Back to this stuff again?

Look, the leader of the republican party, George W. Bush, is as hand's off as one gets. Talk about silver spoons!! He now clears brush as a way to make himself look "manly" and "macho" for some reason. He's an elitist, and always has been. He was born in rich-o CT, went to school at Yale and Harvard, and was born of a rich well to do family. I mean, it's not his fault, but to say the dems need more "real" people, maybe the conservative foisting this mis-perception on people should look to their own before they cast stones. Know what I mean?

Agree

This 'attribute' the pundits continually push - that is, the appearance of being a 'regular guy' - is meaningless... For once, I'd love to hear them talk about what these folks stand for. Instead there is a perpetual push of meaningless fluff to the detriment of legitimate concerns.

Is Carlson fantasizing about a sweaty Jim Webb coming over to fix her washer? Too weird.

My friend wisely pointed out after watching some Clemkadiddlehopper talking about what a 'normal' guy Bush seemed...like you could have a beer with him...'Jeez, we are the most potent country on the planet. I would kind of hope that we WOULDN'T elect someone 'just like me'. Where are the super smart people? Why can't they be elected...insted of someone 'Just like me'.Clearing brush on the back 40 indeed...

"You know, Republicans just like their losers; they let them run again, they have seniority." 

That would explain why so many republicans were jumped over to allow bush to run.

I'd like to see Trent Lott or Thad Cochran try to fix my f&*%ing sink.

You need to call Dickie Morris' SUDS BUSTERS House 'o Washer Repair. They do a bang up job...head to toe...plus all the butt crack you'll ever need!

Just curious is Margaret Carlson a raging Conservative?

I personally don't think she is, Doris.  She's pretty good on Washington Week.

Don't know for sure, but it appears that she isn't too left leaning.. See links below:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Carlson

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh061103.shtml

She used to be one of the "liberal" voices on CNN's Capital Gang, but I always thought she was a bit of a milquetoast. Not hard to seem liberal in a group that typically included Bob Novak and that gargoyle Kate O'Beirne.

Carlson has a good point.  I still think, sometimes, the Dems have no idea how disconnected many Americans feel to Liberals from the Eastern seaboard.  I don't think she's saying there are no democrats who are authentic, I think she's saying they don't SEEM that way.

I don't think you mean to, but it looks like you're saying that liberals from the eastern seaboard are "inauthentic" (whatever that really means).

It's all the damn replicants.

I think a lot of the viewers respond to the perception of accessibility more than anything else.  What has made Senator Webb stand out is that the man has heart ( I mean in terms of courage.) Listening to his response on the SOTU made me proud to be an American.  I want to see more of that in the elected officials.  I want to see more officials to stand up and fight for what is good and right for our country and the world.  I think it takes people who have been in the trenches of life to effectively lead, whether militarily or not.  You respect folks who have been where you've been, sat where you sat and suffered where you have suffered.  Trust fund babies don't have that sensitivity, and worse, feel that they SHOULD lead as an entitlement.  Folks want leaders that have earned it. I bet after all the mess that most people in 2008 are going to actively look for and vote in the officials that  are going to push populism, environment and international reconciliation.  And if big business is smart, they better get with their spin doctors and start working on an image makeover so they can take advantage of the new reality.

I agree that Jim Webb exudes integrity and dignity.  The DemocratIC party sent out an email this past week which linked to a page that one could send Webb your comments.  I bet George Bush only received input from his puppetmasters, Rove and Cheney.

See comments from ordinary Americans here:

http://www.democrats.org/a/2007/01/state_of_the_un_5.php

Snoopy - Gee Thanks a lot...

I’m a born and raised proud Texan who’s been to every state and I never noticed all this rudeness in Texans.  When we wave hello to people we aren’t comparing them or judging them as cow poop.

Now we do at times have cow chip fights.  Texans you don’t even know will wave in an honest and friendly way, and we’re sincere about it.  I hope you didn’t have a bad experience there?  You can find bad apples in every state you visit.

Now if it’s GWB your talkin about, he ain’t no Texan.  He’s from back East.  Just ask the Dixie Chicks, they will have a few choice words for you on him.

ever been to harlingen?

