BS: Untied

Subject: BS: Untied
From: Slag
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 04:43 PM

Today is the day we elect many of our PUBLIC SERVANTS. Some of them are chosen to LEAD us when we need a leader. Chief among them is, well, the Commander in Chief. The duties of the President are pretty much the same as any leader of an organization: 1) Define reality 2) Become a servant to all 3) Do his or her very best for as many as possible 4) have a grateful heart for the opportunity to serve.

The first elected President of my party was Abraham Lincoln. If you have never read his history you have missed the paradigm for any elected leader. He defined reality: 1)the Union must be preserved at any cost 2) slavery was a great evil which must be eliminated. Slavery was secondary to the preservation of the Union because if the union were defeated then slavery would persist and the several states would be so weakened that there would be no ability to resist foreign interests and adventures.

During the last eight years the behavior of the Democrat Party has, in my opinion, been appalling. They have been divisive at every turn. In a tantrum unparalleled, they have dragged their collective feet, thrown sand into the political works, pouted and fumed endlessly because "their guy didn't win the election". In a thread a few months ago I noted this and said then that I would encourage all conservative to give back to the Dems exactly what they had been dishing out should they win the election! I was feeling a little funky and feisty. Knowing that all who post here are truly devoid of any REAL political bias you can imagine the response that sentiment received!

I have to admit that there are a few conservatives who also show the same characteristics for which I castigated the liberals. Two wrongs do not make a right.

In truth, I stand with Lincoln. The Union must be preserved at all cost. Being united (and not "Untied") is what has made this nation of ours great. We can acknowledge our differences and point out the short-comings of our opponent party and continued to work for our own ideals or vision of "reality" but we MUST NOT undermine the union of these several states. I will expect our elected servants to SERVE us, to address the greater needs of the people as a whole, to do the things that are too big to do on an individual or even a statewide basis. In peril I expect our Commander in Chief to be level headed and to made honest and best informed decisions possible and if that peril leads to armed conflict I will support his leadership. If he starts rattling ball bearings in his hand and talking about the strawberries, I will openly oppose him. The Union must be preserved. That is foremost and above all.

When I say that I love my country, that means ALL of YOU! You are my country and we are in this thing together. It might be by accident of birth or by choice but we are one in this United States of America. Like any family we have disagreements and some are pretty hot but it's a family matter and when anyone assaults a member of my family I expect to see something done about it, either by me or those who are called to be protector of our political brethren. I know not all of you share this view. Some of you are more "g l o b a l" in your outlook. Well that may be but I don't see the world rushing to help you (us) when we are attacked (granted, with a few notable exceptions). We are a sovereign country and we OUGHT to put our own interests first. Having done so in the past has enabled the US to share its progress and wealth of many kinds with the world. That's my kind of globalism and I'm very liberal thinking in that.

I would hope that all Americans would share this view. We could really accomplish some great things and be a benefit to the entire world. Leave off the bickering and backbiting. Get behind our elected representatives, public servants and leaders and help advance the cause of The United States of America.

I'm Slag and I approve of this message!

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 04:50 PM

This would be much more likely to gather support (from me anyway) if you had left out the third paragraph. It doesn't usually pay to get folks hackles up and then call for unity.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 05:13 PM

I agree with KB...


and....the DEMOCRATIC party has engaged in appalling behavior? You mean all those Republican scandals and convictions for various crimes and political embarrassments were part of my imagination?

But, yeah....it IS important to get beyond all that.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Sawzaw
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 05:14 PM

Good Message Slag.

However it is my understanding that the Republican Party was formed to prevent the spread of slavery to new states as they were admitted to the Union. They would probably would have wanted to eliminate slavery but thought it was too firmly entrenched in the slave states but they could prevent the spread.

And I would like to say that the Republican have grown lazy, morally corrupt and on the take over the years that they have dominated the Federal Government. They got the big head. Hubris.

