle Eastern statements about America.

First, there is the lurid and emotional tone. You wouldn't know it
listening to much liberal conversation, but we are still living in a
country that is evenly divided politically; the normal rules still
apply; our politics is still a contest between two competing but
essentially valid worldviews; power tends to alternate between the two
parties, as one or the other screws up or grows stale.

But if you listened to liberal rhetoric, you would think America was
convulsed in a Manichean struggle of good against evil. Here, for
example, is the liberal playwright Tony Kushner addressing the
graduating seniors at Columbia College in Chicago. This passage is not
too far off from the rhetoric one can find in liberal circles every
day:

And this is what I think you have gotten your education for. You have
presumably made a study of how important it is for people--the people
and not the oil plutocrats, the people and not the fantasists in
right-wing think tanks, the people and not the virulent lockstep
gasbags of Sunday morning talk shows and editorial pages and all-Nazi
all-the-time radio ranting marathons, the thinking people and not the
crazy people, the rich and multivarious multicultural people and not
the pale pale grayish-white cranky grim greedy people, the secular
pluralist people and not the theocrats, the misogynists, Muslim and
Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, the hard-working people and not
the people whose only real exertion ever in their whole parasite lives
has been the effort it takes to slash a trillion plus dollars in tax
revenue and then stuff it in their already overfull pockets.

Second, there is the frequent and relentless resort to conspiracy
theories. If you judged by newspapers and magazines this spring, you
could conclude that a secret cabal of Straussians, Jews, and
neoconservatives (or perhaps just Richard Perle alone) had deviously
seized control of the United States and were now planning bloody wars
of conquest around the globe.

Third, there is the hypercharged tendency to believe the absolute
worst about one's political opponents. In normal political debate,
partisans routinely accuse each other of destroying the country
through their misguided policies. But in the current liberal rhetoric
it has become normal to raise the possibility that Republicans are
deliberately destroying the country. "It's tempting to suggest that
the Bush administration is failing to provide Iraq with functioning,
efficient, reliable public services because it doesn't believe in
functioning, reliable public services--doesn't believe they should
exist, and doesn't believe that they can exist," writes Hendrik
Hertzberg in the New Yorker. "The suspicion will not die that the
administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its
domestic political prospects," argue the editors of the American
Prospect. In Harper's Thomas Frank calls the Bush budget "a blueprint
for sabotage." He continues: "It seems equally likely that this budget
document, in both its juvenile rhetorical tricks and its idiotic plans
for the nation, is merely supposed to teach us a lesson in how badly
government can misbehave."

In this version of reality, Republicans are deviously effective. They
have careful if evil plans for everything they do. And these sorts of
charges have become so common we're inured to their
horrendousness--that Bush sent thousands of people to their deaths so
he could reap government contracts for Halliburton, that he mobilized
hundreds of thousands of troops and spent tens of billions of dollars
merely to help secure favorable oil deals for Exxon.

Sometimes reading through this literature one gets the impression that
while the United States is merely attempting to export Western style
democracy to the Middle East, the people in the Middle East have
successfully exported Middle Eastern-style conspiracy mongering to the
United States.

NOW IT IS TRUE that you can find conservatives and Republicans who
went berserk during the Clinton years, accusing the Clintons of
multiple murders and obsessing over how Vince Foster's body may or may
not have been moved. And it is true that Michael Savage and Ann
Coulter are still out there accusing the liberals of treason. The
Republicans had their own little bout of self-destructive,
self-pitying powerlessness in the late 1990s, and were only rescued
from it when George W. Bush emerged from Texas radiating equanimity.

But the Democratic mood is more pervasive, and potentially more
self-destructive. Because in the post-9/11 era, moderate and
independent voters do not see reality the way the Democrats do. Bush's
approval ratings are at about 65 percent, and they have been far
higher; most people do not see him as a malevolent force, or the
figurehead atop a conspiracy of corporate moguls. Up to 80 percent of
Americans supported the war in Iraq, and large majorities still
approve of the effort, notwithstanding the absence so far of WMD
stockpiles. They do not see that war as a secret neoconservative
effort to expand American empire, or as a devious attempt to garner
oil contracts.

Democrats can continue to circulate real or artificial tales of
Republican outrages, they can continue to dwell on their sour
prognostications of doom, but there is little evidence that anxious
voters are in the mood to hate, or that they are in the mood for a
political civil war, or that they will respond favorably to whatever
party spits the most venom. There is little evidence that moderate
voters share the sense of powerlessness many Democrats feel, or that
they buy the narrative of the past two and a half years that many
Democrats take as the landscape of reality.

And the problem for Democrats, more than for Republicans, is that they
come from insular parts of the country. In university towns, in New
York, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and even in some Democratic
precincts in Washington, D.C., there is little daily contact with
conservatives or even with detached moderates. (In the Republican
suburban strongholds, by contrast, there is daily contact with
moderate voters, who almost never think about politics except just
before Election Day.) So the liberal tales of Republican malevolence
circulate and grow, are seized upon and believed. Contrary evidence is
ignored. And the tone grows more and more fevered.

Perhaps the Democrats will regain their equanimity. Perhaps some
eventual nominee will restore a temperate tone. The likeliest
candidates--Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, and Lieberman--are, after all,
sensible men and professionally competent. But if the current
Democratic tone remains unchanged, we could be on the verge of another
sharp political shift toward the Republicans.

In 1976, 40 percent of Americans were registered Democrats and fewer
than 20 percent were registered Republicans. During the Reagan era,
those numbers moved, so that by 1989, 35 percent of Americans were
registered Democrats and 30 percent were registered Republicans.
During the Bush and Clinton years Democratic registration was
basically flat and Republican registration dipped slightly to about 27
percent.

But over the past two years, Democratic registration has dropped to
about 32 percent and Republican registration has risen back up to
about 30 percent. These could be temporary gyrations. But it's also
possible that we're on the verge of a historic moment, when Republican
registration surpasses Democratic registration for the first time in
the modern era.

For that to happen, the economy would probably have to rebound, the
war on terror would have to continue without any major disasters, and
the Republicans would have to have some further domestic legislative
success, such as prescription drug benefits, to bring to the American
voters. And most important, Democrats would have to remain as they
are--unhappy, tone deaf, and over the top.

