I have to say that I have missed Gordon’s repartee during my internet absence. Remember, Gordon is the very best they’ve got, he’s the only Dem liberal that engages in any debate at all. Gordo recently posted the following:
Five quick questions on Congressman Nussle for the "conservatives" on this blog (for sanities sake I will answer each in order):
(1) Why do you think that Congressman Nussle more or less actively hides the fact he is both a Congressman and a Republican?
Jim does neither, most if not all Nussle literature contains the words “Republican Congressman Jim Nussle” and most of Jim’s speeches include the bio information. This just isn’t a factually accurate statement. Clever but not accurate, a typical byproduct of living in the liberal dream world where the argument makes the facts instead of the reverse.
(2) Why did our budget go from surplus to deficit under Congressman Nussle as Budget Chair? And, don't say 9/11 -- that's already been debunked by the right wing Heritage Foundation.
Gordon misrepresents the entirety of the recent Heritage report, as if that were the definitive word anyway. The economy slowed throughout 2000 as the energy crush began (remember the Gray Davis "grayouts" in California), simultaneously reducing revenues and increasing spending and the economy recessed as W was taking the oath of office-more Clinton luck, further reducing revenues and increasing spending; the corporate scandals hammered the stock market, worsening revenues even further, particularly in capital gains; and 9.11 was the worst exogenous shock that ever hit the US economy-take a look at the travel, hospitality and aerospace industries in the 15 months after 9.11 and you’ll have some idea of nature of the damage to the economy the terrorists caused on 9.11.
Then of course, we are fighting WW3 and that is kind of spendy also, don’t you think? Notwithstanding, and not that you’ll ever see it in the drive by media, but the deficit is rapidly declining-probably because the economy is booming at historic levels and revenues are growing. This sounds a lot like Reagan doesn’t it? Well, Republican economics work in even the most dangerous of times.
(3) What is Congressman Nussle's position on the Values Fund? Once he said it was great, then he said it was terrible. Which does he really believe?
I cannot speak for Jim or his campaign, only for The Real Sporer on this one, and I am against it. We can make Iowa a business and investment haven for the New Millennium but we need major fundamental economic reforms, not more short term gambles.
(4) Congressman Nussle says he is/was a real leader in Congress. Since several other members of the Republican leadership knew about Mark Foley and his disgusting behavior with pages, doesn't it stand to reason Congressman Nussle also knew? If Congressman Nussle did not know, was Congressman Nussle the leader he claims to be?Why was he so out of the loop?
Gordon, is liberal hypocrisy unrestrained by even shame itself? Why do you care about Foley? My God man, you people have justified, enabled and indulged far, far worse from the aptly named and recently deceased Gerry Studds-who buggered his underage page while sojourning along the romantic Spanish Rivera, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, and, that old time favorite Ted Kennedy (who sent the staffer with whom he was having an adulterous affair to the bottom of a tidal pool through a little thing that Massachusetts usually called vehicular homicide). How on earth could you be bothered by some repulsive emails?
(5) Instead of name calling (such as calling Chet "Cheat," saying he's fat, etc.) why don't you deal with issues, as I did in 1-4 above?
Name calling like trying to link Jim Nussle to the perv Mark Foley? Again, while I cannot speak for Jim or the campaign, after watching the pounding that he took, I’m sure Chester wouldn’t want to take a couple more rounds with Jim together on a stage. Read my earlier columns, the debate format sucks. Again, I cannot speak for Jim on this one but I will be happy to debate you or any other Democrat, any where, any time and on any issue or issues as make you all feel comfortable. We welcome the clash of ideas. Of course, having factual reality and context supported by reason and common sense, on my side does embolden me like champagne Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée.
18 comments:
Sporer you are so arrogant-but somehow I just love you.
Tell me again why you're not Nussle's spokesman?
Go get 'em!
One for Sporer, the historian to ponder.
Pirates of the Mediterranean
By ROBERT HARRIS
Kintbury, England
IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world's only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart.
Rome's port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed,and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff,kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh
and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their
Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help
wondering if history is repeating itself. Consider the parallels. The perpetrators ofthis spectacular assault
were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth:"The ruined men of all nations," in the words of the great 19th-century German
historian Theodor Mommsen, "a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps."
Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a
disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed
themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: "The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway,the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or
their life for a single moment."
What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single
individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men.
Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular
renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of "Civis Romanus sum" - "I am a Roman citizen" - was a guarantee of
safety throughout the world.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were
willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great)
arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.
"Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what
amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,"
the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. "There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits."
Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman
Treasury - 144 million sesterces - to pay for his "war on terror," which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.
Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome,
Pompey's opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed
(illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean.
Even allowing for Pompey's genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises
that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book - the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as "soft" or even "traitorous" - powers had been
ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and
turning himself into the richest man in the empire.
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the
similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being
surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful
wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of "serious" physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the
licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant - all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought
that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a
centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent,
skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.
In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the
Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar -
the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey's special command during the Senate debate - was awarded similar, extended military
sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.
It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of
elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely,Caesar
crossed the Rubicon - and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened
the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything
remotely comparable to Rome's democracy - imperfect though it was - rose again. The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have
the same result.
Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of "Imperium: A Novel of
Ancient Rome."
Yawn. Sporer you are fresh as month old fish in the sun.
The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful
wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of "serious" physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the
licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant - all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
I rarely respond once a thread is started, but this is a special case.
Virtually every premise of the comparison, which is flawed in many other respects and particulars.
For instance, Americans have long been identified as enemy combatants, tried in sometimes secret military tribunals, and executed, also in secret, during times of war.
Lincoln, Wilson and FDR all, and all quite rightly, attempted to monitor virtually every bit of international mail/telegraph/radio/telephone contact. Every bit of incoming mail was read, and much of it censored in whole or in part, during WW2.
Interrogation has always bordered on torture, Mr. Cowardly "anonoymous" Lion. Water boarding was invented during the Phillipine Insurrection of the TR years. Do our current opponents have much compunction about torture, like videotaped decapitation. Given the choice, I'll take Lindsey England naked and having sex, gross as that seems, to slow motion decapitation.
Unfortunately, you have substituted an a-historical premise into the middle of your otherwise clever syllogism, but the result is inevitable-fallacy.
Sporer-you are a killer!
Why hasn't Sporer been back on the Insiders? Sporer fought back with Crawford. Gross is getting better but that other guy is awful.
Sporer, great response!
I hope someone at some point tells us all what Chet's plans are if elected. It is abundantly clear that he has no idea what is contained in the multiple 30-page documents on his website that were generated by his dad's high-priced consultants.
Nussle will make a great Governor.
Go Nussle!
As for The Real Sporer - don't take such a long "vacation" again as your pen is truly mightier than any sword in Iowa! Liberals get a few moments of satisfaction but just like that silly rabbit in the trix commercial - they are insane to ever take you on.
Your lessons should be required reading for all...
Sporer:
My grandfather was a Marine in the Pacific during WW2. He mentioned someone needing "Guadalcanal Justice" on more than one occasion.
When the Marines captured Guadalcanal, the enemedia was allowed to come on shore and view the damage, see the Japanese we had captured, etc. After the presstitutes left, the Marines took the prisoners behind a ridge.
The Marines came back, the Japanese POWs did not.
We cannot use conventional tactics against an unconventional enemy. I have some PROFOUND disagreements with how this war is being prosecuted. So much so that I am nearly to the point of advocating pulling the troops out of Iraq altogether since the Bush Administration does not want to fight the war.
One more thing: Great News!!! The Koran now comes in 2-ply. Much better to wipe with.
WAY TO GO UNCLE TED!!! Previous post is right - the Ds leave bombs and leave. You're right about taking it to 'em. They are reeling every time we do because they don't expect it, then cry foul when we pick up their unexploded grenade and throw it back in their face.
Where's Louis Rukhesyer been.
Sporer is back-Dems beware.
f 'em up uncle teddy.
funny how gordon will come shit all over krusty just go get people fired up but he doesn't DARE post on uncle teddy's site cause his world will get rocked.
Don't forget back to back years of monster hurricanes.
Excellent use of the term "buggered"
Have to take issue with you on one thing Ted. Non WOT domestic discretionary spening increased over 32% during Bush's first term. Haven't had time to research the second term yet but I'll bet its even higher.
Nussle was budget chair during that entire timeframe.
6:20
Don't you know anything? Those hurricanes were generated by Karl Rove's weather machine becuase Republicans hate black people.
Why would Gordon post on Teddy's barely update website? Come on, Ted your blog is taking up the rear of GOP blogs.
7:21
Instead of bitching about this blog, why don't you head over to the Mitt Romney Ass Kissing Society aka Krusty.
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