so now you're just more comfortable with the PROPAGANDA OF THE RIGHT. big fuckin' deal. bush and company can repeat the same crap about how their tax proposal will give the 'average' citizen over $1000 back...but they're playing games with the definition of 'average' vs. 'median'. pretty disappointing coming from the group that wanted to restore 'dignity' to the oval office. apparently, you don't need honesty to be dignified.

if clinton pulled this stuff (and he certainly did) the right wing would be all over him.

our political system is screwed (from both ends really)....we've come to accept nonstop lies and half-truths because they suit us...and we get the government we deserve.

Your candor is praiseworthy, and your remarks are correct. The Democrat party today has suffered from forty years of increased stagnation, and today are dessicated hulls. For forty years, Democrats held the ideological upper hand, and Republican ideas were always the exceptions. It took "Reagan Democrats" to swing the elections in 1980 and 1984, whatever those are, as if Reagan was only elected because he "borrowed" Democrats temporarily to his cause.

Today, in our Information Age, government is results-based. GW Bush said it himself: "In all of these efforts, however, America's purpose is more than to follow a process. It is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world."

I'll repeat that: not to follow a process, but to achieve a result.

The first result of the new information-age style of government was perhaps Clinton's modification of welfare to "workfare", at the urging of the Gingrich Republicans. Despite the Democrats' "sheer and utter outrage" at the time, by golly, it actually worked! Case closed. One by one, the ideological and narcissistic nonsense the left has been pushing down our throats for the last forty years is showing itself false, and the staid and isolationist claptrap the conservatives have been spouting (via Buchanan, Novak, and others) has become marginalized, as it deserves to be.

Let me make a final point about Reagan being "conservative", which might reduce your fear a bit. It is more accurate to call him libertarian, in the tradition of Barry Goldwater, as opposed to the "corporatist" views of the Republicans before Goldwater's time. GW Bush's view, like Reagan's, and Goldwater's, is that people can take care of themselves. (By the way, it was said that Reagan was deeply Christian, but it has also been observed he never went to church.)

Today's Democrats are cynical, pessimistic, distrusting people, who feel, "the world would be a better place if only everyone did exactly what I thought they should be doing." Giving up this totalitarian control, allowing people to make choices for themselves, but setting high standards for people to achieve, is the only key to national success. Reagan understood this, and so did Kennedy. GW Bush is in good company, and so are you.

I think you are more of a hawk liberal, as am I. The words "conservative" and "liberal" have been drained of much of their meaning anyway - many of us, maybe most of us, take a cafeteria approach to politics and policy.

I don't think the speech did much for union members, and I think this Bush guy is actually a goon. But I did like his theme song.

Oh, you mean the other left?

as a leftist, i used to be outraged, but now i'm just amused.

I'll be sure to share your, uh, thoughts with the tons of conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians who are showing up at the anti-war meetings I go to.

it's sad you've been seduced by pro-war "conservatives." I suggest you read a real conservative magazine before you sign off on the U.S.'s transition from republic to Empire.

http://www.amconmag.com/

Conservatives Against the War Party

Anyway, our mission is in great part to counter the disastrous projects of the War Party. We have titled our magazine The American Conservative - and stand ready to initiate a campaign within conservative ranks to keep the country from being led off the cliff by the War Party.


http://www.antiwar.com/mcconnell/mc-col.html

A few posts up, it mentions something about Bush believing in people taking care of themselves? Are you doing lines with the prez, Buddy? Monkey boy is the beneficiary of a lifetime of entitlement. He is a scoundrel of below average intelligence who has been bailed out of everything from failed business dealings, to going to war himself, and being busted for his prolific drug use, basically getting a free ride all of his life. You shouldn't risk nuclear war if you can't pronounce it.

Bravo, Dawn! Yours is an unpopular view among this crowd, though I believe a common one. I, too, did not vote for Bush, but I've been impressed overall. I think anyone without a raging hard-on for the man has, too.

Like you, I received a nice check two years ago from the Republicans, and paid less taxes last year, too. Now I'm looking at paying even less. Bush's tax plan looks like it will save me $1592 on my taxes from here on out, while the Democrats appear to be pitching a plan just like the one they criticized Bush for last year. I would get either $600 or $1200 (reports vary) from the Democrats, this year only.

Let them argue about the average (mean) versus the median all they want to. I've done the math. I'm not rich, and I stand to save some serious bank.

Anyway, Bravo for listening for yourself and making up your own mind. I wish others could do that too, but I fear that we are hearing more of the same from the crowd that supported a Democratic president as he sent troops to fight in Rwanda and Bosnia/Herzegovina and Somalia and so on, but suddenly, with a Republican in the White House, they're anti-war.

