[Ninong]

The Bolton nomination won't even get to the floor of the Senate because Chafee has told reporters in Rhode Island that he will vote against it.

Chafee's on the Foreign Relations Committee. If he joins the Democratic members of the committee in voting against sending the nomination to the floor, it's dead!

"The American people have spoken out against the president's agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy," Chafee said. "And at this late stage in my term, I'm not going to endorse something the American people have spoke out against."

P.S. -- Quack! Quack! Quack! If it sounds like a lame duck it must BE a lame duck.

[Ninong]

I don't believe he graduates until next May, but I'm sure he will have no problems landing a good job in Washington, D.C. if that's what he wants.


S. R. Sidarth, the 20-yr-old college student who single-handedly delivered control of the United States Senate to the Democrats by inspiring Sen. George Felix Allen to utter the macaca word and getting it on video tape! This kid has a future in politics, just not Republican politics. I'm absolutely positive he has a future in Sen. Webb's office should he choose to accept.

[Ninong]

Ken Mehlman will out himself!

[Ninong]

It appears the GOP is getting ready to replace one sleazy scumbag with another one. The Moonie Times is reporting that Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor and just defeated senatorial candidate, is in line to replace Ken Mehlman as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

We talked about this creep Tuesday. He's the one who had homeless people (mostly black men) rounded up in Philly and bussed to Maryland where they were paid $100 to hand out flyers to African-American voters asking them to vote for Steele for the Senate -- only they identified Steele as a Democrat!

You see, Michael Steele, an African-American Republican, thinks that African-American voters are so stupid that they would fall for something like this. This is the second time that Steele and Gov. Bob Ehrlich have pulled this stunt, only this time they were both defeated!

[Ninong]

OK, Rumsfeld is out. That was easy to predict. Mehlman is out. That was even easier to predict. But who's next?



Why I think Cheney is next:

He was strongly opposed to the sacking of his old boss, Don Rumsfeld, and he's even more opposed to the appointment of Bob Gates, the man the Bush family's consiglieri, James Baker, recommended as the new Secretary of Defense. That's a pretty good sign that he's the new Rodney Dangerfield of the Bush Administration.

Will he step down willingly? Not likely. Every time this possibility is raised, he lets everyone know that he has no intention of becoming the scapegoat.

Can the Bush family persuade him to resign? Yes, I think they can. After all, they have the goods on him and Patrick J. Fitzgerald still has an open investigation. Would Fitzgerald be willing to cut a deal with Scooter Libby if both Libby and Karl Rove agreed to testify against Cheney? What do you think?

When Bush delivers his next State of the Union Address, Nancy Pelosi's won't be the only new face in the background.



P.S. -- Bush is a lame duck president. Cheney is a lame duck vice president with no intention of seeking the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. The GOP is reeling from the "thumpin'" they received on November 7th. The conservatives are blaming the neo-conservatives. Cheney is a neo-conservative. Cheney has to go.

Agreeing on a replacement for Cheney won't be easy. Whoever is chosen will automatically become the leading contender for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination. Will it be one of the two current leading candidates or a compromise candidate who has no plans to run for president??? In other words, will it be McCain or Giuliani, both of whom are running hard for the 2008 nomination, or someone safe like James Baker himself? If it's a safe elder statesman, it wouldn't impact the current candidates the way choosing one of them over the others would. Replacing Cheney is a win win situation for the GOP no matter who takes his place, but they have to do it now rather than later.

P.P.S. -- Here's another reason to get a new vice president in place sooner rather than later.

[Ninong]

"KARL ROVE SAID LAST YEAR [2003] that the question of realignment--whether Republicans have at last become the majority party--would be decided by the election of 2004. And it has. Even by the cautious reckoning of Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, Republicans now have both an operational majority in Washington (control of the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives) and an ideological majority in the country (51 percent popular vote for a center-right president). They also control a majority of governorships, a plurality of state legislatures, and are at rough parity with Democrats in the number of state legislators. Rove says that under Bush a "rolling realignment" favoring Republicans continues, and he's right. So Republican hegemony in America is now expected to last for years, maybe decades."

