Had things been done differently, the Republicans might have romped this Fall.
^9/18/2006: An Alternate 9/11 History
Jonathan Alter - Between the Lines (Newsweek)
Sept. 18, 2006 issue - Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly
peaceful. President Bush's pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept
the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the
globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the
midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the
challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in
the first tier of American presidents.
As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn't easy, but he kept at it. At
the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington
that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop
support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh
forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a
martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in
sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After
their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were
transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly
executed.
Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment
have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international
community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide.
Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well
as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying
"humble," as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11
good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull
together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.
At home, some aides suggested that Bush simply tell the nation to "go
shopping." But the president knew he had a precious opportunity to ask
Americans for real sacrifice. He took John McCain's suggestion and
pushed through Congress an ambitious national-service program that
bolstered communities and helped train citizens as first responders.
Soon Bush put the country on a Manhattan Project crash course to get off
oil. He bluntly told Detroit that it was embarrassing that Chinese
automakers had better fuel efficiency, he classified SUVs as cars, and
he imposed a stiff gas tax with a rebate for the working poor. To pay
for it, he abandoned his tax cuts for the wealthy, reminding the country
that no president in history had ever cut taxes in the middle of a war.
This president would be damned if he was going to put more oil money
into the pockets of Middle Eastern hatemongers who had killed nearly
3,000 of our people. To dramatize the point, he drove to his 2002 State
of the Union address in a hybrid car. Sales soared.
When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect
wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up
short. Didn't Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics?
Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his
aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay
surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator
Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially
intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.
Taking a cue from Lincoln's impatience with his generals, Bush was
merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of
the FBI couldn't fix the bureau's computers in a year's time to "connect
the dots," he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about
leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders
whose radios didn't communicate. If someone had told him that five years
after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have
laughed him out of the office.
In 2003, Vice President Cheney advised the president to take out Iraq's
Saddam Hussein militarily. But Bush was beginning to understand that his
veep, while sounding full of gravitas, was in fact reckless. When it
became clear that Saddam posed no imminent threat, Bush resolved to
neuter him, Kaddafi style. When the president found, after a little
asking around, that the 10-year cost of invading Iraq would be a
crushing $1.2 trillion, he opted out of this war of choice.
Five years after that awful September day, even Bush's fiercest critics
have learned an important lesson: leadership counts. Imagine if we'd
done the opposite of these things. This country and the world would be
in a heap of trouble.
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And the Republicrats have shown themselves to be true racists. Allen is a racist. He uses vile terms for Indians and African-Americans. The Republican spin machine has begun a campaign against two of the most experienced and overlooked members of the House, Representatives Rangel and Conyers. They are, of course, African Americans. The Repui blicrats are sneakily issuing propaganda that the Democratic takeover of the House is to be feared since both these learned men would become chairmen of important committees--The Judicary Committee and the Ways and Means Committee. The Republicrats show their hatred for African-Americans every day in every way.
Advocate wrote:MM, I hope you feel better now. Is there any chance you can provide links supporting your many charges? Most are incorrect, and you incorrectly blame the Democrats for the others. For instance, the courts, not the Democrats, have deemed illegal a number of Bush's actions.
Are you going to say that the Dems dont want to and wont raise taxes?
Are you saying that the Dems dont want a national health care system?
Exactly what parts of what I wrote are wrong?
Bi-Polar Bear wrote:mysteryman wrote:I hope the dems win the house,senate,and the White House.
I hope they undo every policy that Bush has put in place for security,I hope they pull all of the US troops out of the middle east,and I hope they release every prisoner held by the US in Gitmo.
Then,when we get hit again in another 9/11 style attack,they dems will have nobody to blame but themselves..
Nice to know you're willing to see another attack on American soil, are in fact hoping for it as you state right here in black and white, so that the dems look stupid. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.... what would be enough for you Mr. Patriotic War Hero?
Since even the 9/11 commission has said its a matter of when,not if,we get hit again,I do hope the dems are in power when it happens.
That way,we will have a chance to see how the dems (who all claim to know how to respond correctly to every attack and problem facing America) actually respond.
Lets see how they and their "experts" react,and they wont have anyone to blame for the results.
revel wrote:Nice try foxfrye, now try actually refuting what he said.
I'm not Fox,but here is one reutation right off the top of my head.
He said "Now, I've never criticized President Bush" and that is an outright lie.
Here are a few examples of him criticizing Bush...
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/9/4581
http://www.buzztracker.org/2004/05/22/cache/203229.html
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/011712.php
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091905I.shtml
There are more examples,but these will do for a start.
Now,how do these examples jibe with his "I've never criticized President Bush"?
Now,since Clinton is on record as saying that he didnt accept Sudans offer to turn Bin Laden over to us because we had no legal reason to hold him,then what legal reason was there for Clinton to order his murder?
Quote:CLINTON: No, no. I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him.
Now,lets look at this quote from the intrview...
Quote:I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn't do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush's neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn't have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn't do enough said that I did too much.
Is this true?
Lets look at what the repubs actually said about it...
