Why I am a Democrat

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Both my heart and my head are hard. I will have nothing to do with gooey sticky altruism. My the G-D of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob melt me into a greasy puddle if I have show any altruism.

I believe in justice. Mercy I leave to other people and the almighty.

ruveyn

I thought the God of Abraham calls for mercy for the widow and orphan. And as I recall from my Sunday school days, God had to explain to a sulking Jonah that he didn't destroy Ninevah (spelling, I'm sure) because the city also included children and animals who were blameless. In other words, there is plenty of calls for mercy in your religion, and in mine for the meek and the beast.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Well, your perceived right not to have to support them is nothing to me.

What have you done for me lately? Your "liberty" is utterly useless to me. The whales attract tourists, which puts money into my account with the credit union. Feeding hungry little kiddies improves the quality of my rest. I'm not going to lose any sleep over you having to pay an extra couple of bucks from out of your paycheck.

And thus one of my arguments for choosing a political affiliation. You and I do not have the same priorities. We do not have the same position in society, and we don't have the same values. The Democrats are generally the best party for championing my particular values. Now, alternatively, I could finance my goals by hitting you over the head with a club and robbing you blind, but I think it saves us both a lot of trouble if we just feud for control over the government.

However, it is not positively guaranteed that politicians serving the Democrats will champion my values, and it is not guaranteed that they will always put the best candidates up to run. Therefore, it is important for me to create for the Democrats a vested interest in maintaining my loyalty and encouraging me to keep making campaign contributions.

Now, this isn't to say that politicians affiliated with the GOP are bad, but they serve different groups of people. Men like John Boehner are excellent politicians, and they do a very good job of doing right by the people who are loyal to their party. They go about their jobs professionally and with dignity. However, they are competing interests.

Yet, when push came to shove, he signed it into law. Yes, he included a signing statement, but that doesn't mean much. It's now a law on the books, and it's a horrible law. It being part of a larger bill doesn't change thiings. Should he signed a budget that included a provision stating that each family's first born must be killed? Well, if he vetoed it and sent it back to Congress, that might be a pain, so maybe he should just sign it and add a signing statement?

I am actually to the left of the Democratic mainstream on many issues, so I guess you're referring to my moderation in deployment of ad hominem attacks.

Alas, I do not have time to respond point by point to the remainder of your post.

I don't do mercy. I leave that to G-D (if He exists) and other folks. My interest is justice.

I do not believe in gratuitous cruelty mind you, I just don't do mercy and compassion. I have not get the capacity for it. I do justice and good manners. Also I do not believe in doing to others what I find obnoxious if done to me.

ruveyn

ruveyn

Huh. Let's see how long this lasts when you cut off peoples benefits.

The rich exploit the poor. If money were infinite it would have no value. There is only so much, as I understand it. Therefore, not everyone can be rich. The richer one person becomes, so the poorer must others become. The super-rich are predators, and often times, criminals, though they are able to avoid punishment for breaking laws most of the time, because they own the governments that are supposed to enforce these laws. They call the super-rich filthy-rich because the only way to become so absurdly rich is to have someone elses blood on ones hands.

Zero sum fallacy. If the economy were properly growing then one person's gain would not necessarily mean another persons loss. We can all gain, but some will gain more than others.

ruveyn

But in your time of trouble, wouldn't you want mercy shown to you?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I would prefer justice and good manners. Justice is objective. Mercy is sentimental crap.

ruveyn

Anyone looking for something to eat and somewhere warm and dry to sleep but is unable to pay for it probably would want more than just justice.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Stephen Colbert for POTUS


I was so hooked on politics for the past two years. I had to stop listening to the dang news because it's so depressing. I will say though that I used to consider myself a Democrat, and I'm registered as a Dem, but most of them (US Congress) have disappointed me. I still like some Dems like Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur, Elizabeth Warren, and Peter DeFazio....and of course I love the Independent, Bernie Sanders!

The only Republican I like running now is Buddy Roemer - at least he seems honest and he's against big money politics.

*sigh*

But wouldn't you know it, Buddy Roemer hasn't been invited to any of the Republican presidential debates.
Go figure.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I think it's a shame Buddy is being ignored, (except by some Dems). No mega corporate media organization that gets any benefits by bribing Congress would want Buddy to get that much attention. He's totally against special interest money.

They would want something to eat and a warm dry place to sleep, most likely. There are people who provide such things because they believe it is the Right Thing To Do.

Did you know that the Hebrew word for Charity is Tzadakis? That means Justice in Hebrew. For Jews treating other people right is a matter of Right and Justice. For Christians it is a matter of Love and Kindness. By the way the word Charity is derived from the Latin Caritas which means love. So Christians are gooey sentimentalists and Jews make a rational assessment of the situation. Well maybe not.... Some Jews are kind. I am not one of them. I would rather be known as Ruveyn the Just, rather than Ruveyn the Merciful.

Live Long and Prosper \\//

ruveyn

That's one of the reasons that it's important to stay involved in the party. If you show up at events, people are there to be persuaded or dissuaded on a certain issue or a certain candidate. If someone in your district is running for state senate, remember, that's where Obama started his meteoric rise in politics. The thing is, it actually helps you a lot psychologically to think of your party as turf that has to be defended. There are all kinds of snakes out there claiming they support these grand populist causes, but you can take one look at their lifestyle and figure out they don't give a happy damn about the working poor and never donated a penny without making sure they got the tax write-off. If the sanctity of your party means something to you, you are going to fight a lot harder to make sure a snake like that doesn't represent you.

One thing I would never do would be to uncritically vote a straight ticket. I try to make sure that the two weakest links are the ones that get the ax. If I thought that a guy was a revolting S.O.B. when he was running for the nomination, he sure isn't going to be the senator for my district or my representative or my judge, and he sure as HELL isn't going to become "The Democratic President who Came from Raleigh."

If you are truly plugged in to politics, you know exactly who is running in your district, and believe me: the Democratic Party must draw at least as many loony toons as the GOP. They're a different strain of crazy, but a guy billed as a liberal was running for school board here. You would have thought he was running for the Communist Party with all his bull crap about "shared prosperity." One of his opponents was also a flaming liberal, but the opponent was one of what I call the "Scandinavian school" of liberal. The opponent was young, polished, educated and experienced. The guy I liked won, by the way.

So being a good Democrat is a little more sophisticated than just voting a straight ticket when the general election comes around.

By the way, I have not only stopped taking the news seriously, but I have lost all of my respect for journalism, period. It's all piss-yellow journalism these days if it were ever anything else. I don't trust a reporter. If I hear about something, I do my own investigation. The more you do your own investigation, the more lies and distortions you start noticing. It's enough to make you vomit.