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 Post subject: Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 2:29 pm 
Yes gRegor I found those pictures to be funny, and slightly akward... |
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Post subject: Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:17 pm
amidthestars wrote: ambientgecko wrote: Kerry is getting tons of votes from people who know absolutely nothing about him or his platform, they're just voting anti-Bush, which is so stupid in my opinion. yeah, it really bothers me when people are randomly anti-bush. just wanted to respond to both of you guys, and respond to the "all he does is talk about vietnam" comment (because it's a common complaint). http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/ notice vietnam isn't listed there. i don't think vietnam is the only thing he talks about, i think it's just what's emphasized in the mainstream media and on conservative talk shows. it's a hot topic, and that always gets ratings. therefore, we don't really hear what else he's talking about. which is great for the opposition, i suppose. but i agree with gregor - vietnam is irrelevant, for the most part. and if you look at the issues, the democratic and republican platforms are nearly identical. and because i think in our country a third party vote is essentially a throwaway, i am given two choices: 1) the incumbent party that promises things for the next four years it already should have done in the last, or 2) the new guys. i'm voting for the new guys. the others already had their chance, and kinda screwed it up. overall, i really don't care which party is in power in which branch -- but i do care that there is a balance. i think that's when our democracy shines. i think the following is a fair, honest, pretty non-partisan way of looking at it (i can't just post the link because it's in a protected site): Quote: Why I Want to Vote for Bush
by Andrew Sullivan | Sep 01 '04 WHY I WANT TO VOTE FOR BUSH ... George W. Bush has grappled with some of the gravest crises of any recent president and handled himself and his job with courage, clarity, and decisiveness. When he came into office, the world seemed preternaturally quiet. We heard the platitudes about "peace and prosperity" in the 2000 campaign, but we soon found out that Bill Clinton's legacy was underpinned by negligence that made his successor's task a monumental one. The economy was tilting into a fast decline after an unsustainable, reckless bubble. Far away in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, whom Clinton had declined to capture when he had the chance, was training twenty thousand jihadists to wreak murderous mayhem across the globe. But on the two vital issues, the economy and terrorism, Bush did the right and difficult thing. He pushed through a large tax cut that helped pull the U. S. out of its tailspin and deflected the real possibility of a global depression. And when catastrophe struck on 9/11, Bush did what a leader should do: He grasped the true extent of the danger, rallied the country with one of the greatest speeches ever delivered by a president to a sitting Congress, and steadily built a coalition to take out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, destroying its bases, capturing or killing a majority of its leading members, and launching a worldwide offensive to bring the other jihadists to justice. People forget now that there was a chorus of elite opposition to the Afghan war, but Bush saw it through. And he refused to stop there. He also understood that the underlying threat was not just one terrorist network but a nexus of states and regimes eager to buttress and support the mass murderers of fanatical Islam. The most frightening was Saddam Hussein's Mafia-run Iraq, a country in violation of umpteen UN resolutions, with widespread links to terror groups and a fervent desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Bush and Cheney saw 9/11 and realized it could have been so much worse. A nuclear, chemical, or biological attack in a major city would kill not thousands but tens of thousands. And the president didn't have the luxury of merely hoping it wouldn't happen. So Bush risked his presidency on a war. In the process, he shifted U. S. foreign policy in the Middle East from a defensive, piecemeal attempt to prop up failed dictatorships in return for oil into a strategy to convert the region to democracy. The war was a stunning success. The coalition occupied a country of twenty-five million, defended by a ruthless cadre of armed fanatics with nothing to lose, and achieved military victory in three weeks. Despite a subsequent insurgency by former Saddamites and jihadist terrorists, the country was turned over to a representative government in a little more than a year, with elections scheduled for January 2005. Elections! In an Arab country! Nothing this profound has occurred since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yes, there have been costs: almost nine hundred U. S. military deaths, thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. But the oxygen of freedom has been brought to the Middle East for