Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

He'd @#$% well better be. We've sacrificed a lot politically, strategically, financially, and in human terms, to get to this point.

And the market goes bananas. If they'd gone 1/4 it would have been a selloff.

Anyone care to make some fearless forecasts, say 6-18 months out? Think we're headed for a 'soft landing', or a hard one?

>>>There are plenty of people out there like me now who up to the year 2000 used to be swing-voters but are having a hard time imagining under what circumstances they could ever vote republican again.<<<

Bingo.

I kind of wanted to maybe touch on this as a separate subject. Has anyone else been fundamentally changed by this administration?

It's not that my sense of morals or anything like that has changed -- I'm still me. But my voting habits have definitely changed. 2000 and prior, I was a habitual swing-voter.

I used to evaluate the person over the party, but the last few years I have felt like I simply cannot risk voting republican anymore. The religious right now owns them and has been quietly accumulating long-term appointments across the government, often replacing highly experienced people who were simply not ideological enough for the bushies.

Big oil owns them also of course. Between these, the lies to the public and to congress to get us into war, the Patriot Act, the e-voting 'irregularities', and now putting purely government functions beyond the taxpayer's reach and into the hands of private contractors with their own agenda -- I see a lot of worrying anti-democracy and anti-freedom trends coming together with the same guys at the center of it all.

Eh. GQ was free to print the piece if it wanted, Bill is free to be interviewed, or not, by whomever he chooses. Bill made a political decision and GQ made a business decision. Posturing and hardball to be sure, but not exactly a 'freedom of speech' issue.

I agree she could well cost the dems the election. There's just too many people out there who just plain hate her. Those sorts of people aren't going to change their minds. I think it was 6 months ago I was insisting that she could never even get the nomination for this very reason, while all the republicans here were insisting and wishing she would. But with the media increasingly treating her as the heir-apparent, it's looking like the choice is being pretty well made for us. She's getting all the headlines. She's being set up to win the nomination.

After 7 years of rule under the neocons honestly I'm prepared to vote for any democrat that will fog a mirror, but I think the public at large is not. In Hillary v. Giuliani I think Giuliani would win.

Yeah conservatives are always shocked to find that some Democrats are religious - or worse, that some liberal churches let Democrats participate in communion 8O 8O 8O

Before the Religious Right's rise to political power, churches across America had a long-standing progressive tradition... separation of church and state wasn't an ideal of a bunch of atheists, it reflected the wishes (and fears) of progressive religious movements that had seen considerable persecution back across the Atlantic. The religious left is really even more ancient -- you read the New Testament it's full of love thy neighbor and blessed are the poor and all that warm fuzzy bleeding-heart liberal stuff that drives conservatives NUTS.

But religious progressives are less keen to ram their religious views down other people's throats, and it has less of a literalist/fundamentalist slant. The religious right takes a more coercive/authoritarian stand on religion, forbidding gay marriage, condemning science to preach creationist literalism, all the while making no secret of their utter contempt for the secular institutions and principles that made this country free.

Jim Babcock said:

According to this poll:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003647275

The American people trust this Democrat run congress less than at any time in history. Trust in the Administration is also low, but not as low as the Democrat run congress. Makes you just want to run our and elect Democrats to run everything doesn't it? 8O

I think you need to read your link again -- here's an excerpt:

"Faith in the executive branch has fallen to 43% -- only 3% higher than it was just before President Nixon's resignation in 1974. At the same time, trust in Congress, at 50%, is its lowest ever."

That leaves Congress ahead of the President as far as I can see -- not that it matters at these levels. The President's core following at this point will stick with him no matter how much he screws up. The democrats' core is mad because Congress won't stand up to Bush so that sort of disapproval isn't actually likely to help the republicans in any way.

I wouldn't hold your breath asking for lefties to vote for christian right extremists just to 'stick it' to the 2-party system anymore than I'd expect you to vote socialist.

Generally 3rd party candidates show up when there is extreme desire for change (for which 2008 will qualify) and especially when the 'center' feels abandoned or when people feel an important issue (in Perot's case, the deficit) is being ignored. Thus 3rd party candidates tend lately to be moderates.

In addition to being a deficit hawk, Perot's popularity also stems in part from being less ideological on all the classic 'wedge' issues that democrats and republicans take up their obligatory party positions on. So there were fewer reasons to hate him. Perot fans could basically ignore the eternal-standing wedge issues and focus matters that actually held some potential for being resolved one way or another in the forseeable future.

But what you're talking about is different. The christian conservative threats coming now are a result of a difficult position the republican party finds itself in as a direct result of extended pandering to its more extreme political elements. They now have to choose between the sort of wingnut candidates that will now satisfy their base, or the sort of moderate candidates that have a chance to win the hearts and minds of the political center in a general election.

Well the market's sure doing well the last few days. The dollar keeps sliding though. The dollar-slide is consistent with the commodities rally. But it is in conflict with the rally in the markets. And the commodities rally to the extent it's gone is now implying tremendous inflation pressure which is in direct conflict with the rally in the bond markets. Observations:

1) The commodity rally and the low bond rates are in conflict with each other. Either commodities must break, or bonds must break. Which turns out to be the case probably depends on whether or not we get a full-blown recession near-term.

2) The falling dollar would logically tend to suck the air out of both bond and stock markets. 1987 comes to mind, when the dollar fell and fell and the market rallied and rallied until it ran right off the cliff. Intuitively it would seem the energy for continued rallies must come from within our borders to supplant capital leaving dollar-based assets. However, offsetting factors (such as the benefits to U.S. manufacturers' exports) may be coming into play in evaluating future earnings potential. Might this be especially true of high-tech exports (or would it be less true, due to foreign-manufactured components becoming more costly to domestic manufacturers??)

Jim Babcock said:
Where are the environmentalists? Do borders matter, or only attacking the western industrialized nations politically correct targets?

Chinese don't have to answer to American voters and moreover in 1989 demonstrated that they aren't terribly interested in hosting marching demonstrations. 8O
I think that pretty well sums it up.