blacklisting those voting against the president?
 

Rove counting heads on the senate judicial committee
If the wiretap program is legal all the way, why would this be necessary? My personal opinion, they knew the program was either outright illegal or at least a grey enough area that they knew they were crossing the line and now they have to resort to political blackmail to make a violation of current law go away. I wonder which senators are going to fold their morals in order to get a picture with the president for next campaign?

simple... because that's the way politics is played

No different from today's times to back in 930 AD at Althingi or even Julius Ceasar in 65 BC.

So much for the polite veneer. You can just hear the wheels coming off this administration.

Isn't blackmail agaisnt the law?

This is why I feel america is doomed to go through another civil war again. Throughout our nations history the only times that congress has dared to challenge the president on violating the law has either been when the president is of the opposite party or it was so blatant that their political careers were in serious jeopardy. It's a sad state of affairs when the 'ruling elite' can snub the law and 'politic' it away.

As Cynthetiq said...that's the way politics is played.

I ain't sayin' it's right...just sayin' it is.

yes but this isn't blackmail, it's blacklisting.

I scratch your back you scratch mine.

You don't scratch mine, I will make sure no one scratches yours.

pretty simple.

All politics is blackmail. The only time people care is when it is the other side doing it to them.

Destroy that which isn't completely yours or which doesn't lend to your power.

Machievelli's lessons at their best.

Yep. Problem is, Machiavelli's teachings are meant to be applied in secret.

They were. I'm pretty sure that Rove isn't the source of this particular leak. :D

I think that this is coming out of one or more members of the Senate. They're not going to be very happy about this kind of pressure coming out of the White House, especially when it includes some very real threats.

Last time I checked, there weren't newspapers, television, or the internet back in the 1400's :D

It's pretty hard to do something like this in secret when there are so many opportunities for a pissed-off person to expose it.

Why isn't Karl Rove in jail yet? Seriously.

How is this any different than what the administration has been doing since elected?

Ask the Ohio senators how they have been treated by King George and Jester Karl.

May not have been in the 1400, but the gutenburg press was in 1440.

But there is writing in long hand, and that was used to distribute information to people like newspapers.

Also:

Call me not surprised.

Why is this a big deal? The Dem's do the exact same thing. Any 3rd party would do it if they had enough political power to enforce it.

It's not right... however to decry this as Bush's doing is like blaming video games for murders. The latter was here LONG before the former.

Seaver, i didn't see anyone decrying this as bush's doing. I think all the attribution has gone to rove. I agree that eveyone does it. I think this instance is notable in that it speaks to the amount of dissension in the republican ranks. Though it seems to me to be rather shortsighted to not help members of your party get reelected when your party is in a system where majority is important.

^^ And contentious midterms are looming!

this is so shocking because the President should totally politically and financially support people who are opposed to what he believes to be right.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

don't decry partisanship and then condemn someone who offers political/financial support on issues rather than party lines.

If I recall Clinton NEVER attacked his political enemies or used FBI files to find out dirt about them, or used IRS audits as punishments.

The audacity of Bush to not support people who do not support him makes the more horrible monster in US history!

Let me go on record, as a self proclaimed liberal, to say: Clinton made mistakes. Clinton is not to liberal politics as Jesus is to christianity. He made horrendus mistakes. Bush 1, Reagen, Carter...in fact every president made mistakes!!! King George the Dubuyah is no different. Does that excuse his actions? ABSOLUTELY NOT. If someone does something wrong, that wrong is not lessened if his or her predecesor is guilty ofthe same or similar transgressions. If I nlackmail someone, and then my son blackmails someone, does that make it alright?

Ustwo, I'd like to hear (read) you admit that this, Bush and Rove strongarming and blackmailing, is counterproductive to a representative democracy. Ifyou can admit this, without including Clinton, Carter, Kennedy, or even terrorism, I will eat my hat.

First, its not blackmail at any rate so we can write that one off.

Now as for strongarming it sure is, but how is it counter productive to a representative democracy?

