COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, February 04, 2008

Republicans Destroying Republicans


Team 43 Leaving the Field

George Bush, Republican, proposed a $3.1 trillion budget today that will come with $400 billion deficits. When he leaves office, the financial condition of the United States will be as follows:
  • As of January 30, 2008, the total U.S. federal debt held by the public was roughly $5.1 trillion. This does not include the money owed by states, corporations, or individuals, nor does it include the money owed, for example debt held for Social Security.
  • If intra-government debt obligations are included, the debt figure rises to roughly $9.2 trillion.
  • If, in addition, unfunded Medicaid, Social Security, etc. promises are added, this figure rises to a total of $59.1 trillion.
  • In 2005 the public debt was 64.5 percent of GDP according to the CIA World Factbook, making the U.S. public debt the 35th largest in the world by percentage of GDP. For 2007, this figure rose to 66.5 percent.
My point is simple, the Republicans, and George Bush dropped the ball on their one strong suit, government spending. That was Republican self-destruction and by a large measure is responsible for the mess the party is in.

However, by all indications it appears that Barack Obama has a good chance of upsetting Hillary and will be the Democratic choice. He is an unknown quantity and once the excitement dies down, which it will, his record and talents other than those of an orator will be thoroughly examined. I doubt that he will pass the test. A Republican can still win this if the Republicans do not destroy the last man standing.

_________________

February 04, 2008
Time for Republicans to Get a Grip
By Kyle-Anne Shiver American Thinker

It's one thing when your political adversaries denounce your Party and hold a gleeful funeral procession with your ashes on public display. We expect our adversaries to behave this way.

It's another thing altogether when your own luminaries dance to the opponent's fight song and give woeful credence to the wishful thinking of your adversaries.

The leftists are having a field day dancing around the near-dead carcass of the Republican Party, and we seem to be joining them at every turn.

Well, enough is enough, I say. It's time for Republicans to get a grip.

Instead of wildly picking at the bark of a single tree here or there, we need to take a step back and look at the forest. Getting bogged down in a single issue, or even three or four, is not Reaganesque.

Polarizing the President Is Paying Big Dividends

The left got its fire lit by two events: (1) the impeachment of their standard bearer; and (2) the contested electoral victory of George W. Bush. That fire might have extinguished itself, however, if not for the huge infusion of cash from leftist billionaire, George Soros, and his wealthy friends.

Put all that money together with a growing network of leftist political action committees. Spin the same message a hundred different ways, amplify it through the mass media and aim all the ammunition at one target: George W. Bush.

The left has effectively polarized President Bush, even to the extent that his own Party believes much of the propaganda. Peggy Noonan wrote just last week that "George W. Bush has destroyed the Republican Party."

Polarization, the tactic espoused by Saul Alinksy, guru to both Obama and Rodham Clinton, is paying big dividends for Soros and his vast left wing coterie of financiers. George Bush, whose college grades at Yale were better than Al Gore's at Harvard, is stupid; the Iraq War is a dismal failure to be ended, despite the victory being won by our troops; the economy, still growing, albeit at a slower pace than before, is in a recession. People in mass numbers believe these lies.

For one thing, the propaganda blitzkrieg has most likely persuaded many ardent conservative politicians to spare themselves and their families the same treatment, thereby keeping them out of the race altogether.

For another, this polarization has resulted in moving the electoral middle slightly left. This, in turn, allows the Democrats to run two of the most far-left, socialist candidates in history and make it seem as though they are America-loving moderates.

I cannot tell you how many genuine, upstanding American citizens I've heard lately say that even they would vote for a Democrat next election just to stop the constant hate-mongering barrage from the left.

This is much like the attitude of the beleaguered parent who gives in to every childish demand just to stop the tantrum and get a little peace. Americans are wanting a president who cannot be so easily polarized, and they are looking toward the middle.

