0
   

Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

 
 
blatham
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 08:28 am

from a senior administration aide (unnamed)... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
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panzade
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 08:40 am
Yes Blatham, there are so many terrifying quotes in the magazine article I wouldn't know where to begin.
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PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 08:42 am
Should be all anyone who is still undecided needs in order to decide...

(yo, bern)
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 09:30 am
Is it true??? The New York Times has (gasp!) come out against the Bush administration !! Really !?!?!? You mean after these years of utterly objective, balanced, non-sectarian reporting from the pinnacle of all that is right and true they have finally declared a preference ! This of course should sway any right thinking observer.
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panzade
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 09:32 am
I inserted The Washington Times and Kerry into your post and had a good laugh george.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:23 am
panzade wrote:
I inserted The Washington Times and Kerry into your post and had a good laugh george.


I agree - it would work equally well. That, of course is the point.
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Lash
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:28 am
Would you say that the US is not an empire?
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:52 am
Lash wrote:
Would you say that the US is not an empire?


Quote:
Empire: (1) a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority; especially : one having an emperor as chief of state (2) : the territory of such a political unit
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Lash
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 11:01 am
Yeah...dismal word usage by me, here. Was mistaking 'empire' with hegemonic status...
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 06:03 pm
Lola wrote:

....So arrogance and snobbery must be disgusting to you only in the case of an official from the Democratic party.

Well it doesn't always disgust me. If the arrogant individual really packs the gear and exhibits a sense of humor about it, I find it a minor annoyance at worst. What twists me up is an encounter with a person who elevates him or her self to a level that appears undeserved, and, at the same time takes little notice of those around him/her. That pisses me off.

Quote:
I've never met Leahy. But I'll take your word for it. Will you take mine about Bush?

No. I think Bush is a bit out of date in his macho style, but authentic nonetheless. He does not give the impression of setting himself above others as does John Kerry.

In my book Kerry qualifies for triple Leahy status. (De Lay may also)

Quote:
Now, let's get to straigtening you out......

Sadism...........Blatham may not understand it, but I do.......

I'll bet you do! Blatham is more fanciful than I, but we share a taste for lyric things. Perhaps a bit the antithesis of Sadism. However I'm a straight up guy and I'll try anything once.
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 07:10 pm
Boy, this guy "Unnamed" sure stirs up a buncha stuff, don't he? And it seems he has no loyalty at all - he'll skewer whichever side a reporter asks him about. One thing's sure; that boy's got a job for life.
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PDiddie
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 07:15 pm
The final presidential debate convinced a number of Republicans that John Kerry should be the next President of United States:

Quote:
The final presidential debate changed James Scott's mind. After watching Bush's performance, the New Philadelphia, Ohio Republican went to the RepublicansForKerry04.org web site and endorsed John Kerry for President. Scott, who served in the US Air Force during Desert Storm, wrote "I am tired of lies, contradictions … and most importantly, Bush's total lack of regard for domestic issues." During last night's debate, Scott noted, Bush painted a rosy picture of the nation's economy. But in Ohio, Scott sees the economy only getting worse: "Jobs are leaving the area that I live in faster than people can board up the businesses," Scott wrote. "Timken, Hoover, and other companies are closing all or part of their operations. Hoover is taking these jobs overseas. But I haven't seen Bush offer any viable plans for any domestic issues. He has failed his country in nearly every way…."

Dr. Barry Taylor from West Franklin NH, another lifelong Republican, expressed outrage over Bush's continued insistence that the invasion of Iraq is key to combating terrorists. Taylor believes that the war in Iraq has driven up Islamic terrorist recruitment and has weakened national security. Until recently Taylor was an ABB voter ("Anybody but Bush"), but after the last debate he now endorses Senator Kerry for President. Dr. Taylor feels that Senator Kerry laid out an effective plan for jobs, the minimum wage, Social Security and health-care costs. Taylor told RepublicanForKerry04.org "Kerry was able to explain in simple words his case against the administration. I am very pleased to say that I am a very strong Kerry supporter now."

Matt Meltzer is a third-year college student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. The most striking fact for him in the final debate was Bush's poor advice to people who have lost their jobs: attend community college. For Meltzer, this answer showed how out of touch with reality Bush is. "Mr. President, do you know that Masters and PhD's make up the largest portion of the 5.6% unemployment rate that they have in over twenty years?" Meltzer asked. "If the best jobs that require advanced degrees are going overseas, what kind of job would a community college graduate get? How is he going to support his family and take care of his family's health insurance while he's in school?"

Phyllis Wilcox has been a Republican since the 1960s, and is currently a professor at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. She told RepublicansForKerry04.org: "Whether it's the war on terrorism, or better education, or protecting the environment, or medical assistance, or Social Security, the Bush administration has shown extreme incompetence, cronyism and favoritism toward their friends, and a thirst for absolute power. One can call their actions mistakes, but I believe that they are attacking the fundamental values that this country is built on. The nation's future is dependent on this election -- on every vote we cast." The last debate affected Phyllis Wilcox as it did James Scott, Dr. Barry Taylor, Matt Meltzer, and other steadfast Republicans; they are now strong supporters of Kerry. Says Wilcox: "Kerry will be a great President and I want him to be my next President."