Bush is an the elected representative of the American people, a majority supported his agenda in the last election. It is his job to move that agenda forward. There is nothing outside of the realm of a representative democracy in not supporting people who do not support you. This really is Bush growing up to political realities, in his first term he tried to work with his enemies and got nothing but daggers in his back in return. This time you make sure they know what side they are on.

So keep your hat firmly on your head.

A representative in a representative democracy is supposed to represent the best interests of his or her constituants, yes? According to every poll I've seen, at least a majority of people are concerned about the wire tapping issue, so much so in fact that the word "impeachment" has been thrown around not only by far lefties, but even several notable conservatives. This means that a group of people, those who have questions but not answers about the wire tapping (whether the questions are of the legal or ethical issue) should be represented in our goverment. If republican representatives in addition to independant and democrat are ready to voice their concern about the wire taps, the issue must be tabled. The president cannot have the power to strongarm the legislative branch. It is a clear breach of checks and balances.
Bush's approval rating is quite telling. When he was elected, he basically have an approval rating of just above 50%, which is enough to secure his presidencey...barely. Now, his approval rating continues to drop, and his disapproval rating continues to rise. This is a clear symptom of his not representing the people. This is a sign that he should NOT stay his course. He should reform his agenda.
It's in the closet, but I get your meaning.

Let me give you a story.

As a member of a representative government you do NOT govern by the polls. You are elected because a majority of the people (or electoral votes) thought you were the right person for the job. You are privy to information that the public is not and can not be. I'll give you an example that involves both Kennedy and Nixon. In the 1960 presidential race, one of the BIG issues was the 'missile gap'. It was generally assumed that the USSR was much more capable of launching a strike against the US than we were at striking them. This is something that Kennedy ran on, and something Nixon, a member of the former administration had to deal with. There was a problem though for Nixon. There was no missile gap, and he knew it. He knew it from secret reconnaissance photos and other more mundane sources for the time that the USSR was in no position to strike at the US and that if we wanted we could have obliterated them with little retaliation. So what do you do? The polls say the American people are very worried about the missile gap, on the other hand you know there isn't a missile gap but if you were to reveal that you would be alerting the enemy to your surveillance? Or lets take the Cuban missile crisis. I don't know what the polls were about it, if the American people were willing to go to war over it or not, but the example is sound. Kennedy knew before we committed to a hard line stance that Kruschev would blink. One of his personal confidants happened to be a US spy. Knowing that he was able to take a stance which on the surface may have looked like WWIII in the making, and it was strong leadership, not polls that made the difference.

That is both the strength and weakness of a elected representative government, over all I’d say the good outweighs the bad.

lets just call me stupid here, but I don't see how your story relates to whether a rep votes according to the law vs party and classified info you can't reveal. can you explain that further?

This isn't backed up by any documentation on either side, especially the Soviet archives. Who was the spy?

Considering that NONE of the upper level Soviet leadership had personal confidants as an absolute matter of course due to the repression and arrests of the Stalin era. Personal confidants could and would get you arrested and shot when Stalin was in power because they would betray you under torture or they might just betray you to move ahead. Nikita Khrushchev certainly did when he sold out his boss in the Ukraine in 1934. Khrushchev's ONLY possible confidant would have been his wife, and she certainly wasn't a US spy. He did not even discuss matters with members of his family who held high level possitions. It's also very doubtful that the US could have "turned" any member of the elite since at this point in Soviet history they were all still true believers.

Any certainty that Kennedy had would have come from meeting the man, who had a lot in common with a child who craves attention in whatever form he could get it.

If you're going to make historical arguements, please be accurate. One blantantly wrong fact (to me at least) makes me suspect the rest of the facts in your arguement that I'm not sure of.

Ustwo Bush did not try to work with democrats during his first term. Do you remember his "You are with us or against us" speach? That is his mantra for both terms. He has done the least to work with the other party that I have ever seen any president do.

