EagleTribune.com : Blogs : The Soapbox

At least he has the nerve to run against Kerry.
I feel if he can campaign on Kerry's weaknesses and flip flops, on which there are many, he'll do well. As you pointed out, Mr. Ogonowski did far better against Niki Tsongas than anyone ever expected, especially on his shoe string campaign budget.
Unfortunately, in this state, there is no such thing as a "credible opponent" when it comes to running against a Kerry or a Kennedy.
There are too many sheeple in this state who continue to vote these fools into office simply because of their name.

Hey Bilgerat,
Don't forget Kerry has an opponent on the Democratic side as well, Attorney Ed O'Reilly of Gloucester.
Many Democrats, perhaps for different reasons, are as tired as John Kerry as you are.
O'Reilly is building a fairly effective grass roots organization around the state.
What his chances are, only time will tell. But not all Democrats are the "sheeple" you seem to think we are.
Hope you weathered th storm OK

Hi Michael,

I survived the storm quite well, thanks for asking! Hope all is well with you, too.
I stand by my statement that anyone running against Kerry or Kennedy, including other democrats, will have a tough time of it.
I'm sorry if you took offense to the sheeple comment. I never mentioned dems specifically in my remark. Both sides have their fair share of wingnuts!
BTW, my best friend is a democrat....but don't hold that against me! ;-)

Mr Benton, bilge rat in his first posting said it all perfectly.
If we as voters view elections like this as 1) unless your a democrat, you're not going to win. 2)unless you have and spend a bundle of money, you're not going to win, then we as someone in these blogs said "we don't need better candidates, we need better voters."

Bilge Rat and Mr.Carlson, I completely agree with both of you on so many things.
Mr. carlson, ur 100% right that we don't necessarily need better candidates, regardless of their party affiliation.
America desperately needs more informed voters who can think for themselves and see through the smoke and mirrors of propaganda candidates from both parties blow in their faces.
How nice that we, with me as a liberal, and the two of you being obviously far more conserative than I, can find such civil, common ground upon which to disagree.
Oh, if only the rest of this deeply troubled country could do the same.

Mr Cook, You may not like this, but if we taught our children right from wrong, would become more self sufficient and stop looking to government to solve our problems, stuck to OUR language, rid orselves of all these evil incumbants, then maybe we would have a chance.

Mr. Carlson, with all due respect, that's just a little too simplistic for me.
And to what "evil incumbents" are you referring?
George Walker Bush? the man who misled us about the reasons for going to war in Iraq?
Dick Cheney? The man who ran a company prior to becoming vice president that was doing a lucrative business with Iran, in violation of both US law and policy, at the same time he and bonny Prince George were declaring Iran a member of the "axis of evil".
There's no doubt we face major problems in this country. Some of them are the result of failed liberal policies, just as many, however, are the result of equally failed conservative policies.
Perhaps if we could all be honest about that reality, we might really stand a chance of fixing those problems.

Mr Cook, Sometimes, if not most of the time the simple approach is the best approach, Also it wasn't simple for our children to lose their way, so it won't be simple to help them find italsoit hasn'teen simple for our gvernments to grow to the behemoth size they are today, so it won't be simple to reduce their size, but we must do it, they are choking us to death. I am, of course referring to all levels, local, state and federal.
I am referring to ALL incumbents except George Bush, he already has a term limit imposed on him. No other incumbent has so we , as voters will have to impose it. Yes there will be a few good people who are lost but it is the only way we can change things.

I thought this was interesting.....
hmmmmmmmmmm....
makes a person think...............

GOP strikes provision giving housing preferences to convicted felons
By Michelle Malkin
January 17, 2008 04:27 PM

It is reassuring to see that there are some clear differences left between Democrats and Republicans. Today in the House, lawmakers voted on a bill reauthorizing a federal housing program. The Democrats wanted to give housing preferences to convicted felons, according to the House Republican leadership. The GOP wanted to strike that provision and grant the preference to troops instead:

Under current law, a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule governs eligibility of criminals seeking federally-assisted public housing. Specifically, public housing authorities may not admit families with members:

-Who were evicted from federally assisted housing for drug-related criminal activity for three years following the date of eviction;
-Who are currently engaging in illegal drug use;
-Who have shown a pattern of illegal drug or alcohol use that may interfere with the health or safety of other public housing residents;
-Who are subject to a lifetime registration requirement under a state sex offender program; or
-Who have ever been convicted of manufacturing methamphetamine on public housing property.

