Ah, daaiwt, the infamous Chewbacca Defense! I bow before your invincible logic!
Ibc, unless you were the governor of a state or held a similar position of power, your argument simply isn't valid. Yes, pops, governors can take vacations, but not unannounced vacations that leave their state in an awful predicament. What would have happened if Sandford had been needed? Sandford disappeared for days, he left the country, and didn't tell his staff or the lieutenant governor. That is irresponsible to the nth degree and is, in my opinion, unacceptable.
As I tried to make clear in my earlier posting, while I don't condone extramariital affairs, my real issue is with the hypocrisy. Yes, we liberals have our scandals. But, last time I checked, we weren't screaming holier-than-thou to anyone who would listen. That's what makes affairs and the like so much jucier when a conservative does it, and that's why it does more damage to a Republican than a Democrat.
I think the problem is that many social conservatives want to pigeonhole themselves into a very narrow view of what is "pure and decent" in our society. Personally, I'd rather just accept law-biding, tax-paying citizens instead of stressing myself out over how they choose to live their lives.
In this way the Republican Party has bent and twisted themselves into an almost hilarious contradiction, as I pointed out in my satire posting of June 7. Here are few more examples:
-We don't like "big government" but we'd like to make an amendment to the constitution telling you who you're allowed to marry. -We're all for "personal freedom" but we also believe in finding out which library books you've read, just in case. -We're for fiscal responsibility, but we let that Bush guy run us into the ground for eight years and didn't really fight him. Not to mention the previous Bush... -We won't leave any child behind, but we'll cut educational and social programs that can help them succeed. -We'll make speeches praising the troops but won't say a word about their pay and benefits being cut. We'll say a vote against a war spending bill is unamerican, unless it's under President Obama, then we'll find an excuse not to vote for it. -We're all about family, but if you lose your job and your health insurance, you're on your own.
No wonder your party is falling apart! People have left in droves because they are tired of the hypocrisy and the direction the country was heading under your leadership. If you actually want to run for office on the basis of fiscal sanity and mainstream values, more power to you; you might have a shot. As it stands,you could be in for a long drought.
The difference between the Mark Sandford affair and the Bill Clinton affair or--in a larger sense--democratic and republican affairs...are you serious?
The difference is that the Republicans have labeled themselves the party of God. They run on traditional values, lecture us on the sanctity of marriage, and just generally try to paint themselves as holier-than-thou. Then they try to get away with the stuff they're telling everyone else is unacceptable.
Then there's the hypocrisy, which is what most people really have a problem with. Ensign was one of the loudest voices against Clinton when that happened, and when Craig got into his airport trouble, he said he hoped that if he were ever placed in a similar situation he hoped he would have the decency to resign. Yet when he had an affair and engaged in activitied that are to me worse--stuff involving his obvious conflicts of interest and misuse of donations, he not only didn't follow his own advise but continued to act like his sh*t doesn't stink. Mark Sandford, also, ran on a platform of family values and he also misued public funds.
The hypocrisy and the other issues, especially using money they shouldn't have used to further their affairs is to me much worse than actually having the affairs. It's just more examples of the do as I say not as I do politics that cost the Republicans seriously needed credibility.
And, finally, to the person who is lamenting the state of affairs because of the Democratic majorities in Congress,what you forgot to mention is the fact that these people have been ELECTED because what the Republicans did while they were elected wasn't working. And they were elected to make the changes they're trying to make because that's what the majority wanted after eight years of Bush.
The real irony here is that JAFO and the other conservative's who make this accusation are accusing Sotomayor of exactly what she didn't do.
In that ruling, which again was first made by a district judge and was unanimously upheld by the three-judge panel that included Sotomayor, Sotomayor and the other judges based their rulings on precedent. They followed the law even if they didn't necessarily like it--they expressed their sympathy for the firefighters--and they left it up to the Supreme Court to change the existing policy if it needed to be changed.
That is exactly how the system is supposed to work and exactly how a responsible judge is supposed to operate. You may also notice, if you bother to read the desisions that the Supreme Court was very divided on this issue and that they did not in any way put down Sotomayor or the earlier decisions.
And, Ibc, she has no history of "ruling from the bench." Give me an example--one single example of when she has done that? Give me some evidence that she's biased toward women or minorities. Give me one example of when she's been activist. Rather than just repeating the conservative talking points, how about you try some facts for a change?
And finally, it seems strange to me that conservatives can refer to empathy over and over and over again as a bad thing while at the same time urging us to have empathy and patience for Ensign and Sandford. You can't have it both ways.
