Captain's Quarters -

An adult non-partisan discussion of Iraq. Nice and safe.

Sadly, however, what motivates the base is not non-partisan beltway doublespeak, but red meat conservative principles and the political discipline to stand up for these principles as a minority party.

As you illustrated so clearly in your list of supporters of Dr. Coburn's porkbuster/anti-earmark amendment and the four "wide standers" who saw both sides of the issue, but decided it was in their constituents best interests NOT to vote.

NAYs ---14
Barrasso (R-WY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Grassley (R-IA)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)

Not Voting - 4
Craig (R-ID)
Dodd (D-CT)
McCain (R-AZ)
Obama (D-IL)

These lists are a fantastic tool to shine a light on those politicians who really vote for the principles they allegedly stand for.

Pretty lame production. No fire in either belly. Both men are looking off-camera, presumably at a teleprompter. Fails to engage the viewer.

And please, please don't use "Together we can." That was moonbat Deval Patrick's slogan here in Taxachusetts, and it served as pablum for the touchy-feely yuppies who voted for him in large numbers.

Scrap this stuff, and come up with a hard-hitting campaign, targeting the enemy: the Dhimmocrats.

/Mr Lynn

Discover your party, comrade!

For example: "It's becoming clear to me that the average 20-year-old fighting for America in Iraq knows more about national security than many of the 20-year veterans in Congress!"

Fred Thompson

Here's your platform GOP - get behind this, prove to the American People that you will do these things, and you will win elections...

1) Defeat the islamofascists in the Middle East and their appeasers at home
2) Close the borders and send illegal aliens home
3) Privatize social security
4) Appoint judges who can read the Constitution and know the difference between interpreting and legislating
5) Enact loser pays tort reform
6) Cut the size of government and the intrusiveness of government regulations down to its Constitutionally enumerated functions
7) Radically simplify tax collection via a flat tax on incomes with no deductions, or a Federal sales tax
8) Repeal the Great Society subsidies for poverty, illegitimacy and ignorance

Otherwise, make like the Whigs.

Cap'n Ed, thanks so much for the set ups. Here is another I'll take,"the minority leadership make good spokesmen for the GOP. "
Because Dear Leader can't. The 800lb gorilla in the room, The President of the United states as the impotent, feeble, DUCTOR FACTICIUS.

I care about Iraq and the Bigger War witch will get bigger as time goes. However, if they can not control our own government (national secrurity leaks,pork spending,immigration) then how can I trust them with the minor problem of Iraq?

What crap fly-man.

My advise is to support your President. He is the only one that we all elected twice. I do not agree nor trust one word that now comes from the 'ship em out' crowd. But I do vote Pug. My anger is directed to the issue, purity crowd that decided to split us up and the spineless group of Senators and Congressmen that bought into it.

Spines. My President has a spine and knows how to fight the enemy, even if he doesn't have much patience with the ones that need the pretty words and waste his time. My advise is to indentify to all your fellow elected Pugs that many of the voting PUGS, do NOT consider George W Bush the enemy. Only the ones that are as determined as Moveon.org to diss the President, split the Party and lose more elections.

And yes, I support Rudy. I like the way he immediately poked Hillary(Dems) in the eye and then turned around and hit the NYT(MSM). Yahoo.

For the last six months, I've eagerly seized on all the 'questionnaires' the Reps have sent, inquiring my opinions on... a carefully selected, dumbed-down set of push-poll questions. Good? Yes, I'm for good. Evil? Of course I'm against evil. Are the Democrats the enemy? SCREW YOU, ASSHOLE, THE DEMOCRATS AREN'T THE ENEMY, THEY'RE AMERICANS.

The gag reaction to those stupid questions has garnered the cretins in the Committees who mail them not one cent from this voter. But the push-polls keep coming.

There's not much sign in the media that the Reps are even alive, let alone thinking on what we should be doing as a country. George W once in a while lets off some speech or other (carefully buried on page 7 usually, but then the media has a calculated hand in that as well). But there's a gaping lack of a series of intelligently connected talks, spaced say a week or two apart. Look forward, O President. Act as if there were a future.

So I've taken to writing letters to insert in the envelopes with the questionnaires (minus shekels, thank you very much), with suggestions to fire the push-poll writers and actually engage us on principles.

And maybe the Rediscover Your Party idea signals some sort of beginning in that direction. More power to them. I'll let you know when I write my first check.

olw2,

You do realize that many of us do not think GWB has let the military go to do their jobs properly,correct? He held them back to much. Was not aggresive enough.

