A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Starting from there then; what would YOU have done so differently? Say you sent sufficient troops to protect the museums and what not, had sufficient oversight to eliminate the prison abuses and weren't building permanent bases...

I wouldnt have gone in. Period. Yes, the overthrow of Saddam has had positive effects as well. But the negatives of the accompanying war and occupation outweigh the positives, as we always already said they would.

Your reasoning already unwittingly acknowledges this, too:

OCCOM BILL wrote:

would the landscape really look any different right now? Would the Sunnis and Shia not still be duking it out? Would Al Qaeda not still be trying to stir the ****?

Yep, they would. Hence why the whole invasion was a bad idea from the start.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Personally I find the fact that he doesn't know how much a gallon of milk costs to be worse than the dress, but that's me...

Me too. We/you need a real person this time round, someone who still knows what an ordinary persons' life looks and feels and, yes, costs like. And has the accompanying values, will stand up for the regular guy who's got regular wages and has to make do with that.

Giuliani obviously doesnt have a clue, and that might explain his easy conversion to flat tax libertarianism. (Yeah, thats what America needs after the Bushite tax give-aways to the super rich! Fatten their pockets further! We just know its gonna translate in lots of new jobs, like the Bush tax cuts.. eerr.. didnt).

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nimh wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
Starting from there then; what would YOU have done so differently? Say you sent sufficient troops to protect the museums and what not, had sufficient oversight to eliminate the prison abuses and weren't building permanent bases...

I wouldnt have gone in. Period. Yes, the overthrow of Saddam has had positive effects as well. But the negatives of the accompanying war and occupation outweigh the positives, as we always already said they would.

There's no hypocrisy in your position and it is plenty fair enough. But; what say you about the multitude of politicians and their constituents who initially supported the war and evolved to a position "Bush mismanaged it" as if his decisions since the war began are to blame for the lack of success?

nimh wrote:

Your reasoning already unwittingly acknowledges this, too:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
would the landscape really look any different right now? Would the Sunnis and Shia not still be duking it out? Would Al Qaeda not still be trying to stir the ****?

Yep, they would. Hence why the whole invasion was a bad idea from the start.

No, that's wittingly acknowledged and IMO the jury is still out. It's an admittedly tall if; but if a decade or two from now Iraq is enjoying a relatively peaceful representative democracy and using their immense influence (oil money) to encourage neighbors into a similar transition; will the Cons still have outweighed the Pros?

Do you think it impossible that Iran will soon undergo a revolution as hundreds of thousands if not millions of brave Iranians have been working towards for years? Would such a Revolution not essentially ally Iran and Iraq in a decidedly beneficial to the world at large kind of way (as opposed to the inevitable alliance of the Muslim Fundamentalists that we're opposing now)?

Would the Sunnis in surrounding Nations not begin to see the writing on the wall as the Shia dominated countries followed in the footsteps of Japan and South Korea insofar as joining the rest of civilization? (Aren't they taking baby steps in that direction now?)

This could still happen. Iraq is bigger than Iraq. Should it be the dismal failure that the majority is predicting; what exactly will have changed? Will the oppressed masses not simply continue to blame the Western World for their lot in life (EXACTLY as they did before Iraq)? Will the time bomb ticking in the Middle East not simply resume it's downward spiral? Do you know what would have happened if we didn't try? Nothing... and that's as unacceptable to me as it is to the Billion people being oppressed by our Oil connections, friend and foe alike.

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nimh wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Personally I find the fact that he doesn't know how much a gallon of milk costs to be worse than the dress, but that's me...

Me too. We/you need a real person this time round, someone who still knows what an ordinary persons' life looks and feels and, yes, costs like. And has the accompanying values, will stand up for the regular guy who's got regular wages and has to make do with that.

Giuliani obviously doesnt have a clue, and that might explain his easy conversion to flat tax libertarianism. (Yeah, thats what America needs after the Bushite tax give-aways to the super rich! Fatten their pockets further! We just know its gonna translate in lots of new jobs, like the Bush tax cuts.. eerr.. didnt).

So,only a "real person" knows what a gallon of milk costs?
OK,how much is a gallon of milk,here in KY?

If only a "real person" knows what milk costs,then you should know the answer to that question.
Personally,anybody that bases their decision on who to vote for based on that is not very smart.
Does Hillary know?
Does Obama?

I doubt if any candidate can answer that question.

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I think the whole thing about Rudy not knowing how much common groceries cost amounts to a big bunch of nothing.

The same thing is probably true about a whole lot of people of means who don't do much on the domestic front - like grocery shopping -anymore.

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snood wrote:

I think the whole thing about Rudy not knowing how much common groceries cost amounts to a big bunch of nothing.

The same thing is probably true about a whole lot of people of means who don't do much on the domestic front - like grocery shopping -anymore.

I couldn't agree more. I don't know how much a gallon of milk is, and there's one in my fridge I bought the other day. If I want milk; I buy milk. I don't know how much gas is either.