I spent quite a bit of time this morning writing a rebuttal to the majority of these comments. I discussed your issues with health care reform movement in some length, focusing on the flaws in our current system and the fact that American citizens die because of it.
I also wrote pointing out the fact that ACORN has been resolved and that conservatives keep knawing that bone as one more sad attempt to cut down Obama while McCain and the Republican party had much stronger ties to voter fraud than Obama had to ACORN. Look it up if you can be bothered with some facts.
I wrote rather eloquently about the idea that just because people don't agree with you good ol' boys doesn't necessarily make us "uninformed."
Then I deleted it all because I figured something out. You keep circling the drain with the same old baseless anti-Obama talking points and your sarcasm and name-calling and fear-and-hate tactics that have gotten conservatives so far lately and I realized that what you're doing is probably the best thing you could do--for the rest of us.
So if you won't get out of the way, keep this up. Keep using the same old tired rhetoric that fewer and fewer people are listening to every day. Keep dodging the fact that you don't have any better ideas and instead toting the words of people like Limbaugh and Cheney who are jokes to the majority. The rest of us are trying to fix the mess we're in while you're becoming more and more of a characature of the GOP and the conservative movement every day.
And that's exactly what the rest of us want.
Have a good day, all. I'm going to keep reading and stay silent until I find something that resembles the actual factual, issue-based debate that WW tried to start before it veered off into the usual nonsense.
WW, conservatives are trying to make an issues where there doesn't really seem to be one. Yes, if he had been fired becasue Michelle wanted him replaced there would be a problem. There'd be a problem with conflict of interest and misuse funds. However, again, there seems to be several strong legitimate reasons for the firing.
Meanwhile Ensign doubled his mistress's salaries at both her jobs. (Hey, Republicans who donated to Ensign, guess where your money went?) Plus the mistress's nineteen-year-old son was given a paying job doing "policy work" for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is chaired by Ensign. (Hey, Republican Party Donors...)
So people are freaking out because the Obama Adminstration MIGHT do something similar to something that a Republican Senator actually DID. And again, I think whomever is chosen to replace Walpin, it's a non-issue because the firing seems to me to be legitimate.
Until they actually replace him, I'm not concerned with the Michelle angle to this whole story, and it seems ironic to me that conservatives are up in arms about who might replace Walpin in the midst of the Ensign mess.
Ibc, while Walpin alleges that he was fired for sniffing out wrongdoing of a politically connected former NBA player who has gone on to become mayor of Sacramento, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, meanwhile found that Walpin's conclusions seemed overstated and did not accurately reflect all the information gathered in the investigation. Again, Walpin didn't bother with evidence that he didn't like, which is part of the many legitimate reasons why he's being fired.
This morning presidential aide Norm Eisen sent a letter to Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, the Chairman and ranking minority member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (with a copy to McCaskill), outlining a number of reasons Walpin was let go. It read:
"Mr. Walpin was removed after a review was unanimously requested by the bi-partisan Board of the Corporation. The Board's action was precipitated by a May 20, 2009 Board meeting at which Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve. Upon our review, we also determined that the Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California, a career prosecutor who was appointed to his post during the Bush Administration, had filed a complaint about Mr. Walpin's conduct with the oversight body for Inspectors General, including for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence. We further learned that Mr. Walpin had been absent from the Corporation's headquarters, insisting upon working from his home in New York over the objections of the Corporation's Board; that he had exhibited a lack of candor in providing material information to decision makers; and that he has engaged in other troubling and inappropriate conduct. Mr. Walpin had become unduly disruptive to agency operations, impairing his effectiveness and, for the reasons stated above, losing the confidence of the Board and the agency. It was for these reasons that Mr. Walpin was removed."
So the board of the corporation unanimously asked for him to be fired, which led them to check in out. During their investigation they learned he wasn't presenting evidence he felt weakened his cases, he wasn't going to work even though the board asked him to, he wasn't being honest with investigators, his conduct was "troubling and inappropriate," and "disruptive." Any one of those reasons would be sufficient. I'm sorry, but I think this is pretty much over.
It's your call July 15, 2009
This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.
July 15, 2009 at 11:15 p.m. ( permalink )
It's your call, July 1, 2009
Ah, daaiwt, the infamous Chewbacca Defense! I bow before your invincible logic!