David Brooks is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

On 9 Jan 2006 18:23:18 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Clark Magnuson says...

Read the bill of rights.

Your bill of rights (yep, including your precious second)
is now toilet paper, by executive order. Too bad, turn
in your guns Clark. If they can repeal the fourth, they
can repeal the second.

Jim
Democrats Go Off the Cliff
From the June 30, 2003 issue: Powerlessness corrupts.
by David Brooks
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41


ACROSS THE COUNTRY Republicans and conservatives are asking each other
the same basic question: Has the other side gone crazy? Have the
Democrats totally flipped their lids? Because every day some Democrat
seems to make a manic or totally over-the-top statement about George
Bush, the Republican party, and the state of the nation today.

"This republic is at its greatest danger in its history because of
this administration," says Democratic senator Robert Byrd.

"I think this is deliberate, intentional destruction of the United
States of America," says liberal commentator Bill Moyers.

George Bush's economic policy is the "most radical and dangerous
economic theory to hit our shores since socialism," says Senator John
Edwards.

"The Most Dangerous President Ever" is the title of an essay in the
American Prospect by Harold Meyerson, in which it is argued that the
president Bush most closely resembles is Jefferson Davis.

Tom Daschle condemns the "dictatorial approach" of this
administration. John Kerry says Bush "deliberately misled" America
into the Iraq war. Asked what Democrats can do about the Republicans,
Janet Reno recalls her visit to the Dachau concentration camp, and
points out that the Holocaust happened because many Germans just stood
by. "And don't you just stand by," she exhorts her Democratic
audience.

When conservatives look at the newspapers, they see liberal columnists
who pick out every tiny piece of evidence or pseudo-evidence of
Republican vileness, and then dwell on it and obsess over it until
they have lost all perspective and succumbed to fevers of incoherent
rage. They see Democratic primary voters who are so filled with hatred
at George Bush and John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney that they are pulling
their party far from the mainstream of American life. They see
candidates who, instead of trying to quell the self-destructive fury,
are playing to it. "I am furious at [Bush] and I am furious at the
Republicans," says Dick Gephardt, trying to sound like John Kerry who
is trying to sound like Howard Dean.

It's mystifying. Fury rarely wins elections. Rage rarely appeals to
suburban moderates. And there is a mountain of evidence that the
Democrats are now racing away from swing voters, who do not hate
George Bush, and who, despite their qualms about the economy and
certain policies, do not feel that the republic is being raped by vile
and illegitimate marauders. The Democrats, indeed, look like they're
turning into a domestic version of the Palestinians--a group so
enraged at their perceived oppressors, and so caught up in their own
victimization, that they behave in ways that are patently not in their
self-interest, and that are almost guaranteed to perpetuate their
suffering.

WHEN YOU TALK to Democratic strategists, you find they do have
rationalizations for the current aggressive thrust. In 2003, it's
necessary to soften Bush up with harsh attacks, some say. In 2004,
we'll put on a happier face. Others argue that Democrats tried to
appeal to moderate voters in 2002 and it didn't work. The key to
victory in 2004 is riling up the liberal base. Still others say that
with all the advantages Bush has--incumbency, victory in Iraq, the
huge fundraising lead--Democrats simply have to roll the dice and
behave radically.

But all of these explanations have a post-facto ring. Democratic
strategists are trying to put a rational gloss on what is a visceral,
unplanned, and emotional state of mind. Democrats may or may not be
behaving intelligently, but they are behaving sincerely. Their
statements are not the product of some Dick Morris-style strategic
plan. This stuff wasn't focus-grouped. The Democrats are letting their
inner selves out for a romp.

And if you probe into the Democratic mind at the current moment, you
sense that the rage, the passion, the fighting spirit are all fueled
not only by opposition to Bush policies, but also by powerlessness.

Republicans have controlled the White House before, but up until now
Democrats still had some alternative power center. Reagan had the
presidency, but Democrats had the House and, part of the time, the
Senate. Bush the elder faced a Democratic Congress. But now Democrats
have nothing. Even the Supreme Court helped Republicans steal the last
election, many Democrats feel. Republicans--to borrow political
scientist Samuel Lubell's trope--have become the Sun party and
Democrats have been reduced to being the Moon party. Many Democrats
feel that George Bush is just running loose, transforming the national
landscape and ruining the nation, and there is nothing they can do to
stop him.

Wherever Democrats look, they sense their powerlessness. Even when
they look to the media, they feel that conservatives have the upper
hand. Conservatives think this is ludicrous. We may have Rush and Fox,
conservatives say, but you have ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times. But
liberals are sincere. They despair that a consortium of conservative
think tanks, talk radio hosts, and Fox News--Hillary's vast right-wing
conspiracy--has cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology
delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out.

When they look to the culture at large, many Democrats feel that the
climate is so hostile to them they can't even speak up. During the war
in Iraq, liberals claimed that millions of Americans were opposed to
war, but were afraid to voice their opinions, lest the Cossacks come
charging through their door. The actor Tim Robbins declared, "Every
day, the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled
threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent.
And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this
weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear." Again, conservatives regard
this as ludicrous. Stand up and oppose the war, conservatives observe,
and you'll probably win an Oscar, a National Magazine Award, and
tenure at four dozen prestigious universities. But the liberals who
made these complaints were sincerely expressing the way they perceive
the world.

And when they look at Washington, they see a cohesive corporate
juggernaut, effortlessly pushing its agenda and rolling over
Democratic opposition. Again, this is not how Republicans perceive
reality. Republicans admire President Bush a great deal, but most feel
that, at least on domestic policy, the conservative agenda has been
thwarted as much as it has been advanced. Bush passed two tax cuts,
but on education he abandoned school choice and adopted a bill largely
written by Ted Kennedy. On Medicare, the administration has abandoned
real reform and embraced a bill also endorsed by Kennedy. On campaign
finance, the president signed a bill promoted by his opponents. The
faith-based initiatives are shrinking to near nothingness. Social
Security reform has disappeared from the agenda for the time being.
Domestic spending has increased.

