Okay I know it is late everyone wants to go home and forget about this place for the weekend but thought I would throw this one out yet...

http://byrd.senate.gov/byrd_newsroom/byrd_news_march/byrd_news_rls_03012005.html

I have provided a link to the full passage in order for people to read his full remarks if interested for CONTEXT which apparently Fox news as well as our friend Paul Krugman (on different topics) need a refresher coarse on.

To inject my analysis of this...Hard to find anything that is historically inaccurate about his comments, maybe people could have a problem with symbollic meaning or assertion but as history it plays pretty well.

Yes STEAM I know he was a member of the Klu Klux Klan...

It's time for Byrd to retire. Respected as one of the most knowledgable senators on both sides of the aisle, he is showing his age-which currently has to be determined by carbon-dating. :p During the debate on the Rice confirmation, he quoted a different section of the Federalist Papers than he meant to-very unlike him. It may not be so apparent on C-SPAN, but I assure you that he is looking rough in person. Not as bad as Strom Thurmond did in his last 6 years in office, but rough no less.

Mind you, this is actually one of his less rambling speeches!

This in response to some Republican senators' drive to limit filibusters? What's wrong with a 60% vote of all the senators to end a filibuster, as has been done many times in the past?

The genius of the American legislative and judicial system is, as Byrd points out, debate can be exhaustive before the law or a ruling on it, can be set in place. No turn not taken, no coin not flipped, no nuance not examined, so that when the decisions are made, there's a consensus, a collective wisdom. In legislating laws, every political faction leaves with something to be happy about.

"Rush to judgement," as the saying goes, or putting limits on debate, is characteristic of totalitarian governments, who don't trust the wisdom or deliberative abilities of their people, who don't want participatory government, but want to govern by edict. They think they know the answers already, forget about testing them in the "court of public opinion." They relate to their self-serving "elitist" status or power, not as servants of the people, but masters.

Senator Byrd may have been one of these people in the distant past, but this article and other things he's said recently, have convinced me he's no longer in an elitist, or racial mindset he may have been 50 years ago in KKK days. Alot has changed since then!

If GWB and the Neo Con's can manufacture and (thus far) get away with, among many other treasonous and dispicable acts:

1. defrauding 2 presidential elections,
2. complicity in the 9/11 disaster,
3. outright lies to embroil this country in a stupid and needless war in Iraq,

...then as Sen. Byrd said, "Employing the “nuclear option”, engaging a pernicious, procedural maneuver to serve immediate partisan goals" and as he quotes Bullock: "[making] illegality legal" is relatively 'small potatoes' to them.

These bastArds will obviously stop at nothing to make this country a virtual dictatorship, if we're not already there.

How about also evangelizing social security "reform?" Maybe this will be the last straw, when this administration will be seen for what it is, smoke and mirrors in the interest of fat cats, giddy with their wealth and status, but never satisfied, always greedy for more. Privatizing social security would not only make it hostage to market forces, but also open the till for greedy manipulators. Shades of Enron! Good ole boy Texas politics! Rule by the priviledged elite!

And you know what? The American people are being suckered into buying it, just like the Germans in the 30s. Sheep, indeed! Going brain dead in their ever more massive SUVS and half million dollar McMansions.

Well, it's fortunate the voices of dissent get louder when the Right starts trampling on civil liberties, as in the 50s and 60s. The 49% who didn't vote for Bush are a formidable minority. It needs to wake up and flex it's muscles!

From Netscape News:

"Saturday, March 5, 2005
Bush Sets Up Social Security 'War Room'


WASHINGTON (AP) - A new Social Security war room inside the Treasury Department is pumping out information to sell President Bush's plan, much like any political campaign might do. It's part of a coordinated effort by the Bush administration.

The internal, taxpayer-funded campaigning is backed up by television advertisements, grass-roots organizing and lobbying from business and other groups that support the Bush plan. The president's opponents are organized too, though they do not enjoy the resources of the White House or Treasury to sell their message.

For the administration, the communications effort is being coordinated out of Treasury's public affairs office through the new Social Security Information Center. Three people have been hired, with two more hires possible soon. The first three employees are veterans of the Bush-Cheney campaign or the Republican National Committee."


So, the lies and brainwashing will continue - business as usual - until hopefully for them they get their way.

How about also evangelizing social security "reform?" Maybe this will be the last straw, when this administration will be seen for what it is, smoke and mirrors in the interest of fat cats, giddy with their wealth and status, but never satisfied, always greedy for more. Privatizing social security would not only make it hostage to market forces, but also open the till for greedy manipulators. Shades of Enron! Good ole boy Texas politics! Rule by the priviledged elite!

