Why John Kerry will (I personally hope not) lose t. Election

If it helps, I don't think Kerry will lose the election, as much as he deserves to.

Bush is doing more to lose the election than Kerry is. Stem cell, negative campaigning, giving the "religious extremist" lable weight. are all great ways to lose. The economy and the Iraqi insurgents are also working to aid him.

This is a race to the bottom. Kerry is not a good candidate, but someone has to not lose this election. It looks like this will be Kerry.

There is a difference between being against the war and properly funding a war that we are already committed to.

Cycloptichorn

In 2000 Bush gained the elections controversial . Probable this happens again? Because of his (stronger? ) lobby.

I read this column yesterday. The part where he talks about Kerry not getting a bounce got my attention:



The only problem is, when I followed the link to the article he references, and then followed the link to the actual survey, it's Kerry that leads Bush 50 to 46 among everyone. He has a lower edge over Bush among registered voters. Nowhere in the survey does Bush lead Kerry at all. It is kind of interesting that the author didn't dig very deep, even though such a polling result seems suspicious on its face.

I think what has been said about Kerry's support of the war or lack there of goes little deeper than most are addressing in the press. The problem with the first Gulf War was that Rumsfeld had given the wink and nod to Hussein to go ahead and invade and indicated the US would not get involved. I believe at that time Kerry was on the intellegence committee. We don't and won't know what made him cast that vote unless Kerry CAN tell us. We have to at least consider that perhaps he can't due to national security.

Since the whole war thing is secretive, I don't think you can look at senate votes as an indication of a politicians take on something without reading and analyzing the whole bill. I don't think many people will do that. I don't think many people will consider that there may have been some "pork" or funding included for unnecessary items, or that perhaps the level of funding wasn't enough and therefore warranted an NO vote.

The politicians and the press try to put the info into sound bites without examining what might really be behind the vote. I happen to be guilty of this, too, since I certainly do not have time to read all of the bills offered up for votes.

BTW, I believe an increase in military pay was provided by executive order for each of at least two of the past three years, so supposedly our military men and women are getting pay raises. Since that was done, one would have to compare that to what was offered as pay in the $87M bill Kerry voted against in order to understand if he was voting against the support of our military men and women or against something else that was in the bill, as well as the timing of it as it relates to the executive orders.

Complicated. Much more complicated than most of us consider.

I find the resurgence of the stem cell issue interesting, especially in light of successes with non-embryonic stem cells above and beyond what the "only embryonic stem cells will work" crowd previously insisted (and still apparently insists despite news of which one would think they'd be aware) was possible with stem cells from other sources.



Check other sources for yourself:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=bone+marrow+stem+cells+heart

Anyhow, the point is that the media seems intent on convincing people that Bush is blocking stem cell research. This is not the case. Federal money is available for, and being used for, loads of stem cell research including work with bone marrow stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells. Bush has drawn a line at destroying embryos to get what we clearly have other viable sources for. That seems reasonable to me. (The media coverage and spin on the administration's position does not.)

Thok
Thok, the author of the article is well-known for his political bias. Adam Sparks works for the Evangelical Alliance in the UK. His views about the Democrats and Kerry in particular are tainted with bias. I realize that, as a comentator, he need not be fair and balanced, but you must placed his article in the wider context of his archives.

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/sparks/archive/

BBB

Re: Thok

That's fair, but then it's also fair to point out that Maureen Dowd is well-known for her political bias, which is decidedly not pro-Bush. Her opinion, cited above, is clearly not the result of any anti-Kerry bias.

It seems to me that everyone is known for their political bias with the exception of PDiddie and McGentrix

(Scrat, good to see you back regardless of your political affiliations)

Thanks, though FWIW I like to think of my affiliations as ideological, not political. My stance in favor of same-gender unions raises as many eyebrows around my Republican friends as does my stance on welfare programs around Democrats I know and love.

<smile> ideology it is, then. Well, my friend, whoever wins this election, I just hope we can get the world in better shape than it is as we speak, but I doubt that either candidate will aspire that far. Guess it's up to the musicians and plebians.

While I don't doubt that there are plenty around A2K who will disagree with me on this, I'm inclined to believe that we (globally) are already better off than we were just a couple of years ago, and that we will continue along this path of improvement if we can stay the current course. I write this, despite being aware of reporting coming from around the globe that suggests that things are a bit of a mess and potentially getting more messy, because of my personal experience cleaning house. You see, there's always a point when I'm cleaning my house that--in order to bring order out of chaos--it seems as though I have made things worse than they were before I started out. Of course, whether I have actually made things worse is a function of whether I keep moving forward or drop what I'm doing and just walk away.

I believe that's a valid analogy for where we are today. It's easy for media pundits and anti-everything squallers to point to the mess in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere and cite it as evidence that things are getting worse rather than better. The problem is, their proposed solution is invariably to stop what we're doing and walk away, which approach would not so much prove their point as actually make their point for them. You wouldn't ask the surgeon who has your spouse's ribcage spread open to stop what he's doing on the basis that your spouse--split open from neck to navel--appears worse off than when he or she came in earlier presenting with chest pain. You wouldn't tell the mechanic who has dismantled your car's engine to get at the faulty part that the fact that the engine is currently in pieces--where it was in one piece when you brought it in--proves that he's taken the wrong course to repairing it.