Still, Democrats and liberals see the Bush presidency in maximalist
terms. "President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday
marked a watershed in American politics," wrote E.J. Dionne of the
Washington Post. "The rules of policymaking that have applied since
the end of World War II are now irrelevant." The headline on a recent
Michael Kinsley column was "Capitalism's 'Deal' Falls Apart," arguing
that the Bush administration had revoked the social contract that had
up to now shaped American politics.

In short, when many liberals look at national affairs, they see a
world in which their leaders are nice, pure-souled, but defenseless,
and they see Republicans who are organized, devious, and relentless.
"It's probably a weakness that we're not real haters. We don't have a
sense that it's a holy crusade," Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told
Adam Clymer of the New York Times. "They play hardball, we play
softball," Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile added. Once again,
Republicans think this picture of reality is delusional. The Democrats
are the party that for 40 years has labeled its opponents racists,
fascists, religious nuts, and monsters who wanted to starve grannies
and orphans. Republicans saw what Democrats did to Robert Bork,
Clarence Thomas, and dozens of others. Yet Democrats are utterly
sincere. Many on the left think they have been losing because their
souls are too elevated.

When they look inward, impotence, weakness, high-mindedness, and
geniality are all they see.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, Robert Kagan published a book, Of Paradise and
Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. Kagan argued that
Americans and Europeans no longer share a common view of the world.
Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus. The essential
reason Americans and Europeans perceive reality differently, he
argued, is that there is a power gap. Americans are much more powerful
than Europeans, and Europeans are acutely aware of their
powerlessness.

Something similar seems to be happening domestically between
Republicans and Democrats. It's not just that members of the two
parties disagree. It's that the disagreements have recently grown so
deep that liberals and conservatives don't seem to perceive the same
reality. Whether it is across the ocean or across the aisle,
powerlessness corrupts just as certainly as power does. Those on top
become overly self-assured, emotionally calloused, dishonest with
themselves, and complacent. Those on the bottom become vicious.
Sensing that their dignity is perpetually insulted, they begin to see
their plight in lurid terms. They exaggerate the power of their foes.
They invent malevolent conspiracy theories to explain their
unfortunate position. They develop a gloomy and panicked view of the
world.

Republicans are suffering from many of the maladies that afflict the
powerful, but they have not been driven into their own emotional
ghetto because in their hearts Republicans don't feel that powerful.
Democrats, on the other hand, do feel powerless. And that is why so
many Democratic statements about Republicans resemble European and
Middle Eastern statements about America.

First, there is the lurid and emotional tone. You wouldn't know it
listening to much liberal conversation, but we are still living in a
country that is evenly divided politically; the normal rules still
apply; our politics is still a contest between two competing but
essentially valid worldviews; power tends to alternate between the two
parties, as one or the other screws up or grows stale.

But if you listened to liberal rhetoric, you would think America was
convulsed in a Manichean struggle of good against evil. Here, for
example, is the liberal playwright Tony Kushner addressing the
graduating seniors at Columbia College in Chicago. This passage is not
too far off from the rhetoric one can find in liberal circles every
day:

And this is what I think you have gotten your education for. You have
presumably made a study of how important it is for people--the people
and not the oil plutocrats, the people and not the fantasists in
right-wing think tanks, the people and not the virulent lockstep
gasbags of Sunday morning talk shows and editorial pages and all-Nazi
all-the-time radio ranting marathons, the thinking people and not the
crazy people, the rich and multivarious multicultural people and not
the pale pale grayish-white cranky grim greedy people, the secular
pluralist people and not the theocrats, the misogynists, Muslim and
Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, the hard-working people and not
the people whose only real exertion ever in their whole parasite lives
has been the effort it takes to slash a trillion plus dollars in tax
revenue and then stuff it in their already overfull pockets.

Second, there is the frequent and relentless resort to conspiracy
theories. If you judged by newspapers and magazines this spring, you
could conclude that a secret cabal of Straussians, Jews, and
neoconservatives (or perhaps just Richard Perle alone) had deviously
seized control of the United States and were now planning bloody wars
of conquest around the globe.

Third, there is the hypercharged tendency to believe the absolute
worst about one's political opponents. In normal political debate,
partisans routinely accuse each other of destroying the country
through their misguided policies. But in the current liberal rhetoric
it has become normal to raise the possibility that Republicans are
deliberately destroying the country. "It's tempting to suggest that
the Bush administration is failing to provide Iraq with functioning,
efficient, reliable public services because it doesn't believe in
functioning, reliable public services--doesn't believe they should
exist, and doesn't believe that they can exist," writes Hendrik
Hertzberg in the New Yorker. "The suspicion will not die that the
administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its
domestic political prospects," argue the editors of the American
Prospect. In Harper's Thomas Frank calls the Bush budget "a blueprint
for sabotage." He continues: "It seems equally likely that this budget
document, in both its juvenile rhetorical tricks and its idiotic plans
for the nation, is merely supposed to teach us a lesson in how badly
government can misbehave."

In this version of reality, Republicans are deviously effective. They
have careful if evil plans for everything they do. And these sorts of
charges have become so common we're inured to their
horrendousness--that Bush sent thousands of people to their deaths so
he could reap government contracts for Halliburton, that he mobilized
hundreds of thousands of troops and spent tens of billions of dollars
merely to help secure favorable oil deals for Exxon.

Sometimes reading through this literature one gets the impression that
while the United States is merely attempting to export Western style
democracy to the Middle East, the people in the Middle East have
successfully exported Middle Eastern-style conspiracy mongering to the
United States.

NOW IT IS TRUE that you can find conservatives and Republicans who
went berserk during the Clinton years, accusing the Clintons of
multiple murders and obsessing over how Vince Foster's body may or may
not have been moved. And it is true that Michael Savage and Ann
Coulter are still out there accusing the liberals of treason. The
Republicans had their own little bout of self-destructive,
self-pitying powerlessness in the late 1990s, and were only rescued
from it when George W. Bush emerged from Texas radiating equanimity.

But the Democratic mood is more pervasive, and potentially more
self-destructive. Because in the post-9/11 era, moderate and
independent voters do not see reality the way the Democrats do. Bush's
approval ratings are at about 65 percent, and they have been far
higher; most people do not see him as a malevolent force, or the
figurehead atop a conspiracy of corporate moguls. Up to 80 percent of
Americans supported the war in Iraq, and large majorities still
approve of the effort, notwithstanding the absence so far of WMD
stockpiles. They do not see that war as a secret neoconservative
effort to expand American empire, or as a devious attempt to garner
oil contracts.