H.R. 3524 would undermine HUD’s ability to enforce these rules and instead would extend a broad “Hard to House” preference to convicted felons – even those who were released from prison less than one year ago. The Republican proposal would strike this language and instead provide a similar preference to Armed Forces veterans.
The GOP amendment passed this afternoon:

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) issued the following statement today after the House passed an amendment authored by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) making sure America’s veterans are given a chance at securing adequate housing before preferences are extended to those who have violated our laws:

“If the majority is going to use this legislation to assign housing preferences to certain groups ahead of others, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to insist America’s veterans are put atop that list. Thankfully, we were able to pass an amendment on the floor today that will ensure just that – turning aside an effort by Democratic leaders to extend preferential treatment to criminal offenders at the expense of our nation’s veterans.

“Far too many men and women whose lives have been spent in service to this country find themselves today in need of public housing. At least with the passage of this amendment, these vets won’t have to stand in line behind criminal offenders – some, only months removed from prison – as they work with HUD and other agencies to secure an adequate housing arrangement.

“I want to thank Sam Graves for his hard work in helping craft and offer this amendment, and his strong and persistent leadership on behalf of veterans in our state and across the country.”
There were 28 Democrats who voted against the measure to put troops above convicted felons. Here they are:

Becerra
Castor
Clarke
Clay
Conyers
Davis (IL)
DeGette
Dingell
Ellison
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Honda
Johnson, E. B.
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
McDermott
Miller, George
Moran (VA)
Richardson
Schakowsky
Slaughter
Stark
Thompson (MS)
Waters
Watson
Woolsey
Wynn

Hey BilgeRat,
You'll get no argument from me on this one. Vets should come first.
But we also need to look at why so many vets, from this current war and those that came before, continue to fall thru the cracks.
I have a good friend who's a social worker at the big vet's hospital in Augusta, Maine. He'll tell you the budget cuts of the last seven years for veteran services, ironically when the chicken hawk, draft evading Bushies were sending a whole new generation of Americans into harms way, have devastated the ability of people like my friend to help those brave vets who now so desperately deserve their country's support.
Vets should be at the top of the list for everything from housing to substance abuse and mental health counseling. Unfortunately, thanks to the Bushies' wanting to do everything on the cheap, that is not what is happening.
The whole system is a mess.
Ah well, what are two peons like you and me to do?

Mr Cook:
Why do the liberals have to meet constuctive criticism with counter criticism. Is it because part of the liberal philosophy is "we can do no wrong? Our cause is so righteous no one should dare criticize us."?

Mr Cook:
Exactly how have the budget cuts devastated the ability of people like your friend to help those brave vets?
Isn't it the Congress that's responsible for providing funds for the government to do its work?

Well, for starters because of the Bush budget a program that provided outreach services to homeless and substance abuse vets has been trimmed back to the bone.
There is no money for the programs because so much has been given away to the already wealthy via the Bush tax cuts.
You cant't cut taxes while fighting a war and expect to adequately fund and supply the guys in the field, let alone help them out when they come home.
What I find ironic about todays's neo-conservatives is they abhor taxes, even when the country is at war. But most seem to have forgotten conservatives during the Vietnam War criticized Lyndon Johnson harshly for not having the guts to RAISE taxes to adequately prosecute that conflict and fund veterans' services at home.
How quickly some forget!

If we weren't supporting so many illegals, we would be able to handle tax cuts AND take care of our vets and active military.
Also, let's get the undeserving off of SSDI bennies.
I'm sorry, and I'll probably get blasted for saying this, but drug addiction, alcholism, and A.D.D. should not qualify as disabilities.
I know I'm off topic with the SSDI thing, but if we're talking about cuts and how to fund programs for our troops and vets, taking the undeserving and societal leeches off the taxpayers payroll would help exponentially.

