Not long ago, I had to reject a comment filled with the usual yada-yada about there being no difference between Democrats and Republicans. I get this sort of thing a lot: The two parties are two wings of the same fascist bird. Kerry and Dubya were both Bonesmen. Clinton something something Bush something something Mena something something they are all in it together.
You know the song. And you know that I invite everyone singing it to check out our freshly-painted exit door.
Here's the kicker: This particular recitation of the creed ended with a cynical observation about election fraud. My commenter believed that the Republicans had already put in the fix for 2008.
Perhaps. But why bother fixing elections if both parties are the same?
Sorry, but my brain's synapses do not possess sufficient elasticity to wrap around that idea.
I'm reminded of that old joke: "The food they serve here is incredibly lousy." "Yeah, and such small portions...!"
Or, to phrase it another way: "The Democrats are in cahoots with the Republicans." "That's why the Republicans rig elections."
Does that make sense to you?
A captious bastard I may be, but one must draw a distinction between cynicism and an otiose sense of despair. At a certain level, those who believe in One Big Conspiracy That Controls Everything offer a message of utter hopelessness. If you are so immersed in faux-hip gloom that you cannot even notice when you've contradicted yourself, why bother writing blog comments? Just grab a bottle of tequila and walk into the ocean. No other actions have much point.
15 comments:
According to DU........
"A lot has been made of soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s claim that impeachment is “off the table” but it is critical to note that in a Washington Post interview…
…Pelosi said a Democratic-controlled House would launch investigations of the administration on energy policy and other matters. She said impeachment would not be a goal of the investigations, but she added: “You never know where it leads to.”...
The reason it is the best choice to minimize the threat of impeachment is that investigations will now ensue with full subpoena power in the hands of John Conyers, whose already published report: “George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution - The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Demestic Spying” makes perfectly clear where it should lead - full accountability for multiple crimes and misdemeanors for the President, Vice President and his administration
Nancy Pelosi has more on her plate than any speaker in recent history, and she's taking this one step at a time. I think some underestimate the good speaker as well as her partner in justice, The Honorable John Conyers?
"You never know where it leads to ..." I think Nancy knows. I think we all know."
There are differences between the parties but they are small. And those differences exist on issues that the corporate interests don't really care about: abortion, gay rights, gun control, stem cell research, prayer in schools, etc.
Joe I know I'm probably one of your least favorite non-tranny commenters (even though i do try to rhyme when i post), so it's no surprise that i am going to ask this. Barring the broad-stroke that "they are the same party" is there no credence to the Clinton(s) Contras and Cocaine story line? I mean, I sure believed Gary Webb's writing.
I'm not saying that the two parties are the same, at all, and anyone who chimes that after the past six horrific years obviously hasn't been thinking about the lesser of two evils. But that's just it; do we ignore the fact that Hill & Bill were in on it? Does admitting that make the whole party culpable?
And speaking of which-- (while i fear this may get me barred from here for good) was it a republican who increased US troops in Vietnam from 500 to 16,000? or how about the Republican LBJ who took it from 16K to 550K Troops? McNamara ...a republican?
Sure the Republican'ts wouldn't have also given us Medicare and Medicade (as lame as they are) and its unlikely they would have given us Civil Rights Laws, but to paint them as saints, and the GOP as sinners is dangerous.
An apotheosis for Hillary and ignoring the fact that she assisted in the illegal arming of the Contras seems to undermine what you usually stand for. If she is the #1 dem choice, will you stand by her because she isn't GOP?
Or what with all the problems we have so far-- does it not matter than an illegal war was funded by the crack-dehumanization of the inner city? Does it not matter that this involved (like Rich) getting arms to a country even Hillary says we might have to fight (to please AIPAC)?
Either tell me that Gary Webb made it all up and its just a fairy tale, or please explain why it doesn't matter. ((again, this isn't to say that the parties are the same, but that doesn't mean the Clinton's aren't also evil))
I had to look up captious and otiose to understand that sentence. As an aesthete of "It Pays to Increase Your Word Power" I say: Nice one.
