The debates are kind of like watching the Harlem Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals.

Of course, the Generals at least go in somewhat PREPARED. One think I take away from these is that McCain hasn't seemed really prepared...he was much better in the primary debates, wasn't he? He's flailing at these things, like all the strategy and talking points have just completely filled his brain. Perhaps that's why he starts writing on that pad of paper the minute the debate starts.

Deep down he's got to be thankful there hasn't been 10 town hall debates.

I can agree with him on one point: Sarah Palin IS a BREAST of fresh air.

LAMBERT: That much is indisputable.

For those of you supporting the empty suit and feeling comforted by the "polls"...

http://townhall.com/Columnists/AnnCoulter/2008/10/15/eighty-four_percent_say_theyd_never_lie_to_a_pollster

As I watched the pundits deconstruct last night's debate after it was over I could not shake the feeling that I wasn't getting the whole story...that something vital was missing, something that could alter my perceptions, reshape my thinking, perhaps even determine which candidate I will utlimately vote for. This feeling grew and my unease turned into agitation. This went on for some time until, with a jolt, it came to me... an open question so profound, so central to American democracy in the waning days of 2008 that I could not believe no one had posed it before: What about Argentina?

LAMBERT: They VOTE, pally. Big swing state. "Estado", I mean.

From the reports I've gotten from another friend recently returned from Buenos Aires and Argentina in general, it's hardly surprising you're finding a paucity of Republicans.

The town sounds a tad thread bare and WAY too egalitarian to attract a lot of Republicans who tend to like things to have a fresh coat of paint, well-irrigated sod, bright-lines of social demarcation, tony shops and parking close by. Is there a Four Seasons? I doubt it.

It might have had more appeal back in the days of the heavy-handed junta when there was oodles of order and no brooking of dissent. To find the Republicans you sought for comment, I reckon you would have had to travel further north and out into the Caribbean where nobody knows your bank account number and the only mingling with the natives takes place in the event one of 'em screws up trimming the topiary and needs a good dressing down.

LAMBERT: The wealthy here are doing quite well. But yes, much of the city is a weird combination of tired, "threadbare" as you say, but also simultaneously undergoing massive re-development.

Argentina?

The Nazi harbor?

Fitting, I guess.

LAMBERT: Several say, "hello".

Well, I reckon the wealthy most everywhere are "doing quite well," though you'd never know it from the level of anger and resentment that comes off the American wealthy like heat waves off hot asphalt. So put upon and limited by the yoke of big guvmint.

But I didn't get the impression that Buenos Aries had the same polished and gilded ersatz reality of the world's finest gated communities. I'm just not picturing the amenities of, say, Fisher Island. Too much bohemia for the right kind of people.

Hence the liberals. The tango alone would be off-puting. Not furtive enough.

LAMBERT: I had been told there was "no middle class" here. That simply isn't true. They don't appear to live as "large" as the American middle class -- two SUVs in every garage and 3500 sq. ft. of interior living -- but they exist. This of course is Buenos Aires -- 12 million people (one-third of the entire national population). interestingly, there is a reluctance to discuss "El Processo" -- the last junta regime. 30,000 fellow citizens were killed -- equivalent to 200,000 Americans. You gotta think everyone knew someone -- and more than a few had to make some pretty tough decisions on who to risk standing up for and who let go with their silence.

Bl, I like your coverage from abroad....where next? You could be like the Andrew Zimmermn of politics--where you go to different countries and get a taste for their political discourse.

Yeah, it seemed like McCain was the little brother who repeatedly pokes his brother in the arm, hoping to get a reaction. And instead, he gets a cool, calm, intelligent response that just pisses him off even more.

LAMBERT: If you were from another planet and watched the debates with the picture off you'd never know Obama was 25 years younger.

Because everything in life can be explained by baseball analogies: McCain has become the streaky hitter with the "long" swing who gets out of sync, and then gets too much (conflicting) advice from all sides. He's a mess. By contrast, Obama is a hittin' machine like Wade Boggs - steady, but maybe hard for some people to get enthusiastic about.

LAMBERT: I keep returning to a great irony, namely that Rove's ream has screwed McCain over twice. Once in 2000, and now again with a campaign that lost him more votes than he had when he started.

In general, Americans have very shallow notions of what life is like in Latin American countries and Brazil -- not a Latin American country but a South American country. I say "in general" reservedly because cities like Sao Paulo and Rio and huge metropolis that rival all the major urban economies of North America, Europe and Asia for economy, a developed middle class, and wealth. Thus, there are many Americans and American corporations actively engaged in cities like Sao Paulo and Buenos Aries.

