If we have a smaller party for now, it will be a better party and one with a stronger future.
In his recent article in Slate, historian David Greenberg shows a fundamental failure to understand the current situation in the Republican Party, taking the common viewpoint of many on the left that defectors like Arlen Specter have been driven from the Republican Party because of an intolerance of liberalism in the GOP. That interpretation may appeal to Democrats who want to portray Republicans as intolerant and dominated by the religious right, or who are still afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome, but it is a simplistic dismissal of Specter's own failures which led to his loss of support within the party and displays a profound ignorance of where the GOP is now and where it is going.…
Article comments
26 - roger nowosielski
Shoot, Irene.
That's Gladys and the Knights, as best I can tell. I've always thought they were origin.
27 - roger nowosielski
Are you perchance foretelling Armageddon?
Because if you do, I thinks it's going to come to that.
28 - roger nowosielski
In the end of times, I should add.
29 - Irene Wagner
Sign of a good song. Lots of covers.
30 - roger nowosielski
Anyways, I'm not in charge and I'm glad it's on somebody else's shoulders.
Meanwhile, I'm listening to "The Twilight of the Gods" from the Met - for the umpteenth time, I might add - and enjoying every moment.
If life could only be so simple, like in a Wagner opera.
I'm being moved here, I hope you understand, by my heroic, Germanic spirit.
31 - Irene Wagner
Blood flowin' in the streets? It won't be the first time it's happened in America. Maybe we're past due for a major earthquakes or killer influenza or two before then, though.
Way back in antiquity it was written "the mystery of iniquity doth already work."
Who me, predicting the end of days? "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
I'm predicting Dancing in the Streets, which there will be, come what may, if there are still people marrying and being given in marriage til the end.
32 - Irene Wagner
Speaking of marriage, Roger, I've got a kitchen to clean... Maybe I'll turn on classical radio while I'm doing it.
What a wonderful resource.
33 - roger nowosielski
It will be so. It it's written. But not just in America but worldwide.
Till the very end, the wicked won't see the error of their ways. And they'll all perish.
How else can you eradicate evil?
34 - Clavos
@#19:
Heh.
We're gettin' to ya, obviously.
That comment probably could have been more lame, but not by much.
35 - roger nowosielski
The worst part - evil is banal for the most part. It's not what we do but rather what we fail to do. In time, however, it corrupts the soul and takes it captive. And after a while, it seems you've reached a point of no return. And it'll take nothing short of a miracle to turn you around.
In absence of that, you're lost.
36 - roger nowosielski
Irene,
Anyways, I'll be watching a James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace," and it'll take my mind of all earthly cares and nuisances.
It's been nice talking to you, as always.
Look forward to soon-to-appear article where I draw the line. As of now, it's the pinnacle of my thought.
Stay well,
Roger
37 - Baronius
Zing, that video's been around for a while. I'm surprised you weren't familiar with it. It's part of a documentary, and if I recall correctly, it's unedited footage of 12 random Obama supporters being asked a dozen questions on election day. The creator also commissioned a Gallup poll which backs up the results.
It's funny, the liberals on this site, who expect the GOP to quit, didn't give up after 2000. Instead, they did what the GOP will probably do, nominate a fool next time around and lose, but eventually pick up the House, Senate, and presidency. There are still two viable parties in this country.
38 - zingzing
baronius: "It's part of a documentary, and if I recall correctly, it's unedited footage of 12 random Obama supporters being asked a dozen questions on election day."
if you think it's unedited, you have no idea how to make a documentary.
"It's funny, the liberals on this site, who expect the GOP to quit, didn't give up after 2000. Instead, they did what the GOP will probably do, nominate a fool next time around and lose, but eventually pick up the House, Senate, and presidency."
that's true. although, y'all nominated a real fool last time and took it twice. i mean, really. bush? i dunno how you guys fell for him twice. who's the moron in that situation? the republicans will get back in, eventually, but i think it might be as something somewhat different than what they are now. luckily, as those people born in the first half of last century die off, the character of the party ought to get a little... better? something.
39 - Baronius
Zing, I shouldn't have said "unedited". You caught me: I've never made a documentary. I meant that they stayed with the same people, and for the first 2/3 at least, they had each person respond to each answer. It wasn't edited in the way that Jay Leno makes man-on-the-street interviewees look stupid. Maybe we can agree that a lot of morons voted for Obama, and I'm not a documentarian.
40 - Clavos
Maybe we can agree that a lot of morons voted for Obama...
Some of us consider that everyone who voted for Obama is...