Cynic that I am, even I do not think that "there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two" parties.
It is my contention that many high level Democrats can fall into or be tempted by corruption, while most high level Republicans get to said high level in their Party primarily because they are corrupt - Birds of a Feather and all.
In other words, a lot of high-level Republicans are professional criminals who are rewarded for their criminal acts, whereas most high level Democrats are opportunistic amateurs who get punished for theirs.
For example, does anyone think that William Jefferson, the Democrat found with $9,000 in his fridge, will ever be an MSM commentator?
Or that Jefferson will have his own Nationally Syndicated radio show such as the likes of Ollie North, or G. Gordon Liddy?
Or that Jefferson will ever be a member of a future Democratic Administration like the Iran Contra retreads in the current Bush Administration, or become wheels in the Democratic hierarchy?
No way. Big time Republicans seem to relish, promote, and reward their criminals; whereas criminal Democrats are bound to obscurity, left to slink off into the night, never to be heard from again except as the subject of ridicule and as way to say, "See, the Dems are crooks (too)." on Fox News or other RW media.
(Marion Barry is the rare exception, but the vast majority of Democrats view him as a crook and have no respect for him.)
Top level Republicans = Modern day Publicans.
You maybe strung up a strawman or woman there, Joseph? Anyway, don't we always have a bright-line choice every four years between the greater and lesser of two evils?
(If you have time and talent, maybe you could set this to music?)
Ruy Lopez, Quo Vadis?
The queen's physician could not save her,
neither save himself,
a thing he knew beforehand,
from Talmud, swine, and wealth.
Ruy knew every alphabet,
the gaudy faiths that lie
along an elegant diagonal,
where gods and ciphers hide.
Ruy Lopez would leave behind
two secret schools in just three moves:
the one, called Skull and Bones of Yale,
the other, no one knows.
At Skull and Bones they only pass
whoever exceed their master,
and so succeed him, whence his head
they slice from his neck in rapture.
-- (AitchD as 'Anonymous')
Joseph,in recent history a dear Democrat president was murdered and replaced by another democrat LBJ, who reversed JFK's NSA directive to "pull out the troops in VietNam" so the Pentagon agents for the military industrial complex and the heroin traffickers/CIA could rake in more money than usual..kinda like today with the Afghanistan poppy harvest enriches certain employees and departments of the government.
The military industrial complex/corporate behemoths, employ most politicians of both stripes right?
Its a bit like professional wrestling Joseph..the charade is funded for both hunks to be paid from the till but the crowd roots for their favorite knowing full well it is fixed.
We all know that our political system is totally corrupted and rotten to the core..with occasional anomalies like Gravel and Kucinich playing straight.
When someone gives you lots of money you tend to say nice things about them and help them out whenever they ask for it.
Is ther a difference between the two parties? Ahhhhh it depends on precisely which issues you want to discull/compare. Like one of your ealier posters said they differ on the rind issues but at the core where the big bucks flow they all say "show me the money" honey and I'll walk the line for youand dance the tango as well.
AitchD, you know I'm a sucker for poetry. Toss in some meter and you can say pretty much any silly thing you like.
lee, your citation of Gary Webb was, well, weird. Because Webb sure didn't mention Hillary when he and I briefly corresponded. Robert Parry of The Consortium grew very close to Webb, and Parry seems to have nothing but contempt for "overwrought" (his word) allegations against the Clintons.
I can find no site, no writing by Webb which includes any material on Hillary-the-drug-smuggler. You offer not one quotation. (I'm asking for a quote USING WORDS WRITTEN BY WEBB HIMSELF, not by some after-the-fact zealot.) Even Catherine Austin Fitts, who believes all those Mena stories, does not cite Webb as a direct source.
All I can find is this from an Alex Jones web site review of Dark Alliance:
"Webb never mentioned Clinton or Lt. Col. Oliver North, George H.W. Bush’s man on the National Security Council, who was deeply and integrally involved with the Contra drugs and weapons apparatus."
