The 2006 USA Election!

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Bluefront
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Post by Bluefront » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:30 am

Erssa.....I know it's difficult to understand politics in another country. Right after the Gulf war, BushI had the highest approval rating of any president for a long time. It wasn't the war that lost Bush the next election.

US presidents always try to do things that will win re-election, either for themselves, or a member of their party. Supposedly this is what is best for the US people, but of course, it depends on what party you belong to.

Clinton? Respected? Maybe by democrats, socialists, morons..... :lol:

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Post by Trip » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:50 am

I think the rest of the world respects him because they view him as an alternative to Dubya. We've got a short memory. Clinton's bombing of Serbia was just as bad as Bush's Iraq as I see it.

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Post by IsaacKuo » Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:00 am

Bluefront wrote:Keep in mind what the Dems did to Bush's father......tricked him into breaking his "no new taxes" promise (we need more money George, to make the USA a better place). Then when BushI came up for re-election, held this broken promise against the guy, costing him an election, and bringing the slease-bag Clinton into power.
The Dems didn't trick Bush 41 into ANYTHING. Bush 41 was always going to raise taxes in order to fix the Reagan deficits, and everyone with half a brain cell knew it. Bush 41 never believed in the Laffer curve nonsense, and he was proven right when Reagan tried it and it produced the exact results which he and every economist with any sense expected (i.e. lowering taxes lowered tax revenues--what a shock!).

No, Bush 41 was simply lying through his teeth when he promised, "Read my lips. No new taxes."

You might wonder--why? Why did Bush 41 lie through his teeth knowing full well that it was going to come back to bite him?

The answer, quite simply, is the disastrous 1984 Presidential campaign of Walter Mondale. Mondale banked his entire election strategy on his honesty. You will NEVER see a political campaign based on honesty ever again. Ever. Mondale demonstrated his honesty with the honest admission that the only way to solve the Reagan deficits was to raise taxes. He paid for his honesty with the biggest landslide defeat in Democrat history--he carried only his home state and the District of Columbia. Mondale's campaign killed the "honesty" strategy. Forever.

Clinton wasn't elected on anti-Bush campaign. He was elected because he promised to do the same thing Reagan did--raise taxes on corporations while lowering taxes for the "middle class". The fantasy Clinton budget promises used some of the same Laffer curve nonsense that the fantasy Reagan budget promises used. But unlike Reagan, Clinton had the benefit of massive cuts in defense spending and a Republican congress willing to slash domestic programs...so it actually kind of worked out (but not because of Laffer curve nonsense).

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Post by IsaacKuo » Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:14 am

Trip wrote:I think the rest of the world respects him because they view him as an alternative to Dubya. We've got a short memory. Clinton's bombing of Serbia was just as bad as Bush's Iraq as I see it.
Clinton's bombing of Serbia:

1. Worked

2. Didn't cost any American lives

3. Didn't last very long

4. Didn't strain US military resources, so it was available when necessary for other military action

and

5. Was a lot cheaper

Honestly, I think the biggest lasting difference is #5. Even though the Iraq War caused a lot of the world to hate us, this unfortunately was perhaps going to occur anyway. But the Iraq War's massive costs came at a time when we really desperately needed to be coming up with long term solutions for our rising retirement and health care costs. We've lost a decade and trillions of dollars on the Iraq War which we should have spent preparing for the future.

And ironically, Clinton's "shoestring" wars may have actually contributed to the likelyhood of Bush getting us stuck in Iraq. We got into this mess because Rumsfeld and the other neo-cons convinced themselves and the President that it was perfectly possible to wage wars on the cheap. Had Clinton's shoestring wars been more expensive, the neo-cons might have been less disastrously over-optimistic.

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Post by IsaacKuo » Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:21 am

Bluefront wrote:Erssa.....I know it's difficult to understand politics in another country. Right after the Gulf war, BushI had the highest approval rating of any president for a long time. It wasn't the war that lost Bush the next election.
Neither was negative campaigning. The 1992 Presidential election was a rarity--an honestly competetive three way race. As such, negative campaigning was not a winning strategy. Negative ads made your target look bad, but it also made you look bad, which benefits the third guy.

All three campaigns were essentially forced to go positive, and Bush 41's campaign simply had too little experience or ability to win an election positively. Remember that Bush 41 had won with venomously negative false campaign ads ("Willie Horton").

