Predictions in Politics

[noiseradio]

1. A Kerry/Edwards ticket

2. Bush drops Cheney from the ticket (citing health concerns as the reason).

3. Bush replaces Cheney with either a)Rudy Giuliani or b)Condoleeza Rice.

I think Rudy is a more likely choice, as Bush would have a better chance of winning New York. But, since Rudy is pro-choice and in favor of gay rights, Bush may have to make a different choice.

4. If Giuliani isn't on the ticket, and assuming Bush wins reelection, Rudy will be in the Cabinet, probably as Head of the Homeland Security Agency.



I know all this because I'm in the CIA and a member of the trilateral commision. I'm also a shape-shifting reptile.

[selfmademug]

Sad and scary predictions. However, you should all know that Noise is a big phoney-- I should know, cause I'm in the NSA, the Rosicrucians and that Knights of Templar thing-y.

Actually in my real job I have been called both "smiley-faced propagandist" and "sanctimonious Bolshevik".

[noiseradio]

I'm interested to know: why are the above predictions sad or scary in your opinion, Mug? You're a Bostonian; what can you tell us about Kerry?

Or were the sad/scary predictions in re: Bush?

[Lipstick]

I would love to see C. Rice on the ticket. She is brilliant and accomplished and a terrific role model for Af. Am. girls. (I'm placing a long overdue order for some books about her for my classroom.)

I'll never forget the opening to her speech at the 2000 GOP convention: "I am a Republican because in 195- the Democrats in my county would not let my Grandfather register to vote."






...just stirring the soup...

[taz]

But...correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it true that the republican/democrat affiliations have pretty much flip-flopped since that time? Didn't good ol' Strom run as a democrat at the time? I think his ideas are highly different than what most Democrats are 'about' today.

And in my opinion, it's kind of asilly reason to affiliate with one side or another based on years old policy/personal prejudices...

[selfmademug]

Kerry-- he's okay. We could do a lot worse. It's always a mix, of course-- he's a solid Dem and so am I but I'm sure it wouldn't take 2 minutes to find something he voted on that would piss me off. He supported the war a bit too gung-ho-ly for my taste, for instance, and if memory serves, he is not against the death penalty, which I am, strongly. He has been a good voice for Massachusetts on lots of topics however, and good for the country, too-- we're lucky to have 2 powerhouse senators (the other being Ted Kennedy). I'll vote for him against Bush with a clear conscience, and I do think he's more electable than Dean. I think he's a good man, but I don't love him.

There are lots of African American women who could and have been tapped who are better than C. Rice, IMHO.

The Bush predictions were the scary ones! I don't melt over a Kerry-Edwards ticket but if they beat Bush I'd be over the moon!

[double dutchess]

I'll never forget the opening to her speech at the 2000 GOP convention: "I am a Republican because in 195- the Democrats in my county would not let my Grandfather register to vote."

That's funny, comming from a woman who works for a guy whose dad voted againist the Civil Rights Act.

I agree with Taz, it's silly to let past mistakes influence judgement now.

[bobster]

Well, it wasn't so much the Democrats and the Republican flip-flopping since the Jim Crow era as from the Civil War. After the Civil War, Northern Democrats slowly evolved (and then devolved) into the party we know today. In the South, they stayed essentially reactionary with occasional bouts of populism or even liberalism (see Huey Long, Russell Long, LBJ even). Then, they eventually dropped the pretense and became Republicans. (Phil Gramm, etc.)

Personally, I think Kerry would be a decent President -- though I'm deeply disturbed, still, by his support for the war -- but I DON'T think he's that electable (though I do think this is a questionable basis for voting -- it's like we're all a bunch of little strategists and it leads to the kind of timid choices which have all but destroyed the Democratic party IMO). Unlike Dean, the Dukakis parrallels here are a possibility. Still, maybe he can find some inner steel now that he's learned that kowtowing isn't the way to go.

