Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Everything Else => Topic started by: JCHancey on August 27, 2008, 12:33:04 AM
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http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2008-08-10-1.html
/discuss
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I think that he raises a couple of interesting points. First, and this is something that I have long disliked about academia, is that education seems to foster criticism more than it seeks possibilities. Don't misunderstand, I think that being skeptical is an essential part of thinking clearly. However, it is only an equal part. If you only encourage doubt, then you are frozen in place, unable to act for lack of a defining truth. The reality of the matter is that very often, in practical situations, you lose as much from inaction as you do from wrongful action. You need the courage to be able to act, despite the fact that there will probably be negative consequences for your actions. There always are, whether they take effect today, or ten years from now. There are always benefits, too. Whether or not they outweigh the detriments is up for grabs. But when you aren't satisfied with a situation, then change is the only possible solution. In just about every situation, that means that somebody must do something that is not already being done.
He also talked about how academics seem to despise the use of the military. I agree that, in many cases, open military force can be more harmful than helpful. In other cases, it can be plainly ineffective. However, it can also be very expedient, and necessary. I have seen a lot of literature recently about poverty throughout the world. Much of this is because of massive corruption in the governments of, for example, African nations. Some of the wealthiest people in the world have money because they stole huge amounts from governments of nations that are starving to death. Since they control the nation's wealth and military, not to mention its food, it is almost impossible for a revolution to form from within. This is a perfect example of a problem that has to be solved militarily. It won't be solved through economic sanctions, since the goods from these countries are too valuable to embargo, or even tax heavily. I can't think of a possible social sanction, since these nations don't generally wield a lot of prestige in the world anyway. Military action is the only feasible option at that point. People say that they want to cure problems like world hunger, but they won't accept that sometimes people have to die for the rest of the world to live better lives.
On the other hand, I thought it ironic that he found time to throw insults at the people he deemed name-callers. Okay, time to pass it off to someone else.
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IMO this was a really good article. Spot on in calling out the "intellectual elite" for being crippled by indecisiveness. An indecisiveness that leads and has lead to inactivity. People in America see the horrible situations throughout the world and know that people just shouldn't have to live that way. They call out and protest that these things should be fixed but that is as far as they are willing to go. Thinking that somehow paper signs and thoughts of doing good will actually make things happen. When someone finally decides to act they completely turn face and now call for the head of the man/woman who had the courage to act. They look at it and say to themselves " wait a minute....if we really want to change the world we are going to have to work for it....to actually sweat, bleed, and die for it....well in that case scratch my name off the list I would much rather think of doing good than actually do good"....
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It really made me look more into my support for obama, now i really don't know which one is worse/better. gotta love OSC
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Don't question your supports just yet. Reality is I loved the article but if all it takes is a well written article to sway your vote then you might as well not vote because your not informed enouph to be strong in your convictions. I think that's part of what the article is getting at. We as everyday people (I say "we" very loosely) are generally under informed. We don't get all the info required to make a good decisionon about who should run this country and then companies like MTV try to get all the uninformed youngsters to vote. Oh sure we have resources that we can research the parties and make an informed decision but how many of "us" actually do that. I'll tell you it's probably not the majority. I'm not saying that this article is entirely right I just feel that it has a lot of good views that can be embraced by everyone in our bipartisan government. It doesn't matter if your Republican or Democrat all that matters is that you look at the facts available and make good strong choices. Don't be swayed do not falter. Stand strong in what you feel is right. And if you don't know whats right find out because the future of our nation might just depend on the education of the masses.
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Oh and I took a quote for my signature. It was an impressive article and it makes me want to go and get those books, its funny because I've never been interested in reading anything other than fantasy before this. Thanks Jakobus for posting it.
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"We leap into vast social experiments with no evidence of their efficacy or necessity"
I thought it was amusing that Card spent the entirety of the article defending the invasion of Iraq, which is perfectly described by his later statement, which I quoted above.
He attacks the intellectual elite with valid statements, and then ruins his validity by pretending the economic elite and/or "conservatives" are any better. RARELY do people surround themselves with the views of others, and it is distressing that our government doesn't have a way to force opposing views into the white house. Card accuses the social elite of being discriminatory of opposing views, and neglects the fact that Bush has nobody of an opposing view on his cabinet, and his administration went through that whole, "firing officials because they don't agree with what I think" phase, and they ask for political affiliation before hiring a person for any job under the administration... So essentially Card, who spends the entire article ridiculing the "intellectual elite" for being hypocritical and praising President Bush and his administration is, in fact, doing the exact same thing that he claims to be so disgusted by. Right down to the name-calling.
As for the "intellectual elite" not being willing to go to war, I believe there are serious issues with all sides of the die there. On the one side, the Bush Administration went into a war on false information (which was KNOWN to be false), and yet Card ignores this fact and claims the war in Iraq was always based on the concept of spreading freedom and democracy, yet our reasons for being in Iraq, according to the administration in charge, has changed from WMDs all the way down to spreading freedom and democracy over time. Yet Card has the gull to attack Obama for changing his mind on issues--all politicians change their minds on issues according to what is popular. Isn't the the nature of a democracy? In a democracy, don't we want our elected officials to change their minds as we do, so they are actually representing how we feel rather than how they feel? In an ideal representative democracy, the politician in question would ALWAYS vote with the people he represents, whether they be wrong or right in his/her mind.
However, sometimes force is needed (though usually it is more than adequate to THREATEN force). The problem isn't that we aren't using force in Darfur, but that we aren't putting any TROOPS in Darfur for peacekeeping reasons. If my memory serves me, there were only TWO UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur in 2007. We aren't to send troops and force a solution, but to send non-combative troops to force temporary peace until a resolution can be found, only to assault when one side becomes aggressive, not picking sides in the issue, but only helping he who is being attacked at the time in order to persuade both sides to not attack, for fear of heavy losses.
And politicians, especially those who tend to agree with Card, send in other people's children to war while they rarely have anything invested in the war themselves, other than profit (and perhaps professional dignity, which few of them have, anyway). We could solve two problems with one stone if we would enact a mandatory service in the military, like Isreal. Not only would we be less likely to go into unimportant wars because those in charge, both the intellectual and economic elite, would HAVE to consider if the war is worth life because their family and friends' families would be on the line. In addition, we would have more troops in order to create powerful peace-keeping missions, instead of not having the troops to go around because we are already invested in too many other wars/occupations. Plus, our entire country would be a backup reserve of military force for emergencies, everybody would know how to defend themselves (and in a non-lethal way, unlike having a firearm), which would lower crime rates.
If we are to believe that we need a leader of strong conviction who will blunderingly charge into battle for causes, and never admit mistake, we might as well just suit ourselves a dictator. The nature of a democracy is that those in charge represent US, not their own values or convictions. Our leader should always consider what WE want as a people more heavily than what he or she believes should happen.
Sometimes democracy must be overlooked in a moment of dictatorial power in extreme situations where action is needed but the people cannot see--this is a rare occasion and, in all honesty, may be a rare occasion which is not missed.
Modification: Thanks a LOT for posting this article, Jakobus--good catch and good idea to post it.
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I think true leaders need to always do what they think is right and not always try to guess what their people want. Politicians so often promise to do whatever they think will get them elected. That just leads to hypocrisy. I think a leader should stand by his or her convictions (but also needs to make practical allowances for circumstances, and needs to be able to admit mistakes and learn from them) and not just try to do whatever they can to keep power. If public opinion turns against them, that's what elections are for.
Tindwyl said something similar in The Well of Ascension, but I can't find the reference right now.
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i dont know who Lan is so im gonna have to give it to the dual blade wielding Drizzt. Plus he's got long white hair.
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In a democracy, don't we want our elected officials to change their minds as we do, so they are actually representing how we feel rather than how they feel? In an ideal representative democracy, the politician in question would ALWAYS vote with the people he represents, whether they be wrong or right in his/her mind.
However, sometimes force is needed (though usually it is more than adequate to THREATEN force). We aren't to send troops and force a solution, but to send non-combative troops to force temporary peace until a resolution can be found, only to assault when one side becomes aggressive, not picking sides in the issue, but only helping he who is being attacked at the time in order to persuade both sides to not attack, for fear of heavy losses.
We could solve two problems with one stone if we would enact a mandatory service in the military, like Isreal. Not only would we be less likely to go into unimportant wars because those in charge, both the intellectual and economic elite, would HAVE to consider if the war is worth life because their family and friends' families would be on the line. In addition, we would have more troops in order to create powerful peace-keeping missions, instead of not having the troops to go around because we are already invested in too many other wars/occupations. Plus, our entire country would be a backup reserve of military force for emergencies, everybody would know how to defend themselves (and in a non-lethal way, unlike having a firearm), which would lower crime rates.
I believe that any elected official should always vote and say exactly what they believe. (yeah, right :P Im really not as naive as I sound) That way they are actually representing their constituents if they get voted in. This way the people will actually get what they voted for, not just someone who is saying what he/she thinks the people want to hear.
I like your ideas about sending troops to force a peace, but sometimes that isn't the right or practical thing to do. War should always be a last resort and peace is always the first objective but there are some nations/factions out there that need to be stopped. For example, Iran has declared it would like to wipe Israel off the face of the planet. If tensions rise to the point where Israel actually attacks Iran preemptively, does that mean we should send in peace-keeping troops to support Iran and force a truce? I don't think so. The underdog is not always the good guy.
I also like your ideas about a mandatory military service (draft?). I see what you are saying about everyone being able to fight if needed and I also see the benefits on crime. However if we were to get into a major war with another country (lets use China for this example) I don't think we would be the best prepared. Right now, we have the best-trained, best-equipped military in the world, because we have a volunteer military. Often volunteers can be expected to re-enlist, meaning more experience and skill in the military, as opposed to a draft in which each unit needs to be trained and in which the investment in training is lost as soon as the tour of duty is over. Also morale can be expected to be far higher in a volunteer unit than one that is fighting because it was forced to. Without our advantage in experience and training it really comes down to who has the most troops. A nation like China has far more citizens than we do, meaning it could potentially "out-draft" us, which is a situation we don't want to be in.
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Valid points, but I think those people who reenlist now would be just as likely to reenlist if the service was mandatory for everybody. Also, Israel has one of the best trained armed forces in the world (which happens to include one of the most versatile martial arts in the world), and they have a policy of mandatory service. And if there were a situation in which we were to get into a war with China (which is impossible, because just as we are dependent on China, they are dependent on us--we fuel their growth, it isn't a likely possibility in the near future), it definitely would not hurt to have more troops. The only two countries who could out draft us as are China and India, both of whom are poor countries compared to us who do not have nearly the resources we have to fight. Also, both are countries it is unforeseeable that we would have to fight given the current world order (especially not on American soil). The idea isn't getting more troops (that's just a bonus)--the idea is getting every person in the nation to have experienced the military and to know people in the military.
The idea behind peacekeeping missions is stopping sect on sect genocide, etc. In a case like Iran vs Israel, we are clearly aligned with one nation, and have been clearly aligned against the other. The side we would pick in that situation is clear--that wouldn't be a peace-keeping mission, that would be defending an ally against our enemy.
I can understand wanted an elected official following his or her own convictions, I just believe democracy would ideally work for the people. I don't like the idea of voting for somebody so they can think for the masses, I like the idea of voting for somebody who will listen to the people he or she represents.
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So we're back to the intelligence being known to be incorrect, do we? 4 different countries, each with their own independant intelligence, had the same belief that WMD's were in Iraq. Saddam's own Generals have testified that even they believed Saddam had stockpiled weapons, and were only told otherwise a month before the invasion. That, coupled with the picture a friend of mine showed me of mustard gas containers found in a palace (which he took himself), along with the weapons-grade plastic explosives stolen from that base in Northern Iraq four years ago (weapons grade meaning it is used in implosive-explosive devices, otherwise known as nuclear weapons), lead me to believe that Saddam's ruse was so well done that he got himself attacked. More importantly, the stuff that was found, including all the cash stashed everywhere, proves the theory that he could have had working WMD's within 6 months to a year of all sanctions being dropped, which was his goal when bribing France and Russia with Oil for Food vouchers. Attacking Iraq was necessary. I smile at the Irony that Osama's attempt at scaring us away from the Middle East actually enboldened us and helped us realize that we couldn't just sit there and say "please don't do that again" 16 times while our "allies" are being bribed into submission. By the way, removing a genocidal maniac from power is not a "social experiment".