Yes, it's hard not to look around the globe right now and think that things are currently a mess, which makes it all the more important to remember what it is we're doing, where we're headed, and why. Without considering the context of our actions and where we are along our chosen path, it's virtually impossible to make any meaningful assessment of either the advisability of our actions or the likelihood of their success.

There are a lot of proposed solutions out there besides 'walking away.' Most of them have to do with general policies and not individual ones, though I feel there is room to improve on individual policies as well.



There are quite a few out there that would argue that a path that begins with deceit has a hard time ending honorably.

Other than that, WB to the debate.

Cycloptichorn

I don't think your analogy is a good one Scrat, for this reason.

In all the examples you gave, there is a well articulated plan and a fairly predictable outcome. In this case, there is neither.

A responsible surgeon will stop a surgery if something unpredictable happens. In cases where patients start bleeding unexpectedly of course doctors stop the surgery to stabilize the patient. Of course these decisions depend on what is best for the patient and are very situational. But, this "we need to finish what we started at all costs" is clearly not rational.

The question is, how do you know when you should keep going in spite of setbacks, and when you should cut your losses and stop.

It is clear to me that both of these actions are correct at times.

But the questions you raised in your post are interesting ones that are relevant to this issue. So I will ask them of you.

- What is it that we are doing?
- Where are we headed?
- Why?

The answers to these questions are not at all clear. This is one of the main reasons I am so sure that continuing on our present course is futile and disastrous.

And I suspect that there are even more who recognize the difference between deceit and error. Neither are desirable, but the former involves intent where the latter seems to have been widespread, including the leadership of many nations who supported the Iraq war and many more who did not.

And that's ignoring the bigger issue that while the question of WMD was (sadly) trotted out as being a palatable reason for resuming combat in Iraq due to Saddam's choice to breach the ceasefire, it was not--in reality--the primary reason for doing so. The question of whether Saddam had WMD--which it is quite clear he did--is inconsequential when compared to the question of whether he was adhering to the terms of the ceasefire and submitting to the will of the world community as he had promised to do.

Saddam was arrogant and stupid. Had he toed the line (the one he'd agreed to toe) he'd still be there happily heading his quaint little thugocracy, murdering and torturing to his heart's content. He chose to thumb his nose at the world, not only failing to eschew terror or his designs on possessing WMD, but also making no real effort even to appear to be doing so. He gambled that what was true during 8 years of Clinton--that he could do anything and suffer no consequences--was still true under Bush, and he found to his surprise that his gamble was a bad one.

It's not ignoring it - that IS the deceit.

If a clear and reasonable case had been made to the American people about the neccessity to remove Saddam from power due to the fact that he continually ignored sanctions and committed mass human rights violations, without the huge drumming of a WMD threat presented by the admin, I would not have such a problem with our actions there.

I suspect the American people would not have supported such an attack against a country that clearly is no immediate threat against the U.S. The fact that the admin decided to take use scare-tactics to drum up support for the war is dishonorable.

I hope for, but cannot see, a good outcome to our situation in Iraq. When a house is built on a shaky foundation; the greater the house, the greater the disaster in the end.

Cycloptichorn

Cy - If you do a little research and pay particular attention to what Bush and the administration actually said--as opposed to where the relentless media focus was to be found--I think you will find your argument uncompelling, if not baseless.

I think that the admin went about this very carefully.

They used three tactics in order to cover their asses on this one, and they both worked beautifully in manipulating those who couldn't see through the rhetoric:

1. Conflation. Bush mentioned Iraq and Al Quaeda together in speeches CONSTANTLY. This has the effect of linking the two together in people's minds, and explains why we saw all those polls where people believed Iraq was linked to 9/11.

2. Deniablity. Phrases such as 'according to evidence' and 'our best evidence shows' lend credence to Bush's message while never actually having made claims himself about WMD. When the claims turn out to be unfounded, the admin can easily point the finger at the alphabet agencies. The claims were made despite the fact that there was significant evidence that the information was false, and very little fact checking done - Powell's speech to the U.N., for example, was based on British intelligence, which it turns out was plagarized from a 1994 graduate student thesis.

3. Scare tactics. The admin didn't present a case to us as logical adults. Instead, they beat the terror drum over and over. People who are scared of an external threat are more likely to band together to support a cause than those who feel no impending sense of danger. I highly doubt that the American public would have supported a march to war based upon Saddam's human rights violations.

As to research, over the last four years, I have spent thousands of hours of my free time poring over documents, watching admin press releases, following footnotes, and studying ideology and history of the middle east. I know what went on. I shook my head at the deceit back then the same way as I do now.

I find it hard to believe that 90% of our pre-war intelligence was flat-out wrong, and yet noone at the time noticed a thing. What is MUCH more likely, and what many have suggested (especially former members of the Admin) is that the decision was made to go to war independent of intelligence, and dissenting voices were quickly silenced.

My argument is both compelling and with a solid base in reality, unlike the admin's arguments, thank you very much.

Cycloptichorn

Dowd observed in an NPR interview with Terry Gross that after interviewing both men Bush came across as down to earth and comfortable with himself while Kerry came across as stiff, pompous, a bit condescending, and insecure. In a close election those characteristics could make the difference between winning and losing .

Glad to see you back Scrat.