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Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

 
 
Ethel2
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 09:33 am
well, that's ok, Bill. I just thought I'd answer your question. I don't require that you respond. Smile
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BillW
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 12:34 pm
Thanks http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung0304/sehrgrosse/large-smiley-005.gif
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 12:41 pm
Ehem, looking at the avatar: exactly where are you kissing Lola, Bill?
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BillW
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 01:48 pm
She does have pretty legs Cool I personally own other pictures of them :wink:
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Ethel2
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 06:59 pm
oh no, don't be kissing me there.........ooooouuuu. Laugh You guys cut that out!
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Ethel2
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 10:48 pm
Yet again another call for the end of the Bush regime. Regime change in the U. S. seems more likely everyday. Could it really be true that the American people are coming to their senses?


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/opinion/13FRIE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position



Quote:
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 11:05 pm
Lola, That's a wrap. What more needs to be said? Thx, c.i.
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Ethel2
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 11:15 pm
True, c.i., but here is more being said. Sorry I don't have the link for this, but here it is anyway. I'll try to get it tomorrow. Pat Buchanan is unhappy with Bush. Isn't Buchanan a member of the conservative base Mr. Bush has to please?

Quote:
A Time for Truth
by Patrick J. Buchanan

With pictures of the sadistic sexual abuse of Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison still spilling out onto the front pages, it is not too early to draw some conclusions.

The neoconservative hour is over. All the blather about "empire," our "unipolar moment," "Pax Americana" and "benevolent global hegemony" will be quietly put on a shelf and forgotten as infantile prattle.
America is not going to fight a five- or 10-year war in Iraq. Nor will we be launching any new invasions soon. The retreat of American empire, begun at Fallujah, is underway.

With a $500 billion deficit, we do not have the money for new wars. With an Army of 480,000 stretched thin, we do not have the troops. With April-May costing us a battalion of dead and wounded, we are not going to pay the price. With the squalid photos from Abu Ghraib, we no longer have the moral authority to impose our "values" on Iraq.

Bush's "world democratic revolution" is history.

Given the hatred of the United States and Bush in the Arab world, as attested to by Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, it is almost delusional to think Arab peoples are going to follow America's lead.

It is a time for truth. In any guerrilla war we fight, there is going to be a steady stream of U.S. dead and wounded. There is going to be collateral damage - i.e., women and children slain and maimed. There will be prisoners abused. And inevitably, there will be outrages by U.S. troops enraged at the killing of comrades and the jeering of hostile populations. If you would have an empire, this goes with the territory. And if you are unprepared to pay the price, give it up.

The administration's shock and paralysis at publication of the S&M photos from Abu Ghraib tell us we are not up to it. For what is taking place in Iraq is child's play compared to what we did in the Philippines a century ago. Only there, they did not have digital cameras, videocams and the Internet.

Iraq was an unnecessary war that may become one of the great blunders in U.S. history. That the invasion was brilliantly conceived and executed by Gen. Franks, that our fighting men were among the finest we ever sent to war, that they have done good deeds and brave acts, is undeniable. Yet, if recent surveys are accurate, the Iraqis no longer want us there.

Outside the Kurdish areas, over 80 percent of Sunnis and Shias view us as occupiers. Over 50 percent believe there are occasions when U.S. soldiers deserve killing. The rejoicing around every destroyed military vehicle where U.S. soldiers have died should tell us that the battle for hearts and minds is being lost.

Why are we so hated in the Middle East? Three fundamental reasons:

Our invasion of Iraq is seen as a premeditated and unjust war to crush a weak Arab nation that had not threatened or attacked us, to seize its oil.

We are seen as an arrogant imperial superpower that dictates to Arab peoples and sustains regimes that oppress them.

We are seen as the financier and armorer of an Israel that oppresses and robs Palestinians of their land and denies them rights we hypocritically preach to the world.

Until we address these perceptions and causes of the conflict between us, we will not persuade the Arab world to follow us.

What should Bush do now? He should declare that the United States has no intention of establishing permanent bases in Iraq, and that we intend o withdraw all U.S. troops after elections, if the Iraqis tell us to leave. Then we should schedule elections at the earliest possible date this year.

The Iraqi peoples should then be told that U.S. soldiers are not going to fight and die indefinitely for their freedom. If they do not want to be ruled by Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr or some future Saddam, they will have
to fight themselves. Otherwise, they will have to live with them, even as they lived with Saddam. For in the last analysis, it is their country, not ours.

The president should also offer to withdraw U.S. forces from any Arab country that wishes us to leave. We have already pulled out of Saudi Arabia. Let us pull out of the rest unless they ask that we remain. Our military presence in these Arab and Islamic countries, it would seem, does less to prevent terror attacks upon us than to incite them.

A presidential election is where the great foreign policy debate should take place over whether to maintain U.S. troops all over the world, or bring them home and let other nations determine their own destiny. Unfortunately, we have two candidates and two parties that agree on our present foreign policy that is conspicuously failing.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 13 May, 2004 11:43 pm
I was never a fan of Buchanan, but he's finally realized what we've been saying before this war started; it was unjustified, and it's costing us too much, and it's not winnable.
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Thomas
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 01:44 am
Sorry, not much time, and I won't be able to give you a full response until in a few days. So here's the best I can do right now
Lola wrote:
The distinction I'm concerned about, worried about, is the one I mention above. I'll call it the fundamentalists vs. those who depend on the process of rational thought.