Looks like the Fourth Reich lasted all of four years. That's dating it back to January 2003 when the GOP regained control of the Senate. Republicans just lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Not a single Democratic incumbent was defeated. Not one!

The "permanent Republican majority" turned out to be not nearly as permanent as some people expected. As far as their 51% "mandate" is concerned, the only Republican with a mandate now is Mark Foley. Their 28-22 majority of governorships was exactly reversed. They now control 22 governorships and the Democrats control 28. As far as their "rough parity" with Democrats in the number of state legislatures is concerned, the Democrats just picked up a net gain of 275 seats and control of nine chambers. Maybe that's part of that "rolling realignment" Karl was talking about.

"For Republicans to slip into minority status again, it would take a monumental party split like that in 1912 or a colossal increase in the pain level of Americans as happened with the Great Depression. Neither is likely."

Yeah, right!



P.S. -- What about monumental incompetence and corruption?

[schrocat]

I'm hoping Cheney sticks around and keeps talking.

[SPasse]

George,

On the subject of John Bolton:

1 What do you think of him?

2 Do you think it is the US UN representative's job to be an advocate for the UN or an advocate for the US in the UN?

As far as the republican "re-alignment" well they could have made it "long lasting" if they had played their cards right. The democrats can thank the stupidity and graft of the "power structure" in the republican party as much as any fundamental shift from conservative to liberal ideology.

I am really beginning to think that the prospects for a third party are better than they have been in a long time.

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by schrocat

I'm hoping Cheney sticks around and keeps talking.

Those pesky German courts are another reason he might want to stay in office.

Guess who said the following at a mid-day news conference in Des Moines, Iowa on October 18, 2006 when asked what his reaction would be to a Democratic take-over of the Senate?

"I think I'd just commit suicide. I don't want to face that eventuality because I don't think it's going to happen...I think it's going to be tough, but I think we'll do o.k."

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by SPasse

George,

On the subject of John Bolton:

1 What do you think of him?

First of all, he's a member of the neo-con Project for the New American Century! So right there you know that I'm not going to belong to his fan club.

He's a lying, obnoxious bully and the most undiplomatic person ever nominated by any president for a diplomatic post.

2 Do you think it is the US UN representative's job to be an advocate for the UN or an advocate for the US in the UN?

It is the job of all U.S. diplomats to be advocates for the best interests of the United States. Why would you even ask such a question?

John Bolton wasn't sent to the United Nations to advocate for the best interests of the United States. He was sent there to hasten the destruction of the United Nations. Bush has always advocated the abolition of the United Nations just as he has always advocated the abolition (complete privatization) of Social Security. This has been his position all along and he was very clear about it when he ran for office in 1978. This is nothing new.

Don't you remember the rallying cry? "Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S." This has always been Bush's position and it was an official plank in the Texas Republican Party's 2000 platform when it was led by Governor George W. Bush.

Bolton has previously said that he would be happy if the United Nations no longer existed. Why would someone like that be a suitable candidate for a diplomatic post? He is despised by every ambassador at the U.N., including our allies. He is an obnoxious buffoon.

He has repeatedly lied and tried to use unsubstantiated intelligence in his speeches. In fact, you can't even call it intelligence because it's just stuff he made up. He famously demanded that two high ranking intelligence officers who disagreed with him be fired or transferred. This is not rumor, this is fact. The disagreement was over a claim Bolton intended to make in one of his speeches to the effect that Cuba possessed biological weapons and that Cuba was exporting biological weapons to other countries. The intelligence analysts insisted that the most Bolton could say was that Cuba "could" develop such weapons. Period! Bolton attempted to have the chief bioweapons analyst at the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research and the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America reassigned. He was unsuccessful in that attempt. They both kept their positions.