Toss all the names you can think of at me, but I won't change my mind.
;-)

Mr Cook:
You must not have lived during the same Vietnamese war I did. In the one I lived through, there were two criticisms of the Presidents:
1 That they fought a losing war. One that the United States couldn't win or
2.That they didn't prosecute the war properly with the intent of winning it.
At no time did I hear any President criticized for not funding any part of the war.
How quickly some remember something that never happened.
Re your first paragraph, the usual liberal view of a spending cut back is where the spending doesn't increase as fast as it was increasing. Is that what you are talking about?
What Viet Nam war are you talking about?
I'm remembering the one that was fought from approx 1962 until approx 1975. (US participation)

Mr. Carlson,
Read Barry Goldwater's biography. In it you will learn he, and many other conservatives, lambasted LBJ for not raising the revenue (aka taxes!) to effectively prosecute the war against communism in Indo-China

Bilge rat, I don't disagree with you.
As a former social worker I saw way too many con artists and scammers working the system.
I also experienced the wrath of the powers that be when I tried to address the scamming.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know both sides in the dilemma play fast and loose with facts to score political points of one kind or another.
And that serves the interests of no one.

It must have been an unauthorized biography.
The euphemism "revenue" for taxes wasn't being used then, politicians were more honest then. (although that wouldn't have been hard when viewed from the current times).
The biography you are talking about was probably written by a liberal New York times reporter and was an probably a revisionist attempt to rewrite history

Mr. Carlson, it must so hard to admit that for the better part of thirty years the Reagan wing and now the neo-conservative wing of the GOP have successfully sold you and your brethren a an economic and policy bill of goods that has transformed us into a debtor nation and one whose standing is at an all time low in the eyes of much of the world.
I really feel very sorry for you all.

Thank you for your sympathy but it is misguided. It has been the spending policies of both parties for the last 70 years that is at the heart of our problems today. It began with FDR, continued with Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy,Johnson (especially) , Nixon, Ford (although he made a feeble attempt to stop it), Carter, Reagan (he made a real try at stopping it, but the build up of bureacrats easily beat him.) Bush #41 (he was very much a democrat) Clinton (especially, but he lucked out with the internet ficticious economy that Al Gore invented and then poof, all those jobs vanished) and now Bush #43 )who has so far been blamed for everything but guilty of only an ill advised war)
As far as our standing in the eyes of much of the world, I stand by Tony Blairs recent comment that the best measure of a country is the number of people who want to get in vs the number that want to get out.

An "ill advised war"? they lied to us about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, LIED!
The result is, according to a GAO estimate in 2007, the war in Iraq, over time, is going to cost every American family of four more than $50,000!
This from people who want to get government "off people's backs".
Please!

For God's sake man, you sound like a broken record.I make 50+ points and you pick out one adjective and beat it to death.
In case you've forgotten, the reference to a broken record refers to a prehistoric means of entertainment through a grooved disc where a needle passed through the grooves and reproduced whatever sound was recorded on the disk.
Unless you have something new, worthwhile, intelligible, non hogwash, please don't address any further comments to me.

Excerpt of Clinton speech at the Pentagon 2/17/98 regarding Iraq, Hussein, and WMDs....

"Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave the lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports. For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months, and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.
In 1995 Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more. Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities--and weapons stocks. Previously it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth.

Now listen to this: What did it admit? It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability, notably, 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs. And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production. . . .

Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door, and our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it. . . .

Over the past few months, as [the weapons inspectors] have come closer and closer to rooting out Iraq's remaining nuclear capacity, Saddam has undertaken yet another gambit to thwart their ambitions by imposing debilitating conditions on the inspectors and declaring key sites which have still not been inspected off limits, including, I might add, one palace in Baghdad more than 2,600 acres large. . . .

One of these presidential sites is about the size of Washington, D.C. . . .

It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them. The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons. . . .

Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal. . . . In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now--a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam, and all those who would follow in his footsteps, will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.."

Clinton knew, and did nothing. This allowed Saddam to continue his policies of thumbing his nose at the UN, the US and the world...

Now, bear with me for a bit....
The reason for the war was Saddam's military threat to our allies, his own admitted aggression and plans to continue pursuing WMDs in spite of UN Resolution 1441. This position that Iraq was a serious threat was publicly endorsed by President Clinton, Madeline Albright, William Cohen and other high ranking Clinton officials in 1998, as stated above. This is also one of the reasons John Kerry and Gen. Wesley Clark supported the war.

But Bush LIED....
I'm just not seeing the connection....

Research project, folks...Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever....better yet, just ask Saddam about it...
Oh, I forgot, he's DEAD!!