I hate to say it but it has tints of Vietnam in that the military wins but the elected people do not support them.

Yeah, SkyWatch, if only we had dropped more bombs and shot more people on sight, why, this whole insurgency in Iraq would have been gone long ago.

I imagine if we engaged in further and more comprehensive torture of random Iraqis, we would have much more actionable intelligence on AQ. Now that I mention it, why don't we just kill all the Sunnis? The insurgency will end overnight.

You're right, we should take the gloves off and really start pounding the faces of these people into the sand as fast and as hard as possible; it would inspire just the sort of fear that we want people to have in their heads when they think of the US.

Skywatch:

If you had been paying any attention at all to the dispatches from Micheal Totten, Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, et all, you would know that our recent success is due to the change in strategy where we are doing less shoot-em-up. The only comparison to Viet Nam I see is Westmoreland / Abrams. Petraeus, like Abrams, has changed to a classical counterinsurgency strategy, with the focus on the security of the populace. The results speak for themselves.

Owl2 The President is a human and very capable of displaying human characteristics, like flaws, that part I accept. I don't accept that we as tax payers, subsidizing any adventure, should do so blindly at the word of our elected officials. The battle against Islamic extremism is not a pinata that the President gets to swing a golden bat at and no candy comes out. Accountability is the number one responsibility that matters for me. Go read Madison and Jefferson and realize that they knew all too well what unbridled power can do to the citizenry. I accept that the President was elected, but as a stock holder in this government I choose to separate myself from the short term gains of patriotic propaganda and bluster and look to real return performance and accountability, regardless of the party in power. The administration's propensity for Don't ask us , because we won't tell you, mentality is my grievance point. Truth is only on one side of the mountain. Big boys can explain themselves and elaborate the details. Bush has done neither.

Captain Ed,

The problem with the Republicans isn't what they say. The positions of the party at the national level are all quite reasonable.

The problem is what they did when they controlled Congress. They spent like Democrats. Well, not quite that bad, but close. Also, they let earmarks get totally out of control. I'm a conservative, but no longer a Republican, until I have some assurance Republican congresscritters will behave when they get elected.

Ooo, ouch! Al Qaeda was not in Iraq before the invasion, so they didn't decide that Iraq would be the central front in their war with us. Bush has made that claim, but as Boehner points out, they're in Asia, Africa, and Europe, while we're stuck in Iraq unable to pose a credible threat to Iran who have thousands of centrifuges running day and night.

Wish they'd start with facts to sell me policy.

Ooo, ouch! Blunt says "if we don't leave Iraq in the right way at the right time, it'll be the greatest recruiting tool for our totalitarian enemies . . . ." Oh, dear, does he not know it is?

Back to Boehner, somehow I missed the plank in the Democratic platform advocating that we "precipitously withdraw our troops," and I haven't heard anyone advocate increasing the size of our military so that we don't have to withdraw, and can have overwhelming force over there. This doesn't look anymore serious about the war than Bush has been.

Ed, I don't see this as a positive message. It's the same scare message, without any policy (other than, stay the course, which voters have decided leaves much to be desired), based on erroneous information. Follow us home? He just said they're all over the world, then Blunt says it's just a little sliver of totalitarian Islam in that region.

Angry Dumbo, in all the years the Republican Congress governed with the Republican President, we had double digit increases in discretionary spending. Name names, but one of the biggest pork barrel spenders was just named to head the White House Office of Management and Budget. Name names, but include those in Ways and Means who'd be right back in the driver's seat.

He didn't like it, but Clinton had to deal with Graham-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, which required that ANY new expenditure be balanced either by a cut somewhere, or a tax increase. That's how the Democrats lost the House, they increased. Might lose it again.

The suit's wrong.

The hairpiece looks like it's been borrowed from Sam Donaldson.

And, all those guys would be a lot happier if they could just show up to work wearing dresses.

Whom do they dress for?

You call this "dressing to talk to America" clothes?

There's absolutely nothing about the senators trying to grab hold of some item, with which these scoundrels can cover themselves in patriotism!

The President will do a fine job reaching the PEOPLE.

The senators would do a better job if they stopped their pork diets. And gave a look outside their tinted windows. Sure. Lots of them hear from Americans every day. From their own states, of course. And, then like salesmen; who spend terrible days dealing with difficult customers; they back track. Sometimes to a customer who gives them lots of business and is nice. And, sometimes straight for a drink. Whatever.

