You gotta love Groucho...

The Pinkertons are gone.

Because....?

So is the Dust Bowl.

OK, you got me there.

Farmers drive half million dollar combines,
and are in hock up to their axles.

dockworkers are paid $150,000 a year,

Aren't you the free-market guy?

10-year-old American kids aren't working in textile plants,

No. Asian 10-year-olds are doing that for companies that sell their products here.

and schools are free.
Oh, no you don't! You whose hobby it is to trash American schools as substandard holding pens do not get to use them as a plus in this argument. If they're OK, then the liberal supporters of education have done something well; if they aren't, you don't get to use their being "free" as an asset. Something worth nothing is free only in the literal sense that it is without value.

Get over it.
Testy, aren't we? Nations have slid back into bad habits before.

"Strayed from where it says it is" sounds an awful lot like a euphemism for deceit.

The Democrats' problem is not so much deceit as lack of direction.

I think the Republicans are full of it -- I mean, themselves -- too.

Re: the '60s:

Yes, I do mean to say that the times were different. The population was lower. Medical advances we take for granted now that we didn't have then assured that the elderly were few, so medical care was a moot point: cancer was a death sentence. The poor died in flop houses, which have since been closed to gentrify downtowns. The Soviet Union, while a powerful and tenacious enemy, had no death wish and could be negotiated with using statecraft and outwitted using espionage (though admittedly we had remarkably little aptitude for that as the Cold War went on). The thriving middle class's direct descendents are the dockworkers you mentioned: there used to be unionized manufacturing jobs in the US. Now you have to have an associate's degree to sell socks knitted overseas by 10-year-olds in Sears. The returning GIs had the biggest Federal spending bill in history, the GI Bill, helping them improve their lives with a generous infusion of cash. Whether you think of it as a social program or as an enormous thank you from a grateful nation that remembered the Hooverville settlements, it was still a big "transfer of wealth". As for the increase in Federal spending, shall we talk about the Reagan years?

JFK was making a State of the Union address for 1963. The rhetoric stands up because he was a good rhetoritician. The numbers have all changed.

And I agree with Humphrey.

What do they stand for RIGHT NOW?

--Defense of the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, the Seventh, the Eighth...

I wish they would defend the Second.

No one has tried to quarter troops in private residences recently, so the Third needs no defense right now.

Take this fun quiz at the ACLU web site.

--Prevention of the unrestricted aquisition and despoilment of natural resources by businesses who only have to answer to their stockholders and who don't think past the next quarterly report.

--Open debate of foreign policy, which allows the public to participate, instead of a Capitol full of bobblehead dolls bouncing up and down.

President Bush's victory resulted from all those people staying home on Election Day.



You can believe this if it makes you feel better. It may even be true.



It is, and you know it is. Reagan won because all those people came out to vote for him. His ability to turn working-class Democrats is legendary. The Democrats lost this last election because of low turnout, and not only that, but low turnout among Democrats.

In every case, the liberal response has been some sort of excuse. Reagan fooled everyone. The voters were having a tantrum. All the voters were idiots who didn't know any better. Jeb rigged the voting machines.



Every possible rationalization except the truth: maybe the voters liked the Republican ideas better? Nahhhh.

"All our voters stayed home?" After the 2000 election squeaker, where every last vote counted? After being told this was their BIG CHANCE to rip Bush a new one? How nuts is THAT? The Democrats did everything in their power to inspire their base. And they still stayed home? Did anyone ask why? Maybe they should. And why did the Republicans come out then?



Voters who like things vote FOR them, and will make an effort to do so. Voters who hate things will vote AGAINST them, and will make an effort to do so. Voters who don't think their vote counts, or who don't see any difference between the two sides, or who are disgusted with the whole thing, stay away.

Democrats saw Republican candidates and Republican candidates in Democrat suits. Republicans saw Republican candidates.

What I love about this is that you are applying the standards of unconditional surrender. It's not enough to win. You must insist that the reason you won is that the Democrats are worthless, morally bankrupt imbeciles. It couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the uncertainty and fear in the current political climate. It couldn't have anything to do with voter apathy due to an inept campaign strategy. It must be moral superiority. Yup.

Well, it doesn't matter. Dissent will slowly be strangled in this country, and then you won't have to listen to anyone criticize the government anymore. It's in the cards. Perhaps I will see the tentative return of dissent when I'm eighty.

Regards--
Mary Anne