Another Bush For President

[Deepwater6]

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/jeb-bush-run-2016-son/story?id=26461466

 

Putting restrictions on who can hold office can be tricky because they have a way of circling back around and preventing some good people from getting in. Even though it's original intention was to keep out an undesirable or person considered too young to hold such an office with that much responsibility.

 

In this case I must consider it. I cringe to think of what the rest of the world thinks of us when we are viewed in the Bush-Clinton era. "All the people in that country, and they keep coming back to only two family names?" Mr. Obama excluded of course, but Hillary was still in the primary. 

 

A person I have a lot of respect for and is very well off himself once told me that the Bush family and Exxon are basically one in the same. He offered no proof of this, and I asked for none, but I think all things being equal we can say big oil is a fan of the Bush family. Although politics is money it would still be nice if the powers that be at least maintained the illusion of the people picking the president and not corporations making the decisions.

 

This run, if it happens, would concern me as most of my political views are mainstream Liberal. Getting back to restrictions, maybe it's time to think about the number of times a family dynasty in X amount of generations can hold this office? As I said I lean towards liberal views, but I would not like the DNC to run with Hillary either. A female for sure to break that barrier, but not Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.

 

I feel I'm in the 99% group and so enjoy fresh blood. I think that was the largest part appealing to Americans with Obama. Although I'm one of the few people who will admit to voting for him in forums and comments at other sites. I believe he is doing a good job. I don't agree with all his moves, but you don't reach the presidency without having to owe some groups. I think he understands that the first Black president is not only history, but a chance to set the bar high for those who follow him.

 

It would be sad if he went down in history as the first black president known to be in the Bush, Clinton dynasty eras. 
 

[Buffy]

Actually this has more to do with concentration of political power among those who have money. Trying to limit relatives from holding office seems to me to be a fools errand, and has all the same problems as term limits (a topic for another thread, but here in California, we've seen the extreme downside of that one). 

 

The thing is that in spite of the hyperventilation on the right end of the spectrum about Democrats being commie, socialist America haters, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both have governed to the *right* of most of the *Republican* presidents in the last 100 years. Some of the biggest damage to anti-trust legislation happened under Clinton (especially in banking regulation), and Obama has been trying desperately to pass a "Grand Bargain" that would set back government spending to levels not seen since the 1920s. The reason for this "conservatism on the left" has to do with the increasing need for money in politics in conjunction with income inequality giving a very small group of people a lot of spare funds to spend and rulings like Citizen's United letting them spend the money freely, has led Democrats to having to make lots of compromises about their positions in order to get funds that are being dangled in front of them. Groups like "No Labels" and "Third Way" fundraise almost exclusively for Democrats (although No Labels just threw a bunch of money to Cory Booker in the Colorado Senate race for no apparently logical reason), but they represent leaders and owners of large corporations and advocate a lot of the same positions as those who are supporting Republicans, but they're socially liberal, and so they have no place--and no influence--in the Republican party.

 

Hillary has proven to be very, uh, "flexible" in her opinions: while it's clear she's actually a left-ish liberal (e.g. "Hilary-care" was basically a single-payor health insurance proposal), she's been very pro-business and has raised lots and lots of money from corporate sources. Those who thought Obama was a more liberal alternative to Hillary, weren't really listening to what he was saying, especially when he praised Ronald Reagan, which he still does occasionally. 

 

Anyway, I think the bottom line here is that while it will take some tremendously earth-shattering events to break this stranglehold of money on politics, that that's what it is going to take to get more variety in who we get to vote for. 

 

I personally don't think it's a terrible thing. I'm voting for Hillary (although I'd like to see Elizabeth Warren run eventually too), and I'm voting for Jerry Brown (son of former governor Pat Brown) next week in spite of the fact that he's yet another example of someone who is way to the right of his reputation.

 

 

In the vacuum created by fear and ignorance and hunger and want, it's evil, not good, that rushes to fill the void, :phones: (and guess who's fomenting the most fear these days....)

Buffy

[Racoon]

Sorry, Buffy.

You admitted to being a Republican awhile back, and here you are talking about voting for Elizabeth Warren?

That is a total Joke.

 

Elizabeth Warren wants to take every gun away from law-abiding citizens, and Lied about being Native American..

 

You are Not Conservative, Buffy( Barbara) , if you say you want Elizabeth Warren in Office..

As for Hillary... She's never done anything worth a damn to be considered as Experience.

Bengahzi excluded

 

Name 1 Thing Hillary has done?? - She's never held a private sector job.. She just gets a free pass for being one of those liberal assholes from the late 60's.

[Buffy]

Hahahahaha! You obviously did not look up my quote! 

