efin98

Godef or Tanked?

__________________
"As long as we have Belichick, I always think that we're going to be just fine."...Tom Brady, in reference to his coach.

“It is what it is, but it ain’t what you think.”...Brandon Spikes

IcyPatriot

Godef

efin98

Oh OK, thought you might have left it open to stand for both

__________________
"As long as we have Belichick, I always think that we're going to be just fine."...Tom Brady, in reference to his coach.

“It is what it is, but it ain’t what you think.”...Brandon Spikes

IcyPatriot

Tanked is ... posts here all the time.

Godef just comes around to take a dump every once in a while.

efin98

Oh ok, thought you meant their posting style and not their participation amount

__________________
"As long as we have Belichick, I always think that we're going to be just fine."...Tom Brady, in reference to his coach.

“It is what it is, but it ain’t what you think.”...Brandon Spikes

PatsFanInVa

back to the one serious response, I think as said, by the time they're on our radars, most politicians have done things "in our name" we'd never do ourselves. There are many faces of this.... some will set up a side deal with the contractor building the local skating rink, to build our house for cheap... some just fix a bunch of tickets (which may be understood in his/her area to be exactly what one does as a politician.) All of them kiss babies and shake hands of people they believe at some level to be below them. They are "constituents," meaning you are nothing without the great mass of them, because they "constitute" you, but any given one of them is as important to you as a hangnail. Above all, the environment leads to the belief that you are of more importance than the people, and somehow distinguishable from the next guy who might take your place at the big politics bar if you decided to go away. You confuse the rarity of the position with the rarity of your own talents and personality. In some cases, in the politician's mind, his or her own importance makes his or her own personal pleasure a relatively unimportant infringement on the body politic, since it will "only" cost each person a dollar or a dime or some other figure.

When this goes on outside the law, it's criminal (QED.) When it's allowed for in the law, but is expensive, it's just the sort of thing opponents complain about. When the belief in being "above the law" goes to extreme lengths, expressions much more disasterous than a little graft can result.

And that applies across the board.

Oh, last observation? My favorite guys/gals, and my least favorite ones, are just as likely as each other to be the nasty variety. I take that as a given... I also take as a given that "you can just tell..." usually lines up with which individuals we favor in the first place.

We delude ourselves for one thing. For another thing, it brings up the question (in the world of politicians) of "compared to what?" Lastly, the one thing they have in common is they have developed an ability to evade our bullsh1t detectors (which may simply be an outgrowth of our willingness to believe.)

You guys know what I think of the character of the various players as of right now (who I like, who I don't like.) Now and then I see some who I don't think are terribly corrupt. One guy I think is too psycho to be corrupt is Nader. But there are only so many people who put integrity so high, in Nader's case because he had to live some kind of weird monk life b/c lobbyists have been looking for a smear campaign since day 1. A truly courageous man, though I don't agree w/all his politics, and he really showed his ***** vs. Obama in the last election...

work time

PFnV

Stokes

A nice response PFnV, one that I agree with obviously. Also a good point that sometimes our favorites are the most nasty. I would add that sometimes they're the only ones that can get the job done! I look at 2 guys I think were successful in their jobs, Clinton and Bill Weld, and I see guys that would absolutely do some shady stuff, but they both were successful in part because of that mentality. Weld worked very effectively within a corrupt political system (and probably contributed to that corruption), and Clinton was able to change course dozens of times in his presidency while convincing us it was his plan all along.

reflexblue

I think they're all corrupt, its that the pubbs stand out because thay are more apt to get on a soap box and preach about morals. Morals that they go ahead and violate.

Some of the biggest moralisers turn out to be some of the most corrupt.

__________________
S.H.E.S.
I Likes Spikes.

godef

It just gets really annoying and disheartening when Democrats expect reasonable political discourse, and instead get bullying and shouting idiots drowning out the message, and then get called naive for it. How patronizing is that? And please don't fire back that the Dems do the same thing, because that's bull*****. We fight back, but not nearly with the same venom and vile as the right. Government sponsored euthanasia? Sheesh, and you wonder why Dems think most Republicans are stupid. I was once a moderate Republican up to the mid '80s, voted for Reagen, but I was driven away from the party because of such stupidity.

It is the Republicans who are naive in believing their scare tactics constitute civil discourse, and are corrupt in doing so.

__________________
See you at Super Bowl XLVI!

godef

What, do you think I spend all my time here? I do have a life. And sure tanked posts more consistently than I do, but when I do post, it's never inane "so are you!" posts which seem to constitute at least half of what he ever posts; he is the king of useless posts.

And you IP, you once had my respect as a reasonable middle-of-the-roader, but I realize you're just another one who practices the tactic of debate-by-insult. How disappointing.

__________________
See you at Super Bowl XLVI!