EclecticWriter

So here we are,
Spending AM in the bedroom,
Christmas vacation
has taken me away.

They discussed how Republicans are now pushing laws to “Protect the Producer Class.” They even played a minute of an old Ayn Rand interview.

So the battle lines have been drawn with Republicans rallying to “Liberate the Producer Class from Washington.” Yes, they are using rhetoric that compares the “Producer Class” to slaves. This is in opposition to (1) Democrats, and (2) OWS, who are being sold as a tool of Democrats.

Who ever wins this confrontation between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie will define and dominate this government and the country for the next generation. Should Republicans win, I suspect they will move the national guard and military coming home from Iraq into the streets.

Interesting times.

M. Frank Darbe

I hear echoes and reverberations around the web from progressives and liberals (those groups are not synonymous. They look at the current Republican lineup of possible Presidential Candidates. The word circus and follies is bandied about. This is blamed on the imminent Republican Collapse.  I realize that I’ve heard this all before.

• MyDD saw the writing on the wall of a “Total Republican Collapse Imminent” linking to numerous news stories.
• The New York Times Heralded the “Republican Collapse in 2007 with, “The Republican Collapse” by David Brooks.
• Blogger Allan Caruba discussed evidence from their loss in 2006 about a “Republican Collapse.”
• Martin Nolan predicted the collapse in 2008 “The Republican Collapse: 100 Years In The Making” in the Huffington Post.
• A “Compilation of the Republican Collapse” appeared on Youtube in 2009.

Though Republicans have been collapses since 2006, somehow they continue to totter along.

Republicans embody one half of he American concept of a two party system, and have done so since the Whigs collapsed, for real. Republicans even were the most liberal of the two parties for a time after the Civil War. Unless we develop a system that allows multiple parties to participate in a system that is not winner take all, we will continue to see two parties that have successes and failures. After a retreat, they shine up their brand and come roaring back. It is even conceivable that the Republican Party might crash and burn so bad that the Right side of the spectrum will form a new party form the ranks. But whether they are called Republicans or something else, they will be there for the foreseeable future. Rather than crow about their collapse and sing the wonders of a one progressive party system, we should recognize that political conflict is part of what we are as humans. Short of evolving into trees, that won’t change.

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Anne Lamont – Bird by Bird

In “CASUS BELLI – International Law of War vs. U.S. Criminal Due Process (the Yemen Hellfire killings)” Vets74 and Democratic Underground provides an excellent discussion on why under the current war on terror that the deaths of al-Awlak and Samir Khan were legal under national and international law.

It doesn’t answer, or attempt to answer, if it is the right way to do things. Under the Clinton Administration, in most cases terrorism was considered a law enforcement issue. That began to change in the later part of his administration, as President Clinton (1998) used military force against Afghanistan via missile strikes. Bush just made it our primary response after 9/11 and formalized it with the AUMF.

I would have preferred we capture Anwar al-Awlak and Samir Khan, as well as Bin Laden, and try them. But sending a U.S. Marital into a region of a foreign country controlled by militant men ready to kill anyone they don’t like is rarely a viable course.

I suspect that people will continue to claim the act was unconstitutional because of what they believe the Constitution says and not what is declared by law.  

Habitable planets orbit 1/3 of Sun-like stars

The Kepler orbiting observatory research team found more than 1,200 exoplanets in its first 136 days of operation. Using their data, other researchers are now calculating that there may be many, many more—so many, in fact, that we might find habitable worlds around one-third of all Sun-like stars. The Kepler research team’s findings, released earlier this year, revealed evidence of 1,235 exoplanets found after viewing some 150,000 target stars. That’s a big haul for just a fraction of a year’s work, but it’s only a tiny portion of the universe. Using the Kepler data, other researchers have begun statistical analysis in an effort to extrapolate just how many exoplanets might be habitable. The answer: quite a few.

It isn’t possible to put too much emphasis on this report. There are millions of stars, and it is not only a matter of time before we will know will near certainity which ones have life in our stellar neighborhood. The number of civlizations that must exist are enormous. it is now possible to begin really considering an attempt to create generation ships that will travel to these far worlds. Give us 30  years, and if we are still here as a species, we can begin the incredbly slow process of sending out our species. If we do not kill ourselves, it is now quite possible that we will survive as a species.

To the stars.

The Tea party has primaried a number of, for Republicans, moderate Congressmen and Senators. Now, Mr. Lewis of Batavia County has this eyes on the biggest Republican Socialist in Congress. The man, one assumes, who is the Socialist singlehandedly responsible for the Republicans flight into the far left. He’s talking about John Boehner?

I have not problem if someone primaries John Boehner and sends him home to spend more time with K Street lobbyists, but it still makes me ask, What the Frick?

What Mr. Lewis and other Teaparty folks know is that the Republican Party is scared to death of the Koch brother’s beaters. A run like this is more intended to force Boehner to move father right and, quite possibly, fall off the face of the Universe. On the right, it works well, and almost nobody complains. The farther right they push their party, the happier their poor little deluded hearts feel.

But on the left, the very idea that we might primary a conservative Democrat like the President or Senators gets most of the party in mortal fear. On the left, we think that pushing  people to the left will lead to their defeat. Those on the left believe that a process that works like gang busters on the right, never work for the left.

I can only conclude that what passes for the left believes with all their demoralized litter hearts that the left really is an evil place. They believe if we push a president, Senator, or Congressman to think like those men who passed Social Security, the Equal Rights Act of 1964, Medicare, Medicaid, and defunded the Vietnam War, it is a recipe for defeat. That defeat will lead to the sewers of hell opening up and replacing someone who is a centrist or center right representative with a demon from the pits of Conservative Hell.

Well, wake the hell up. Republicans know that elected Representatives crap in their diapers at the very idea of facing a primary and possibly losing their cushy jobs. They know it if their fowl, festering hearts. They are not afraid to take the risk of losing a Congressman, Senator, or the White House.

So my request to any one, Centrist, Liberal, or Progressive is to GROW A PAIR. The reward is worth the risk. If you risk nothing you gain nothing and lose everything.