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Darx we should hang out, that was right on the money.
My question was pointed out by Reaves already but I will make it blunt. Does anyone know the cost of training an American soldier? I got this from WikiAnswers and I'm aware that it may be inaccurate but its close to what I was told when in trainingBasic US military training is anywhere from 3-6 months, which translates to ~$4,000 minimum just to pay a single trainee. Add in food, lodging, and equipment at government-contracted rates and that cost easily doubles. That doesn't include any of the support staff necessary to train, equip, or manage the logistics of a group of recruits. No good source for it, but its generally said that each front-line soldier requires eight additional folks to support them... not quite applicable to basic training so call it a really conservative 2:1 ratio of trainee to support staff, tack on the fact that support staff is probably averages at least four years of service, and three months of training a single soldier jumps easily jumps to $10,000. Once a soldier completes minimum training they're good for... pretty much nothing except wearing the uniform and being able to complete further training.
Now imagine what the cost of creating a mandatory military term. So lets say everyone who is fit mind you because they don't take everyone contrary to popular belief joins the military. That also includes all benefits like medical and educational. That is if you don't want them to change the benefits packages. So then after this you send all these people who if given the choice would have not joined the military, to watch eachothers backs while your bankrupting the economy trying to support them. That makes sense. The idea is sound but unpractical. Yes I think we should be involved in police action around the world but no I don't want some bum who doesn't want to be there watching my back. More soldiers die because their buddy isn't paying attention than because they aren't. Being an all volunteer military should be something we are proud of. It should be something that we look at and say "hey look at all those men an women who are willing to put it all on the line for this country". I wouldn't sacrifice that for anything.
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yeah i think currently a single Marine's equipment comes to about $16k.
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Equipment is crazy expensive. That isnt even really included in the cost estimation because the equipent belongs to the military but they still have to equip every soldier so you could take that 10k and round it up to about 26k
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i dont know who Lan is so im gonna have to give it to the dual blade wielding Drizzt. Plus he's got long white hair.
just got back into the whole forums recently, didn't think to check this one until now.
Lan is a hardcore warder in Wheel of Time that would (imo) beat drizzt :P
Now with Palin on the boat I wear my Obama/Biden shirt to school with pride! Ha she scares me more than Hitler... and i hate genocides...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/
As for us going into iraq on intelligence.... /facepalm.
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i dont know who Lan is so im gonna have to give it to the dual blade wielding Drizzt. Plus he's got long white hair.
just got back into the whole forums recently, didn't think to check this one until now.
Lan is a hardcore warder in Wheel of Time that would (imo) beat drizzt :P
Now with Palin on the boat I wear my Obama/Biden shirt to school with pride! Ha she scares me more than Hitler... and i hate genocides...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/
As for us going into iraq on intelligence.... /facepalm.
I dont know about that...Drizzt has two swords. Two!
If Palin were president, i can imagine us declaring wore on...i dont know....Italy, for them not accepting her Suit 'n skirt designs she made in the sixth grade.
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If Palin were president, i can imagine us declaring wore on...i dont know....Italy, for them not accepting her Suit 'n skirt designs she made in the sixth grade.
Declarations of War come from the Legislative Branch.
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If Palin were president, i can imagine us declaring wore on...i dont know....Italy, for them not accepting her Suit 'n skirt designs she made in the sixth grade.
Declarations of War come from the Legislative Branch.
Want some barbaque?
since your devouring my joke!
lol.
hows your character coming along?
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By the way, removing a genocidal maniac from power is not a "social experiment".
Okay, so according to Card we went in to spread democracy and freedom. I'd say invading a country to see spread ideals in a moderately unfamiliar way is a social experiment. Secondly
In late February 2002, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate reports that Iraq was attempting to purchase additional yellowcake from Niger. Wilson returned and informed the CIA that reports of yellowcake sales to Iraq were "unequivocally wrong."...On May 1, 2005 the "Downing Street memo" was published in The Sunday Times. It contained an overview of a secret July 23, 2002 meeting among UK Labour government, defense, and intelligence figures who discussed the build-up to the Iraq war — including direct references to classified U.S. policy of the time. The memo stated, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."...On September 18, 2002, George Tenet briefed Bush that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Bush dismissed this top-secret intelligence from Saddam's inner circle which was approved by two senior CIA officers, but it turned out to be completely accurate....Indeed, Colin Powell, in his address to the U.N. Security Council just prior to the war, made reference to the aluminum tubes. But a report released by the Institute for Science and International Security in 2002 reported that it was highly unlikely that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium. Powell later admitted he had presented an inaccurate case to the United Nations on Iraqi weapons, and the intelligence he was relying on was, in some cases, "deliberately misleading."
Wikipedia's page on "Iraq War" (second Gulf War), all sources are cited.
Sounds like a lot of bad intelligence to me. But that's a different story, anyway--the point is Card acts as though it was our ultimate goal the entire invasion was to spread freedom and democracy. Seems like, even if our intelligence was assumed to be good (not something I am granting), we went in for self preservation or selfish means, not for spreading democracy. Card sugar coats it because he wont come of as convincingly at attacking one group if the alternative group is seen as incompetent. It's dishonest editorializing, just like most liberal snuff is complete bullshit in the same manner. I figure he's just about as good as the people he's bashing because he is doing most the things he bashes.
Also, a massively mandatory military would require some shifting of policy (not all people in the military are troops, too--especially since in a mandatory military policy most the troops would be stationed at home like a national reserve, since I can't imagine we would ever actually use our people, God forbid, in actual peacekeeping missions unless it was cried for by the western international community). I understand that. I still feel it is something that should be looked into. Surely you aren't suggesting, Green, that people who are drafted are inadequate to serve? I believe you've been in the military--every aspect of the military is geared towards making people into those who fit into the military. I mean, they hire psychologists to work out ways to take people who would not normally be a good soldier and train them into being who you meet in the military.
It's not a perfect idea, but I think it could be implemented well and I think it would solve a lot of problems. That's just one person's opinion.
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Funny, the same Wikipedia article also references the yellow cake uranium the already had before 1990, and that Hans Blix himself stated that SEVERAL CHEMICAL WEAPONS CACHES WERE UNACCOUNTED FOR and that Iraq had not made a GENUINE EFFORT TO COMPLY WITH UN REGULATIONS. So, there was intelligence that said both yes and no. Bush decided not to take the chance. Bin Laden should have been dealt with in the '90's and we paid for that mistake. We needed to show that we would not be complacent anymore. I am not at all surprised that you only took the information to support your case, but I was a little surprised that you actually referenced an website that disproves your point more than proves it.
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I guess I don't see intelligence about a state in 1990 being equivalent to intelligence about a state in 2002. My mistake, I forgot Husein had a time machine. I never said the first gulf war wasn't warranted.
If Bush (and his administration) was trying to stop Husein because of a fear of weapons of mass destruction, I don't think he would have found it necesary to fix the intelligence around his policy of invasion. It seems like the policy of invasion would have been fixed around the intelligence. That's generally how "reacting" to something works. It seems to me like if the administration was less fixed on going to war before they had the intelligence to back it up, they might not have blatantly ignored good intelligence, dismissing it because it doesn't fit with their world view. And, I don't know, maybe that wouldn't have happened if Bush didn't have people censoring everything he sees and everybody he talks about, and if the administration didn't completely surround itself with yes men who think exactly like them. That probably would have led to a little more "discussion" about invasion, and little less "ignoring information from our own intelligence divisions."
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The point is that he hid things successfully in the past, and there was intelligence both for and against WMD's. The weapons inspectors were still finding illegal weapons in 2002, and the Hans Blix comment was made in 2003! We could not afford inaction anymore, bottom line. There were plenty of other reasons to go into Iraq and get him out. You can use hindsight and Monday morning quarterback all you want, but the fact that our lack of response to unconfirmed intelligence resulted in the 9/11 attacks demanded we be more proactive. I bet if you researched hard enough you could have found plenty of intelligence that countered what we now know was the plan to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. You should be more outraged that Clinton spent 8 years allowing Al-Qaeda to practice bomb US targets all over the globe and responded with a couple of random cruise missiles instead of making a true response. Clinton was a Democrat, though, so he gets a pass, right?
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If Palin were president, i can imagine us declaring wore on...i dont know....Italy, for them not accepting her Suit 'n skirt designs she made in the sixth grade.
Declarations of War come from the Legislative Branch.
Want some barbaque?
since your devouring my joke!
lol.
hows your character coming along?
Haha! ;) Yeah... I do that. He's coming along, I'm working on the plotting for this story at the moment.
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The point is that he hid things successfully in the past, and there was intelligence both for and against WMD's. The weapons inspectors were still finding illegal weapons in 2002, and the Hans Blix comment was made in 2003! We could not afford inaction anymore, bottom line. There were plenty of other reasons to go into Iraq and get him out. You can use hindsight and Monday morning quarterback all you want, but the fact that our lack of response to unconfirmed intelligence resulted in the 9/11 attacks demanded we be more proactive. I bet if you researched hard enough you could have found plenty of intelligence that countered what we now know was the plan to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. You should be more outraged that Clinton spent 8 years allowing Al-Qaeda to practice bomb US targets all over the globe and responded with a couple of random cruise missiles instead of making a true response. Clinton was a Democrat, though, so he gets a pass, right?
Ugh, in a hurry. Clinton didn't set things up as well as he should have, but he wasn't the one in power at the time of the attacks, nor was he the one to ignore important memos, like one entitled something along the lines of "Bin Laden Determined to Attack the US". If this administration had done something like oversee the longest period of economic expansion in our country's history, I would be much more forgiving for its shortcomings. Instead, it has worked around the constitution, made false information or hidden true information, fired people because of alternate political views, given important jobs to unqualified people (FEMA, anyone?), and Bush had taken 250 vacation days by August 2003. By 1999 Clinton had taken only 152. The fact is, I don't like Clinton more than Bush because he's a liberal--I like him more because he screwed up less (or at least to my knowledge he did, since I was all of 12 at the end of his presidency, I can only go by what I've learned, which isn't a whole ton since he had an end of office approval rating of 65%, the highest since WWII--which means he doesn't get a lot of post-presidency smearing).
Was he perfect? No. I think he was better that Bush. That being said, I think his wife would have been equally incompetent as Bush and I would have refused to vote for her under almost any circumstance, and she's a liberal.
Edit: Content (Language)
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Oh snap Gorgon said the "F" word. That's new to the forum. Are we all going to loose our ability to articulate our thoughts to the point that we are swearing because it was the most powerful word we could think of? Who knows maybe it's catching right now. I try to not post here because people with more knowledge on the subject have better conversation and I enjoy reading it. The point is alot of people don't post but they do read the posts so lets not get too carried away.
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I'll go ahead and apologize if I offended anybody, and I'll edit it out if somebody complains--but otherwise I'd like to leave it, if only for the fact that swear words are part of language and are often treated as though they are less legitimate. They are words to express extremes, and I think they can be used just as beautifully as any prose. I don't see a problem using them, nor do I see a problem with others hearing them (and I do see a problem censoring them), but since this is a public forum which is privately owned, I'll go ahead and recant if I get any legitimate complaints. I'd like to note I didn't swear at anybody, no did I use it in any sort of angry rage--I just used it as a descriptor. I think there's a big difference between that and cursing at someone or cursing out of blind rage.
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Hey Gorgon I get it. Ok cool you didn't use it offensively, personally I don't even care that you used it. We have all used our share of swear words in our time. I don't really find it an issue when the conversation is between adults who understand the placement and usage. The issue comes when someone who may not understand comes along and creates an issue out of it. I for one have read the forum rules where they state that this is a family environment and usage of words such as the one you used is prohibited. How could I let it pass when people are called out for double posting. Its not that your wrong its just rude. You seem intelligent enough to think of other words that would describe extremes. And I find it funny that I am the one to say this, I for one have a problem with regulating my vocabulary to appropriate situations. I think that's why I said something about it.
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Like I said, I wasn't sure if you were genuinely offended or anything; I'll modify it immediately after I post this. I'm not standing in a public square and I can't word things however I want.
