Silly me... I wasn't aware FDR or Kennedy was weak on defense. Too bad Clinton gutted the military - otherwise we'd have really trounced them in Afghanistan and Bagdad. Good thing w rebuilt the shock and awe back so quickly - or else who knows what might have happened over the last couple years. Don't forget all those Democrats who fought and died right alongside your boys.
Remember the Thanksgiving (or was it Christmas?) fly in to Bagdad with the plastic turkey? Remember the mountain bike "incident" of this past summer?
What you folks fail to see is that there's one person who'll gain by these acts of wanton disregard for presidential safety. Who do you think put w. up to such stunts? Fer God sake... flying onto an aircraft carrier in a fighter... or dropping into a hostile country during a war... or skiddering over jagged rocks and cliffs on a bicycle...
It's CHENEY I tell ya. It's Cheney. He's trying to bump w. off so's he can swivel in the oval office for a change without worrying that dweeb for a boss'll catch 'im. Dick knows that he should rightly be president, not that apron-string mammas boy who likes to play cowboy. And, afterall, the ticker's not what it used to be - God only knows how much time dick has left. He's gotta take matters into his own hands.
(Speaking of taking matters into his own hands, do you think w., dick, condi, donny, et.al. take a look under the desk in there and get all "stimulated" by the goings on that took place right under there? It's enough to scare you into wanting to make a law against such acts of depravity. Amend the Constitution! Enact the Defense of Missionary Position Amendment.)
My above cited comments were ment to be sarcastic. I agree with you that Mr. Kerry is the waffle king. I hope nobody interpreted my comments as being in support of flip-flop John.
Glen
Historically, FDR and Kennedy were different sorts of dems. FDR was basically forced to rebuild in light of the threat across the Atlantic. Kennedy was dealing with the cold war.
Subsequent dems were quite different -- LBJ had his guns and butter plan where the military took a back seat to domestic affairs. Carter was one who significantly neglected the military. Finally, the last dem inhabitant did make real cuts to the defense department. That shock and awe you are speaking of was primarily a carryover from the previous administrations' buildups and the [sometimes] fortunate circumstance that the pentagon is a very large machine with a huge amount of momentum that takes a long time to change. That said, very few new weapon systems were conceived during the prior administration's reign.
I'm not calling the dems unpatriotic or anything like that, and democrat soldiers have nothing to do with the democrat leadership, which is what I am talking about. Do you really think Kennedy would be a democrat today? I'm not so sure he would be sitting up there with Al Gore, Tom Daschle and Michael Moore. His tax policy was much more conservative. Since then, don't ask me...ask those in the military who see first hand what happens with democrat presidents. From what I have seen, it isn't even much of an argument.
dwhite
Let me put this more simply. People come here to communicate. Your choice of top-posting impedes that. That's a good way to get put into the "killfile" and outright ignored. It's one thing to be ignorant, but you're showing that ignorance isn't the problem here.
I'll quit top posting when Usenet ceases to exist (or I do, whichever comes first). Pay attention and everything flows smoothly.
. Bye, CW, you're not worth reading.
That is really an interesting observation... I believe in some aspects he would surely be in the Democrat camp - others, not. Honestly, I am not that familiar with Kennedy's policies and beliefs.
Have you examined how many recent past Republican prez's would approve of today's admin and party? Eisenhower with his parting words warning of the military industrial compex? Nixon had is foibles, but he certainly believed in strengthening foreign relations. Do you think Reagan would be cheering the decisions of today? (I believe we can surmise that George H. is not in full agreement on many of the aspects of the way the Middle East has been handled from his book on his own experiences there.)
I believe the Democrat Party has not changed as much as the Republican Party has in the last 15 years. I'd hazzard a guess that the Repubs are far less recognizeable to their predecessors than the Dems are to theirs.
I think you might have to go back a bit farther than 15 years to get a really big difference, but don't try telling that to Zell Miller. Beyond that, I don't do a lot of guessing about what dead presidents would think about things.
todd
-snip-
I rarely watch teevee news and never CBS.