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Post by aristide1 » Fri Nov 10, 2006 11:28 am

Keep in mind what the Dems did to Bush's father......tricked him into breaking his "no new taxes" promise (we need more money George, to make the USA a better place). Then when BushI came up for re-election, held this broken promise against the guy, costing him an election, and bringing the slease-bag Clinton into power.
I don't think this can even be compared to a world class sleaze bag like this scenario:

1. You're caught red handed breaking into your opponents offices.

2. You've clearly broken federal laws that affect the office, the country, and all the people.

3. You step down.

4. Your successor pardons you. No impeachment, no hearings, no jail. You are "above the law", just like GWB, and you walk around free.

I consider that far slicker than anything Slick Willie ever did.

Doesn't this seem rather slick/sleazy to you?
Keep in mind what the Dems did to Bush's father......tricked him into breaking his "no new taxes" promise
So Bush signed a bill and he didn't know what was in the bill? Because that's the only possible trick here. Maybe he had a gun to his head. And maybe it belonged to a drunk draft dodger named Dick Cheney.

Shall we address more sleaze?
Last edited by aristide1 on Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by andyb » Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:58 pm

Erssa, I believe the reason why so many people in Europe now hate the US is because people in the Middle East (and other parts of the world) associate the US and Europe together.

This is purely because we are alied, most of the countries in the middle east are allied by religion and manipulative arseholes that treat their ignorant brain washed people like pawns in a battle.

Many people in the Middle East see the US/Europe as an enemy of the Middle East/Islam, whereas most people see the Middle East, as a downtrodden worthless shithole that should be left alone to rot, and the US lead invasion just made things worse.

As everything surrounding Iraq/Afghanistan has gone pear-shaped, lots of people want a scapegoat, and the US is at the top of the list, its that simple.

Personally I have little problem with the US, but I do think that the US does interfere far more than it should.

Obviously whichever cock-jockey persuaded those idiots in power (Bush/Blair) to attack Iraq should be hung slowly until dead, they obviously didnt rub their 2 braincells together.

Anyone who has any idea of the mentallity of Middle Easterners could have foretold the continuing problems in Iraq/Afghanistan, and now whats going to happen, Civil war.??? before or after we pull out.???


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Post by Beyonder » Fri Nov 10, 2006 4:58 pm

AZBrandon wrote:I saw a funny one-liner this morning on another board. It said "Well, folks are obviously tired of greedy, corrupt Republican scandals. Bring back the greedy, corrupt Democrat scandals!"
I loled.

It also reminds me of:
Dudley Moore explains the two-party system to Peter Cook wrote: The Americans, like us in England, have a two-party system. They have the Republican party, which is like our Conservative party, and they have the Democratic party, which is like...(pauses)...our Conservative party.
Bluefront wrote: The Dems love to spend your money
There is no comparison between Democrats of the past and the pork-barrel spending that has dogged the Republican majority's tenure under the Bush presidency. Even The Economist--which is definitely not about to endorse the Democratic party--has pointed out that Congress over the last six years has seriously outdone itself. This from a newspaper that has definitely looked at Democrats with a wary eye, endorsed Iraq, and focuses on economic trends means a lot.

And saying Clinton's deficit was all about fudging the numbers is absurd. (It probably made sense when Rush said it, but luckily this is the real world)

The whole notion of being fiscally conservative applied to the current Republican party is a complete hoax.

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Post by aristide1 » Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:37 pm

There is no comparison between Democrats of the past and the pork-barrel spending that has dogged the Republican majority's tenure under the Bush presidency. Even The Economist--which is definitely not about to endorse the Democratic party--has pointed out that Congress over the last six years has seriously outdone itself.
Funny how the repubs never acknowledge that, it's like these facts are hidden at some undisclosed location, along with the draft dodger, who's history is never acknowledged either.

A $140 billion energy policy cloaked under national security with $100 billion handed over to oil companies for more exploration. The same companies with record profits. But of course, we can't question George and Dick, after all they are churchgoers.

So was John Gotti. Remember?

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Post by aristide1 » Fri Nov 10, 2006 6:41 pm

Remember September 11, 2001.
I remember, because I was there, because I worked there.

Know what else I remember? I remember that from January 20, 2001 until September 10, 2001 GWB did absolutely nothing about national security.