Republicans for Kerry
0 Replies
 
firstthought
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 07:29 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
Is it true??? The New York Times has (gasp!) come out against the Bush administration !! Really !?!?!? You mean after these years of utterly objective, balanced, non-sectarian reporting from the pinnacle of all that is right and true they have finally declared a preference ! This of course should sway any right thinking observer.


Obviously you don't read William Safire and David Brooks a real pair of right-wingers who indulge in doublespeak : an analysis can be given in the works of Prof William Lutz the proponent of plain speaking in English.

ft Rolling Eyes
0 Replies
 
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 07:45 pm
Timber writes:
Quote:
Boy, this guy "Unnamed" sure stirs up a buncha stuff, don't he? And it seems he has no loyalty at all - he'll skewer whichever side a reporter asks him about. One thing's sure; that boy's got a job for life.


Between the misquotes, unnamed sources, and an 'unnamed member of _________committee/administration/team/party who spoke on condition of anonymity, we can usually find something to post to back up any position we wish to take.

I'm to the point now that if the source is 'unnamed', I am of the opinion the reporter made it up.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 07:46 pm
First Thought,

A fair, but modest, attempt at a put down. A bit patronizing. The pedantic flourish at the end was merely a distracting bit of puffery. Love those rolling eyes.
0 Replies
 
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:02 pm
Frank posted the eloquent endorsement for Kerry in the NY Times.

The Chicago Tribune has just as eloquently endorsed President Bush.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0410170332oct17,1,367

(Registration required but it's free)
0 Replies
 
Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:14 pm
Quote:
[size=27]Error [/size]

Sorry, the page you requested could not be found.


LMAO
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timberlandko
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:20 pm
Here, Einerjahr, my browser works just fine.

The Chicago Tribune wrote:
George W. Bush for president

Published October 17, 2004

One by one, Americans typically settle on a presidential candidate after weighing his, and his rival's, views on the mosaic of issues that each of us finds important.

Some years, though, force vectors we didn't anticipate turn some of our usual priorities--our pet causes, our own economic interest--into narcissistic luxuries. As Election Day nears, the new force vectors drive our decision-making.

This is one of those years--distinct in ways best framed by Sen. John McCain, perhaps this country's most broadly respected politician. Seven weeks ago, McCain looked with chilling calm into TV cameras and told Americans, with our rich diversity of clashing worldviews, what is at stake for every one of us in the first presidential election since Sept. 11 of 2001:

"So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny. ... All of us, despite the differences that enliven our politics, are united in the one big idea that freedom is our birthright and its defense is always our first responsibility. All other responsibilities come second." If we waver, McCain said, "we will fail the one mission no American generation has ever failed--to provide to our children a stronger, better country than the one we were blessed to inherit."

This year, each of us has the privilege of choosing between two major-party candidates whose integrity, intentions and abilities are exemplary.

One of those candidates, Sen. John Kerry, embraces an ongoing struggle against murderous terrorists, although with limited U.S. entanglements overseas. The other candidate, President George W. Bush, talks more freely about what is at risk for this country: the cold-eyed possibility that fresh attacks no better coordinated than those of Sept. 11--but with far deadlier weapons--could ravage American metropolises. Bush, then, embraces a bolder struggle not only with those who sow terror, but also with rogue governments that harbor, finance or arm them.

This was a radical strategy when the president articulated it in 2001, even as dust carrying the DNA of innocents wafted up from ground zero. And it is the unambiguous strategy that, as this page repeatedly has contended, is most likely to deliver the more secure future that John McCain wishes for our children.

A President Kerry certainly would punish those who want us dead. As he pledged, with cautiously calibrated words, in accepting his party's nomination: "Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response." Bush, by contrast, insists on taking the fight to terrorists, depriving them of oxygen by encouraging free and democratic governments in tough neighborhoods. As he stated in his National Security Strategy in 2002: "The United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. ... We cannot let our enemies strike first."

Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president.

There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned. And there are reasons--apart from the global perils likely to dominate the next presidency--to recommend either of these two good candidates.

But for his resoluteness on the defining challenge of our age--a resoluteness John Kerry has not been able to demonstrate--the Chicago Tribune urges the re-election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.

- - -

Bush, his critics say, displays an arrogance that turns friends into foes. Spurned at the United Nations by "Old Europe"--France, Germany, Russia--he was too long in admitting he wanted their help in a war. He needs to acknowledge that his country's future interests are best served by fixing frayed friendships. And if re-elected, he needs to accomplish that goal.

