Politics... again.

[strredwolf]

Things are a mess down in hot-air central (Washington, DC).

• A House subcomitte voted overwelmingly to attach a rider to an emergency spending bill.  The bill would fund military actions in Iraq and Aftganistan, send $19 billion to the Gulf Coast for disaster relief, and block Dubai World Ports from operating 7 seaports (including the Baltimore Port) -- setting up a possible showdown between our lame-duck President and Congress.
• Democrats are taking avantage of this, showing how badly the Republicans are fumbling about realizing they have to listen to who they represent first, and then the Pres second.

If I had control over things:

• Cancel the contract with Dubai, and rebid.  Make sure all US companies intrested are brought in (there's two lawsuits underway: CTS Inc is suing in Florida, and the NY/NJ Port Authority's suing in New Jersey)
• Order an independent review of all wiretapping by a special prosecutor.
• Introduce legislation to make FEMA an independent agency again, with connections to Homeland Security and the military.
• Introduce a seperate bill for Katrina/Rita relief.
• Whatever we did in Vietnam, don't do in Iraq and Aftganistan.  We're stuck there, and pulling out now isn't going to help.
  
• Prepare to invade Iran, by pointing a few ICBM's at it in an international effort.  If we go to war, we nuke first and pave second.  That mess has gone on for too long.  Draw straws as to who fires a ICBM.

I just contributed to MoveOn.  An opposite-party Congress is worth it's weight in gold.

Comments

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Uhh, that showdown? Not going to happen.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8G896085.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db

and I thought that the majority of the republicans were already listening to who they represent first, which is why the whole thing as so damaging to the president... *Sigh* Partisan politics "We Have The Other Side On The Ropes!!!!111oneoneone"

Nuke and pave is about the last thing we want to do in Iran. It's actually more like Afghanistan than it is Iraq and North Korea. The people there as a whole don't particularly like their government and don't fear them as much as the Iraqis ano Nkoreans feared/fear their respective "dear leaders."

The noise about the wiretapping is ridiculous once you know the targets and goals of the operation. Almost everyone who understands what is going on wants to change the law rather than stop the operation.

As far as MoveOn goes, they're most likely to cause the democrats to lose rather than win. People are tired of their platform and their vitriolic rhetoric. If the Democrats want to become a viable party again they'll kick fanatic groups like that to the curb and go back to their roots.

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard later that not only did the bill go veto-proof, but DP World (got it right) is going to sell it to a US "Entity" out of the fireball it's caused.

Would a change of government in Iran, perferably by someone else's hands, be worth it? I'm not so sure that it will work effectively, since there is a heavy religious influence on the government. You would have to remove the religious influence first, which is much harder. Iraq was handled correctly by the world with one exception -- we should of rebuilt the government then. North Korea deserves the change in government, but I think it will have a heavy Chinese influence to do the right thing.

I do know the overall goals for the wiretapping, but it's not known if the methods are illegal. There is a law already in place about that. I'd want them to follow the law until the courts have ruled on the previous items -- something that is too *!)@#( eazy to do!

The Democrats as a party have a wide base for their roots, including MoveOn and some religous groups. The Republican base is mainly some business groups and the Christian Coalition, the latter getting more and more radically conservative. They're injecting more religion into government then what I want, which is a very bad thing.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

The religious influence on the government is not widely popular with the people. They actually resent this to an extent.

We're far too weak in that region to actually affect regime change in North Korea. Weaker even than we were in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only truly friendly countries there that would support us are Japan and Taiwan. South Korea has been on a slow slide to the dark side for a number of years, and generally the youth of South Korea do not agree with any of the pro-US government officials and in general they want to reconcile with North Korea. Their schools are actually very anti-US, anti-Japan and Pro-North Korea in their teachings as well. Gord's website had quite a bit on this in their forums awhile back.

The problem with the existing laws are as follows.

The way it's done now: Someone outside the US who is a known Al Queda member or operative calls someone in the US. They wiretap it outside the US to figure out if it's a call to activate some sleeper cell in the US and to determine if they are setting up other plans.

The way the law says you have to do it: Someone outside the US who is a known Al Queda member calls someone in the US. They make a log of the phone number, ignoring the contents of the call which could be triggering a terrorist event. They go to a secret court which has months of backlog and legally have a minimum turnaround time of 3 days. They may or may not get approval, then tap the phone inside the US and hope that that person calls back and that number wasn't just a throwaway trigger number.

Clearly this isn't easy nor is it a sane way to do intelligence operations where you have to be right every single time.

I'm going to throw another post in since I hit their 4300 character limit. *grumble*

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

The republican base is wide and varied as well. In fact, there's almost more disagreement philosophically inside the republican base than there is in the Democrats. Your simplification misses a wide variety of warring groups inside. The one major thread that most of the groups agree on is that having a military that is capable of defending us is a good thing. Past that almost everything else is up for debate.

The major group you're missing is the Archaeo-Liberals (Neo-conservatives.) They're a group that believes in just about everything the socialist branch of the Democrats do, except that unlike the socialists they believe the US needs a strong military. (Reagan Democrats, I've heard them called.) They're placating the Fiscal conservatives with tax cuts and utilizing the untapped potential of the Social conservatives (Christian Coalition, as you say) by pushing through a number of issues that appeal to them. (Abortion, gay marriage, etc.)

You can easily break the fiscal conservatives and social conservatives up into many other sub branches as well. Fiscal conservatives come as large business owners, small business owners, libertarians, and a number of other tiny factions. The two sizes of businesses frequently have opposing viewpoints on many issues. Almost all fiscal conservatives believe in Smaller government, something that the Archaeo-liberals violently disagree with, as evidenced by their massive spending programs in the last 5 years. The fiscal conservatives have been grumbling for a couple years, but follow along because they know the alternative is worse and would lead us to another Vietnam, for example. The sad part is that they were the ones that managed to bring the Republican party to power back in 1994 and then had the whole thing hijacked.

Social conservatives generally are all across the board on secular issues like small government, and thus have generally followed like sheep as the archaeo-liberal branch placates them and pushes forward their issues.

Your knowledge of the republican party is about as limited as my knowledge of the Democrat party. All I really know is that it's composed of Green party voters including ecoterror groups like the ALF and ELF, Hereditary rich people like Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and George Soros, Movie stars and their little causes like MoveOn, Socialists, who have since changed their name to "Progressives," Anti-war movements (like MoveOn,) the jewish religious organizations, and a handful of others. The most moderate of all of those would be the Progressives and the Jewish religious organizations, since the government has moved significantly towards socialism since the 1940's. The one thing that seems to tie all of these together is that they support larger government and more government economic control. The Progressives and jewish members of the democratic party are trying desperately to distance themselves from the MoveOn/ALF/ELF/Green/Hollywood nuts without alienating them too much, because the mainstream of the country is sick of the shrillness of their message and their attacks.

To us fiscal conservatives and libertarians, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of political system with every single major party now pushing for big government. Very depressing. It feels like the Republican party is trying to exclude us most of the time, just as the jewish and moderate progressives are being squeezed out of the Democratic party mainstream by their antiwar/pro-terrorist groups. I just don't think there's anyone that Fiscal conservatives can align with in the current political atmosphere. I suppose the best thing for the democrats would be to split off from the democratic party and build a new base. The old branch would sink into obscurity likely like the green party has. I suspect they're so addicted to the money from those groups that it'll never happen though.