Edwards is an absolutely electrifying speaker, hitting all the right notes for a populist democrat. I'm still highly skeptical that he might be just a refined version of Clinton, which is the last thing we need (well, except for four more years of idiot-boy).

Dean, I'm a feeling a lot more skeptical about, though I was a die-hard Deaniac before "I Have a Scream" night and its aftermath. (Also, seeing Edwards has shaken my faith that Dean was the only real leader of the group.)

So, I too, am guessing Kerry and Edwards. But I'd prefer Edwards and Kerrey! Or maybe Edwards and Clark (or some real foreign policy wonk).

Dean, though, could still pull it out and, I am convinced, win -- though he needs to figure out how to tug the populist string which is probably the ONLY way a democrat can get elected.

[mood swung]

I ordinarily vote a strict GDI. If you could see my local primary ballot, you'd understand why I change parties with the breeze. But this is the first year of my electoral life that I understand why my parents used to vote for a 'winner'--the ABBA thing.

[noiseradio]

Wow. You guys get yer buttons pushed pretty damn easily. (And they say I'm sensitive). Lipstick is devilling you. That it worked so quickly is hi-freakin-larious.

Mug,

Gracias for the lowdown on Kerry. Follow-up to your last post: What about the Bush predictions scares you? I'll assume you're not a Dick Cheney fan, so what is it about the prospect of Giuliani (a very moderate Republican, who is pro choice and in favor of gay rights) or Condi Rice that bugs you so much? I'm not being confrontational; I just genuinely want to know what people think about these things. A switch of that kind woould only be for strategic reasons. What I wonder is if Rudy or Condi scares Dems more than Cheney, and if so, why?

[noiseradio]

That's funny, comming from a woman who works for a guy whose dad voted againist the Civil Rights Act.

I agree with Taz, it's silly to let past mistakes influence judgement now.

Aren't you letting Papa Bush's past mistakes influence your judgement of C. Rice and W? I smell a double standard, double dutchess.

[noiseradio]

Taz,

Actually, Strom ran as a Dixiecrat, something of his own invention. He left the Democratic Party when Truman integrated the military--over his own party's objections. He only became a Republican as a protest to the integration of the military. Until the period immediately following WW2, conventional wisdom was that the GOP was the party of civil rights (Lincoln, etc...). I'm not 100% sure what flipped the switch, but certainly when Kennedy/Johnson started showing support for Civil Rights legislation, there seemes to have been a defection of Thurmond-style Democrats to the Republican Party. It's all a bit of a haze in the 50's and early 60's. Eisenhower had sent the military in to enforce school integration, and he was a Republican. But he was not interested in pushing for corrective legislation, and he probably wouldn't have sent in the troops if the Supreme Court hadn't forced his hand. I personally think that Kennedy and Johnson (especially Johnson) desere tremendous credit for making civil rights their issue. By doing so, they managed to define their party as the party of civil rights--even over the objections of a lot of Democrats. Nixon followed up by slashing and cutting the heart out of the Great Society programs, turning back progress in Civil Rights. By doing so, he clearly defined the GOP as the party of the status quo--over the objections of more than a few Republicans. But I think it's safe to say that by the time Johnson was pushing for passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the parties had essentially switched places from Civil War/Reconstruction days in terms of attitudes about Civil Rights.

[double dutchess]

Aren't you letting Papa Bush's past mistakes influence your judgement of C. Rice and W? I smell a double standard, double dutchess.

my god, i should have known somebody would misunderstand my point... I meant that Ms. Rice should think before she says such stupid shit.

I don't need to look to old Mr. Bush for reasons why I don't like his son. He gives me plenty of reasons on his own, thank you.

[noiseradio]

I think I understood you just fine. I mean, what's to misunderstand? Condi Rice asserts that her father was kept from voting by Democrats and that's why she's a Republican. You counter that it's ironic for her to say that in 2000, considering that her current employer's father voted against the Civil Rights Act 3 careers ago in 1964. Then you say that people shouldn't let past mistakes influence current judgement, which you clearly just did yourself.