The biggest contrast I find when going to Brazil is between futbol and NFL football. I'm sure you find the same in Argentina. But, of course, it is fantastically different when you leave the large cities and go out to experience the rich indigenous cultures and traditions alongside the layers of colonial history vanishing the remnants of agrarian, iron-age, and industrial phrases of their social development.

LAMBERT: We're heading to the foothills of the Andes this weekend

You got to wonder about a troll who comes to a progressive site and "proves" his point by quoting Ann Coulter. Hilarious!

LAMBERT: But he's our troll, and he has Coulter for a brain.

BL - Having predicted a Reichstag fire scenario for the last two elections, with win at all cost Republican operatives staging some outrageous calamity to swing the fear vote, I'm reluctant to go there again this year.

Oh why? These people always come off so…credible.

One of my long standing pet peeves. People who make Reichstag (and whatever else German you want to throw in there) / US analogies past their freshman year in college are idiots and crackpots. They misunderstand history, or just insist it conform to their pathologically skewed worldview. You learned this since the last election cycle?

I still take McCain to win: 50 – 48%

The cattle rancher must have some cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t strike me as a very socially conscious occupation if you’re a sensitive liberal. Hard on the environment, and on the pampas no less. And beef for goodness sake…

Lambo:

Do they have MSNBC down there? If not, then look to YouTube for Sixth District MN Congresswoman Michelle Bachman's jawdropping performance on "Hardball" this afternoon.

Not since your favorite adopted state's Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy have Americans witnessed such despicable and cowardly rhetoric of innuendo and implied character assasination. She wants the media to start rooting out the anti-American left-wing members of Congress she fears are plotting to destroy America. Truly, truly, truly a new low in MN political history. Astonishingly unhinged.

Meanwhile, we're witness to GOP VP nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin saying at one of her rallies today that it's so good to be in a "pro-American" part of the country. WHAT? Oh, wait, how odd, but she must be referencing her own state where her husband belonged to a secessionist group whose wild-eyed leader was murdered by one of their members with, wait for it...a bomb. He, too, is posthumously all over YouTube frothing at the mouth about how much he hates the lower 48 and the government yadda, yadda, yadda. The usual barking at the moon rhetoric.

Why are these dots not being connected by the allegedly left-wing, in-the-bag-for-Obama media? This is bad for America, no matter who you plan to vote for. And Rep. Michelle Bachman, well,after witnessing her appalling rant on Hardball today, I'm going to start carrying a map of the 6th district to make sure I don't find myself inadvertently running out gas within its borders. That woman's alleged mind scares me.

LAMBERT: I've only heard of it. All I can say for now is that my "pro-America" status is secure since I grew up in 5000 population Montevideo (Minnesota -- not the fake one cross the river from here.) The only hard-working patriots are in small towns, you know. BTW, is Edina considered a "small town"?

108: Sonorously put, sir. But I wonder, you happen to catch Michelle Bachman's unhinged performance on "Hardball" today? She pretty well trumped your argument. Truly blood curdling. You claim this person as one of your own? Dude, talk about pathologically skewed worldviews...

You familiar with the concept of "normalizing the unthinkable"? Huh? Ring a bell? Well, trust me, your gal, Bachman's definitely on the case. But she's a mere stooge. Just following orders, as the familiar phrase goes.

You ever have a look at Hannah Arendt's 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil? Oh, I know, that was a different matter entirely, you argue, never to be repeated. But the book's about a phenomenon, a human trait, a readily repeatable (and recognizable) manifestation of a dark proclivity in the human condition. How about "The Lucifer Effect"? Anything? The Stanford Prison Experiment? No? Nothing? Surely a scholar like yourself recognizes the seeming oxymoronic phrase from Milton's Paradise Lost, "darkness visible"? I bet you even had to read it while at St. Thomas.

Oh, son, the darkness was fully visible this afternoon on MSNBC in that ghastly outburst from the "whited sepulcher" (you a Bible reader or Joseph Conrad, 108?) of the sixth district. Now, I wonder, 108, are you going to just stand by and indulge in the sophistry of moral equivalency cant? Obama tries to conflate McCain with Bush. Obama had coffee with Ayres. Please, dear boy.

The unblinking effort to publicly indict a group of people by innuendo, people with whom you have a merely political difference (far left "libruls") of opinion as traitors, of betrayers of their office and their citizenship (shudder)?

Hmmm? I guess the question is: Where's your bright line, 108? You got one? When does an upstanding guy like you step up and say--ENOUGH? This is beyond what I can accept.

But look who I'm asking, a guy who hides behind a blogonym, the rhetorical equivalent of a balaclava.