Moving the middle to the left is forcing the Republicans to run centrist candidates, all of whom have veered off Reagan's path on one or more big issues. That's the big-picture reality, and no amount of protest to the contrary is going to change the picture by this time next week.

But does any of this spell death for the Republican Party?

Only if we let it.

So, what would Ronald Reagan do?

Nobody knows, of course, since he isn't here to tell us. I suspect, however, that the very last thing he would do is start blaming his own. He wouldn't go off half-cocked for all the world to see how his political adversaries had gotten the better of him. And he wouldn't be raising any white flags just because the realities of the political landscape demanded new, slightly different strategies.

Ronald Reagan has been transformed from a living, breathing, human president into a political icon, and I think he would positively hate this.

He would be the first among us, I believe, to demand an end to holding every candidate up to the false picture of conservative perfection we ourselves have created. The problem with making icons is that it is necessary to discount every negative and embellish every positive. When this process is applied to human beings, nothing can result but a false picture that sets its admirers up for failure and disappointment in the long term.

Would Ronald Reagan encourage this childish fantasy? I think not.

And it wouldn't take him five minutes to list the vast differences between one of the Republican centrist candidates and either a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama. Both stand for centralized government solutions to every individual problem. Both stand for expansion of government control on everything from regulating the environment and our health care to an even tighter, iron grip on our education system. Both are internationalists who see America as more of a problem to the world than the source of emulation and better solutions.

When I heard Ann Coulter last week on Hannity and Colmes say that if John McCain is the Republican nominee for President, she would go out and campaign for Hillary Clinton because there isn't a shred of difference between them, I gasped in disbelief. Honestly, I thought the poor dear has completely lost it.

Ronald Reagan was no quitter and he was no fuzzy-brained idealist either. He was a pragmatist all the way, seizing the best opportunity since WWII to bring the Country back rightward. That opportunity had a name: James Earl Carter. There was no vast right wing conspiracy to bring Carter down; he did it all by himself. Reagan dove in and picked up the Country's pieces, and ended the cold war in one preesidency.

But Reagan, of all people would have the good common sense he derived from God to know that 2008 is not 1980. The political landscape has changed, and no amount of fretting, whining, fuming or swearing is going to change that one iota.

Time to get a real grip Republicans. Face reality. And elect a true America-loving centrist who can stop the bleeding. The whole electorate is crying out for an end to the polarizing politics and a man who can truly unite the Country.

We need to do this one for the Gipper.



63 comments:

  1. Duece, good stuff....I don't think the skeletons have really started rattling yet...on anybody...

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  2. I loved Dutch. I, also, realized he was past his prime the day he entered office.

    Don't get all excited about this budget. It's got a couple of Hundred Billion in "Rebates" in it. It's, also, reflecting the last 8 or 9 months of slowing tax collections (that will reverse sometime around the middle of the year.) We will probably, in addition, spend Less on the war this year than in 07'.

    I think I saw where spending will, actually, rise less than one percent of GDP. If so, that means we will, almost certainly, spend less as a % of GDP than we did last year.

    This looks like really bad politics right now; but, it will be pretty good politics in July when the economy is Booming.

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  3. RUFUS:
    Check this out:
    RCP has McCain way in the lead, and doesn't have a single Rasmussen poll.
    ---
    Rasmussen numbers?
    In the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, it’s John McCain at 33%, Mitt Romney at 30%, and Mike Huckabee at 22%. Ron Paul is supported by 5% of Likely Republican Primary Voters (see recent daily numbers). Rasmussen Reports includes only voters likely to participate in a primary election in this sample. That is a more conservative segment of the Republican Party and more focused on the election at this time.

    ---
    Rasmussen Tracking Poll

    THIS IS FUCKED!

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  4. Far too imaginative for a Politician, esp Pub Pol:
    ---
    Will Mitt Make a Surprise Move This Week?
    Remember when Reagan pre-emptively announced his Richard Schweiker and gained a ton of momentum after a series of losses in 1976? (Although Reagan was a little late on that strategy, it very effective and probably would have worked had Reagan done it sooner.)

