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May 14, 2007A Billion for Hillary & her cabinet
NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been a successful mayor largely by keeping most of Rudy Giuliani’s policies in place since taking office. He would not be my first choice for president, as he seems hellbent on micromanaging people’s lives “for their own good,” and that smacks ‘way too much of Winston Smith and Big Brother for my liking. Nevertheless, a reader sends word that Bloomberg is willing to spend one billlllion dollars (why do I keep hearing Mike Myers in my brain?) to run for the WH or, as the emailer said, “to make Hillary the next president.” Writes my correspondent: Perot got Bill into office in 1992 and Bloomy will get Clinton/Obama into office in 2008. Well, I’m not really covering ‘08 yet, as I’ve said. It’s too early for all of it, but especially too early to start hyperventilating. As my Auntie Lillie would say, “save yer breath to cool yer porridge.” But it is interesting to think of Bloomberg spending that sort of dough to run for as a third-party candidate, when he must know that such a candidate - especially one willing to spend a billion dollars, which many will find offensive - can never get into the WH, so who is he trying to benefit? It was Rudy’s endorsement that helped Bloomberg win NY the first time, but I don’t think that means anything. Let’s think…Republicans vote whatever single-issue they’re dedicated to, or they vote their “principals,” in protest against an impure candidate, or they “sit it out” to teach their party a lesson. I think that’s pretty much how it’s been going for a while, right? That’s how it went in ‘92 and (for many) in ‘06. Libertarians won’t like Bloomberg, because he’s way too much of a Nanny-state Nurse. Democrats vote for Democrats. Or Reagan. And a lot of them would vote for Giuliani. That’s about it. Perhaps Bloomberg is thinking he’ll be the spoiler that simply helps to further divide and conquer all the “non-Democrat” factions. I don’t see how his candidacy would be anything but a boon to the Democrat nominee. Hmmmmm. Just imagine: Okay, those last two before Couric were a joke. But the rest of it? Not that far-fetched…the whole crew, back in power and firmly entrenched, and the first amendment, er…amended. I can see why some might feel inclined to gasping. But it’s too early. The only thing I know for sure is there is no way in heaven or on earth that Newt’s candidacy will help. Don Surber is wondering if Bloomberg is looking for a speechwriter. http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/05/14/a-billion-to-get-hillary-in-the-wh/trackback/ 15 Responses to “A Billion for Hillary & her cabinet” |
May 14th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I realize, Madame A, that the imagined Rodham Administration roster outlined above is by way of being your little joke, but the odd thing is (and I am not a fan of the former First Lady—for various reasons, among them that the notion of the US presidency as a dynastic plaything needs to be buried, yes, instanter) that a majority of the names on your list would strike most rational observers, I think, as improvements over the hacks and operatives at present occupying those slots. Interesting to see, here and elsewhere in the neighborhood, that McCain’s status as apostate appears firmly settled in this region of Blogistan…
May 14th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
You wrong me, Rand. I don’t think of McCain as an apostate at all, (in fact I fearfully dislike naming anyone “apostate” or “heretic”…I know there are folks on the right who do that…but I also know there are folks on the left who do it as well…why am I thinking of Joe Lieberman, right now? Weird!)
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I simply think the man McCain wants influence and he’ll do what he thinks he needs to do to get it - he’s no apostate, he’s just an opportunist. Lots of great Americans are opportunists!
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I wholly agree with you that at least a generation should pass before we ever see a Bush or Clinton in the WH again, but things do seem to have a forward momentum (or caseload of FBI files, or whatever) of their own.
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As to the rest, you think my pretend list (yes, it was a joke, mostly) improvements over the current “hacks and operatives,” - other see these names as the “hacks and operatives.” Can’t help that. I’ll tell you what - you tell me someone in the Bush administration that you DON’T think is a hack/operative/bastard and I’ll see if I can take one off my list!
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Frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing a third party candidate win it (if it were possible, but it’s not) simply to see allllllll of these too-familiar, overstayed-their-welcome people (on both sides) who have too-long dominated our politics and our nightly news get lost. I just don’t think it’s possible.