As one who lives in Bachmann's district, and just had my Obama/Biden lawn sign stolen last night (my Kerry/Edwards lawn sign four years ago was ripped to shreds), hearing those "remarks" are troubling, but I'm choosing to keep my head about it.

Look, like it or not, these are the times we're living in. There's a core 30-35 percent of right wing folks in this country who are unambiguous and unambivalent in their belief that they are "true" Americans. Depending on the political cycle, they can convince another 10 or so percent of other "centrist" or right leaning people to join in and vote for candidates who advance that agenda. After 8 years of particularly incompetent rule, and given the perilous situation we're now in, they might be out of sync with the times, but until it's proven that the rest of us can actually chart a successful course and re-define what it actually means to be an American citizen, those folks ain't going anywhere.

Does anyone think, if Obama gets elected and there's a decent majority of Democrats in the Congress, that if after two years there's little progress being made to improve our situation, these people won't be right back with some "Contract with America" proposal to vault them back into power, and begin the road back with Congressional victories to lessen the Democratic majority?

This is my main problem with the Democrats and 527's like MoveOn.org; they have not exactly inspired people to follow a new, pragmatic direction that means something to the majority of Americans. Because they've been beaten over the head since, say 1980, and have been demonized by talk radio and other conservative venues, a lot of progressives just want to get in a lick or two. It's only because of the sheer enormity of suffering we're experiencing right now, that a majority of folks might--and I mean the word might--be willing to reject this blatant, but familiar attempt (Willie Horton, flag burning, Clinton's morals, Swift Boat) to steer away the conversation from what really matters, and try something different.

So, if I'm upset or distressed at anyone, it's more at myself and the other people in this country who can't seem to unify and stand up with facts and passion, but without rancor, to demand something different, something real. The political class as a whole, has failed us; what we're left with is yapping idiots like Bachmann, and bad candidates like Franken to try and cure what ails us as a society.

I can't help thinking that's more "my bad".

We've gotten out what we've put into this.

LAMBERT: The upside here is that the progressive web has given the voices of reason a "fast response" mechanism for instantly disputing the bat-shit craziness. This wasn't possible during early Clinton, and was still forming at late-Clinton. And Obama ain't no Clinton.

This sermon from a guy who closely follows the fortunes of the MN Timberwolves. You're so very good and noble, Mr. Weinhold. Let's all break out the hair shirts, flagellate ourselves with nettles, circle the Capitol on bare and bleeding knees to atone. Obama's got two years to turn things around, or else. Yes, after these last eight years, liberal to moderate liberal Americans have a lot of explaining to do. They've failed the nation.

Distinguished commentor colleagues, you might think I am jumping the gun, that the election is still weeks away and installation of the new president months away, but I think we need to start the changes now.

And here on this blog is where it starts--we have to become more civil to opposing views, because the end goal is not to slice up the other commentors, it is to address the weaknesses of the topic at hand.

With the possible exception of BJ, and I still hope he will open his mind, I have found honesty and value in almost all the postings on Brian's blog...that is most of the reason why I stay around--to learn from you all.

But the rest of the reason I stay around is because I feel a need to participate in making our country a better place, to improve the discussions, to help solve the problems that Brian features on this blog.

If you have followed my postings here, I think you have noticed a maturing in my views and comments (again, with the possible exceptions of my BJ responses...I'm working on my weakness there).

My change here in brief, is that I wanted to reduce any divisiveness and any too-easy labeling of issues and people. My goal is to get us all talking about what we see as the problems, so we can then talk about possible solutions...and the divisive talk was putting us all on the defensive, and as such undermining even our best responses.

Like Peter and Jim's postings above here--I've found Jim's comments to display intellectual depth in the past, but then here he fell prey to the personal attack (I've done it too, it is easy to fall into that trap, especially with the distance of blogs with unseen and unmet commentors).

And, Peter's comment, which had kernels of good promise, it fell prey to the other trap of singling out the one party's 527s and ignoring all the other parties' 527s and attack groups. Then, his comment about the wingnut size of the GOP, which I would like to address, gets lost while focus shifted off track.

It happens, we are not professionals, this is a hobby of sorts, but I say all this to urge you to keep trying, to keep improving, to keep writing--but let's make this a damn fine discussion blog and try to stay away from the finger-pointing and label-making and personal-attacks that drag discussions down to bar argument levels where nothing good comes out of it.

Seriously, all this change america, country first stuff...it comes down to things like this where we do our part to advance the discussion and stop acting like half of the country doesn't care about the other half, just like half of us commentors should care about the other half, we might even be neighbors, maybe we should act like it here.