Lots of drug running did happen at Mena, but when I spoke to Arkansas State Prosecutor Charles Black about it (this was back before you probably ever heard about Mena), I ran all the more eldritch claims about the Clintons by him -- the Park-on-Meter stuff, the Rose Law Firm stuff, all of it. They were all news to Black. He laughed. LAUGHED at that stuff. And even as he laughed, he was (or so he told me) looking right at a large shelf FILLED with evidence on Mena, evidence which he had helped to compile.
The one guy Black was really pissed off at was Poppy Bush, because the Bush administration blew the case against Seal.
When you look carefully at all the 90s-era stories about Clinton the Drug Kingpin, you will find:
1. They trace back to Scaife, Moon, the American Spectator, Larry Nichols, the Wall Street Journal, and the far, far right. Lovely bunch, that. Didn't they help start a war four years ago...?
2. They also trace to Terry Reed (whom we will discuss briefly tomorrow) and to a guy named Mark Swaney. I talked to Swaney at length and even helped get him some airtime in California. I came to think that he was a big fake.
3. At just the moment when you expect to see hard evidence show up in these anti-Clinton stories, words like "allegedly" and "reportedly" start showing up.
Joe Conason and Gene Lyon's book "The Hunting of the President" goes into all this in detail. You may also want to talk to David Brock about the milieu in which those accusations first appeared.
Hillary assisted the arming of the contras? And somehow managed to do so without being noticed by guys like Robert Parry, who helped to BREAK the contra story?
Horsecrap!
As Al Gore says in his movie, the problem is what we know that just ain't so. In the '90s, all of these allegations against the Clintons received such wide distribution that even a lot of people on the left came to fear that they would stand accused of naivete if they did not offer lip service to these claims.
Hence my use of the phrase "faux-hip."
Somewhere during the Ken Starr inquisition, the tide turned. We (well, most of us) realized that there was no "there" there. Starr was such an anti-Clinton zealot, he would have uncovered drug-running allegations against Clinton, if any existed.
At this point, Lee, guys like you traditionally chirp up with the all-too-familiar words: "Ken Starr's investigation was restricted! If he talked about the drug smuggling, he would have implicated Bush! THEY wouldn't let him do that!"
Heard it before. Heard it before. In fact, you have pretty much nothing to tell me that I have not heard a zillion times.
All I can say is, if there's any EVIDENCE that Hillary was a big contra weapons supplier or whatever, send it to Robert Parry. I will believe such claims when and if they come from someone like him.
beeta: You make my point. I have already discussed ad nauseum why Pelosi had to make that "off the table" remark. But my readers have yet to take me up on my challenge -- I asked them to name one single ACTION Nancy has taken to impede the impeachment movement.
Yeah, she could conceivably stop a bill from coming to a vote. I'm not asking about things that are conceivable. I'm asking: "What has she DONE?"
Jeez, i know there are a lot of people who want to believe that the two parties are the same, but why do they come HERE? And can't you guys do any better than to cite LBJ, who was indeed a corrupt sunvabitch -- and who left office nearly forty years ago?
Have it your way, dudes. If you want to think that the sitch is hopeless, then you should bloody well ACT like it's hopeless. So take me up on my suggestion: Fly out to LAX and then start hoofing it to the ocean. Just head in a southwestern direction. It's the big green thing. Can't miss it.
Oh, and be sure to grab some Jose Cuervo along the way. I suggest that you spring for the Reposado, which is smooth enough to drink straight. It'll get you nice and toasty as you do the "Norman Maine" thang.
Joseph, you're a national treasure.
I have my Cuervo in hand, but this is way too much fun to walk into the ocean.
BTW, from what I've heard about LBJ, he never voted for anything, not even any bill he fervently believed in, unless he got some remuneration for his vote.
Here's are difference: 1) The Democrats have a history that they can call on to move out of the pattern of obedience and folly this crew embodies; 2) The Democrats are not nearly as bloodthirsty as the Republicans; 3) The Democrats are likely to give us a kiss after they screw us;), always a thoughtful move.
Both parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate interests. Democrats need the votes of the working and middle class so they have to moderate their corporate game plan.