Become a student at MMA. On your weekend liberty, walk to town (they don't offer a bus ride to this day) and tell me how many white people stop to offer you a ride vs. the amount of white people in trucks who think it's funny to throw oranges at you as they speed by at 60 miles per hour. That's the kind of texas hospitality I've seen over and over again.

Hi Snoopy...

I think we agree, but you don’t know it yet.  When I said I’ve found Bad Apples in every state,  that includes Disgusting Racist Too.  I don’t know what your experience has been,  but I’ve traveled extensively to every state including Alaska and also to Canada.

From what I’ve learned Racism is definitely not exclusive to my home state of Texas.

I know that from first hand experience.  It’s entrenched and deeply rooted in many people I know from every state.  I’m gifted at identifying a racist because I have known 1000’s of them in my lifetime.  Many of them just tell you up front about it.

Thanks ... Sam

Are you sure this isn't more likely that perpetuated myth that the south is friendlier? I've lived both places, and quit frankly, I see way just as many rude people in Texas as I've seen in the northeast. The big difference is really the way they all come across. If you are in the northeast, it's obvious expression wise and speech wise just what they think of you (i.e. blunt). In Texas, they smile and call you sugar as they compare you to a pile of dung.

Don't forget that in the South, you can say anything you want about anybody, and seem nice about it, as long as you preface your comment with, "Bless his/her heart..." and then go on to disparage them to anyone that will listen. As long as you bless them first, then it's OK and "nice". Whereas in the NE, you pretty much know where you stand immediately.

Word.  I live in Missippy and I see this all the time.  Give me an honest New Yorker any day.

Well...

I was born & raised in New York, and have lived in New England [Massachusetts] for 25 years...soooooooo I guess THAT makes me just about PERFECT ;-)

don't make me not like you dude, I have ADHD and can change just like that! =0)

J2, you are indeed perfect.  :^)

NO no no-thanks for giving me a chance to explain, I vote for them all the time.  What I'm trying to say is (I'm in the Midwest) there are a lot of people here, not me, always complain about "East Coast liberals"--lumping them into one group.  I think a lot of conservative midwesterners are afraid of them because they are afraid of change.  I thought that's what Carlson was trying to say-that there is an inherent Midwestern bias against the East Coast so called "Liberal elitist establisment", whatever in the world that is.

I find that strange because historically the Republican party, (not the new social conservatives that  want to control everybody’s behavior and make sure nobody is doing anything they don’t want done) were from the upper classes and the business elite.  The Democratic Party was the party of the everyday Joe.  I think that the Dems moved too quickly for some people on social issues and they frightened some away. Webb was a Democrat who became a Republican, (The Viet Nam War fiasco especially the chaotic end of that “conflict” was blamed on the Democrats and that drove many service people to the Republicans) and now he has made it back to his populace roots and has re-joined the Democrats. He like many others believe that the pro-business elite Republicans played on the fears of the so called Regan Democrats and that it was all a sham to get their votes because they continued to support corporate priorities,  and seemed quite willing to sacrifice  the maintenance of a viable and sizable middle class to do that. I have been reading some of Webb's stuff and I must admit he speaks to me. I actually believe that Jim Webb is presidential material. I'm sure the man's not as liberal as I am but he seems to have a basic sense of fairness and he knows that the country is moving in the wrong direction on so many levels. Webb also knows that the GW and his boys pay lip service to how much they value our servicemen, but that using the military cavalierly and recklessly speaks volumes about how much value they actually place on them.

And they "seem" that way because media figures have worked very hard to create that false impression.

Not every east coast liberal is an elitist. In fact very few of us are. Most of us work for a living. We fix things, build things, and are every bit as authentic as any of these fake cowboys in the Republican Party.

Hell, I'd like to see Cheney try to get under a sink, let alone fix one.

So, would Carlson judge Hillary "authentic-seeming" if she were to knit some curtains, or make a nice stiff meringue?

So.. Is Bush Jr. supposed to "seem like an authentic" person"? 

Something tells me that he'd have a hard time trying to figure out how to pump his own gas.

Not to mention buy his own food.  "Uh, what is this here?" That is a barcode sir. "Whoa, this is special. What do you do with it?"

And he's pretzelly-challenged too. 