LAMBERT: I'm a big believer in civility.

Ladies and gentlemen, wake up, it is going to take generations of leadership dedicated to change and transformation to undo the horrendous damage that Bush and the Republicans have wrought upon this nation.

If you expect Obama to fix everything in the first 100 days of his administration, you are smoking rope.

Moving our troops out of Iraq will not be easy, even though the Iran government has given us a deadline to LEAVE, its not like Johnny turns on his heal and come marching home. And then there is Afghanistan and Pakistan where all the seeds of real state sponsored terrorism exists and bin Laden still resides.

We have an unbelievable burden of debt left by Bush and his Treasury raiding cronies have strapped us with for the last 8 years. We have a crumbling infrastructure, that if any politician attempts to rebuild, the extremists on the right will be screaming "socialism" and "communism" -- sounds like George Wallace or Strom Thurmond. I never understood why McCain took such exception with being identified with Wallace the titans of his party and ideological fathers of the Right.

I'm sorry Peter, the healing and transformation is not going to happen overnight. The Republicans have screwed the pouch so horrendously and maintain such a bitter resolve to blame and divide the nation that they will be resolved to recrimination and spawning hatred.

Still, I see hope with Colin Powell who says we need political and generational transformation to bring anew. And I think many Americans now seeing the terribly calamitous effects of politics based on greed, hatred and angry division.

Oh, I LOVE the Michelle haters - she's attractive, perky, pro-family, pro-business, and - horrors!- speaks her mind on Obama!

The degree to which some of you spew hatred at her is the inverse of your own humanity.

No wonder you support a done-nothing like the "clean, articulate" Obama.

McCain by 8.

Uh, Leinie, while you're pressing your hair shirt, McCain / Palin is getting ready for the win.

Momkat, I missed the part where you succinctly and intelligently refute what Coulter states.

I am sure you were just getting around to it?

Or not.

This thread is probably dead, but I'll respond anyway. Mr. Leinfelder, you can marginalize me all you want because I happen to blog about the T-Wolves. That's obviously your call to make. It's rather presumptuous and shallow, since you don't know anything else about me, but them's the breaks.

All I'm pointing out here, is that--after living in the north suburbs for over a decade-- Bachmann's viewpoint is closer to this community mainstream than yours or mine. I think we've taken for granted that our viewpoints--say as opposed to bertram's--are enlightened. That's not sermonizing, it's an opinion. I think we have to do a better job of demonstrating and proving to folks who are leaning more to the right than we are exactly why our positions are more beneficial to a larger group of people. Since I can't control anyone else's behavior, that begins with me. Sorry if that's a little too 12 step for you.

Or, you can marginalize an entire section of the metro community and beyond, and "start carrying a map of the 6th district to make sure I don't find myself inadvertently running out gas within its borders". An exaggeration I'm guessing/hoping, but it displays one type of attitude that frankly turns people away from progressives, and to idiots like Bachmann.

Oh, and I've already have heard the "the Democrats have had control of Congress for two years" comments from a lot of people up here. Look what happened to Clinton--and to the Democratic Congressional majority--in 94. Do you think Rezko and Ayres are going away if Obama wins? A good cooked-up scandal can slow anyone's progress, whether it's real or not. Add to that the real despair folks are feeling, and, if after two more years nothing's changed, those people who may have voted against the Bush/Republican incompetence more than Obama's allure might just take another look at the GOP for answers.

In basketball parlance, Obama should be slam dunking this campaign, but he's not. That should be troubling to everyone who is hoping for something more than just a momentary shift in Washington.

LAMBERT: Actually, I think Obama is coming as close to slam dunking as we're likely to see from a liberal in 21st century America. In stark contrast to the bungling and cynicism of McCain's campaign, Obama's has come off with text book discipline.

JL - The unblinking effort to publicly indict a group of people by innuendo, people with whom you have a merely political difference (far left "libruls") of opinion as traitors, of betrayers of their office and their citizenship (shudder)?
Like continually equating Republicanism or conservatism with fascism? Or equating it with stupidity and dimness?
I have a line. By nature, I’m not apocryphal or sufficiently weak minded (ahem) to be swayed by conspiracy theory du jour. The country will be fine. But my line is this: if central planning or an initiative to combat ‘climate change’ causes the next holodomor, it’s unacceptable that some people think that’s OK. Just the price of change, you know, and brushed off with a Duranty like ambivalence.
I never read Conrad. Camus appeared on my syllabus (fwiw). I read Arendt and most things Wiesenthal because it was compelling to me. I have as fine an understanding of WWII as anyone. OK, perhaps not you Jim. By all means, have at your game of who has the biggest intellectual phallus anytime someone says ‘Weimar!’ And don’t forget to quote schlagater, we’ll be looking for that. It’s become so tedious it’s now known as ‘the banality of Leinfelder.’

