The race for the US presidency

[sechs]

Furthermore, I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal; is this really that unusual a position to be lacking representation?

You need to move to Maine. Olympia Snowe is your girl.

 

[ddrueding]

You need to move to Maine. Olympia Snowe is your girl.

While a senator with a pornstar name would be awesome, and her views do look pretty solid, the actual snow is a deal-breaker.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't agree. The only thing voting 3rd party does is give the Democrats an easy victory.

Wait. What?
You're making a huge and fundamentally incorrect assumption about the nature of any other political party that might exist.

Right now we are divided between social progressives and social conservatives, and the actual behavior of both parties seems to veer away from what might be called responsibility in spending; the difference is just who that spending benefits.

At some later point, we might re-divide along lines of personal liberties vs. security (that seemed to be the main issue in 2004, at least) or personal liberties vs. environmental responsibility.

The core of the Democrats power are the people who will never vote for another party because they are dependent on the current Democrats for their free handouts.

You realize that this is also the case when republicans are in control, right? The only difference is who gets the handouts. I'd rather see money go to education funding or subsidized housing or health care than to see a bunch of rugged individualists get no bid defense contracts.

I must have missed it. Where was fiscal conservatism on the ballot?

It wasn't. McCain is was playing up a sort of moderate neoconservative stance, and those guys go through money like it's water with the ideological goal of getting the government so big and debt-laden that it can no longer fund New Deal social programs (this is something that has been articulated by Grover Norquist et al). I'm not sure true fiscal conservatives were represented even in the primaries this election cycle: Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney were both real friends of big business, but if Fred was "in the mold of Reagan", he wasn't going to cut the purse strings, and from what I heard of Mitt, he had some fiscal misadventures of his own when he was governor. Face it "Let's not spend any money." isn't particularly thrilling as a campaign platform in an election year.

 

[sechs]

While a senator with a pornstar name would be awesome, and her views do look pretty solid, the actual snow is a deal-breaker.

Ah, but now you can complain about snow instead of a lack of real representation!

 

[timwhit]

I hope Blagojevich ends up in jail.

Hey it looks like my hope is coming true. What an idiot.

 

[Mercutio]

To be fair, the guy has been under federal investigation for one thing or other almost since the day he took office. You didn't have to be psychic to know he was going to end up in jail sooner or later.

 

[timwhit]

To be fair, the guy has been under federal investigation for one thing or other almost since the day he took office. You didn't have to be psychic to know he was going to end up in jail sooner or later.

Either way, a lot of people seem happy that he won't be able to terrorize us anymore. This has to be the most blatant case of abuse of power I have witnessed in my life. (I'm not old enough to count Nixon)

 

[Mercutio]

There's something to be said for the blantant way the Bush presidency manipulated the general public and the media. Authorizing torture, announcing terror alerts every time political rivals threatened to do anything positive during a news cycle (really, go back and look!), secretly wiretapping anything and everything they felt like... you must have a really short memory, timwhit.

Blago was just playing Chicago politics. He's not played well with others during his administration, so there was no insulation of underlings to take the fall for him.

 

[Howell]

This has to be the most blatant case of abuse of power I have witnessed in my life. (I'm not old enough to count Nixon)

Yeah, I agree. I was surprised to hear on NPR that what he did was only just outside of normal for Chicago politics though.

 

[paugie]

There's something to be said for the blatant way the Bush presidency manipulated the general public and the media. Authorizing torture, announcing terror alerts every time political rivals threatened to do anything positive during a news cycle (really, go back and look!), secretly wiretapping anything and everything they felt like... you must have a really short memory, timwhit.

sounds very much like our government. BTW, the one who sits as president here was a classmate of your president. must have learned the same things in the same school.

whenever something comes up against her (arroyo's administration) they whip up some other happening to steal the people's attention. Gah! I hope she trips or something worse.

 

[paugie]

additionally
Journalists, radio commentators, activists, students, protestors all, are dying here.

i'm so glad Obama has refused to take any phone calls from the arroyo.