we all know that bush and his team suck, but we cant do shit

cause we arent those executives who owned large corporations

and have lots of money to even vote him out. guess what our

vote doesnt even count, he cheated his way on the elections in

florida, and i bet he did too in other states. hes taking freedom

and liberty away from us in disguise of homeland security and all

that crap. do you think we really need all that security ?? with the

patriot act and all that, they can now just go in to our house and

search for what ever reason they have, when we open bank

accounts , they can see how much money we have in order to

track down terrorist fundings, are we the terrorists now ?.we

have been attacking countries that cant even do massive

destruction to us. talk about democracy and peace and evil

communist, why dont we attack china and north korea for a

change, they are the evil communist, yet we leave them alone

and strike iraq and afghanistan which , in the past, have been

our allies. please think about it guys.

 

See, I have tried not to rub things in people's faces, but I have no choice. When I was younger, I guess I was a democrat. Always fighting authority, never satisfied with the way things were, yada, yada, yada. But things change as people get older, and yes, make more money and have more secure jobs. You begin to think differently about alot of things, not least of which as to our elected public officials. Let's think about this fact: Clinton was elected in his first term right when the children of the baby boomer generation achieved legal voting age. So suddenly, you had a very large, very young, and very BLIND voting population. Now, fast forward to the Y2K election..... those same people have grown up a little, gone through college or other school, have families, and are more wise to life in general. So, where Clinton won in landslides, Bush made it through a narrow margin as the age ballance swings. I'd place a solid bet on that logic that Bush will get re-elected by a not so narrow margin next year. Just to show how that works, I would have voted for Clinton in '92 if I was old enough (before I knew anything), I voted for Dole in '96, and Bush in '00..... and I will vote for Bush again. As people grow up, they get real, which is what some of you still need to do.

 

i'm not really worried about bush anymore. he's dropping huge in polls, and i doubt he'll make it for a second term.



oh and btw...







GO DEAN 2004!!!!!!

 

While Bush may be slipping in the latest polls all economic data is indicating the economy is moving up. Companies are hiring, layoffs are slowing, consumers are buying more, manufacturing is up, etc. Looks like the Bush tax cuts are working. And if this trend continues it takes a large argument away from the Dems during the election year...they will have to fall back to only criticizing Iraq, and that alone will not get them the Presidency.

Oh and BTW...

Dean is a hippocrate. First he says he is all for campaign finance reform, but the minute he can raise more than the gov't match that puts a cap on the spending he jumps ship, does a 180 degree flip flop, and says he will not take the match to limit spending.

With the way the other Democratic contenders are assailing him they will spend all their money on winning the primary, leaving a bruised and batter oponent with mud on his face to face Bush. All the dirt on these guys will come out before the Democratic convention and they will hurt each other more than they are Bush. In all actuality they are helping Bush more than they are hurting him. Rather than taking a unified approach to beat Bush they are taking a decisive approach...and for the Democrats they may be splitting themselves worse than Bush & Gore did to the nation in 2000.

 

DVPGSR - Every primary election is a bunch of mud-slinging and assailment of character on the part of the various candidates because they believe mostly the same thing.

Fastball, I find your comments about people growing up and becoming Republican to be not only offensive but grossly presumptuous. While it may be true that you were young and rebellious and then "saw the light" that does not mean that people who support liberal values are immature. They are liberal. What about all of the senior citizens and minorities that the Democratic party has sworn to protect with programs like Social Security and Medicaid? My grandparents have been staunch supporters of the Democratic party since Roosevelt. You can't tell me that my grandfather who has his own sattelite built by NASA that's in orbit right now and is a former air force pilot and president of the American Meteoroligical Society has been immature all of his life because of his political views. Amazingly enough people will have different viewpoints from you. If you are incapable of acknowledging that they may in fact have merit or at the very least they are entitled to have those views, instead of dismissing those people as incapable of thinking "correctly" then you are still immature regardless of any change you have made in your political affiliation. Similarly if you want people to espouse your point of view you do not go about convincing them by insulting them. This is no different than Christian fundamentalists trying to proselytize people by bashing people over the head with threats of hellfire and brimstone.