LAMBERT: Uh, oh.

Look at the evidence, 108. You've allowed a bunch of extremists, ideologues, know-nothings and thugs to take over your party and marginalize anyone with the moderate chops of a Colin Powell. Christopher Buckley's been summarily drummed out of his own father's magazine. Even the neo-cons are starting to fall in line with Obama. The GOP's wasteland.

Yes, I now associate the former party of Lincoln with all the deficits you list. What evidence would you offer to change my mind?Palin? Bachmann? What accomplishments would you point to in the last eight years? Get back to me.

Let me ask you something: Is anyone worried about McCain being shot? I rest my case.

My point was merely that the Timberwolves have been a mediocre basketball franchise throughout their history. And yet Mr. Weinhold seems to be able maintain some sort of faith or at least interest in their fortunes, or the vague promise of having some in a distant future.

But a President Obama, him you're only giving two years to turn thing around. That's ridiculous. He won't. it's a childish expectation. If that's what it takes for your neighbors up there on the alluvial sand plain to hang in there as citizens, well, I guess we'll have to soldier on without their coruscating ideas for a better republic.

In other words, the status quo.

108: "The country will be fine. But my line is this: if central planning or an initiative to combat ‘climate change’ causes the next holodomor, it’s unacceptable that some people think that’s OK."

Seriously? Who's planning "central control," 108? Obama? Show me his plan for "socialism." You mean a return to a progressive tax policy. Whoa, scary stuff. The term's been reduced to a mere buzzword by your man, McCain and his say-anything surrogates.

Do I think Michelle Bachmann's going to take over the country? No, I think of her in much the same I do the chickens you can play tic tac toe with at Reptile Gardens in Rapid City.To a little kid, it might seem like the tiny-brained bird is actually plotting its Xs and Os just as some of the folks in the northern reaches of the 6th might think Bachmann actually has any comprehension of what she's saying; how, well, ANTIi-American her rhetoric of division is, how it harkens back to the roots of this country's and the world's worst acts of inhumanities to man. Like the chicken, she has no comprehension of what she's doing or saying. She's just pecking around for her food pellet.

And, uh, one of the major concerns about global warming, as I understand the majority of the world's scientists, is a famine that'll make the holodomor look like the South beach Diet. It won't last for just one agricultural cycle and be limited to one republic in the former Soviet Union. But walk me through what Obama's got in the offing that'll bring about a politically-motivated famine. Fill in the blanks for me on that hysterical assertion, could ya' please?

How is it your darkest fears of famine conspiracies and actual socialism supplanting our democratic republic if Oabam's elected absent any evidence are well founded; but in the face of the divisive and downright hateful rhetoric coming out people who claim to be leaders, or aspire to electoral promotion, we're all about of hysterics for being offended by the parsing of the country into the "real America" and the, what, "faux America"?

You, sir, are a welter of contradictions.

Whew, what a thread, while I get out wiki and try to figure it out, I have a puzzle for you folks to chew on (BJ, you too if you are up for thinking for yourself today)--

--What is the GOP going to change to stop losing their party to the religious right special interest and losing elections to Democrats?

As Peter pointed out above, something like 30-40% of the GOP is comprised of religious wingnuts/neocons who drove away most of the true conservative GOPs leaving an unelectable minority in most districts. It is not going to be much of a two party system if one party keeps losing and sounding more batshitty along the way.

So, will true GOPs take back their party or start a third party or flow to the Democratic way?

Okay, while you chew on that, I think I left off on 'holodomor'....

Priceless, tom.

Let's refocus please:

1. Which of Barry Hussein's legislative authorings is most indicative of his economic policy experience?

2. Which of "Plugs" Biden's prior foreign policy positions has most positively impacted the war on terror?

3. What is Colin Powell's real reason for "endorsing" Obama,(yet not campaigning for him), especially given that Biden voted against the war when Powell was S of S?

4. How come the MSM will not report the McCain endorsements?

LAMBERT: Didn't the Strib report the Feral Cat Hunting ATVers for McCain endorsement? They are SO biased.

Lambert, I am much looking forward to that drink at Manny's on November 7th...

LAMBERT: Have you ever paid off a bet in your life? I'm having the 48 oz. porterhouse. And I like Oban.

Refocus? Me?
I'll repeat myself again to try to get you to make a semblance of a discussion out of these topics, but instead you change the game.