So, you still think the war in Iraq is justifiable based on the threat of a near immediate attack on the USA, with mushroom clouds an' all? I mean, those new!, improved! SCUDs now can go 1/2 way round the world!
(An', ya know, electin' Kerry is sure as shootin' gonna bring on a guar-an-teed 'terrist' attack on US. So, if that ain't a reason to vote for shrub, I sure don't know what is).
And, you think Iraq is happily on the way to democracy?
Things are youknowwhere in a handbasket on so many fronts, but the admin has y'all so scairt and keep adding to that fear. DON'T change horses mid stream, even if the horse (and rider) is underwater and drowning!
*** Over the weekend I swore off repsonding to politics, but I failed already. Based on the responses in this thread, I give up, and maybe will hold to my pledge. Besides, the shop is slowly getting unburied, and maybe I'll be able to do some ww'g soon.Renata
Right, and who makes the determination that someone has "joined the enemy?" How is it that they don't have the right to even contest that? Because to do so might make then eligible for due process, which would be *really* inconvenient in terms of getting another notch on Ashcroft's belt.
I agree that Kerry's opinion in this regard is totally brain-dead. However it's also pretty run-of-the-mill and pretty broadly held (granted, doesn't say much for the average IQ.) And since when have you ever heard of a presidential candidate that wasn't a "slicky-boy politician who can't tell the truth about anything." PLEASE don't say that GW doesn't fit that description to a "T" as well.
I see, but it doesn't bother you that Bush had taken 250 days off as of August 2003 (27% of his presidency spent on vacation) - compared to the average American having 13 days off a year? And if you want to bring Clinton into the mix, he took off a total of 152 days in the entirety of his first two terms. The only close runner up to GW in days off is his father, who took off 543 vacation days (speaking of being "cut from the same cloth"). Please spare me the "working vacation" stuff - that's easily on par with Clinton's "didn't inhale."
- Al
I agree, only I was only afforded a semi-swagger since I was a navigator :-)
- Al
Well, I'd say turning up in, say, Afghanistan, training with the Taliban, would be one good sign that you've decided to join the enemy. Yes?
So you tolerate his lies since all politicians lie? OK, perhaps, but if it's a given they're all untrustworthy, then at least decide which issues matter most to you, and pick the one whose _actions_ agree with your beliefs.
"Not in the White House" does not equal "Not working". Kerry missing say 75% of meetings he's supposed to be at, _does_ equal "not working".
Shame he wasn't gone more, actually.
OK, if you want to believe it, there's obviously no way I'll change that. But even if you dislike W, wouldn't him not being at work be _good_ for you then?
This might hold water if everyone having their civil rights suspended was found to be training with the Taliban, but that's far from the case.
Yes.
I agree completely. And although Kerry's opinion on the weapons stuff is idiotic, it's not something that I'm passionate about. But I have no problem with it shaping your voting decision.
I don't follow this logic. 2/3's of the meetings I am supposed to be at are a total waste of time. In fact, I'm serving my users/benefactors more by getting something 'real' done instead of sitting through the meeting. I don't know for a fact that this is the case with Kerry, but it certainly illustrates that not being at meetings does not necessarily mean not working. Why should I take for granted that Bush is working while not in the White House (translation, in Crawford or Kennebunkport) but that Kerry isn't while absent from meetings?
:-)
Sure you can, I'm all ears. But I would expect you to be open to the possibility that Kerry might be doing something worthwhile when not attending meetings in Washington.
It doesn't bother me for that very reason. I just thought it odd that you were bothered by Kerry's frequent absences but not by Bush's notorious vacation times.
- Al
Hold your nose and pull the lever, yup.