 

The problem is the Overton Window: folks who used to be the heart of the Republican party would be called communist sympathizers by today's Republican party. You're nowhere near old enough to remember what Republicans used to be. I still hope for a return of the days of having business-hating, trust-busting, tree-huggers like Teddy Roosevelt as the core of the party. Eisenhower recommended dismantling the defense industry on his way out the door. Even Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan supported the baby killer abortionists!

 

Seriously, stop watching Fox News dear. All that revisionist history (as polite as I can possibly be in describing it), makes people stupid.

 

 

You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that, :phones:

Buffy

[Racoon]

I like your energy, Buffy.. You are a real sparkplug.

[Racoon]

If anyone can tell us what Hillary Clinton ever did I'm all ears..

 

Elizabeth Warren?? Crazy-*** Communist

[Buffy]

Yale law school grad. Staff lawyer on the Watergate committee. First female partner at one of the top law firms in the south. Made more money than Bill until he was elected president. US Senator in the 3rd largest state (population) isn't a bad accomplishment either.

 

In other words, a lot more than you. Or Dubya. Or Sarah Palin.

 

And to call Elizabeth Warren a "commie" is just making you look desperate and silly. So you think the banks really should be taking a 10% cut every single time you spend money? They don't yet, but they're working on it and right now they're already getting 5%.The most radical thing Senator Warren is for is to say they deserve a fraction of that, given they have an 80% margin on that business already and don't deserve 95% (that smiley was completely accidental, but oh so appropriate (the number is eighty))

 

You might want to stop digging that hole, sonny.

 

 

This administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America, :phones:

Buffy

[Foghorn]

Do you really expect the rest of us to believe that after stating you cozy up to a rich man who knows better, that we should even listen to you?

 

Then you say that working three jobs is uniquely American?

 

Advice to you.

 

Lose the Buffy avatar, you are obviously a 60 year old man with issues.

 

Do not speak to the lower 95% of us as if you are one of us.

 

Cheers

[Buffy]

Then you say that working three jobs is uniquely American?

 

Welcome to Hypography Foghorn! 

 

You're new here, so you're not familiar with some of my odd quirks. Those sign-offs with the little :phones: (AKA "Buffy's Asterisk") are a quote that it's wise to look up before you react to it, because it's often ironic or counter-factual and can often make no sense until you do look it up. :cheer:

 

You might also want to note the Tom Lehrer quote in my signature.... :rolleyes:

 

 

What's the point of havin' a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people? :phones:

Buffy

[Foghorn]

TBH, Buffy, your sig looks like an eye test I failed...

 

Sorry, can't read it.

 

Can you just tell me straight up if you are rep or dem? Idc really as both are shot full of dicks but helps to know tendencies lol.

[Buffy]

TBH, Buffy, your sig looks like an eye test I failed...

 

Sorry, can't read it.

 

Ctrl-scroll-wheel-up is your friend! Try it! :cheer:

 

But for the far-sighted, here it is blown up:

 

 

"If you do not agree with anything I say, I'll not only retract it, but deny under oath that I ever said it!"

________________________________________________________________-- Tom Lehrer

 

"You know, I promised my mom and dad I wouldn't do anything stupid after I got out of college....Sorry, Mom!"

 

Forum Administrator

Hypography Science Forums -

 Science for Boys and Girls!

 

 

 

 

Can you just tell me straight up if you are rep or dem? Idc really as both are shot full of dicks but helps to know tendencies lol.

 

I register Republican, although the last Republican I would have voted for for President was Howard Baker. Now it's mostly to vote for the craziest nutcase who manages to get onto the Republican primary ballot, although our "top two" open primaries have messed up that activity horridly here in California.

 

Now that doesn't really mean anything because as mentioned above, for the Republican party that is now far to the right of the John Birch Society, folks who actually do believe in capitalism who simultaneously also believe that there's a role for government regulation to make those markets truly free and fair and want to limit monopoly power are branded as Trotskyites (a term I love because even Lenin and Stalin thought of them as "leftists") and America haters. Things that folks like Elizabeth Warren, Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow say could have made them comfortable "liberal Republicans" back before you were born, but those days are seemingly long gone. 

 

A contradiction? Illogical? Hmmm, what oppressed minority gets branded with that all the time.... :cheer:

 

 

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth, :phones:

Buffy

[Foghorn]

SHAME!! be upon me.

 

Those things I got hot about and attributed to Buffy were instead the bloviations of another!

 

No, I don't know what bloviating actually means but sounded cool.

 

But I beg forgiveness.

