Robert Romano, ALG:
So, despite the political catastrophe of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and the bailouts of Fannie, Freddie, AIG, GM, and Chrysler all under a Republican administration, the Senate — with the help of a “handful of GOP members” reported by the [Washington] Post — is now poised to institutionalize that authority for all time.
Too big for too big to fail? The GOP seems to think so.
Idea for a third party movement: the Anti-Incumbent Party. Instead of a jackass or a lumbering elephant, the mascot can be a hunter holding a rabbit gun and a sack.
Does that proposed mascot have a speech impediment too?
Be vewwy vewwy quiet — I’m hunting cwwooked powwiticians!
I used to think mandatory term limits were a bad idea; voters already have the right to impose term limits if they want them.
Unfortunately it seems that the average voter can’t be bothered enough to vote outside of party affiliation or name recognition.
When in doubt, freedom! Run as often as you like. If you suck and people still vote for you, they deserve the government they get. Unfortunately, in a democratic republic, so do the rest of us.
From the WP link.
Goldman Sachs has done their job. Taking some heat for the team in order to reap vast rewards down the road. A nicely managed show trial. Done well enough to earn the raves of the twin sisters of Maine.
Next up in the Left’s run of theatrical, stage-crafted, Kabuki, events will be BP. Can they bring the house down on “Cap ‘n Trade” as well as Goldman Sachs has done on Dodd’s permanent TARP? The next few months will tell.
Wait, weren’t we accused of being Republican apologists on another thread?
Maybe the mascot could get Barney Frank to denounce him as a rascally radical Republican replacement.
I’ve never been clear as to how it is that the whole of the Republicans seated in the Senate are saddled with responsibility for a failure to undertake a filibuster when under these circumstances, with only 41 votes total, it only takes a couple of defectors to make filibuster impossible? Name the defectors, fine, place the responsibility where it lies, fine, but why attribute it across the board?
We get accused of lots of stuff, Blake.
sdferr,
I believe the argument is that the GOP could stop this if they were willing to spend the political capital on it, but that the leadership has decided that it just isn’t worth it to pay off the fence-sitters. Suspicious minds might add that the leadership secretly delights in the idea of getting their hands on this new power in a couple of years.
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns; why should we let them have ideas?
I wouldn’t find that argument persuasive on its face I guess Squid, having witnessed the willfulness of various Senators from Maine lo these last few years (among others, not to single out the ladies alone).
Great, Squid, now my narrative is all screwed up.
Will this travesty address the excesses of Fannie and Freddie and all of that glorious cash that people like Raines, Gorelick (yuck), and Rahm took from them?
I keep seeing people on TV (I don’t know who they are, but by god they have opinions!) worrying about “how the GOP feels about the Tea Party”, or words to that effect.
Look, guys: wrong question.
It doesn’t matter how the old bulls feel about the tea partiers. All that matters is how the tea partiers feel about the GOP. Which, at the moment, is “not that happy”.
Here endeth the lesson
I got in an argument with Francis Cianfrocca over TARP a couple of years ago. My problem with TARP was that, no matter how necessary it might seem, politicians would screw it up.
I was assured by Mr. Cianfrocca at the time it was a necessary evil and that it would be okay.
I didn’t buy the argument at the time.
I’ve comfortably ignored Mr. Cianfrocca since then.
Yeah, this is a big fucking deal, Dodd, you damnable crook. In the modern Democrat vernacular, that is. Try it just off-mike but not really.
Back in reality land, we’re living in what used to look a lot like a buncha misled congressmen losing what’s left of their minds and demanding reality itself conform to those conceits and myths. This we call, naturally, the “reality-based party” “doing the work of the American people”, and if you like, doing it expressly against the “party of no.”
Of course, this requires the view that these fucks once had a conscience.
Anyway, I used to be disgusted…now I’m just amused. Fire every last one of the bastards.
More on the sheer lunacy of the governing classes. And the reality-based party’s tenuous grasp of that reality.
We’re way past the tipping point. What comes next is reform-by-reality. You’ll hear the collision from three thousand miles away…kinda like now.
What are you people complaining about? These politicians know what’s good for us. Pretty soon we’ll have skittle-shitting unicorns for everyone.
Hope! Change!
cranky-you didn’t get your unicorn yet? Mine got dropped off by the census taker last week.
Wait. You guys already have your unicorns?
Crap.
There are two kinds of freedom at work here. There is individual liberty, which should indeed be the default position. But there is also political power, which must be strictly limited to assure maximum
liberty.
The soi-disant “right to vote” is not an exercise of individual liberty but of political power. (Once you step into the voting booth, you’re no longer acting as a private citizen but as the holder of the office of Elector.) George Washington placed upon himself a limitation on that power: limit two terms. He could easily have been President for Life, but he had already turned down the job of King George I of America. Over a century of Presidents respected that limitation, and as soon as anyone violated it, we wrote it into the Constitution formally.
The main problem I have with most term limit proposals is that they allow a candidate to be the entrenched incumbent for N-1 terms, followed by the Nth term as a lame duck accountable to no one (like my own Congressman, Dennis Moore, who is retiring at the end of this session).