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I know and I don't think I would say I was offended but I would at least like to follow the rules of the forum seeing how we all enjoy it. The last thing I want is for an intelligent poster like yourself to in anyway be looked at negativly by any Mod or Admin. You seem to have been here long enough so I don't need to talk to you about it. Happy posting :)
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Gorgon, Gorgon, Gorgon.......Clinton was in office when we were attacked. In fact, we were attacked 3 times while he was in office (first Trade Center Bombing, African embassy, USS Cole). Clinton himself deemed Sadamm Hussein an enemy of America. He sent a few cruise missiles Hussein's way as well. He also significantly weakened our military, which was just another sign to terrorists that we were becoming weak. Also, his first two years in office, the economy was garbage. We also forget the most important factor. 2 years after Clinton was elected, the Democratic party lost control of the House and Senate for the first time in almost 40 years. You don't think this changing of the guard had a positive impact on the next 6 years? If you factor in the corruption that surrounded his presidency, I think long term history will see Clinton a little differently than those who were too blinded by all the shiny new toys they bought to see the truth. You also are wrong about FEMA. I am sure you don't remember the number of disasters that occurred while that Brown guy headed FEMA, but there were quite a few that went without a hitch. In fact, very little is even spoken about Katrina's impact to Mississippi, which was just as hard hit. The difference was the state of Mississippi did what was right to minimize damage, while Louisiana misused funds to pay for Levy repairs, refused to help people evacuate because the buses they had weren't comfortable enough (Mayor Nagin actually had this complaint, there were hundreds of school buses sitting there, and he wanted someone to send Coach buses), and told the Feds to stay out. This last piece is most important. It is illegal for the Federal Government to send any troops, including the National Guard, into a State without permission from the Governor of that state. There is audio of the then Governor of Louisiana telling the President himself that they were all set and did not need his help. The levys broke a couple hours later, and by then the delay in mobilizing the relief effort was destructive. What I find most amusing is that, had Bush and FEMA ignored the law and gone into LA full bore, and the levy's had held, it would have been hell to pay, and another example of Bush going around the rules. He probably would have also been chastised for the misuse of resources.
Now I have a question: Please tell me a specific example of Bush working around the constition. I hear about all these civil liberties that have been taken away from us, but don't actually know what they are. Someone please elaborate, but be prepared to explain yourself well.
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Good points, the national guard is actually controlled by the state. All guardsmen and women swear both to the president and to the governor of the respective state. So lets say the Pres wanted a Guard unit from LA activated and the governor didn't, then the unit would stay inactive because it is the state that funds those units and not the federal government.
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Right, and even more importantly, a National Guard unit from another state would need approval from the president, as well as the Governors from both the state they are going to and coming from.
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Gorgon, Gorgon, Gorgon.......Clinton was in office when we were attacked. In fact, we were attacked 3 times while he was in office (first Trade Center Bombing, African embassy, USS Cole). Clinton himself deemed Sadamm Hussein an enemy of America. He sent a few cruise missiles Hussein's way as well. etc.
A) I was talking about the attacks that were the focus of the discussion. And, as far as I know (feel free to correct me if you can find evidence otherwise), Clinton wasn't accused of blatantly ignoring evidence of any attacks beforehand, nor was he accused of ignoring evidence skewing evidence in order to go to war. I'm sorry, I don't see, "being attacked" and "failing to take any necessary steps to prevent an attack when information was available" as equivalent.
And yet, somehow under Clinton's rule (and this was not all, and very likely not even mostly, his doing), we still had the highest period of economic expansion. So, I'm sure you can see how I'm willing to say, "In the beginning it might have been a slump, but he had to work with what he was given" (just as you are doing with Bush and the terrorism). Also, I'm sure you can see how I look at Clinton handing over a country with the highest surplus in American history (at least so is what I have been told), and getting from Bush the biggest deficit in American history.
Maybe I'm not aware of all of the terrible scandals surrounding Clinton's presidency, because I was so young. Enlighten me?
I don't have time to go into anything further right now. I've been as busy as a horse with six legs and two heads. I don't even know what that entails, but it's true, I swear! Take a look at torture, wire-tapping, the USA PATROIT Act, etc. I know, you're going to say the PATROIT Act was fine, well--I disagree. I'm sure a solid internet search of "Bush, civil liberty repeal" will do wonders. I don't feel like trading off civil liberties, even if it doesn't directly affect me or anybody I know, for feeling safer is a good trade. I feel like to be a superpower, one must show itself as vigilant and in order to really be a shining beacon of freedom and democracy, one must demonstrate true love of freedom and democracy, even when it is hard to do so. Freedom for everybody we encounter, including our prisoners.
I think what bothers me the most is that, because I disagree with Bush, people just label me as some democrat who blindly follows the democrats. And yet, while I also challenge democrats when they get my country into trouble (like the democratic house and senate that promised some change, but has yet to do anything of importance except start to crumble into lobbyists, etc., on the topic of offshore drilling...). Yet, most Bush supporters at this point, for whatever reason (probably because they're so outnumbered and perhaps feel surrounded, often by morons, which is often the case), don't criticize his presidency at all despite the fact that he has obviously done some harm. Unless they agree with the points they tend to ignore, too. Like, I haven't heard you comment at all on the multiple mentions I've made of his firings of non like minded thinkers, or a complete monotone cabinet. Whether or not Brown had done a good job, he was completely under qualified for the job when he was hired. Mistakes have been made, and perhaps the side that dislikes Bush wouldn't be so (from your view) overly vigorous, if the side that likes Bush wouldn't just accept everything he's done as being swell. And then try to completely push the blame for things that happened under his presidency on the last guy. Clinton had some blame, like I already said, but don't you think that the guy in power probably had some control over what was going on? Or should have?
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And yet, somehow under Clinton's rule (and this was not all, and very likely not even mostly, his doing), we still had the highest period of economic expansion. So, I'm sure you can see how I'm willing to say, "In the beginning it might have been a slump, but he had to work with what he was given" (just as you are doing with Bush and the terrorism). Also, I'm sure you can see how I look at Clinton handing over a country with the highest surplus in American history (at least so is what I have been told), and getting from Bush the biggest deficit in American history.
I could be wrong, but what I remember happening is that Clinton and Congress dead-locked on the budget for several months. Resulting in the shutdown of all non-essential government services, that is unfortunately the only time our government have shown a profit. I not to sure on the deficit though. All I know is that it has been a problem since the 70's. On the other hand this book I'm reading, Founding Brothers, actually puts the date at about 1790 and that we have never paid off our debt since.
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Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget and a reported federal surplus.[6][7] Based on Congressional accounting rules, at the end of his presidency Clinton reported a surplus of $559 billion. (wikipedia on Bill Clinton in the intro).
I would be willing to believe that "congressional accounting rules" count something that isn't a surplus a surplus. It's kinda the nature of a government to be in debt to other countries and banks--I mean, it does help in the sense that when you owe people money, they're invested in you. Which means if you get into a war or something, they're likely to take your side or stay out of it. But there's a limit.
That being said, whatever "rules of accounting" they used are the same rules of accounting they're using now, and the deficit is amazing now. Obviously that's what happens when you get into a war and try to rebuild a country from the ground up. And I'm not going to get back into the argument of "was Iraq called for or not" because when it comes down to it, like I said, it's a matter of opinion. Was the price right? To each of us the answer is different. But we shouldn't be using exclusive bid contracts, among other things that are just plain mistakes which are costing us lots of money to large corporations (most of whom use less than legal tax scams to not even pay the country what it owes, a difference citizens have to make up).
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What you are missing is that the perceived surplus was created by the weakening of our military and the artificial expansion of the economy by dot com companies that imploded at the end of 2000. Do you think Bush somehow magically changed policies so much in just 9 months that he caused the attacks? Or that just him becoming president caused the stock market to plummet? If anything, a Republican president coming into office usually helps, as companies know that reduced taxes and regulation may occur. Do you think it capable of anyone, especially someone who just barely won an election, to just come out guns blazing? The culture of America pre 9/11 was to use diplomacy, and to only get involved in a fight if we were directly affected. There may have been intelligence out there, but there would have been no way to pinpoint it exactly. He would have been eviscerated if he ordered the checks and controls on flights before the attacks. No one would have accepted them. People barely accept them now, and all they really do is inconvenience people. Fighting 2 wars and drastically increasing security to prevent future attack is draining, but that is not the extent of the problem. Another major cause of deficit is unfair trade with other countries, and our inability to hold those countries to task for undercutting us. I know Bush has made mistakes, as all Presidents have. I think his biggest mistakes were not holding Congress accountable for continued overspending and Partisan politics. he focused too much on National Security and not enough on fixing Government. I am not sure what you mean by Monotone Cabinet. If you mean just politically, then that may be true. You will be hard pressed to find a Presidency where the Cabinet members did not closely agree with the President and stayed around for any length of time. Colin Powell left of his own accord, so who was fired for disagreeing with Bush? That brings me to my second criticism of Bush; his loyalty to his people. In many ways, bush was too nice a guy when it came to his subordinates. I happen to believe he was too forgiving at times (Rumsfeld being a PRIME example). Finally, he didn't spend enough time pushing past Media bias and making sure his decisions were given the proper context and reasoning.
Now, Civil Liberties. First off, unless you are suspected of a crime (in which there is a warrant somewhere), or are receiving phone calls from the Middle East or Africa, the FBI is not monitoring your phone calls. There are 200 Million people in America, do you really think they have time to spy on even 1 percent, even if they wanted to? As for torture, I take the McCain stance, it should not be legal. While I understand that it has been effective, it can also produce as much bad intelligence as good, and it gives our enemies an excuse to torture their prisoners, AKA US POW's. So, while I may use the incredibly accurate and dependable internet to do the search you mentioned, I still want to know what Civil Liberties we have traded off in order to be more safe?
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Every boom (.com boom, for example, or the current real-estate boom) has a crash. You can't really blame any person for the crash (be it Bush or Clinton) in 2001--that is what happens when too many people invest in the same thing. It happened with gold, it happened with banking, it happened with stocks, it happened with .com, it is happening with real-estate.
Clinton had a monotone cabinet too, I think, and I think it's a disgusting failure for any president to surround himself with minds just like his. However, whatever the reason, our country was in better shape almost all of Clinton's leadership than Bush's. Blame it on the situation if you want, but I was accused of disliking Bush simply because I like Democrats (which I maintain is untrue), but it seems like there's a lot of Clinton hate here for the opposite reason. Like I said, he wasn't a perfect president (who was?); I think he was much better than Bush. And a large portion of our society would agree with me. That doesn't make me right, but it doesn't hurt my argument, either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy.
Also, considering it has come out that people hired into positions (low and high) under the Bush Administration were asked about their political views and if they think Bush has been doing a good job, often looking into seeing if applicants were registered Republican, I'd say his administration has overstepped its bounds. Somebody's political stance should be irrelevant if they are qualified for a job, and if anything, finding people who have been unhappy with your performance can lead to better leadership through useful criticism. All presidents, neigh, all people surround themselves with those who agree with them, but Bush's administration has definitely taken it farther than I can think of it ever going, and far beyond the limit of acceptability.
A republican president may usually help, but it certainly hasn't this time. We can't say (as far as I know) that the .com plummet was Bush's administration's fault, but the current drop certainly has at least a percentage of fault with the administration.
I don't think I am being spied on. I think it's a crime that my leader would endorse the legality of inhibiting civil liberties. End of story--I don't care if you've been suspected of a crime or not, without due process, no person should be stripped of any liberty.
Bush has done some alright things, too. He's been a great president for Africa, so I hear. But his successes are far overshadowed by his failures.
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I agree that bipartisanship should be practiced. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen on either side. The Clinton Administration was the same, as has just about every Administration in history. You again mention the restriction of your civil liberties, but I still don't see what was restricted. The only rights I seem to be losing are the rights to protect myself and my family, the right to freely express religious beliefs (only Christians seem to be restricted), and the right to make an honest observation about another ethnic group without being labeled a racist. Do you know a poll taken yesterday stated that almost 40% of those polled believe that, if Obama loses the election, it will be due almost solely to racism? That is staggering to me! Yet there is no problem bashing McCain because he is 71? I'm sorry if I am bitter towards the Democratic party, but I am tired of Celebutants who can't even run their own lives telling me how to vote, and I certainly can't stand the media bias. I would have no problem if the information flow to the average person was even remotely fair and balanced, but it is not. Ever wonder how hippocritical it is for America's leading feminist organization to hold in such high regard a man who was thrice accused of sexual harrassment and admitted to cheating on his wife? While in the Oval office? Now there is finally a chance for the glass ceiling to be shattered by a proven reformer, someone who has a record of standing up to her own party to do what is right, and she is being villified because she is Pro-Life? The Feminists are even accusing her of putting her career above her family!!!!!! Condaleeza Rice is the First Black women to be Secratary of State, and all you hear about her is that she is a puppet for the Bush Administration. I again apologize, but I can not throw my support towards anyone endorsed by these selfish fools.
