tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post1665259068106344535..comments2024-01-09T15:21:52.135-08:00Comments on Sayet Right: Missing Voters, ACORN and the Leftist MediaEvan Sayethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15989761214143022432noreply@blogger.comBlogger185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-45657412632984641892008-11-20T12:56:00.000-08:002008-11-20T12:56:00.000-08:00Heyok, let me educate you. "Reicho" refers to the ...Heyok, let me educate you. "Reicho" refers to the "Third Reich," the Nazi regime. I am sure that a good number of the people who post on this blog know that - I think that you need a crash course in history and culture.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-67481481732342631402008-11-20T08:20:00.000-08:002008-11-20T08:20:00.000-08:00Hello all - to the point.Anyone have a definition ...Hello all - to the point.<BR/><BR/>Anyone have a definition for "reichos" as has been used in several comments above.<BR/><BR/>I realize many of the people here aren't looking for insight, information, or dialogue but you can't just post a word you know and expect others to know what you mean.<BR/><BR/>What's "reichos" (I already tried googling which led me to a profile page and the urban dictionary.)HEYOKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08977257375361038670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-26338356861974114492008-11-17T18:29:00.000-08:002008-11-17T18:29:00.000-08:00...make that gullible. But then, fool me twice be......make that <I>gullible</I>. But then, fool me twice becomes shame on me. And the peeps are NOT going to be buying the Dem BS line again in 2012.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-82892942871036351922008-11-16T20:45:00.000-08:002008-11-16T20:45:00.000-08:00Center left isn't strong enough. The election show...Center left isn't strong enough. The election shows it's strongly liberal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-45090231432676424612008-11-16T17:47:00.000-08:002008-11-16T17:47:00.000-08:00McCain adviser admits America is ‘center-left.’Whi...McCain adviser admits America is ‘center-left.’<BR/><BR/>While conservative pundits and even some traditional journalists continue to insist that America remains a center-right nation. Today in a Washington Post op-ed, Hoover Institution fellow and former informal adviser to the McCain campaign Tod Lindberg rebuts this myth: <BR/><BR/>Here’s the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, “The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats.” This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.<BR/><BR/>Lindberg acknowledges that “the percentage of voters describing themselves as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ has held relatively constant over many election cycles.” However, he notes that “the views behind those labels” have shifted to be more liberal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-67337322065076843652008-11-16T10:41:00.000-08:002008-11-16T10:41:00.000-08:00Rudderless and fighting with each other, the gop h...Rudderless and fighting with each other, the gop has pulled so far to the right that they have alienated pretty much every voter who isn't a subscriber to the Limbaugh Letter. Judging by the sad crop of leaders they are stuck with, hopefully they'll stay in the wilderness for the next few election cycles.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-1152245630625212462008-11-16T10:13:00.000-08:002008-11-16T10:13:00.000-08:00Down the Republican Rabbit Hole History may be wri...Down the Republican Rabbit Hole <BR/><BR/>History may be written by the winners, but that doesn't stop the losers from wasting a lot of ink in the attempt. This time, it's the GOP revanchists who are busy trying to come up with a reason -- any reason -- for the economic crisis that doesn't point directly to their conservative ideology and the greedy green horse of the Apocalypse, deregulation.<BR/><BR/>There are dozens of letters percolating through Republican chain mail, and a matching number of posts on right wing blogs, all trying to spread the same message: Democrats loaned money to black people!<BR/><BR/>Here's an example plucked from my own mailbox. <BR/><BR/>We're on the brink of an economic disaster and another Great Depression. This was not caused by Republicans. This was caused solely by Democrats.