The Articles of Confederation had what I think is the best kind of term limits: No individual delegate to Congress could serve more than three years out of any consecutive six. I have long advocated something similar, which I call the Grover Cleveland Amendment: No one who holds the office of President, Senator, or Representative for at least one year of a term would be eligible to serve any portion of the next consecutive term in that same office. (The year allows for a Veep running for POTUS to take over and allow time for a different candidate to emerge.)
I understand the enormity of what G. Washington did when he imposed a term limit on himself – I also think it’s informative that this same limit was self-imposed until a certain Democrat president from the 20th century.
The idealist in me thinks, however, that a well-informed polity will make the codification of term-limits unnecessary. Passing laws to overcome perceived “weaknesses” in human nature sounds like something those Other People do (no trans fats for you! Bad example, Bloomberg (“R”)), and I’m reflexively against that. On the other hand, I’m no anarchist and I have no objections to laws against rape and murder, to use a couple of examples.
Let’s just say I’d have to think really hard about a term-limits law, but I’m starting to come around.
I rather like this imagery; specifically, the hunter dude with the crying weebeastie leaning against his leg.
Love it. Elmer Fudd with a wicked gleam in his eye. And Bugs Bunny’s stuffed head over the mantel.
The tag line could be: “Go ahead. Keep misunderestimating us. We dare you.”
The real idiots would make fun of it. The rest of us would laugh in appreciation….
The problem, Nukem, is that unless we’re prepared to actually bag some of them, they won’t take it seriously.
Capability without will is useless.
If I had a nickel for every dead body in the name of socialism and communism, I’d be a fucking billionaire. How fucking stupid and off topic can one troll be?
If I had a nickel for every bleeding-heart liberal politician whose idea of private charitable giving is taking a tax write-off on his used underwear…
If I had a nickel for every Obama cabinet nominee who quit because of tax-related problems…
How’s THAT for hypocrisy?
To be honest, I’d rather hear about family values from a guy who’s had an affair than preaching on any topic from what passes for a progg “moralist”. The former typically has the grace to say he did something wrong, and here is how he made amends with his own values.
The latter just keeps tweaking his values so he wasn’t ever wrong to begin with. Heaven forbid mankind is flawed.
You know what’s funny? What’s funny is going back through Yelverton’s archives and seeing how he’s contrasted that paragon of evil Newt Gingrich with the tower of virtue that is John Edwards.
It’s a morality comparison, you see: Gingrich abandoned her wife in her need, while Edwards stood by his woman.
That gave me a chortle, it did.
Hey RA, did you notice this?
He’s no Gerry Studds, I’ll tell ya that.
Did Souter correct the record to reflect that he meant during a relationship rather than in one?
I think I’m going to look back and see when the last time I defended such behavior by a Rebublican..checking, checking, hmmm, nope, can’t say I have.
I’m glad Souder resigned, it was the right thing to do.
And now for the list of Democrats who’ve resigned due to scandal:
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Hmm, I can’t seem to think of anyone.
Perhaps another list of Democrats who are still in office despite scandal:
Charlie “I write the tax code and proceed to ignore it” Rangel
Barney “My boyfriend ran a brothel out of my house but I didn’t know it” Franks
Tim “Tax Cheat” Geithner
Richard “Yeah, I claimed I was in Vietnam but really wasn’t” Blumenthal
Robert “White Sheets” Byrd
Christopher “Friend of Angelo preferred loan from bankrupt Countrywide” Dodd
The difference is that you eating trans fats can make you have a heart attack or stroke or whatever. But you re-electing someone to be Presidente por vida can hurt me, (kinda like rape and murder) as the only person to violate Washington’s Limit showed. That’s why Honduras’ constitution prohibits continuismo; leaving an executive in power has shown to be bad for the liberty of the people.
The burden of proof is on the person advocating the limitation of personal liberty, but the exercise of political power is not personal liberty.
OT and FWIW, but Rand Paul is throttling Trey Grayson for the KY GOP Senate nod.
[…] repeat: A hunter. In a hat. Carrying a rabbit gun and a […]
I missed that Real American thingie. Willie the racist hilljack skin flute player was calling himself Real Diplomacy in another thread. It is simply not possible for yelverton to be a bigger midget asshat than he is.
“I believe the argument is that the GOP could stop this if they were willing to spend the political capital on it, but that the leadership has decided that it just isn’t worth it to pay off the fence-sitters. Suspicious minds might add that the leadership secretly delights in the idea of getting their hands on this new power in a couple of years.”
I am sick and tired of having the Keystone Cop Republican caucus being blamed for the bank robberies when it is the Obama Democrat bank robbers – stealing our freedom and prosperity – who are the ones responsible. It’s like we have internalized the liberal narrative on everything – when in doubt, no matter what the topic subject or issue, blame the closest Republican.
If a man is raping a woman in the park, and a cop stands by and does nothing to stop it, I can remark that the cop is a worthless piece of shit. Such a remark does not mean I am blind to the rapist and his actions, nor that I support them. It just means that I think we need a better sort of person willing to put a stop to such things.