Under oath at his Senate confirmation hearings, Bolton denied trying to have the men fired but he was contradicted by SEVEN intelligence officials who were also under oath!

According to Henry Waxman, it was Bolton who managed to get the "16 words" into Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address even though George Tenet had previously managed to get them deleted from a previous speech. That would be the claim that Saddam was attempting to acquire yellowcake from Niger.

He has deliberately lied and misled in some of his other claims, specifically about Iran, to the IAEA. He's pushing the neo-con agenda of building a case for a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Iran may be a problem but we don't need more people misleading us like they did in the runup to Iraq.*

*The newly nominated Secretary of Defense agrees with me on that point:

WASHINGTON - Robert Gates, President Bush's choice to lead the Pentagon, argues that the United States should be talking with Iran instead of shunning it.

He says America's spy agencies misled the president on whether Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction - but also believes the nation should never launch another pre-emptive military strike without "unambiguous" intelligence.

As far as the republican "re-alignment" well they could have made it "long lasting" if they had played their cards right. The democrats can thank the stupidity and graft of the "power structure" in the republican party as much as any fundamental shift from conservative to liberal ideology.

There are many reasons for the reaction of the voters on November 7th and they're obvious to just about anyone except maybe Karl Rove. To put it bluntly, the stink was overwhelming. Incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, stupidity, corruption, scandals, lying, etc., etc. We all know that, including even the Republicans. They just didn't think it was going to hurt them as much as it did because they figured their "base" would turn out and vote for them no matter what. In most elections, 90% of Republicans vote for Republican candidates and 90% of Democrats vote for Democratic candidates. In this election, a slightly higher percentage of Democrats voted for Democrats and a slightly lower percentage of Republicans voted for Republicans and two-thirds of independents voted for Democrats.

Here's something for the Republicans to think about: The more they put Bush out on the road, the more they're helping create new Democrats. The more they let him open his mouth without reading from a prepared speech, the more they're creating new Democrats. Nixon did this during Watergate and now Bush is repeating it. At least 60% of the voters who came of voting age during Watergate became Democrats and most are still Democrats. The same thing is happening right now thanks to George W. Bush. Thanks, Dubya, you're doing a heckuva job.

If you don't believe me, just go through CNN's election results and read through all of the exit poll demographics like I have done. OK, so I haven't read through all of them but I have read through certain ones, particularly as it affects certain ballot measures. It's a very interesting read. Voters under the age of 30 do not think the same as older voters. And voters under the age of 25 are even more socially liberal in their thinking. I believe we can all agree that they are the future. Sure, some of them may get more fiscally conservative as they age but they may not change their social views.

Regardless of the supposed merits of Republican ideas vs. Democratic ideas when it comes to governance, the demographics seem to favor continued strength for the Democratic Party over the next decade at least. This trend has been very apparent in California over the past twenty years and California is a trend-setting state. Look at what Arnold Schwarzenegger just pulled off. He managed to go from 35% approval just one year ago to winning reelection in a landslide by abandoning many of the Republican ideas in favor of Democratic ideas. You could almost say that he represents a third party of one.

P.S. -- According to a Newsweek poll that was taken AFTER the November 7th elections and just released this morning, Bush's approval rating is presently 31%, an all-time low for that poll.

From that same Newsweek poll:

And there’s massive support for much of the Democratic Congress’s presumed agenda. For instance, 75 percent of Americans say allowing the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices for seniors should be a “top priority,” including 67 percent of Republicans. Increasing the minimum wage comes next (68 percent) on the public’s list, followed by investigating government contracts in Iraq (60 percent).

[Ninong]

Scott,

If you want a good example of what happened November 7th, just check out the defeat of Richard Pombo (R-CA-11). He was the only incumbent Republican congressman in California to be defeated. His district, where I used to live, is 43% Republican and 37% Democratic.