GW and his right winger compatriots are the biggest phonies ever. Tough talking war dodgers. They pretend to be everyday joes hunting, and clearing brush while giving historic tax cuts to their corporate buds and allowing them to write legislation that favors them and hurt us all the while helping their own personal portfolios grow an grow. Phony balonies don't give a damn about everyday Americans.

Hi, Lynn! Channeling Holden Caulfield?

Touche! Maybe I got a little carried away, but damn they're a bunch of phonies!

Not carried away at all. It's true.

I have to chuckle to myself when I hear rightwingers extolling the virtuous ideals of small, efficient government. Meanwhile they harbor ambitions of living in huge, inefficient houses bloated with uneccessary amenities.

Their ideals seldom match their ambitions. They might as well come out and say what they feel, "nobody can be bigger than me. I'm the biggest. Me me me me me."

Now that is carried away, Lynn. Not to mention thoroughly unwarranted but I'm venting today to anyone who cares to give a cursory listen.

XOXO : )

Margaret Carlson isn't human, she is a tv pundit and supposed journalist, so I don't know how she would know if someone was "authentic" or not.

What an ugly person and I don't mean only on the outside either.

Disgusting Republican talking points creature.

I just looked at the picture MMFA put with this story.

Margaret Carlson looks exactly like Al Franken in drag. 

Jim Webb could fix your sink.

George W Bush let the Twin Towers and New Orleans sink into oblivion. 

I do agree that I'm looking for authenticity in the Democrats, especially Senate Democrats.  In the first Gulf War, Democrats overwhelmingly voted against giving Bush that authority.  They knew what the consequences were.  They were right.  Two of the causes of 9/11 are from that Gulf War:  the bases in Saudia Arabia and the sanctions that killed half a million children. 

The first Bush was a more credible figure than Bush II but the Senate Democrats understood the long term dangers back in '91.   Then, in '02, they went along with something that made so much LESS sense, had so much worse potential for disaster.  It wasn't public opinion polls.  The American public is not the gulled morons the media wants to tell us we were.  Public opinion polls were narrowly split and the Democrats could have won public opinion if they'd stood up and made the case they KNEW was there:  We would be stuck occupying Iraq.

 What changed?  Why did they go along with it?  We NEED some authenticity on that question.  Was it for campaign money?  Is it a coincidence that campaign money has exploded - Hillary is going to get hundreds of millions; Bush got hundreds of millions - and we are stuck in this war?   Who pushed those Democratic senators to go along with it?  We desperately need accountability for those people and we need leaders who are authentic and will tell us the truth about the forces behind this war.  Most of the Democrats are doing "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" on those forces that pushed them to allow this war and it looks very bad.  No one believes they bought the crazy, stupid, phony intelligence about Saddam shipping nuclear drones into the US or mobile chemical labs.  None of them bought that.  Thats why they always look so foolish; they are telling us they were fools.   

Well Andra, thank you for reading the minds of the of so many people and telling us what they thought.

In all honestly, please remember what happened after 9/11 and pre-Iraq war or your just as guilty as the republican spin doctors.

People are forgeting how many "experts" stood up and said "there are WMD's in Iraq" and "Iraq supports terrorism." I would say 100% of these experts were hand selected by Team Bush. And a few of the intelligence experts have said that their data was twisted and corrupted to support this claim. Also realize that for many in america there was a very strong anti-muslim mentality, which affected how a lot of people saw this issue (i.e. we don't care if they had anything to do with 9/11, as long as we blow up Arabs).

It seems to me that if anything (and I don't claim to know for sure) many Democrats were far too trusting. They should have questioned the evidence, even a little. But who knew for sure what a f#$&@# up mess the current administration was? 

Also, side note: Yeah I think public opinion polls did have a little to do with the issue. When you have a poll showing most (yes it was close, but still the majority were in favor, from the polls I have read from that time), in favor of the war. It was either be popular and vote yes or be unpopular and vote no, and then spend the rest of your political career defending your desission (if the war turned out to be a good thing). Do I wish the party had questioned it? Yes, but people should look back on history, before making blanket statements.

So we should give the Dems a pass for believing lies and being eager to kill arabs for 9/11? Excuse me, but the Federal government is commint war crimes. You can't make excuses for voting for war crimes, no matter which party does it.