<BR/><BR/>In 1977 Democratic President Jimmy Carter passed the Community Reinvestment Act to provide housing to poor people. In the 1990s Bill Clinton had Attorney General Janet Reno threaten banks under red lining rules into giving loans to people who could not afford them. Then in the last 8 years, the leftist group ACORN, which has ties to Barack Obama, went to banks and threatened them to relax their rules again. Banks had to give loans to people who had no jobs or no identification. <BR/><BR/>You have to hand it to them. In terms of bringing together the maximum number of Republican demons -- Carter, Clinton, Reno, Obama -- with the smallest amount of connecting narrative, this is a keeper.<BR/><BR/>It's a satisfying bedtime story for the right. They can snooze and dream of revenge, when the wonders of True Conservatism will pave the streets with a mixture of gold and liberal bones. Unfortunately for them, it's not only simplistic, not only demonstrative of deep prejudice, it's also dead wrong.<BR/><BR/>The Community Reinvestment Act and other red lining laws weren't passed to force banks to make loans to African-Americans and other minorities. They were there to make the rules consistent. Previous to the passage of the CRA, minorities were often required to have better credit, and make larger down payments to get loans equivalent to those awarded whites. Nothing in these laws required that banks lower their lending standards, only that they be fair, consistent, and operate in a "safe and secure" way. There was no evidence then, and no evidence now, that minorities with the same initial credit rating as whites tend to default on their loans at any greater rate.<BR/><BR/>Want proof? Mortgage failure rate in 2000: 1%. 2001: 1%. 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006? One (1) as in ONE percent. But wait! Everything that Carter, Reno, and Clinton could do was already in there. The nefarious community organizers of ACORN had already grown their little oak trees of pressure. Carter's poor people had been sitting in their new homes so long, that many of those initial mortgages were paid off and gone.<BR/><BR/>What does legislation passed 31 years ago have to do with problems today? Nothing. Neither do tweaks Clinton made to that legislation in the mid 90s. The real culprits require a much shorter trip down memory lane.<BR/><BR/>Subprime mortgages (and all mortgages, really) are a fraction of the current problem. The bailout would have been enough to buy out every subprime mortgage in foreclosure across the country. In fact, it was enough to do that several times over. So why not do that?<BR/><BR/>The reason is that the purpose of the bailout (at least as Treasury Secretary Paulson sees it) isn't to stop mortgage foreclosures, but to save the banks. And the banks have some self-inflicted problems that make those mortgages an afterthought.<BR/><BR/>For example, the wonderful credit default swap. In essence, credit default swaps are (or were) nothing but insurance policies for loans. And yet in 2007 the total number of credit default swaps traded far exceeded the value of all loans. In fact, it may have touched $70 trillion dollars, which puts it above the gross domestic product of the entire planet.<BR/><BR/>How is that possible? Come with me back to the primitive world of 1999, when SUVs ruled the roads and cell phones did not yet shoot video, and let's see how this clumsy bit of fiscal jargon conquered the planet.<BR/><BR/>The Evolution of the Credit Default Swap<BR/><BR/>Stage 1 (Perturbo mutans) <BR/>You have just made a loan to someone, and now you're nervous that this scoundrel might not pay. What to do, what to do? Ah, but you need not worry! I happen to have assets on hand that can easily cover your petty loan. What's more, for a small monthly fee, I'll be happy to provide you with insurance of a sort. Should the person to whom you've extended a loan prove unreliable, I'll shoulder the burden -- so long as you keep up the payments. Let's call this insurance a... credit default swap.<BR/><BR/>In 1999, these credit default swaps already existed, but they were a niche product. Only a fraction of banks employed them and then only on a fraction of loans. Without some knock to the system, swaps would probably have remained a relatively small player.<BR/><BR/>Stage 2 (Perturbo furtiva) <BR/>Knock, knock. In 2000 Republican economic hero, Phil Gramm, with the assistance of a small legion of lobbyists, created the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Along with ushering in the Enron disaster, this bill provided the one thing that credit default swaps needed to grow and mutate -- invisibility. Thanks to the CFMA, not only were credit default swaps unregulated, they were impossible to observe directly. Like black holes in deep space, you could only spot swaps by looking at how other things acted nearby.