41 - zingzing
clavos, if you didn't find yourself superior to all others, no one else would.
42 - Baronius
Clavos, I don't believe that. A lot of people voted for a moderate Obama. (I can't judge them too harshly, because I sure didn't expect him to govern so far to the left.) Secondly, there were some intelligent people who actually wanted the Obama we got. They're not stupid; they just have a different ideology from mine. And there are even further-out people who just want the system to be demolished, and saw Obama as the most likely person to do it.
43 - Clavos
clavos, if you didn't find yourself superior to all others, no one else would.
Zing, what other people think of me has never been a concern.
44 - Clavos
Clavos, I don't believe that. A lot of people voted for a moderate Obama. (I can't judge them too harshly, because I sure didn't expect him to govern so far to the left.)
I'm surprised at that, Bar. I never expected him to be anything BUT way to the left; this guy has been a left-winger all his life -- why would he move to the center now that he's reached the point where he really can implement his lifelong beliefs?
I expect him to move even further left as time goes on. In light of the speed with which he's moving, I believe he's trying to make all his moves in this term, knowing that, by the time everyone wakes up, he won't be able to garner more than the extreme left voters.
"No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."
Henry Lewis Mencken
Chicago Tribune,
Sept. 19, 1926
"Yes We Can"
Barack Obama
2008
45 - Baronius
Clavos, I didn't expect a moderate. I never expected this level of economic intervention though.
46 - Clavos
I think we ain't seen nothin' yet, Bar, he still has 3 1/2 years (minimum) left.
Wait until he puts in carbon cap & trade; the prices of everything you buy will go up -- everything involves carbon one way or another -- even if it's only for the electricity at the factory.
Meantime, the chinese will be putting new coal burning power plants online on an almost weekly basis for at least the next ten years, so global greenhouse gasses will continue to increase, regardless.
47 - Clavos
Bar,
Here's an interesting opinion piece very apropos to what we've just been discussing.
48 - Glen Boyd
Since I don't get over here all that often, I figured I'd let y'all know that the definitive version of Dancing In The Streets is the one by Martha & The Vandellas.
Bring on the apocalypse.
Carry on, then...
-Glen
49 - El Bicho
I'll take Van Halen's cover, Glen.
"Some of us consider that everyone who voted for Obama is..."
That's because some of you are morons.
btw, John Zigler was a hack radio host who got run out of town in LA, so take anything he does with a grain of salt. But if it reflects your opinions, no need to question it, right? Where was his doc asking Bush voters questions? I'd lay money they weren't all Mensa members.
50 - Bliffle
The new format is terrible. Here's why:
You can't read the entire article without paging (slowly) through it. This makes it difficult to go back to a point that was made earlier.
An interested reader is forced to page forward and back to find segments of the article or comments that he would like to address or quote. Slow and frustrating.
The slightest hitch in communications inspires the reader to abandon the effort, as I have done many times.
In the end, all that is presented is the headline, and since that is usually some kind of naive overstatement (perhaps contrived merely for incitement), BC as a whole decreases in interest and value.
Too bad, since the original format presented the article and all comments as easily available in a single workspace. One could even save it in a text file.
Nothing REQUIRES this new paging format. The amount of memory and bandwidth required for the simple ASCII text is trivial compared to all the HTML and other wrapping associated with any display. I suspect that some new advertising gimmick is being phased in. Why else change what was working well to this clumsy new format?
51 - Baronius
Bliffle, you sound like a conservative: "if it works, don't change it". (Teasing.)
I agree with you. The site also seems unable to remember my name, there's the 20x+1 problem, and the comments tally next to the articles on the Politics page is always out of date. I like the idea of a comments tally, though.
52 - Baronius
My biggest complaint is that they didn't set up a comments/complaints page before they started the transition. Ideally, there should have been one when they were designing the new site, but at a minimum there should have been a thread to report bugs.
53 - Cindy
In addition to what Bliffle said: I used to be able to use my browser's 'Edit/Find in page' feature to quickly locate a comment I was familiar with and wanted to return to. Now, that is impossible.
(Of course, I'll write an e-mail. Rather than merely complaining here. When I get around to it.)
54 - roger nowosielski
Well, if there are enough dissatisfied contributors, there is a perfect opportunity to set up a separate forum. The Internet is here to stay and so is blogging; getting the advertisers is a cinch. So all we need is a few enterprising minds and a bit of capital. The writers could be stockholders.
Stranger things have happened when the parent company take they eye of the ball.