One more thing....If you really look closely, you will find that the president has little to do with the economy. That's the best part about all of these battles and finger pointing right now. There is little the President can do to affect the Economy. Congress, however, can play a big part. The deregulation bills that allowed the mortgages to occur was voted on in 1996. In 2006, McCain proposed a bill to rein in Freddie and Fannie and it went nowhere. Why? It was and election year, and the Dems knew they were going to take the house and Senate back, and ther weren't going to let the Rep's take any credit. All the President can do is make recommendations, sign good bills into law and veto bad ones. We need to hold the Executives of the companies responsible, as well as Congress.
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True, the president has little to do with the economy. But it is the president's job (which is why he has a secretary of Treasury and Commerce) to have his administration be on top of what is happening in the economic sector to provide adequate pressure on businesses and on congress (this congress has been a moderate to complete joke--yay, we raised minimum wage...good job, do you want a cookie?) to take necessary actions. You'll note it is the president and/or his cabinet members who are now coming up with the "solutions" for the economic issues we're looking at right now. That's because it's their job, quite literally, to stay on top of it. The companies were TERRIBLY irresponsible because they knew they'd get bailed out, congress was not on top of things, neither was the president. Notice I never said it was all the administration's fault, I said they have some blame.
I don't see how a man's personal decisions affects how high of a regard I can hold him as a professional. I don't care if he does things in his personal life that I disagree with, as long as he doesn't do anything illegal while in office, it really doesn't affect how good of a president he is. It might affect how good of a person he is, but that's a separate issue entirely (besides, judge not or you'll be judged, if a cheating man's wife can forgive him, I don't see why I can't).
There's no law that says you can't say something stereotypical. There isn't even a law that says you can't say something blatantly ignorant or racist. There's no law that says you can't go out on the streets and flagrantly spew your religious beliefs to anybody who passes (no matter what they are--in fact, here at MSU we have a very zealous individual we call the Wells Hall Preaches. He likes to go out on sunny days and yell at passing students about how they're going to Hell if they don't accept Jesus). You can't put religious teachings into a school system everybody's kids go to for obvious reasons--other people don't want you teaching their kids your religion. If you want to teach your kids your religion in school, there's nothing stopping you from teaching your kids at home or using a private school. It is not the government's job to provide a place to teach religion to your kids.
There is no such thing as unbiased news. There are plenty of sources with a liberal tilt, there are plenty of sources with a conservative tilt, and there are plenty of sources that are extremist. And everything in between (except no tilt). If you have a problem with the "liberal media", it is because you see the things that you disagree with more obviously than you recognize the things you agree with, or you are looking at the wrong places.
I don't see how vilifying somebody for being pro-life is worse than standing outside an abortion clinic en masse, yelling at the women who have made a very difficult choice about how they are going to Hell. Also, it's not like Republicans don't vilify Democrats all the time, either (for example, saying a person who is a proven successful leader is inadequate to lead because he made a mistake in his personal life).
I'm tired of Democrats. I'm tired of Republicans. What I'm tired of MOST is Democrats who accuse Republicans of things that they do, and Republicans who do the same. Which is, in all honesty, pretty much all of them (both parties). Which brings us back to this article, which is a long tangent of one man doing just that. The article linked at the beginning of this discussion is also a good example of right-wing biased media, in case you were wondering where to find some.
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Of course there are media outlets that are right wing; I am talking about the overall state of the Media. If you research the 5 Major Networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX), you will learn that 4 of them slant left, some significantly. There is research that proved this. Overall, the bias towards the left far exceeds any bias to the right. It seems there are very few choices to get accurate information.
Also, your point on anti-abortionists had nothing to do with what I was saying. I was pointing out the hipocrisy of those who claim to want equality, but actually only care about themselves and to hell with everyone else. Sexual Harrassment is Illegal, which is why he spoke to a Grand Jury about it. Perjury is also illegal, which is why he was impeached, sanctioned, and after he left office, temporarily disbarred. He also lied right to our face several times. How can someone's character not have weight, especially when they are leading a nation? If you have a friend who never pays you back, to you keep loaning him money? The only reason Hillary stayed with him is because divorcing him was bad for her political career.
I agree that the mudslinging is garbage. If what is stated is factual and relevant, that is OK. But partisanship for the sake of gaining power is wrong on both sides. I hate when records are distorted, and statements are taken out of context. what I hate even more is when the people who are supposed to be responsible for filtering out the crap and showing the truth are instead providing assistance to one side over the other. Why is it not front page news on every media outlet that McCain presented a bill in 2006 to try to rein in Freddie and Fannie before the housing bubble truly burst? Why is it not front page news that Obama did not provide a vote, nor help with any legislation to help the crisis ahead of time, but is now saying he can fix it if he is elected? Anyone can say they will change everything for the better, shouldn't it be required that we see some effort in the candidate's record? There is no mention anywhere of any times where Obama or Biden went against his own party to support a bill they thought was best for the country. If there were, you would hear it every day. Obama refused to vote on over 100 bills! How can he be a leader if he can't make up his mind? He's supposed to be representing Millions of people from Illinois, yet they had no voice on those bills because he didn't want to make the wrong choice? How can you believe he will do what is necessary to make these changes if he can't even choose yeah or Nay? Palin has an 80% approval rating in Alaska. That's huge! She also called out her boss ( the republican governor at the time) on ethics violations. This could have ruined her career, but she chose to do the right thing to do over the self-serving or cowardly thing. Maybe that's what scares people the most about her. McCain and Palin have demonstrated that they are willing to do what they promise. Don't you want references when hiring a contractor? Would you hire the first person you see, or would you want some references. Maybe some examples of his or her work? Why should politics be any different?
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Well, I agree a person's record should be taken into account when we're thinking about making him or her our leader. I also think that Obama and Biden do not have great records, from what I have seen, nor does McCain, and Palin doesn't even really have a record to speak of. Oh, she's been in politics, and you can disagree, but I don't see anything she's done as material for being president, which is really the position I weigh her up against, since McCain could keel over any day. That being said, I'd rather have somebody who, when he or she is uninformed or neutral on a subject to not blindly take sides for the sake of being seen as a strong decision maker. It is better to not make a decision as a senator when you do not think you have been informed to the point of having enough information to process (whether it be Obama, McCain, or anybody else, I actually respect more than most traits the ability to say "I am under informed and will withhold my opinion until I know enough to responsibly take a side").
You wanna know why it's not front page news? Because the system is broken. It is broken, it is wretched and it has been twisted out of shape. That is why we have a party system (especially a two party system), that is why the media is irresponsible and doesn't tell us what we know, that is why somebody can lose an election because of how he looks on TV (starting with Nixon and working on up. In fact, in the Nixon-Kennedy debate, those listening on the radio said Nixon won almost unanimously, but those watching on TV said the opposite), that is why a person who does not receive the popular vote can go on to win an election and reign for eight years, and that is why we are still playing into corporation's hands at our own expenses in every sector, and that is why right now our brilliant leaders have decided the best move is to take $2,000 from every household and hand it to corporations with "no bars held, no questions asked" instead of using that money to, say, provide health care for needing children or homes for those with none.
You can be upset with the system, but generally Republican candidates want to keep the system as static as possible (hence the nature of being "conservative"). Unfortunately, generally Democratic candidates don't do much to change the system. Which brings us back to the system is broken.
Also, very few people want equality, I bet you yourself are included in this (at least at some level, and I, too, am sure that I am guilty). People want to be equal OR GREATER THAN. They want their issues at the forefront and they want their side to win, and equality isn't enough but it is a start. Is it terrible? Yes. Does every major (and probably every minor) social movement do it in at least factions? Yes.
A great example of records being distorted which is pretty disgusting is an ad that is currently going around here that essentially says McCain will support a tax break for companies shipping jobs overseas. Except the tax break is designed to encourage companies to bring the jobs back overseas, and Obama supports the same legislature. Ridiculous that people can get away with that, especially since I know this add is rioting hundreds of thousands of Democrats into fevered, drooling dreams of Obama for president across the Midwest (maybe the nation, I don't know far the ad is being run).
Also, to be fair, FOX is REALLY, REALLY conservative (going so far as to put polls up about "who would be more likely to cheat at cards, Bill Clinton" or some other democrat), and it is owned by the third largest media outlet in the world with cable news programs (only outdone by the ever powerful AOL Time/Warner with CNN and Viacom with CBS and the faux news shows on Comedy Central). But the "mother corporation," News Outlet, owns the more News-Oriented media than any other company in the world--if I'm not mistaken, which if I am recalling correctly, I am not. These are figures I learned in early 2008, but I'm pretty sure they hold up now.
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I just gave you examples of Palin's record. She has more than 6 years of executive experience. Obama has 0 years of executive experience, 0 years of military leadership experience, and Palin has done more to show she can lead and delegate and manage than both Biden and Obama. The simple fact is that every level of government Palin has been involved in has had tremendous success. In just two years, Alaska has a surplus, taxes on oil companies were increased to match current standards, the taxpayers are getting money back, and should I mention again the 80% approval rating (whoops, I just did) I can't believe you are making an excuse for his inaction. Will that be his excuse as president too? "I'm sorry, but I am not sure I have all the information, I'll just keep waiting for more evidence". You also contradict yourself by having issue with the inaction by the President to prevent the current economic situation. Maybe he didn't have enough evidence either. I guess we should wait until things happen before we make a decision, that way we can never be wrong, and will instead always be in crisis mode. I am quite sure that, unless he was too busy getting ready to be president to do his job, then he had the right information, but either couldn't or wouldn't make a choice. Also, you are naive if you think McCain has less of a chance of surviving his presidency than others. According to all the experts, he has a 95% chance of surviving his first term, and a 92% chance of surviving the second, so don't give me that garbage about him dying in office. What "material" have you seen that says McCain's record is not good? Fox is not, really really conservative. In fact, it is as close to the middle as you can get. The problem is, the others are so far left it makes Foxnews seem conservative. Speaking of conservative, the current party systems really have nothing to do with the terminology used. Dems are far from Liberal and Republicans are not all that conservative anymore, either. They have the "core" values that don't change on both sides. The true difference is in Government control.
You forgot about ABC and NBC.
I disagree about your equality statement. There are many people, the majority in fact, who don't care much about what everyone else thinks, and are understanding of others. You just don't hear about those people, because they don't make any noise.
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I know that "liberals" are hardly liberal anymore, I'm using generally accepted terminology. Republicans are, generally, more conservative than Democrats. As such, they, generally, want to see fewer changes to the status quo.
Death of a president is an issue for Obama and Biden's ticket, too, for me. And it would have been important for Bush and Cheney had I been voting in either of his elections. It is ALWAYS a concern.
The nature of the presidency and the nature of being a senator are different enough that I can respect a man's right to withhold a vote as a senator as being a smart inaction, whereas the presidency is a single job, not multiple people doing the same job, with dozens of people working hand-in-hand to get something done.
If you think that fox news is middle ground, it is only because you agree with what they say. I watch fox news about half the time, the other half I watch CNN. I don't really like either of them. However, just like I've never really seen more than one person on CNN agree with a republican, I've never seen ANYBODY on Fox agree with a democrat on any issue Republicans in general weren't already agreeing with them on. No other news program that is "respectable" (snicker) has put up a poll such as the one I described, either, to my knowledge. Also, ABC and NBC do not own cable news stations, like I said, and their mother corperations (Disney and General Electric) are NOT widely known as news media companies. News Corperation, however, deals almost exclusively with news, and Fox is bigger than any other broadcasting station in the United States.