Democrats can continue to circulate real or artificial tales of
Republican outrages, they can continue to dwell on their sour
prognostications of doom, but there is little evidence that anxious
voters are in the mood to hate, or that they are in the mood for a
political civil war, or that they will respond favorably to whatever
party spits the most venom. There is little evidence that moderate
voters share the sense of powerlessness many Democrats feel, or that
they buy the narrative of the past two and a half years that many
Democrats take as the landscape of reality.

And the problem for Democrats, more than for Republicans, is that they
come from insular parts of the country. In university towns, in New
York, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and even in some Democratic
precincts in Washington, D.C., there is little daily contact with
conservatives or even with detached moderates. (In the Republican
suburban strongholds, by contrast, there is daily contact with
moderate voters, who almost never think about politics except just
before Election Day.) So the liberal tales of Republican malevolence
circulate and grow, are seized upon and believed. Contrary evidence is
ignored. And the tone grows more and more fevered.

Perhaps the Democrats will regain their equanimity. Perhaps some
eventual nominee will restore a temperate tone. The likeliest
candidates--Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, and Lieberman--are, after all,
sensible men and professionally competent. But if the current
Democratic tone remains unchanged, we could be on the verge of another
sharp political shift toward the Republicans.

In 1976, 40 percent of Americans were registered Democrats and fewer
than 20 percent were registered Republicans. During the Reagan era,
those numbers moved, so that by 1989, 35 percent of Americans were
registered Democrats and 30 percent were registered Republicans.
During the Bush and Clinton years Democratic registration was
basically flat and Republican registration dipped slightly to about 27
percent.

But over the past two years, Democratic registration has dropped to
about 32 percent and Republican registration has risen back up to
about 30 percent. These could be temporary gyrations. But it's also
possible that we're on the verge of a historic moment, when Republican
registration surpasses Democratic registration for the first time in
the modern era.

For that to happen, the economy would probably have to rebound, the
war on terror would have to continue without any major disasters, and
the Republicans would have to have some further domestic legislative
success, such as prescription drug benefits, to bring to the American
voters. And most important, Democrats would have to remain as they
are--unhappy, tone deaf, and over the top.

David Brooks is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 16:22:16 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:



Other groups of people of similar ages in different parts of the country
behave quite differently so it's not generational. People in say
VT/NH/ME understand the risks of winter storms and insure they have food
and wood for the wood stove in the event that they are snowed in and
without power for a week during a big storm.

People who live in cold climates do seem to cope with adversity well.
We were without power for 8 days in a recent (October) storm that
I'll bet you never even knew happened. Not newsworthy outside the
region. Neighbors help neighbors and get 'r done.

Yes, and the tree huggers and fern fondlers who pushed so hard for
solar and wind power are now raising Hell about the birds that get
fried in the solar beam or conked by a windmill. I say it doesn't
matter what we do because those whiners will always be around to bitch
about something.
Bugs

You take one lousy week off to join Thorax at the Elvis concert, and this
is what happens: jim rozen writes on 9 Jan 2006
18:20:50 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

It was interesting to note, that within hours of the Hurricane hitting
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the right wing talk shows were full of
exhortations to donate, information one where to donate, where to
volunteer, etc. But the left went straight to blaming Bush for not being
omnipotent enough to steer the hurricane.

And within minutes of the news that the president was busy
breaking the law by wiretapping US citizens with the NSA,
about 12 thousand right wingers joined together in a single
chant: "We Don't Need That Amendment."

Then they all joined in to a rousing chorus of "in bush we trust."

Say Jim, do you have any clue as to what the relevant law is?

And while we are at it, what is with the Democrat obsession with making
sure the dots are not collected in the first place? Sheesh, the New York
Times broadcasts to the world that the way to keep your plots from being
monitored by the US is to have one of the participants be in the US.

Say, what ever happened to who ever got those 951 FBI files that
magically appeared in the White House? Oh wait, that was under a Democrat,
so it doesn't matter.


Sheesh, there is a reason the Democrats are out of power, they can't be
trusted with national security, or any security for that matter.

Now go back to your pre-September 11th position: head in the sand, ass
in the air. Don't for get the "Kick Me Hard, I deserve it" sign.



--
pyotr filipivich
TV NEWS: Yesterday's newspaper read to the illiterate.

In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

Then they all joined in to a rousing chorus of "in bush we trust."

Say Jim, do you have any clue as to what the relevant law is?

Law? I thought it was the fourth amendment to the US constitution.

I think *you* need to go back to civics class, you must have been
out that week when they taught this part....

g

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 04:14:11 -0600, the renowned Don Foreman
wrote:

On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 16:22:16 GMT, "Pete C."
wrote:



Other groups of people of similar ages in different parts of the country
behave quite differently so it's not generational. People in say
VT/NH/ME understand the risks of winter storms and insure they have food
and wood for the wood stove in the event that they are snowed in and
without power for a week during a big storm.

People who live in cold climates do seem to cope with adversity well.
We were without power for 8 days in a recent (October) storm that
I'll bet you never even knew happened. Not newsworthy outside the
region. Neighbors help neighbors and get 'r done.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that if you don't act responsibly you
can *die*, unlike more tropical climates.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

snip
Read the bill of rights.

Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights means only what the nine
geezers in Washington say it means, and many of them have super
human vision and can see words, clauses, phrases and entire
articles that no one else can [emperor's new clothes?]

In this circumstance "make no law" really means "make no law
unless we really, really want to," etc.

Unless something means what it says, it means nothing at all.

Uncle George

"Gunner" wrote

(well, cut and pasted)

Democrats Go Off the Cliff
From the June 30, 2003 issue: Powerlessness corrupts.
by David Brooks
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41


Hmmmm. June 30, 2003. Just after "Mission Accomplished".
But what has David Brooks written for you recently?

-- TP

"tonyp" wrote in message
...