55 - Glenn Contrarian
To the BC owners:
When both the hard-right conservatives AND the hard-left liberals (like me) agree on something, you should listen...
...because this new format is flatly terrible.
('terrible' is the best I could do after discarding all the not-so-socially-acceptable (but oh-so-accurate) descriptives from twenty years of active duty)
Please, go back to the old format. Prettier isn't necessarily better.
56 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
Y'know, I have yet to see ANY conservative state his support for Dubya now that he is out of office. Not one. Not a single one.
But what Bush policies, exactly, do you oppose?
Was it his opposition to stem-cell research?
What about his opposition to abortion?
What about his opposition to enforcing the EPA?
How about his hands-off approach to enforcement by the IRS?
And then there's his administration's lassaiz-faire attitude towards the economy...
...and his refusal to allow states to enact their own banking rules to get the lending industry under control...
Perhaps y'all were against his huge increases in the military budget?
Or his desire to drastically cut taxes?
Were you against Bush's refusal to engage in diplomacy with 'terrorist' nations?
Were you against Bush's invasion of Iraq?
Were you against Bush's use of 'enhanced interrogation' a.k.a. 'torture'?
Sure, Bush made some really dumb mistakes (like Katrina), but which of his POLICIES did you really disagree with?
And if you agreed with almost all of his policies...then you got PRECISELY what your Republican party voted into office...AND reelected, to boot.
In other words, be careful what you wish for - 'cause you might get it.
57 - Baronius
Glenn, I generally approved of Bush's policies. I oppose abortion and fetal stem-cell research. I favored the Iraq War and believe that its success speaks for itself. I wish he'd had a lassaiz-faire approach to the economy.
58 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
Bush DID have a lassaiz-faire approach to the economy. That's why he refused to enforce economic regulations, and that's why - when states wanted to enact their own regulatory laws to get the lending industry under control, he used a Civil-War era law to prevent the states from passing any such laws...and to negate any such laws EVER passed by those states.
If that's not 'lassaiz-faire', then I can only wonder what your definition of it is....
59 - Clavos
Glenn,
Y'know, I have yet to see ANY conservative state his support for Dubya now that he is out of office.
After he began spending like a drunken liberal, very few fiscal conservatives supported him while he was in office.
60 - Baronius
Glenn, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm only saying that if you purged the name Paulson and all of his actions, Moses-style, from the Bush administration, I'd sign off on it in a heartbeat. You've met someone who would say that.
61 - Baronius
To phrase that better - Ignoring Paulson's actions, for which Bush is responsible, I would acknowledge the Bush administration as a success.
62 - Bliffle
A lot of reps are having Buyers Remorse over Bush, so why submit to being fooled again and submit to the falsehood that Obama is a leftist?
Clearly, Obama is a Corporate Statist, like most of his recent predecessors. That's why he immediately aped the bank bailout initiated by the previous Corp Statist, GWB, even hiring a Paulson/Bush operative, Geithner as SecTreas.
Obama even resurrected L Summers from the dead. Will Bob Rubin be joining soon?
At the same time he has done little for trad liberal constituencies, even allowing the congress to squelch the puny little homeowner bailout that so offended the Corp statists for it's "moral hazard" (I guess they want to reserve all the moral hazard opportunites for the financial industry, where they really know how to cash in on Moral Hazard!). They want to stand by and shake their fingers sanctimoniously at those vicious homeowners and credit card users and scornfully denounce THEIR modest little excesses.
More of the same, as we surrender the USA and it's promise to an ever more feudalist state devoted to preserving the power and privileges of the few.
I suppose that leftists are hopeful that some scraps of bread fall off the table as the US government feeds luxurious meals to the financial establishment. Like the much discussed little favor to the unions in the Chrysler deal which gives them a piece of the action without involving any REAL money. The REAL money, of course, goes to coppering the bets and gambles of the financiers.
63 - roger nowosielski
Then why is it, bliffle, that the right-wingers don't see it that way? Because if they did, they should be delighted that the good old Military & Industrial complex will be alive and well - if not now, then very very soon.
64 - rED gREEN
If you voted for President Obama then you voted for Liberal Collectivism via the Fabian Socislist model advanced via the tactics of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals". Community Organizers is a cover term for "Active Social Revolutionary Cadres" President Obama deserves to be shown all respect due the office of the president. It does not mean we should not do everything we legally can to impeach him and remove him from office, or defeat him in the 2012 elections. He has done some good things so far, but the bad will outweigh this. Pray for Mr. Obama as that has to be the toughest job any human being can have on earth!