THIS IS NOT ->Delawareliberal

What Ting is ignoring is that the vote was carefully stage-managed not to pass. If there were a 67th vote available, GOP leadership would have authorized some blue-state Republican to vote against it and bring it back down to 66.
 

What? Frist did that? Why...? So he could look even more useless than he already does?
 

Too bad Ting doesn't stand a snowball's chance. The article contains the nasty little (unsubstantiated?) claim that Ting burned a flag to protest the Vietnam War. Now, of course WE would never stoop to the level of say, a Karl Rove, but if WE were to consider that as a possibility, this would be worth making some phone calls about.
 

The flag burned, but it was because a seed popped out of the bong and hit Ting in the eye. He whipped around and knocked a candle off the yurt's alter to polytheism. The candel fell to the floor and rolled onto a flag which the commune was using as a door mat.

You did not hear that from me.
 

Carper is probably the most colorless, flavorless, empty-suited eternal incumbent to haunt our statewide roster for 3 decades now and counting, ad nauseam. I have racked my brain to figure out one lasting thing or notable achievement of his --- oh yeah, electricity deregulation. Thanks Tom!

Having said that, the man clearly stands on the right side of the most fundamental issues at hand. While flag-burning is a facially irrelevant grandstand issue of almost subzero practical import, beneath the surface it represents the divide between the barbarians and the enlightened on two epic questions for all time :

1. Does a harmless physical act that only offends the most shallow of pseudo-patriotism warrant a harmful act of universal violence to the 1st Amendment and all that it truly stands for?

2. Is an issue of such inherent irrelevance to the life of this nation and of such a purely and solely symbolic nature worth defacing the most precious governing document ever devised, by altering it for only the 28th time in 219 years?

Carper did not win my vote, much as I commend him, but Ting definitely lost any chance at it. For good.

I wish the Democratic party would take more principled stands like this. I wish Carper would take to the Senate floor and rail endlessly and legislate interminably against this criminal administration's outrageous and sustained assaults on every pillar on which this Republic has ever rested, ensuring its continued survival.

Instead he only stands when the issue is symbolic.

As far as the flag-waving, my-country-right-or-wrong bumpkins who want to burn the Constitution to ban the burning of a piece of colored cloth I can only say : the flag, more than anything else, represents freedom so broad and unfettered that it even abides itself being torched in the expression of this liberty. Those who can't see that the flag represents even the freedom to burn the flag just don't get what this country is about. They need to be beaten back into their holes before they drag us all down with them.
 

Exceedingly well put.

What I would not give to see more conservatives like you win your party back from the crazies.
 

Thanks, Jason. We're working on it.

I hate labels, but if I have to smack one on myself it is to try to show that there are some of us out here who know what it's really all about - the real conservatives. The Reagan True Believers, not the Bush Agenda Operators.

The stakes are so high these days we are better to find common ground to stand against the real evildoers we face (and we know they ain't across the other side of the world, either).

We have reached a point in history where the threat from within now far exceeds anything from without. No room to quibble over lesser issues where we part. We agree on ths big stuff and that is what matters.

For the record, I am probably the only Republican I know who opposed the war and the Bush junta's vile aggression as far back as it was ever contemplated by their scheming little minds. I join you as one who knew exactly what was going to happen without needing to see it. Unfortunately the price paid in blood by which history proves us right mutes any cause to revel.

It is nice, however, that this bunch have been so glaringly exposed as the villains they are. Sometimes history needs a swing towards the bad, so the good can mount up and restore balance. Bush has embodied the worst of everything conceivable. Hopefully he will leave a generation of activists forever vigilant against his like ever ascending to power again.
 

Jason, I copied this from a comment I made on your Ferris Follies post a while back. It ended up being the last comment in the thread, so I assume you never saw it. Here it is again, I am truly curious to your response. Remember that it came from a Ferris post, not a Ting-Carper post:

MOT Newbie said...
Jason - I asked this upcoming question to Liz Allen and never got a response. Of course I was really pointing out that she professes hate all over anyone or anything that disagrees with her opinion. At least you don't do that. I acknowledge that you are a professed loyal-lib, but I need to know, as I am someone who still has yet in my life to vote straight-ticket (if I ever do, then that means one side has really f'ed up something). Here's the question...if a republican is pretty much the same as the "second-coming" and has guaranteed through undeniable example that he/she will deliver everything that will be good for all, would you still vote for the opponent soley because my described candidate is a republican? Have you ever voted for a repub, or at least a non-dem? I am hoping you will say at the very least you have voted non-dem, but I won't disparage you for whatever answer you have. However you vote is your right. I am simply curious so I can guage your site and your blind-allegiance to Biden and smear of Wharton, as if he knew nothing of what he is running.

Thanks and Ciao.

P.S.: If you recall from Dana's site over the last few weeks, my rants about my own party still stand firm. I am anti-Crossan, well almost everyone in that office. I'm not a happy camper over here, just to give you an idea of my mindset.
 

Conservative with Conscience... dude, who the 'f' are you??? I can't believe another one of me exists! Hot damn! I am not the last of the mammoths afterall! Woo hoo!

Seriously, no identity reveals here, but in the least, do you have some sort of activity in the party? I ask 'cuz I do and I have a plan, it'll just take a while with the current affairs.

How sad I am doing this on a professed give-me-liberals-or-give-me-death blog site. Jason, you must be crapping yourself (a happy crapping, by the way) right about now.
 

I'm with you newbie, all around. Party label or loyalty are so far down on my list of deciding factors that they fell clean off the table.

I vote my conscience (no name pun intended). If a Democrat is right they are right, if a Repub is wrong they are wrong. Last I checked neither good ideas nor bad politics register any specific affiliation. I view party as one facet of a candidate, not a candidate as one facet of their party, to be either lumped together or dismissed with its overall cast.

Jason is a good person to stick with his party but I hope he would ultimately go with the better person, no matter the party. I would like to help salvage our party and join others in doing so. But sometimes the political fight is not worth the distraction it brings from ever addressing the real issues that matter. Entrenchment has to be finessed and end-run. We can't fight it head-on because we are not single-minded enough to fight the single-minded party hacks we face.

I believe that only the real threat of alternative political affiliations and issue-driven coalitions will force the two 'major parties' to adapt rather than control and manipulate as a duopoly. Alliances around good public service, integrity, vision, and great ideas rather than mere collections of loyalist politicos can put party in the back seat (or hell, the trunk) rather than the driver's seat, because right now they are drunk driving beyond belief.

No idea is worth sacrificing simply to prop up token, empty, clannish political associations operating purely on cohesion, rather than coherence.

Party affiliation is a big fat ugly distraction --- a false but seemingly built-in source of constant negative, corrosive conflict. How many good things in public policy and good people in public service have fallen victim to knee-jerk myopia that sees them as nothing but enemies to be vanquished at any price? We no longer have even the niceties of loyal opposition or simple political competition, we have downright irrational feuding that leaves us as decimated in spirit as the Hatfields and McCoys, after murdering each other for eons.

It is time to support what we believe rather than just oppose that which we are not.
 

We should get in touch, newbie. Time to start making things happen in the open. I fear no one in the GOP but I am also reticent about inviting their BS tactics on myself (see above). We need to end-run them, flank them, ambush them, and undermine them with their own words and deeds. No need to make ourselves targets until we have slapped the bullseye on their backs before they even realize it.

Stay tuned here and give thought to how we can touch base without fearing it as risky for any reason....

Yes, I am involved in the GOP, to answer your question.

Maybe we can have a liberal like Jason broker bringing us, his 'political opponents', together! (Kidding, Jason, though that is ironically what you are doing in many ways by pointing out on a regular basis how we suck.)
 

Carper is probably the most colorless, flavorless, empty-suited eternal incumbent to haunt our statewide roster for 3 decades now and counting, ad nauseam.

Whew - that is a tough call in a state that also contains Mike Castle!

I hope he would ultimately go with the better person, no matter the party.

Of course the minority party earnestly, with hand on heart, advises everyone to split their tickets. Nice try!!

If you are a Dem there is a perfectly good reason to hold your nose and vote for some stinkers. Now, I hate Carper and Joe Biden for their repeal of consumer bankruptcy protections, just for one example. But I am going to vote for both of them, because I want a Democratic majority in Congress. I want a Dem majority, not so Biden can introduce more banking bills, but so real Democrats from other states can start moving Democratic legislation.

On the other hand, if a sock puppet wants to primary Biden or Carper, I will probably vote for the sock puppet.

By the way, Democrats should have no fear of conservatives suddenly rejecting W-brand conservatism and returning to their Reagan roots. Once you slough off all the ditto-heads and theocons and neocons, the remaining true believers could barely fill a good-sized Greenville country club. And Reaganism doesn't work without Reagan.
 

Conservative with Conscience...yeah, use Jason's site to pull this together. *plop*woo-hoo* I think that was another Jason happy-log hitting the water.

If you are true, I have an eery feeling we may already know who each other is...
 

When it comes to sloughing off all the nasty XXXXXX-cons until nothing is left, you might have missed the old 'silent majority' paradigm, which is often an inherent political reality. Thoughtful 'moderates' (as in open-mindedly moderate, not politically 'centrist' moderate) are often drowned out by loud zealots, but that does not negate their existence. The list you speak of sloughing-off points to bad elements that are the most obvious and visible, but only because they are the most shrill not the most numerous.

No one wants 'Reaganism' per se, just the basic nature of his kindness in politics, his overall honesty, and his consistency of beliefs. (Please don't give me a laundry list of particulars that you abhor....if you look at the worst things about the Reagan Presidency they all gather around one guy : BUSH.) Reagsn is from another era entirely but he has as much to offer in retrospect, as does JFK's legacy.

Believe it or not, I also want a Democratic Congress this year, or at least a Democratic House. Bush is not just destroying my party, but in many ways our country and its long-term health. We need to disempower the rubber-stamping sycophants my party presently has in charge of Congress.

The need for split rule in government, now more than ever, only highlights the need to diffuse power NOT just to shift it back and forth. We need viable party alternatives outside the 2 parties. Many many progressives and workaday Americans believe, rightfully, that the D's and R's are simply two sides of the same spinning coin.

As far as your suggestion that my comment was some veiled tactic by which my 'minority party' benefits from ticket-splitting.....oh please. You really believe that I offered my thoughts about a good rule of thumb as some farce to gain strategic advantage??? Man, you are so cynical. This is part of the problem.....being attacked for even stating stating a simple face value decent, reasonable thought about what should ultimately weigh on voting decisions. How do I defend? I am already cast as a slick manipulator by your suggestion. DISAPPOINTING, FRIEND.

As far as Ca-(stle/rper), yeah they are both pretty much just different white shades of the same pale. No argument from here that they are equally inert figures in the public arena.