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Ha, I guess you never heard of Alan Colmes and Juan Williams? These guys are 100% liberals, Democrats to the core, and they are permanent members of FoxNews. Obviously you've never watched them while they are on. You are showing your hidden bias. You can pretend to be impartial all you want, but you are biased. CNN, by the way, is the 2nd closest to the middle, with ABC third and NBC is in lala land (MSNBC is a total joke, which is why almost no one watches it). It's hard to break preconceived notions, isn't it? It's cool to not like FoxNews, because they tell it like it is, and the news portions certainly don't give republicans any breaks. They tell the news and let you determine what you believe. How do I know this? Because I don't just trust what people say, I double check. I go to the other agencies and see what they say, then I go online and look up facts. After a while, you can see where the slants are. Now sure, there are more editorial shows (Brit Hume, the Beltway Boys) that slant right then other stations, but that's because other stations have one or no shows that slant anyway but left. Other than Joe Scarborough, name me one News Personality from any major network news outlet. I suggest you check things out more closely. Just by using an Absolute the way you did proves that you are only looking for what you want to hear, and anything outside of that is automatically wrong. I bet you hate Bill O'Reilly too. You should take a few minutes to read his talking points. He hammers both sides. If it seems like he spends a lot of time debunking falsehoods from the far left Media, it's because there is so much of it there. Believe me, when a democrat is wrongfully smeared, he is all over putting that right too. Just look at the defenses he made of Hillary and Obama during the primaries.
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I don't think I ever claimed to be impartial. In fact, I'm sure I've said, though maybe not on this thread, several times that everybody has a bias, and all media has a bias. I don't know those two reporters. However, I don't think two liberal reporters make up for an blatantly conservative staff, anymore than two conservative reporters would make up for a blatantly liberal staff. (And I came back tonight expecting to see something about MSNBC, I will admit I overlooked that station along with the other handful of NBC news cable stations because I don't watch them. My mistake, I apologize).
CNN is pretty liberal, I would say it is less liberal than Fox is conservative (I think that if you watched them both after the debates tonight, it would be a good example. CNN phrased most of its questions to frame Obama in a positive light, although not going on to say Obama was a clear-cut winner. Fox, however, not only declared McCain the winner, but said that everybody thought Obama would run circles around him in this debate. In fact, the opposite was true, as McCain has a more foreign policy experience. Most the experts that I saw on both stations that were not clearly parked in one camp or another, or the ones that wisely pointed out their bias and attempted to judge the debates with it held as much at bay as possible, said that the debate was essentially a draw. Both Candidates made good points and both made mistakes, both having a very different speaking and debating style.)
I didn't ever mean to accuse you of getting your news from fallible sources--I don't know where you get your news (well, now I do). My point was, I think, what your point was (originally), and that is that there is a huge slant to our media (both to the right and to the left). I also don't think you usually need to look up the facts from multiple sources to figure out where biases lie, it seems pretty obvious most of the time.
I love Bill O'Reilly. I think he's one of the most entertaining things on television. He will start out a topic with a statement such as ""Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment" (actual quote from 03/23/01). This statement clearly states what side he is on, then negatively slants the other side before giving any actual facts about the issue. Sure, sometimes he says things that help a liberal side (rarely), but when he does he almost always tries to use it to help a conservative end and/or is only doing it to make himself seem like a credible news source. Heck, I even saw him defend Obama once. But even if you argue that he takes a left side sometimes and ignore his rationale for doing so, when he does, he does so in a way that still favors one side blatantly and giving the other side of the argument the air of a retarded monkey. That is not a credible news source. It is an entertaining news source, but it isn't credible--at least not on its own.
I somewhat over exaggerated the case when I said I've never seen anybody on fox agree with a democrat (twas a hyperbole for sure), but it is highly slanted. That being said, I don't pretend like CNN is much better in the opposite direction (that's why I split my news time about 50/50 between, a poor attempt to even the slant I'm receiving. It doesn't work, which is why the internet is handy. And even then, I'm still getting huge slant both ways and I have to figure it out for myself, which I should have just done originally after one broadcast and not wasted my time. But, oh well, I'm a glutton for punishment).
The fact is, however, that Fox News, just like any other news source, has a bias. They also have more editorial shows that are HIGHLY biased and air themselves as a credible source of information. In addition, they tend to show biased clips of speeches (as I saw a bit of after the debate--going so far as to completely cut of a rational response Obama had made to make it look as though he was caught off-guard and unaware by McCain) and show biased ticker information (again, good examples tonight--it kept flashing "both sides believe they have won the debate", then explained the positive factors that McCain's camp used to believe they had won the debate. They did not follow by giving the positive points that Obama's camp used to judge his merit, despite the fact that other stations, such as CNN, showed both). I'm not saying CNN, or any other news source, is unbiased. But Fox is very biased, CNN is also pretty biased, and I don't even watch MSNBC because, like you've said, what I've seen is a complete joke. But considering it is biased (even if you think it is the most middle ground station, which I clearly disagree with with, you would agree it is biased), and its mother corporation is biased, and its mother corporation is the largest news corporation in the world, I'd say there is plenty of right-wing biased media out there.
I think it is sad that the complaint many people have is, "there isn't enough right-wing biased media out there" and not "there is too much of too biased media out there." I'm not saying that is necessarily what you are saying, but it is what a lot of people say.
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You know, I watched most of the debate on FoxNews and most of them had it with McCain having a slight advantage over Obama in the last part of the debate, but Obama winning the first part. I saw points from both sides in the crawl (I know this because one of them made me laugh). In fact, on Fox and Friends Saturday morning, one of the anchors brought out the FactCheck.Org results of the debate and announced that Obama was a little more accurate factually than McCain overall. In the end, there was no clear winner. This debate did nothing to sway any voters either way. The reason Obama didn't win the debate is because he allowed McCain to repeatedly rehash his experience advantage, and agreed with him too often. The Henry Kissinger reference was a mistake, because not only was it not true but it allowed McCain to remind everyone how much more experience he has with leaders in general. McCain was more consistent, and appeared slightly more poised, but spent too much time on earmarks instead of issues. Obama will never win over McCain on the war, security, or leadership experience, but he can win on the economy, which would give him the election despite the other points. Because McCain didn't win the economy section of the debate, he did not win the debate. It was funny that an NBC analyst called it a tie that McCain won, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
The way you described the difference between CNN and FoxNews sounds like you felt Obama won outright, and the fact that the Fox panel disagreed with you automatically makes them bias. By the way, Juan Williams was one of the members of that panel (the liberal guy I was telling you about), and even he gave a slight edge to McCain, but said there was no clear winner. If you are liberal, then even middle of the road will seem conservative. Did CNN give McCain any positives?
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I agree entirely on the fact that McCain and Obama were about even (I missed a portion of the economic section, though, in which I heard Obama did very well), and I would agree with how you described their strengths. I watched the debate on PBS, no scroll, so I didn't catch what fox or CNN were saying during the debate. I switched to fox about ten minute after the debate ended, and I immediately saw huge bias towards McCain, which did end up dissipating after another ten minutes or so.
If memory serves, immediately after the debate CNN's anchor (I don't remember who it was) said the debate appeared to be about even, in just the manner that you just described it. They didn't undercut McCain, but they did word several of their interview questions in ways that seemed underhandedly liberal to me.
Like I said before, I think that CNN and Fox are both more biased than you seem to think, maybe that's me over exaggerating the point because it disgusts me so. However, I would say CNN is slightly less biased than fox, not necessarily during normal broadcasting, but definitely because of fox's ridiculously biased editorial sections.
I will say that if I had listened to the debate on the radio, I would have probably placed the candidates at dead even near the end. But Obama handled the television much better. McCain refused to make eye contact with Obama, and that made him seem shady (a friend of mine said, with a chuckle, it made him seem racist--but sadly, there are those out there who would actually think that). McCain also spent almost the whole time talking to the mediator instead of to the camera, and I don't think he ever spoke to Obama directly, he always said "What Senator Obama doesn't seem to understand is..." Because of that, Obama seemed much more charismatic and he seemed to know what he was talking about, even though it is really irrelevant to how much he ACTUALLY knows what he is talking about, because he handled the camera, mediator and McCain more appropriately. McCain needs his people to give him some lessons on how to handle the cameras or everyday viewers are going to undercut him points he should be getting (in fact, that's just what happened when fox interviewed their test group of "everyday people" after the debate--most the them gave it to Obama, despite the fact that those of us who really listened usually split it closer down the middle).
Despite the fact that appearance has no merit in judging ability to govern, it's really important in these debates. After all, we all know what happened to Nixon.
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True enough. People who look better and speak better tend to get a slight edge. Of course, not looking at your opponent is a tactic. McCain is trying to show Obama's inexperience, and a lack of poise can cause people to make that assumption. He was trying to get Obama flustered, and it only worked a couple of times. Unfortunately, most of the people polled (and in general) most likely only watched highlights of the debate, where the little stumbles are rarely shown for either side. The fact that McCain got Obama to call him John (which makes it more personal), and once even called him the moderators name by accident, shows that McCain was getting to him. This debate was a setup for the next two, and believe me when I tell you people will only remember the last one. It wouldn't surprise me at all if McCain took a completely different tact next time, just to try to shake Obama up again. McCain's advantage in this is his poise. He has been playing this game for a long time, and you will not see him lose his composure unless he wants to. You could argue this as a positive or a negative, but in the end if Obama does break a little, the Republicans will jump all over it as proof that he is poor under pressure. It's a shady tactic, but at least it can be correlated to his ability to lead in crisis. The Dems are doing the same thing to Palin right now. If she cracks in the debate, it could be a major problem.
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Yeah, it's also true that most people will just care about the last debate (which happens to be economy, the subject that most people say Obama did slightly better than McCain). I don't really see stumbling over words as a weakness at all, nor do I see informality between the opponents--I mean, they're colleagues and have worked together a while. They know each other. However, the fact that MOST people will see it how they're told to see it (and if they're told to see it as cracking under pressure, they will) is a good point.
For his own sake, McCain better start taking a tactic of bolstering his own experience rather than tearing down Obama's. I mean, if Obama is considered inexperienced, then what is Palin? And you better believe the Democrats are going to point that out. He needs to spend more time saying what he has done (which he did a little of), and more time appealing to the people rather than trying to affect his opponent. You can't control what your opponent will do, but you can definitely control how you appear to the people. It'll be interesting to watch the next one.
I'm really interested to see the Vice-Presidential debates. It'll make or break Palin, since all eyes are on her. She was a wild-card draw, and a lot of people on all sides don't really know what to think. Biden said that he wasn't going to do what McCain was trying to do and just constantly poke at her inexperience, but I imagine it will be tempting for him to point it out a few times. We'll see how true to his word he comes out, too.
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I agree. Biden is a fantastic debater, so it will be a struggle. I think trying to push on Palin's lack of experience is a mistake, which is why Biden won't go there. 12 years of governmental management experience trumps 4 years of legislative experience when you are talking about management positions. In this way Palin technically has more management experience than Obama. She also sat on energy commissions which dealt with international companies, so she understands energy and some aspects of the global economy. I feel many times that Senators and Representatives tend to live in an idealistic bubble. It is quite different to manage and make policy decisions than it is to be part of a team that works as a unit. If you really want to get technical, Palin has more executive experience than even McCain. When your in the top seat, there is nowhere to hide, just ask Bush. No matter how badly Congress screws up, in the end the President takes the responsibility, because he is in charge. He or she also sometimes gets credit for things they didn't do, but that comes with the job. McCain has a right to question Obama's experience; he is going for the top job. If Obama was vice-presidential nominee, I would be much less concerned with his experience, and or his record. The record is more important to me than anything. Voting for Obama is a vote entirely on faith, because there is little in his past that shows he has the ability to get done what he says he will get done. I still think he ran too soon.
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I think Biden was a great choice by Obama, much better than Mccain's choosing of Palin. My grandpa is a professor of Political Science and about the time Biden was first elected he told his students that he would be in the White House some day. Palin on the other hand... well she scares me. The fact that she was pushing for Georgia to join the UN so we could help defend them against Russia was insane!!! When Russia invaded I told my friends I'm just waiting for an alien race to destroy China. Anyway I'm excited for the debate, Biden will do fantastic, but I'm not too sure about Palin, guess we'll just have to see :)
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I agree with you that Palin is scary. From the little I've seen of her she seems as ambitious and creepy as Hillary Clinton. She'll stop at nothing to get what she wants. I was on the fence, but planning to vote for McCain until she was nominated - now I'm leaning a lot more towards Obama/Biden.
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*Sigh* Did your Grandpa predict he would plagarize a speech in the 1988 presidential primaries? Or that would tell people the helicopter he was in was brought down by terrorists in Afghanistan, when it was the weather? How about the fact that he thought FDR was president during the depression, and that TV existed in 1929? Biden can't get out of his own way. He is absolutely incapable of being wrong, which says a lot considering the people with which he works.