How's my memory? And what do you remember?

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Post by Trip » Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:24 pm

IsaacKuo,

You make some good points there... I guess Serbia wasn't as bad as Iraq, though I disagree that Serbia turned out well. The Muslims are cleansing out their territories. I suppose one side or the other would end up doing such though.

What I was thinking was that it was wrong for us to bomb them just as it was wrong for us to enter Iraq without provocation. Both excursions had nothing to do with US interests.

However, Clinton didn't spend as much in US blood and treasure or get us bogged down as you say.

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Post by aristide1 » Fri Nov 10, 2006 8:03 pm

US presidents always try to do things that will win re-election, either for themselves, or a member of their party. Supposedly this is what is best for the US people, but of course, it depends on what party you belong to.
No, doing the right thing is what's best for all people. To suggest otherwise is completely ridiculous.

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Post by Bluefront » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:04 am

Ok....let's examine this. The USA is a representative democracy, rather than a pure democracy. We elect presidents to represent our intrests. Obviously a republican president will better represent the interests of a republican voter, than that of a democrat voter. But that's the way it is, when your party gets a majority of the votes.

The hope here is that this president will do things that the majority of the voters will approve. Doesn't always happen that way, but that's the way it works. There is no way one person can do anything that will please everyone....get over it. Perfection in this representative democracy, or any other type of government, is not possible.

Now take our former president clinton.....supposedly "well respected". Go to Google, type in Vince Foster murder, read some of the gazillion hits. Also realize this poster-boy of the democratic party, former president of the USA, allowed to go out in public without chains......has been involved in numerous incidents similar to the Vince Foster thing, maybe a hundred or more times, going back to his early days in Arkansas. The #1 democrat is a scum-bag, and worse.

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An interested Aussie

Post by damien » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:08 am

I'm an Australian who has a passing interest in US politics, not in the least that our own foreign policy over the last decade tends to mirror that of the Americans... with the exact same justification. Cite, for example, Iraq and Kyoto.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, if you will, because I am admittedly a little left of centre, and have sympathies to Labor and the (American) Democrats.

Essentially, a change in US foreign policy means a change in Australian foreign policy, regardless of what spin is put on it.

Whilst Australians are divided over Iraq, many are now coming to the same conclusion that it was a mistake. The "stay-the-course" or the "terrorists will win" argument is often cited by our prime minister, John Howard.

Despite the sometimes hysterical opposition to the war, there is wide consensus that the ANZUS alliance is still vitally important, even if it means that (in trade) we're caught in the middle between our traditional partners (read: US, UK) and our emerging partners (read: China).

Oh, and the point of this? We don't dislike USA but very few people that I know (including many conservative voters) strongly dislike GWB. This includes some fundamentalist Christians I know, whose mother is from Texas.

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Post by Trip » Sat Nov 11, 2006 4:23 am

Looking at Australia's trade deficit with the US the other day, I was surprised to see that the US actually has a trade surplus with Australia.

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Post by aristide1 » Sat Nov 11, 2006 7:23 am

Also realize this poster-boy of the democratic party,
As a typical party zealot you failed to address any of my points. Locking onto a single event instead of addressing the whole picture. Oh I almost forgot, 2 wrongs make a right.

Innocent dead under Clinton - 1
Innocent dead under Bush - ???,??? ??
Go to Google, type in Vince Foster murder, read some of the gazillion hits
Well I did that, and there's a lot. I also did UFOs, and there's more. I should now believe in UFOs with your logic, correct? There's also a lot of hits saying 9-11 was the work of this administration, shall I believe that as well? When it comes to republican arguments any blog becomes fact. How convenient.

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Post by aristide1 » Sat Nov 11, 2006 7:42 am

aristide1 wrote:
Remember September 11, 2001.
I remember, because I was there, because I worked there.

Know what else I remember? I remember that from January 20, 2001 until September 10, 2001 GWB did absolutely nothing about national security.

How's my memory? And what do you remember?
Why no answer here?