I think a mixture of both Democrats and Republicans is in the best interest of America. Then they have to compromise and it keeps them on their toes and wary of loosing power and not being re elected.

And if lobbying could some how be eliminated it would make the government more honest. One lobbying group exists to counter act another and whoever corrupts the government the most wins. I am talking about big business lobbies as well as things like NRA, ARA, unions, screw them. Let the American people decide on a one for one basis what they want.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Slag
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 05:17 PM

Facts is facts. You say it isn't so? I also admitted that I have the same feelings from the other side, don't you see that? And that I ADMIT it. That's called honesty. Trust me on this. I even admitted that there are other of my leaning which feel the same. The difference is that I am AWARE of these emotions and can lay them aside. I am not going to stop being a conservbative. I am going to attempt to move my partisanship out of the forefront and pull for our nation as a WHOLE.

I know that it is difficult for folks who feel they don't have any biases to look beyond something they can't see and move into the greater arena of unity but come on, give it a try.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 05:46 PM

When something doesn't work, one stops doing it. That's called sanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: kendall
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 07:56 PM

According to A. Lincoln, the republican party was formed to free the working man from the clutches of the greedy land owner.

Now, they ARE the greedy land owner.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: catspaw49
Date: 04 Nov 08 - 08:07 PM

Yes, and all the economic problems were caused by first, Bill Clinton, and then the past two years of a Democratic congress. All was golden for all the Republican Congresses and that top notch statesman and economic wizard, President Bush the latter.

Luckily he got us into a truly wonderful war where we can keep the American spirit alive if not American GI's. Bush has been a loyal friend to his friends and they are all wealthy beyond their dreams as we gladly pay them outrageously for gasoline.

Personally, I like having a President who was so sensitive as to become almost catatonic and shit himself in the face of terrorist attacks. Its been wonderful. Yes, the Republican party is the party of choice for thinking Americans (read: assholes)

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Slag
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 12:27 AM

...and then there are those...

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 02:18 AM

Either way, the PEOPLE have spoken today.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Barry Finn
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 03:43 AM

And then there are those.............of us who heard Bush declare he'd be the Great Uniter, he did as much, along with his republican party to split this nation as has only been seen since the Civil & the Viet Nam Wars, Union perservered, my ass. He has, along with his republican party shit on our Constitution & revoked our human & civil rights, some rights that have been handed down to US from the Magna Carta (Habeas Corpus
), over 700 yrs old, in the toilet. He has made the mere mention of our name, the world over, enough to cause vomit & disgust, along with his republican party. He, the unifier, has, along with his republican party, gone it alone & against all others in this world who'd not go with him, against anyone & everyone that was not of the same heart & mind as he is, preserve the union? My ass, he's pit US against the rest of the world & brought a terror to the surface that we've never seen the likes of since the crusades, he could've along with his party been the great one who could've united the world instead he went & tried to burn it up in flames. Your sacred republican party brought on, along with Bush & company a world wide bankruptcy not seen since the Great Depression. Your republican party saw fit to snub the UN, the World Court, the Kato Accord, the global fight/war on AIDS, climate change & global warming, sex education, accessable education & health care, & you wanted to impeach Bill Clinton because he got a "Blow Job"? You're out of your f&%king mind.
This is why the democratic party, along with Obama tonight won by a landslide. You will most likely see a Supreme Court within the next coming 8 Obama yrs finally become (hopefully) balanced & it won't be because your republican party wanted to see the scales equal & on the sides of "Just-US". You will most likely see the republican party, for the next 8 yrs try to redefine itself into something that the nation can swallow, good luck. Your republican pary, along with Bush has put their heads & US so far down the toilet that, if Obama is sucessful (see how the republicans can work with the dems for a better union for the next 8 yrs) with pulling US out of this toilet that they've gotten US into, that you won't hear the toilet stop flushing republicans into the cesspool for at least (hopefully) the next few decades. They can all kiss their collective asses good-bye. We're far better off as a nation with out them, THAT's WHAT THIS ELECTION WAS ALL ABOUT. Thank our lucky stars, hope at last.