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) said the following on August 20, 1998:
Quote:Well, I think the United States did exactly the right thing. We cannot allow a terrorist group to attack American embassies and do nothing. And I think we have to recognize that we are now committed to engaging this organization and breaking it apart and doing whatever we have to to suppress it, because we cannot afford to have people who think that they can kill Americans without any consequence. So this was the right thing to do.
You can read more refutations of what Clinton said here...
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5888
So,as you can see,refuting what Clinton said is actually fairly easy.
MM, there is a thread for this so I will take it over there. Might take a while, but I am confident that I can answer the questions.
From today's 'Albuquerque Tribune':
Quote:Nobody's Silent on Administration's Errors in Iraq
E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington. What could prove to be the most important factor in the 2006 elections is overlooked because it is unseen: The Republicans cannot try to curry favor with a "silent majority" that favors the Iraq war because a majority of Americans, both vocal and quiet, has come to see the war as a mistake.
President Bush's defenders, from Donald Rumsfeld to Karl Rove, have tried hard to cast opponents of the war as supposedly weak on terror. But the charges have not taken hold because most Americans don't agree with the premise linking the two.
And blame for the failures on the ground in Iraq has fallen not on some liberal coterie supposedly holding our generals back, but on the choices of civilians in a conservative administration. Those civilians, and their allies outside the administration, find themselves under increasing fire from leaders of the military and the intelligence services for bad planning, flawed analysis and unrealistic expectations.
[... ... ...]
The conventional, and accurate, view of this fall's election is that Iraq is a Democratic issue and the broader war on terror is a Republican issue. Accordingly, Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid were understandably eager to point to the report as a commentary on the president's "repeated missteps in Iraq and his stubborn refusal to change course," as Reid put it Sunday. But beneath the conventional account is a more revealing truth: that over the last four years, the burden of proof on the Iraq war has been turned on its head.
During the 2002 election campaign -- before the war had actually begun -- Democratic candidates all over the country fled the Iraq debate and feared raising any questions about Bush's national security choices. In 2006, it's the administration trying to keep Iraq out of the campaign and to move the public conversation to anything else as an alternative to an accounting for its war decisions that so many middle-of-the-road Americans now regret. There is no silent majority to bail the president out.
source: transcripted from today's Albuquerque Journal, page 6
(Just noticed) The above quote is online by another paper, with a different headline:
E.J. Dionne: The majority and the GOP
MarionT wrote:And the Republicrats have shown themselves to be true racists. Allen is a racist. He uses vile terms for Indians and African-Americans. The Republican spin machine has begun a campaign against two of the most experienced and overlooked members of the House, Representatives Rangel and Conyers. They are, of course, African Americans. The Repui blicrats are sneakily issuing propaganda that the Democratic takeover of the House is to be feared since both these learned men would become chairmen of important committees--The Judicary Committee and the Ways and Means Committee. The Republicrats show their hatred for African-Americans every day in every way.
No way Possum, we all know the repubs have a history of supporting civil/equal rights for everyone. Me thinks you jest with us.
MM,
Perhaps you and Mr Noel Shepard should realize that one instance of a neocon supporting the action in Afghanistan does NOT make Clinton's statement false. If no one accused Clinton of "wag the dog" then why did Spector and Gingrich defend Clinton from the "wag the dog" accusation?
RW hate radio was and still is filled with accusations of Clinton attacking an "aspirin factory" to divert attention from Lewinsky. I bet you have made those comments yourself MM. Do you want to deny it now? Or admit you are part of the group that cried "wag the dog"?
The opinion piece which Walter has posted raises some interesting issues with regard to this coming election. However, i continue to believe that those who want to see Democrats win in November underestimate the power of incumbancy, and overestimate the likely effect of popular disenchantment with the administration. Republicans who can distance themselves from the Iraq fiasco without appearing to be disloyal to their party have a good chance of hanging on to their seats.
Other opinion pieces claim that the religious right has become disenchanted with the administration, as well, for paying lip service to their "values" issues, but not actually taking effective action. But to equate such disenchantment with Iraq referred to in the piece posted by Walter, and the disenchantment with some right-wing religious types with a big Democratic win in November seems to me to be a case of taking counsel of one's hopes rather than reality.
Time and again, elections for national office in this country have demonstrated that when the core support for a party is unhappy, they just stay home--they don't necessarily vote for the opposition. Mid-term elections usually don't have the same turn-out as the quadrennial national elections to begin with, and i think that if traditional Republican voters are terribly disenchanted, they are just less likely to vote--not more likely to cross party lines when voting.
I'd like to see the Democrats increase their holdings in the House (i consider it completely out of the realm of possiblity that they'd take the House), and perhaps to take the Senate. But i don't think that relying upon the disenchantment of those who have voted Republican in the past is realistic. Some people out there are hard-core Bush supporters--the Shrub right or wrong--they're not much of the equation. Many, many others have supported the Republicans because they stand for, or have seemed to stand for what those folks believe in, the religious wingnut espousal of "values" being the most obvious example, they are Republicans because they perceive that party as the likeliest avenue to imposing their agenda on the nation. They certainly would not switch to the Democrats, whom they see as just to the right (barely) of godless communism. There is a larger group of core support for the Republican Party because of an overall adherence to the traditional platform of the party--if any of them are disenchanted, they're likely to just stay home.
