Posts by Russell Brown
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And with all due respect to Rolling Stone, 'worse Congress ever'? Perhaps if your sense of history begins with Woodstock. :) I've been reading Robert Caro's biography of LBJ, and during the five decades the Democrats ran Congress there was plenty of scum-baggery, sharp practice and outright fraud going on.
I still can't conceive of it actually being worse than the last few years. What dumbfounds me is the way that conservatives seem happy to overlook the abandonment of basic conservative values here. Fiscal fecklessness, pork-loaded spending bills (just check the numbers for the pork explosion in the last five years), the unprecedented intervention of lobbyists and the erosion of basic private freedoms and constitutional protections. And all the while, government has grown basically unchecked.
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And this is the TV3 report:
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The young man who discovered quite how easy it is to intercept other Telecom customers' text messages talks to the camera. The subsequent TV3 report is in the first comment below.
Website: http://www.teamparodee.com
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Well. indeed. It's one thing for Nany Pelosi to sa the mid-terms were a, "rejection of the President's failed policy on Iraq." The problem for the Democrats is that they actually have to propose - and pass - a policy of their own, and do so with pretty broad bipartisan support. It should be interesting to watch. I think it would be very generous to say the Democrats were *ahem* strategically ambiguous in the campaign about what their vision of a 'new direction in Iraq' actually was and, to be fair,it's not as if anyone was asking.
Yes, the Democratic message for "change" in Iraq was deliberately vague and, politically, all the better for it. It put the emphasis on the White House to actually say what its plan is, and the vote made Rumsfeld's position untenable.
The Dems' action-point list is fairly canny too. No.1 promise: fully implement the domestic security recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. It'd be a brave president who would veto that puppy, and the Dem majority will rightly claim credit for it.
James was fretting yesterday about the focus on security shifting to "law enforcement". Well, why not? The horrifying multi-plane terror plot revealed earlier this year was tracked from a very early stage by British police - and it was they that foiled it, not some poor southern kids serving in Iraq. Indeed, what nearly screwed it was White House grandstanding.
I can see little advantage for al Qaeda in a more realistic policy in Iraq. Iraq just isn't a happy home for the Sunni jihadists - they're hiding in Pakistan. The Baker commission looks set to recommend an accommodation with Iran and Syria to help stabilise Iraq, which isn't exactly ideal, but there aren't many other options at this point. It's that badly screwed up.
Pelosi also promised to make her Congress the least corrupt in history. Easier said than done, but it's hard to see how the new Houses could be any less arrogant and dishonest than those that are passing.
Every measure of sound, accountable government (and, indeed, traditional conservative values) has gone south in the last five years. This has been a terrible Congress and, as Rolling Stone proposed a couple of weeks ago, quite possibly the worst ever.
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I just like looking at James Carville on TV ...
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CNN's showing a 17-seat pickup now.
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Looks like the first pick-up is in the works in Indiana - 61.7/38.3 to the Dems with 33.6% counted.
Still 62-38 with 41% counted. Jesus. Did the incumbent Republican do something to really piss people off?
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I was chatting to someone senior at Ihug yesterday and it seems their problem is being between owners. The sale transfer is in a couple of days, and the old owner won't pay for extra servers, and the new owner can't yet pay. If it were not for this they would have grabbed some extra servers as the spam started to impact.
Interesting. And pretty much what I figured was the case. You'd think something could have been worked out though - continuity is kind of important in that business.
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Hmmm ...
Exit polls have a narrowly Democrat Senate:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0611/S00127.htm
But we know what happens to exit polls ...
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So 1pm ticked over and after six pages and 100+ posts I figured we needed a fresh new mid-terms election thread now the results are poised to come in. Feel free to keep on arguing in the original, and we'll watch the news break here. Love your work.
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