Your comments are not face cards; they are obvious distractions, like monopoly money being placed in a poker game!

Again, I'll ask your (and other GOP-types) opinion--what should real conservatives do with this faux GOP party?
--trash it by setting up a true Conservative Party?
--leave for the dems and try to fit their spending planks into their party agenda?
--fight to regain it after it finishes imploding in two weeks?

What endorsements for McCain? Trouble is there aren't any.

oh yeah, my old friend Joe Lieberman... the MSM did report that one.

I can easily be encouraged to expand on my own hyperbole. To get back to the main point – you’re ridiculous to make a Weimar / fascist comparison to American conservatism. It doesn’t equate and never has, except in the minds of ridiculous people who wish it were so. Like so many things, they wish and project and connect little dots this so they can keep telling themselves they’re ‘the good people’. It’s an ego trip for those whose minds are otherwise racked by cognitive dissonance, moral equivalence, and agnosticism.

I could pretty easily document the ‘hate’ on the right as overdescribed, exaggerated, by an enabling media. I could pretty easily document hate on the left. But go right on believing. It has to be true, because you’re the ‘good people’ and the ‘smart people’.

LAMBERT: What's eery here, 108, is that almost every fascistic, nationalistic movement begins by appealing to the greivances of the rural and/or less educated population. Simultaneously, at least through the 20th century, beard stroking burger meisters insisted there was nothing there to worry about.

We have progressive taxation, now, as you well know. A 3 point hike in the top rate by Obama doesn’t change it from flat to progressive.

The ‘majority of scientists’ agree on no such thing with respect to famine - another overstatement. There’s a tepid consensus for some type of global climate change. But the scientists don’t agree on the IPCC, they don’t agree on hurricanes, there’s some speculation growing seasons may get longer and stabilize. But let’s charge right into this and do something, based on the consensus, such as it is.

Bush accomplishments? I don’t think he a success overall. I think the war was worth fighting, although I’m not fervent. Bush has been very good on Africa. The tax cuts were good. EITC, started by Clinton and expanded by Bush, has moved us to a point where 40% of the population is off the income tax rolls (if you think that’s a good thing). Medicare part B. It must have worked, because it’s certainly no longer an election issue.

I’m hesitant to get into this with you earnest Mike, because it would be like having a fanny kicking contest against a guy with no legs. But trust me, the Republican Party will continue to be vigorous – its pollution with religious types not withstanding.

LAMBERT: Thanks for several blogs worth of material, 108. But believe me, your party is in serious trouble, which isn't necessarily all good for Democrats. Let's see YOU take a scalpel to the racists and religious ding-bats.

Maybe you can help me out. I’m interested in what Weimar or Reichstag analogies we can apply to this fellow:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/32322889.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsX

In the spirit of fairness, I’ll also entertain analogies about those attempts by conservative brown shirts to disrupt the DNC. I believe you’ll have me in a poor position to argue when you find one.

108: Conservative brown shirts aren't into protest. Too straightforward. They like behind-the-scenes stuff like scrubbing voter lists, sending legions of thugs to disrupt the recount in Florida, intimidating voters at the polls, Diebold, Orwellian interpretations of the Help American Vote Act, misidentifying people as felons and scrubbing them off the rolls, lying push polls, politicizing the Justice Department to aid and abet aforementioned felonies, that sort of thing.

LAMBERT: It's a forest for the trees kind of thing.

Thanks for providing a response 108, I've been so tired of dealing with BJ's distractions, that to read your response is a complete breath of fresh air.

As Brian already answered to your posting, I too feel the GOP has imploded between the '06 and these '08 elections. Bush's re-election in '04 caused the party to sell its soul to the religious types...how else do you explain a Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin advanced way way way beyond their skills and intellect.

But, that is past--their constituents will have to justify voting for them. I'm still wondering where the GOP might go, how they might recapture their historic (fiscal) conservative position of balancing over-reaching liberalism.

I should add--I'm not predicting Obama going there, because I am amazed at how little lefty-liberalism he puts into his positions, but I'm no fan of the 18% approved congress and not under any illusion Obama alone can get the congress to become functional for all of us in the first 100 days--UNLESS we the people get our voices in their faces.

Bear in mind that our founding fathers put the true role of leading our country in the hands of the congress, not the president (regardless of all the power-grabbing King George pulled off). And the congress is where the sensible conservatives of all parties need to find representation. If not GOP, because they have run wingnut religious, then where?