<BR/><BR/>So, now you've made a loan to someone, and you're worried about it. I want to offer you a credit default swap so I can collect the fee. Trouble is, I don't have the assets to cover your loan. So how can I... hold on, credit default swaps are so unregulated that no one says I actually have to be able to deliver on my promise. Hey, over here! Have I got a swap for you, and it's a bargain.<BR/><BR/>So now the CDS is a means of moving the risk, but the risk is still as high (or higher, since the original lender might have been better able to cover the loss). In fact, credit default swaps have gone from being a risk mitigator, to a risk magnifier.<BR/><BR/>Stage 3 (Peturbo veloxicresco) <BR/>You have a loan you're worried about. That's good, because lots of people want to offer you swaps. After all, you don't have to have any assets to issue a swap. The investment bank of First Me and The Change I Found In the Couch Cushions can offer swaps for all the debt at Morgan Stanley, and that's okay. I get free money for issuing the swaps, and the swaps have value on the books. So both me and my pal Mr. Stanley have values that are inflating faster than a tick in a blood bank.<BR/><BR/>Now you can get a swap for any loan you want, and with all the competition, the cost of these swaps is lower, and lower, and lower. Here's an idea: why not go out and make more loans, riskier loans. Why not offer anyone you can collar on the street a loan, no matter whether or not they can pay it off, not because some 30 year old law makes you do it, but because your friend the credit swap makes it perfectly safe!<BR/><BR/>So many people are offering these things that you could give a loan to Saddam while the bombs are falling without a care in the world. You can always get a swap.<BR/><BR/>Stage 4 (Fatum casus) <BR/>I have a swap. I really, really want someone to take my swap. Only even with every incentive I can offer, not enough people are loaning. Sure, there's a record amount of hypothetical money sloshing around the system thanks to me and my swaps, but it's still not enough. So what can I...<BR/><BR/>Wait a second. Swaps are unregulated. No one says I have to have enough resources to cover the swap, and even better, no one says I have to offer the swap to the person who actually made the loan! Hey buddy, see that loan over there? You may think it's iffy, but I think it'll hold up. In fact, I'm so sure it will, I'll sell you a credit default swap on it that pays off if it fails. You don't make the loan, you don't have to pay off on the loan, you don't have anything to do with the loan. You just pay me the fee. And if that guy loses his money, you collect. How sweet is that!<BR/><BR/>This mutation is enormous (see how the genera changed up there?). At this point, credit default swaps have become completely divorced from the original function. A single loan can be covered by multiple swaps. There's a complicated fiscal term for this. It's called gambling, and at this stage, that's all that remains of those little "insurance" policies. They no longer protect anyone from anything, they just offer a chance to place enormous overlapping side bets on everything.<BR/><BR/>Stage 5 (Fatum insanus) <BR/>I have swaps! Get your swaps here! Want a swap on a loan you made? Okay. Want to bet that the bozo in the next cube is making bad loans? We can do that. Want to bundle up some loans and bet on those? Buddy we can do better than that. I can give you a swap on the value of other swaps. Now we're really in business.<BR/><BR/>Who owns the original loan? Don't know, don't care. Who's actually responsible for the money if that loan should fail? Ehhh, can't really say. Has anyone noticed that a single bad loan could cause a cascade of swap calls that bounce around the system like a rocket-power pinball? Shut up.<BR/><BR/>Isn't anyone worried that this is the most massive house of cards ever constructed in human history? Lookit, what part of "we took 120 billion in bonuses out of this place in the last five years" are you missing?<BR/><BR/>Stage 6 (Fatum exicelebritas) <BR/>Hey, my loan went bad. Can I have my money from that swap, please?<BR/><BR/>Stage 7 (Fatum cerus) <BR/>Oh shit.