My recent posts here and here on how bifurcated America has become because of our red and blue politics is, no doubt, a passing phase. We old farts will all die and our children will slap the dust off their dungarees and adopt equally foolish political agendas. I have lived through the bifurcation being a stubborn “liberal” Republican who was pushed to the sidelines and who chose to spend the last twenty years twitting the purges. My first precinct caucus was 1970. In 1992 I ran as an Independent candidate for Congress against both the Democrat Jim Oberstar and the Republican Phil Herwig. The Republicans good naturedly let me back into their caucuses after that and I subsequently ran as a Republican in two legislative campaigns in 2000 and 2002.
In 2004 (or so) I attended my first Democratic precinct caucus. I felt very out of place despite the fact that on issue after issue I agreed with the resolutions being offered up from the folks I was caucusing with.
This change is just what my generation called for back in our youth when we (not me) said of the two parties that they were so similar they were like Alice in Wonderland’s twins Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
My argument for keeping the two parties the way they were, is the very same one that Mitt’s Dad, George Romney, outlined to Barry “Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is no vice” Goldwater. He pointed to the often dysfunctional politics of the European democracies where Communists and extreme rightist parties fought for control. Romney lost that argument and today the European’s parties are more like America’s old Democrats and Republicans and our parties have taken to extreme rhetoric.
I have had one gadfly critic from the beginning of the blog in 2006, My Buddy. The emails have grown heated between us but they have not stopped except for a few months when I quit replying to his emails because of my irritation. We still come out swinging when we think the other has said something bone headed. Here’s a recent sample of our quibbles as our November 4th election draws near:
Harry:
I liked McGovern, and I voted for McGovern, but the video clip at http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/021801.htmlis an example of why http://www.foxnews.com/is my internet home page; and why I visit web pages other than that of The Lincoln Democrat; and why I am disinclined to vote for Obama. If his behavior regarding what recently happened in Benghazi; and if the lame stream media’s coverage of it doesn’t suck; please tell me why.
Your Buddy
Buddy,
The NY Times had a hurricane to cover. Big Surprise no Benghazi coverage.
I suppose you’ve forgotten the democrat’s complaints that the Lame Street Media didn’t cover the bull on WMD’s and other crap justifying Bush’s Iraq invasion. Media blindfolds can work both ways.
The outrage was amped up in the Fox segment. The Judge sounds a lot like the retard bashing Coulter and so did the interviewer. [I confused the male blowhard with the Judge who was the female interviewer] Listen to the interview again. Sounded like a bunch of cackling hysterics. Who can blame them? Looks like Benghazi is going to get the same pass the WMD’s did.
As for the lame street media, I get most of my stuff from the tax payer’s dollars at NPR. This is what they had to say about Benghazi today: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=164156200 But it’s probably not true. It comes from all those bitter enders at the CIA.
I’d like to hear Coulter and crew piss and moan about this while we dig out from the GOP’s global warming and beach front flooding debacles. Obviously, God wants Obama to win. That’s what I’d expect the Pat Robertson’s of the GOP to say.
At least my father-in-law who watches FOX all the time is hard of hearing and isn’t [always] very clear about what is being communicated. He has the good sense to be oblivious of and to Lincolndemocrat.com.
Harry
Harry:
Oh, yeah, “global warming and beach front flooding debacles” are all and entirely caused by the GOP. Aren’t you embarrassed to be uttering such bullshit?
Regarding the “pass the WMD’s” got, have you forgot that Clinton CIA appointee honcho Tenet reportedly indicated to Dubya that their existence was “a slam dunk”?
I need time to read and think about what is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=164156200. Not even NPR deserves to have anything that it says, accepted uncritically.
Your Buddy
From my Buddy:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/11/althouse-if-you-could-write-your-how.html
Harry:
Do you suppose that the MSNBC reporter was satisfied by Obama’s response to the reporter’s question? Are you satisfied by Obama’s response to the MSNBC reporter’s question? Oy.
The NPR article seems to pertain mostly to what the CIA did or didn’t do. I don’t know what the CIA did or didn’t do, but the CIA is part of the Obama administration, and we don’t seem to know what we should about what the Obama administration did or didn’t do, except that it seems to have backed away from its ludicrous position that the attack on Benghazi was solely or largely a spontaneous attack because some people were upset about that California video.
Perhaps The New York Times and other lame stream media aren’t providing much coverage of this, but it disgusts me. Mistakes will be made, and people will die from them; but subsequent presidential failure to acknowledge the mistakes, and to dissemble about them, is disgusting. Even if all of the Americans who were recently killed at Benghazi were devout Democrats, they didn’t deserve to die as they did.
Apparently my vote is going to cancel yours.
My Buddy
Buddy,
My point is, points are, that the FOX video you sent me is worse than lame.
Sure, my comment on global warming and the GOP was over the top but not by much. Remember how you raised hell over the released emails from a bunch of angry
environmental scientists a couple years ago? They were hacked in a conspiracy to debunk global warming not all that different from Grover Norquist’s fight to stop any tax increases by unseating any moderate Republican willing to consider raising taxes to deal with the growing deficit. And it worked. Americans stopped thinking that they had anything to do with warming as they send billions of tons of carbon into the Sandy fueling atmosphere..You’ve always raised Tennet’s appointment by Clinton to forgive Bush for going into Iraq. Remember what Truman said. “The Buck stops with the appointees of your predecessors.”
Go ahead and think about the PBS report. I heard an elaboration on it tonight from a general who backed it up even while criticizing the poor protection of the Benghazi consulate. This is it: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=164207549&m=164208472
100 people died in Sandy. Thousands died in Iraq. Four died in Benghazi. Let’s have some perspective, please. Honest to God [Buddy], that clip from FOX was just plain simple minded. This is a network dedicated to saving the cognitively impaired from the evil ultra liberal main street media. Screw FOX for chastising the MSM for bias. They excrete it,
And once more. They sounded hysterical…….like their chameleon was about to lose the election.
Harry
Harry:
What bothers me about the Benghazi situation is the apparent dishonesty involved. Bush and company might have been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but being wrong is not the same as being dishonest.
If you suggest that you or anyone else knows that the recent Sandy storm was caused by anthropogenic global warming, I am ready with the word “bullshitâ€.
Your Buddy
Buddy,
The last three paragraphs demostrate that Althouse thinks. I disagree with her and am far more troubled by the dogmatic GOP than by Obama who I find entirely reasonable.
I find her use of Benghazi simple minded.
Harry
Harry:
I don’t know that anyone is entirely reasonable.
Your Buddy
From my Buddy:
“Apparently my vote is going to cancel yours.”
No Buddy, My Vote will cancel yours and my wife’s will trump yours.
Harry
Oh, [ef]. This is becoming ridiculous.
From my Buddy:
That you seem to have developed a perpetual [chip on your shoulder against] the GOP, seems to have become increasingly apparent. I don’t know that the GOP is any more dogmatic than is the Democratic Party. I decline to join either tribe.
To my Buddy:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/insuring-disaster.html
Harry:
From http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/insuring-disaster.html:“Human-caused climate change “is believed to contribute to this trend,”the report said,
A lot of people believe many things. Belief, per se, proves nothing.Your Buddy
Buddy,
Unlike the GOP bitter enders I don’t discount the possibility of human caused global warming. I have the open mind not Senator Coburn.
Harry
Harry:
I, too, think that human activity might be causing global warming. I also think that it might not. I don’t think that anyone knows.
Your Buddy
Good to know that Tom Coburn isn’t the end all and be all on the topic. He’s right in opposing Grover Norquist. I’ll take what I can get from him.
Harry