May 14th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
We have a major problem here. If the Republican candidate wins, the Dems will do everything in their power to make sure he or she, not only fails, but is politically handicapped and destroyed in the process, just as they have done everything they can to destroy George W., even if it means taking down the entire country with him. Certainly they will do nothing to help with the war effort, just as they have done nothing to help win it so far, and have focused all their efforts on impeding it. (If they put one-tenth of their efforts to destroy Bush into helping win the war, we could have left Iraq victoriously a couple of years ago, and the rest of the terrorist world would know never again to fight against a united America.) But the Dems care more about their own acquisition of power than anything else and if a Republican wins, they will continue their one and only one policy of attacking and seeking to destroy the president. I cannot see the Dems ever laying down their arms and peacefully coming together with the Republicans.
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Now if the Dems win, they will still continue their policy of attacking Republicans, doing nothing — absolutely nothing at all — to solve any problems, and doing little more than continuing to blame all the woes of the world on those evil Republicans. They will continue their blind policy of national suicide until the day that D.C. or NYC disappear in a flash and nothing is left but nuclear fall-out.
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The Dems have become addicted to hate — hatred not merely of Bush, but hatred of some fairly fundamental things, like truth, not to mention Truth. It has consumed them, and it controls them, and it leaves a trail of destruction behind. So either way, whoever wins, like drug addicts, we are not going to see improvement from the left side of the aisle until we hit bottom. It is all too clear that we are all going to have to crash and burn and then — maybe — the Dems will wake up and realize what they have wrought and — maybe — they will then change. Or not.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Bender B:
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I think that you are barking mad.
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On the off-chance that I’m mistaken, please explain in as much detail as you feel necessary which tenth of the Democrats’ energy would have been required to “win the war” and exactly how this might have come about in those palmy days of mid-2005. Recall that the Crawford Caligula had legislative carte blanche (that’s French, by the way, or “Freedom” as some of your co-religionists like to call it) from the commencement of hostilities all the way up until the new Congress was seated in January.
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You say that you “cannot see the Dems ever laying down their arms and peacefully coming together with the Republicans.” Here, at least, we agree. The modern Republican Party is not the benign, endearingly stodgy entity I grew up with (I am older than the Anchoress and far, far older than you, little Benny). It has been eaten out from within by a cabal, and I, who slept politically through the eighties and nineties, will not sleep again until this zombie has had a stake driven through its heart. I count myself fortunate that the president and kindly, avuncular, nakedly sinister Dick Cheney are doing the heavy lifting on my behalf, and the memory of your consternation will sustain me a bit during the coming years of struggle.
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cordially,
May 14th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Ummm…I’m appalled.
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The Crawford Caligula??? You don’t think that’s just a little over the top? Bender’s post was a little hotter than I liked, but Rand, honestly. I have always known you to be gentlemanly, and this “barking mad” attack, the condescension (I’m quite sure neither Bender nor anyone else here needs to have “carte blanche” translated) and the hyperbole, and the very paranoid-sounding characterizations…it is all simply unworthy of you. I’m just shocked.
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You also break one of the rules with which I have very politely asked posters to comply, to whit:
No referring to Presidents, ex-presidents, or others by disgusting or vulgar nicknames. I don’t do it myself - out of respect for the office, and also because it is simply infantile - and I would prefer it not be done on my site. A simple last name is sufficient.
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This thread either gets better and more in line with my guidelines, real quick, or it gets closed.
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I’m a hospitable sort of girl, but that’s way outside the zone…and what I won’t tolerate, I won’t tolerate.
May 14th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
My dear Madame A:
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Well no, I didn’t think that “barking mad” (and I did leave open at the outset that I could be mistaken) was out of line–certainly not against Bender’s imputations of treason–and I had not previously reviewed your guidelines for presidential references, although had I done so (lacking context apart from your excerpt) I might not have suspected that “Crawford Caligula” crossed over the line. This said, I trust that, speaking of context, you will accept my assurances that no disrespect toward you or your site was intended by my post (which nevertheless strikes me as markedly less intemperate than Bender’s), but that conscious of my status not merely as a guest but as, so to say, the ambassador of a hostile power, I will endeavor henceforth to be particularly circumspect.