But these dorks are snookering themselves.

And, the first thing to do, to start sounding real, is to get off bandwagons where they think they can then still do their shit load of mischief.

Hands across the aisle, my foot. It seems there's a grand old network, over there, with a lot of "wide-stances" and very little use of brains, involved.

If there was a real democratic party? The GOP would be KAPUT. Their lucky breaks come from the affirmative action crowd that took over the Bonkeys. But it's nothing of which to be proud.

Maybe, if they just printed all their additions to the law on toilet paper, I'd be more impressed.

But from the wardrobe, you can tell. BUNCH OF PHONIES. They think if they have labels to flaunt we'll all be so impressed. Well, not even if they showed up in ermine.

DC is a stinking swamp.

Ya just have to stay awake so that these slobs don't do what Hillary does, which is steal the furniture.

Dear Leader is the Divider, not the Decider. Pitting those who believe we are safer because of our involvement in Iraq against those that don't. What a simpleton. Was this some lame attempt to counter any doubt on the subject because of what Sen. Warner got as an answer from Gen. P? Who the hell does he think he's talking to?

This message pays lip service to our troops and it's coming from Representative Boehner, who just today told Wolf Blitzer that the death and injury of thousands of American troops as a "small price to pay" for a stable Iraq.

What a tool.

I have yet to hear ONE grand plan to counter the President's. We and our elected bosses, sat on our azzes all through the 90's as one attack after the next happened to us. Nada. We did nada. They built and became more and more aggressive and we did NADA.

Now they are scattered all over the globe and have embedded in so many foreign governments while they built. So now 9/11 is not big enough for some of you people?

You have a plan? Oh, that's right. We should only go after that tall bearded man and pretend that finishes that little problem. What's the plan? The only one I have ever heard from Dems is the UN. Yep, that's the ticket. Feel safer just thinking about it.

If the GOP wants America to discover the Party, they need to discover a path away from RINOS.

We've had enough of Dims and the RINOS that court them.

I.E.:

http://www.townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2007/09/10/evangelicals_hesitant_about_thompson

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=/Commentary/archive/200709/COM20070913b.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_el_pr/thompson_florida_10;_ylt=AnH6LVpEPlZbqcYNTE2CaYwE1vAI

"... Thompson was asked in an interview for Bay News 9's "Political Connections" program whether he thought Congress' intervention to save the
life of the brain-damaged woman two years ago was appropriate.
"I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," Thompson said. "That's going back in history.
I don't remember the details of it." ..."

"... Thompson's performance as a United States senator was mediocre. He chaired a committee that was supposed to investigate Chinese money
which had infiltrated the 1996 campaign of William J. (Bill) Clinton and other Democratic nominees. Instead Senator John H. Glenn (D-OH)
turned the hearing so that it became an investigation of bad Republican fundraising practices. Glenn was thereafter rewarded with another trip into space, something he badly had wanted.

It is not entirely clear what Thompson believes. When he was Senator he seemed to support an open-borders approach to immigration. In recent speeches Thompson has not supported President George W. Bush's comprehensive immigration reform bill, which was soundly defeated.

There is the question of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Thompson initially stated that, although he is a federalist, he reluctantly supported the Amendment because it was too important to do otherwise. Now his staff has put out a clarification suggesting that Thompson does not support the Amendment.
That greatly has upset social conservatives, many of whom believe that [no] support for the Amendment a deal breaker.
Thus far, Thompson has declined to meet with important social conservatives to clarify the matter. ..."

These are about Thompson, I feel the same about Rudi and Mitt, Newt and McCain AND KIND!

If this TYPE of person is nominated by the GOP, it will be my HONOR to vote for a WRITE-IN.

Qwl2, your premise is soooo flawed. Here is the analogy I use to describe it: The family is taking a trip and Dad is driving. He says I know how to get there. So out of respect no one questions his integrity and allows him to drive and assume navigation responsibilities. Then after he gets lost , having said numerous times, trust me I know what's right and where we're going , mom steps up and says let me drive. By that time Dad gets indignant and says But you don't know where we're going, shut the hell up. As the whole family goes off the cliff Dad finally gives mom the wheel. Guess what, MOM HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH GOING OFF THE CLIFF. Failure to articulate a plan and be accountable for the consequences of our actions is to be laid at the feet of Dear Leader and HIS party. They let Toonces drive.

I wonder if the opposition party would consider six hundred tousand worth the price of liberty because this is what our won civil war cost.