"Gunner" wrote

(well, cut and pasted)

Democrats Go Off the Cliff
From the June 30, 2003 issue: Powerlessness corrupts.
by David Brooks
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41


Hmmmm. June 30, 2003. Just after "Mission Accomplished".
But what has David Brooks written for you recently?

He's the one who wrote, just last week, "...some Democrats are so sleazy,
they get involved with the likes of us." d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"Gunner" wrote

(well, cut and pasted)

Democrats Go Off the Cliff
From the June 30, 2003 issue: Powerlessness corrupts.
by David Brooks
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41


Hmmmm. June 30, 2003. Just after "Mission Accomplished".
But what has David Brooks written for you recently?

-- TP


Now that you mention it, a funny thing happened to David Brooks in the
ensuing two years or so since he wrote that article. First, he was outed as
being a homosexual. Then he quit the Weekly Standard, repudiated the right
wing and everything he has done as one of them, and has written a book
explaining what a schmuck he was for being a Republican dupe. He's changed
his ways, said he was wrong being a Republican, and in his book he names
names and spilled the beans on all the underhanded stuff his former pals are
guilty of. Looks like another case of Gunner being a day late and a dollar
short. Using the words of someone that has completely repudiated them is
pretty low. But as we all know right wingers will stoop to anything. That's
what makes them wingers.

Hawke

"Hawke" wrote

Now that you mention it, a funny thing happened
to David Brooks in the ensuing two years or so
since he wrote that article. First, he was outed as
being a homosexual ...


You're thinking of David _Brock_. Brooks is a NY Times columnist, nowadays,
but he is still a conservative and proud of it. Brock is at Media Matters,
calling attention to conservative propaganda in the allegedly liberal media.


Looks like another case of Gunner being a day late
and a dollar short.


Well, Gunner's claim that he never heard of the K Street project is better
evidence for that.


Using the words of someone that has completely
repudiated them is pretty low.


Now, now. Gunner may have done that another time, but not here. On the
other hand, had he actually _read_ the Brooks article he posted, he might
have spotted this passage:

"NOW IT IS TRUE that you can find conservatives
and Republicans who went berserk during the Clinton years,
accusing the Clintons of multiple murders and obsessing
over how Vince Foster's body may or may not have been moved.
And it is true that Michael Savage and AnnCoulter
are still out there accusing the liberals of treason."

So I think your last point ...

But as we all know right wingers will stoop to anything. That's
what makes them wingers.

.... is justified.

-- TP

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:23:25 -0500, "tonyp"
wrote:


"Gunner" wrote

(well, cut and pasted)

Democrats Go Off the Cliff
From the June 30, 2003 issue: Powerlessness corrupts.
by David Brooks
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41


Hmmmm. June 30, 2003. Just after "Mission Accomplished".
But what has David Brooks written for you recently?

-- TP


Mission accomplished for that aircraft carrier? I supose that is an
good guess on the date. If I cared enough..Id google it.

No idea what Mr. Brooks had done lately.

So..what is Micheal The Hut Moores new project?

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

"Hawke" wrote in message
...


Now that you mention it, a funny thing happened to David Brooks in the
ensuing two years or so since he wrote that article. First, he was outed
as
being a homosexual. Then he quit the Weekly Standard, repudiated the right
wing and everything he has done as one of them, and has written a book...

snip

Ah, Hawke, I think you have David Brooks mixed up with David Brock (_Blinded
By The Right_).

It's quite a book, BTW. He's the guy who crucified Anita Hill, and he
explains how the story about her was made up out of thin air.

It also explains who Richard Mellon Scaife is, and how he paid millions to
crucify Bill Clinton. Brock was part of the hit team and he got a big
Mercedes Benz out of the deal, among other things.

--
Ed Huntress

In article , F. George McDuffee
says...

snip
Read the bill of rights.

Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights means only what the nine
geezers in Washington say it means,

That's right, it's called checks and balances. The
president does not decide when it's OK to break the law
as interpreted by the USSC.

The last time that happened it was nixon and he had to
go away.

You seem disapointed that our form of government includes
a judiciary. Would you rather simply eliminate that branch
and also the legislative one too?

Then all we would have would be emperor shrubbie.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

Why do you libs refer to the President as "Shrubbie" and "This
President" ?

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 01:26:34 -0500, "tonyp"
wrote:


"Hawke" wrote

Now that you mention it, a funny thing happened
to David Brooks in the ensuing two years or so
since he wrote that article. First, he was outed as
being a homosexual ...


You're thinking of David _Brock_. Brooks is a NY Times columnist, nowadays,
but he is still a conservative and proud of it. Brock is at Media Matters,
calling attention to conservative propaganda in the allegedly liberal media.


Looks like another case of Gunner being a day late
and a dollar short.


Well, Gunner's claim that he never heard of the K Street project is better
evidence for that.


Using the words of someone that has completely
repudiated them is pretty low.


Now, now. Gunner may have done that another time, but not here. On the
other hand, had he actually _read_ the Brooks article he posted, he might
have spotted this passage:

"NOW IT IS TRUE that you can find conservatives
and Republicans who went berserk during the Clinton years,
accusing the Clintons of multiple murders and obsessing
over how Vince Foster's body may or may not have been moved.
And it is true that Michael Savage and AnnCoulter
are still out there accusing the liberals of treason."

There are indeed liberals committing and having had committed treason.
Thats a given.

So I think your last point ...

But as we all know right wingers will stoop to anything. That's
what makes them wingers.

... is justified.

-- TP

Excuse me while I go through Granny out in the snow to die, poison
some children and steal all your air, land and water.

Laugh laugh laugh

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:19:42 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

"Hawke" wrote in message
...


Now that you mention it, a funny thing happened to David Brooks in the
ensuing two years or so since he wrote that article. First, he was outed
as
being a homosexual. Then he quit the Weekly Standard, repudiated the right
wing and everything he has done as one of them, and has written a book...

snip

Ah, Hawke, I think you have David Brooks mixed up with David Brock (_Blinded
By The Right_).

It's quite a book, BTW. He's the guy who crucified Anita Hill, and he
explains how the story about her was made up out of thin air.

It also explains who Richard Mellon Scaife is, and how he paid millions to
crucify Bill Clinton. Brock was part of the hit team and he got a big
Mercedes Benz out of the deal, among other things.