It amazes me how you all have no problem with career politicians being ambitious as long as they are men. Obama has two memoirs written and he has only been a State Senator for four years! Come on! Let's at least be consistent here. If 8 years as mayor and 2 as Governor is not enough experience (along with time chairing an energy committe), then neither is 4 years as a District Senator and 4 years as State Senator. If you feel Palin is scary because she will stop at nothing to get into office when in fact she was chosen by McCain, then you have to feel the same way about Obama, who has been setting up his run for at least 3 years. All your posts really tell me is that you are afraid of change. As much as everyone says they want someone in office who isn't a political insider, who can give a fresh perspective to that insanity on Capitol Hill, you would prefer to choose a man who is just a deep in the crap as the rest of them, and managed to get that deep in record time. If that doesn't scare you, then Palin should make you feel like your on top of the world. I'm not a fan of Hillary, but it is because I disagree with her politics, and there are way too many skeletons in her closet. It has nothing to do with her ambition or drive, and certainly has nothing to do with her sex.
By the way, she wanted Georgia to become part of the UN so they could be afforded the same protection as other UN nations, not so we can attack Russia. Are you serious? Russia wouldn't dare attack another UN entity, but a country with no affiliations? Well that's more of a gray area. Why should they not be part of that group? Should we allow Russia to rebuild the Soviet Union one country at a time? Now that's insane.
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Er, the talk was about Georgia joining NATO. It's already in the UN like almost every country in the world.
I'm interested to see the VP debates on Thursday. But all four candidates seem very ambitious to me, and none of them are incredibly truthful. You know the old saying, something along the lines of no one who desperately wants to be president can possibly be the best person for the job.
It does bug me how the news organizations are poking fun at every comment Palin makes, like when she commented to her daughter that New York was a city with lots of things to see and do (so what?) and that she said she got her news from all sources, declining to name one (me too, I just read what pops up at Google News, which is just an aggregator).
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My bad on the UN/NATO thing.
Should we allow Russia to rebuild the Soviet Union one country at a time? Now that's insane.
Haha when I first heard of the invasion I immediately thought Second Warsaw pact, and by golly Ender's Game is a bible! I agree though, we shouldn't let them rebuild that, but at the moment we have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, a 3 front war would be murder for us, my opinion isn't based on her drive or ambition, just the fact that we cannot uphold a 3 front war, especially against Russia under Putin. Putin is even scarier than I thought at first, something does need to be done about Russia, but at the moment we would be spread too far out, that is unless the elected president pulls out of Iraq and begins fortifying former SU countries.
What this election has become makes me want to pull out my Ron Paul sign and put it up where the Obama sign was (I live in Utah, the Obama sign lasted 2 days before it disappeared).
You know the old saying, something along the lines of no one who desperately wants to be president can possibly be the best person for the job.
I like that, and totally agree, but we have no one that doesn't want this position running.
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:oRamen! :o
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Of course we don't. Look what the candidates have to go through to get this job. Then once you get it, everything is your fault. I believe that all four candidates have good intentions. When I slam Obama and Biden on trivial things, it is only to make a point that there are trivial things on both sides, and these things really don't make them less viable as candidates. However, when the media makes a big deal out of these things, but only on one side, it does upset me. The fact that Biden's missteps are swept under the rug while Palin is ridiculed because she didn't want to endorse a newspaper on national TV (what hard hitting journalism by Katie Couric, by the way) is disgusting. I am just as disgusted when people try to portray Obama as a Muslim, not only because it is not true, but because it shouldn't matter even if he was. Why is that a negative? McCain's age is another thing that bothers me. He is probably healthier than most Americans half his age, and his mother is 96 and still quite healthy, which means he has good genes. Like I've said before, if you have to look past the issues to find a reason to not vote for someone, then you are doing yourself a disservice.
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I don't think that being an executive in a state geographically and culturally separated from the Union, the entirity of which has 2/3rds the population of DETROIT CITY, and not even five times the amount of people as Salt Lake City. I mean, Salt Lake City's urban population dwarfs the entire population of Alaska by 200,000 people. And Utah is not a highly populated state (it's a moderately populated state at #34), nor is Salt Lake City a highly populated city.
If Palin is considered to have "executive experienced" in a way that is applicable towards the presidency because she led such a state, then the mayor of every major city in the US is about as prepared--and many of them have been in office for longer than Palin. The fact of the matter is the Senate works with the Executive branch and the judicial branch, and what each does affects the other. McCain and Biden are both much more appropriately experienced than Palin, and I would say Obama is as well because he has the background for political office. Palin has a BA in journalism. Obama has a degree in political science with a specialty in foreign affairs. Palin governed the 3rd least populated state in the Union and has touted as a show of character her experience playing high-school basketball. I'm sorry, she does not have the educational background or the Washington background that Obama has.
Also, the fact that Palin has been quoted as saying things which McCain has called inexperienced, stupid, misinformed, etc. before it was Palin saying them shows that, according to her own running mate, she does not understand the concepts behind their own platform.
I expect Biden to say his great-grandfather defeated the British with the help of the Russians in 1845. I really do.
This is scattered because I'm rushed and must go. I'd like to flesh out my thoughts better, but I can't for now.
Mod: I edited one of my sentences to make sense.
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The difference is that Obama has never been in a leadership role. When you are on top, the final decision is yours. You have to be able to make a decision and stand by it. You need to understand delegation and prioritization for every department that reports to you. A good manager doesn't have to know the intimate details of a person's job, they just need to know what needs to be done and make sure it gets done properly. My boss couldn't do my job, but he knows what he wants done and makes sure it gets done. Leaders don't have the luxury of not making a decision because they don't feel comfortable, or don't want to risk looking bad. They have to say yes or no or everything stops. I would say that there are several mayors of major cities that have the executive experience to be president, although the major difference between a mayor and a governor is dealing with Congress. A mayor only had a city council as a legislative body, while a governor deals with a local version of the Senate and House, and in all states but mine, has to deal with the same separation of powers that the president deals with. In this effect, it is not separated from the union. It is a state with the same governmental structure as every other state. If by saying it is separate from the union means it has been able to avoid most of the Political BS that other states are mired in, then that should be a compliment, not a snide. Besides that, many midwestern states would sorely disagree with you about cultural differences. You know what, I challenge you to enlighten me on what cultural differences Alaska has with a state like say, Texas? North Dakota? Utah? Georgia? Kentucky? Shall I continue?
Obama is unproven as a leader. That doesn't mean he won't make a good one, but he nonetheless has no record of management experience. He hasn't even been in the Senate long enough to run a committee, which would at least show his management ability to a small degree. He is leading a sub-subcommittee on NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, but hasn't done anything with it yet. If he hadn't abstained on so many votes, I would give him more credit, but 130 times? That is excessive for anyone. It is one thing if you are not there to vote, but to be there and make no decision that many times? He won't have that luxury as president. What about his judgement? Someone who claims to want change we can believe in, and is this beacon of hope for so many, spends 20 years listening to the hate speech of a bigot who preached the end of white society? Even worse, he subjected his kids to that their whole lives. If you don't think that won't make an impression, your crazy. He then says that because his grandmother is a little prejudiced, it makes what his pastor does OK. So he basically sells his own family down the river, then distances himself from that pastor only after it became political dynamite? He has a 97% record of voting strictly along party lines, yet says he can get people to reach across the aisle? He wouldn't even do it himself, how is he going to get others to do it? (as a side note, the fact that McCain is considered a rogue when he voted along party lines 90% of the time in the past 4 years shows you how bad the rest of them are)
You are also severely distorting the truth. Her playing basketball has nothing to do with her leadership skills. I guess republicans are not allowed to use analogies from past experience to help people understand their points. You also consistently dismiss or ignore the fact that everything she has been involved in has improved, and she has an 80% approval rating as Governor of her state. Also, your college education means little to me as experience. Clinton has a law degree, Reagan had an Economics degree. I bet there are a lot fewer Poly Sci degrees in Congress than you would think. Face it, if Palin is underqualified, so is Obama. So let's get over the experience hurdle, shall we? If you stopped and really looked for even a second, you would see that Obama is all about getting the job, not doing the job. And as for Biden, well he never met a fact he couldn't change to fit his opinion. Let's have a vice-president who's own supporters agree his mouth repeatedly gets him into trouble, and let him talk with world leaders.
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I would disagree about a good manager not having to know how to do a job. Every good manager I have ever had has been able to do my job, and, in fact, did do my job at some point. This includes working in multiple state positions (for example, I worked for several months as a member of the Americorps programs hand in hand with my state's Department of Natural Resources). Any manager who deals with anything technical, whether it be law, engineering, medicine, etc. needs to have a deep understanding of the field he or she works in, because without it you can't be expected to understand how things need to get done, just what needs to get done. And that leads to the wrong people being blamed for things not getting done and the wrong people being assigned to certain jobs.
Alaska has a different culture from the rest of the US. That being said, Michigan has a different culture than Indiana, Detroit has a different culture than Lansing. Alaska has many similarities to other conservative states, like the ones you've listed off, but also many differences. These stem from the severely different job market from the rest of the union, the different environment and living conditions, the different types of people who are attracted to that sort of life.
I didn't say that a poli-sci degree is necessary. Or I didn't mean to. Rather, I meant to say that a journalism degree is rather inadequate. There are plenty of leaders who are capable of leading with NO educational background, or an unrelated one. But all the people you listed off have a related background, and as it is many of our leaders do. Law, economics, political science--even sociology or psychology are highly qualified backgrounds when dealing in social services. She does NOT strike me as somebody who is naturally a qualified individual. I think if she was, her party would flaunt her around more and have her do a lot of interviews, so everybody KNEW she was a natural born leader.
I did not distort the truth. I said she used her basketball experience as an example of her character. She did just that. Analogy or not, I would expect her to use stronger and more applicable examples/analogies if she had them.
Judging people by an associate they have is ridiculous. Period. I've known racists before, I've been friends with racists before. Somebody who had a LARGE part in raising me for my entire childhood is a racist. I'm not racist. Why wouldn't we convict somebody on the things HE has said, rather than the things he has been told? He can't help what family he was born into, or what church he was raised by. Lets be honest, people go to the same churches as adults that they go to as children a majority of the time (those that do go to church as adult and child). I bet you did, if you go to church (unless you moved).
I didn't bring up her experience, I was defending that she does not have more applicable of a background than Obama, which is something you said. All I said was that Biden wasn't planning on attacking her experience. I'm not "on the experience" anything. I would rather look at what McCain has to say, what Obama has to say, what Palin has to say, and what Biden is going to make up...err...has to say.
That being said, I agree with the democratic ticket more often than the republican ticket this election. I don't really feel confident in either, it's just a matter of which is the less of two risks? I feel it is Obama, especially since I do not want to see Roe V Wade repealed and this election could be very important to the layout of the Supreme Court. I also do not want to see somebody who agreed with this president so often in power, because of how often I've seen this president act incompetently, uninformed, and how often I have been lied to by him. I'd rather vote in fresh ideas that haven't yet been proven than vote in old ideas that have been proven...to be a negative. I'm not super excited about Obama, I'm not super excited about McCain. I REALLY dislike Palin, and I'm more or less neutral on Biden.
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You seem to be comparing a direct supervisor to a Manager or Director. A good manager can't be bogged down by every detail, that is the point of delegation. Why do you think the term Micromanager is considered a slight? A good manager makes informed decisions and stick by those decisions, has to trust the people that work for him to do their jobs, and hold them accountable if they don't. If they could do it all, they wouldn't need anybody working for them, would they? Your fear of Roe v Wade being overturned means that you agree with the democratic ticket more in every election, not just this one. The Supreme Court could overturn Roe v Wade right now, but they won't, and they won't even if all nine justices are Conservatives. A compromise must be reached, and unlike the judges in your party, conservatives rarely get accused of legislating from the bench. You spew the "he lied" spin when you talk about Bush. If there was really any factual evidence to support these claims, he would have been impeached when the dems took over congress, period.
You forget that the economy was improving 2 years ago, right about the time the Republicans called for Fannie and Freddie oversight. Bush called for it a few times, but got nowhere, and you didn't hear about it until days after the collapse. Despite this, voters are still placing the majority of blame on Bush and McCain. Even Bill Clinton agrees the Dems screwed up. Is anybody really paying attention?
