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For anyone who has not already heard Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down as Secretary of Defense (or should it be offense). Let's just hope he is the first of many such assholes to go.

i knew what this was when i saw the title.......good fuckin riddance indeed.
wooohooooo!!!!

Yeah! Can you get rid of Dick Cheney now? Those guys are evil. Without them and their ilk, the braindead Bush would be fairly harmless.

Seriously though, do you think this marks the end of the era begun by Ronald Reagan or just a blip?

I think this is a hopeful sign, but, considering that Rumsfeld's proposed successor is a former head of the CIA there may be little difference.

yep...the lesser of two evils.


better than nothing!

The era begun by Ronnie R. ended when Clinton eliminated the deficit and ballanced the federal budget. IMO.

Now we in a whole new era Bonzo only dreamed of.

</dismal outlook off>


Smiles everyone, Smiles.
chuck.

considering that Rumsfeld's proposed successor is a former head of the CIA there may be little difference.

But Gates is a consummate manager, who makes decisions carefully and within context according to everything I have read about him. Gates is not a politician but a career civil servant with a stellar track record re: managing organizations effectively and efficiently. I think this is a good appointment, and should have been made much earlier.

Gates is a reluctant civil servant, leaving Texas A&M University to do this, but as I understand it only on his own terms.

This could easily be the right person the find the path out of that very unfortunate situation in Iraq. He's a clear headed logical thinker that gives not a shit about politics.

For everyone cheering about the Dems getting back in power, please keep in mind they are complete fuckups as well, only of a different flavor. What the U.S. needs is a viable third party.

When THAT happens, then indeed I may say "dismal outlook off" but to think the Dems will "fix" whatever is broken, well, that is shortsighted IMO.
It will take some period of time before they are drunk with power, but it will happen. And the federal budget was only balanced on paper, not in reality.

Bubba Clinton did basically nothing about terrorist attacks on the U.S. and U.S. interests, and turned down OSB when the Somalis (I think it was them) offered his head on a plate. And in the meantime, he and Madeline Albright put a feel-good treaty in place with the North Koreans regarding nuclear development and then just walked away without doing anything else re: enforcement. You can see how that one turned out: North Korea in a position to sell enriched uranium to anyone wanting it. But at least they could feel good about getting the paper signed. They never bothered to collect, however.

And what about African genocide during the eight years Clinton was in charge? Should the U.S. have basically ignored this?

It's not as simple as "Democrats are in, life is good".

I do agree the GOP needed to have their collective asses handed to them, and they deserve everything they got. This is what happens in Washington when one party controls everything. If there is a Dem president while the Dems control both houses, it will suck. But it will suck differently.

Balance ought to be the order of the day. A viable third party puts balance in place. Who could possibly do that? Joe Lieberman and John McCain, that's who. While you may not agree with both of them all the time, at least they have the balls to buck big party politics and vote their conscience. That means a lot, and I can see how a lot of people could get behind that ticket. Don't forget Ross Perot basically put Clinton in office by siphoning a huge number of votes in 1992. The potential is there - we just need the right people to make the commitment.

The American two party system is severely broken and needs repair, desperately.

YMMV :-)

Seriously though, do you think this marks the end of the era begun by Ronald Reagan or just a blip?

But Reagan was a true conservative, and that was his appeal. The true conservative mantra:

Lower taxes for everyone, more personal responsibility and less dependency on government for those who ought to be able to take care of themselves, and and smaller government.

Today's GOP has veered greatly from that course, particularly regarding the size of government and fiscal responsibility. There are a number of things that got the GOP ousted from Congress, and this is part of it. Many, many people who used to vote Republican are politically homeless in the U.S. today. The current GOP has alienated all but the hardcore religious right, for the most part. I'm a conservative at heart (and being a conservative has NOTHING to do with political party affiliations in the purest sense), but I can't hang with the GOP today. No way.

I don't trust them whatsover. But I don't trust the alternative, either.

Lesser of two evils? Only time will tell.