And as an aside--I urge you to stop worrying about your precious tax breaks. Good grief, if you had even average financial advice (meaning avoiding all the get-rich-quick idiots), you are sitting on the biggest pile of money of your life--amounts you never imagined you would possess when you were 25 years old (I thought I would be set if I made over $25000/year back then). So stop being so paranoid and greedy, and be willing to contribute your share in cutting down the deficit and funding the recovery of the country's infrastructure. Geez, if I can get by in a 700 square foot house in south Mpls heated to 64 degrees tonight...what's your problem? Do your part, shall I drop the unamerican label on you? ;)

BL - What's eery here, 108, is that almost every fascistic, nationalistic movement begins by appealing to the grievances of the rural and/or less educated population.

Do tell, you have examples? I don’t find it eery, because I would demand an American parallel, which can’t be found. I believe in American and constitutional exceptionalism.

Further – and I’ll show proper restraint and not use a fascistic or nationalistic analogy that might be hyperbolic – ‘community organizing’ as we know it is nothing but an appeal to the urban, less educated population.

BL - But believe me, your party is in serious trouble, which isn't necessarily all good for Democrats. Let's see YOU take a scalpel to the racists and religious ding-bats.

This is projection, what you like to believe. The party can be rehabilitated in the blink of an eye with the right message or candidate, and probably will be. Your own experience should tell you that, you’ve been around

Scalpel? I don’t have to do this for the same reason you don’t take on the ridiculous aspects of the left. There’s more than enough people in the opposition to do that.

But in any event I do find those characterizations fairly profane. I don’t think you encounter those people. You read about them, or take your characterizations from ‘Jesus Camp’. I don’t encounter them. Particularly, I don’t encounter them at church. I didn’t find the people I knew who went to one of these new fangled, evangelical mega churches to be ding batty or racist. These people that make racist posts and rail on about welfare in Star Tribune comments. You think those people are Republicans?

LAMBERT: As for examples of appealing to the grievances of the rural and/or uneducated. How about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Where would like to stop?

But the bigger issue is that the vast majority of the people even you seem to disdain -- the "Jesus Camp" nutballs and racists spouting off at rallies and in op-ed letters are NOT identifying with the Democratic party. The Republican party, particularly under Karl Rove has made a huge investment in contorting itself to "serve" this crowd, (they actually do very little for them, but that's another story).

Moreover, the key difference between appealing to the urban uneducated/unsophisticated and the rural is that the urban crowd is making accommodations with racial tolerance almost every day of their lives.

Further, 108, I'll see your twenty something RNC anarchist and aspiring "bomber" who wanted to knock out the electricity at Xcel Center and raise you 27-year-old Christian Identity Movement guvmint hater, Tim McVeigh, who wanted to kill as many people as possible cuz' the federal government had let HIM down. He was a real doer, 168 dead, 500 injured, deadliest U.S. domestic terrorist.

Timmy very much enjoyed the Patrick Swayze film, "Red Dawn," and the novel, "The Turner Diaries" written by former American Nazi Party honcho William L. Pierce, under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. Its hero - Earl Turner - responds to gun control by making a truck bomb and blowing up the Washington FBI Building.

Which party's rhetoric and politics this cycle would you imagine most spoke to McVeigh's narcissistic, self-pitying rage?

Neither guy, of course, was a member of the mainstream of either party.

We were discussing the inflammatory and divisive rhetoric of a grown woman currently "serving" in Congress and similarly corrosive and no-less divisive rhetoric coming out of the gobs of two people running for VP and POTUS who currently "serve" as the governor of a state (whose husband worked to see secede from a hated lower 48) and a U.S. Senator respectively.

This carefully-chosen rhetoric points in a particular direction and it's not a good one.

Ms. Palin tells NBC's Brian Williams that elitists are people who think they're better than others. John McCain, who knows better, says with a Beavis and Butthead conspiratorial chuckle that, yeah, heh, heh, and he knows "where a lot of 'em live," heh, heh.

These elitists are not "real" Americans, Palin tells her wild-eyed followers that these places where the elitists live are not "pro-American" parts of the country. Worse, one of their surrogates tells them (only to lie about it later) they "hate" the real hard-working Americans who achieve. In other words, THEY're not as good as US. Self awareness, get some.

McVeigh shared this self-righteous, us/them worldview that demonizes some Americans to sooth the resentment and feelings of marginalization of others with no intention of actually helping them reverse their fortunes. That he would not now have to go to a meeting of the Christian Identity Movement or of the Posse Commitatus to hear this sort of rhetoric but at the rallies of mainstream Republican candidates for president and vice president would have done his heart good. It would have been a balm on McVeigh's tortured soul. That's just how he saw America, too. But to Mcveigh, it wasn't just a cynical campaign ploy.