I work for Democrats and give to them. I have no illusions. The alternatives are often truly frightening.
At the same time, when someone asked me if * would go to martial law? my response was, why would he need to, he's got the Democrats in Congress. They gave in on habeas corpus and the Patriot Act. What's left? We live in a lawless nation.
There is a difference. If we had public funding for all campaigns, things would change in a hurry? If the pressure on Democrats were overwhelming, they'd respond, but not for long without a severing of the cash ties.
It's a grand life if you don't falter.
One reason for the GOP to steal elections in spite of the fact that the two Parties basically cater to the same Uberclass rather than to you or me:
The Party in Power gets to steer more contracts to their side of the plutocracy. That's simply more $$ for their buddies.
Now why have the Dems not been caught stealing elections? Because the GOP have been caught doing it first.
The Dems do, however, quite well at internally rigging themselves. The Dem's expensive market-driven machine and their media assets will simply not allow the Kuciniches or Gravels the light of day, despite their positions being more in line with regular Americans. The Dems have also been known for dirty tricks against the Nader campaigns.
So, does "stealing an election" always have to entail outright vote-rigging and voter disenfranchisement measures? Perhaps the Dems are more subtle.
Ah, anything to get that One Big Conspiracy That Controls Everything idea in there.
Look, Democrats have indeed cowered in the face of power, and for good reason. Look at what happened to Max Cleland. Look at the smearing of Al Gore in 2000. Look at the swiftboating of Kerry. Look at the Whitewater smears. Look at the CNN/Gupta smears against Michael Moore. Hell, most of you are too young to remember it, but CARTER was smeared in unforgivable ways.
Like it or not, we live in a country filled with inherently conservative, ill-read people who are easily swayed by a well-funded hate campaign. If I were in Congress, I would probably be as cautious and skitterish as a well-kicked dog -- and you folks would probably be calling ME a sell-out.
Someone in that position must either resign himself to either 1. Being called dirty names by a relative handful of fire-breathing progressives, or 2. Doing but one term, if that, in office.
Do not confuse the kicked dog and the bastard doing the kicking.
I still believe in my party. If we ever have a space of genuine power -- and Dubya's incompetence and overreach may give us that day -- we can institute genuine reforms. I'm talking about campaign finance reform and a return to the Fairness Doctrine, broadened to apply to cable TV. A few simple changes like those, and the rest of our problems will become much more resolvable.
I'll say one more thing. I was not a big Bill Clinton fan; I supported Bob Kerrey in the primaries back in 1992. But throughout the rest of the 1990s, I kept hearing this non-stop canard that there is no difference between the two parties. The people telling me this line were either militia maniacs or faux-hip progressive purists.
So I started to pay attention. Every so often in the mid 1990s I would go through a period where I checked the newspapers daily for stories about what the Clinton administration was doing. Nearly every day, there would be some small story somewhere reporting that Clinton was doing something I liked. These stories may not have made front page headlines; they may not have been the items that everyone was discussing. But they were there.
Clinton would appoint a justice with a resume that impressed me. His Energy Secretary would place once-classified nuke documents online. (Fascinating site; I spent hours there.) He would make FOIA easier. He had Al Gore reduce government wastefulness. He made tax rates more progressive.
Every day there was something, often multiple somethings. Many of these somethings were small, and small things do not stick in the memory. But small things add up.
Hit the newspaper indexes for (say) 1997 and you'll see what I mean. Every day, I could open up a newspaper and expect to see something -- just a little something, somewhere -- that was downright pleasant to read about.
When was the last time Bush did anything, however small, that you liked?
Don't tell me that there's no difference between the two parties. That is BULLSHIT. I'd give ten years of my life (and I'm not a young man) for the chance to re-experience two years of Clinton-era peace and prosperity.
History provides many examples of Democrats doing the devil's bidding, imo, and so to speak.
Clinton promised to integrate gays into the military by executive order as one of his campaign promises. That was sabotaged in a very harmful, high profile manner by Senate Armed Services Chairman Sam Nunn (D-GA), and many others in the Democratic Senate caucus.