And you know what? The American people are being suckered into buying it, just like the Germans in the 30s. Sheep, indeed! Going brain dead in their ever more massive SUVS and half million dollar McMansions.

Well, it's fortunate the voices of dissent get louder when the Right starts trampling on civil liberties, as in the 50s and 60s. The 49% who didn't vote for Bush are a formidable minority. It needs to wake up and flex it's muscles!

If there is a parallelism between now and then it would be thus...The people were not suckered nor are we...the balance of the motivated believe that this is right and correct. 9/11 has given them (not the administration) the feeling that some freedom can be lost in the name of protection. The social barriers that used to form along horizontal economic lines now form vertically as nearly half the nation view the other half as Leaches looking for a hand out from the "producer" class.

Until the Democrats come to understand that although they have a "majority" of registered voters they will never win another election because the Republicans have a more active base...as early 20th century philosopers knew who came to abandon socialism for fascism, the proletariat has never pushed history one way or another...it has always been the middle class aided by business and the "outsiders" from the middle elite, they have been the true revolutionaries in an industrialized society.

If there is a parallelism between now and then it would be thus...The people were not suckered nor are we...the balance of the motivated believe that this is right and correct. 9/11 has given them (not the administration) the feeling that some freedom can be lost in the name of protection. The social barriers that used to form along horizontal economic lines now form vertically as nearly half the nation view the other half as Leaches looking for a hand out from the "producer" class.

Until the Democrats come to understand that although they have a "majority" of registered voters they will never win another election because the Republicans have a more active base...as early 20th century philosopers knew who came to abandon socialism for fascism, the proletariat has never pushed history one way or another...it has always been the middle class aided by business and the "outsiders" from the middle elite, they have been the true revolutionaries in an industrialized society.

"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."

- Adolf Hitler

"Rush to judgement," as the saying goes, or putting limits on debate, is characteristic of totalitarian governments, who don't trust the wisdom or deliberative abilities of their people, who don't want participatory government, but want to govern by edict. They think they know the answers already, forget about testing them in the "court of public opinion." They relate to their self-serving "elitist" status or power, not as servants of the people, but masters.



You make it sound like any effort to stop a "filibuster" is an effort to stop open debate. This is not the case at all.

To use a tactic that appearantly AJS invented (if only everyone was that smart)

Filibuster:
1. The use of obstructionist tactics, especially prolonged speechmaking, for the purpose of delaying legislative action.
2. An instance of the use of this delaying tactic.

Clearly this is not considered productive debate.

And by the way I have no clue what the last few post by AJS and Bushboy are talking about. Whatever it is it was not covered by School House Rock.

Clearly this is not considered productive debate.



Clearly you have not the slightest idea of what you're talking about.

If there is a parallelism between now and then it would be thus...The people were not suckered nor are we...the balance of the motivated believe that this is right and correct. 9/11 has given them (not the administration) the feeling that some freedom can be lost in the name of protection. The social barriers that used to form along horizontal economic lines now form vertically as nearly half the nation view the other half as Leaches looking for a hand out from the "producer" class.

Until the Democrats come to understand that although they have a "majority" of registered voters they will never win another election because the Republicans have a more active base...as early 20th century philosopers knew who came to abandon socialism for fascism, the proletariat has never pushed history one way or another...it has always been the middle class aided by business and the "outsiders" from the middle elite, they have been the true revolutionaries in an industrialized society.

Maybe it was on NPR, but I heard a learned historian (hence the reference to you) say that we have to be careful about drawing parallels in history, because they may be interesting but parallel lines never meet.

Did they teach you that at your institution of higher learning?

Clearly you have not the slightest idea of what you're talking about.

That is the one thing we have in common

Maybe it was on NPR, but I heard a learned historian (hence the reference to you) say that we have to be careful about drawing parallels in history, because they may be interesting but parallel lines never meet.

Did they teach you that at your institution of higher learning?

They also taught me about those not learning from history being destined to repeat it.

Seriously though I make reference to instances of sameness... I would never say that what we are experiencing is the same for identical rationales, or could meet to the same outcome. Here is to hoping...unfortunately that has offered me scant positive outcome so far.

The essay by Byrd says that a filibuster, which indeed is a delaying tactic at best or a sabotage at worst, to obstruct a bill from being voted on, can be overcome with a 60% percent vote of all the members of the senate. Byrd furthur states this has happened a number of times in the past to kill a filibuster, so there isn't any need for some rules committee or individual to shut up a filibuster without a vote or consensus. That's the whole issue, whether one man or a select committee has the power to shut down debate, or it must be done by consensus of 60% of the governing body.