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contritely,
May 14th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Rand - The “blogistan” remark in your earlier comment had my antennae up that maybe you were simply not in great spirits. I didn’t much appreciate it, but I let it slide. But the other lit my fuse, and I had to let you know, because I have boundaries. I know that’s an odd concept in the blogosphere, but I have ‘em just the same.
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I will point out that Bender was speaking in very general terms to no one in particular, and I’m not entirely sure he’s looking for the one-on-one battle. He may be, or may not. You folks want to battle it out please keep it civil. In my bar, you take the fights outside. I am determined that this site will be a place where ideas and disagreements do not automatically mean everyone gets bloody.
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Undoubtedly both of you feel the other was the more intemperate - sadly, it is becoming more and more apparent that there is simply no way for hard left and hard right to communicate with each other, since both have stopped seeing the humanity of the other.
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This is how the world will be destroyed, you know…by a mindless forward thrust of hate that has learned to completely disregard the humanity of an ideological opponent. It is how the nation will die, too.
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The hated President Bush does not return ugly attitude in kind, and I don’t either. It is the smallest, the very tiniest of steps that one may take in order to restore that endangered sense of “humanity” upon another. I know that for too many even that small little gesture of Bush’s - that he not match ugly rhetoric for ugly rhetoric - is unworthy of praise…so don’t praise it. It is certainly worthy of emulation. Our society hangs in the balance.
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I accept that you intended nothing untoward, Rand. And now that you know the rules…I know you’ll be a gent.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Anchoress,
I read this list and now I’m afraid to go to bed for fear of the nightmares it will cause!
May 15th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Rcareaga
You mention people in the Adminstration as Hackjobs. I wish people would take time to see what these people are doing. Some of these folks are doing great jobs. By the way this isn’t aimed at just Dems. Trust me my email and my participation on forums shows me many so called “conservatives” think all these folks have some plot to make a North American Union and other nonsense.
Most people have no clue what these Cabinet people are doing. For instance We have a fine Sec of Commerce. I bet one out of 10,000 Americans can’t even name him. He does a lot more than the Census which by the way you don’t puu together all of a sudden in 2009.
It just irratates me that when men and women are in charge of the departments that make the trains run on time from Agriculture to the Dept of Energy to the Bureau of Indian affairs that they get so easily dismissed. Many of these people are some of the most intelligent people that get little praise but BOY when something goes wrong the hounds of hell descend.
There was a time not too long ago when people did know and did care as impossible that might seem today.
Anyway that is my rant.
JH
Louisiana
May 15th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Yes, my prior comments were a little hot — a little hotter than I too liked — but true all the same, I believe. I wish it were not so, but it appears that politically and socially things will get worse — much worse — before they get better, if they get better.
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Not only in this country, but throughout the world, we have one side who has rejected truth and another side that is too afraid to stand up for the truth. One side caught up in the dictatorship of relativism, with all its attendant horrors, and the other side is full of little more than self-interested cowardly fools — at least on the political level.
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I know that George W. and Dick Cheney both have a pair, but it is astounding that the rest of the organized Republican Party still has the ability to reproduce without a single testicle between them all. But I suppose it is even more astounding and miraculous that they are even able to live without any spine or intestines. I don’t know, perhaps they are all human-worm hybrids, the product of some fantastic heretofore unreported breakthrough on the genetic front. But it is clear that they are unwilling to stand up and fight.
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Now, on the other side, we have a party that clearly has the fortitude to fight, at least when the fight is not against the real enemies of the country or society, but they have abandoned any desire for truth, preferring to create their own truth to fit their objectives. They are a side that has abandoned even the truth of their own name, opening rejecting the democratic system in favor of eternal dissent when the majority vote does not go their way, and advancing the cause of Marxist anarchism. Everywhere you look, every traditional institution and thought is under attack. For examples, do we really need to go any further than their exultation of the slaughter of the most innocent and vulnerable among us?? For them to advance the death of one of these innocents is bad enough, but 45 million in this country alone? Is it really any wonder that their willful and knowing rejection of the truth of the life and humanity of these innocents would lead to their attack on the truth of other components of the most fundamental institution of society, namely the family, before turning on civil society itself?