the first time in memory. In the long run, Bush will be deemed a hero for his fortitude. At home, Bush steered the economy into a period of renewed growth and mounting employment. He passed an education-reform bill that for the first time insisted on real standards in public education. He passed a Medicare drug program for seniors, something that had long eluded Bill Clinton. But all his centrist achievements were drowned out by a chorus of cynics who wanted this accidental president defeated far more than they wanted victory in the war on terror or a healthy economy at home. Yet Bush endured, his steeliness married to a mild-mannered folksiness that inspired hearts in the middle of the country. In today's polarized climate, few presidents could have escaped without bitter criticism. But fewer still could have weathered it with Bush's calm, cheeriness, and grace. ... BUT WHY I CAN'T The presidency of George W. Bush—billed as a force for moderation and "compassionate conservatism"—ended up extremist, harsh, and anything but conservative. He could have cut tax rates across the board and removed tax loopholes for wealthy corporations. Instead, he cut taxes substantively only for the very rich, clotted the tax code with even more corporate giveaways, and ended the one tax that penalized inherited rather than earned wealth, the estate tax. At the same time, Bush let the federal government rip, expanding spending at a faster rate than any president since LBJ. While Ronald Reagan cut nondefense domestic discretionary spending by 9 percent, Bush increased it by more than 25 percent. He reversed reforms in agricultural subsidies and created a vast new bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. He poured money into education, labor, and pork-barrel projects, abetted by a Republican Congress that preferred bribing its way back to power rather than keeping the books balanced. The final straw was the Medicare drug entitlement that linked the fastest-growing sector of the population—the aging baby boomers—with a product whose price was increasing faster than almost anything else: prescription drugs. The result was a massive deficit and projected bankruptcy in the near- or long-term future. Worse, the president refused to concede there was any problem at all. "Deficits don't matter," was Vice-President Dick Cheney's mantra. In the war, Bush made two huge errors. First, he banked the United States' international credibility on the assertion that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Those stockpiles didn't exist. Worse, Bush refused to acknowledge this. When asked by Diane Sawyer in late 2003 to account for the discrepancy between the evidence of a program for WMDs and actual stockpiles, Bush quipped, "What's the difference?" The difference is that America's entire reputation rested on the distinction. By his insouciance, Bush ensured that support for the war at home would be weakened and that no future preemptive war on the basis of intelligence would ever get international or domestic approval again. His second error was underestimating the potential for an insurgency after the fall of Baghdad. The result was a postwar that is still a war. There were far too few troops to keep order—something that had been predicted—and no plans to change course. This incompetence and obstinacy meant that an entire window of opportunity in Iraq was thrown away. The coup de grâce was the Abu Ghraib prison abuses—perhaps the most damaging blow to America's reputation in a generation. The revelation of those abuses was followed by the discovery of memos from the Justice Department that clearly tried to make a legal case for the permissibility of torture. Again, Bush seemed unable to grasp the seriousness of the wound or to hold anyone in his circle accountable for it. In Iraq, more than a hundred thousand American troops will remain indefinitely, trying to hold together a fledgling new regime that has yet to win substantive public support. They have responsibility for the success of the mission, and yet they have ceded power to others. It is a recipe for disaster. In 2000, Bush campaigned as a "uniter, not a divider." Yet he has catered incessantly to the far religious Right, infusing his secular office with religious undertones and backing the most radical measure of the fundamentalists, a constitutional amendment to ban any civil protections for gay couples seeking civil marriages. He refused to fund most new research on embryonic stem cells, he fused his political operation with churches, he tried to funnel public funds to sectarian groups, and he claimed that his foreign policy was a product of his relationship with the Almighty. In other words, he got cleanly on the wrong side of the civil-rights movement of his time, and he made the Republican party inseparable from a religious movement. Blacks and Hispanics remain leery; gays are lost for a generation. By the start of his reelection campaign, his strategy was to drive up support from the white, old, fundamentalist South, where alone he felt at home. He therefore left the country even more deeply divided and embittered than he found it—no easy task. Give him another four years and he'll embitter it some more. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at The New Republic and author of the popular Web log andrewsullivan.com. His anthology Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con was re-released in May. _________________ hello. |
