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I forget who mentioned it above, but I agree with the poster who pointed out that the differences between the two parties in Congress are negligible. The monopoly on power came when Republicans muscled their way in to the system in the 90s and instead of reforming that system, they completed the transformation of the legislature into a giant bucket of leeches.

I'm only 24. My earliest memories of the actions of Government only date back to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, at the earliest. Since then, I can't remember a single thing that the federal government has done that I can now say deserves any respect. It's been killing foreigners non-stop (Bosnia, Iraq: The Sanctions, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq II: The Revenge), committing violations against civil liberty (Waco, Ruby Ridge, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Patriot Acts I & II, NSA Wiretapping + congressional capitulation, and DMCA--for good measure), the national debt is over twice as much as it was in 1995, they've managed to make public education worse nationwide, we're entering another depression and our public officials are trying to solve it the same way Hoover and FDR did. Then, of course, are all the good things that government failed to do after I was taught that our government would never let those kinds of things happen here (9/11 and Hurricane Katrina).

Throughout all this crap, I've had the same mantra drilled into my head for every election I've been able to participate in, as well as the one just prior to my 17th birthday: "You've got to vote for the lesser of two evils".

I voted a straight-ticket for the Democrats in 2004 and 2006 hoping that they would use the power to challenge Bush, but when they got it, they just kept right on doing what they were doing, and even joined in on whatever the Republicans were doing. They had the floor to pull the troops out of Iraq. They had the floor to try to impeach Bush and Cheney for war crimes and domestic civil rights violations. They could have stopped the FISA amendment from coming to a vote. They could have stood in the way of corporate bailouts. They could have done anything that they had been asked to do, but they didn't. All they do is blame some other official, the administration, the media, etc.

I was idealistic for a while, but now I just don't think the federal government is worth fighting for anymore. My political ideology is now somewhere between Ron Paul and Joe Vogler. We need to reject all new federally-funded initiatives. We need to drop everything we're doing and bring all our troops home from every deployment overseas. We should also get rid of the federal reserve, abolish the income tax, and repudiate the national debt. If these things don't happen, I have absolutely no hope that the coming decades will not be just a complete, unmitigated disaster as the American Empire self-destructs. But I'm not worried. The way I look at it, what's new?

Last edited by Rozzlapeed (2008-10-28 7:36 pm)

Farmerkev wrote:

Yes, I am.
As I've said several times in the past, our best times come with divided gov't.
I fear they will be even worse than the all Rep period we've just had.

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Roosevelt and Congress

The Fifty-seventh session of Congress was sitting when Roosevelt assumed the presidency. He went on to preside over the Fifty-eight, Fifty-ninth, and Sixty sessions before he retired in March 1909. In the early twentieth century the Republicans held control of both houses of Congress. In the Fifty-seventh Congress there were 56 Republicans, 32 Democrats, and 2 Populists in the Senate. In the House of Representatives there were 200 Republicans, 151 Democrats, 5 Populists, and one Silver Republican who backed bimetallism. This changed little throughout Roosevelt's tenure.

During the Roosevelt years Congress, particularly the Senate, tended to be more conservative than the chief executive. Historian George Mowry wrote that by 1901 "the power of Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, John C. Spooner of Wisconsin, Orville H. Platt of Connecticut, and William B. Allison of Iowa was practically unchallenged." Other...

They've been keeping their powder dry, ya know.

You just wait, that FISA thing'll be fixed in the first 100 Days! And a withdrawal from Iraq. And National Health Care. Not to mention, O'Bama's middle-class tax cut.

"Also!"