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Webb to Shrubby: Mind your own damn business

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by dog428, Nov 30, 2006.

  1. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    What about PDB?
     
  2. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    I wish I had some great story. Just been busy. I'm cyclical with this place...I post hundreds of times in a week, but if there's not a steady diet of new stuff I'm interested in, I lose interest.

    I've also had to informally ban myself a couple of times for losing my temper at folks -- including you and Fenian, whom I respect -- on politics threads.

    But I'm back now. Hopefully for a while.
     
  3. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Your corner of the political world has been horribly misrepresented in the interim.

    Glad you're back to set the record straight.

    So, when's Rummy's Medal of Freedom ceremony?
     
  4. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    JR there is not a domestic agenda around that would make up for the 58,000 US troops killed in Nam.

    As far as domestic policies Johnson's "great society" turned out to be a abject failure. Generations of people were commited to a life of public assistance. The country is still suffering the effects of Johnson's grand scheme.
     
  5. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    The sooner the better. God knows, if he IS going to get a medal -- and I wouldn't bet against it -- better to do it soon, then get him the hell out of the public eye for good.
     
  6. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Boom:

    The civil rights bill turned out OK, right?

    That alone would probably trump any of W's legislative accomplishments.

    M_W:

    Maybe my Tivo knows.
     
  7. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    So essentially what you are saying then is that the civil rights bill makes the 58,000 lost in Nam OK .
     
  8. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Giving LBJ all the credit for the Civil Rights Act is as over-the-top as giving him all the blame for the 58,000 deaths in Nam.*

    *NOTE: I take that back, Zeke. You're not as silly as Boom. Not even close.
     
  9. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Boom --

    No.

    I was saying that Johnson's work to pass the civil rights bill would trump all of the work W has done on domestic policy.

    I'm leaving the Vietnam war and the Iraq war completely out of the discussion for the moment.
     
  10. As long as the tailor remembers to give W an extra inch where the zipper ends, right back to his bunghole.
     
  11. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    LBJ does deserve a lot of credit for getting the Civil Rights Act passed. Back then, you needed 2/3 of the Senate to end a filibuster, which was 67 votes instead of 60 votes. Southern senators - Democrats back then - had effectively used the filibuster to stop most equal rights legislation. LBJ manipulated things, pushed Senators, used the image of doing this as a memorial to John F. Kennedy, to get it done. Title IX, which was used for women's equality, was done as a result of the Civil Rights Bill. A Virginia segreatationist member of Congress offered an amendment to the bill extending the equality to women, trying to make the point that the Civil Rights Bill was ridiculous and hoping to sink the bill. The few women members of Congress jumped on this and supported it, managing to get it pass.

    LBJ got this done - had Kennedy lived, the Civil Rights bill probably wouldn't have been passed.

    How do I balance the Civil Rights Act (and throw in the Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Acts) with LBJ's responsibility for the Viet Nam War?

    Well, LBJ made the difference in getting the Civil Rights Act into law. Had he not been president, it might not have gotten done for several years if at all. There probably would have been piecemeal efforts but there wouldn't have been the dramatic statement - and make no mistake about it, that was a radical change and a proud moment in American history.

    In Viet Nam, if LBJ had not been president, the Viet Nam war would have gone on. This idea that we could drop one bomb and end it all is absurd. Goldwater wanted to go even harder, which would have resulted in more deaths.

    Richard Nixon is responsible for about 20,000 of those casualties - he got the same deal in 1973 that he could have had in 1969, but it is easier and more politically correct to blame Jane Fonda than Richard Nixon.

    Wingman, good to see you back.
     
  12. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Thanks for the welcome, Gold. Good to be back, and definitely good to see you.

    I'm not totally sure I agree with the idea that without LBJ, the Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed during that era in some form or another. He was a great horse-trader -- have you read Robert Caro's LBJ biography? -- but it seems like a stretch to say that all the upheaval of the Sixties wouldn't have forced some kind of legislative coming-to-terms with race in America.

    Obviously, it's impossible to prove a negative. We can't know what would have transpired if the CRA hadn't come into law...not that that will or should keep us from arguing about it.

    And I should point out that Bush has been a pretty terrible domestic president..."Big-government conservatism" is an ugly beast. His steel deal is revolting. NCLB is a great idea that the Senate hamstrung and the White House underfunded; teachers' unions and their supporters are already circling it to bring on the ugly end. The Medicare bill was an election-year love letter to the AARP. And on and on.
     
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