    Perhaps the time has come for Mitt to do something similarly unorthodox. How about a pre-emptive announcement from Romney that his "Richard Schweiker" is going to be J.C. Watts? A Romney-Watts ticket would thrash all hopes of a Hillary or Obama victory because it yanks away African American bloc voters from the Dem's. Furthermore it adds evangelical comfort to the Romney ticket with a good ole Southern Baptist.

    I think that might even be enough to give the "I'm settling for McCain because he's electable" crowd something to get excited about...and McCain might no longer squeak by as the unintended beneficiary of a divided party on 3% - 5% victories. There are too many conservatives who don't want McCain to be the nominee. McCain is bad for the party. Romney needs to harness all that opposition to McCain and put it to work for him.

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  5. It's the MSM and Real Clear Whores and Drudge destroying Republicans!

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  6. Ah, ya gotta have a Dem administration every now and then, Doug. We'll just go ahead, lay back and enjoy it.

    The Republicans have totally fucked themselves for a few years, so so-be-it.

    I don't think there's any way McCrazy could beat either Dem this year, but, just in case, I'll be voting for the Hillabama ticket. It's going to be a Debacle, whoever wins; so, I want to make sure the Dems get credit it.

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  7. What about the Supreme Court?
    Think I'd rather Have Mac/Ted Olsen than THAT!

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  8. Doug, the vacancies that are coming up are the liberal ones. There won't be two degrees of separation between the Judges the McShamniac nominates, and the ones Hillary puts forth.

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  9. Goddammit, Doug, Rufus has never been right about anything. Not one goddamn thing.

    If I had to read "Look, guys..." one more time, I'd vomit.

    No offense, rufus.

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  10. Which is worse, him making you vomit, or him BEING Vomit?

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  11. Rudy looks like an undertaker.
    McCain looks like his future client.

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  12. I am still convinced that Prince Obama is going to peak and decline rapidly with the vetting process that will be handed out by McCain. By the way, I did pick the Giants.

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  13. Bite the fucking bullet already and vote for that bat-shit crazy geezer.

    Because he is the only goddamned Republican who can get you there.

    If you don't want to be there, vote for someone else.

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  14. Haven't yet read this, but it seems like it's relevant.

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  15. Would you vote for McCain, Trish?

    Yes? Depends on nominee? No? Undecided?

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  16. Yeah, I would.

    And four years ago he was my nightmare Republican nominee; Hillary v. McCain my nightmare match up.

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  17. "I said I would not tear up," Clinton said. "Already we're not on that path."

    Both Democrats are wrapping up an intense round of campaigning as voters in some two dozen states go to the polls Tuesday.

    The Democratic contest is so tight that many see Sens. Clinton and Obama continuing to duke it out eve after Super Tuesday.


    Obama Like JFK

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  18. When she's president, and when we get hit again, what's she going to do? Get on tv and cry? wtf.

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  19. Course, we haven't seen the VP selection yet.

    McCain-Huckabee vs. Hillary/?

    Speaking of nightmare scenarios...

    ---

    Above link takes Kristol to task, Doug, in case your interested.

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  20. Both CNN and MSNBC, which was up 33 percent, have aggressively promoted their political teams. Fox News Channel's viewership was essentially flat, up 4 percent.

    "We're pleasantly surprised by the level of interest," said Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president.

    Between the motormouthed Chris Matthews and provocative Keith Olbermann, MSNBC has tried to make its coverage vibrant, said NBC News executive Phil Griffin. Joe Scarborough's "Morning Joe" program, the network's replacement for Don Imus, has become a political showcase.


    Dominating TV Today

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  21. That was, BTW, an awesome Super Bowl.

    And I'm by no means a football fan of any kind.