Point taken.

Quote:
Of course, these polarities are actually points on a scale. But for the purpose of our discussion, I hope we can agree that these characteristics, to the point they predominate, are mutually exclusive.

We can. I just don't know a single country in the world where TV channels are assigned on the basis of these categories.

Quote:
Now, I think you are arguing that government regulations are always a greater danger than is the condition of no regulations at all. If this is not your argument, then please correct me.

I was talking about industry regulations such as mandatory safety procedures in firms, the FCC, and so forth. I think it is possible in principle that such regulations do good, but I can see few examples, if any, that do more good than harm in practice.

Lola wrote:
If this is what you're arguing, then let me ask you a question. Do you believe that all laws are a greater danger than having no laws at all?

No. I believe in laws to protect individual human rights, as defined in America's Bill of Rights or the French Declaration of Human Rights of 1789. In addition to that, I acknowledge that markets work imperfectly (imperfect information, monopoly power, externalties like pollution (which is bad) or basic science (which is good)). This makes it possible for a perfectly benevolent and perfectly competent government to improve the outcome from laissez-faire. But it is romantic and naive to assume that governments are competent and benevolent, for the reasons broadly outlined by public choice theory.

In the end, both industry regulations and laws against murder, slavery and theft face us with a tradeoff between market failure and government failure. On balance, I believe government failure dominates in the case of industry regulations so I prefer laissez-faire in that regard, but market failure dominates in the protection of basic human rights. Putting it all together, I end up with an ideology pretty much like the classical liberalism of the 19th century and the more moderate variants of libertarianism of the present.
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PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 10:45 am
Let's talk more about Bush being replaced.

The NRA has passed for now on endorsing Bush, and is tying any future endorsement to Bush's action on the assault weapons ban.

If he renews the ban, it won't endorse the president; if he doesn't, then he gets it.

Which is a huge political problem for Bush, as the assault weapons ban is popular amongst the suburban set the Republicans are trying mightily to hold.

Compounding his eroding base problem is that the Libertarians have a star in the making. Hollywood producer (and Emmy and Tony Award winner) Aaron Russo is the favorite to get the Libertarian Party's nomination. He's already been quoted discussing the possibility of a military draft (he's anti-draft, anti-Iraq War), and is becoming a favorite of the gun folks (already gotten the endorsement of KeepAndBearArms.com).

Many libertarian-leaning Republicans and disillusioned conservatives (Lou Dobbs of CNN leading the charge here) are looking for alternatives to Bush, so Russo may become a force to be reckoned with. With a unified Right in 2000, the Libertarian ticket received 382,892 votes (Nader and the Greens got 2.9 million). What's more:

Quote:
In addition, (the Libertarian Party) ran 1,430 candidates -- more than twice as many as all the other third parties combined. We fielded candidates for 255 of the 435 seats in the U.S. House, as well as 25 of the 33 Senate seats up for election, making the Libertarian Party the first third party in 80 years to contest a majority of the seats in Congress. On Election Day, our U.S. House candidates received 1.7 million votes -- the first time any third party has received over a million votes for the U.S. House.


I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say the Libertarians can easily double -- if not triple -- that number this year, posing a real threat to Bush, particularly in some battleground Western states.

One other wildcard to watch -- the libertarian contingent on the web is huge. In fact, many of the blogs on the Right are actually more libertarian-leaning than what passes for conservative these days. It will be interesting to see if Russo can tap into this well of support and use it to catapult into bigger prominence. It'll also be interesting to track his Meetup numbers and activity on his campaign blog.

(thanks to Daily Kos for most of this data.)
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 11:04 am
PDid, I doubt much will come of it unless the major media begins to cover this news. We don't see "Libertarians" is a force in California, because the democrats pretty much runs this state. Ahnold is an anomaly.
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BillW
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 01:06 pm
c.i. wrote:
Ahnold is an anomaly


In many, many ways Exclamation
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 01:23 pm
cicerone imposter wrote:
Ahnold is an anomaly.


Pamela Anderson, I've heard, only became a US citizen, because she wants to run for governess of SILICON valley :wink:
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 05:12 pm
I would vote for Pamela Anderson if she's on the ballot.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Fri 14 May, 2004 09:11 pm
I usually don't trust one article on any subject, but this one about Nader in the 2000 election is interesting read - although quite long. I voted for Nader in 2000 - in California.
**************
http://www.soc.qc.edu/Staff/levine/Ralph-Nader-As-Suicide-Bomber.html
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 15 May, 2004 03:21 pm
Post Turtle

Perhaps you will be inspired to help the "Post Turtle" get down.

While suturing a laceration on the hand of a 70-year old Texas Rancher (whose hand had caught in a gate while working cattle), a doctor and the old man were talking about George W. Bush being in the White House.

The old Texan said, "Well ya know, Bush is a 'post turtle'." Not knowing what the old man meant, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was. The old man said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain.