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Post subject: Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 6:09 pm
"Anybody but ________" is an acceptable position to take in an election, I think. Maybe it's not the most "noble" thing (whatever that really means), but it is acceptable and both sides have done it before. _________________ "The revolution starts today, not tomorrow." :: got g-Love? |
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Post subject: Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 6:23 pm
there's been alot of interesting ideological and factual discussion and arguments from both sides that are quite legitimate, but i thought for a change i'd bring up a point that to me really sums up what underlies politics in the u.s.... the divide between republicans and democrats is for the overwhelmingly most part the divide between religious conservatives and well.. those who aren't. no offense to the religious, but 50-100 years from now some of the clearly absurd ideas held by religious conservatives, (e.g. people can help being gay, evolution isn't true) will be regarded as completely ridiculous, just like today we regard the notion that the earth is flat as ridiculous... another truism about americans and even moreso about the republican populace is that they are generally ignorant in comparision with other first and second world countries, especially regarding the issue of other countries. being multicultural i get to see this and it amazes me sometimes how the most powerful country in the world is a democracy that is comprised mainly of people that are completely oblivious and could incidentally care less about what is going on in the rest of the world. the causes are many - individualist ethics, libertarian ideals, geographical isolation, etc etc... the sad part is that this will ultimately be the downfall of the united states 'empire'. anyone from an outside point of view sees this as obvious _________________ "You're my favorite person." - David Carradine, Kill Bill vol. 2 |
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Post subject: Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 7:11 pm
I like to keep my opinions to myself. Where the crap is the neither. |
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Joined: 05 Nov 2002 | Posts: 1479 | Location: Dallas, Texas
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 7:45 am
ideal wrote: there's been alot of interesting ideological and factual discussion and arguments from both sides that are quite legitimate, but i thought for a change i'd bring up a point that to me really sums up what underlies politics in the u.s.... the divide between republicans and democrats is for the overwhelmingly most part the divide between religious conservatives and well.. those who aren't. no offense to the religious, but 50-100 years from now some of the clearly absurd ideas held by religious conservatives, (e.g. people can help being gay, evolution isn't true) will be regarded as completely ridiculous, just like today we regard the notion that the earth is flat as ridiculous...
another truism about americans and even moreso about the republican populace is that they are generally ignorant in comparision with other first and second world countries, especially regarding the issue of other countries. being multicultural i get to see this and it amazes me sometimes how the most powerful country in the world is a democracy that is comprised mainly of people that are completely oblivious and could incidentally care less about what is going on in the rest of the world. the causes are many - individualist ethics, libertarian ideals, geographical isolation, etc etc... the sad part is that this will ultimately be the downfall of the united states 'empire'. anyone from an outside point of view sees this as obvious I was going to reply to this but it is so full of laughable ignorance it really doesn't warrant the time.  _________________ "Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." - C. G. Jung |
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003 | Posts: 1497 | Location: Santa Monica, CA
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:07 am
ideal wrote: there's been alot of interesting ideological and factual discussion and arguments from both sides that are quite legitimate, but i thought for a change i'd bring up a point that to me really sums up what underlies politics in the u.s.... the divide between republicans and democrats is for the overwhelmingly most part the divide between religious conservatives and well.. those who aren't. no offense to the religious, but 50-100 years from now some of the clearly absurd ideas held by religious conservatives, (e.g. people can help being gay, evolution isn't true) will be regarded as completely ridiculous, just like today we regard the notion that the earth is flat as ridiculous...