Oh, sorry, to answer the question :-)

I think it will be a long time before a true conservative, an ideolog like Reagan, can make it to the White House again. Many people are disgusted with the strong influence on the Republican party by religious factions. And now we have a major Republican sending sexual email to young male employees. You can run your campaign on "family values" and that really smells good to religious-minded folk, but you had better back it up. All it takes is one fool discovered just before an election to effect a lengthy drought. That taint cannot easily be removed, and who knows how long Republicans will be forced to wait? If there is to be no third party, it could be a long dry spell.

Unless the Democrats drop the ball as well :-)

The era begun by Ronnie R. ended when Clinton eliminated the deficit and ballanced the federal budget. IMO.

Do you remember the Carter years? It was a horrible economy, insane interest rates, crazy inflation, all that stuff. About the best rate available on a mortgage was around 14%.

Applying this logic, one could say "the era begun by Jimmy Carter ended when Reagan put things in place to fix them".

I'm sorry, but it's not as simple as "someone else is in power and now things are good". And BTW who was in control of Congress when Clinton balanced the budget on paper, if not in practice? Who submitted that legislation for Clinton to sign? Clinton didn't balance the budget, he signed the legislation Congress submitted. That's how it works here.

Naturally, Clinton was the MASTER at making it seem as though he fixed something. They didn't call him "Slick Willie" in Arkansas for no reason. Most people think he deserves the credit for this, but in fact.......

http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-08-98.html

One more time: it's not as simple as "someone else is in power and now things are good", not by a long shot.

All IMO, of course.

And of course the GOP deserved to be booted out of Washington. What a pack of fuckups.

Both major parties are full of douchebags. Vote Libertarian. Oh, shit! You mean there are douchebags in EVERY party? FUHCK!

Lafe wrote:A viable third party puts balance in place. Who could possibly do that? Joe Lieberman and John McCain, that's who. While you may not agree with both of them all the time, at least they have the balls to buck big party politics and vote their conscience.

Joe Lieberman vote? When? The main reason many in the Democratic party here in Connecticut decided to drop him is because he missed over 400 votes in Congress and they wanted someone who would be there doing his job instead of out campaigning for a better one. As an independent, I would be glad to see a third party come into being that could challenge the established two party system. Unfortunately, the Republicans and Democrats have too much of the population bullshitted into thinking a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. As for Reagan, he was the one in power when the Social Security System was opened up for raping and his administration allowed big corporations to do the same to many pension plans. I have a number of friends who lost twenty years of pension plan savings during the eighties. Trickle down economics really worked, didn't it? And all of that is beside the fact that his administration did nothing to combat the start of the AIDS crisis, allowing it to grow to epidemic levels, all because of their homophobic family values.

P.S. I was one of the people who voted for Perot.

For everyone cheering about the Dems getting back in power, please keep in mind they are complete fuckups as well, only of a different flavor. What the U.S. needs is a viable third party

i agree. Dems are still 'for profit' politiicans......

The main reason many in the Democratic party here in Connecticut decided to drop him is because he missed over 400 votes in Congress and they wanted someone who would be there doing his job instead of out campaigning for a better one.

That, I was unaware of. Shit. Thanks for the info. I think his tendency to not toe the party line had a lot to do with it as well, i.e. too cozy with GWB :-)

he (Reagan) was the one in power when the Social Security System was opened up for raping

In what way?

From the gubment's Social Security web site:

u
http://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html

Don't forget who submitted the legislation changing the way the pension system operates. Did Reagan sign it? Yes. Who controlled Congress and wrote the legislation? The Democrats, of course.

**************

It's not as simple as putting the blame on the prez for everything that happens (or doesn't happen). Where was the Democrat congress in the early days of the AIDS crisis if research was unfunded? There were sufficient votes to overcome a presidential veto.

So even if Reagan allegedly left AIDS unfunded, the Democratic congress could easily have done something about it.