Any relation to George Soros, who has been funding all the Leftist
527s such as MoveOn.org and so forth?

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

On 11 Jan 2006 07:13:00 -0800, "carneyke"
wrote:

Why do you libs refer to the President as "Shrubbie" and "This
President" ?

Because they are consumed with the fact that the People finally got
the Lefts message..and found it to be abhorent. And kicked the Left
out of power.

So this is one of the ways they manifiest their tantrums.

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose
and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology
has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence,
and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years
.. It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints,
and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been
as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

In article .com, carneyke
says...

Why do you libs refer to the President as "Shrubbie"

That's his nickname per his family.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

You take one lousy week off to join Thorax at the Elvis concert, and this
is what happens: jim rozen writes on 10 Jan 2006
05:52:27 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

Then they all joined in to a rousing chorus of "in bush we trust."

Say Jim, do you have any clue as to what the relevant law is?

Law? I thought it was the fourth amendment to the US constitution.

I think *you* need to go back to civics class, you must have been
out that week when they taught this part....

Jim, the US Constitution is a Living Breathing Document, and the
application of it must remain flexible for contemporary usage. Welcome to
the twenty first century.

Like I said, the Democrats want to remain ignorant of what is happening
in the real world, and will use any excuse to remain so. Even peddling
some out dated interpretation of the Constitution. Sheesh, what a bunch of
reactionaries.


tootles

pyotr





--
pyotr filipivich
The two oldest cliches in the book are "The Good Old Days were
better." and "After all, these are Modern TImes."

"Gunner" wrote in message
...

It also explains who Richard Mellon Scaife is, and how he paid millions
to
crucify Bill Clinton. Brock was part of the hit team and he got a big
Mercedes Benz out of the deal, among other things.


Any relation to George Soros, who has been funding all the Leftist
527s such as MoveOn.org and so forth?

No, no relation. Soros funds political organizations, in public. Scaife
funds felons, corrupt reporters, corrupt cops, corrupt lawyers, and
prostitutes, in private.

Soros wants you to know what he's doing. Scaife doesn't want *anyone* to
know what he's doing, probably because there's prison time attached to some
of his activities. Different modus operendi.

--
Ed Huntress

In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

I think *you* need to go back to civics class, you must have been
out that week when they taught this part....

Jim, the US Constitution is a Living Breathing Document,

THis is what nixon said, right?

If the president does it, it must be legal.

Bush's NSA fiasco broke the law. Just like all those Abramoff
folks. Oh, you'll hear a lot of spin going on, a lot of foot
stamping and blubbering.

But in the end there will be defense attorneys on hire.

The shrubster is alienating a lot of even his own party. THe CIA
is real ****ed at him. He made monkeys out of all those secret
security court judges. The mess with delay and ney isn't helping
either.

REmember how popular delay was until the prosecutors came knocking?
The same thing could happen to the president.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message
...
You take one lousy week off to join Thorax at the Elvis concert, and this
is what happens: jim rozen writes on 9 Jan 2006
18:20:50 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

It was interesting to note, that within hours of the Hurricane hitting
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the right wing talk shows were full
of
exhortations to donate, information one where to donate, where to
volunteer, etc. But the left went straight to blaming Bush for not
being
omnipotent enough to steer the hurricane.

And within minutes of the news that the president was busy
breaking the law by wiretapping US citizens with the NSA,
about 12 thousand right wingers joined together in a single
chant: "We Don't Need That Amendment."

Then they all joined in to a rousing chorus of "in bush we trust."

Say Jim, do you have any clue as to what the relevant law is?

And while we are at it, what is with the Democrat obsession with making
sure the dots are not collected in the first place? Sheesh, the New York
Times broadcasts to the world that the way to keep your plots from being
monitored by the US is to have one of the participants be in the US.

Say, what ever happened to who ever got those 951 FBI files that
magically appeared in the White House? Oh wait, that was under a
Democrat,
so it doesn't matter.


Sheesh, there is a reason the Democrats are out of power, they can't be
trusted with national security, or any security for that matter.

Now go back to your pre-September 11th position: head in the sand, ass
in the air. Don't for get the "Kick Me Hard, I deserve it" sign.



--
pyotr filipivich

I'm just curious, what are you going to say when the Democrats are in the
majority again? To hear you right wingers you would thing the Republicans
can never be replaced and Democrats are so lame they will never be in power
again. Don't be surprised to see the Democrats in the majority later on this
year. After seeing the job your Republicans have done lately I doubt that
anyone could do any worse than they have.

And by the way, the party in power pre Sept. 11, 2001 with it's head in the
sand and it's ass in the air was the one led by George W. Bush. You must
have forgotten.

Hawke

"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

I think *you* need to go back to civics class, you must have been
out that week when they taught this part....

Jim, the US Constitution is a Living Breathing Document,

THis is what nixon said, right?

If the president does it, it must be legal.

Bush's NSA fiasco broke the law. Just like all those Abramoff
folks. Oh, you'll hear a lot of spin going on, a lot of foot
stamping and blubbering.

But in the end there will be defense attorneys on hire.

The shrubster is alienating a lot of even his own party. THe CIA
is real ****ed at him. He made monkeys out of all those secret
security court judges. The mess with delay and ney isn't helping
either.

REmember how popular delay was until the prosecutors came knocking?
The same thing could happen to the president.

Jim


It is all starting to come out now and the wheels are going to fall off real
soon. Jim Risen of the NY Times has a book out that tells how Bush's people
kept the CIA from giving the other side in the WMD argument in the run up to
the war. In effect, they kept the CIA from giving any information that
contradicted the White House line. As usual, the truth about a corrupt
administration scornful of the law is coming to light and as it does it's
beginning to look more and more like a train heading full speed for a bridge
that's washed out. Yee Haa!

Hawke

You take one lousy week off to join Thorax at the Elvis concert, and this
is what happens: "Hawke" writes on Thu, 12 Jan 2006
20:13:03 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

I think *you* need to go back to civics class, you must have been
out that week when they taught this part....

Jim, the US Constitution is a Living Breathing Document,

THis is what nixon said, right?

If the president does it, it must be legal.