Guess what, I'm anti-war, too. Almost as much as I'm anti-genocide and anti-dying-a-miserable-death-at-the-hands-of-terrorists-with-nerve-gas and anti-let-the-harmless-dictator-wipe-the-jews-off-the-map.

War isn't the best option, but it's the best option left.

Stop confusing liberals with Democrats. If you're expecting coherent left-wing criticisms of Bush from Democrats, you're bound to be disappointed. The Democrats' move to the center-right has left this country without a mainstream liberal voice.

Contending that conservatism is the only recourse because Democrats have not inspired you reveals the superficiality of your own "liberalism". If you can't come up with your own principled criticism of Bush from the left, maybe you were never a liberal to begin with.

The alleged former bleeding heart liberals turned compassionless conservatives posting seem to have burned their membership cards because they could get a few more shillings back from Unkkkle Scam. You sold your souls to the man for love of the green! For shame!

Wow Slim....you must be outraged!


It would be really funny if that was the real Slim Shady calling someone a sell out haha

Color me sell-out ya'll, but my priorities are the following: feeding, housing, clothing my family. Then paying extra bills, then perhaps the occasional luxury item, like shampoo and dishsoap.

I scrub floors and toilets to pay my way. Don't call me anything but hardworking or I will bust your ass.

^and that sums it up really good.

I like that mentality.

peace.

Supply Sider Jude Wanniski comes out against the slaughter. Hey, Jude, you were made to go out and get'em!

http://polyconomics.com/

Yet Another Conservative Against the War!

Thanks, Jude! You're the best

"Take a sad song and go out and get 'em........"

http://polyconomics.com/

I'm A ChickenHawk Republican, A Coward and a Hypocrite.

My name is Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfie, Bill Kristol, and so on and on.

When it came time to fight for my country back in the 60s, I didn't actually do that. What I did was chicken out, get a deferrement, all sorts of other excuses. Nope, didn't fight.

But I feel perfectly comfortable sending young men to fight in a war. That's because, like most pro-war Republicans bullies, I'm a basically a spineless coward. Also, I cheat on my taxes.

Chop off my head and watch me run!!!!!

Well Chickenshit, I mean Chickenhawk, are they as spineless as you who uses a fake name and email.

Oh, Jeebus people. Some of you whiny ass Liberals make me embarrassed to have ever been so dogmatic and unrealistically inflated with self-righteousness.

I have yet to see ONE intelligent refute to why we shouldn't be removing Saddam from power. Not one.

Try this:

http://www.amconmag.com/10_7/the_road_to_folly.html

And this:

http://www.amconmag.com/10_21/iraq.html

And this:

http://www.amconmag.com/11_4/bushs_grand_strategy.html

And this:

http://www.amconmag.com/11_4/militarism_and_the.html


IF YOU SUPPORT THE WAR, YOU'RE BASICALLY JUST ANOTHER LIBERAL!!!!!! REAL CONSERVATIVES OPPOSE THE WAR!!!! READ THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE AND LEARN THE TRUTH!!!!!

So Dawn, what you're saying is you've become a conservative because it will help you replace lost income due to being an underemployed toilet scrubber? Your belief system is scrubbing bubbles clean!

And the intelligent point you wish to make Slim is.....? I am waiting.

Um....wasn't it Clinton who DODGED the draft?

Clinton dodged the draft, yes, but so did Bush. He went into the Texas Guard to avoid service, and then went AWOL from THAT. The rest of the so-called chickenhawks took similar cop-outs when confronted with actually having to fight for their country.

The typical Republican behavior: they exempt themselves from the behavior they demand of everyone else.

You mean like John McCain?

McCain's an exception; and furthermore, he doesn't serve in the Administration, where Perle,W, Cheney, Rove, and the rest of the civilian War Criminals-In-Training sit, planning to send ordinary teenagers off to do their dirty work, cheered on by the witless Olsens, among others.

This thread is further proof of the old adage: "Liberals look for heretics, conservatives look for converts." If you're looking for clues as to why modern liberalism seems so impotent in today's political climate, just scroll up.

Incidentally, I voted for McCain twice when I still lived in Arizona (and would gladly do so again). Does this make me a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or not? I've lost track.

So what took you so long? The case against liberalism has always centred on their prejudice against prejudice -in the broad Burkean sense of the word. Your evident addiction to irony implies a continuing reluctance to face this fact. How many 9-ll's will it require to finally bring liberals down from their conceptualist high? Also - have you considered the role of the internet itself in shaping your disaffection with
the left ? The "new underground" (Richard Poe) is slowly, ineluctably burying the left.