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  22. I thought I heard my name? Then . . kind of a vomiting sound

    Is someone sick?

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  23. That idiot Patriot coach had 'em pass on that fourth down when they should have kicked the field goal. Moron. Serves him right.

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  24. I can't stand it when women cry. I may vote for Hillary too.

    What state is Ron Paul going to win, Sam?

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  25. The sacrificial goat of the Liberal Elite and friends.

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  26. President Bush presented a $3.1 trillion budget proposal to the Democratic-controlled Congress, much of which is likely to go nowhere. But lawmakers will have to confront at least one element of the package: the president's plan to make his big tax cuts permanent.

    ...

    By contrast, nonsecurity spending, mostly social services and other domestic programs, would rise by just 0.3% to $393 billion. In the process, the budget seeks major reductions or elimination of 151 programs, including some education, health and job-training programs for states.

    ...

    The HUD budget request doesn't include any new programs to address the housing-market turmoil. Federal Housing Commissioner Brian Montgomery told reporters that there would be "changes we're going to propose administratively," but he wouldn't provide details.


    Tax Cuts

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  27. Ron Paul's thinking of a third party run, according to the video. Can only hurt the republicans.

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  28. Don't worry about Hillary, she only cries about herself and her own affairs. If we get hit, she'll be looking for a button to push, I have that much faith in her.

    She's the kind of woman that could give the gladiators a good pep talk.

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  29. On the eve of tomorrow's near-national contest for each party's presidential nominee, Democrat Hillary Clinton has lost much of her longtime polling lead over Barack Obama both nationally and in grand prize California, while Republican John McCain has surged ahead for a potentially decisive edge.

    ...

    Regardless of states won, many Democratic strategists expect Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama to roughly split the delegates tomorrow, with each reaping roughly 800 toward the 2,025 majority needed for the nomination.

    ...

    Mr. Romney won Maine's small Republican caucuses over the weekend, but that isn't seen as a harbinger. Sen. McCain sealed his front-runner status with last week's Florida victory, and -- despite conservatives' undying suspicions of the maverick senator -- establishment Republicans in Super Tuesday states have been jumping aboard his bandwagon.


    McCain Lengthens Lead

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  30. Here is the plaintiff's brief in the D.C. gun ban case filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a biggie.

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  31. Damn, he's got a shitload of authorities.

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  32. A federal appeals court struck down the ban in March as incompatible with the Second Amendment.

    At issue is whether the Second Amendment of the Constitution protects an individual's right to own guns or instead merely sets forth the collective right of states to maintain militias.

    City officials filed briefs in support of the ban in January.


    Supreme Court

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  33. The Second Amendment was engendered by the Framer's bitter experience with the King's disarmament of the population.

    Most critically, the preamble cannot contradict or render meaningless the operative text.

    from the brief...

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  34. Mr. Romney seemed pleased to have drawn Mr. McCain back to California; after Mr. Romney added a Monday-night stop there, Mr. McCain added a stop on Tuesday. The Romney campaign is focusing its television advertising budget on California and cable television, deciding against running commercials in Missouri and Georgia.

    “I understand that we’ve now brought Senator McCain back to California, too,” Mr. Romney said at a news conference in Nashville on Monday morning. “He’s like, ‘Oh wow, Romney’s there.

    I better go back there and see if I can’t shore up the race there.’ But he’s sliding in California.”


    Big Day Looms

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  35. Who cut the undersea internet cables? USA and Israel Of Course Conspiracy theories abound.

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  36. Mark Botti, a former official in the Justice Department's antitrust division, said Google can provide regulators with information and analysis about what it sees as the anticompetitive aspects of the transaction. The company could also take its concerns to Capitol Hill.

    Microsoft likely prefers that the Bush administration, which has challenged few deals, review the transaction rather than the next administration, Litan said. Most experts think the review would take at least a year.

