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whoever wins has the good sense to name him Attorney General. Our Justice Department has been sorely compromised and crapped upon. It needs rehabilitation in the worst way!!! He would bring honor and integrity back to it, absolutely. I would trust him completely - no ulterior motives from him that we've seen in ashcroft, gonzales, and mukasey. God, what a sleazy threesome! Edwards would know that point of the Justice Department is not, and has never been, mainly to cover the pResident's ass.
In any event, crushing the republi-CONS, I mean REALLY crushing them, would be a great thing for the rehabilitation of our entire country. Damn! I still harken back to whichever most eloquent DUer, several years ago, talked about the necessity of having the enemy "get the snot beaten out of them" in the next presidential election cycle. It was leading up to 2004, at the time. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to make a better note of the name of that DUer along with that quote. We DO INDEED have to beat the snot out of them. Because A) if they get close enough, they can either rationalize that they really weren't that far off the mark, OR as we've already seen twice in the last two presidential election cycles, they'll be well-positioned to steal it. B) getting the snot beaten out of them, instead of just a narrow loss would more forcefully drive home, to them and everyone else, how their view is NOT IT. Just NOT IT. Completely wrong, a complete repudiation, no doubt about it, no if's and's or but's. NOTHING that they'd be able to weasel around with, or spin. NOTHING. NO WAY.
I can still remember the cover of some magazine in the issue immediately following the landslide hose-job Barry Goldwater got from the Democrats and LBJ. It was an artist's rendering of an elephant, sick in bed, eyes baggy and bloodshot, a big icebag on its head, a really beaten down, forlorn, damn near deathly look on its face, covers pulled up almost as though to hide it, and a bottle of tonic in its "hand" - labeled with the Rx "AU H2O" (Goldwater). That's what kind of kick in the nuts the GOP got that year. A HUGE setback and a hugely PUBLIC humiliation and repudiation. Such a tectonic calamity that it forced them to go back to the drawing board, in late 1964, and reassess everything. Reassess what they were, who they were, how they were going to regroup and recover. Of course, the plans they laid out have finally come to fruition. They went totally over to the dark side. They conspired to build from the ground up (the whole "start running for school board" thing), building machinery and infrastructure that would later result in lavishly-funded think tanks and other reactionary, revisionist viper pits (like the Heritage Foundation, the Eagle Forum, the Cato Institute, and the worst of all - the American Enterprise Institute from which spawned the PNAC) that would encourage CONservative thinking, scholarship, writing, book publishing, theory and philosophy and other packaged sales tools they could then sell in the media. These outfits also schooled people in how to talk to and rebuff and manipulate the media - hence the armies of media consultants and advisors and coaches who teach how to avoid answering questions and how to "catapult the propaganda" and talk slick and stay on message. Eventually, they built to the point where they could further harness the big money of their wealthy contributors and benefactors and ridiculously wealthy CONservative families like the scaifes, the hunts, the basses and others who'd willingly bankroll purchases of media properties and armies of lobbyists (also educated and reared in those same think tanks) who could then push aggressively among legislators for control of communications.
THAT ultimately led to their dream achievement of deregulating broadcasting, doing away with restrictions on who could own how much and how many properties in the same market, who could dominate, who didn't have to bother that much with news and public affairs and community service anymore to justify the holding of broadcast licenses, AND who didn't have to bother with such annoyances as the Equal Time Provisions. When deregulation happened, no longer did the owners (usually CONservatives themselves) have to make room for other opinions than their own. Which gave you the rise of monsters like rush limbaugh and eventually rupert murdoch's Pox Noise.
It took 'em forty years, but they did it. They built it on the message and philosophy that's now been allowed to play out - to the worst results imaginable for all but the tiniest sliver of wealthy, powerful, and yes, CONservative elites - the so-called "have mores". And now that message has proven itself to be a dismal failure. If the present-day GOP still clings to it, and bets the bank on it this November, THEN THEY NEED TO GET THE SNOT BEATEN OUT OF THEM - enough so to get it through their thick, closed-minded, stubborn heads that THEIR WAY IS A COMPLETE FAILURE, AN UTTER DISASTER, AND THEY CONTINUE PUSHING IT AT THEIR PERIL. They need to be smacked squarely across the face with that, otherwise they will continue to embrace it and push it. They need to be shown that their views are so repellant that to cling to them means further and greater election losses. It's the only way to open their eyes that THEY have to change. The answer is NOT more of the same military adventurism and aggression, NOT more of the same corporate tax breaks and giveaways and freebies and "rich man's welfare," NOT more of the same hard-core, intolerant, back-assed religious extremism that's already done far too much damage to our people, our nation, AND our world. THAT is basically what this year's crop of republi-CON White House wannabes are offering. And they need to be shown in the most painful and most obvious and most unspinnable way that THAT SHIT DOESN'T WORK AND ISN'T WANTED ANYMORE. They need to get the snot beaten out of them so badly that they are forced to rethink who they are and what they want and who they're in bed with. Because all of that, so far, has been the world's biggest and most humiliating loser for them.
They NEED to get the snot beaten out of them. The rest of us NEED them to get the snot beaten out of them. WE NEED to beat the snot out of them. To them winning is everything. Losing means you're wrong, you're a loser, you're a freakshow, you have no credibility, you're a laughingstock, you're pathetic, you're a joke to be sneered at and kicked in the teeth and shoved back into the far corner and kept there. AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY NEED TO BE, THEMSELVES. When they see that THEY themselves have become that, they just might be forced to see the light, and abandon this horseshit gospel of greed and selfishness and intolerance and short-sightedness that they've elevated into a veritable series of sacraments.
They MUST get the snot beaten out of them. It will be good for everyone else in America AND the rest of the world, and once they get over themselves, it'll be good for THEM, too.
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