If it's stupid shit for Condoleeza Rice to say, it's no less stupid shit from you.

[taz]

I think I understood you just fine. I mean, what's to misunderstand? Condi Rice asserts that her father was kept from voting by Democrats and that's why she's a Republican. You counter that it's ironic for her to say that in 2000, considering that her current employer's father voted against the Civil Rights Act 3 careers ago in 1964. Then you say that people shouldn't let past mistakes influence current judgement, which you clearly just did yourself.

If it's stupid shit for Condoleeza Rice to say, it's no less stupid shit from you.

The double standard is coming from Rice, I believe DD was just pointing it out. Which allows her to criticize Rice for HER judgement in saying something retarded like that without thinking, while at the same time not having a specific bearing on Dum-Dum or his Daddy...

[noiseradio]

So you can use a double standard to criticize someone for using a double standard.


Glad that's clear.

[Lipstick]

True Story:

I have a friend who is a yellow dog Democrat, and proud of it. She regularly makes broad, disparaging remarks about the racism of Republicans, because everyone knows Republicans are eager to “keep down” all the minorities.

A year or so ago we went to dinner together at a fantastic Italian restaurant in our town—a mom and pop type place with terrific recipes and atmosphere. My friend, we’ll call her Jenn, announced with authority that the family who owned this restaurant was the in deep with the Italian Mafia and that they had their hand in 90% of the crime in our city. She carried on with a couple of examples, as everyone knew this as accepted fact.

I told her that actually this family wasn’t Italian at all and are definitely not involved in the mafia. I used to work with a niece of the owner, whose name was Bema and whose family had come from what is now Bosnia about 20 years ago. Her uncles have 4 restaurants, actually, with similar unique and delicious food. Bema waits tables sometimes for them on the weekends to help out. Once I went with her to one of their restaurants and her uncle came out from the kitchen and gave her a hug and welcomed us all, and gave us double portions on what we ordered. If you look at them, listen to them talk, and notice that they have Baklava on the menu as well as cheesecake, it makes perfect sense. They are from the same peninsula as Greece; they are not Italian. There’s just no market for Bosnian food, so they opened Italian restaurants. If they were in the mafia, I doubt that Bema would be working in the mall or waiting tables.

Jenn looked highly skeptical, even when we talked to the waitress about the Baklava recipe and she said it was her mother’s recipe, etc. etc.

Later when it was time to pay, Jenn said, “Well, I guess half our money will go to the mafia to help fund crime. Ha ha.” She was determined to go on with her ugly belief about a very nice family and acted as though I hadn’t told her anything about them.

A few months later, there was a vote about adding public transportation to our city. I don’t know of many cities of 350,000 people that have NO public transportation of any kind. The city wanted to add a bus system that would work with the other systems in neighboring towns in the D/FW area. What it would effectively do would be to give a large group of minorities in the nearest town access to jobs in our town, bringing them in close contact….

Jenn and her equally yellow parents actually went to a city council meeting to protest this plan. They said that the buses would pollute their neighborhood.

[noiseradio]

Which only goes to show that there are hypocrites in both parties and that it's ludicrous to make broad sweeping generalizations about any party or group of people based on the actions of some of its members.

[HungupStrungup]

2. Bush drops Cheney from the ticket (citing health concerns as the reason).

3. Bush replaces Cheney with either a)Rudy Giuliani or b)Condoleeza Rice.

I know all this because I'm in the CIA and a member of the trilateral commision. I'm also a shape-shifting reptile.

This scenario is never happening. Surely you know Cheney is one of the top people with the Trilateral Commission, and come to think of it, another shape-shifting reptile.

Rudy is a moderate on social issues and too independent as well, therefore not acceptable to the people who really run W's administration. And Condi Rice loses W more voters in a few key states than he would pick up. If Cheney decides not to run again, and it would be his choice rather than Shrub's, he can only be replaced by a like-minded individual, a Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay type. Hey, maybe Bob Barr or Bob Dornan!