Now Bush took an oath to uphold the law and the constitution of the United States and the fact is that IF he broke the law then he deserves to be punished for it, especially if he broke the constitution. By doing everything in his power to impede an investigation he is not honoring his contract to America. Let's use one of the conservitive arguments against Bush. If he didn't break the law he has nothing to fear and shouldn't worry about an investagation (that sounds a lot like if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear from our wiretaps).

I love that fable, it's one of my favorite from Aesop (IIRC)

Ustwo, that is the single most patently ludicrous argument I've ever seen you try to float.

"Bush was elected, therefore has a mandate, therefore it's the will of the people that he steamroll the congress".

Dude... CONGRESS was elected. YOU voted for members of it. Where's THEIR mandate? Things have CHANGED since 2002. Things have changed since the middle of 2005, for that matter.

Congress has a responsibility to its constituents to protect their civil rights. Bush is trying to get away stepping on those rights. You can't just call an electoral mandate down from on high to justify behavior like this.

first off, it would be more extortion than blackmail. more like demanding protection money or you'll burn down the store than "i have film of you masturbating with the aid of a liverwurst sandwich and if you dont pay i'll go public."

second, this kind of horsetrading--you know, crass power politics--is a strucural feature of the way the american oligarchy operates.

trading or threatening not to trade material advantage is a mechanism for building and maintaining factions.
the delivery of material benefits to the public is understood as part of the circuit that constitues power.
in this, the logic of the american system tends, and has long tended, to substitue the accumulation of objects for responsiveness to the people--that is jockeying for position relative to cash streams is what these "representative" bodies do in place of fulfilling any meaningful democratic function.
the assumption is that cash=freedom.
things=freedom.
the amount of things=an index of how free you are.

the right likes to squander huge amounts of money on boys in uniform--other folk prefer spending more on education or health care or infrastructure etc etc etc--but these are variants of the same.
the more money spent on boys in uniform=an index of freedom for the right....the more money spent on other types of projects=an index of freedom for other positions.

faction within american "representative" bodies substitute positioning relative to cash streams for democracy in any meaningful sense of the term: representation is oriented toward the top, if you like, toward budgets and their allocations, rather than toward below, toward being responsive to the polity.
this means that, once elected, representatives cross into a system of the exercize of power that is different in kind from a democracy.

the linkage between the two (horsetrading/power politics vs. democratic process) is a matter of assertion.
these assertions are close enough to arbitrary that they require some maintenance--the feedback loops that enable such maintenance are polls. direct interaction---phone barrages of congressional offices--- by this point have become suspect, thanks in large part to the modes of organization put in place by the christian coalition and tobacco companies (you know, the cold calling pollsters who ask questions about a given political issue, test your views, and, if you seem servicable, ask if you want to talk to your representative--if you say yes, they switch you to that number--this is the technique that allows you to construct a fake grassroots movement)...so polls, which give a vague image of the aggregate, become all the more important.
not in shaping how things go, but in determining when assertions about the meaning of those things require repetition or adjustment.

all this presupposes an uninformed and largely indifferent population, a population willing to accept that politics=a variant of shopping and that one's material position is an index of political freedom.

so while horsetrading and extortion (its unpleasant counterpart) have long been part of the american way of doing bidness, long been a feature of how the american oligarchy functions. but there is no logic behind ustwo's position that it is ok if the bushsquad threatens republicans with exile to reactionary siberia because other presidents have also worked that way.


third: in the continuing refusal of all critique of the bush admninistration, those few hardline conservatives remaining out there effectively treat conservative politics as a variant of juche thought and george w bush as the Dear Leader.
ustwo continues to almost surprise in the consistency of his servicing of the image of the Dear Leader for the benefit of the rest of us.
past, present, future: al are malleable for folk like this---all dimensions of experience can and should be subordinated to the defense of the Dear Leader.
just switch the pictoral aesthetic---substitute polo shirts and suvs for the trappings of the juche ideal.
maybe that's why the right hates north korea so much: the regime makes precisely the kind of closed-minded lock step ideology they prefer look really bad.