And how about the four hundred thousand who shed blood against the rise of Nazism because this is what is the fight against National Socialism cost.

Or about the two hundred thousand against North Korea becasue this is what the fight against communism cost.

And the cost for those fighting against communist take-over of Vietnam fifty-eight thousand.

All Liberty is paid for with the blood of those who fight for freedom, this is why America's warrior is honored as freedom's hero.

Uh, why did the video end with words superimposed over the gentlemen?

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Karl Rove has done it again--sign me up!

I just figured a few things out!

First of all, the most blood being shed, now, in Irak. IS BY IRAQIS. And, they're not really shouting that they want us to go! If anything, even the sunnis, who threw themselves up against the ropes, because the imams promised them more than reality delivers ... Have gotten dosed, now, by enough reality ... that Irak is heading in the correct direction. No need for them to pile up an inventory of burkas, either.

And. Petraeus is HERE!

While Petraeus is HERE ... and soon he lifts off, and heads to England first. FOR A STOP OVER. I'm going to have to wait, before anything else happens in the Mideast Theater. That's just the way it is.

It also explains why Bush didn't give anyone a big math lesson, tonight.

Heck, when we were heading into the Pacific, going back to a speech FDR made in early 1942; he told the press to tell the American people TO GO OUT AND BY MAPS OF THE WORLD!

The President then did a "chat." And, many Americans, by then had purchased these maps. To learn, for the first time, what's out there; on the BIG Pacific Ocean.

With Petraeus in DC. And, then departing, folks, it's no wonder BUsh's speech, tonight, was just about average.

Meanwhile, the GOP senators can't find their footing with the American public, because each and every state is DIFFERENT. These putz's just know their own version of "store." They don't know a thing about reaching a bigger audience. And, yes. It shows.

But for the GOP to do well; Bush has to do "better."

Up ahead, watch out.

I cannot see Bush just sitting there "coasting."

And, I already read that he's booked himself a "world tour." Making more stops outside the USA, in the next year, than any other President did. Ever. (No, I don't have his office schedule handy; so I can't refer to it.)

But if it's part of a puzzle piece; then yes. Once we do what's necessary, not just in Irak; but with the "unstable neighbors," then the President will do a tour. This means? NOT THE UN.

Whatever else is out there, just like our senators are without a paddle, so, too, are the diplomatic pants dancers.

WHile best of all? Bush got Condi to SHUT UP.

We are not at a disadvantage.

Fireworks? Only after Petraeus, on his 3rd tour, arrives "home."

Oh, yeah. Tommy Franks called Floriduh "home." Way different hook up, these days.

Give this a few years to work out. A few lightweights will be lifted off their chairs.

There's really good stuff ahead. No bull shit.

Though in the short-distance, wide-stance Larry is gonna come back to his familiar surroundings. This type of stupid "excitement" works in the swamp.

Imagine how much more impressive Boehner would be if he sobered up.

Oh honey, I know I've beaten you up before, but I'm really sorry and I've changed now. Honest. Tomorrow morning, well Monday at the latest, I'm going to get a job and then just watch me cut government spending then!

Baby? Where ya going? Get back here! No, wait, I'm sorry....

The Republican Party had 6 years to do something meaningful and long lasting for this country.
They squandered it away acting like Democrats and looking to cardboard cutouts for leadership.
Since incumbency is so certain we have pretty much the same bunch in charge that have been in charge.
Why in the world should any sane person expect something new and honorable from these egocentric
political hacks.
John Boehner is a cardboard cut out who is the John Edwards of the Republican Party hair and all.
Not politically but cosmetically.
Here in Ohio we have seen the totally destruction of the Republican Party because of the constant line of RINOS who succeed each other in party leadership positions.
Until the rank and file wake up and start acting like conservatives again there is not a chance for the GOP.

I live in hope that the Republicans have learned their lesson. I'm not a real big fan of any of the current GOP hopefuls, but I'd take any of them over the Dimocrats (juru still out on Ron Paul). Time to wake up and get to work!

I'm with Insufficiently Sensitive. I stopped receiving donation requests from the GOP after returning a dozen with comments in red pen--sans check. I formally re-registered as an independent two years ago.

I hate the fact that I have no alternative to the fools on both sides of the aisle (it's getting worse: I note with dismay that even Jeff Sessions--normally a bulwark against idiocy--did not support Dr. Coburn's porkbuster/anti-earmark amendment).

I hate the fact that GOP folly leaves America in the position of having a Democrat run the war and appoint the next few Supreme Court justices.