Durban, patriot or traitor?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Don't you see why the Republicans are pushing for censure? They want to force the Dems to go on the record about this, so they can use it against them at a later date.

Won't register with people who have no clue who Durbin is.

And GePap is right. Lott's statements in support of Thurmond didn't hurt the Republicans that much. This won't hurt the Dems.

[Drake Tungsten]

weren;t you one of the people who did not think Lott really said anything bad back when his statement thst cost him the Senate leadership came out?

No...

IIRC you were, so your ability to judge the political impact of statements seems rather, well, LOW.

Much like your ability to remember things and formulate arguments.

From the very responses in this thread, the only people who will care about this, the only people who DO care about it are people like youself who vote republican anyways.

I don't vote Republican...

[GePap]

Oh, right.... in Nebraska you vote Reform.

You and O'Reilley.

[Drake Tungsten]

I don't think we have Reform in Nebraska.

Hard to tell in Nebraska anyway though, as most state offices are non-partisan.

[GePap]

Except for the Congressional and Senate seats, and knowing that you don;t vote republican, one must assume you, well, don't vote.

You seem the civic minded type.

[Drake Tungsten]

Except for the Congressional and Senate seats, and knowing that you don;t vote republican, one must assume you, well, don't vote.

I voted for Hagel, who's a Republican. Then again, I also voted for Nelson, who's a Democrat. For the House, I voted for Bereuter, who's a Republican. That's hardly surprising though, as he was our representative for as long as I can remember. I'm not even sure he had any real competition against him the times I voted. I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. And all the other races are non-partisan, except Governor and maybe Attorney General. Of course, I voted against Republican Mike Johanns for Governor and Republican Don Stenburg for AG because I hate those asshats.

Anyway, you can hardly say I "vote Republican." Sorry to burst your ill-informed bubble...

[Drake Tungsten]

Apparently Secretary of State, State Auditor and State Treasurer are the other partisan offices in Nebraska. Please excuse me for not remembering the party affiliation of the person I voted for in the Nebraska Secretary of State race in 2000...

[Az]

what does the Nebraska secretary of state do anyway? forges diplomatic ties with Yukon, and uses Nebraskan int'l. prestige to stop the Galician-Burgundian axis of gaining power in europe?

[Drake Tungsten]

what does the Nebraska secretary of state do anyway?

I have no idea.

edit:

The Secretary of State's Duties

Serves as:
Chief Election Officer
Chief Protocol Officer
Keeper of the Great Seal
Chairman, Nebraska Brand Committee
Chairman, State Real Estate Commission
Chairman, State Records Board
Secretary, State Canvassing Board
Member, Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission
Member, State Pardons Board
Repository of Constitution, Legislative Bills, and Department Rules and Regulations
Chairman of Vote Nebraska Initiative Committee
Chairman of the Nebraska Quarter Design Committee

Administrator of:
Business Corporation Act
Election Laws
Trade Name Laws
Trade Mark Laws & Service Mark Laws
Uniform Commercial Code
Records Management
Collection Agency Act
Private Detective Laws
Debt Management Laws
Issues Notary Public Commissions
Licensing of Truth and Deception Examiners
Register Inventors

http://www.sos.state.ne.us/admin/about/duties.html

Galician-Burgundian axis

Nebraska is keeping an eye on you, you Galician-Burgundian bastards...

[Ned]

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
So it isn't the abuses hurting our reputation and giving the jihadists material to drum up both support and new recurits, it's pointing out that these abuses are occuring in the first place on our soil by our people.

What they don't know can't hurt us, eh Ned?

DR, I don't know what you mean by "abuses." To the extent that there have been so-called "abuses", they've been in violation of the rules and policies of the government and have been prosecuted. Pointing these abuses out and then saying that they are the policies of the US government or actions authorized by military command is what the Democrats are doing. They are linking violations of law and policy with law and policy in a deliberate attempt to smear the administration and to undermine the war on terror. It is clear that many Democrats actually want us to lose to Al Qaeda, particularly in Iraq. They want the war on terror to be a repeat of Vietnam: a complete humiliation of United States.

[Ned]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


Unlike some who will always be facists.

Do you actually believe in what the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution stand for? Because maybe you should take another peek at those documents. The ones smearing this nation are Bush and his sheep.

Well, asleep. There is also a difference between propaganda and truth. The people who link Abu Gharib and abuses at Gitmo with administration policy and then condemn the administration and the US military as being Nazis are the people who are undermining the United States.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Colossal? Drake, it'll be forgotten in a month.

So true. It's practically forgotten now. Despite attempts by some to manufacture a "colossal" blunder, this just ain't it. It does reek of desperation from the Republicans, however. They've been getting hammered all over the map lately, so they're clawing at Durbin's comments as a chance to change the tied. Kinda pathetic, actually.

