Extremist Democrats Angry That Better Economy Will "Help Bush"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXXIX

You have to see this to believe it. A post in the General Discussion Forum at Democratic Underground, yesterday.

881101, DOW 10,000++
Posted by leftyandproud on Thu Dec-11-03 04:18 PM

F*CK!

Please folks, don't start that "We should be happy for people... They are seeing nice gains in their 401k's..yadda yadda" Bottom line, this will HELP BUSH!

I took a look at my IRA today and see it sitting at a three year high. I admit, for a moment, I felt a moment of glee, then I remembered who this is REALLY helping, big corporations, Bush's supporters, and the sheep who think he really did anything to boost the economy.

Like it or not, people vote with their pocketbooks and when they see these big gains, they will be happy. Couple this with the bigger than ever tax refund checks people we getting (Thanks in no small part to the politically motivated tactic of reducing tax brackets across the board in JULY, and making the bill retroactive, so the first 7 months of overpaid taxes will be INCLUDED in your tax refund...in addition to the doubled child credit and marriage penalty drop...my GOD...I know most of tax cuts help the rich, but this sh*t really will help middle America with larger refunds. ALSO, since Dubya dropped the steel tariffs, the price of nearly everything with metal in it will be DROPPING over the next few months...meaning more spending...more demand...more products sold...more corporate revenue...more jobs needed...We need to admit this and prepare for it.

The people are going to be happy.
They like their tax reductions.
They like cheap prices on stuff.
They like their 401k's being up 40% this year.

If the economy keeps this pace, unemployment will likely be down to 5.5% by next November and we better have a damn good argument against Bush's policies. Is there any way we can take credit for helping the economy? We certainly are going to need an argument for this next year.

Frankly, one is tempted at first to think this might have been planted by some devious conservative to make Democratic Underground look bad. A perusal of the replies, however, shows no sign that anybody thinks it isn't a sincere post; and, this quite-precisely anti-American attitude, though not shared by everybody there, nonetheless meets with some approval. Here's an example:

881217, I have this 'gut' feeling that
Posted by Pegleg Thd on Thu Dec-11-03 04:31 PM

the" Greedy Old Pigs" are giving us inflated figures in order to make the criminals look good. I wonder whhat the NY attorney general thinks of this situation. As I understand it he has had his nose up their asses for the last couple of years. My guess is that before long we will hear of another brokerage caught with their hands raiding the cookie jar. Then watch the bottom drop out and reality set in hard. (we can only hope that I am right )

(Thanks, James.)

P.S. "leftyandproud" is a Kucinich supporter.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 12/12/03 09:23:44 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

A Presidential Declaration of Preemptive Military Action

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat XVIII, September 11, 1941.

"But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him."

.... There has now come a time when you and I must see the cold inexorable necessity of saying to these inhuman, unrestrained seekers of world conquest and permanent world domination by the sword: "You seek to throw our children and our children's children into your form of terrorism and slavery. You have now attacked our own safety. You shall go no further."

Normal practices of diplomacy — note writing — are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws who sink our ships and kill our citizens.

One peaceful nation after another has met disaster because each refused to look the Nazi danger squarely in the eye until it had actually had them by the throat.

The United States will not make that fatal mistake.

No act of violence, no act of intimidation will keep us from maintaining intact two bulwarks of American defense: First, our line of supply of material to the enemies of Hitler; and second, the freedom of our shipping on the high seas.

No matter what it takes, no matter what it costs, we will keep open the line of legitimate commerce in these defensive water of ours.

We have sought no shooting war with Hitler. We do not seek it now. But neither do we want peace so much, that we are willing to pay for it by permitting him to attack our naval and merchant ships while they are on legitimate business.

I assume that the German leaders are not deeply concerned, tonight or any other time, by what we Americans or the American Government say or publish about them. We cannot bring about the downfall of Nazi-ism by the use of long-range invective. But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.

These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic. They are a menace to the free pathways of the high seas. They are a challenge to our own sovereignty. They hammer at our most precious rights when they attack ships of the American flag — symbols of our independence, our freedom, our very life.

It is clear to all Americans that the time has come when the Americas themselves must now be defended. A continuation of attacks in our own waters or in waters that could be used for further and greater attacks on us, will inevitably weaken our American ability to repel Hitlerism.

Do not let us be hair-splitters. Let us not ask ourselves whether the Americas should begin to defend themselves after the first attack, or the fifth attack, or the tenth attack, or the twentieth attack.

The time for active defense is now.

Do not let us split hairs. Let us not say: "We will only defend ourselves if the torpedo succeeds in getting home, or if the crew and the passengers are drowned". This is the time for prevention of attack....

(Source.)

Can you imagine, Faithful Reader — can we even begin to imagine — the howling conniption fits that George W. Bush would start all over the world if he dismissed diplomacy towards tyrants as "note writing"?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 12/12/03 04:08:23 PM
Categorized as Historical & International & Speeches and Suchlike.

Making a Point on the BCRA

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 12/12/03 07:58:04 AM
Categorized as Political.

"Clinton Vows to Help Oust Bush"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXXVIII

Hillary Clinton mouths off in a rather well-balanced article in the Albany Times-Union, Dec. 11.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to campaign nationwide to help defeat President Bush, calling the Republican and his administration a threat to the United States.

"I can't maybe even convey it as strongly as I feel, how dangerous this administration is to the future of our country," Clinton said.