He was defeated by a liberal Democrat. In fact, the guy who defeated him wasn't even the choice of the Democratic Party honchos in Washington, D.C. They supported a more centrist candidate in the Democratic primary because they thought a liberal would have no chance in that district against an entrenched Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. The DCCC didn't give the Democratic candidate any financial support until very late in the campaign (late September or October). And the total contribution from the DCCC was $214,000 vs. $1.4 million that the GOP gave Pombo.

Pombo had a campaign war chest of close to $4 million. His Democratic challenger had almost nothing until the national environmental groups decided to make Pombo their pinata boy by contributing $1 million to his opponent. Pombo was named as committee chairman of that committee by Tom Delay several years back when he was one of the lowest ranking members by seniority. We now know why. Both DeLay and Pombo had very close ties to Jack Abramoff. Pombo challenged reporters to prove that he had ever done favors for Abramoff. They promptly proved that he had done lots and lots of favors for Abramoff's clients and published a complete listing of the campaign contributions he had received from them.

Pombo not only wanted to abolish the endangered species act and open up ANWAR to drilling, he even wanted to sell off some of the national parks. He said we had too many national parks and they were too large. We could sell off parts of these vast national parks to the oil industry. Last summer he famously took a two-week vacation with his wife and kids in a rented RV ($5000 for a two-week rental) to "inspect" some of our national parks. He met with the park superintendents for an hour or so at each park. He then charged the entire expense of his family vacation to the government.

Anyway, my point is that even a liberal Democrat can defeat a conservative Republican in a Republican leaning district if the stink is bad enough. John Doolittle's district, which is nearby, is even more Republican and he barely held on. He will be indicted any day now. Too bad that he and Jerry Lewis weren't indicted before November 7th. Lewis has spent close to $1 million of his campaign funds on his legal defense. Doolittle has spent less than that amount. Both of them are on the take and both of them will end up being indicted. Then there will be special elections and the Republicans will probably hold onto the districts if they can come up with just about anybody with no ties to the previous crooks, just as they managed to hold onto Duke Cunningham's district.

[SPasse]

George,

"It is the job of all U.S. diplomats to be advocates for the best interests of the United States. Why would you even ask such a question?"

Well there really are those in the liberal camp that would like to replace the sovereign US government with a one world government. This is not just a construct of the "rabid right" I have actually talked to the one world government types…

They truly believe that "world justice" is dependent on "demilitarizing" the western governments, especially the US.

On the US government negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies, I am all for it.

The prescription drug bill, as presently enacted, is just a pork barrel wind fall for the drug companies.

I think that US citizens should be able to buy drugs directly from countries like India. India is an example of a country where companies are able to make pharmaceuticals in USDA approved facilities, for 10 cents on the dollar of what the US firms sell them for.

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by SPasse

Well there really are those in the liberal camp that would like to replace the sovereign US government with a one world government. This is not just a construct of the "rabid right" I have actually talked to the one world government types…

There is no doubt whatsoever that a one-world government would be the ideal form of government, on paper at least, just as communism would appear to be the ideal form of government from a strictly Christian perspective. We all know that communism doesn't work and we all know one of the reasons why. We are NOT that self-sacrificing as individual human beings. In fact, we are quite selfish in the literal definition of the word.

Communism may work for religious orders, but it doesn't work as a form of government for present day H. sapiens. We aren't that altruistic yet, not by a long shot.

One-world government isn't something that will happen in our lifetimes, just as abolition of war isn't something that will happen in our lifetimes. We're too tribal by nature, and I mean that in a strictly biological, evolutionary sense. It has been built into our genes as a survival mechanism for hundreds of thousands of years.

They truly believe that "world justice" is dependent on "demilitarizing" the western governments, especially the US.

Sure, but we're not ready for that yet and won't be for at least another 500 years, maybe more, assuming we're still around by then.

The prescription drug bill, as presently enacted, is just a pork barrel wind fall for the drug companies.