Ibc, unless you were the governor of a state or held a similar position of power, your argument simply isn't valid. Yes, pops, governors can take vacations, but not unannounced vacations that leave their state in an awful predicament. What would have happened if Sandford had been needed? Sandford disappeared for days, he left the country, and didn't tell his staff or the lieutenant governor. That is irresponsible to the nth degree and is, in my opinion, unacceptable.
As I tried to make clear in my earlier posting, while I don't condone extramariital affairs, my real issue is with the hypocrisy. Yes, we liberals have our scandals. But, last time I checked, we weren't screaming holier-than-thou to anyone who would listen. That's what makes affairs and the like so much jucier when a conservative does it, and that's why it does more damage to a Republican than a Democrat.
I think the problem is that many social conservatives want to pigeonhole themselves into a very narrow view of what is "pure and decent" in our society. Personally, I'd rather just accept law-biding, tax-paying citizens instead of stressing myself out over how they choose to live their lives.
In this way the Republican Party has bent and twisted themselves into an almost hilarious contradiction, as I pointed out in my satire posting of June 7. Here are few more examples:
-We don't like "big government" but we'd like to make an amendment to the constitution telling you who you're allowed to marry.
-We're all for "personal freedom" but we also believe in finding out which library books you've read, just in case.
-We're for fiscal responsibility, but we let that Bush guy run us into the ground for eight years and didn't really fight him. Not to mention the previous Bush...
-We won't leave any child behind, but we'll cut educational and social programs that can help them succeed.
-We'll make speeches praising the troops but won't say a word about their pay and benefits being cut. We'll say a vote against a war spending bill is unamerican, unless it's under President Obama, then we'll find an excuse not to vote for it.
-We're all about family, but if you lose your job and your health insurance, you're on your own.
No wonder your party is falling apart! People have left in droves because they are tired of the hypocrisy and the direction the country was heading under your leadership. If you actually want to run for office on the basis of fiscal sanity and mainstream values, more power to you; you might have a shot. As it stands,you could be in for a long drought.
July 1, 2009 at 11:28 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
It's your call, July 1, 2009
The difference between the Mark Sandford affair and the Bill Clinton affair or--in a larger sense--democratic and republican affairs...are you serious?
The difference is that the Republicans have labeled themselves the party of God. They run on traditional values, lecture us on the sanctity of marriage, and just generally try to paint themselves as holier-than-thou. Then they try to get away with the stuff they're telling everyone else is unacceptable.
Then there's the hypocrisy, which is what most people really have a problem with. Ensign was one of the loudest voices against Clinton when that happened, and when Craig got into his airport trouble, he said he hoped that if he were ever placed in a similar situation he hoped he would have the decency to resign. Yet when he had an affair and engaged in activitied that are to me worse--stuff involving his obvious conflicts of interest and misuse of donations, he not only didn't follow his own advise but continued to act like his sh*t doesn't stink. Mark Sandford, also, ran on a platform of family values and he also misued public funds.
The hypocrisy and the other issues, especially using money they shouldn't have used to further their affairs is to me much worse than actually having the affairs. It's just more examples of the do as I say not as I do politics that cost the Republicans seriously needed credibility.
And, finally, to the person who is lamenting the state of affairs because of the Democratic majorities in Congress,what you forgot to mention is the fact that these people have been ELECTED because what the Republicans did while they were elected wasn't working. And they were elected to make the changes they're trying to make because that's what the majority wanted after eight years of Bush.
July 1, 2009 at 11:07 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Firefighters win Supreme Court appeal
The real irony here is that JAFO and the other conservative's who make this accusation are accusing Sotomayor of exactly what she didn't do.
In that ruling, which again was first made by a district judge and was unanimously upheld by the three-judge panel that included Sotomayor, Sotomayor and the other judges based their rulings on precedent. They followed the law even if they didn't necessarily like it--they expressed their sympathy for the firefighters--and they left it up to the Supreme Court to change the existing policy if it needed to be changed.
That is exactly how the system is supposed to work and exactly how a responsible judge is supposed to operate. You may also notice, if you bother to read the desisions that the Supreme Court was very divided on this issue and that they did not in any way put down Sotomayor or the earlier decisions.
And, Ibc, she has no history of "ruling from the bench." Give me an example--one single example of when she has done that? Give me some evidence that she's biased toward women or minorities. Give me one example of when she's been activist. Rather than just repeating the conservative talking points, how about you try some facts for a change?
And finally, it seems strange to me that conservatives can refer to empathy over and over and over again as a bad thing while at the same time urging us to have empathy and patience for Ensign and Sandford. You can't have it both ways.
