Well, It's not just Dean

[Jobber of the Week 0]

It wasn't even a few thousand years ago. It was just a few decades ago that politics was more about issues instead of parties. The parties just adopted strong views on these issues and made themselves the main event.

 

If I had to pick a Republican, I'd go Teddy Roosevelt. Speak softly, carry a big stick (note the speaking softly part. "Bring em on!" doesn't qualify.) Wasn't too afraid to go after business. When a lot of people thought Taft was too far to the right, he fought for them and eventually made another party and ran on that while selling his experience to voters, though it didn't work.

[Guest MikeSC]

It wasn't even a few thousand years ago. It was just a few decades ago that politics was more about issues instead of parties.

Like when LBJ hinted that Goldwater would drop nukes if elected President?

 

If I had to pick a Republican, I'd go Teddy Roosevelt. Speak softly, carry a big stick (note the speaking softly part. "Bring em on!" doesn't qualify.)

You are aware that he didn't speak softly often, right? Plus, I have little reason to suspect that his handling of the Panama Canal would have been approved by you.

Wasn't too afraid to go after business. When a lot of people thought Taft was too far to the right, he fought for them and eventually made another party and ran on that while selling his experience to voters, though it didn't work.

Ironically, Taft fought business MORE than Teddy.

 

Heck, Taft broke up Standard Oil.

-=Mike

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Like when LBJ hinted that Goldwater would drop nukes if elected President?

You can just sit and keep bringing up stuff like this, but you're avoiding the issue by doing so. Which is that people are far more partisan than they ever were. All this Coulter/Moore/O'Reilly/Hannity/Franken/Limbaugh stuff and their blind league of followers.

 

Plus, I have little reason to suspect that his handling of the Panama Canal would have been approved by you.

I don't think there were a whole bunch of realistic alternatives.

[Guest MikeSC]

Like when LBJ hinted that Goldwater would drop nukes if elected President?

You can just sit and keep bringing up stuff like this, but you're avoiding the issue by doing so. Which is that people are far more partisan than they ever were. All this Coulter/Moore/O'Reilly/Hannity/Franken/Limbaugh stuff and their blind league of followers.

Jesus, study HISTORY here. Heck, the partisanship has REDUCED dramatically over the years. What guys like Jefferson and Adams faced would make people BLUSH today.

Plus, I have little reason to suspect that his handling of the Panama Canal would have been approved by you.

I don't think there were a whole bunch of realistic alternatives.

So, you have no problem with creating a country out of nothing, fermenting a revolution, and aiding the revolution's ultimate success because the "dagos" in Colombia wouldn't sell the property to the US the property at acceptable enough terms for him?

 

But Bush's Iraq policy is over-the-top?

-=Mike

[Guest MikeSC]

Like when LBJ hinted that Goldwater would drop nukes if elected President?

You can just sit and keep bringing up stuff like this, but you're avoiding the issue by doing so. Which is that people are far more partisan than they ever were. All this Coulter/Moore/O'Reilly/Hannity/Franken/Limbaugh stuff and their blind league of followers.

Jesus, study HISTORY here. Heck, the partisanship has REDUCED dramatically over the years. What guys like Jefferson and Adams faced would make people BLUSH today.

Plus, I have little reason to suspect that his handling of the Panama Canal would have been approved by you.

I don't think there were a whole bunch of realistic alternatives.

So, you have no problem with creating a country out of nothing, fermenting a revolution, and aiding the revolution's ultimate success because the "dagos" in Colombia wouldn't sell the property to the US the property at acceptable enough terms for him?

 

But Bush's Iraq policy is over-the-top?

-=Mike

[Guest Wildbomb 4:20]

I think, for the life of us all (liberals, mind you), need to come to terms with a few things.

 

1. Bush's Iraqi policy is not the first, and probably won't be the last, time that an invasion of a country that doesn't agree with our policies. War for oil? How about a coup over BANANAS? It happened: Guatemala, 1954. Thank Mr. Eisenhower.

 

These documents, including an instructional guide on assassination found among the training files of the CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS," were among several hundred records released by the Agency on May 23, 1997 on its involvement in the infamous 1954 coup in Guatemala. After years of answering Freedom of Information Act requests with its standard "we can neither confirm nor deny that such records exist," the CIA has finally declassified some 1400 pages of over 100,000 estimated to be in its secret archives on the Guatemalan destabilization program. (The Agency's press release stated that more records would be released before the end of the year.) An excerpt from the assassination manual appears on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on Saturday, May 31, 1997.

The small, albeit dramatic, release comes more than five years after then CIA director Robert Gates declared that the CIA would "open" its shadowy past to post-cold war public scrutiny, and only days after a member of the CIA's own historical review panel was quoted in the New York Times as calling the CIA's commitment to openness "a brilliant public relations snow job." (See Tim Weiner, "C.I.A.'s Openness Derided as a 'Snow Job'," The New York Times, May 20, 1997, p. A16)

 

Arbenz was elected President of Guatemala in 1950 to continue a process of socio- economic reforms that the CIA disdainfully refers to in its memoranda as "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic.'" The first CIA effort to overthrow the Guatemalan president--a CIA collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza to support a disgruntled general named Carlos Castillo Armas and codenamed Operation PBFORTUNE--was authorized by President Truman in 1952. As early as February of that year, CIA Headquarters began generating memos with subject titles such as "Guatemalan Communist Personel to be disposed of during Military Operations," outlining categories of persons to be neutralized "through Executive Action"--murder--or through imprisonment and exile. The "A" list of those to be assassinated contained 58 names--all of which the CIA has excised from the declassified documents.

 

PBSUCCESS, authorized by President Eisenhower in August 1953, carried a $2.7 million budget for "pychological warfare and political action" and "subversion," among the other components of a small paramilitary war. But, according to the CIA's own internal study of the agency's so-called "K program," up until the day Arbenz resigned on June 27, 1954, "the option of assassination was still being considered." While the power of the CIA's psychological-war, codenamed "Operation Sherwood," against Arbenz rendered that option unnecessary, the last stage of PBSUCCESS called for "roll-up of Communists and collaborators." Although Arbenz and his top aides were able to flee the country, after the CIA installed Castillo Armas in power, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate, the repressive operatives of sucessive military regimes murdered more than 100,000 civilians.

 

2. Love him or hate him, Bush has done an average job. He excels in some areas (in some minds) while does lackluster in others. Uneducated? No. Sounds that way? Sometimes. I'd love to see a debate between him and the Dem nominees.

 

3. The only issues you can probably fault Bush on, and still be able to win, would be the economy, the environment (questionably), and the "loss of personal freedom under the Patriot Act." The economy isn't creating new jobs...yet. Still give it till the end of Q1 or middle of Q2. The environment is a divisive issue; damned if you do, damned if you don't. The last one? Screaming blood libs love that one, but you can't really fault it...except for the whole "hold people as long as you want without charging them or informing them why they are being held."

 

4. Like it or not, which I don't, you'll probably see Mr. Bush for another four years . Dean has the best chances, and I think Dean-Kerry could give Bush a run for his money. But also start planning for 2008 by trying to figure things out NOW. It'd be appreciated by the American public.