Yes. And they paid good money to make sure it was written that way.

I think that US citizens should be able to buy drugs directly from countries like India. India is an example of a country where companies are able to make pharmaceuticals in USDA approved facilities, for 10 cents on the dollar of what the US firms sell them for.

Yes, but U.S. pharmaceutical companies are entitled to recover the costs of developing all these new drugs. We have to be careful what we wish for. There is no doubt that there is a problem that needs to be addressed but we have to be careful that we don't screw things up trying to make things better.

As it is right now, most U.S. drug companies refuse to manufacture vaccines because the risk-reward ratio just isn't favorable to them. That's why most vaccines are manufactured abroad. The litigation risks are too high.

I shouldn't get into this line of reasoning because it could be bad for my "street cred" on the board but the pharmaceutical industry's problems are complex and will require careful handling. It is obviously unfair that U.S. drug companies should sell the exact same drugs to the Canadian government for one-third the price they charge Americans. In effect, they are making us pay all of the development costs. On the other hand, you can't run around telling them that they can't charge such and such a price for a new drug that they just developed after spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the previous ten years or so to develop and test that drug and after maybe a hundred other approaches were discontinued along the way.

OK, I give up. I don't feel like posting a lengthy defense of the drug industry but I'm just pointing out that it takes a very long time and an awful lot of money to develop most new drugs.

[Ninong]

Kevin Drum has some interesting observations:

Myth #1: It was the youth vote that pushed Democrats over the top.

Nope. In 2004 Dems won 55% of the youth vote. This year they won 60%. That's a swing of 5 points, exactly the same as the overall nationwide swing in favor of Democrats.

In fact, it's actually worse than that: the number of young voters (age 18-29) decreased from 16% of the electorate in 2004 to 12% of the electorate in 2006. This means that in 2004 they amounted to 8.8% of the total Dem vote, compared to 7.2% in 2006. The youth vote was a fizzle.

Myth #2: Democrats won a third of the white evangelical vote.

I have no idea where this one came from. In 2004 Dems won 25% of the white evangelical vote. This year Dems won 28%. That's a swing of 3 points, which is actually a bit less than the overall Democratic swing. Turnout was about the same both years.

Bottom line: Nothing happened here.

Myth #3: Democrats won by running conservative candidates.

A few high-profile Democratic candidates had conservative views on certain issues (Casey on abortion, Tester on guns), but overall the newly-elected Dems look a lot like the current Democratic caucus.

And the exit polls back this up. In 2004, Democrats got 17% of the vote from self-described conservatives. This year it was 20%. As with evangelicals, this is less than the overall nationwide swing. Conservatives are still solidly supporting the Republican Party.


He makes two points on the youth vote. (1) That the increase from 55% to 60% matched the 5% swing to Democrats in the overall electorate, and (2), that the percentage of young voters is slipping as the population ages and lives longer.

A much more interesting statistic is the percentage of citizens registering to vote for the very first time who are registering as Democrats. What I'm talking about here is the percentage of 18- and 19-year-olds who are registering as Democrats rather than Republicans. I haven't personally verified the numbers but I have read that it's above 60% nationwide. This phenomenon was observed during the years of the Nixon Watergate scandal but not during the Clinton impeachment period, possibly because young people didn't think Clinton's "trangression" was all that serious and certainly not something worthy of impeachment. They, as well as the rest of the world, viewed it as much ado about nothing.

During the Eisenhower years and some of the Reagan years (except for Iran-Contra) new voter registrations were either evenly divided or slightly favored Republicans. The political views of the younger generation are strongly influenced by the reputation of the president in power at the time they come of age. This influence is not nearly as great as the "inherited" effect but it's there nonetheless. Children of Republican parents are more likely to register as Republicans just as children of Democratic parents are more likely to register as Democrats. This is quite similar to the strange phenomenon that children more often than not happen to choose the same religion as their parents. It's purely coincidental that they and their parents just happened to select the same one true religion out of all the myriad possibilities.