<BR/><BR/>Now that people are paying attention, it turns out that the value of most credit default swaps is not just bupkis, it's Bupkis Plus. More computer power went into modeling these things than has been invested in predicting climate change, but everyone overlooked the giant "and then a miracle occurs" at the center of all the equations that allowed credit default swaps to generate revenue ex nihilo.<BR/><BR/>Trying to blame the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act for the current fiscal crisis is like blaming a spot on your windshield for engine failure while ignoring the gaping wound in you head gasket. Republicans are scribbling hard to create their new version of reality, and you never know what's going to sell. After all, people bought a "Book of Virtues" authored by Bill Bennet.<BR/><BR/>But in this case, even the Mock Turtle and the March Hare think the GOP line is too outlandish.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-3561439860001257102008-11-16T09:25:00.000-08:002008-11-16T09:25:00.000-08:00When does the psycho get out of intensive care for...When does the psycho get out of intensive care for the trauma he suffered on election night?<BR/><BR/>We need our psychopath, rationalization, bizarro entertainment fix.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-20908256773062575072008-11-15T17:08:00.000-08:002008-11-15T17:08:00.000-08:00I think I hear the cavalry coming in 2010..I find ...I think I hear the cavalry coming in 2010..<BR/><BR/><I>I find myself in a lonely position. While many states and local governments are lining up for a bailout from Congress, I went to Washington recently to oppose such bailouts. I may be the only governor to do so.<BR/><BR/>But I suspect I'm not entirely alone, as there are a lot of taxpayers who aren't pleased with Christmas coming early for politicians. And I hope these taxpayers make their voices heard before Democrats load up the next bailout train for states with budget deficits.<BR/><BR/>Several questions led me to oppose bailing out the states. They are worth asking, even if you supported bailing out Wall Street.<BR/><BR/>Who bails out the "bail-outor"?<BR/><BR/>Washington is short on cash these days and will borrow every dime of the $150 billion to $300 billion for the "stimulus" bill now being worked on. Federal appetites may know no bounds. But the federal government's ability to borrow is not limitless. Already, our nation's unfunded liabilities total $52 trillion -- about $450,000 per household. There's something very strange about issuing debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt.<BR/><BR/>Do you now have to be a financial "bad boy" to win?<BR/><BR/>Community bankers tell me that they are now at a competitive disadvantage for being careful about who to lend to, because others that were less disciplined will get a federal bailout. This is also true for states. Those that have been fiscally responsible will pay for or lose out to the big spenders. California increased spending 95% over the past 10 years (federal spending went up 71% over the same period). To bail out California now seems unfair to fiscally prudent states.<BR/><BR/>Was the economist Herb Stein wrong when he said that if something cannot go on forever, it won't?<BR/><BR/>Medicaid grew 9.5% annually over the past 10 years. That's unsustainable. But if Congress opens the checkbook now, there will be no reform.<BR/><BR/>Isn't government intervention supposed to be the last resort and come only when it can make a difference?<BR/><BR/>In 2008 bailouts became the first resort. Over the past year the federal government has committed itself to $2.3 trillion (including the tax rebate "stimulus" checks of last February) to "improve" the economy. I don't see how another $150 billion now will make a difference in a global slowdown. We've already unloaded truckloads of sugar in a vain attempt to sweeten a lake. Tossing in a Twinkie will not make the difference.<BR/><BR/>However, there is something Congress can do: free states from federal mandates. South Carolina will spend about $425 million next year meeting federal unfunded mandates. The increase in the minimum wage alone will cost the state $2.6 million and meeting Homeland Security's REAL ID requirements will cost $8.9 million.<BR/><BR/>Based on what I saw in Washington, the bailout train is being loaded up. Taxpayers will have to speak up now to change its freight, tab or departure.