Will You Watch the Debate?

Saddam deserved a quick and timely death. I can't believe you actually wrote this C.I.

McGentrix, that is not your decision to make although you arer entitiled to your opinion.

McG, In a democracy, even the most rabid criminal has his day in court.

Some of my best friends are French Canadians and Mainers, I would never call them "frogs" myself but I am sure they sometimes lovingly refer to themselves as such.

My Gripe with the Parisian French are three things.

1.) They masqueraded as pacifists at the UN... I am a pacifist at heart. I just love democracy more than I hate war. I am offended by their charade.

2.) Their pacifism seemed to vanish away when it is discovered how many arms they have sold to Saddam and how much they accepted in bribes of oil for food at American expense and Iraqi lives.

3.)Then for them to not aid us in the military work in Iraq kind of sealed the deal...

I will have you know I love the French too but it is hard to love people who would rather see us fail than help do some good in the world with us. Had they not been such shysters we would have welcomed their country in on the rebuilding first hand after the initial invasion. It is not the wealth of Iraq Americans want but the stability and freedom in the region... We are already rich in loyalty to our principles. What else does one need?

okay. i wanted to see where your head was at.



i didn't see it as the french charading as pacifists. as i recall they asked for a few more months of u.n. inspections. c'mon rex, after 3+ years of u.n. absence in iraq, a couple of months going to make a difference? in order to lead, you have to treat other countrles with a certain amount of respect. would we not be better off benefiting from french involvement in iraq as we are in afghanistan?



explain what you mean here...



above. more flies with honey than vinegar. if you know french folks as well as you say, you understand that they do not like to be talked down to. like most of us. that's why god created diplomacy.



i don't believe i've ever heard that they want the u.s. to fail. only that they don't agree with the way bush wanted to do things.

welcomed their involvement? i'd say it's more like we need their involvement. unless you are willing to stand in a soup line for the benefit of the grateful, liberated iraqi people.

you need to understand this rex. when you see the daily news of american g.i.s, foreign ngos and upstanding iraqis getting whacked everyday, it's not the french doing it. or the germans, the russians or even my next door neighbors in mexico doing it. it is nearly all being carried out by iraqis.

physician, heal thyself.



oh. i thought we were disarming saddam...



you have got to be kidding me.

i can't help but believe your sincerity, after our discussions. but man, i really have to ask what color is the sky on the planet you live on? i don't mean that to be plain nasty, but jeez dude. do you not understand what this iraq involvement is costing your own country?

i view, as do a lot of other folks i talk with, maybe not in these exact terms, democracy as a nearly buddhist concept. "enlightenment through your own efforts".

unfortunately, they are too hung up with cultural antiquities to work towards it at anything more than a snail's pace. if they get past that, they may have a chance. but it is up to them, not the western nations. we cannot do that work for them.

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Checking the Facts, in Advance

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 12, 2004

It's not hard to predict what President Bush, who sounds increasingly desperate, will say tomorrow. Here are eight lies or distortions you'll hear, and the truth about each:

Jobs



Mr. Bush will talk about the 1.7 million jobs created since the summer of 2003, and will say that the economy is "strong and getting stronger." That's like boasting about getting a D on your final exam, when you flunked the midterm and needed at least a C to pass the course.

Mr. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in payroll employment. That's worse than it sounds because the economy needs around 1.6 million new jobs each year just to keep up with population growth. The past year's job gains, while better news than earlier job losses, barely met this requirement, and they did little to close the huge gap between the number of jobs the country needs and the number actually available.

Unemployment



Mr. Bush will boast about the decline in the unemployment rate from its June 2003 peak. But the employed fraction of the population didn't rise at all; unemployment declined only because some of those without jobs stopped actively looking for work, and therefore dropped out of the unemployment statistics. The labor force participation rate - the fraction of the population either working or actively looking for work - has fallen sharply under Mr. Bush; if it had stayed at its January 2001 level, the official unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent.