As far as the conserative Democratic candidates are concerned, some of them were more conservative than what the Democrats normally run. Heath Shuler and Harold Ford, Jr. come to mind. Shuler won, Ford did not. And besides Casey, who was specifically chosen because of his anti-abortion views, there is Jim Webb in Virginia. He's much more conservative than your typical Democratic senatorial candidate. So there may be a bit more truth to this one than Drum wants to admit. One thing I noticed about some of the new Republican candidates this time around was that they were pretty much the same as Republcan candidates in previous elections. That's to say that conservative Republicans usually beat out moderate Republicans in their party primaries and then run into difficulty running against Democratic candidates in the general election, especially in a year like this one. Just imagine how badly the GOP would have been beaten in the Rhode Island senatorial race if Chafee had lost the GOP primary to his main rival, who was much more conservative.

An interesting question would be whether John McCain or Rudy Giuliani would be the more difficult Republican nominee for Hillary Clinton to defeat. Personally, I believe McCain would be the easier candidate for her to run against because of the contrast. Giuliani would force the Republicans, even the evangelicals, to back him because in their minds the alternative would be unthinkable and he might pull more Independents and more Democrats away from Clinton than McCain would. If the Republicans think Hillary is definitely going to be the nominee, then they might want to move to the center to cut her off. I'm not saying she's going to be the nominee or that I would like for her to be the nominee. I would vote for her over either McCain or Giuliani but I'm one of those people who usually votes for the Democratic candidates anyway.

Hillary has been moving to the center ever since she was elected to the Senate. I think that's Bill's influence. She was always more liberal than her husband but he's the one with the better charisma and the better political sense. When the Republicans took over the House in 1994, it actually helped Bill Clinton push through his welfare reform package in spite of the Congressional Black Caucus and the national labor unions. Bill Clinton was actually a moderate Democrat, especially in his fiscal policies and his approach to welfare reform. John Kerry, as I pointed out in this forum way back before he won the nomination, was too liberal to be elected.

P.S. -- I think I know how the myth about the Democrats getting one-third of the white evangelical vote came about. One of the exit poll questions asks voters to identify the Number One issue that influenced their vote in this election. Of those white evangelicals who picked Corruption as their Number One issue, one-third of those voted for Democrats. That's not the same as saying that one-third of all white evangelicals voted for Democrats.

[SPasse]

George,

"Sure, but we're not ready for that yet and won't be for at least another 500 years, maybe more, assuming we're still around by then."

We know from Star Trek that a one world government won't happen until after the 3rd World (Nuclear) war and our subsequent discovery (Through faster than light space travel) that we are not alone in this galaxy. Then it at least occurs to humans to tame their tribalism. (To the planetary level at least)

Amazon.com: The Ethics of Star Trek: Books: Judith Barad,Ed Robertson

I understand that drug companies need to recover R&D. But the present system is the worst of both worlds. Insanely high drug prices and Vioxx. This means a combination of tort reform and restructuring the FDA.

Interestingly, Wal-Mart may actually be the force that pushes many prescription drug prices down. (As much as I hate Wal-Mart)

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

So, who do you want the GOP to nominate in 2008?

[SPasse]

George,

Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. (I know he's a democrat)

Still examining the republican prospects.

Regards,

Scott

[SPasse]

George,

Actually I want a pro-life version of former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm.

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

I can't figure out how Rudy Giuliani is so high in polls of potential Republican presidential candidates. I wonder if it's just that the majority of Republicans responding really don't know Giuliani's positions on certain favorite GOP campaign issues or if it's possible that the GOP wants to steer a course away from it's past.

I suspect it's just a matter of not knowing enough about him. He's pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage and pro-choice. I think that's exactly the opposite of the GOP's Guns, Gays and God divide and conquer campaign strategy of the past six years.

[schrocat]

both at 31%

Pelosi at 34.