</I> --Mark Sanford, Governor of SCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-19365568346577068632008-11-15T14:20:00.000-08:002008-11-15T14:20:00.000-08:00Demoralized? DC needs a good flushing NOW more th...Demoralized? DC needs a <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM" REL="nofollow">good flushing</A> NOW more than ever, especially that Congressman from Sodom's Codpiece, Barney Frank!<BR/><BR/>I have not yet begun to fight!<BR/><BR/><I>Send 'em ALL to the pen in 2010!</I>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-62643891078427612672008-11-15T12:06:00.000-08:002008-11-15T12:06:00.000-08:00Well...as we expected nothing going on here anymor...Well...as we expected nothing going on here anymore after the recent avalanche. <BR/><BR/>I guess the reichos are finally so demoralized that they've just about given up completely.<BR/><BR/>There's a great article going around now saying that many in the religious right are deciding that political activism has not worked for them and has merely caused a backlash against their causes.They plan on opting out of the political game and seeking other venues for their medieval propaganda. <BR/><BR/>What a relief it'll be to have them shut up for a while, and their goes a third of the GOP votes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-11904300016920505252008-11-15T09:05:00.000-08:002008-11-15T09:05:00.000-08:00Watching Obama staff his government is like watchi...Watching Obama staff his government is like watching a Washington political boneyard on a dark moon filled night. Obama mumbles his name-laden incantation and ex-Clinton official after ex-official rises from his casket, removes the wooden stake from the empty cavity where his heart should have been and then walks to a new desk at 1600 PA Ave.<BR/><BR/>It's spooky, I tell ya.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-68463988635425911052008-11-15T08:56:00.000-08:002008-11-15T08:56:00.000-08:00Since Barack Obama is floating a 'Hillary for Sec ...Since Barack Obama is floating a 'Hillary for Sec State' trial balloon, that means America's national interest has once again been subordinated to the UN and their purposely faux-legalistic and meandering humanitarian philanthropies, as puppetted through Ban Ki Moon by the liberal jet set.<BR/><BR/>Being a liberal today means never having to experience or be blamed for the damage you inflict on the rest of the world. <I>It was Bush's fault</I>, and the buck will never stop at Obama's desk.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-76786337986080838212008-11-15T05:08:00.000-08:002008-11-15T05:08:00.000-08:00Speaking of falling further and further...NEW YORK...Speaking of falling further and further...<BR/><BR/><I>NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street ended a turbulent week with another astonishing show of volatility Friday, with stocks plunging, recovering and then plunging again as investors absorbed another wave of downbeat economic news. The Dow Jones industrials fell almost 340 points and the major indexes all fell sharply for the second straight week.</I><BR/><BR/>The Obama Depression is getting deeper and DEEPER. "Yes we can" is becoming "with what?" as the Fed reaches deeper and deeper into Joe Taxpayer's pocket and keeps coming up empty.<BR/><BR/>It'll take more than slogans to get America moving again. And so far Wall Street's betting that Obama doesn't have what it takes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-63109244716745184892008-11-14T18:31:00.000-08:002008-11-14T18:31:00.000-08:00Ted Stevens (R-Federal Prison) is falling further ...Ted Stevens (R-Federal Prison) is falling further behind every day.<BR/><BR/>Do you go to bed optimistical, tonight, Evan?<BR/><BR/>Do you think it will be reversed if the communist appears to win?<BR/><BR/>I want to know.<BR/><BR/>You were sure right about that big election.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-11606215451913475092008-11-14T16:50:00.000-08:002008-11-14T16:50:00.000-08:00Do you enjoy watching this Obamster dance, Evan? ...Do you enjoy watching this <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_kgNp9oQg" REL="nofollow">Obamster dance</A>, Evan? Even the one that claims to have once been a Republican can't hide his two left feet.<BR/><BR/>If only governing were as easy as making up a plausible story and pretending it was true... There's gonna be a rude awakening come January when the messiah's followers find out there's no there, there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-34962785219564069602008-11-14T13:44:00.000-08:002008-11-14T13:44:00.000-08:00Great article there on the demise of the right...a...Great article there on the demise of the right...and I'm a Republican.