Rudy's no cabinet secretary either, unless it's Attorney General, and W can't replace Ashcroft without pissing off the religious right.

Here's the text of another NY Times op-ed piece by Paul Krugman:

January 27, 2004

Red Ink Realities

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Even conservatives are starting to admit that George Bush isn't serious when he claims to be doing something about the exploding budget deficit. At best — to borrow the already classic language of the State of the Union address — his administration is engaged in deficit reduction-related program activities.

But these admissions have been accompanied by an urban legend about what went wrong. According to cleverly misleading reports from the Heritage Foundation and other like-minded sources, the deficit is growing because Mr. Bush isn't sufficiently conservative: he's allowing runaway growth in domestic spending. This myth is intended to divert attention from the real culprit: sharply reduced tax collections, mainly from corporations and the wealthy.

Is domestic spending really exploding? Think about it: farm subsidies aside, which domestic programs have received lavish budget increases over the last three years? Education? Don't be silly: No Child Left Behind is rapidly turning into a sick joke.

In fact, many government agencies are severely underfinanced. For example, last month the head of the National Park Service's police admitted to reporters that her force faced serious budget and staff shortages, and was promptly suspended.

A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities does the math. While overall government spending has risen rapidly since 2001, the great bulk of that increase can be attributed either to outlays on defense and homeland security, or to types of government spending, like unemployment insurance, that automatically rise when the economy is depressed.

Why, then, do we face the prospect of huge deficits as far as the eye can see? Part of the answer is the surge in defense and homeland security spending. The main reason for deficits, however, is that revenues have plunged. Federal tax receipts as a share of national income are now at their lowest level since 1950.

Of course, most people don't feel that their taxes have fallen sharply. And they're right: taxes that fall mainly on middle-income Americans, like the payroll tax, are still near historic highs. The decline in revenue has come almost entirely from taxes that are mostly paid by the richest 5 percent of families: the personal income tax and the corporate profits tax. These taxes combined now take a smaller share of national income than in any year since World War II.

This decline in tax collections from the wealthy is partly the result of the Bush tax cuts, which account for more than half of this year's projected deficit. But it also probably reflects an epidemic of tax avoidance and evasion. Everyone who wants to understand what's happening to the tax system should read "Perfectly Legal," the new book by David Cay Johnston, The Times's tax reporter, who shows how ideologues have made America safe for wealthy people who don't feel like paying taxes.

I was particularly struck by Mr. Johnston's description of the carefully staged Senate Finance Committee hearings in 1997-1998. Senators Trent Lott and Frank Murkowski accused the I.R.S. of "Gestapo"-like tactics, and Congress passed new rules that severely restricted the I.R.S.'s ability to investigate suspected tax evaders. Only later, when the cameras were no longer rolling, did it become clear that the whole thing was a con. Most of the charges weren't true, and there was good reason to believe that the star witness, who dramatically described how I.R.S. agents had humiliated him, really was engaged in major-league tax evasion (he eventually paid $23 million, insisting he had done no wrong).

And this was part of a larger con. What's playing out in America right now is the bait-and-switch strategy known on the right as "starve the beast." The ultimate goal is to slash government programs that help the poor and the middle class, and use the savings to cut taxes for the rich. But the public would never vote for that.

So the right has used deceptive salesmanship to undermine tax enforcement and push through upper-income tax cuts. And now that deficits have emerged, the right insists that they are the result of runaway spending, which must be curbed.

While this strategy has been remarkably successful so far, it also offers a big opportunity to the opposition. So here's a test for the Democratic contenders: details of your proposals aside, which of you can do the best job explaining the ongoing budget con to the American people?



Whomever the Dems nominate needs to incorporate the facts about this con job as a major campaign theme.

"Deficit reduction-related program activities" ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

[selfmademug]

Thanks for that, HS, it's a great piece.