Clinton promised to deliver a health care plan to address the national crisis. The plan as developed eschewed the logical and simplest form (single payer), in order to keep the largest insurance companies as players and prevent their opposition. Maybe that was the big mistake, or maybe that was the only way to do it, realistically, but in any case, it was sabotaged in the Senate by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), whose committee would normally have had jurisdiction, but was left out of the planning. It appeared he was offended, and in a fit of pique, ruined the last best chance this country has seen to address this matter.
Similarly, all the 'old bull' Democratic chairmen opposed needed Clinton initiatives like campaign reform, told him it wouldn't be brought up, and to save his breath on that one. When Clinton vetoed the repeal of Glass-Steagal, the successful veto overturn was led by Chris Dodd (D-CT). After Clinton had expended much political capital to pass a BTU tax in the House, it was scuttled by a single Democratic Senator, David Boren, iirc.
These are examples of (parts of) the Democratic Party being either the principle, or among the principle, opponents to many things Clinton proposed that were important and good things.
And we have the opposite as well, where the Democratic Party was on the side of the angels, so to speak, and Clinton pushed things through despite their opposition. NAFTA and GATT, for example. Whereas the GOP supported those things about 80% to 20%, the Democrats opposed them at about the identical percentages (approx. 80% against). Clinton pushed those things through against major Democratic opposition. His telecommunications reform bill has been disastrous for the national discourse (although I'm not sure that it had a large majority DP opposition at the time).
Going back in time a bit, then-GOP VP nominee Bob Dole once said all the past major US wars were Democrat wars. While I was outraged at the time, he had a point at the time (although since contradicted by ensuing events). Wilson and LBJ were both re-elected on promises to keep us out of the wars they later went into. Before Kellog-Brown Root was bought by Halliburton, it was LBJ's main lifetime benefactor, and a huge beneficiary of Vietnam contracting (a billion dollars for the huge Khamran Bay (sp?) facility alone). LBJ corruptly steered the F-111B contract to General Dynamics in Texas against the recommendations of McNamara and the JCS. The 'Senator from Boeing,' Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, was similarly in the bag for Boeing, and provided the fertile grounds for the political career beginnings of Richard Perle and the other neo-cons, who were at that time Democrats. All the old southern Democrat chairmen were all bought and paid for by the defense contractors, and hence, key cogs in the military-industrial complex machinery.
When John Kerry's subcommittee investigation got close to proving the Contra/Cocaine connection, he was ordered to back off by the Democratic leadership, who not only failed to support him against attacks, but cut off his funds and crippled his investigations. Credible sources place high level Democratic Party officials in on the October Surprise meetings, against their own party's president.
Don't get me wrong. I voted for McGovern in '72, and haven't voted Republican since that time, having no reason to do so. I donate to the DNC and various Dem candidates, Wellstone Action, the ADA, and etc. And, as the party 'moderates' (quislings, often) have gone down to defeat after defeat, and the party conservatives have become Republicans, and the Democratic Party Congressional membership has thereby grown ever more liberal leaning, I find the party still more to my liking.
And yet, the 'serious' Democrats went all DLC on us (Clinton a co-founder, and the despicable Joe Lieberman on board), and their equivalents in our day all voted for the authorization to use military force in Iraq, imo, to use Clinton's infelicitous phrase, to 'maintain their political viability.' Which means a) to appear 'strong' to the know-nothing electorate, and b) perhaps more importantly, to pay tribute to their large business interest contributors. Including Hillary, John Edwards, I think Kerry (although maybe not), and etc. That, even though roughly half the Democrats in the Senate voted 'nay.'
So, while I give the DP the credit it is due, I think it is quite accurate to locate a considerable part of the problem right in the DP as well.
sofla
I forgot to mention that most of the depredations of the Patriot Act against the Bill of Rights were proposed by Clinton in the aftermath of the OKC bombing, and only kept from enactment by GOP obstruction (good on them, for maybe the only time).
Bob Kerry provided a choice anti-Clinton quote much used by the Republicans when he said Clinton was an extremely skilled liar.
sofla
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