From the economy and the environment to health care and government accountability, Clinton said she sees "giant steps backward, and much of it is being done under the rubric of security."

Clinton was in Troy on Wednesday morning, first at a fund-raiser for the Rensselaer County Democratic Committee, then at a conference on small businesses. She later met with the Times Union editorial board in Colonie.

A day after former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton remained mum on who, she considers the best candidate to take on Bush, although many consider retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark to be the Clintons' choice.

"My goal is to support first the process," she said. "Let it be vigorous, let people be contesting in the primary and the caucuses, because I think the more vigorous the primary process is, the better prepared whoever emerges from it will be to take on the President."

She said Gore's endorsement doesn't mean Dean has locked up the nomination. Historically, Clinton said, primaries have been "extremely unpredictable."

"Twelve years ago, in December 1991, no one thought Bill Clinton was going to get the nomination," she said.

Clinton said she'll support any Democrat chosen.

"At the end of the day, we will have a candidate, and I am going to do everything I can to elect that person, because I feel so strongly about the need to deprive this administration of a second term," she said.

Christine Iverson, press secretary for the Republican National Committee, said her party welcomes Clinton's challenge.

"The Clintons seem to have a way of overshadowing the candidates they campaign for, rather than helping them," Iverson said, adding that Clinton and the Democrats running for president are showing a theme of "protest and pessimism."

Clinton was less hesitant to talk about a challenger to New York Gov. George Pataki, whom she accused of politicizing the modernization of New York's voting system and of holding up federal homeland security funds designated for local governments.

If New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer decides to run in 2006, he'd beat Pataki, Clinton predicted.

"We'd have an excellent chance of having a Democratic governor who would do a superb job for the state," she said.

New York Republican State Committee Chairman Alexander "Sandy" Treadwell said Clinton has no reason to be critical.

"It's absurd that Senator Clinton has the audacity to criticize Governor Pataki when she has accomplished absolutely nothing for New York state," Treadwell said, adding that Clinton hasn't brought any new jobs to New York.

Treadwell also dismissed Clinton's assertion that her colleague in the Senate, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, won't have a serious challenger in 2004.

"We will have a very strong candidate to run against Charles Schumer," he said.

Pataki spokesman Joseph Conway said Clinton should be more concerned with bringing federal aid to New York than with state politics.

Clinton also defended her vote in favor of invading Iraq, and said the information she received from credible sources outside the Bush administration convinced her that Saddam Hussein was a threat who needed to be removed from power. But she says she did not anticipate "how poorly prepared this administration was to deal with the consequences of their actions."

She said the administration dramatically mishandled Iraq. Bush should have let U.N. inspectors continue their work, Clinton said, and committed more troops when it came time to fight. The United States should have declared martial law and had enough troops in Iraq to avoid the looting and mayhem that happened after the ground war was fought.

White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said the United States is safer under Bush, and that Iraq's infrastructure was worse than any world leader imagined going into the war.

Prewar planning, Lisaius said, avoided food shortages, displacing Iraqis and environmental crises that would have arisen from more oil fields being destroyed.

Clinton said problems there are more serious than the Bush administration has admitted.

"The fact is, they didn't have a plan," she said. "We're playing catch-up, and it has cost us dearly. And, on that ground alone, the administration, in my view, should be retired."

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2003, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 12/12/03 07:19:59 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

Jimmy Carter Bashes Zell Miller

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXXVII

Jimmy "I Never Met a Leftist Dictator Whose Feet I Didn't Want to Kiss" Carter complains that Zell Miller wants to leave Carter in the dustbin of history.

Carter: Miller's Senate appointment was 'mistake'

The Associated Press

Former President Jimmy Carter says the appointment of Georgia's Zell Miller to the Senate was a mistake because his fellow ex-governor "betrayed all the basic principles that I thought he and I and others shared."

The comments, which Carter made Wednesday on the radio program FOX News Live with Alan Colmes, are the latest in a string of attacks prominent Democrats have made lately concerning the maverick senator who has endorsed President Bush's re-election and penned a new book arguing his party is out of touch with the South.

When Colmes asked Carter about Miller, the former president first said, "I would rather not even comment about Zell Miller on the radio," then proceeded to call the appointment "one of the worst mistakes" then-Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes made in his four years in office.

Barnes tapped Miller in 2000 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell. He then went on to win a special election to complete Coverdell's term, which ends in January 2005. Miller has announced he won't seek re-election, and Republicans are viewed as the favorites to capture the seat.

Miller dismissed Carter's comments Thursday, calling the former president a friend of more than 40 years.

"And over those 40-plus years, I bet I've received about two dozen personal notes from Jimmy Carter," Miller said. "Half of them are giving me hell, and the other half are bragging on me. So, I figure I'm doing OK batting .500 with Jimmy Carter."

Barnes declined to comment Thursday on the squabble between the two other former governors.

In Miller's book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat," he devotes a chapter to analyzing why Carter won the presidential race in 1976 and lost in 1980.

"This Georgian, who had generated so much regional pride, saw his Southern base decimated," Miller wrote of the latter contest. "... Some Southerners would say he forgot where he came from. Others would say it was the magic of Ronald Reagan. I say it was because after campaigning as a new kind of Democrat, he governed too much like an old one."

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

See also "A National Party No More".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 12/12/03 07:08:51 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.