"You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the poor bastard get down."
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sat 15 May, 2004 04:34 pm
More good news from Reuters.
********
A Newsweek magazine poll released on Saturday showed Bush's job approval rating sinking to a record low for his presidency, 42 percent. The poll said 57 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of Iraq.
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Ethel2
 
  1  
Reply Sat 15 May, 2004 09:11 pm
yes!
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Sun 16 May, 2004 12:23 am
I'm going to post this one on several forum on A2K.
***********
Harsh judgement, sure, but do they have a point?




"Are we sure that the extreme Christian fundamentalists who lurk behind President Bush, with their hair-raising attitudes to gays and abortionists, are a lesser threat than the extreme Muslim fundamentalists who lurk behind several Middle Eastern regimes?"

Flaws in the American way of life

What the New Statesman and several of its commentators such as John Pilger and Ziauddin Sardar have said for the past two years is now being accepted across the political spectrum. The Independent's ex-editor Andreas Whittam Smith compares George W Bush and Tony Blair to Stalin - a comparison at which even the most dedicated anti-Americans would have baulked until now.

In the London Evening Standard, the political commentator Peter Oborne calls the US "a rogue state". The editor of Newsweek International,
Fareed Zakaria, acknowledges that, to much of the world, the US is "an international outlaw". The proposition that America had the slightest
interest in the welfare of the Iraqi people, and that a humanitarian mission could piggyback on its invasion, now looks wholly absurd.
Attacked by Arabs on 9/11, it wanted to take the battle to Arab territory (that they were different Arabs was neither here nor there); alarmed by China's growing demand for oil, it wanted to strengthen its position in the oil-rich Middle East; dedicated to aggressive capitalism, it wanted to
impose its ideology on the only region still largely resisting it.

As always, US leaders try to present America's crimes as an aberration. What happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, we are told, does not
represent "American values". Yet, the only exceptional thing is that Americans did the torturing themselves. More often, over the past two
years, the US has used secret planes to move prisoners to allied regimes that have more skill and experience in torture. Again, the deaths of
hundreds in Fallujah must be another aberration - or perhaps they didn't die at all or perhaps they were all armed terrorists.

Why we expect so much of America is a puzzle. During the Korean war, it bombed the north so intensively that it ran out of targets. In the 1960s
and 1970s, it killed an estimated three million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. At the end of the first Gulf war, it killed retreating Iraqi
conscripts in their tens of thousands. In Chile and Nicaragua, it helped armed opponents of democratically elected governments. It has tried to
squeeze the life out of Cuba for decades and took new measures to stop Cuban Americans sending cash to their families back home only the other
day. It opposes a host of international treaties - on banning nuclear tests and controlling carbon-dioxide emissions, for example - and now abjures
the Geneva Conventions as well.

How a country conducts its internal affairs is a good guide to how it will behave abroad. It may treat foreigners worse than it treats its own people, but it will not treat them better. This is why tyrants' professions of peaceful intentions should never be trusted. What misleads us about the US is its commitment to many liberal values: free speech, a free press, a robust legal system and lots of voting, for example. But this is also a country that incarcerates two million (about one in every 140) of its residents - the world's highest rate of imprisonment. One in three black men spends some part of his life behind bars. Prison regimes are sometimes harsh and abuse is frequent. The US also executes more than 50 people a year, some of them children.

The American way of life has many other shameful features: the subordination of politics to business interests; the uncontrolled possession of guns; huge social and racial inequalities; the pitiful provision of health and welfare for poor people. We tolerate these as an ally's flaw, rather as we might tolerate a few drunken binges in an otherwise amiable friend. We do not see how they add up to a vision of the world that America wishes to export - a way of life that seems comfortable enough for middle-class opinion-formers, but that brings misery to millions of others. We share, we think, "western values" and must unite against a common enemy. But are we sure that we and the Americans share the same understanding of western values? Are we sure that the extreme Christian fundamentalists who lurk behind President Bush, with their hair-raising attitudes to gays and abortionists, are a lesser threat than the
extreme Muslim fundamentalists who lurk behind several Middle Eastern regimes?

Scoff if you like, and observe that the US does not behead people in cold blood. But who knows where its unshakeable belief in its own righteousness may lead it? Wiser rulers than Britain's would hedge their bets rather more, lest they find themselves obliged to defend worse things than beatings and sexual humiliation in a Baghdad prison. America, some say, is in a "pre-fascist" era. That now looks just a little less implausible than it did a month ago.

-- The New Statesman, 17 May 2004
http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_People&newDisplayURN=200405170001

When the Franco fascists attacked their own government and the people of Spain in the 1930s, passionate people from across the globe joined in
the fight to save the country from fascism. Can we expect a similar call, one day and possibly soon, to fight to save America from itself?

********
My comment: This was sent to me by a friend in Australia, and it pretty much summarizes what I've been contending for many months. The idea that Bush and his bush-wackers are trying to bring democracy to Iraq is outrageously stupid for people to accept as "our cause." It's good to know I'm not alone in being able to see how rediculous the justifications for this war in Iraq.
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