The deficit



Mr. Bush will claim that the recession and 9/11 caused record budget deficits. Congressional Budget Office estimates show that tax cuts caused about two-thirds of the 2004 deficit.

The tax cuts



Mr. Bush will claim that Senator John Kerry opposed "middle class" tax cuts. But budget office numbers show that most of Mr. Bush's tax cuts went to the best-off 10 percent of families, and more than a third went to the top 1 percent, whose average income is more than $1 million.

The Kerry tax plan



Mr. Bush will claim, once again, that Mr. Kerry plans to raise taxes on many small businesses. In fact, only a tiny percentage would be affected. Moreover, as Mr. Kerry correctly pointed out last week, the administration's definition of a small-business owner is so broad that in 2001 it included Mr. Bush, who does indeed have a stake in a timber company - a business he's so little involved with that he apparently forgot about it.

Fiscal responsibility



Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry proposes $2 trillion in new spending. That's a partisan number and is much higher than independent estimates. Meanwhile, as The Washington Post pointed out after the Republican convention, the administration's own numbers show that the cost of the agenda Mr. Bush laid out "is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion" and "far eclipses that of the Kerry plan."

Spending



On Friday, Mr. Bush claimed that he had increased nondefense discretionary spending by only 1 percent per year. The actual number is 8 percent, even after adjusting for inflation. Mr. Bush seems to have confused his budget promises - which he keeps on breaking - with reality.

Health care



Mr. Bush will claim that Mr. Kerry wants to take medical decisions away from individuals. The Kerry plan would expand Medicaid (which works like Medicare), ensuring that children, in particular, have health insurance. It would protect everyone against catastrophic medical expenses, a particular help to the chronically ill. It would do nothing to restrict patients' choices.

By singling out Mr. Bush's lies and misrepresentations, am I saying that Mr. Kerry isn't equally at fault? Yes.

Mr. Kerry sometimes uses verbal shorthand that offers nitpickers things to complain about. He talks of 1.6 million lost jobs; that's the private-sector loss, partly offset by increased government employment. But the job record is indeed awful. He talks of the $200 billion cost of the Iraq war; actual spending is only $120 billion so far. But nobody doubts that the war will cost at least another $80 billion. The point is that Mr. Kerry can, at most, be accused of using loose language; the thrust of his statements is correct.

Mr. Bush's statements, on the other hand, are fundamentally dishonest. He is insisting that black is white, and that failure is success. Journalists who play it safe by spending equal time exposing his lies and parsing Mr. Kerry's choice of words are betraying their readers.

Dang...

This is a great one from Mr. Krugman, thanks for posting it. I have a feeling I'm going to be quoting from it a lot. (I hope Kerry does in the debate, too.)

I agree. And I wish Kerry had used Bush's baits-and-switches on the tax cut in last debate's question to Bush about "Can you name three mistakes you made, and how you handled them when you noticed them?"

How about this for mistake-handling? Design a tax cut to defeat Steve Forbes. Steve Forbes is out of the race; so same tax cut, but now it never was about Forbes anymore, it has always been about giving back the budget surplus to "the people who pay the bills". Surplus is gone; so same tax cut, but now it's never been about the surplus, it has always been about stimulating the economy and boosting employment in a time of crisis. Employment plunges, then keeps sitting down there; so same tax cut, but now it has never been about short-term stimulus, it has always been about long-term growth.

What a record for Kerry to jump on! I can't believe he opted to repeat his "catastrophic mistake" soundbite for the n-th time instead -- I almost flinched as hard as during his answer to the abortion question. Ah, the joys of Monday morning quarterbacking ..... Curious what happens tomorrow night.

Yep. I was up on my feet and shouting at him for that one. "JUMP ON IT! No no no something new!! JUMP!!"

Ah well.

Definitely curious about tomorrow.