Oh, we can thank Bush, along with your republican party for coining the new word/phrase "Extreme Rendition" & for the violations of the Geneva Conventions, for commiting crimes against humanity, esculating the use of torture & reserecting the use of concentration camps outside our own borders. While I'm at it I might as well remind you of the 2 wars we are illegally waging whose cost will keep US from getting US out of the shit-hole they've put US in! Thank You republicans, it's a fine mess you've left US.

Barry   

Where have you been for the past 8 yrs Slag?????
Answer; you've had your head in the same place as your beloved republican party.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: KB in Iowa
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 09:20 AM

Slag, I never said I don't have any biases, of course I do. I was merely suggesting that when you come out swinging don't expect a group hug.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Sawzaw
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 11:46 AM

It is my hope that people stop using the term Black and White when referring to someone. Every time someone say it, it just pokes a stick in someones eye. It keeps racism alive.

Just knock it off and we all be better off.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 04:20 PM

"And then there are those.............of us who heard Bush declare he'd be the Great Uniter"


Exactly.... Waiting to see what Obama's words really end up meaning...

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:00 PM

Well, Bush was the Great Uniter---he got 80% of the public united in opposition to him.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Amos
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:19 PM

I am glad to see you standing with Lincoln, Slag, who wrote that a house divided against itself may not stand, and that we may not allow the bonds of our friendship to be broken.

The Republic Party when it was formed was built from the combined remnants of the then Whig and Democratic parties, and their support of a man who was largely viewed as inexperienced, underqualified, and risky (by his detractors of course) was curiously parallel to some of the flak the current President elect has had to deal with from the under-informed or under-discerning.

Lincoln, too, inherited a country that hat been split by hatred and class divisiveness. He too had to learn the art of bridging and reunification, indeed in a much more extreme hour of need than the present one, because his war was on our soil.

I think you will find that the first-generation Republican party stood very close to what Barack Obama represents.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:21 PM

Precisely bruce - "Waiting to see what Obama's words really end up meaning".   And not deciding in advance that he didn't mean what he said.

"Give the lad a chance", as the saying goes back here.

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:47 PM

I am so very glad that BeardedBruce and Doug R and Slag and some of these other wet blankets around here are about to get their own back.

To quote the famous Texas cock-up politician Clayton Williams: Just lie back and enjoy it, boys.

Ha!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 04:48 PM

The Onion has a story about Hillary Clinton criticizing Obama for wasting so much time and not getting down to work. Sounds like a few here are suffering from the same problem.

He is the President-elect. Give him some time. And yes - he will make some incredible mistakes. All presidents do. It comes with the job.
He will not fulfill all his campaigbn promises. Name me a president who has.

Hopefully he won't get us into another war. Hopefully he won't make the economy any worse. Hopefully he won't make us cringe in embarrassment when he opens his mouth. Hopefully.

But at least give him a week or two AFTER he is inaugerated before calling him on his screw ups.

SHEESH!

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: artbrooks
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 05:37 PM

Very true, Sinsull. Any president can do little through executive orders - he will need to get legislation passed to get any of his initiates going. The Republicans still have enough seats in the Senate to filibuster anything to death unless some of them choose to vote with the Democrats. [For the non-Yanks and civically challenged, any senator or group of senators can talk forever unless 60 of them vote for "cloture" and move a bill on to a real vote. The last count I saw, there were only 55 Democratic senators, up from 49.]

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Nov 08 - 05:49 PM

Mind, there's a time and a place for filibustering - here's James Stewart showing how it should be done. (Of course these days Mr Smith couldn't have done it, since they changed the rules.)

Subject: RE: BS: Untied
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Nov 08 - 04:44 PM

He'd have found a way...