It's not just his view on them, it's how he completly misrepresents what the issue is about. If it was "I agree with the AWB because I'm anti-gun (he is)", fine, I disagree with him. But when he says "Lifting the AWB is bad because it helps terrorists", and when he equates the ban to anything involving machine guns (it doesn't), it just turns my stomach. How badly is he lying to us on topics I don't understand as completely? I don't know, but I'm not planning to find out.
According to
Well, it certainly _sounds_ like something that should be important, and apparently it wasn't important enough for him to attend, _or_ important enough to him for him to stay in. Now, for election time, he says it's really important, conveniently enough.
Well, if he wasn't at the meetings, he shouldn't be claiming he cared about topic. His actions speak pretty loudly on this one.
Could be, but as I say, then he should explain why he missed 77.6% of them. "They were BS meetings"? Great, then why are they having meetings that don't mean anything? "I lost interest and didn't feel it was important, until it became politically necessary to pretend otherwise" is what I'm seeing. If you're not going to participate fully in a group, don't participate at all, and make room for someone else.
I'm not _bothered by_ them, but I would like him to explain himself.
Dave Hinz
Has it ever been any other way? We're talking politics here.
Yeah, the moveon rhetoric that he seems to perpetuate with regard to the ban is pretty pathetic. But I think where we differ is that you believe it is particularly low even for a politician, and I would maintain that such a misrepresentation is "business as usual" for every political figure on the national scene. You're just sensitized to it because you're knowledgeable about the issue, and as such, aren't gullible enough to blur the distinction between bayonet mounts and hip mounted miniguns like so much of the public evidently is. But it's par for the course. For example, your reaction to Kerry's take on this issue is really not much different than what somebody in the know on weapons technology (e.g., scientists and analysts Los Alamos, Albequerque, Omaha...) thinks when they hear Rumsfeld and other senior staff members talk about capabilities of future/proposed weapon systems.
Interesting site. Looks like it's associated with the Annenberg School of Public Policy at Penn, so I'm assuming they're at least attempting to be unbiased. Again, I'm not arguing that he wasn't absent.
Is there anyone in the race who hasn't acquired a sudden interest in a topic that also happens to be germane to their electability?
Not terribly shrewd, politically, I'll admit. I think it's a clumsy reaction on his part to the prevailing, current administration manufactured opinion that the future of western civilization depends on fixing the intelligence community. This might not earn him any merit badges, but it's small fry in the grand scheme of political indiscretions.
I don't know... is Kerry to blame for that?
I'd be curious as to what the normal rate of absenteeism is in Washington, particularly for those running for the Presidency. His behavior in this regard only marks him as a politician in my book, and doesn't rule him out as a viable candidate for the presidency.
As would I, but I hope you'll hold Bush to the same standard regarding his vacation time.
- Al
To deny that the Vietnam war was a war defies reason.
No, Kerry did not vote to approve the war. The Congress did not declare war. That's like saying that a law thar permits police officers to carry guns is approval of every shooting by a police officer.
The authorization to use force was a reasonable and necessary Act to force Iraq to comply with the UNMOVIC inspection program. Iraq did comply with the UNMOVC inspection program. The IAEA certified that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program. UNMOVIC was in the process of verifying that Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons or program for them, when we invaded.
The Authorization to use force and the subsequent UNMOVIC inspections assured that Iraq would not and could not use WMDs against its neighbors or even its own people. Thus the invasion was unecessary for those purposed. There were other motives and other justifications for the invasion.
Something Bush and Clinton have in common is the way they smirk when they tell certain lies. When they know that they aren't fooling anyone but their supporters don't care, that is when they both have this evil smirk on their face.
When they think they hav eto fool people to get away with lying that is when they seem absolutely sincere.
Both are a marked contrast to Reagan who apperas absolutely sincere all the time. Probably Reagan was sincere inasmuch as he always believed what he was saying, even if he knew it was untrue. That's called 'The Method'.
More to the point voters might prefer a liar over an honest candidate based on the policies they espouse. I say might, because it may never come to pass that voters have a choice between an honest and a dishonest candidate.
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