If you think Obama's plans are new, you haven't looked into them very closely. Nothing he is proposing is new or fresh. He is full of empty promises to get elected. Do you honestly believe that increasing taxes on Corporations that are losing money and cutting jobs will help create new jobs? How can taking more money from an already struggling system make it better? The feds gave Chrysler, GM, and Ford a 28 BILLION dollar loan two weeks ago. Why? because they employ over a million american workers, and for them to go under would be a disaster. You can't raise taxes when the target can't afford to run things now. That is assinine! Worse than that, Obama wants to give the Federal government, who even he admits is irresponsible, MORE MONEY! If you had a friend that asked you for 100 bucks to help pay his rent, and you found out that he used sixty of it to buy a video game, would you continue to loan him money? Of course not! We need to get control of government before they get more money, not after. There may be greedy rich people out there, but they still do much more to help this country investing it themselves than giving it to the government, and if companies fell they are getting shafted, they will move their plants to more tax-friendly countries. We already saw this happen as a result of the dot com implosion. Companies began outsourcing to other countries in order to remain competitive. As for his health care plan; we tried this already with car insurance. "If everyone has car insurance, more money will be in the system and we won't have to worry about paying for uninsured motorists". Did anyone's insurance rates go down? Nope! It was allowing competition between all the insurance companies that helped auto insurance. So if you did actually look past your Pro-Choice hazed perspective, you would see that Obama's plans have already been tried before, and the last thing we should want right now is increased Government control over anything. Obama said that Earmarks only accounted for 17 billion dollars of the budget, but how many votes were bought with those earmarks, and how much money did those bills end up costing us?
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darxbane, I think it likely that nine conservative judges would overturn Roe v. Wade in short order. Two or three more conservative judge might get it done. A couple more strict constructionists like Thomas, and it would be gone. Roberts talked about super-stare-decesis, but Alito declined to and Scalia's and Thomas's beliefs it should be overturned are well documented.
Of course, I agree it should be overturned, but there was a whole thread about abortion.
In general, though, I think that reading into the constitution things that aren't there is a bad idea.
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Judging people by an associate they have is ridiculous. Period. I've known racists before, I've been friends with racists before. Somebody who had a LARGE part in raising me for my entire childhood is a racist. I'm not racist. Why wouldn't we convict somebody on the things HE has said, rather than the things he has been told? He can't help what family he was born into, or what church he was raised by. Lets be honest, people go to the same churches as adults that they go to as children a majority of the time (those that do go to church as adult and child). I bet you did, if you go to church (unless you moved).
I disagree. I believe that it is ridiculous to judge people by an associate they didn't choose - e.g. a relative - but an association freely made in adult life can certainly illustrate a person's character and values. This is particularly true when the person maintains and defends the association over a long period of time.
In Obama's case, it is my understanding that the church he chose to attend as an adult has little to do with the way he was raised. I believe his mother and grandmother did not encourage regular attendance at any particular church, but rather fostered religious open-mindedness or perhaps atheism. If anything, I believe his ancestral roots were Methodist on one side and Muslim on the other. As far as I know, his childhood religion had no direct correlation with his later choice to affiliate with a black United Church of Christ with a tendency towards liberation theology. I'm certainly no expert on Obama's biography, so please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
In my opinion the choice of a church, as an adult, should be made primarily based on agreement with that church's teachings rather than on a feeling of familiarity or inertia from childhood. I, personally, have always chosen churches on that basis whenever I have moved, and I currently attend a different church than my parents do, even though we live in the same town. However, I understand and agree with your point that statistically this does not tend to be the case; most people end up believing what their parents believed and attending the church (if any) that their parents attended. But if what I said above of Obama is true, he (like me) bucked that trend and made an independent choice for his adult religious affiliation. Thus, I think it is fair to hold him accountable for that choice.
I would likewise hold accountable a politician who joined the KKK while arguing that he disagreed with the racism expressed by other KKK members; he simply joined because the leader was an old family friend and mentor. Now, this is obviously an extreme and imperfect analogy. I realize that the KKK is pretty much all about racism and nothing else, while the same is not true of the UCC or even of Jeremiah Wright's particular congregation - I'm sure that the majority of the time Wright preaches about other things than white hatred. Obama could argue that he affiliated himself with Wright because of these other things he preaches; however, he didn't argue this - he just argued that Wright was an old friend and mentor and Obama felt the same loyalty toward him as toward his white grandmother. I bought this argument and was filled with admiration for Obama's wisdom and strength of character, standing up for a friend even when it hurt him politically - right up until a week later, when he switched course and threw Wright under the bus. It wasn't that Wright was saying anything new or different than what Obama had already excused him for saying, it was just that he hadn't let the issue die like Obama apparently hoped he would. That was my moment of disillusionment in this campaign, when I became convinced that Obama was just another politician.
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I suppose you're right. While I would like to see some restrictions placed on abortions, I don't think it can made completely illegal. However, I agree that the Supreme Court stretched itself pretty thin by attaching it to Right to Privacy.
Here, Here, Sarah. You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends. I rarely attend church, but I have never heard either myself, nor from anyone else, that any Priest in my church has ever spoken ill of another human being during church service. If a priest did start touting racial bigotry, he would not be in that church for long.
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Thanks, darx. I would also add that actually joining an organization (such as a church) shows even more about someone's character, beliefs, and values than simply being friends or business associates with someone questionable. Many of us don't agree with all of our friends on every issue, nor should we, but when we make the conscious decision to become members of a given group, we'd better think carefully about that group's purpose and teachings. That's what membership is all about - choosing to align yourself with, to be identified with, a particular group and its beliefs.
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I am in complete agreement. Unfortunately, none of that seems to matter as long as you tell people what they want to hear and play on their fears and weaknesses. Between his quite poor judgement of character and his inability to make a choice whenever it is not politically convenient, I don't see how anyone can think he is more presidential or more fit to lead than McCain.
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First of all, this election seems more important, to my understanding, than elections in general to the nature of Roe V Wade and the Supreme Court. Secondly, yes, abortion is an important issue to me because I feel that a part of this nation wants to take away what I see as a natural right, and on the basis (in majority) of religion. You can call me whatever names you would like because I've taken the opposite stance on an issue than you, and strongly so, but it doesn't change the fact that I am justified in every way to be willing to vote one way or another in an election based on what I see as an important issue. You are also wrong if you think that there aren't republicans who want to just overturn Roe V Wade--there are a lot of them. I'd be perfectly willing to make an agreement somewhere in the middle of the road, and happily, as I've expressed on the board before. But there's an entire other thread for this.
I would agree Obama didn't handle the press' assaults well when he eventually abandoned Wright. But I still think it is ridiculous that Wright says occasional remarks, and a is known to have a generally strong congregation and positive message, and use it to assault a congregation member. Do I assault Catholic politicians because they remained Catholic after the scandals with children? No, because that would be ridiculous. If they were involved, that would be different. Obama wasn't the one spouting off unacceptable speech, and there are many reasons for him to stay with a long time friend and mentor, even if he doesn't always agree with him.
Bush did lie, he has lied, and he probably should have been impeached. He has lied or distorted the truth throughout his presidency. His administration oversaw the largest surplus and turned it into the largest deficit. I have agree with few of the policies Bush has supported that I have heard of. Just because you support a president, which you have every right to do, does not mean I can't disagree with him. You're also right when you say that I generally will side with democrats, because I am a liberal. I, in fact, do not like democrats and republicans primarily because they agree on too many issues and do not give me enough options for many issues in which I disagree with both. I'm liberal, I never denied that. I'm also an independent, and do not/will not always agree/vote for democrats. I will be MUCH more likely to vote democrat than republican because I disagree with republicans more often. I wish there were more major parties so I could find one that agreed with me on more issues that I find to be important civil liberty issues. These are the issues that I find most important.
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Do I assault Catholic politicians because they remained Catholic after the scandals with children? No, because that would be ridiculous. If they were involved, that would be different. Obama wasn't the one spouting off unacceptable speech, and there are many reasons for him to stay with a long time friend and mentor, even if he doesn't always agree with him.
Surely, though, you would assault a Catholic politician whose old friend and mentor was a priest found guilty of molesting children - if that politician remained friends with that priest, and continued to consider him a mentor, and remained a member of the priest's congregation without calling for the priest's dismissal.
The Catholic church as a whole does not condone child molestation, so membership in the Catholic church as a whole does not imply agreement with child molesters. However, knowingly remaining under the spiritual leadership of an individual priest who is a molester is another matter.
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Let's put the whole "surplus" argument to bed, shall we? Copy and paste the below link. the information is taken directly from US Treasury archives. I know, you were young then, and weren't paying attention. Whatever. You still have failed to provide a specific example of how Bush lied that is in any way more grievous than any other politician who has held office in the last 20 years.
HTTP://www/letxa.com/articles/16
Surprised you've never heard this before? Don't be. While I will be the first to admit that Bush made some mistakes, he had issues to deal with that no president had had to deal with sinceWWII. He was over-focused on National Security and the war, but that is a natural reaction to being attacked, especially when the Feds ignored 8 years of hints, and even reduced Defense and Security spending to aid in their "surplus". Because of this, we were attacked, and had to jack up spending for defense. At the same time, the dot com bubble evaporate (before Bush even set up his first budget, as the article states), and the economy is sent spiraling. In addition to the obvious impact to the attack, the economic impact caused by the loss of those two buildings greatly exacerbated the problem. People became afraid that more economic institutions would be attacked, so they started pulling out their money. What you, and most other liberal-leaning people don't take into account is that the media is on your side, and they have never gotten over the 2000 election. They were determined to undermine Bush any chance they got. They have been utterly unable to contain their vitriole and bias to this day. So, you have been receiving filtered information from teachers and the media through your entire adult life. Crazy, isnt it?
Of course I know there are Reps that want to completely ban abortion, just like their are Libs who want it completely unrestricted. However, McCain does not support a ban, and any judge he picks has to get by the Senate. So if I were you, I would be much more concerned that the Dems in the Senate are schrooing the pooch to the point where they may lose control again in the next 4 years if they are not careful.
Now, an almost completely unrelated question: Do you feel that Barney Frank should lose his House seat due to his comments and conflict of interest regarding Fannie and Freddie? He'll get reelected in Mass, probably by an 80% margin, but even a murderer can get elected in Mass if he/she is a democrat.
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Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/?gclid=CKaa6bPHmpYCFRfAQAodCBuB6w
There's a list of times his administration lied about weapons of mass destruction. There's also quite a few times we've been mislead or lied to about the nature of Iraq's "civil war" status, the nature of the cost of the war, the nature of our success in the war, the nature of Iraw's links to Al Queda, American sanctioned torture, the firing of judicial officials and other officials under his administration, and more. Lots of politicians lie or misrepresent the truth on purpose on issues just as important just as often, and each and every one of them should also be removed from office.
That link doesn't bring me anywhere. Yes, I was surprised I was sent to a link of random other links, each of which is a sponsored advertisement.
Yeah, Bush didn't have it easy. Nobody says he did. He didn't completely screw everything up. He screwed up enough throughout his presidency (starting with being elected without the popular vote--before he was even president coming into office dishonestly) that I don't want to bring in anybody like him, although admittedly McCain would probably be better.
Like I said, not all media is on our side. As I showed you earlier, the largest media corporation in the world has a conservative bias (the extent of that bias depends on what angle you look at it, it appears. Ironically, I have FOX on right now). Bush was elected in 2000, for example, partially because he had a cousin in high places within conservative media who said Bush won before the results are in, leading to all media doing so, and thus putting pressure on the system to see Bush as the victor. The democratic politicians, just like the Republican politicians, in Washington are childish. They always are.
Yeah, the democratic congregation isn't really doing anything. That also angers me. I only have two parties to choose from, and like I've said, I don't really like either one. I see Obama as the lesser of two poor choices.
I'm going to be honest, I am not really knowledgable of the Barney Frank situation. I think if he lied, or ESPECIALLY if he performed poorly in overseeing the agencies because of conflict of interest (sleeping with corporations is one of the lowest things I think a politician can do), he should be removed from office. I don't know enough about the situation to truly give you a good answer, but I hope that gives you a decent idea where I stand.
Oh, and I meant to say something in my last post that I didn't: I said Obama was fresh blood, and you said he doesn't have new ideas. But he does have a fresh point of view, and a fresh means of coming to his conclusions--more so than McCain. If you get a great new basketball player on your local team, he's using the same fundamentals. It's an imperfect analogy, but I'd rather see some new perspective. Another reason I dislike McCain's campaign right now is it seem more blatantly focused on the negative, rather than the issues (which McCain admitted in a way, saying, "this campaign would be different if Obama had agreed to going around in town halls as I requested"), not that Obama's campaign has been all tulips and roses.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I wish there were more major parties so I wasn't stuck choosing one of these guys. I think Obama will do a better job, I'd hardly describe myself as an Obama supporter (although I am supporting him...I hope that makes sense).
