Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Polls are not static. That's the reason why polls are taken at regular intervals to see how opinions change. To conclude that swings in polls is the result of bias is really stupid.

blatham wrote:

Perhaps there is a skin patch that might help you get through this need to read nothing much but what supports simplistic ideology.

Likewise I'm sure there' a drug you can injest that would curb your liberal tendencies. I'm not sure if it's painful, but it can't be all that good for you. You should be concerned about your long-term health. Most hippies have seen the light and become conservative by now.

(Cue dys ...)

But I didn't say anything about your "conservative tendencies". The address was to the narrow band of ideological sources that inform your thinking (it seems a valid inference from what you paste). Why not take, as a model for political study, the men who founded your country, or Lincoln, all of whom educated themselves with great breadth.

The piece you quoted above is quite typical of the others from Townhall etc you put in here. It's really not very good, by which I mean, it is uncareful and ends up being worth little in terms of encouraging real understanding and illumination. But that's not surprising. It really has a polemic goal, not something more objective or analytic.

I read liberal crap every day. I ascertain it's crap, and summarily disregard it. You seem to think I'm obligated to post liberal crap here, and because I don't, have concluded I'm only interested in reading that which shares my ideological viewpoint. I'm not sure why you continue to try and make this point.

You don't suffer from a misapprehension about the of articles posted on townhall.com -- you have been critical of their conservative slant in the past. It (like Newsmax, National Review, Weekly Standard, and others) is unabashedly conservative ... it doesn't pretend to be unbiased, unlike salon.com and the other sources you cite.

The piece I criticized has a critical failing in its logic. And it's a pretty obvious failing. You ought to have caught it.

If you find a piece anywhere which you think gets at the truth, post it.

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Here's my question to you: If there's a biological or chemical terrorist attack, killing and wounding tens of thousands of Americans, how much would you care about "our reputation and how we are viewed in the Muslim world"? What will you think of leftist politicians, intellectuals and news media people preoccupied with whether we're treating Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the Geneva Convention?


Blatham: Here's Williams' question: If something very bad happens in the future, how much will we care about mistakes and misperceptions which inhibited prevention of it? And here's Williams' unspoken answer: we'll be mad at those people who missed it and got it wrong.

Well, ok. Let's apply Mr. Williams' argument to, say, global warming. If there's a consequence of widespread death, disease, population displacement, civic turmoil, increased extremism against the 'have' countries which results in the deaths of millions and even tens of thousands or more in the US, who will then care about what Wall Street people and the petro-chemical rich cats and Townhall hacks think about economic and foreign policy?

Therefore....well, therefore what? Because a bad future is possible does it then follow that we set policy and values as if it has already happened?

"I am a former kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County and the adjoining counties of the state .... The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia .... It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state of the Union. Will you please inform me as to the possibilities of rebuilding the Klan in the Realm of W. Va .... I hope that you will find it convenient to answer my letter in regards to future possibilities." -- Former Klansman and current US Senator Robert Byrd, a man who is referred to by many Democrats as the "conscience of the Senate", in a letter written in 1946.

Republicans accuse West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd of sharply changing his priorities over the last five decades in the first television ad purchased by either of the campaign committees in a warmup to the 2006 congressional campaign.

[..] The ad shows a picture of Byrd as a brown-haired young man with a bow tie and a fiddle under his chin that alternates with a picture of the white-haired senator, who is now 87. Byrd entered the Senate in 1958 and is in his eighth term.

"Byrd voted for soldiers in the 50s, but he voted against body armor in the war on terror. Back then, he stood with working families ... today he votes for higher taxes for the middle class."

they think it is smarmy to dig back in someone's past and try to ruin a career with past crap... tawdry and cheap.

Likely because they think it is smarmy to dig back in someone's past and try to ruin a career with past crap. Democrat attacks on Strom Thurmond--and Lott for just saying something kind about Thurmond--were tawdry and cheap.

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they think it is smarmy to dig back in someone's past and try to ruin a career with past crap... tawdry and cheap.

We note the difference. Ken Starr was definitely NOT cheap.

Carter: Guantanamo Detentions Disgraceful

By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD
The Associated Press
Saturday, July 30, 2005; 5:32 PM

BIRMINGHAM, England -- Former President Carter said Saturday the detention of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base was an embarrassment and had given extremists an excuse to attack the United States.

Carter also criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as "unnecessary and unjust."

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England. "I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."

Carter said, however, that terrorist acts could not be justified, and that while Guantanamo "may be an aggravating factor ... it's not the basis of terrorism."

Critics of President Bush's administration have long accused the U.S. government of unjustly detaining terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. Hundreds of men have been held indefinitely at the prison, without charge or access to lawyers.

"What has happened at Guantanamo Bay ... does not represent the will of the American people," Carter said Saturday. "I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people."

Earlier this month, Carter called for the Guantanamo prison to be shut down, saying reports of abuses there were an embarassment to the United States. He also said that the United States needs to make sure no detainees are held incommunicado and that all are told the charges against them.

Carter, who won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, has been an outspoken critic of the Iraq war.

"I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false," he said Saturday.

The Baptist World Alliance, comprising more than 200 Baptist unions around the world, was formed in London in 1905. The headquarters of the alliance, which meets in a different location every five years, moved to the United States in 1947.

An estimated 12,700 delegates gathered in the city of Birmingham in central England for the conference. Carter, a Sunday school teacher in his hometown of Plains, Ga., was due to lead a Bible study lesson during the conference.

He praised British police and intelligence services for the swift arrests in connection with the July 21 failed bombing attempts on London's transit system.

"I'm very proud to be in a nation that stands so stalwart against terrorism with us," he said. "The people of my country have united our hearts and sympathy for the tragedy that you have suffered from terrorism."

<Carter polled at 39% approval in 1980>