Back to Main
June 28, 2005
WB: My Kind of Democrat
Comments
Emmanuel has said that he is a “Vince Lombardi Democrat; winning is everything.”
He’s a good example of why we’re losing. At first he supported the Iraq war when it was popular, then he had reservations about how it was conducted, soon he will be for withdrawal.
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Jun 28 2005 16:08 utc | 1
Emmanuel has said that he is a “Vince Lombardi Democrat; winning is everything.”
He’s a good example of why we’re losing. At first he supported the Iraq war when it was popular, then he had reservations about how it was conducted, soon he will be for withdrawal.
This is the kind of guy who will feed his own constituents into the woodchipper as soon as any Republican, and I mean that almost literally. How many soldiers from his district have died in this pointless war?
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Jun 28 2005 16:09 utc | 2
At first he supported the Iraq war when it was popular, then he had reservations about how it was conducted, soon he will be for withdrawal.
I suppose you’re right. But anyone who beats Republicans to death with a baseball bat and then feeds their bodies into a wood chipper can’t be all bad.
Posted by: Billmon | Jun 28 2005 16:14 utc | 3
If the Rep wants to be the man, shouldn’t he be bold and say something about the War on his own website?
Oh well.
I see myself in the park on horseback
surrouded by dark
leading the armies of peace
but the iron legs of the horse will not bend–Mark Strand, The way It Is
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 28 2005 16:18 utc | 4
If the Rep wants to be the man, shouldn’t he be bold and say something about the War on his own website?
Well I clicked the link and this is the first thing I saw:
Top Story
Congress Continues to Honor America’s Fallen WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, Thursday, June 23, 2005, U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) delivered the following statement during a Special Order on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Emanuel was joined Reps. John Lewis (D-GA), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Brian Baird (D-WA), Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Frank Pallone (D-NJ) in reading the names of American men and women who fell while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Members will continue reading the names during Special Orders until all of the fallen are memorialized in the Congressional Record.
Make Rahm for Daddy?
Posted by: bcf | Jun 28 2005 16:27 utc | 6
See? We’ll all be dragged further down the road to hell, but the democrats will at least pave the way there for a smoother ride.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 28 2005 16:32 utc | 7
Emanuel grew his war fangs during the Clinton years when the vrwc was investigating that admin at any turn. I believe any dem is better than the rethugs.
Members of the MOA community have to be patient in the anti-war stance. I know, I know, we should be hard and steadfast against the war. I have been against the war and Bushie pisses me off every time I hear the moron. But what we are seeing now is some wounds opening up in the soft underbelly of the Bushie junta. It takes some chipping away, (impeachment by a thousand cuts) and some time before the wounds become infected. Your seeing the early stages with the Rovian bloviation and Bushies speech that requires the wounds to be dressed if only to relieve some pain. It takes time for the flesh to open up in full view of the US population. The black salve of calling the liberals names and blaming liberals for war failures will where off as the public knows who is really in charge and it sure isn’t the liberals.
So be patient, the scab keep getting picked everytime it closes and the healing isn’t going very well.
Posted by: jdp | Jun 28 2005 16:55 utc | 11
Vin Carreo: At first he supported the Iraq war when it was popular, then he had reservations about how it was conducted, soon he will be for withdrawal.
Well, that still would be an improvement to cheer. And I agree with Billmon, if he beats Repubs to a bloody pulp on some issue, more power to him.
Vin Carreo: All he has to say is that he took the USG words in good faith.
Posted by: Friendly Fire | Jun 28 2005 17:09 utc | 14
Slothrop, didn’t you mean to put some ??? after “Socialist”? Bernie sounds like a mainstream Social Democrat, but in a country as reactionary as America, in which Billmon could praise some jerk who was an aide to the guy who turned the Dem. Party into the Repug. Party, one could call him inheritor of Paul Wellstone’s legacy as the Last Progressive.
The Socialist label is a particularly cruel joke, now that little Bobby Reich is working hard w/the Pirates to relieve them of having to pay for medical insurance. Plans are to build 2 Tier Medical System. A private one for those who matter; and a Soviet style one for those who don’t. This is not only to benefit the auto industry – Toyota was going to build plant in Canada so they didn’t have to pay medical ins. & GM is tottering – but to facilitate the merger of xUS w/Canada, whose medical system is just now being hollowed out to converge w/this system. Against this backdrop he seems about as Socialist as FDR, particularly if one examines the Catastrophic ramifications of exporting our industry to China, that only happened ‘cuz Financiers were allowed to cannibalize the political domain.
Posted by: jj | Jun 28 2005 17:12 utc | 15
Just curious, not being snarky, anywhere today that you would call socialist, jj?
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 28 2005 18:19 utc | 16
I should really steer clear of this one, but I’ve never been one to place pragmatism and self-preservation above voicing a concern. I really think that playing partisan games about backing one dangerous animal over another because he happens to be wearing your team’s colours (at this moment) is not an ethically tenable way to go and almost certainly will not get you the results you are looking for.