But that is not the whole story. Consider:

Bush has nurtured newer alliances with many nations such as Poland, Romania and Ukraine (combined population, close to 110 million) that want more than to be America's friends: Having seized their liberty from tyrants, they are determined now to be on the right side of history.

Kerry is an internationalist, a man of conspicuous intellect. He is a keen student of world affairs and their impact at home.

But that is not the whole story. Consider:

On the most crucial issue of our time, Kerry has serially dodged for political advantage. Through much of the 2004 election cycle, he used his status as a war hero as an excuse not to have a coherent position on America's national security. Even now, when Kerry grasps a microphone, it can be difficult to fathom who is speaking--the war hero, or the anti-war hero.

Kerry displays great faith in diplomacy as the way to solve virtually all problems. Diplomatic solutions should always be the goal. Yet that principle would be more compelling if the world had a better record of confronting true crises, whether proffered by the nuclear-crazed ayatollahs of Iran, the dark eccentrics of North Korea, the genocidal murderers of villagers in Sudan--or the Butcher of Baghdad.

In each of these cases, Bush has pursued multilateral strategies. In Iraq, when the UN refused to enforce its 17th stern resolution--the more we learn about the UN's corrupt Oil-for-Food program, the more it's clear the fix was in--Bush acted. He thus reminded many of the world's governments why they dislike conservative and stubborn U.S. presidents (see Reagan, Ronald).

Bush has scored a great success in Afghanistan--not only by ousting the Taliban regime and nurturing a new democracy, but also by ignoring the chronic doubters who said a war there would be a quagmire. He and his administration provoked Libya to surrender its weapons program, turned Pakistan into an ally against terrorists (something Bill Clinton's diplomats couldn't do) and helped shut down A.Q. Khan, the world's most menacing rogue nuclear proliferator.

Many of these cross-currents in Bush's and Kerry's worldviews collide in Iraq.

Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.

Kerry, though, has lost his way. The now-professed anti-war candidate says he still would vote to authorize the war he didn't vote to finance. He used the presidential debates to telegraph a policy of withdrawal. His Iraq plan essentially is Bush's plan. All of which perplexes many.

Worse, it plainly perplexes Kerry. ("I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat," he said Oct. 8, adding that Bush was preoccupied with Iraq, "where there wasn't a threat.") What's not debatable is that Kerry did nothing to oppose White House policy on Iraq until he trailed the dovish Howard Dean in the race for his party's nomination. Also haunting Kerry: his Senate vote against the Persian Gulf war--driven by faith that, yes, more diplomacy could end Saddam Hussein's rape of Kuwait.

- - -

On domestic issues, the choice is also clear. In critical areas such as public education and health care, Bush's emphasis is on greater competition. His No Child Left Behind Act has flaws, but its requirements have created a new climate of expectation and accountability. On both of these important fronts, but especially with his expensive health-care plan, Kerry primarily sees a need to raise and spend more money.

The failure of either candidate to offer spending and taxation proposals that remotely approach balancing the federal budget is an embarrassment to both. The non-partisan Concord Coalition calculates the 10-year impact of Bush's proposals as a negative $1.33 trillion; the impact of Kerry's is a nearly identical $1.27 trillion. Kerry correctly cites the disturbingly expensive legacy of Bush's tax cuts--while, in the same breath, promising new tax cuts of his own.

This is a genre of American fiction that Bush, if he is re-elected, cannot perpetuate. To Bush's credit, his tax policies have had the aggregate effect of pushing Americans toward more savings and investment--the capital with which the world's strongest economy generates jobs. But he has not shown the necessary discipline on discretionary spending. Two particularly egregious examples: Medicare prescription drug coverage and an enormously expensive farm subsidy bill, both signed by Bush.

This country's paramount issue, though, remains the threat to its national security.

John Kerry has been a discerning critic of where Bush has erred. But Kerry's message--a more restrained assault on global threats, earnest comfort with the international community's noble inaction--suggests what many voters sense: After 20 years in the Senate, the moral certitude Kerry once displayed has evaporated. There is no landmark Kennedy-Kerry Education Act, no Kerry-Frist Health Bill. Today's Kerry is more about plans and process than solutions. He is better suited to analysis than to action. He has not delivered a compelling blueprint for change.

For three years, Bush has kept Americans, and their government, focused--effectively--on this nation's security. The experience, dating from Sept. 11, 2001, has readied him for the next four years, a period that could prove as pivotal in this nation's history as were the four years of World War II.

That demonstrated ability, and that crucible of experience, argue for the re-election of President George W. Bush. He has the steadfastness, and the strength, to execute the one mission no American generation has ever failed.
0 Replies
 
Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:50 pm
Thanks Timberlandko
0 Replies
 
Dookiestix
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Oct, 2004 10:57 pm
It won't matter. Bush will be gone this November 2nd.

Speaking of mosaics, this could be why:

http://www.buckfush.com/images/bush_Vote.jpg
0 Replies
 
 

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