I'm not an apologist for anyone, but for non U.S. readers that may not understand how things work in Washington (and unfortunately for probably many Americans as well :-) I have to keep repeating that it takes two to tango. Congress submits legislation, the President signs it or vetoes it. If it gets vetoed, it goes back to Congress and if there are sufficient votes the veto is overturned and the legislation is passed.

But was AIDS research/treatment/whatever truly left unfunded?

In fact, every Reagan budget contained specific funds earmarked for AIDS and it increased each year of his presidency.

Follow the link and scroll down to the table:

http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/m ... 030913.asp

That's an increase from $8 million to $2.3 billion (with a "b") from 1982 to 1989, with a 450% increase in 1983.

From the article:

"You could have poured half the national budget into AIDS in 1983, and it would have gone down a rat hole," says Michael Fumento, author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World. "There were no anti-virals back then. The first anti-viral was AZT which came along in 1987, and that was for AIDS." As an example of how blindly scientists and policymakers flew as the virus took wing, Fumento recalls that "in 1984, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler predicted that there would be an AIDS vaccine by 1986. There is no AIDS vaccine to date."

Those are the facts regarding Reagan, the national budget, and AIDS. The outrage that was fomented in the gay community was mostly a pre-supposition that this church going president had his fingers crossed hoping all those homosexuals would die. In fact, his budgets greatly increased these funds the whole time he was taking heat for not doing anything about it. But that was in the day when all the news available was from the traditional media, and so the myth spread. A quick Google search in 2006 reveals the true budget numbers.


**********

Now, where is that viable third party? :-)

Lafe- Your tendency to quote sources such as Rupert Murdock's National Review leads me to wonder if you have looked at this from the perspective of a non-partisan since his publications and networks have been consistent tools for the extreme political right. The claims that funding for AIDS research was being increased during the early years of the outbreak was a myth put forth to try calming the outrage of the medical community at the time. In typical Washingtonian bureaucratic fashion the accounting method for determining just how much money was being spent on research was skewed and deplorably underhanded. Both parties have used this ploy on more than one occassion. The Budget Office was including anything they felt was remotely associated with the AIDS epidemic, such as some cancer research programs and funding for the Just Say No and sexual abstinance programs, and calling it AIDS research funding. This is a common practice of both parties and has lead to misinformation and disinformation for the sole purpose of pushing their political agendas. If you wish to see a timeline of what happened throughout the 80's and 90's please check out www.thebody.com or more specifically www.thebody.com/encyclo/presidency.html which provides a fairly detailed timeline of events and does not play favorites with the political parties. I would also suggest taking a look at the National Institue of Health's and The Center for Disease Control's websites for their timelines.
As far as Joe Lieberman is concerned, yes, his siding with the Bush administration on several key issues did have a negative effect upon his primary loss, yet, I heard the Dems complain more about his absence from congress and the state of CT more often than anything else.

Before Reagan in US and Thatcher over here, it seemed to me that “conservatism” meant slow change, in other words, evolution rather than revolution. The difference with Thatcher/Reagan and the people around them is that they wanted stop the clock and actually wind it back. Over here it was referred to as “Victorian values” – a kind of prudish, intolerant and generally hypocritical, morality.

There is a great irony that the US Neo Cons and similar extremists in the West actually share many of the same values as their nemesis, the extreme Islamists (although they wouldn’t see it that way!).

There is also a popular perception that Reagan and Bush are just figureheads without the intellectual capacity to lead the world’s most powerful country. This is quite scary for those of us in the rest of the world. It also suggests that there are some powerful un-elected people wielding power from behind the throne.

I can certainly understand your concerns that nothing will change with the Democrats winning control of your Congress. We thought that Tony Blair would lead us to the Promised Land after the horrors of the Thatcher/Major era but instead he led us to war against the will of the people. Now we have nowhere left to go because the opposition party is more right wing and would probably have been even more likely to resort to violence.

We actually have an almost-viable third party here but, in practice, the situation is the same as US with two parties becoming more and more alike. Some countries in continental Europe have different electoral systems that do enable more parties and this tends to lead to coalition governments, which have their own pros and cons.