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Post by Trip » Sat Nov 11, 2006 8:19 am

Because you're correct :)

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Post by IsaacKuo » Sat Nov 11, 2006 8:37 am

Trip wrote:IsaacKuo,

You make some good points there... I guess Serbia wasn't as bad as Iraq, though I disagree that Serbia turned out well. The Muslims are cleansing out their territories. I suppose one side or the other would end up doing such though.
I didn't say it "turned out well", but rather that the bombing mission in Serbia "worked". There's a big difference between stopping the killing for now and ending the killing forever.
What I was thinking was that it was wrong for us to bomb them just as it was wrong for us to enter Iraq without provocation. Both excursions had nothing to do with US interests.
A better example, for you, would be the mission in Kosovo. While it's true that Bosnia didn't directly threaten US interests, European forces were already on the ground there trying and failing to end the war. They wanted US help, and the Bosnians wanted US help. So there was a broad coalition who wanted US help--going back to Bush 41.

Now, Bush 41 wanted to stop the war in Bosnia, but he also had a vision of a "New World Order" where the US was no longer the only power capable of cleaning up the world's messes. He envisioned a world where regional powers could handle regional affairs. Thus, he wanted European powers to handle this European problem.

The failure of Europe's attempts to stop the war in Bosnia, and the success when Clinton got the US involved more or less killed Bush 41's "New World Order" vision. From then on, we were the world's "go to" superpower.

Anyway, in Bosnia we were invited.

The next big crisis was Rwanda, where we weren't invited. It turned into a horrible genocidal slaughter.

As a result, Albright had a very different attitude when the genocide in Kosovo began. In Kosovo, we were the ones who pushed the Europeans to get involved, not the other way around.

Anyway, both Kosovo and Iraq DID involve US interests. In Kosovo, the US interest was the interest in stopping genocide. In Iraq, the US interest was in preventing WMDs from threatening Isreal/US. Whether or not one or both of these were reasonable or correct, those were essentially the justifications.

In my case, I felt that Kosovo was justified while Iraq was not--but I only changed my mind after weeks of Hans Blix's weapons inspectors failed to find the WMDs which I thought were certain to be found within days.

By the time of the actual Iraq invasion, I thought the best evidence was that we needed to wait until we had proof of at least some WMDs before invading. At that point, I was convinced that Saddam no longer had any nuclear weapons program (being too big an effort for Blix not to find evidence of easily), but that surely there were still stockpiles of chemical weapons hidden somewhere. To me, this relieved the pressure to take action right away--chemical weapons may be nasty, but they weren't going to be usable for a big nuclear terrorist attack in the US. Thus, we could afford to spend some more weeks/months letting Blix find those chemical weapons stockpiles before we went in to remove the rest.

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Post by Bluefront » Sat Nov 11, 2006 9:08 am

aristide1....I don't usually answer stupid questions, but you already provided the answer. In the few months BushII was president before 9-11, there was not enough time to undo the damage done to USA security by the clinton administration during the previous eight years.

And pray tell, what would you have had him do anyway? Close the borders to Muslims? That would have gone over big.....wouldn't even fly after 9-11.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Sat Nov 11, 2006 10:30 am

Bluefront wrote:aristide1....I don't usually answer stupid questions, but you already provided the answer. In the few months BushII was president before 9-11, there was not enough time to undo the damage done to USA security by the clinton administration during the previous eight years.
So it is precisely because there wasn't enough time that BushII administration simply gave up and refused to do anything at all?

Your logic has way too many loopholes. You make awesome filters Bluefront, but you need to look past your party affiliations.


BTW I think everyone should rewatch this video (especially if you haven't seen it before)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS_M6RvjTAQ

Bluefront
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Post by Bluefront » Sat Nov 11, 2006 11:46 am

Bush didn't do "nothing at all'.........the beginning stages of returning to a safer level of security were started. Who knew the attack would come so quickly. The Dems were still screaming about the election. The Republicans had been out of power for eight years, and it takes time to fix things.

IMHO, Bush did the wrong thing by attacking Iraq. But what was his alternative, do nothing to avenge the attack? The Democrats would still be screaming for his head. The man was put between a "rock and a hard place". And he did what he thought best.

Cost the Republicans this past election.....very sad.

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Post by DonQ » Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:16 pm

Bluefront wrote:neil...balanced budjets under clinton were a fantasy, achieved on paper only by number manipulation, and other tricks. I'm sure you know that, but might not admit it. Dems=higher taxes to pay for increased federal spending. Fact of life in the USA.
I think it goes something like this:

1. Dems=higher taxes to pay for increased federal spending.

2. Reps=increased federal spending +lower taxes=> higher national debt.

I think the problem is that higher taxes is much more tangible than higher debt to most people. I bet the average person has no idea how a high national debt affects THEM and probably doesn't care.