another truism about americans and even moreso about the republican populace is that they are generally ignorant in comparision with other first and second world countries, especially regarding the issue of other countries. being multicultural i get to see this and it amazes me sometimes how the most powerful country in the world is a democracy that is comprised mainly of people that are completely oblivious and could incidentally care less about what is going on in the rest of the world. the causes are many - individualist ethics, libertarian ideals, geographical isolation, etc etc... the sad part is that this will ultimately be the downfall of the united states 'empire'. anyone from an outside point of view sees this as obvious Although I don't have time to expand, I agree with some of what you wrote. But based on most of the replies in this thread, you probably won't get much support. |
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:23 am
icurate wrote: I was going to reply to this but it is so full of laughable ignorance it really doesn't warrant the time. i'd like to hear a thought-out response, rather than a knee-jerk reaction. _________________ hello. |
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Joined: 23 Aug 2003 | Posts: 5978 | Location: Austin, Texas
Last edited by ali on Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 8:39 am
i'm voting for bush come november... my first election! _________________ eisley sticker: $1 eisley ep: $6 eisley t-shirt: $15 eisley poster: $40 seeing eisley for the first time: priceless xanga |
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Joined: 16 Mar 2004 | Posts: 2218 | Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA ... a.k.a middle of nowhere... i wish i lived in california
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 9:35 am
It's nice to see a rational debate going on Bush and Kerry. Normally the people I come in contact with do not have much reason to vote for Kerry besides the fact that they don't agree with the War. I've gotten somewhat tired of hearing that Kerry is going to solve our problems, no one person can do that. There have been many reasons stated here why both of the canidates should be come out on top. As long as you have a good valid reason to vote for one person stick with it. I am not going to vote for Kerry just because he is the alternative to Bush. _________________ http://www.myspace.com/whisperingtrees |
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Joined: 25 Nov 2003 | Posts: 540 | Location: Tin Can
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:04 am
It's funny that you feel that way. Many of the people I talk to who side with Bush cite equally obscure reasons. I voted for Bush last time, but one time after another he speaks in generalizations, while he has other people cover his controversial topics (which are kind of scary in some cases). I don't equate Bush with pure evil, but he's shrouded in too much secrecy for me to feel secure. He has too many question marks, and they cover up things that are too important. Kerry has smart fiscal and social policies (and does discuss them often, contrary to what I thought at first), and he doesn't shroud himself in an aura of secrecy and what appreas to be blatant pandering to special interests (ie anti-gay marriage, corporations, etc.). He has a strong military policy, and I see him fit for my vote. But this is my last political post. I'm just saying who I'm voting for and why. Good bye, and see you at the polls.  _________________ My photography:www.jamiemphoto.com You can't spell awesome without emo...backwards! -Julie definingawesome (11:44:11 PM): Eisley shivers our timbers |
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:16 am
TheAntrider wrote: But this is my last political post. I'm just saying who I'm voting for and why. Good bye, and see you at the polls. great post, jamie. you're not bothering me, you can post politically to your heart's content  _________________ hello. |
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:32 am
ali wrote: great post, jamie. you're not bothering me, you can post politically to your heart's content I probably won't, but thanks. _________________ My photography:www.jamiemphoto.com You can't spell awesome without emo...backwards! -Julie definingawesome (11:44:11 PM): Eisley shivers our timbers |
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 12:26 pm
TheAntrider wrote: It's funny that you feel that way. Many of the people I talk to who side with Bush cite equally obscure reasons. I voted for Bush last time, but one time after another he speaks in generalizations, while he has other people cover his controversial topics (which are kind of scary in some cases). I don't equate Bush with pure evil, but he's shrouded in too much secrecy for me to feel secure. He has too many question marks, and they cover up things that are too important. Kerry has smart fiscal and social policies (and does discuss them often, contrary to what I thought at first), and he doesn't shroud himself in an aura of secrecy and what appreas to be blatant pandering to special interests (ie anti-gay marriage, corporations, etc.). He has a strong military policy, and I see him fit for my vote.
But this is my last political post. I'm just saying who I'm voting for and why. Good bye, and see you at the polls. Great post Jamie- and that was a great article Ali. One of the best reads I've had on this election. _________________ thanks to the works of stephen colbert, the population of elephants has tripled in the past 10 years. |
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Post subject: Posted: Tue Sep 07, 2004 12:31 pm
girl*from*mars wrote: Great post Jamie- and that was a great article Ali. One of the best reads I've had on this election. ha, i'm kinda surprised someone read it, actually... after i posted it, i realized what a beast it was  _________________ hello. |
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Laughing City Forum Index -> General -> Bush or Kerry?
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