I *heart* Paul Krugman. I had the great good fortune of meeting him when he came to address a labor committee I served on.

[Goody2Shoes]

Yes, thanks Hungup.

Krugman for President.

[noiseradio]

Hungup,

Your analysis of why my predictions won't come true sounds very good. They're not wishes, just predictions. Still, I think Cheney is on his way out. (Though I forgot he was a shape-shifter).

If it turns out I'm right, can I have a dollar?

[taz]

Which only goes to show that there are hypocrites in both parties and that it's ludicrous to make broad sweeping generalizations about any party or group of people based on the actions of some of its members.

Which is exactly the point made about Rice...she is making those same generalizations and basing an entire political doctrine on it. Hardly somebody I'd feel should be vice president....

[double dutchess]

Thank you, Taz, you understood exactly what I meant.

Noise, why must you keep insisting that I'm using a double standard? What did I ever do to you?

[noiseradio]

Taz,

I wasn't saying Condoleeza Rice SHOULD be Vice President. I predicted that Bush MIGHT tap her for the position if he doesn't tap Giuliani first. I'm not rooting for it; I think Bush might see it as politically to his advantage to have an African American woman on his ticket instead of Dick "Dial Tone" Cheney. Pure conjecture, and that's all.

For the record, I agree that she's painting the Dems and the GOP with too broad a brush in her explanation of why she's a Republican. On the other hand, I think it's a valid gripe in the particulars of her father's situation and one that obviously affected her family. Why is it silly for people to feel strogly about a group of people who wronged them? If you were in his position, woudn't you likely feel resentment to the Democratic party?

I know people who vote for modern Democrats because they thought the Kennedy/Johnson years were great for civil rights. I agree. But what does that have to do with Carter/Mondale/Dukakis/CLinton/Gore/Kerry? The assumprion that the party that ushered in the Civil Rights Act will always be champions of that cause is just a fallible as the assumption that the Republicans (since they fought to end slavery) always remained the champions of equality.

Al Franken likes to say tha he's a Democrat because his father told him that, as Jews, they had to be for Civil Rights. His father had been a Republican, but switched in the Kennedy/Johnson years. I understand why, but I also suspect that Franken is pretty solidly a Democrat, an dthat he would back a sorry Democrat over a solid Republican, even if that Republican had a good record on Civil Rights. And that seems stupid to me.

Double Dutchess,

Because I think it's a double standard. Rice makes a statement. You think she's being a hypocrite for working for Bush, whose father once opposed Civil Rights, while claiming that she resents the Democrats of the 50's for not letting her father register to vote. Ok, so maybe she's a hypocrite.

BUT

You followed that by saying it's stupid to let people's past mistakes influence current judgement. That doesn't follow. If your second statement is right, then for Rice to work for Bush isn't all that problematic. After all, she may be following the same advice. Perhaps she has forgiven Papa Bush for his past mistakes and has decided not to judge the Shrub for his father's errors. It might still be inconsistent for her to have forgiven Papa Bush and then continue to hold a grudge against the Democratic Party. But the fact of working for Bush would be unremarkable if she were an adherent of yours and Taz's opinion that to let past errors influence present decisions is silly.

The thing is, your stone-throwing at Papa Bush is cut from the same cloth as her stone-throwing at the Democrats of the 50s. He went on to say in public that that vote was the biggest mistake he ever made as a congressman, and he apologized for it. Maybe that's good enough, and maybe it's not. But Rice wasn't working for Papa. She works for Junior. So even if Senior is forever a bastard for voting against the Civil Rights Act, that has NO BEARING on Rice working for W. I happen to agree that her statement is illogical. I also think criticizing her for working for the son of a guy who used to be on the wrong side of the same issue is just as illogical.

So that's a double standard in my book.

And you shouldn't take my comments any more personally than anyone should take yours. If you make an argument that someone's statement is "stupid shit," don't be mad when someone who may disagree with you uses the same terms.