Is your problem with the Democrats that they aren’t already indistinguishable enough from the Republicans…? Are you okay with the brutal methodology of the neocons, but upset that somebody else’s party is getting to have all the fun with the blunt instruments?
I’m glad you used the movie Fargo and the infamous woodchipping scene in this discussion. It simplifies my point. Or do you not recall that Steve Buscemi’s character was fed into the woodchipper by his erstwhile ally? There was a lesson in there; it wasn’t entirely gratuitous.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 28 2005 19:28 utc | 18
It’s also possible that this was another satirical post and I’m just being obtuse. If so, I apologise for my visceral response.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 28 2005 19:44 utc | 19
Comrades: it’s all very well wanting politicians with some integrity and humanity. But I also want to be able to drink all night and not feel badly the next day.
Posted by: citizen k | Jun 28 2005 20:55 utc | 20
To achieve that effect citizen k I would recommend a double bloody mary and a pan of dublin coddle followed by a pint of plain and a tube of that suff the queen bee drinks.
You can want integrity in poly tics all you want but all you ever get in the sham that is modern tele-democracy is more and more bloodsucking insects.
Posted by: drunk as a rule | Jun 28 2005 21:38 utc | 21
Drunkaar: It’s all very well to spell out such a complex plan, but execution is a bitch after the first step.
Posted by: citizen k | Jun 28 2005 23:46 utc | 22
Too bad Billmon can’t appreciate Howard Dean. Emanuel is another cheap, shallow politican. Howard, on the other hand, is the real deal.
Posted by: susan | Jun 29 2005 0:09 utc | 23
@citizen K and drunk as a rule~
My sarcasmatron is on the fritz these days and I am having more trouble than usual deciphering the intended meaning behind the printed word.
I will say this, though…
1.) Abuses perpetrated by agents acting in the interests of the elite are not peripheral to the values of that elite. The neocon paradigm is one of dehumanising people who disagree with their philosophy of entitlement. It absolves criminals of the guilt of their wrongdoing and promotes further crimes. Therefore, violation of international law and crimes against humanity are not incidental to the present US administration’s foreign policy; they are a natural progression of it.
2.) Acting above the law to murder “bad people” (whether they are Nazis, neocons, “terrorists” or anyone else) for “good reasons” is still a crime and is founded upon that same elitism that has produced neocon philosophy in the first place. Fighting fire with fire will only get us all burned more efficiently.
3.) Acting above the law will result in a cascade of similar vigilantism as well as a host of other unintended consequences. (“It has always seemed to me, in going back over past history, that the death of Rasputin, however desirable it was on moral and other grounds, was the factor leading to the final debacle of the Romanoffs” ~Hanbury Williams)
Violence begets suffering, no matter how “nobly” one believes they are acting or how firmly they believe their adverseries deserve it. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, for example, was still being felt globally well up to 1945. The disenfranchised will make themselves heard. If they are not given an acceptable outlet to do so, the avenues to which they will resort will result in generations of death and destruction.
4.)Excepting the crimes perpetrated by the elite as being endemic to their nature is not only an unreasonable and untenable position, it furthers the disenfranchisement of the majority of humanity. If one truly believes that all politicians are and must be corrupt, then we have no reason to object to any of their specific acts of corruption. I, on the other hand, believe that elected leadership should be held to a higher, rather than lower, standard than the people they ostensibly represent since the repercussions of their crimes are magnified many times over.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 29 2005 0:19 utc | 24
Vin Carreo: All he has to say is that he took the USG words in good faith.— Friendly Fire
And what did the Republicans tell the Dems before the war?:
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, said that in closed sessions this week, administration officials had been asked several times whether they had evidence of an imminent threat from Hussein against U.S. citizens. “They said ‘no,’ ” she said. “Not ‘no, but’ or ‘maybe,’ but ‘no.’ I was stunned. Not shocked. Not surprised. Stunned.”
I’ll still vote for them, but man am I sick of the Democrats. Biden gave a speech last week saying that if we have to withdraw, we should arm the Shias and Kurds and have them take care of the Sunnis. In other words, the same “Salvador Option” of the neocons.
Emmanuel is just as likely to feed his constituents into the woodchipper as he is any Republican politician, only the former he’ll send to die in a pointless war and the latter he’ll retire to K-Street.
Sorry for the double post up above; I thought I killed out the 1st message.
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Jun 29 2005 1:03 utc | 25
mononyclus
Aren’t you hip to the ironic pose, that pomo style of sexy resentiment, that cynical reason? The chicks dig it. The orgasm: how boring.
“Society seems intent, by a deathly elimination of tension, on making a noteworthy contribution to entrophy”
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 29 2005 1:24 utc | 26
Slothrop,
How about being a bit more concise? I need more background, more context, more common two- and three letter words.
Posted by: rapt | Jun 29 2005 1:36 utc | 27