The votes up for grabs are the non-affiliated folks who have bought the Republican security song and dance in the past, those who have voted their fears or their national pride. I don't see any good reason to assume they could account for a Democratic landslide.
I just think supporters of the Democrats ought not to nurture unrealistic expectations.
Here are thoughts of an actor continually outraged by the actions of the Bush administration.
Alec Baldwin
Mon Sep 25, 8:18 PM ET
I can't remember which upset me more....the stolen election in 2000 or the war in Iraq. Or was it when they outed Valerie Plame, a woman working in the service of her country's intelligence apparatus who had the "misfortune" of being married to a government official who dared to contradict this White House's right-wing-nut-bag agenda in Baghdad? Or was it that the withering Republican stooge, Robert Novak, made it all seem so business-as-usual? Or was it when scientists, on the government's payroll and otherwise, were being told to shut up about global warming? It might have been when they actually started editing government reports to suit their pro-business purposes. I can't recall. Maybe it was when I read that David Addington really runs the government. Never heard of him? Oh.
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It might have been when Secretary Rice, like any good secretary covering up for her boss, smirked her way through the 9/11 hearings and never seemed to flinch in the face of "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Within the US." Then again, I could be wrong. It might have been when I read in the New York Times of March 3, 2006, that Jason Peltier, a former agricultural lobbyist in California's San Joaquin Valley, had gone to work in the Bush Interior Department and was responsible for awarding government water contracts to his former employers. Actually, on second thought, I might be confusing the Peltier issue with the revelations about Jack Abramoff and the Interior Trust scandals. Or the Klamath Basin questions in 2003. Or the Interior Department's own Inspector General who said last week that the place is rife with "cronyism and cover-ups."
There were back-to-back reports of Bush Administration malfeasance in this past Friday's and Saturday's papers. In Friday's Times, HUD Secretary Alphonso R. Jackson was busy regretting that he said his agency should award contracts based on the political leanings of contractors. The next day, the Times reported that the Department of Education's Reading First program, which has spent a total of $4.8 billion dollars during Bush's term in office, had a similar political litmus test. The article comes down hard on the program's director, Chris Doherty, who was caught red-handed in e-mail correspondences ordering that grants be extended to politically favored publishers and that the review boards that make the grants be stacked with ideologically compatible, conservative thinkers.
Gosh, I just can't make up my mind as to which one is the main reason why, once again, I won't be switching my party affiliation to the GOP this Fall. I had given it serious thought. What with men like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld giving it all they've got to fight terrorism. I just couldn't seem to get all of this other stuff out of my mind. And with Frist and Hastert taking naps for the past six years, I wondered who is going to look after our interests. I want to register and vote Republican. It seems to make everything so easy, the way they have everything ready to serve up, all predigested. No self-criticism for the country to go through. No doubts. Can anyone out there help me figure this out? I mean, Republicans in Congress spent tens of millions trying to nail Clinton, and came up empty-handed. They had nothing. What are we supposed to do about all that is going on now? And that is only what we know of without any Congressional oversight or subpoena power. You wouldn't suggest that we just let it all go, would you?
He should stick to his acting. His Schweaty balls routine on SNL still makes me laugh.
I liked him on SNL, but thought the Schweaty balls thing went on too long.
But I wager you can't refute anything in his piece.
parados wrote:MM,
Perhaps you and Mr Noel Shepard should realize that one instance of a neocon supporting the action in Afghanistan does NOT make Clinton's statement false. If no one accused Clinton of "wag the dog" then why did Spector and Gingrich defend Clinton from the "wag the dog" accusation?
RW hate radio was and still is filled with accusations of Clinton attacking an "aspirin factory" to divert attention from Lewinsky. I bet you have made those comments yourself MM. Do you want to deny it now? Or admit you are part of the group that cried "wag the dog"?
I never used the term "wag the dog",but I do admit to thinking that Clinton DID bomb an aspirin factory.
I dont know if he did it to divert attention from Monica,because I was not privy to the decision making process.
I do know that much of what Clinton said during that interview was either a distortion of the public record,or an outright lie.
Not all of it was,but much of it was.
Bush has lied two hundred times more than Clinton ever did. Almost every word out of Bush's mouth is a lie/ He doesn't know what he is reading, anyway. He is just reciting a speech given to him by Karl Rove whenever he speaks/ Rove is the true president, the power behind the throne-not Bush.
Here's one of those little sidebar factoids that may or may not have significant effect on the upcoming election. If the observations cited are correct, however, it could affect several of the races in November.
'Fertility gap' helps explain political divide SOURCE
I agree with Fox that the stuff in her post constitutes factoids.
Main Entry: fac·toid
Pronunciation: 'fak-"toid
Function: noun
1 : an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print
2 : a briefly stated and usually trivial fact
--Merriam-Webster
It very well may be, but it comes from a semi-reliable source. Can you refute the information in it?