I expected McVeigh to come up. I think his counterpart on the left is Jim Jones, or even Ayers. Ayers is the McVeigh of the left or worse despite a lower body count.

I think Michele B is a bit nuts. I really doubt shes a rascist. Re this kerfuffle, if you don't believe in American supremacy and exceptionalism, thats not the 'American-ism' we've come to know over decades. It's reasonably described as some sort of Un-Americanism. Anti-. I think its legitimate to have a political conversation about that. Bachmann is obviously the wrong person to open the argument, but the left wishes to stifle the debate, or deconstruct and redefine terms.

I dont find 'palling around with terrorists' to be an overly rhetorical flourish. Its an understatement. The press and the populace should have much less ambivalence about Ayers. Obama should have been less ambivalent about Ayers. Ayers is rotten. Un-American is the least you can say about his views.

http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/276377.php

Me, a welter of contradictions? Why I post here is my own problem. I see a lot of smug assertions made by people with an emotional investment in reflecting back on themselves that they're part of the 'smart people' and the 'good people'.

This entire back and forth of posting and refuting good points could easily lead someone to the valid observation that one mans meat is another mans poison. But you two are insistant about the purity and holiness of all things left-liberal because of whatever good intentions you get to claim as a believer in those things. It's crap, fellas.

BL - How about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Where would like to stop?

They didnt go from constitutional democracy to Stalin, Mao, or Pot. Again, I don't believe a non-American 'totalitarian' analogy suffices. As an aside, I'm struck by this now... Do you choose not to use the word 'communism' ? I recall the Ceausescu argument we had, in which you wouldn't admit Ceausescu was a communist. Are you one of those who carry that old dorm room, lava lamp chestnut around: communism isn't a failure because real communism hasn't been tried? Ergo, Stalin, Mao, and Pot arent communists?

LAMBERT: You're an interesting guy, 108. A bit like Newt Gingrich. One minute making germane, well-crafted points ... the next minute over the cliff. Jim Jones ... the Democratic counterpoint to Tim McVeigh? Whaaaa? And the issue with Bill Ayers wasn't that he was a "terrorist". There was no dispute over what he did. The issue was this canard that he was some kind of inner circle mentor to Barack Obama. I have yet to read anything -- anywhere credible -- that proves that assertion.

And, like Gingrich, this somewhat pedantic -- and semantic -- distinction between communist totalitarians and fascist totalitarians misses my point -- which is that they are all totalitarian, with a centralized authority monitoring citizen behavior in lethal ways. It has been a long time since I saw communism as an extension of progressive liberalism. The United States, I'll argue, would have a much longer road to go moving from liberal socialism to communism than from "American exceptionalism" to paranoid nationalism.

Neither is remotely likely. But when someone like Bachmann stands up and blathers the precise talking points of the talk radio/Karl Rove rhetorical machinery, it is valid to make the historical associations to when we've heard this before.

What I'm saying is that this act has been revealed as the intellectually impoverished shtick it has always been -- but was ignored because it won elections.

Please don't strip 'ol Jimmy of his intellectual pretensions.

It would leave him rather, well, naked.

The investment in the elitism, the superiority - being the "good, the smart" people is the laugh out loud punch line - it's so utterly transparent here.

Look, 108, I think the point both Brian and myself are trying to make is the same as the great liberal Protestant, John Philpot Curran was making when he said , "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

LAMBERT: Very good. Very good. Someone has performed his hermeneutics.

Of course I expect certain endorsements, but these two I did not--
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/10/not-quite-colin.html
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/10/adelman-addendu.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2008/10/in-praise-of-fr.html
--For the sin of being honest about Sarah Palin and the Republican campaign strategy, David Frum has become something of a pariah on the right.... Frum is doing something that’s quite rare across the spectrum of American politics: holding his side to the same standard as the other side.... I was also happy to see him telling Rachel Maddow, of MSNBC, to elevate the tone and substance of her new talk show.

Can you say Obama in a landslide?

BUT, eight years of fear-based politics has me jumpy in this regard--
--In our rush to throw out the GOP hacks (Norm, Bachmann), neo-cons and cronyism/corruption of K street politics...we have to be careful NOT to throw away conservatism and intellectual thought (admittedly well hidden in MN politics, but we need them).

If Dems do, we lose by winning. These are critical times with less wiggle room for sloppy thought and the mandate is not to return to business as usual politics.

We the people, of our country and the world we impact--deserve better than that.

LAMBERT: Old school conservatives have something to offer. I may not agree with much of it -- other than fiscal management -- but at least they're thinking and prepared to engage in an adult dialogue.