 

wow.. you didn't pay attention to the news during the 2000 election did you? if you had you would know that the first count of ballots in florida was a descision for bush. gore then promptly filed approximately 400 different lawsuits over sever different counties in florida for a recount. the recount was held and held again. all 3 times the count came out in favor of GW. coincidence?



how so? if you're not conspiring to commit terrorism you have nothing to worry about

again... if you're not conspiring a terrorist act you have nothing to worry about



how so? tell that to anyone that lives in NYC. the terrorist cells that reside in these countries are responsible for the WTC attacks on 9/11/01. just because they were born in saudi arabia does not mean that that's where they were trained or that the leaders of said organizations are there.

ok.. the battle against communism died when the USSR crumbled under it's own weight. communism actually seems to be working for china and n. korea is just trying to gain leverage so they can get some sanctions lifted blah blah blah. like a child, n. korea will figure out that it's not working and stop. they won't launch a missle because they know their insignificant country will be wiped from the face of the planet. afghanistan may have been an "ally" in the past but that was only because they were trying to fight off the russian invasion and russia at the time was our #1 enemy. history is good for you. read it sometime. around the same timeframe russia was supporting iran as well who was fighting iraq. so, naturally we funded iraq to oppose the USSR. bottom line with afghanistan, al queda had terrorist training camps in that country, so naturally after al queda took responsibility for the 9/11/01 attacks, we attack their training camps at the very least. you really should pay more attention to the news or at least the details. even the liberal media couldn't paint that picture in a negative light.

 

Oh please, I don't disagree with the war. I think we went into it a little too quickly--if for the only reason to rally the world up a little bit more so Bush didn't make it look like it was him against the world (which, really, it was not--but people wanted it to seem that way). So, I'm not an ultra-democrat. Infact, the way things are is fine, but there can always be improvements. Little ones. Not huge ones. Not huge ones in EITHER direction.

 

hey man black magic, you work in the military ? then i have

nothing to argue with you, you will always support the trigger

happy bush and those who support war. btw how many innocent

lives did you take away in iraq ? now the war is over and the elite

got all the oil properties in iraq, everybodies happy right ?



i might not know a lot about politics and history, but even

someone like me can sense that something is wrong with what

the government is doing to us and the rest of the world. and oh

yes i follow the news, but when i do i try to filter out all the

window dressings that they put on it.

 

stereotypes are a product of a closed mind. if you want to make a solid argument you may want to avoid them.

fi you mean by "elite" the iraqi people then sure.. you're right on in that statement, but somehow i think you're alluding the the "war for oil" conspiracy theory that's been floating around on this board for quite some time.

it's funny that you should say something like this because the window dressings you speak of are a liberal spin from most news organizations. so, with this line of liberal reasoning on your part, if i had to guess i'd say that you're biting off on the "window dressings" hook line and sinker.

 

At this point, I'm not going to argue whether or not we should have gone to the war. We went to war in March. I still disagree with the Bush administration's decision to go to war at the moment it did, for the reason it did, and with the lack of international consensus on the subject; but that doesn't change the fact that we are still fighting a war in Iraq.

What I now take objection to is the apparent trend of this administration to knowingly and willingly paint the picture in Iraq as much more rosy than it actually is. Pentagon and White House officials have routinely dismissed war critics as shortsighted, and for most of the fall have run a campaign saying that Iraq is in much better shape than news reports indicate. Yet throughout what amounts to essentially this barrage of propaganda, very few facts have been presented.

People like Donald Rumsfeld stand up on that podium, present very little to no factual evidence and expect us to trust them. But then what about an internal Rumsfeld memo conceding U.S. forces were in for "a long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why can't Rumsfeld come out with that message to the public? And last week one day after saying that violent attacks in Baghdad just showed that terrorists were "desperate," Bush reversed course and said Iraq remains dangerous. Other examples: When looters pillaged major Iraqi cities, Rumsfeld dismissed the problem as "untidiness." Rumsfeld once said the violence in Baghdad, which has included attacks with truck bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and land mines, was similar to crime in Washington, D.C. Now I know D.C. is a little ghetto but you don't have insurgent rebels shooting off rocket-propelled grenades.

Other problems I have with the Bush administration's policy: this is the first time in modern history that the US has ever launched a unilateral preemptive strike. The reason North Korea has been rattling their saber since the spring time (aside from them taking advantage of what they see as an opportunity to get a few concessions if they can) is because the long-standing doctrine of the US not attacking until it is attacked no longer holds true. Bush can tell them that we won't attack all he wants but that doesn't change his track record of starting fights without an overt act of aggression made towards the US.

Finally, Iraq is the first war since Vietnam that this country has gotten into without presenting a clear exit strategy before it started. Obviously the magnitude of casualties is infinitessimal compared to Vietnam but the distinction remains. Vietnam had a huge effect on perception of the government. Public mistrust of the government reached an all-time high during Vietnam and has still not subsided to the level at which it existed before that war. As a result, the armed forces became all volunteers and every president from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton never started a war without a clear exit strategy.

I feel that Iraq was not the imminent threat it was presented as by the Bush administration, and it was certainly not enough of a threat to justify the break from the post-Vietnam military strategy used by Republican and Democrat presidents alike.