People were marching in the streets screaming "No to war!" and the Dems voted to invade. Blix was proving Bush a liar about the WMD and the Dems still voted to invade. And every time I turn around, another Dem party loyalist is trying to pass the buck on those votes to someone else. Your party voted to invade and kill Iraqis in the hundreds of thousands, all because their masters at AIPAC commanded them to.

Go ahead, make excuses for the Dems voting to kill Iraqi children because of their overwhelming support for Zionism and anti-arab bigotry.

Wow Red a little touchy maybe?

BTW I'm a liberal and I agree the war is and was a terrile idea.

I'm just trying to inject a little perspective into a broad attack on everyone of voted yes. I place blame squarly on Bush and his yes-men.

Also remember something, at the begining the anti-war movement was small and its leadership usually consisted of a handfull of people who would have marched and chanted against war no matter what it was about. ("save Europe from the Nazis?" "War is wrong!")

"So we should give the Dems a pass for believing lies and being eager to kill arabs for 9/11?"

-----

Read the resolution sometime. It called for war as a last resort. At the time, the weapons inspectors, led by Hans Blix, were in Iraq (W saying Sadaam wouldn't let them in was a bald-faced lie). They were quickly pulled out of Iraq by W who couldn't wait to start indiscriminate "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad, civilian enclaves included.

No one believed the President would be so bloodthirsty. He was given the authority to use force after all diplomatic and UN resources had been tried and exhausted. W ignored everything and went straight to war.

Not a single Democrat voted for war. Not a single Democrat thought that W was as totally incompetent as he has turned out to be. 

My brother told me about reading an article where someone totaled up the numbers of law enforcement people of all sorts in California - sheriffs, police, highway patrol, everything.  And it was in the hundreds of thousands.  And California didn't just get bombed and  invaded and its government wasn't decapitated with all the rulers run into hiding.  Under normal circumstances, you need hundreds of thousands of law enforcement people to keep order among 25 million people.  How does a US senator pretend not to have considered that? 

 There was a fiduciary duty on the part of these US Senators (both parties but since I've mostly voted for Democrats and since they were against Gulf War I, I look at the Democrats more).   They don't get to act dumb and shrug and we say, "Oh, well."  They don't get to say, "Bush should have had a plan"  and not be called on a grievous lapse in their responsibility.  Or they shouldn't.

 And whats scary is they'll do it again if they aren't pinned down and forced to say WHAT CHANGED.  Were you insincere in '91?  Was that just politics?  And I think they were right in '91.  That war was a mistake, too, that stuck us in Iraq and that war was the origin of 2 of bin Laden's 3 grievances. 

 But more important, it'll happen again.  I just read the other day on TalkingPointsMemo.com that Hillary Clinton just snagged a big fund raiser who is the head of IAPAC.  Iranian American Public Affairs Committe.  What is he after from US government that he's going to collect multi-multi-millions to put the Clintons back in power?  He's associated with the neocons.  Bob Dole said they don't give all that money "just because they want good government." 

 Our politicians sold us down the river for those campaign contributions and, as Democrats, we have to go along with it like we don't understand what happened?  Because so many Democrats were part of it that we can't afford to say out loud that it looks like treason, frankly.  Thousands of people are dead and its rude to say "They did it and they knew exactly what would happen."

You ask why Dems voted to attack Iraq? The answer is very very simple. AIPAC. When AIPAC says "jump!", the Dem Party asks "How high?"

And when Rush spoon-feeds you manure, you ask how wide you should open your mouth.

perhaps carlson was thinking of Paul Begala who CNN puts forth as the liberal viewpoint when in fact he is only one degree removed from his mentor the Dixiecrat, Zell Miller. Or Terry MCaullife for another, the most insincere spinmeister  whose loyalties to the Clintons have for years taken precedence over any desire to represent the democratic aspirations of his party and country.Rep.s Schumer and Wexler whose talking points are dictated by the Israeli Lobby regardless of the best interests of American foreign policy. It goes  on and on. Carson can't be criticized for stating the obvious.

Sorry to be a little late getting here, but my wife's grandparents own a ranch in South Texas. NOBODY spends that much time clearing brush, unless your land is a piece of crap...

Then again, this was a Bush business deal, so the land probably is crap. 

It was a pig farm up until 1999 when W bought it to put on a sham for the American public.

It still is.