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But, previously, even that state of affairs did not prevent us all from coming together in common cause on occasion. However, since the advent of Clintonism, where truth is relative, especially with regard to language, and even “is” has different meanings, together with their “Move-on” comrades, destruction of their human-worm-hybrid opponents, and the tradition that they stand for, if they had spines to be able to stand, has been their number one objective. They are not deterred from this objective even by the fact that a very real and long-standing enemy (1,400 years) is ready and waiting to put half of them in a burka, while smiting the necks of a good proportion of the rest.
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Hot, yes, but it will get a lot hotter before it gets better. After a lifetime of dissent and attack regardless of the outcomes of democratic elections, does anyone really think that the Dems will lay down their weapons and join hands with the Republicans if the Republicans win in ‘08? And if the Dems win, does anyone really think that the Republicans, even being the worms that they are, will be in the mood to forgive and forget and get down on their knees and satisfy the Dems (RINOs aside)?
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Things will get worse before they get better. And it would be bad enough if it was just us fighting amongst ourselves. But there is an external enemy reveling in this. People think that the war front is in Iraq. They think that the civil war is in Iraq. The problem with that way of thinking is that, for the enemy, Iraq is only a side show, a diversion. The most advantageous front for the enemy is right here in D.C., and that aspect of the war is being fought without the enemy having to engage a single suicide bomber — our disunity and political and societal civil war right here at home has encouraged and emboldened the enemy enough to give him a generation of sustenance. And within a generation, even those anti-technology cave-dwellers will have been able to obtain one piece of highly sophisticated technology, and then things will be really, really hot.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Here is the wisdom according to H.L. Mencken: A professional politician is a professionally dishonest man.
The current President is VERY, VERY far from being the drooling moron that he is portrayed to be in the mainstream press. Nor is he a Machiavellian schemer as is sometimes averred. Interesting that the media portray the President as both without even the slightest hint of embarrassment at their lack of consistency or logic! But out-of-control hatred will destroy even the slightest vestige of common sense.
Bender is correct. This is not a time for the kinds of people who occupy MOST of the seats on both sides of the aisle in Congress. They MAKE THEIR LIVINGS at this and are, thus, professional politicians - and following the logic in my first paragraph, they are PROFESSIONALLY DISHONEST.
What this nation needs now are PATRIOTS. And frankly, we’ve precious few of those in the United States Senate or House of Representatives. But then, we get the government we deserve, and if we keep sending these bottom-feeding sycophantic dimwits back to the trough over and over and over again - who do we blame but ourselves?
Not enough people vote. That’s the first thing. And of those who do vote, pitifully few of them are even minimally informed by anything other than the frothing partisans in the MSM.
More and more, I fear for our country because of the enormous threat from WITHIN, almost as much as I fear the threat from without.
All we can do is PRAY.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
all i can add is yikes…
the folks that made it their policy to lie about the genocide in Rwanda, desperate to return?
well said, and Ms. Miller is well stated too…
why do democrat liberal partisans embrace and promote the dishonest?
May 16th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Hello Ms. A,
Big fan of your site. I must take issue, though, with the conventional wisdom espoused by you and others that Bloomberg would automatically elect Hillary. What Bloomberg would do is split the social liberal vote, meaning that the social conservatives could rally behind a champion and be relatively more effective. But more importantly, Bloomberg would split the New York vote. There is no credible scenario where the Dems win the WH without winning the New York jackpot, and Hillary would be forced to spend time and resources in the expensive NY market with no guarantee of success. Furthermore, a wide enough split could conceivably allow a socially conservative Republican candidate to steal New York by galvanizing the upstate social conservatives. That would clinch the WH for the Republican candidate, regardless of Bloomie’s effect elsewhere.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Melinda’s gone and (ugh) Blake is still here with his crappy, unlistenable “singing.”
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I told you that things would get worse before they get better.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:47 am
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