June 30, 2009 at 11:13 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Your letters, June 26, 2009
I spent quite a bit of time this morning writing a rebuttal to the majority of these comments. I discussed your issues with health care reform movement in some length, focusing on the flaws in our current system and the fact that American citizens die because of it.
I also wrote pointing out the fact that ACORN has been resolved and that conservatives keep knawing that bone as one more sad attempt to cut down Obama while McCain and the Republican party had much stronger ties to voter fraud than Obama had to ACORN. Look it up if you can be bothered with some facts.
I wrote rather eloquently about the idea that just because people don't agree with you good ol' boys doesn't necessarily make us "uninformed."
Then I deleted it all because I figured something out. You keep circling the drain with the same old baseless anti-Obama talking points and your sarcasm and name-calling and fear-and-hate tactics that have gotten conservatives so far lately and I realized that what you're doing is probably the best thing you could do--for the rest of us.
So if you won't get out of the way, keep this up. Keep using the same old tired rhetoric that fewer and fewer people are listening to every day. Keep dodging the fact that you don't have any better ideas and instead toting the words of people like Limbaugh and Cheney who are jokes to the majority. The rest of us are trying to fix the mess we're in while you're becoming more and more of a characature of the GOP and the conservative movement every day.
And that's exactly what the rest of us want.
Have a good day, all. I'm going to keep reading and stay silent until I find something that resembles the actual factual, issue-based debate that WW tried to start before it veered off into the usual nonsense.
June 26, 2009 at 12:36 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
It's your call June 24, 2009
I agree wholeheartedly with the last caller.
June 24, 2009 at 11:51 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Your letters June 20, 2009
WW, conservatives are trying to make an issues where there doesn't really seem to be one. Yes, if he had been fired becasue Michelle wanted him replaced there would be a problem. There'd be a problem with conflict of interest and misuse funds. However, again, there seems to be several strong legitimate reasons for the firing.
Meanwhile Ensign doubled his mistress's salaries at both her jobs. (Hey, Republicans who donated to Ensign, guess where your money went?) Plus the mistress's nineteen-year-old son was given a paying job doing "policy work" for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is chaired by Ensign. (Hey, Republican Party Donors...)
So people are freaking out because the Obama Adminstration MIGHT do something similar to something that a Republican Senator actually DID. And again, I think whomever is chosen to replace Walpin, it's a non-issue because the firing seems to me to be legitimate.
June 20, 2009 at 2:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Your letters June 20, 2009
Until they actually replace him, I'm not concerned with the Michelle angle to this whole story, and it seems ironic to me that conservatives are up in arms about who might replace Walpin in the midst of the Ensign mess.
June 20, 2009 at 1:34 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Your letters June 20, 2009
Ibc, while Walpin alleges that he was fired for sniffing out wrongdoing of a politically connected former NBA player who has gone on to become mayor of Sacramento, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, meanwhile found that Walpin's conclusions seemed overstated and did not accurately reflect all the information gathered in the investigation. Again, Walpin didn't bother with evidence that he didn't like, which is part of the many legitimate reasons why he's being fired.
June 20, 2009 at 1:31 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Your letters June 20, 2009
This morning presidential aide Norm Eisen sent a letter to Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, the Chairman and ranking minority member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (with a copy to McCaskill), outlining a number of reasons Walpin was let go. It read:
"Mr. Walpin was removed after a review was unanimously requested by the bi-partisan Board of the Corporation. The Board's action was precipitated by a May 20, 2009 Board meeting at which Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve. Upon our review, we also determined that the Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California, a career prosecutor who was appointed to his post during the Bush Administration, had filed a complaint about Mr. Walpin's conduct with the oversight body for Inspectors General, including for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence. We further learned that Mr. Walpin had been absent from the Corporation's headquarters, insisting upon working from his home in New York over the objections of the Corporation's Board; that he had exhibited a lack of candor in providing material information to decision makers; and that he has engaged in other troubling and inappropriate conduct. Mr. Walpin had become unduly disruptive to agency operations, impairing his effectiveness and, for the reasons stated above, losing the confidence of the Board and the agency. It was for these reasons that Mr. Walpin was removed."
So the board of the corporation unanimously asked for him to be fired, which led them to check in out. During their investigation they learned he wasn't presenting evidence he felt weakened his cases, he wasn't going to work even though the board asked him to, he wasn't being honest with investigators, his conduct was "troubling and inappropriate," and "disruptive." Any one of those reasons would be sufficient. I'm sorry, but I think this is pretty much over.
June 20, 2009 at 1:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )