Democrats Debate lineup

bigdog wrote:I wonder how many times Tom Skerrit has the played the town sheriff in a TV show or movie? It's so many times that he looks funny without a cop's hat on his head.
I wonder if he's played a cop more times or Sean Bean has died more times in movies. It's got to be a close race.

Floridatexan wrote:
Just saw Skerrit as a kid on an old episode of Gunsmoke.  I remember Picket Fences...really liked it.  

bigdog wrote:I doubt it was sincere, but it wasn't an issue he should have been attacked on in the first place. I was a Republican way back when, and I don't feel any need at all to apologize for it. That's because I am 100% confident in the fact that I have also never been a racist. Anybody alive back then knew that, at least in the South, Democrats were the party of racism. We had good old George Wallace back then. That's why I supported Richard Nixon.
AND nobody knew he was a racist back then, so don't even go there. It was only with the playing of the tapes that we learned that fact.
I don't know why Biden chose to be a Democrat. I do know that I always respected him and never saw him as a racist, even in the 70's. I don't believe he should have apologized. I think it was a political move, but I don't think it's going to matter by the time the primaries roll along.
And if his son was as good a friend to Kamala Harris as he said, I understand why he was so taken aback in the debate when she attacked him like she did. He got blindsided by something from 40 years ago from someone he didn't think would do such a thing.
That's her little prosecutor ass showing up, and it didn't impress me. She's playing her race card big time with some of her Essence festival speeches this weekend, unlike Booker. She wants to buy houses for people based on their race.  I'm liking her  less all the time.

She's more Al Sharpton than she is Barack Obama.
I wouldn't vote for the Rev. Al for dogcatcher.
But come to think of it, I might if he were running against Kamala.

bigdog wrote:Yes, he did run on ending the war in Vietnam, which is one reason that I voted for him, You understand that?
I voted for him and in 1972 he was reelected by the largest margin of any candidate in the history of America. Tricky Dick, as apparently you don't remember, was an extremely POPULAR president.
What he did in Cambodia and other countries was not known until after he left office, nor was the fact that he was a racist revealed before the tapes from the White House were made public. That's because he did not govern as a racist.

I don't apologize for not knowing things that were NOT public knowledge nor for voting for Nixon. We had no knowledge of what went on in the privacy of the Oval office. What the public did know is that he lowered the voting age to 18, he ended the draft,  that he created the EPA to protect the environment, and that, in the end, he did get us out of Vietnam.  He attempted to do something about fuel emissions long before it was popular to do so, and if he was a racist, he did not practice it in his decision making process while he was POTUS.
Nixon was a hell of a lot better president than history will ever allow him to be seen as.  Yes, he covered up a crime, making him a criminal.
And he should have resigned.
But I would never apologize for voting for Nixon, because I know what we knew at the time, and at that time, my decision was absolutely correct.
Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's war, and JFK's war for expanding our forces there, and we even had troops there under IKE, from what I've heard.
It's only Nixon's because Americans want to hate somebody for it and Nixon was there at the end. Johnson had f--cked it up so badly by the time Nixon got there all he could do was claim victory and leave, which is what we finally did.



And for the same reason I would never apologize for voting for Nixon, Joe Biden should not have apologized for working with segregationists to get things done at the beginning of his career.  It was the only way to get things done AT THE TIME whether Kamala Harris wants to acknowledge it or not.
Different times require different decisions and different actions. Using todays morality, you need to tear down the Washington monument, because old George had slaves, and definitely bomb Monticello and that room where he kept his slave girlfriend.
When I drive to the beach, I go to a place named Perdido Key. The Gulf Islands National Seashore is there, and it's protected against development by the act Richard Nixon signed 50 years ago. I'm grateful to him every time I see those signs. Because there is very little left of Pensacola Beach itself to the public. It's been destroyed by condos and businesses.
Nope, no apologies ever for voting for Nixon.

bigdog wrote:I watched the Anita Hill hearings, beginning to end. I was hoping she could implicate Thomas in something serious enough to keep him off the court.
I'm a woman, and I don't automatically take every word out of every other woman's mouth as absolute gospel. I do not believe you always have to "believe the woman," because I've met some pretty damned devious ladies in my life.  The  truth is, just like in the Kavanaugh case, both women waited over a decade to accuse these men of abuse. Just because I didn't want Thomas on the bench didn't mean Anita Hill's testimony was sufficient to keep him off. And Joe Biden did what no Republicans ever did when they were in power of Senate committees, he allowed both sides to complete their questions. He didn't cut them off on party lines. If you don't like fairness, sorry about that.
As I remember there was some talk about a pubic hair in a coke can during the testimony, it got pretty nasty. But in the end, it was still her word against his. And he played the race card, big time.  The Democrats had to be very careful what they did or they would have been accused of trying to keep him off the court because he was black. Republicans knew that when they put him forward. Biden did the best he could with a bad situation. Two African Americans disagreeing with each other and trying not to make the Democratic party look racist.
Yeah, it is about the politics sometime.
And by the way, I'm not just a Democrat, I'm an active Democrat. So you can put your "not an ex republican" comment where the sun don't shine.

bigdog wrote:

 Where's your picture proud Democrat with whatever political candidate you've worked for? Because this is me and Wesley and Gert Clark. You need more?
Because this is one more picture than you have to prove you're a Democrat and you give a damn about who wins elections.

bigdog wrote:No, it doesn't turn me on to post pictures on here, that's your thing and Sals. But I'm not going to be called a Republican by somebody that sits on an internet forum and mouths off about who I voted for nearly 50 years ago when this country was completely different from what it is today. I never was a hippie, I hate to disappoint you. I was in college and I had a nearly full time job and I just didn't have the time. And I dated a lot of guys in the military back then, which I guess would be unacceptable in your view of the 60's too. My brother was Air Force, my husband was Air Force before I met him, and I didn't blame the military for fighting the war.
I became a Democrat when Bill Clinton's presidency convinced me that I didn't have to be completely insane to be one. I didn't have to be so far to the left that I had to pretend that we could all follow the words in "imagine" and the whole world would just put down their weapons and go out into a field and make love all day long. Because reality never was like that and it never will be.

I'm a Bill Clinton democrat, a Joe Biden democrat, and whether you want to admit it or not, probably more of a Barack Obama democrat than you will ever be. Because he wasn't a fool. He knew politics was a job and it meant crawling around in the shit sometimes to get some little part of what he wanted, because it was a start. That's what Obamacare is, just a start.

he's not "progressive" enough for you, don't vote for him. But what you are most likely going to find is that most Democrats, which I Am, are still not as pure as you want them to be.
Because Biden is probably still going to be the nominee.

bigdog wrote:Cute caption.

I'm sure I will vote for her if she's nominated, but I will probably be swallowing back the vomit in my mouth if I do.
But I won't apologize for decisions made nearly 50 years ago based on another time and another place, a time when Americans did not know every secret hidden behind the White House doors.
It was also a time when Americans still thought they could win Vietnam and leave with honor. They would have crucified Nixon had we left with our tails between our legs at the beginning of his presidency, rather than at the end of his presidency when they knew there was no other way out.

I have no reason to apologize for being a Republican then because every racist I knew in Pensacola back then was a Democrat.  
Today, they are all Republicans.  And I definitely am not.

bigdog wrote:LOL  Telstar, I never know what your rolling eyes emoticon means.

I don't know if you remember either Hubert Humphreys or Walter Mondale, who were the people Nixon ran against, if I remember right.

This was during the "real cold war" when it had only been 6 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis which could have caused the extinction of mankind from the planet.Americans were very concerned about Vietnam spreading into a world war with China. Foreign Policy was a number one issue.

Humphreys or Mondale were strong on Civil Rights at the time, but neither of them had any decent foreign policy credentials. Humphreys had been Johnson's VP, and Johnson was not exactly a foreign policy genius. Johnson was a big drag on Humphreys, no doubt about it. I don't think people trusted him with Vietnam anymore than they trusted Johnson with it. Voting Nixon made perfect sense.  And after his first very successful term with all the above successes, he had no real competition in Mondale.

People not around back then have learned a strange view of history, IMO. Americans needed a strong leader and I felt the same way. Nixon was it.
It wasn't that complicated and I make no apologies.