As an aside -- maybe it's just me, but I had never noticed that the football-fan-you is such a big part of the political you. I guess George Bush brings that out in people ...

Heh, yeah. General sports fan though, I only talk about the Packers now but I used to be a rabid Bulls fan, even more so than I'm currently a Packers fan, if you can believe it.

But yeah, lots of parallels.

pre-emptive strike Au.

great article.

"he means what he says, and means what he says"

uh-huh...

Kerry is an oxymoron...

From dictionary.com:

ox·y·mo·ron ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ks-môrn, -mr-)
n. pl. ox·y·mo·ra (-môr, -mr) or ox·y·mo·rons
A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Greek oxumron, from neuter of oxumros, pointedly foolish : oxus, sharp; see oxygen + mros, foolish, dull.]


Comment: Concerning John Kerry, He doesn't want to impose anti abortion on the American people just because he doesn't believe in abortion but he will vote in the senate to impose taxes on the American people... OXYMORON!

Mournful optimist: Kerry will have the troops out of Iraq early and he will kill all the terrorists! He is going to give cops machine guns and send them over to Iraq to help! Double the police force and cut the funding for schools and federally fund abortion and American genocide from within. A stronger America and a weaker military... OXYMORON!

This is what I expect from Kerry in the "debate"

More of Kerry's hate toward Tony Blair while he tells us we need to make a coalition of the bribed instead of the loyal. I have never heard Kerry once congratulate the troops or our allies for doing their duty. While his service in war was four wimpy months and he thinks he is a hero for back stabbing his fellow soldiers in NAM who were still in the field. Kerry does not even stand in the shadow of today's American fighter in Iraq. Not in service, duty or loyalty. OXYMORON!


Then we turn to the environment... He wants to bankrupt our economy by kyoto agreements while foreign jobs are given to our competitive countries who do not have the stipulations. Then he criticizes Bush for protecting our economy. OXYMORON!

OXYMORON!
OXYMORON!
OXYMORON!
OXYMORON!

i give up on you dude.

scroll award.

Schieffer's statements raise questions about objectivity
Schieffer's statements raise questions about objectivity
Posted to the web on Tuesday October 12, 2004 at 6:10 PM EST
Media Matters of America

Bob Schieffer, CBS chief Washington correspondent and host of Face the Nation, is scheduled to moderate the third and final presidential debate on October 13. As moderator, Schieffer will be responsible for formulating the debate questions and following up after the candidates respond. However, Schieffer has described in the past his "golfing friendship" with President George W. Bush "during the 1990s" and has said, "It's always difficult to cover someone you know personally." These and other past statements by Schieffer raise the very question that Schieffer himself suggested: Can he perform the role of objective moderator given the "difficult[y]" of "cover[ing] someone you know personally"?

Schieffer may find it "difficult" due to Bush friendship. According to an August 20 Mother Jones article, Schieffer "struck up a golfing friendship with George W. Bush during the 1990s." In 2003, Schieffer told Washington Post staff writer and CNN host Howard Kurtz: "It's always difficult to cover someone you know personally."
Schieffer on Kerry: "

Oh great.

you said it, brother.

it would have been neat to see walter cronkite moderate one of the debates.

at his age, he's seen just about everything and wouldn't be afraid to call either one of them on jive, and insist that they actually answer the question.

supposedly, bush is planning to try to spend a lot of time talking about iraq/terror/safer with saddam gone instead of sticking to the domestic issues that the debate is intended to focus on.

I didn't saw, that Schieffer preffered Bush. I watched all three debates, so my conclusion in a short way is that Debate Nr. 1 won Kerry, the second was nearly a tie. But finally the third goes also to Kerry,who spoke well and direct to the camera. So let's wait what the polls will say and accordingly some swing voters.

Kerry was the clear winner, again.

I found Schieffer to be very fair, and actually thought he was more balanced in his questioning than the other two moderators.

Will check back in the morning... Good night!