 

 

[AnssiH]

To go back to OP, yeah it's a bit of a joke that you get the same family in power over and over. It is a plutocratic system, plain and simple, and you guys don't really have a democratic choice. And if you look at the Bush family business ties for instance, suddenly a lot of US foreign policies start to make sense. In a bad way.

 

I would say the first part of the problem is that you need such an obscene amount of money to be portrayed as a serious runner, that you must corrupt yourself to run. In the US politics you probably must have corrupted yourself already in earlier steps to get that far though...

 

The second part of the problem is that, in order to get elected, you must constantly talk to the lowest common denominator. This has direct connections to the mass ignorance problem I've been talking about in other threads. That is why every candidate always "believes into the God of the bible". This is why they have no problems lying about what they are planning to do if they get elected. This is why politicians generally become reluctant at making any votes close to re-elections.

 

The smarter the masses are, the smarter the politicians become too.

 

Btw, it seems to me that Ron Paul often complains about real problems, even when it is not popular to complain about them. And he doesn't seem to be shy to complain about the problems with banking and corporate power. He kind of does much less of the "lowest common denominator" thing. I don't know if he has got solutions, but at least he is not shy to call out the problems.

 

Why do you guys think it is he is never taken as a serious contender? Would you vote for him or not, and why?

 

And yeah Obama is an enigma to me. He seems to have pushed the secrecy of the government far further than Bush did. Wonder how much control your president really have...

[Buffy]

I think you may mean Rand Paul, since his father Ron has basically fallen by the wayside for saying too many kooky things. Rand is a chip off the old block though, and they're almost indistinguishable on their political positions and Rand has picked up his dad's followers.

 

Rand Paul is considered a serious contender, amazingly enough, and a lot of it has to do with how crazy most of the contenders are on the right, so he comes off sometimes as actually sane (but just listen long enough and...).

 

Rand Paul is also the leader of the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party and Libertarians are indeed better educated compared to other groups: a lot of Silicon Valley types call themselves Libertarian because they think of themselves as fiscal conservatives and social liberals. He tries to cater to the social conservatives though by paying lip-service to their litmus tests like abortion and prayer in schools, but the fact is that they simply don't trust him, precisely because of some of his "unique" positions like being anti-war. So he gets a huge amount of attention because a very small but very vocal wing of the Republican party promotes him.

 

He has said things that are "anti-corporate" but he's pulled those back pretty quickly because his corporate backers don't like it. The fact is that the essence of rich libertarians is a strict view of Laissez Faire markets with no government interference on developing monopolies and discriminatory and self-dealing practices. Since that's his base, he can't really get very far with going against that core belief, and when he has he's been thwacked.

 

Some of his other "unusual" positions though have been Lee Atwater style dog whistles like his opposition to the Civil Right's Act. It's things like that that give even the credulous Washington DC Press poobahs some pause about him, but that does not eliminate him as a contender.

 

Some folks on the left though have been willing to ignore the civil rights and anti-abortion stances and like him for his anti-war positions, and he's gotten at least partial endorsements from people like Bill Maher.

 

So the bottom line on him is that he's managed to both show occasional attractiveness to a wide range of groups, but that trying to please everyone has left him being disdained by the majority.

 

While the Washington Press treats him as a serious contender, he's really unlikely to ever get the Republican nomination because the social conservative base won't vote for him, and there's no way he'd make it as a Democrat even if he started talking like Elizabeth Warren about banks and taxes. And of course America hasn't voted in a third party since Abraham Lincoln, but there's always that possibility....

 

 

I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation, :phones:

Buffy

[AnssiH]

I think you may mean Rand Paul, since his father Ron has basically fallen by the wayside for saying too many kooky things. Rand is a chip off the old block though, and they're almost indistinguishable on their political positions and Rand has picked up his dad's followers.

No actually I meant Ron... Hadn't even realized Rand is his son though. :) Anyway, I was asking because in the earlier elections he was pretty much dismissed in the media, but then often the sound bites I hear from him were quite rational. So I wondered what had happened to him.

 

I don't know that much about him, so, what were the kooky things that people mostly remember him from?

 

He has said things that are "anti-corporate" but he's pulled those back pretty quickly because his corporate backers don't like it. The fact is that the essence of rich libertarians is a strict view of Laissez Faire markets with no government interference on developing monopolies and discriminatory and self-dealing practices. Since that's his base, he can't really get very far with going against that core belief, and when he has he's been thwacked.

That would be a problem. Of course, if you are anti-corporate and honest about it, you can't really get anywhere in US politics. That is also a problem.

 

So the bottom line on him is that he's managed to both show occasional attractiveness to a wide range of groups, but that trying to please everyone has left him being disdained by the majority.