Bush's NSA fiasco broke the law. Just like all those Abramoff
folks. Oh, you'll hear a lot of spin going on, a lot of foot
stamping and blubbering.

But in the end there will be defense attorneys on hire.

The shrubster is alienating a lot of even his own party. THe CIA
is real ****ed at him. He made monkeys out of all those secret
security court judges. The mess with delay and ney isn't helping
either.

REmember how popular delay was until the prosecutors came knocking?
The same thing could happen to the president.

Jim


It is all starting to come out now and the wheels are going to fall off real
soon. Jim Risen of the NY Times has a book out that tells how Bush's people
kept the CIA from giving the other side in the WMD argument in the run up to
the war. In effect, they kept the CIA from giving any information that
contradicted the White House line. As usual, the truth about a corrupt
administration scornful of the law is coming to light and as it does it's
beginning to look more and more like a train heading full speed for a bridge
that's washed out. Yee Haa!

Too late Hawke. The Constitution is a Living Document, and means what
the Attorney General needs for it to mean.

In the mean time, the Democrats are still confused about what is and
isn't part of the government, or which part has jurisdictions over what.
For starters, the New York Times is not part of the Government, and is not
the proper agency for the reporting of illegally obtained wire taps. It
wasn't in 1998, when illegally recorded phone conversations made by
democrat party Activists were turned over by a Democrat Congressman, nor is
it now when a whistle blower forgets to inform the Inspector General or
Department of Justice, but rather goes to the NYT with his suspicions of
illegal activity.

Oh well, it isn't like there is any danger in the world.


tootles

pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
Denial is not a river in Egypt, "Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme,
a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the
denying person knows the truth on some level." LTC Grossman.

You take one lousy week off to join Thorax at the Elvis concert, and this
is what happens: jim rozen writes on 12 Jan 2006
05:49:46 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :
In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

I think *you* need to go back to civics class, you must have been
out that week when they taught this part....

Jim, the US Constitution is a Living Breathing Document,

THis is what nixon said, right?

No, I believe that was the position taken by Senator Al "No Controlling
authority" Gore.

I do recall that President Clinton thought there were some rights which
needed to be curtailed in this modern society.

If the president does it, it must be legal.

It is all covered by the penumbras of the emanations, Jim, so just
relax.

Bush's NSA fiasco broke the law.

So did the leaker and the New York Times. (In case you're unfamiliar
with the issue, the New York Times is not part of the US Government, nor
does it have legal jurisdiction to investigate complains of wrongful
activity inside a government agency.)

Just like all those Abramoff
folks. Oh, you'll hear a lot of spin going on, a lot of foot
stamping and blubbering.

But in the end there will be defense attorneys on hire.

The shrubster is alienating a lot of even his own party. THe CIA
is real ****ed at him. He made monkeys out of all those secret
security court judges. The mess with delay and ney isn't helping
either.

You forgot about how his failure to sign the Kyoto Protocols failed to
give him the power necessary to prevent Hurricane Katrina.

REmember how popular delay was until the prosecutors came knocking?
The same thing could happen to the president.


Jim

--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."

In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

In the mean time, the Democrats are still confused about what is and
isn't part of the government, or which part has jurisdictions over what.
For starters, the New York Times is not part of the Government,

It is when judith miller is sucking off ahmed chalabi for them.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article , pyotr filipivich
says...

Bush's NSA fiasco broke the law.

So did the leaker and the New York Times.

What, the valeri plame leaker?

That would be Karl Rove, right?

I guess the worm as they say is indeed on the other foot now.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

In article , Hawke says...

And by the way, the party in power pre Sept. 11, 2001 with it's head in the
sand and it's ass in the air was the one led by George W. Bush.

It's interesting to note that there's a considerable dissention in the
republican party over the neocon thing. Apparently W's dad is not too
happy how that all played out, and folks were mighty suprised to see
that they held sway for so long, and convinced W to invest so much
effort in the neocon agenda.

I think his dad, having been head of the CIA is now quite upset at
the trashing those folks have received at his son's hand.

At some point the Delay effect may start to occur higher up the
food chain.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

It's more than a bit ironic to think that the first President Bush will in
hindsight, prove to be not such a bad guy after all. His son's ability to
**** up a wetdream will help him to go down in history as one of the worst
president's in this country's history.

And that's saying something.

As for the role of the NYT, it has always been the role of a free press to
investigate the activities of government.. Mr. Filipovitch's assertion
notwithstanding.

The backlash of the Abramoff, Delay, Frist, Rove, Libby, et al, affairs will
hopefully go as high as the oval office.Then the democrats can run things
and **** them up for a while.

John Emmons

"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Hawke says...

And by the way, the party in power pre Sept. 11, 2001 with it's head in
the
sand and it's ass in the air was the one led by George W. Bush.

It's interesting to note that there's a considerable dissention in the
republican party over the neocon thing. Apparently W's dad is not too
happy how that all played out, and folks were mighty suprised to see
that they held sway for so long, and convinced W to invest so much
effort in the neocon agenda.

I think his dad, having been head of the CIA is now quite upset at
the trashing those folks have received at his son's hand.

At some point the Delay effect may start to occur higher up the
food chain.

Jim


--
==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================

"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message
...
writes on 12 Jan 2006
05:49:46 -0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :


Bush's NSA fiasco broke the law.

So did the leaker and the New York Times.

New York Times v. United States, 1971: First Amendment claim sustained, per
curium decision.

No contest.

--
Ed Huntress

"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Hawke says...

And by the way, the party in power pre Sept. 11, 2001 with it's head in
the
sand and it's ass in the air was the one led by George W. Bush.

It's interesting to note that there's a considerable dissention in the
republican party over the neocon thing. Apparently W's dad is not too
happy how that all played out, and folks were mighty suprised to see
that they held sway for so long, and convinced W to invest so much
effort in the neocon agenda.

His dad thinks for himself. W, being born-again, fears nothing so much as
appearing to be uncertain, which would mean he was slipping back into the
wastrel darkness whence he came. His neocon courtiers provide him with
certainty in order to keep him on track, promoting and pushing their agenda.