What TMB is talking about, if I may expand a little, is there are two types of people in society, those who bravely forge ahead, gamble, take risks, think "out of the box" on all kinds of issues, sometimes win, sometimes crash and burn. There are others who always take the tried and true path, follow the successes of the past, follow religious, moral or political authority. Thye're fearful of change, in a constant search for security, personal, religious, financial, whatever.

The way to fight terrorism is not to create terrorism yourself, but to reach out and show the way of peace and respect for your neighbors, not with tanks but with smiling faces and warm handshakes. Follow it up with patient co-operation. Instead of pushing your ideas on someone else, make him feel like he thought of it himself.

What we are seeing is what Andre Malraux wrote about China around 1900 in "Man's Fate," and Orwell about Europe in the 30s in "1984," the politics of paranoia. Anyone suspected of being or knowing an enemy of the state is radicalized by the ever more oppressive state, and the desire to revolt increases like a virus. This is the mindset of southern plantation owners developing a whole military society to contain their paranoia about slave rebellions. Its the mindset of cold warriors looking for communists behind every liberal cause, the irony of J Edgar Hoover exploring the sex life of Martin Luther King, Nixon with his Watergate spies.

The parallell with the early 20th century, when fascism took over from socialist ideals, is the politics of paranoia. The moneyed classes, the rich and the middle class, were then and are now the groups with the most to lose, so naturally they get behind the paranoia. They amass ever more wealth for security, while the proletariat, having nothing to lose, eventually revolts. That will happen if more of the wealth isn't funneled down to the least wealthy. The reverse is actually happening, as Dr. Hoo brought out in his post.

Just wanted to add a "book of the month" option that has to do with people (in this case the greater population of Germany) and how when conditions present themselves and they are given an opening to allow there ID to come to the fore how a population can become complicitious in a societies terrors..."Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust"...fairly provocative and controversial in the field, it argues that the Germans did not suddenly leap to genocide but pervasive feelings that predated Hitler were already present making it possible for the Nazi's to manipulate the populations "eliminationist" tendancies.

The way to fight terrorism is not to create terrorism yourself, but to reach out and show the way of peace and respect for your neighbors, not with tanks but with smiling faces and warm handshakes. Follow it up with patient co-operation. Instead of pushing your ideas on someone else, make him feel like he thought of it himself.


Are You Serious?

Maybe we should deal with convicted murderers the same way. Just show them a little love for a few weeks and let them go. If they kill again just show a little patienance and ask them to please stop.

Have you considered changing your screen name to Rodney King?

Your statement scares me more than anything AJS has ever wrote.

How can you beleave it? Please tell me why you think it is that easy to change people.

Please tell me why you think it is that easy to change people.


Nothing is easy at this point.

There are 1 billion Muslims in the world, as I recall. Can't shoot 'em all; got to make friends with the rest.

It's called "hearts and minds." It works.

Your statement scares me more than anything AJS has ever wrote.



if you are not "scared" of the Bush Admin. and the Neo Cons by now, then anything I or Fredrico says here shouldn't scare you at all.

Quit being a Drama Queen, k??

The way to fight terrorism is not to create terrorism yourself, but to reach out and show the way of peace and respect for your neighbors, not with tanks but with smiling faces and warm handshakes. Follow it up with patient co-operation. Instead of pushing your ideas on someone else, make him feel like he thought of it himself.

Are You Serious?


Hmmm. Sounds like Fredrico has been paying attention to the teachings of Jesus. Something GW clearly does not.

FWIW, I'm not religeous.

Are You Serious?

Maybe we should deal with convicted murderers the same way. Just show them a little love for a few weeks and let them go. If they kill again just show a little patienance and ask them to please stop.

Have you considered changing your screen name to Rodney King?

Your statement scares me more than anything AJS has ever wrote.

How can you beleave it? Please tell me why you think it is that easy to change people.

You should dial down your sense of mockrage...it is showing up in more than one thread.

Ok, I was overstating my case, but yes, I'm serious. That's the way the world works, negotiation and compromise. People get into fights when they can't do that.

What is the connection to Rodney King? The cops who beat the $hit out of him could easily have avoided that with crisis managment skills they were probably taught in the police academy. Instead, they "got even," worked their own racist "justice." King didn't deserve that.

What's "scary?" Where are you coming from?

The only thing scary around here is how mind-fukt members like LL really are.

Are You Serious?

Maybe we should deal with convicted murderers the same way. Just show them a little love for a few weeks and let them go. If they kill again just show a little patienance and ask them to please stop.

Have you considered changing your screen name to Rodney King?

Your statement scares me more than anything AJS has ever wrote.

How can you beleave it? Please tell me why you think it is that easy to change people.

You don't know what scarry is yet. Wait until the war grows and then the glory will be ours! Syria you are next. The rest of the middle east quakes in our wars of nationalism and conquest.

Les Trolls...