Right. But then the flip-side of that coin is that had he not tried to please a larger base with some lies, you would have never even heard of him. So, you could either say the problem is he tries to please everyone by lying, or you could say that he has not lied as much as some others?

 

It seems the two party system is quite problematic, because in order to be successful, you have to be perceived very clearly as agreeing with the party line. If you let out your own opinions that differ from the party line, you are instantly losing the trust of some people. So politicians who are somewhere in the middle don't get elected as often. You should expect some polarization to occur in that kind of dynamic.

[Racoon]

Hahahahaha! You obviously did not look up my quote! 

 

The problem is the Overton Window: folks who used to be the heart of the Republican party would be called communist sympathizers by today's Republican party. You're nowhere near old enough to remember what Republicans used to be. I still hope for a return of the days of having business-hating, trust-busting, tree-huggers like Teddy Roosevelt as the core of the party. Eisenhower recommended dismantling the defense industry on his way out the door. Even Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan supported the baby killer abortionists!

 

Seriously, stop watching Fox News dear. All that revisionist history (as polite as I can possibly be in describing it), makes people stupid.

 

 

You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that, :phones:

Buffy

 

 

You know I admire and respect you Buffy... You are always a great read, and very intelligent. A beautiful woman in life I am sure.

 

However.. Remember that the KKK was Democrat. That Civil Rights were passed by Republicans.

That is Indesputable Fact.

 

Eisenhower didn't recommend dismantling the Military on the way out.. He said beware and keep them in Check.

It does reinforce the fact of the New World Order that people are reluctant to admit.  

 

Commuism is the new Liberalism.. It only sounds good during Sound-Bites.. It never works out in Reality.

Everyone wanted Obama to be the Hope and Change, .. but we only found out he's the worst President in history.

 

Hillary, would be  70 years old if she won the Presidency. Does the United States really need a Re-Tread, Has-Been, Never -Really- -did -Anything  to be President in the New World of Techno Globalization?

 

Elizabeth Warren is nothing short of a Communist. She votes with Obama 98+ % of the time.. We already know after 6+ years his policies are Failed... Why expect anything different than her??

 

I am not against a woman president. But I am against for the "Lets vote for a woman, now that we've had a Black president, and next it will be a Latino president, Just for the charade of going thru the demographics to select our next Politically Correct president despite actual qualifications."

 

What this Country needs, now again, is a Ronald Regan post Jimmy Carter..

[CraigD]

Eisenhower recommended dismantling the defense industry on his way out the door.

Eisenhower didn't recommend dismantling the Military on the way out.. He said beware and keep them in Check.

Eisenhower’s actual words were (The script of the actual speech is available here):

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

He neither called for dismantling the US Army or Navy (the latter of which, Constitutionally, can’t be dismantled), nor the dismantling of private and public businesses that supply them, nor for the regulation of them, but for preventing them gaining too much influence over the government.

 

This line by Eisenhower is widely considered and taught (at least to me) to be insightful and prophetic. I think it is, though not extraordinarily so.

 

I think Eisenhower and other mid-20th Century US leaders were critically off-target in seeking to contain the military-industrial complex through public and government vigilance, because I think its rise in power was nearly inevitable once Congress began providing nearly as much of more money for an Army (which now, consists of the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and in large part, Navy) when the US was not at war as when it was. That is, the rise of the military-industrial complex is not primarily due “the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by defense companies, but by too much use of the US congress’s ower to – to use phrases from the Constitution - “raise and support Armies” “provide for the calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” and for “organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia”, and a neglect of their power “to declare war”, and the responsibility that attends that.

 

Although some of this failure of Congress is, I think, due to the influence of individuals and companies seeking to use the US to – to use a phrase common in news and political speech these days – “protect their interests at home and abroad”, most of it, I think, was a fearful reaction to WWI, WWII, and expected future world wars.

 

In this fear, I think Congress accurately reflects and represents the sentiments of the People. I’m dismayed to conclude that we are not “the brave” sung of in the US National Anthem, but a fearful people willing to sacrifice liberty – and money – for security, and who consider preemptive military attacks on militaries, paramilitaries, and individuals much too weak to pose a real threat of defeating the US at war, to be legitimate.

 

I believe real improvement of the US will not occur until the majority the People are willing to live without a powerful, always-ready military, and that the US can successfully defend itself militarily by reacting to attacks, not attacking first.

 

“The best defense is a good offense”, should, I believe, be applied only to games like American football, not the use of military and police force.

 

As for this year and 1016’s elections, I’ll vote for candidates who promise to oppose the enactment of religion-inspired laws, such as the prohibition of contraception and abortion. For the past 20 years or so, these have always been members of the Democratic Party, of Independents who side with members of the Democratic Party.