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:

His dad thinks for himself. W, being born-again, fears nothing so much as
appearing to be uncertain, which would mean he was slipping back into the
wastrel darkness whence he came. His neocon courtiers provide him with
certainty in order to keep him on track, promoting and pushing their agenda.


That is quite different from them born-once-ers who believe that there
is no truth, only opinions. NeoLibs provide them with uncertainty in
order to keep them off track, promoting and pushing their agendas. g

"Gus" wrote in message
oups.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:

His dad thinks for himself. W, being born-again, fears nothing so much
as
appearing to be uncertain, which would mean he was slipping back into
the
wastrel darkness whence he came. His neocon courtiers provide him with
certainty in order to keep him on track, promoting and pushing their
agenda.


That is quite different from them born-once-ers who believe that there
is no truth, only opinions.

If you were born right the first time, you don't worry about how you appear
to others. You focus on your own integrity and you have the courage to admit
when you aren't certain, as well as the courage to admit when you're wrong.

If there's any single sign that this administration is based on that
born-again fear of admitting imperfect knowledge, it's their unwillingness
to admit a mistake. Bush's recent mea culpas are coming out like he's been
constipated for years and just ate a whole pack of Ex-Lax by mistake.

NeoLibs provide them with uncertainty in order to keep them off track,
promoting
and pushing their agendas. g

I didn't miss the g, but what's a "neolib"? It sounds like something
Gunner cut and pasted off of one of his neo-fascist blogs. g

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:

If you were born right the first time, you don't worry about how you appear
to others. You focus on your own integrity and you have the courage to admit
when you aren't certain, as well as the courage to admit when you're wrong.

If there's any single sign that this administration is based on that
born-again fear of admitting imperfect knowledge, it's their unwillingness
to admit a mistake. Bush's recent mea culpas are coming out like he's been
constipated for years and just ate a whole pack of Ex-Lax by mistake.

I guess I don't see what being "born again" has to do with anything. I
don't think that gives someone a new personality and fear of admitting
anything.


NeoLibs provide them with uncertainty in order to keep them off track,
promoting
and pushing their agendas. g

I didn't miss the g, but what's a "neolib"? It sounds like something
Gunner cut and pasted off of one of his neo-fascist blogs. g

Well, we have frequently used words like "neocon, winger, rightard",
and the ever-popular "neo-fascist" and I just didn't want anyone to
feel Left out.

"Gus" wrote in message
ps.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:

If you were born right the first time, you don't worry about how you
appear
to others. You focus on your own integrity and you have the courage to
admit
when you aren't certain, as well as the courage to admit when you're
wrong.

If there's any single sign that this administration is based on that
born-again fear of admitting imperfect knowledge, it's their
unwillingness
to admit a mistake. Bush's recent mea culpas are coming out like he's
been
constipated for years and just ate a whole pack of Ex-Lax by mistake.

I guess I don't see what being "born again" has to do with anything. I
don't think that gives someone a new personality and fear of admitting
anything.

It's a theory I've been working on for years. d8-) I've known some
born-agains since before they were born for the second time and I've been
struck by certain parallels in their behaviors and their attitudes.

When I learned that W was one of them I had an "aha" response; his behavior
fits the general pattern. Then when I learned more about his pre-born-again
life I realized his was an elite version of the life led by an old friend of
mine, who is now born-again and certain as hell -- not about minor facts or
little details of life, but about the big things, and especially about which
social and spiritual attitudes should guide the lives of everyone else. He
fears returning to his old attitudes and ways more than anything, as do
almost all of the born-agains I've known.

But I digress...



NeoLibs provide them with uncertainty in order to keep them off track,
promoting
and pushing their agendas. g

I didn't miss the g, but what's a "neolib"? It sounds like something
Gunner cut and pasted off of one of his neo-fascist blogs. g

Well, we have frequently used words like "neocon, winger, rightard",
and the ever-popular "neo-fascist" and I just didn't want anyone to
feel Left out.

I don't use rightard and I'm really stingy with the use of winger. But a
neocon (neoconservative) is self-defined, an outgrowth of some articles
written in the 60s by a group of Jewish intellectuals (Irving Kristol and
Norman Podhoretz were prominent among them) who objected to the way the US
reacted to the '67 Mideast War, and who flipped from liberal to conservative
political postures.

It has a clear-cut history and the development of neocon thinking can be
tracked through articles and essays published in the intellectual-right
press in the years since. The term has broadened and narrowed, then
broadened again. It's not perfectly fixed. But it has a few common threads
and a core of well-defined adherents. The central idea, which has been
central since the first days of the neocons, is that the US should project
its power to "modernize" the key trouble spots around the globe --
particularly the Middle East -- by imposing a form of government and rights,
and, they may hope, a set of social attitudes that might be exemplified by
the attitudes of, say, Waco, Texas. The Project For The New American Century
is a major neocon program. You'll recognize the names of the key
participants: they're now filling the second tier in the White House.

The term "neocon" has taken on some opprobrium for warmongering and
heavy-handed political dealing, and most of them prefer to be called
"conservatives" today. But they're something like that new variety of
semi-domesticated Canada goose that spends its winters up north and doesn't
migrate. It honks like a goose and walks like a goose, but when it comes
time to migrate and act like a goose, it just hangs around and craps up the
neighborhood. Interestingly, these new geese, which I've heard are now
considered a subspecies by some, showed up at about the same time that
neocons first appeared.

I think you'll find that "neo-fascist" also has a fairly clear definition,
and there are specific groups around the world -- not all with the same
programs, but all of whom share a strong desire for authoritarian rule --
that political scientists label as neo-fascist.

"Neoliberal" has a specific meaning in economics. It refers to the current
US- and UK mainstream economic thought, which most people would call
conservative. It's known in economic policy circles as "the Washington
Consensus."

But I don't know what meaning you're assigning to it in politics. I suspect
there is none, really; it's just an attempt by conservatives to sling around
a term that sounds erudite and opprobrious, but which is really just noise.

In any case, there is no "new liberal" thought that I know of. The 60s/70s
liberals are mostly moribund. Those that remain have no projects or programs
around which they could cohere. Liberalism itself is little more than an
attitude today, as conservatism tends to be in the mainstream. But there is
no intellectual or policy-driven core of liberalism as there is with
conservatism.

--
Ed Huntress