If I ever ran for public office at this level my platform would be 4 yrs of "free" state college for EVERYONE that wants it! We need an educamated population for democracy to have a chance as long as we have politicians whose goals are the betterment of THEIR lives.

Of course I would never run because I don't have the stomach for politics.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Sat Nov 11, 2006 12:27 pm

Blue, you speak in Republican soundbites, that does very little for your credibility.

If it takes time to fix things, then why did Bush take three month long vacation as soon as he took office? Was that his plan to start fixing things? And here I am thinking start early is the best way to accomplish something, especially for a president in the first year or two when he has the highest approval ratings and therefore has highest chances to pass legislation/do something useful.

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Post by Bluefront » Sat Nov 11, 2006 1:35 pm

Ok....fill in the blanks. After the 9-11 attack on the USA, I, Democrat holding some office in Washington DC, would have done the following.......

And this is with the advantage of hind-sight. I have already stated in other threads what I would have done. I don't have to repete it. But I haven't heard one Democratic alternative to what Bush did, or what I would have done, that had even a small chance of stopping another attack.

The Democrats won this past election without any plans to provide security for the USA, security in the face of certain trouble in the future. They only responded negatively to what Bush did/is doing. Certainly doesn't give me much confidence that things will get better....

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Post by qviri » Sat Nov 11, 2006 2:06 pm

Bluefront wrote:The Democrats won this past election without any plans to provide security for the USA, security in the face of certain trouble in the future. They only responded negatively to what Bush did/is doing. Certainly doesn't give me much confidence that things will get better....
Do you feel personally unsafe due to not homebred factors? (ie, terrorists count, but crime in downtown St. Louis doesn't)

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Post by Bluefront » Sat Nov 11, 2006 2:17 pm

The only thing in St Louis worth attacking by terrorists would be the Arch downtown.....a symbolic attack and highly unlikely. Should another massive strike come, it'll be on the east coast, with all the targets.

But answer the question....what would you have done immediately after 9-11?

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Post by IsaacKuo » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:14 pm

Bluefront wrote:IMHO, Bush did the wrong thing by attacking Iraq. But what was his alternative, do nothing to avenge the attack?
Umm...his "alternative" was to attack Afghanistan, where Bin Laden was. Which he did.

BTW, we're still there in Afghanistan. Bin Laden, as far as we can guess, isn't. We let him slip away into Pakistan.

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Post by IsaacKuo » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:32 pm

Bluefront wrote:But answer the question....what would you have done immediately after 9-11?
There were, in fact, a number of neo-cons in the Bush administration which pushed hard for attacking Iraq immediately in revenge for the 9/11 attacks, regardless of who was actually responsible. There were other voices who advocated attacking Afghanistan, since the Taliban were the ones hosting Bin Laden.

The neo-cons argued that Iraq should be attacked, not because they had anything to do with 9/11 but because they'd been planning for attacking Iraq for a long time already anyway, and thus they had much better TARGETS plotted out.

To his credit, Bush didn't buy the neo-con arguments since they were just plain too nonsensical, and so he went with the other voices--the ones who were at least making some sort of sense. Even if we didn't have juicy targets to bomb in Afghanistan and even if we hadn't been planning out attack plans for years, we'd cobble together some sort of action plan and attack Afghanistan. And to Rumsfeld's credit, what he came up with in just a couple months for attacking Afghanistan worked out remarkably well.

If you compare how much more successful things have gone in Afghanistan compared to Iraq, the contrast is stunning. Who knows? If we had not gotten involved in Iraq, we might have even "won" in Afghanistan. As it is, Afghanistan is still iffy, and could go either way.
Last edited by IsaacKuo on Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by damien » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:33 pm

Trip wrote:Looking at Australia's trade deficit with the US the other day, I was surprised to see that the US actually has a trade surplus with Australia.
True... I think we copped the raw end of the "free trade" agreement between the two countries. The agricultural lobby in both is VERY powerful, especially in Australia due to Gerrymandering. Not as bad as it has been, but it's still there.

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