    Yahoo has said little about Microsoft's offer since it was made public Friday, except that its board is considering it.


    Concerns Flawed

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  37. Bill of Rights was a whopper of a mistake, heavily contended at the time.

    When the entire point of your constitution is to carefully delimit government authority, you don't want to go enumerating and listing individual rights. Only confuses the matter.

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  38. I am not voting for any Democrat. The Republicans took a shellacking because they acted and legislated like Democrats.

    You have to be kidding me about Supreme Court justices not making a difference. They sure have for the last 50 years. Hugh Hewitt, has supported Romney and Giuliani, but admits that he will support McCain , if he is nominated and his commentary has been reasonable and dignified.

    Coulter, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity make no sense with their vitriol. Coulter is promoting Coulter. Rush Limbaugh cannot even control his own life, divorced three times and be blew out his hearing because all the hairs fell out of his ears from excessive and chronic drug use. How is he any expert on virtue?

    Glenn Beck is best when he is a clown and Sean Hannity?

    No one was more critical of McCain than this blog during the immigration debacle, but voting for Hillary or Obama makes as much sense to me as Paul Bremner deciding to punish the Sunnis by firing the civil service and the army and then letting the street take over Iraq. The Democrats cannot control their own mob. Give them all three branches under a rookie social activist or Hillary? You must be joking.

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  39. The Supreme Court has ruled that political parties, like the rest of us, have free-speech rights. Thus, they can control who gets to vote in their primary.

    If you're not a member of the Sierra Vista Rotary Club, you don't get to vote for the club's leaders. But we're not looking for the leaders of the Sierra Vista Rotary Club to protect us from terrorists and get us out of Iraq.

    So, today I am undesirable, but come this fall, the candidates will be begging for us to join their little clique. I can wait.


    Unwanted Independent

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  40. If I say I'm voting for a democrat you know I'm pulling your leg.

    If the S.Court comes up with a real crapper on this gun case this summer it might bring out some pissed of folks over to McCain.

    Trish you got a good point there.

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  41. Man, these dems calling in to KGO tonight are all fired up, smelling Republican blood in the water. All the talk on the KGO street seems to be about Obama's running mate. Richardson, Seballeus(sp?)whoever that is...

    Ron Paul and Huckabee sure have caused a lot of damage rummaging around out there this year.

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  42. Why is this? Why hasn't the Iraq war--which has "gone on longer than World War II"--made a clearer impression on the American mind?

    In the launch
    issue of the new journal World Affairs, George Packer, longtime foreign affairs correspondent for the New Yorker offers important insights into this paradox. Packer is both an experienced and honest Iraq reporter and a longtime critic of Bush policy, so he is perhaps one of the few qualified to write "Over There: Iraq the Place vs. Iraq the Abstraction."

    He is particularly on point in describing the disconnects he observes in the way Hollywood thinks about Iraq. "Once, after to a trip to Iraq," he writes,

    I attended a dinner party in Los Angeles at which most of the guests were movie types. They wanted to know what it was like "over there."


    Dissonance on Iraq

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  43. Over a million and a half Californians have already voted absentee.

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  44. Maybe I spoke too soon:) Didn't know Obama was a nuclear energy guy, first I heard of it ---



    Greetings.

    Tomorrow is Super Tuesday.

    And tomorrow is a big day for the two corporate controlled parties.

    For the corporate Democrats, will it be Hillary – whose work as a young lawyer for the union-busting Wal-Mart was documented last week by ABC News?

    Or will it be Obama, who wants to keep nuclear power on the table and who has close ties to Illinois-based nuclear power company Exelon – as documented by a front page article in the New York Times Saturday?

    At this point, we’re exploring other possibilities.

    For one, we’d like to know—who will challenge the corporate welfare kings?

    Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston has written a brilliant expose of corporate welfare in the United States – how corporations use the government to take from the many and give to the rich.