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I will find a way to make that link work. Obviously, you need to look into your civics, because the populare vote is not needed to elect a president, and it hasn't for 150 years. The electoral vote is what counts. Why? Because people in close groups (like cities) tend to share viewpoints, and also have bias towards candidates from their area. If you believe that Bush one because one alleged Conservative media person declared him the winner early, then how come Kerry didn't win in '04, when all but 1 media outlet (I won't keep bringing up the name) projected Kerry as the winner because of exit polls? More to the point, how come Bush ended up winning Florida when everyone projected Gore as the winner? You are wrong about Bush lying about Iraq, you are definitely wrong about him and his administration lying about a civil war in Iraq. There has never been one. Iran and Syria born insurgents were trying to send Iraq into Civil War, but it was prevented. Most of the people I work with have done tours in Iraq, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that what you have been hearing on TV every day for the past 5 years is a complete misrepresentation of what was and is happening over there. I will not repeat myself, but I have already told you about how 3 countries in addition to the US had similar intelligence about WMD's, so if Bush lied, he found a way to dupe 4 different intelligence agencies. How foolish is that to believe? You want to know the mistakes Bush made in Iraq? He tried to appease the doves by keeping troop levels the same when his generals were asking for more. He didn't get on TV Every Day to tell people that the war would take 5-10 years, and that an insurgency was possible (he said it once at first, but didn't repeat it, and of course no one else brings it up). Also, seeing as the official reports all conclude that Hussein could have been producing WMD's within 1 year of the lifting of sanctions, the first paragraph of that article you attached proves that he didn't lie, as it states that the Bush admin believed he either had WMD's OR was trying to produce them. In my opinion, bribing UN officials with Oil and keeping the money that is supposed to feed his people shows he was trying to do just that.
www.letxa.com/articles/16
There, it should work this time. I like backing things up with facts when I can.
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Link did work this time. "While not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, it is aggravating seeing Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus." I believe I said earlier, accompanied with a link to a US treasury page, or some such sort, that the surplus was according to some financial mumbo-jumbo talk, using different words, of United States accountants/treasury, but these are the same terms that are used to measure Bush's financial responsibility, which means I see them as accurate, professional definitions of terms as they are used in accordance with the way national deficit is measured. I can understand how you might get tired of hearing this argument from people who don't understand what was meant by "surplus", but I assure you I do understand that it is not being used in the way we may expect in everyday language, but I continue to use it not to distort the truth; I continue to use the term because that is the term that was used professionally by the persons evaluating the national monetary situation, and thus I see them as accurate terms. Especially since the same system is being used to measure Bush's administration, and every other administration after-the-fact.
You're right, our system isn't based directly on the popular vote because it is ridiculously outdated. But it is run based on the assumption that the electoral college will vote with the popular vote. Predictions and declarations are different, and it didn't work out in Kerry's favor because the situation was different, plain and simple. As far as I see it, using loopholes in the system to gain control of the country is despicable, and I would immediately dislike any candidate who did so, Republican, Democrat or otherwise. I think the system needs a major overhaul in nearly every aspect, and I don't see Democrats or Republicans doing enough to change it--I just see them becoming more and more like each other as time passes.
And I don't want to go back into the Iraq War lie argument any more than you do, so I not repeat myself. I just think it stands to say that after the testimonies of intelligence officials and government officials, it is pretty obvious to me that Bush misrepresented the truth at BEST. He was even quoted as to saying, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." Whoops.
And so negating the Iraq War misrepresentation argument, as to not repeat ourselves, you've still ignore all the other categories in which Bush's administration has regularly refused to testify, purposefully distorted or misrepresented the truth or flat out lied.
Like I said before, you can continue to like, or admire, or whatever this president if you wish. I do not. There is very little about his presidency that I have respected, and there has been a lot of I have disliked. This is difference of opinion--you always rag on me about how I have this liberal bias and it makes me see things distorted, but it's not like you don't also have a bias. Our biases are really just a compilation of our opinions on events, which frame the world for us. I respect the fact that your world-view allows you to like a president that I cannot fathom respecting. I have given plenty of reasons why I dislike Bush, many of which have not been countered or even mentioned, and many others of which have been countered with reasons or logic that I do not find more compelling than the ones on the side that I have taken. A few points you have made have hit home, but certainly not enough to change my opinion of the administration.
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And that is fine. I am not out to convince you that you should run around chanting "W Rules!". I am simply pointing out that some reasons you have given are themselves the result of misrepresentation, and even lies. The only reason I go after you so strongly is that some of your arguments are full of misplaced dislike. Bush did not create the electoral college, nor did he have a secret task force running around hiding votes or holding people at gunpoint so they couldn't vote. He was the legal winner of both elections. Had the roles been reversed, you would not feel so strongly opposed to this event (and I quite possibly could be the one upset about it). However, the electoral college was created specifically to prevent the tyranny of the majority, not to mirror the popular vote. By your own admission, each state has cultural differences, as well as different needs. Ironically, this system supports what you believe by preventing the populous from too much power. If every decision was made by a majority vote, there would be no gay marriage, no abortion, the civil rights movement may not have happened, etc. Just because it didn't work out in your favor doesn't mean it is outdated. It is a control.
I attached that link in response to your criticism that we went from the largest surplus to the biggest deficit. It doesn't matter if you admitted earlier that it was due to financial double-speak. You still used it as a criticism. If you don't agree with how Bush handled situations, that's fine. We will agree in some cases and disagree in others. However, if you use arguments to justify your position that are based on conjecture and manipulated facts, it weakens the rest of your reasoning. I may be a little too much of a Bush defender, but it is only because I have seen repeated and well organized campaigns to smear him and Republicans in general. This has become personal for the Left, and when I catch somebody in enough lies (and when I say lies I mean absolute unequivicable non-truths), personal attacks, and one-sided arguments, I begin to stop listening. Whether we went to war in Iraq will always be a point of contention. However, the media coverage of the war was despicable, and the Dems were so intent on taking over the White House that they ignored anything positive, and all but ensured we would lose no matter what (ironically, this type of behavior is exactly what they condemn Bush for during the decision to go to war in the first place).
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Had the roles been reversed, I would be JUST as angry about a candidate who did not win the election's popular vote taking advantage of a legal loophole. Whether he be third party, or EITHER main party. I wasn't blaming Bush for the electoral college, I'm upset at the system that allowed a person who did not win the popular vote take a position. I dislike Bush for a slew of other reasons, such as taking advantage of the system. The Electoral College was created because people used to be uneducated, and the educated feared the decisions they made. It was wrong when it was made to tout being a democracy but have systems in place to keep an elite, be it the intellectual, the economic or the political, or others elite, with an edge. And it is still wrong today.
The Judicial system is a control for moral reasons, to keep the majority from getting out of control with immoral laws. And nobody was complaining about having that check and balance--the judicial system wasn't enacted, nor was it intended, to keep one group of people in front of another.
Yeah, the democrats are disgusting too. Politicians are. Right now, I have a largest complaint with Bush's administration because it is the longest living and most powerful example of this crap. Maybe if Obama is put into presidency, I'll like what he does. Maybe he'll be just like Bush and I'll have problems with him, too. But I can rest almost assured that McCain will be more like Bush than Obama.
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Somehow I doubt that, especially if the president turned out to be the best ever. We don't live in a democracy, do we? We live in a Republic. Sure, we have some democratic processes, but we do not vote on everything, we elect representatives to speak for us. We do the same thing when electing a president. The Electorate was not made to prevent the "uneducated" from making mistakes. It was made to prevent small, densely populated regions of people from monopolizing the presidency. Before the Electorate was created, every president came from the NorthEast. the remaining states, which had very different needs (city folk didn't really care about farmers, as long as they got food), couldn't get representation. Do you understand mob and self interest mentality? The electorate allows each state to have the same power electing a president as they have representation in the House. In fact, each state has the same number of electoral votes as representatives. This is called balance. It also wasn't the first time it happened.
Contrary to popular belief, the Bush Admin is not the longest standing example. Congress is a much more colorful example of the problems with our current political landscape. It is also an example of what is wrong with us. Sports are always a great comparison to life. What sports do you like? Baseball? Football? If a team has no talent, will firing the coach somehow make the team better? Most of the time it doesn't, but it makes people feel like something is being done.
Barack Obama could be completely different from Bush and make things worse. You don't have the luxury of working with so many current and former military and police personnel. I know things that the public have not been able to filter out of the crap the media spews just to bash Bush adn support their own selfish agendas. I know of other things that have never been made public in order to prevent mass panic. Believe me, the focus on keeping Terrorists busy on as many fronts as possible is more necessary than you can even begin to realize, and I am not saying this to scare you. The fact that you are still able to be angry with Bush and feel so comfortable in life is proof that he succeeded in his number one agenda, to make America safe. If you look even closer, you will find that, before the dems gaffed the chance to rein in Fanni and Freddie in 2006, we had lower unemployment rates, higher revenues than the Clinton era, and an all time record stock market number. I keep hearing about tax cuts for the rich, but the way the tax cuts were structured, the top 30 % pay a higher percentage of the overall tax burden than they did under Clinton. Interesting, isn't it? It is proof that we can't help but be influenced by those on TV. They can make or break someone. I can't worry too much about it, though. Even you, Gorgon, kept the blame on Bush for 9/11 because it happened on his watch. I guess that means that Lincoln was even worse, because half the country SECEDED when he was president, and he presided over the only American Civil war! I imagine his popularity rate wasn't all that high at the time, either. The truth will come out eventually.
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We don't live in a democracy. But it is touted that we live in a democracy none the same. My point, therefor, is still perfectly valid.
The people in congress have changed, in a major part, as recently as a few years ago. Also, while I'm not a large sports person in general, a switch in coaching often can lead to a large increase in team productivity. Especially if you are switching from a terrible coach or to a great coach. Congress sucks. I know, I've said it several times. They are failing to act at important times because (big surprise) they are more obsessed with reelection than they are with issues. The Democratic congress has been doing hardly anything, and the Republican congress continuously failed to check to the president at important times until issues became publicly noticed. Bush would have been a much better president, I believe, if his congress had checked him more. This would have allowed him a fallback net which he didn't have.
I don't believe I ever flat-out blamed Bush for 9/11. I said that relieving him of all responsibility, as it sounded like you were trying to do, is ridiculous. It did happen on his watch, and there was some intelligence his administration had which they failed to act on. I never said, "It's all Bush's fault," I was defending the fact that he has some blame.
You know, it's not just as though television is bashing Bush, and all of those people who are informed really admire him for his greatness. There is plenty of literature from political scholars and even those involved in the administration who hold similar opinions to myself.
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The popular vote doesn't matter because the candidates know going in that it doesn't matter and thus don't run fully national campaigns. They only campaign hard in the swing states. Unless the electoral college is dropped completely, you can't say for sure who would win the popular vote. Bush won over 50% of the popular vote in 2004, but if the campaigns had been based on the popular vote from the start and both candidates had campaigned nationwide and fought for every vote, no one can say whether it would have turned out the same or differently.
That said, I think there is still something to be said for the electoral college system for the reasons darxbane mentioned that it was set up (though it's not true that "most" of the pre-Constitution presidents were from the Northeast). But perhaps it should be altered in some form, like adding some votes for the nationwide popular vote winner. Or making each state's votes divide up by how each district actually voted.
I also think there's a better way to vote in the first place (possibly with the electoral college overlaid). Instant runoff voting would let people vote for who they actually wanted rather than only who they thought could win (like for the Hugo awards). And the whole voter registration thing is bunk. It shouldn't be necessary to register to vote. It should be automatic.
Also, in some countries voting is mandatory. And I like the idea of "none of the above" being a possible, binding, option.
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I very much like the idea of adding in Instant Runoff Voting, or some other form of voting which allows you to pick your favorite without fear of taking votes away from a major candidate. I also like the idea of "none of the above", which takes away any excuse people have to not vote. I do not like the idea of mandatory voting for two reasons. Forcing a person to vote, even if it is in their best interest, is still forcing a person to do something outside the realm of power I think the government should have. Also, the people who tend to not vote also tend to be the people who are uninformed or simply do not care, which means if they do vote (even if "no opinion" is given as an option), many are likely to make uninformed decisions just because they're told to.