And hypocritical, considering what Republicans have said in the past:

Questions of hypocrisy in Republican attacks on senator who raised Nazis in Guantanamo comparison
John Byrne

GOP has used Nazi, Hitler references on stem cells, abortion, taxes and the environment

An array of senior Republican officials and activists—including the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign—have invoked Hitler or Nazi references, raising questions of hypocrisy for recent attacks on Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) for referencing “Nazi” tactics at Guantanamo Bay, RAW STORY has found.

Republicans criticized a speech that Durbin made recently in the Senate citing mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, calling on the Illinois senator to apologize. Durbin read from an FBI email which complained about “torture techniques” used at the facilities, saying "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

Durbin’s remarks were quickly snapped up by conservatives and the media.

But senior Republicans—including Chairman of the Republican National Committee Ken Mehlman—have not apologized, and have in fact defended, comparisons of Democrats to Nazis in the past.

Last June, then-Bush campaign manager Mehlman defended an ad that contained footage of Adolf Hitler interspersed with images of Democratic leaders Al Gore, Dick Gephart and John Kerry. The campaign defended the images, saying they were taken from a video on MoveOn.org.

Mehlman said it was used "to show the depths to which these Kerry supporters will sink to win." The video was later removed.

Mehlman is not alone. A raft of Republicans in Congress have invoked Hitler and Nazism on issues from stem cell research, to abortion, to taxes and the environment.

White House confidante Grover Norquist, known for his blistering attacks on U.S. taxes, likened the estate tax to the “morality of the Holocaust” in October 2003.

"The argument that some who play to the politics of hate and envy and class division will say is, 'Well, that's only 2 percent -- or, as people get richer, 5 percent, in the near future -- of Americans likely to have to pay [the estate tax],” he told NPR. “I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust: 'Oh, it's only a small percentage. It's not you; it's somebody else.’”

After being criticized for his remarks, Norquist expanded them in 2004 to include Democrats.

"The Nazis were for gun control, the Nazis were for high marginal tax rates.... Do you want to talk about who's closer politically to national socialism, the Right or the Left?" he told the Jewish newspaper The Forward. He also "told the Forward that he would not hesitate to use Holocaust comparisons in the future."

A Republican senator invoked Nazism when criticizing stem cell research last year.

"We certainly have all seen the rejections of Nazi Germany's abuses of science,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) declared regarding his opposition to stem cell research last October. “As a society and a nation, there ought to be some limit on what we can allow or should allow."

In response to a ruling on abortion last September, Congressman Steve King said following law on reproductive rights equivalent to a Nazi guard saying he was following orders.

“That, Mr. Speaker, is a ‘modern-day’ equivalent of the Nazi prison guard saying 'I was just following orders,’” he said on the House floor Sept. 8, 2004. “It was all legal in Nazi Germany at the time.”

Another senator even compared the Kyoto climate treaty to Nazism, repeating a quotation from a Russian official.

Sen. James Inhofe said Oct. 11, 2004 that Kyoto "would deal a powerful blow on the whole humanity similar to the one humanity experienced when Nazism and communism flourished."

The Oklahoma Republican added, "The world has certainly turned on its head that we Americans must look to Russians for speaking out strongly against irrational authoritarian ideologies."

Sen. Tom Cole (R-OK) dragged out Hitler to hit Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

"Cole Claims a Vote Against Bush Is a Vote For Hitler," KTOK radio in Oklahoma blared last year.

"Republican Congressman Tom Cole claims a vote against the ‘re-election’ of President Bush is like supporting Adolph Hitler during World War Two,” the station reported. “It's what he said recently before a meeting of Canadian County Republicans."

Cole later codified his statement, saying through a spokesperson: "What do you think Hitler would have thought if Roosevelt would've lost the election in 1944?”

Others, too, have likened Democratic policy to Nazism. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) compared a Democratic tax plan to Nazi law in 2002.

"Now, forgive me, but that is right out of Nazi Germany,” Gramm said. “I don't understand ... why all of a sudden we are passing laws that sound as if they are right out of Nazi Germany."

And just last month, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) compared Democrats with Adolf Hitler during the filibuster battle.

"Imagine, the rule that this is the way we confirm judges has been in place for 214 years, broken by the other side 2 years ago, and the audacity of some Members to stand up and say, How dare you break this rule, it is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying: I'm in Paris, how dare you invade me, how dare you bomb my city. It's mine," Santorum said May 19. "This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster."

Each and every one of those comments goes well beyond what Durbin said in terms of taste and decency. Where was the GOP outrage then?

And now conservatives are agreeing with Durbin:

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_06_19_dish_archive.html#111929946887774399

Face it: This is nothing more than the GOP throwing a hissy fit in an attempt to deflect attention from their abysmal performance.

It's also, shamefully, deflecting attention from the real issue, which is the content of the FBI report Durbin quoted.

[Drake Tungsten]

Sully ain't a conservative anymore...

edit: The powers that be must have noticed Sully's defense of Durbin; the advisory just jumped from "chagrined" to "disgusted"...

[Ramo]

Yes, I suppose that partisan hackery is now a fundamental basis of the conservate ideology.

[DinoDoc]

I stopped caring about the comment awhile ago. What drives you people's interest in it?