<BR/><BR/>I tried telling these people to quit making excuses eeeeeeeeeverytime the Bush administration screwed up and start taking the party back from these bozos, but noooo...I had to be a liberal troll to even see anything wrong.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-10193255525455915752008-11-14T13:17:00.000-08:002008-11-14T13:17:00.000-08:00You try to tell these dumbasses, but they just ca...You try to tell these dumbasses, but they just can't comprehend...maybe they'll believe the pro business, right wing WSJ...their actual rates come out to the fourth lowest in the developed world:<BR/><BR/>WSJ: "The Internal Revenue Service found that U.S. companies paid federal income taxes on their reported U.S. profits at far less than the 35% statutory rate, offering a potential revenue source for an incoming presidential administration that faces a yawning budget deficit. Newly released data from the IRS show companies paid federal and foreign income taxes on their U.S. book income -- the amount reported to shareholders -- at a rate of 25.3% during 2005, the most recent year for which data were made available by the IRS." 11/15Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-14018104130669582032008-11-14T12:34:00.000-08:002008-11-14T12:34:00.000-08:00Sayonara, Republican PartyThe Republican Party (18...Sayonara, Republican Party<BR/><BR/>The Republican Party (1854-2008) <BR/>The GOP has been on life support since 2006. Four days ago, it died a loud and ugly death. <BR/>By Ron Knox <BR/>Sunday, November 9, 2008 <BR/><BR/><BR/> "The party in the Northeast is all but extinct; the party on the West Coast is all but extinct; the party has lost the mid-South states — Virginia, North Carolina — and the party is in deep trouble in the Rocky Mountain West, and there has to be a message and a vision that is compelling to people in order for them to come back and to give consideration to the Republican Party again." <BR/><BR/>—Steve Schmidt, McCain campaign manager <BR/><BR/>It’s been four days now since the Republicans’ “big tent” officially imploded. Like Schmidt says, the party is basically defunct in the majority of the country. We appreciate the sentiment, Steve—always the wishful thinker. But sorry. Watching the party canibalize itself over the past four days, it's obvious to anyone without an NRA membership: The party's over. Forever. <BR/><BR/>The decimation of the Sarah Palin campaign (this election was never about John McCain) exposed a devastating reality for the GOP: all of the awful divisions born during the 1960s culture wars are, for the majority of Americans, over. <BR/><BR/>The country is certainly just as God-fearing and moral as it has ever been. But until Democrats make some outward and obvious attack on religion or gun rights, the days of riding into national office on the backs of social issues ended sometime during George W. Bush’s second term. <BR/><BR/>This reality is lost on the people who showed up en masse to Palin's rallies. For this collection of backwoods half-wits, the culture war is like the war on terror or drugs — endless and omnipresent. These are the Republican Party’s new loud and boisterous base, focused so intently on saving America from eternal damnation, they would rather vote against gay marriage than in favor of their own economic interests. <BR/><BR/>These mobs are small and shrinking in lockstep with the number of good jobs in small-town America. Yet these mobs have, throughout the Rove years, become the face of the GOP, and remained that way throughout Palin's cartoon campaign. The party's microscopic intellectual wing can gasp and choke on the stupidity of the party's base until they turn blue, but it won't help. Who else would vote for Republicans now? <BR/><BR/>At some point, one side of the party is going to lose their voice entirely. It will be wildly entertaining to see which half can suffocate the other first. Will it be the orphaned children of Reaganomics, left to flounder aimlessly after their theories on deregulation and trickle-down wealth redistribution were buried under the weight of the economic disaster they caused? Or will it be the lunatic fundamentalists, whose ugly, racially-tinged rhetoric was exactly what the party needed if it wanted to get blown out in every conceivable electoral way.