Sorry Bilge Rat.
I agree with you on many things, but I don't care who endorsed this war.
It was, as Allan Greenspan said in his recent autobigraphy, all about oil.
We Americans, myself included, whether we want to face it or not, are petroleum junkies.
My much more conservative, older brother, as much as I hate to admit it, may be right.
the time may be fast approaching when we have to go in and nuke all the camel jockeys sitting atop all that oil because we Americans, God's true chosen people, cannot sustain our privileged way of life without it.

At least you finally realized that Americans are "God's true chosen people"...
;-)

Obviously, Michael, you DO care who endorsed and supported the war effort or you wouldn't have posted the following message:

Michael Cook said: "George Walker Bush? the man who misled us about the reasons for going to war in Iraq?" Yeah, he "misled" us based on prior intelligence from the Clinton administration.

When confronted with the facts I stated above, Michael, you proceeded to revert to the name calling that liberals have no other choice to engage in when confronted with rational thought. And that is why liberals do not have and never will have any real credibility. Instead of offering alternatives or suggestions, they can only resort to name calling, derogatory remarks, and childish behavior, much like a child who doesn't get their way.

I'm not towing any party lines here, but I am sick and tired of hearing how Bush is responsible for all the ills of the U.S. and the world. It just isn't the case, and it's about time the liberals face that fact.
Phew!
:-)

Right on bilge rat, I couldn't have said it better myself. It is truly amazing that anyone could read what you quoted and you accurately stated the timing of it and yet come back with the comment "... I don't care who endorsed this war." Four years before there was a war. WOW.

Thanks, Jim...
Oh, and one more thing for the anti-war, anti-Bush crowd...

And I quote...

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions."
--Bill Clinton, July 22, 2003

Regime change...sounds like war to me....

'Nuff said....

Mr Cook is right though that we are petroleum junkies. Every President starting with Carter, as I remember has said that and has vowed to end our dependence on foreign oil. Obviously none of them was or is successful and the OPEC nations continue to dominate us.In my opinion, the only way we are going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil is through nuclear energy. France and Japan both get most of their electricity from nuclear plants (apparently safely) anf if they can do it so can we. This business of ethanol is clearly not the answer unless we don't want corn to eat or feed our farm animals. We're in the process of proving to ourselves that we can't do that.
I can't believe this discussion started by Mr. Benton talking about Mr Ogonowski's potential run against John Heinz er Kerry.

Funny how discussions evolve.

We are definitely petroleum dependent, no argument there. But whenever alternatives are proposed, the very people who claim we are in an war for oil oppose the alternatives.
Just look at Cape Wind.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the perfect alternative. There will always be environmental or safety issues, no matter how we get our energy. However, this country has to bite the bullet sooner or later and endorse the alternatives or drill in Alaska. Until then we will continue to kowtow to the Middle East.
Much like this conversation, we need to evolve....
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Go Pats!
:-)

Remember the midnight ride of paul revere. Well one 1 If by land 2 If by Sea. Deval IS by Land Kennedy and Kerry Are bye sea Via Islands and cape. We are doomed.

With regard to the Senate race, there is a well known Veteran running against Kerry. His name is Jeff Beatty, Delta Force Assault Troop Commander-Major-USA (ret) He has quite the resume and background. It would be great for this state to have a Senator with a brain representing us.

Arlene, sorry, I have not heard of Jeff Beatty, where is he from? Does he have a party affiliation? I will google him, but I'll tell you,any change from Kerry is bound to benefit us.

Jim,

He's a Republican (conservative) and here is his site.
http://www.jeffbeatty.com/

We have the opportunity to elect a man of honor for Senator.

Arlene,

I've heard Jeff Beatty's views and I liked what I heard.
I am a bit confused, however, about his endorsement of John McCain.
In fact, I'm really surprised how anyone with even the tiniest conservative bent can endorse someone who stands for open borders and higher taxes.

I'll probably get slammed for what I'm about to say, but, if we weren't in a war right now, would there be the same support for John McCain? Sometimes I think people are endorsing him simply because he's a war hero and in their minds if they endorse McCain, they are "supporting the troops" and justifying their lip service to our military.

As much as I respect his sacrifice for our country, I don't necessarily feel that qualifies a person to be the POTUS.
It is a good start, though....

Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Others no doubt will like it like I did.