    Yesterday, the Times ran a book review by Jonathan Chait attacking Johnston as a “left-wing populist” (even though he’s a registered Republican) and saying that one of the heroes of the book is Ralph Nader.

    Before the Times ran the review, Free Lunch had climbed to Number 5 on the Times non-fiction best sellers list.

    Free Lunch is the kind of book we are urging all citizens to read before making snap judgments about this election year.

    During this election year, we will be exploring this question – who will challenge the corporate welfare kings?

    Check us out at www.naderexplore08.org.

    Thank you for your ongoing support and commitment to standing up to corporate power.

    Please spread the word.

    And give whatever you can.

    Onward

    The Nader Team

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  45. But McCain cautioned that he was "not predicting" that he would wrap up the GOP nomination today. "I've seen more than one election go against what the polls show," he told reporters after the rally.

    If for some reason today's primaries did not crown him as the presumptive nominee, "we will be prepared to continue in the campaign."

    That next key moment in the campaign could come as early as Thursday, when the annual Conservative Political Action Conference begins in the District. Both McCain and Romney are scheduled to speak that day to thousands of conservative activists.


    1 Big Day

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  46. "Trish you got a good point there."

    I try to roll out one a year, bob.: )

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  47. Hope everything is well with you there, Trish.

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  48. And it's never anything I can take credit for.

    I just rarely remember who to give proper credit to.

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  49. Every place has its challenges. Every place has its charms.

    And for that, I can take full credit.

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  50. Without much overstatement: The best thing about living overseas, bob, is the US Customs and Immigration guy sincerely welcoming you home again.

    We'd not have, I don't think, near the appreciation we do for our country - and its unselfconsciously amazing people - if we'd not spent a hellluva lotta time away.

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  51. I remember when I got back from my one trip to Europe, I was glad to be home, and Europe is good living.

    Interesting for sure, but I like these wide open spaces.

    I remember some of them, the foreign folk, there at Hyde Park in London, making speeches against all things Western, back in the late 60's. There were plenty of Hindoos and islamics around, even then, from what I could see.

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  52. I wish Americans could see how exceptional they are.

    They think they do. But they don't.

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  53. Bob, in 1965, me and about seven other airman left a pub on Bayswater Road in London. We had been there since it opened at 11:00Am and closed at two in the afternoon. We walked over to Speakers Corner and some Pakistanis had a small demonstration saying how much they hated the English, but the crowd was mostly good-nature about it. Something else caught our attention.

    Two long haired Americans with beards were unfurling an American flag. We joined the crowd around them and to our shocked amazement, one of them pulled out a Zippo and started a speech about why he was going to set it on fire. Viet Nam. One of our guys from Wisconsin calmly said to him that after the flag was burned, he was going to take the pole from him and shove it up his ass. The two hippies ( the first any of us had ever seen) realized that we were both unamused and had some good English beer in our belly. Another of our crew, grabbed the flag and hundreds of English people laughed and cheered.

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  54. Good story. I remember this one well spoken African man really going after British imperialsim in Africa. Maybe he was young Robert Mugabe.

    I wish I could have had more time, and a lot more money, I would have rented cars and driven the countrysides more. It was the lowest of low rent tours. I have a much better idea of what I would really want to see. There might be a next time too, my wife is bugging me.

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  55. Fucking Evangelicals!
    ---
    Georgia
    Huckabee continues to lead among the state’s Evangelical Christian voters, but by a smaller margin than earlier in the year.
    The former Baptist Preacher attracts 34% of the Evangelical Vote in Georgia while McCain picks up 28% and Romney 26%.

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  56. I'm Elmer Fudd and I'm a Christian!
    ----
    "Evangelicals Flock to Fudd! "

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  57. I'm Elmer Fudd and I approve this message.

    What's the huckleberry in it for other than vp at this point. I agree with you completey Doug. Coast To Coast is over for the night. We'll know a lot more tomorrow night. Nite.

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