<BR/><BR/><BR/>For most, I think the answer is: Who cares? Let the two halves of the GOP gut each other until they both bleed out. At this point, it looks like it might happen; the nasty and very public in-fighting over the degree of Sarah Palin’s ignorance and selfishness during the campaign might well be the first wounds of the death match. At the end of the day, it might be all for the best. The party can't and won't survive as it is, with two rotting ideological corpses as its central premises, its main talking points. <BR/><BR/>In Ana Marie Cox's terrific interview with Schmidt, he talked about moving the party to the ideological center — the home of most American voters. Again, Steve is always the optimist. The Republican base detests the center. The center is the bastion of gay marriage, of upholding Roe v. Wade, of enforcing the division of church and state. The base would flee, and if they lose the base, they lose the few remaining loyal Republican voters in America. <BR/><BR/>Maybe Schmidt knows this and just doesn't care. They've lost everything already. Maybe he knows as well as we do that the party can't be repaired. It has to be ripped apart and reconstructed, from the ground up.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-52434314635341675672008-11-14T12:15:00.000-08:002008-11-14T12:15:00.000-08:00Palin has reached her 'sell by' date. Herbert Bush...Palin has reached her 'sell by' date. <BR/><BR/>Herbert Bush Hoover Jr has long ago expired as a viable political commodity and should be moved off the shelf immediately so Obama can save what's left of the economy ...while there is still some left.<BR/><BR/>This is a national emergency and the team that caused it is still in place for another two months??!<BR/><BR/>This is insanity.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-39094042259550017722008-11-14T10:48:00.000-08:002008-11-14T10:48:00.000-08:00wait 4 it...wait 4 it...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-29004854903145617462008-11-14T09:45:00.000-08:002008-11-14T09:45:00.000-08:00Here's another plan for them: mass suicide...for t...Here's another plan for them: mass suicide...for the nation's good.<BR/><BR/>Gingrich says GOP is outmatched<BR/>By: Roger Simon <BR/>November 13, 2008 <BR/> <BR/>How bad off is the Republican Party right now? Ask Newt Gingrich.<BR/><BR/>“The Republican Party right now is like a midsize college team trying to play in the Superbowl,” <BR/><BR/>Gingrich told me Wednesday. “It is pretty hard to say our losses were because of John McCain’s campaign. McCain performed way above plausibility compared to where the Republican president was in the polls. We have to look honestly at what went wrong.”<BR/><BR/>Gingrich, Republican speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999, declined say who he wanted as the next chairman of the party. He said his main concern was the rise of what he called the “modern left,” which just a few years ago was thought to be moribund in this country but now looks alive and kicking.<BR/><BR/>Gingrich said the fundraising capacity of the left in the last election proved astonishing and far outstripped what Republicans were able to gather. “The modern left has gotten that large,” Gingrich said.<BR/><BR/>Gingrich said that the best thing the Republican Party could do right now is stop worrying about the Republican Party. “We need to worry about the nation,” Gingrich said. “Wal-Mart doesn’t get ahead by attacking Sears but by offering better value.”<BR/><BR/>Greg Mueller, a political consultant who specializes in conservative candidates, said that the next chairman of the party must be an “ideological conservative.”<BR/><BR/>“We need full-throttle conservatism,” Mueller said. “We have governed as lighter versions of liberal Democrats. We went to Washington to be fiscal conservatives and we became profligate spenders and big-government bureaucrats.”Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-30445082112458636582008-11-14T09:24:00.000-08:002008-11-14T09:24:00.000-08:00Hey Freddie, can you loan me $100B?Hey Freddie, can you loan me $100B?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-32717306135699461492008-11-14T09:22:00.000-08:002008-11-14T09:22:00.000-08:00America 2.0, the "Brother, can you spare a dime?" ...America 2.0, the "Brother, can you spare a dime?" era of the government run soup kitchen and Section 8 mortgage has officially begun! Woo-hoo!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7938318.post-30377916619507959402008-11-14T09:18:00.000-08:002008-11-14T09:18:00.000-08:00Thanks!Thanks!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com