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actually I'm thinking that when George H W Bush talked about having gone to a grocery market and commented about "wow they can just put an item on this scanner light and it tells what the price is' (I'm paraphrasasing here)

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Quote:

Giuliani made his sharpest case for moving beyond social issues this weekend in Iowa, telling The Des Moines Register, "Our party is going to grow, and we are going to win in 2008 if we are a party characterized by what we're for, not if we're a party that's known for what we're against."

Asked about abortion, he said, "Our party has to get beyond issues like that."

Giuliani upset conservatives - and surprised supporters - by saying in a CNN interview that he favored public funding for abortion in some cases.

NYPost

I mean, c'mon.

Cycloptichorn

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Rudy Giuliani Is So Toast
Cliff Schecter

It turns out that dressing up like a woman, hanging with mobbed up business partners and recommending them as homeland security chiefs, having three wives, having a wife who's had three husbands and "omitted" one of them until recently, having no relationship with your kids, living with a gay couple, announcing your second divorce to the media before you tell your wife, making sad, half-assed overtures to the Right, supporting publicly-funded abortions, not knowing how much milk and bread cost, having no idea what the difference is between Sunni and Shiite, drinking the blood of small children and generally being an asshole doesn't play well with the GOP base (you would think the last two might make up for all the rest).

I am not one to say I told you so. But so many smart people have written McCain's obit and started buying into Rudy as GOP nominee. Ain't gonna happen. And as a new poll shows, with all the scrutiny now on Rudy's "alternative lifestyle," McCain is back within six points.

Very simply, McCain is their guy by default, unless a conservative savior gets in the race (that could be Newt, perhaps, or the crappy actor--although the latter has a lot of baggage waiting to be explored).

Yet, as long as it's Romney vs. McCain vs. Giuliani, McCain wins by default, for simply being the most conservative of the three (particularly on Iraq, still popular among GOP crazies) and having Bush's South Carolina slime squad on board.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cliff-schecter/rudy-giuliani-is-so-toast_b_46064.html

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Go RUDY!!!!!

(giggles)

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Keep Whistling, Lash. It won't save him in the end.

Cycloptichorn

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(Content to watch this play out...)

I have hopes for the evolving humanity of the GOP---just don't know if I'll live to see us reach the Promised Land... I may not get there with them...

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Lash wrote:

(Content to watch this play out...)

I have hopes for the evolving humanity of the GOP---just don't know if I'll live to see us reach the Promised Land... I may not get there with them...

I didn't.

Cycloptichorn

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Unplugged McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran' http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCain_unplugged_Bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_0419.html

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Memo to Rudy: Get a strategist and handler before you start talking about ferrets again

always interesting coverage by new york mag

(do they like any politicians?)

Quote:

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and in the current issue

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/rudy070423_198.jpg

Rudy and 'Nam

Quote:

Rudy Giuliani, speaking about terrorism and the Iraq war, said last week, "It is something I understand better than anyone else running for president."

<snip>

Quote:

It's too early in the primary cycle to go negative. But opponents know this is the warrior-mayor's biggest weakness. "If Giuliani is the nominee, we're going to hammer him with ads, and it's going to be easy because the issue is simple: He's a draft dodger," says Jon Soltz, an Iraq vet who served as a captain and runs VoteVets.org, a left-leaning version of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "Giuliani gets a zero-zero," says General Wesley Clark, an adviser to the group.

<snip>

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blueflame1 wrote:

Unplugged McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran' http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCain_unplugged_Bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_0419.html

bomb bomb bomb... Laughing

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Quote:

Rudy Giuliani, speaking about terrorism and the Iraq war, said last week, "It is something I understand better than anyone else running for president."

Egad.

There's a wonderful gag in Woody's movie Sleeper where, after he emerges in that distant New York future and is being grilled by 'scientists' on the long-gone period he lived in, is shown a picture of Norman Mailer and asked about this historical curiosity.

Woody gives Mailer's name and notes that "His ego is in the Smithsonian".

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McCain=crazy

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Quote:

It's too early in the primary cycle to go negative. But opponents know this is the warrior-mayor's biggest weakness. "If Giuliani is the nominee, we're going to hammer him with ads, and it's going to be easy because the issue is simple: He's a draft dodger," says Jon Soltz, an Iraq vet who served as a captain and runs VoteVets.org, a left-leaning version of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. "Giuliani gets a zero-zero," says General Wesley Clark, an adviser to the group.

I doubt that the "draft dodger" campaign mentioned above is going to have any impact on Rudi. First of all, you would have to be about 60 years old to even know what the draft was about. Anyone much younger than that (I am 60) has no knowledge of what was going on back then, except perhaps to make the connection that there was an unpopular war going on in a far away place, which we were losing. And perhaps they might understand the concept of the draft, where every male between 18 and some upper limit could be pulled off the street and sent to Vietnam.

There were many ways guys got around the draft. Get into a Guard unit (tough to do unless you had connections--Guard units rarely got sent to Vietnam); find a friendly doctor who would "discover" a knee injury and provide a letter proclaiming the lad physically unfit for military service.
There were a few other methods used.

My point is that a lot of guys, for one reason or another, decided to get out of going to Vietnam. Some of them are my age and running for something.

I don't that there is a stigma associated with finding a way to avoid the draft 35 years ago that would impact a candidate.

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A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

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