Crawford Newspaper Endorses Kerry

ramoth4 writes "Local Crawford, TX (Bush's adopted hometown) paper The Lone Star Iconoclast has endorsed John Kerry for president. Kerry's home paper, the Boston Globe, hasn't come out with an endorsement yet. It's a very interesting editorial, especially in light of Bush's performance in the first debate."

Comments

Bush != Conservative

[ericspinder]

I think that it just goes to show, that true conservatives cannot vote for Bush. The Republican Party is no longer conservative, they are a bunch of various single-issue voters who cobble together for political strength. As the debates progress, more people will see John Kerry, not as the man Bush and his cronies has spent million to defame, but as a strong leader, who really cares about the people of America and America's place in the world. Other than a couple of retread ideas from his first campain (tort reform, etc) Bush has a campain based on attacking Kerry as weak; he cannot run on his record, so he tries to burn his opposition.

Re:Bush != Conservative

[Anonymous Coward]

I can name quite a few conservative principles that Bush has violated.

1) Fiscal responsibility. Bush has gone from surpluses to a record deficit. They have no plans for changing this.
2) Personal Liberty. The Bush adminstration has done its best to undermine the rule of law by declaring American citizens as enemy combatants and denying them trials.
3) Foreign Policy Realism. Traditionally conservatives have based their foreign policy on realistic assumptions and a narrow definition of national interest, not idealism based foreign policy. This has been horribly undermined by the Iraq War which was based on neo-Wilsonian principles of making the Middle East safe for democracy.
4) Small Government. Under the Bush adminstration the growth of discretionary domestic goverment spending has outstript the growth under Clinton. Of course the targets of the spending have typically been large corporations, but I don't think conservativism naturally favors screwing the little guy in favor of multinational corporations.

Can you state a conservative principle that Bush has upheld? The Bush adminstration is a alliance of crony capitalists and religious reactionaries. It has no relationship to what has traditionally been understood as conservative values.

Re:Bush != Conservative

[lucabrasi999]

Do you even know what the word "conservative" means? Can you even name three conservative values?

I don't know about the OP, but I can make three suggestions (yes, this entire discussion may be off-topic). Note that your opinion of a conservative value may differ from mine (or anyone elses). If I were to suggest three conservative values, I would suggest the following (in no particular order):

Fiscal: Government should only spend on those key areas where it is required (National Defense, for example), and it should spend within its means.

Individual: Government's power over the individual should be limited.

Economic: Government should limit it's involvement in economic activity. It should try to stay out of the way of business, as much as possible.

Now, if we can agree that those are conservative values, George W. Bush's policies have all been in direct opposition to the above. Fiscally, he cuts taxes, but then spends millions on social programs. Individually, we now have few rights than we have ever had. Economically, the President has subsidized thousands of individuals and companies that should have gone out of business (from Farmers to the Steel Industry to Airlines).

Note that I am not saying John Kerry is a strong leader, I am only questioning how President Bush can be considered a conservative, at least by my three suggested definitions above.

How would you define a conservative?

Re:Bush != Conservative

[demachina]

"As for the airlines, what would you have done? Let the industry collapse in the wake of 9/11?"

Let the industry collapse no, let United, American, Delta and U.S. Air collapse yes. They are dinosaurs running dinosaur business models and they deserve to fail in a free market system and they probably are still going to fail and take all our tax dollar subsidies with them. Southwest, JetBlue and their ilk are clearly the winners in the industry and they should win without the government meddling in it and picking winning and losers.

As much as you rant in praise of Capitalism I'm dumbfounded when you defend the anticapitalist tendencies of the current Republican party.

They are in fact using our tax dollars and their stranglehold on power to reward their friends and punish their enemies. You don't have to look any further than the Medicare "Reform" bill which was a gigantic giveaway of our tax dollars to the health care and drug industry, and is offering very little benefit to seniors. Sure they get a drug discount but the drug industry was given a blank check to raise prices so they can erase the benefit of the dicount in a heartbeat. As a reminder the Medicare administration is fordbidden by that law from negotiating fair, quantity pricing which is why drugs are reasonably priced every place but the U.S. It is a mechanism for transfering our tax dollars in to the pockets of the drug and health megacorps with no real benefit to seniors and at a staggering price tag.

"Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity"

Well then the current administration is not conservative. Reference above Medicare reform, and reference all the no bid contracts in Iraq the Bush administration is handing to its cronies. If there were equality of opportunity any company could have bid for those contracts and the best bid would of won. Instead the companies that are winning are tapping the crony network to get an inside track on no bid contracts.

Cronyism is not "equality of opprtunity" it is their friends win and those who are not their friends don't even get a seat at the table.

"Conservatives believe in strong foreign policy and in not compromising national sovereignty."

Real conservatives abhor nation building and becoming entangled in foreign situations that are not integral to American security. The war in Afghanistan passed the "coservative test" since it directly affected American security. The war in Iraq DID NOT.

As you recall in 2000 Bush ran on a classic conservative platform that rejected nation building. In practice the Bush administration is nation building all over the globe, albeit they are doing a spectacularly bad job of it in Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq in particular.

"Conservatives believe that small business is key to a healthy economy"

Yes they do but, the Bush administration by contrast is, in practice, overwhelmingly favoring policies that are destroying small business in America. The most obvious example being outsourcing of jobs to China which is devastating small business in America. Big corporations have no problem outsourcing, its a major challenge for small business to do it or compete against big business doing it. Walmart is single handedly devastating small business across the nation, both small retailers who can't compete on price and suppliers who Walmart is overtly pressuring to either offshore to China to match those prices or go out of business.

Another obvious example of anti business practice is the Bush administration gave Microsoft a free pass, a get out of jail free card, to a convicted monopolist. You don't favor small business by giving predatory monopolies a license to kill small businesses with innovative ideas.

Republicans can shovel shit about how they favor small business but their policies are obviously massively favoring big business, and especially big business relocating to China.

"We subsidize farmers because we like cheap food."

We subsidize farmers becaus

Tripe

[the morgawr]

This junk is quoted from the Democratic Party's website and framed as the independant thoughts of the editors. If you want to slam someone at least be creative about it instead of committing plagarism.

Re:This is news?

[(trb001)]

A paper with a circulation of 425, no less. Nevermind the Lowell Sun endorsing Bush, though.

--trb

Why do we put up with this?

[sgant]

I was just wondering, why would a Newspaper or a news outlet go out and say "We're endorsing this candidate over this other one".

I mean, shouldn't they at least TRY to be non-biased about the news they report? I know I know...there is this "Liberal Media" that's suppose to pump up all Democrats and rake-across-the-coals all Republicans...at the same time there are conservative news outlets that almost try to convince us that Democrats cause cancer....but shouldn't they at least pretend to not be biased?

I want my news from unbiased..."we don't endorse anyone" kind of thing. I know, it's a pipe dream to try to find just raw news reporting without SOMEONE saying it's biased one way or another.

Just always wondered why newspapers go out on a limb like that.

Re:It's sad...

[isaac]

It's sad that the AP picks up the fact that a paper with a circulation of 425 supports Kerry. But there is not mention that the Lowell Sun, a ciculation of 100,000+ and a major newspaper in Massachusetts, Endorses Bush.

What makes this a story is that Bush's hometown paper endorsed him in 2000. The Lowell Sun has been attacking Kerry relentlessly since 1972 when Kerry first moved there and upset the local good-ol-boy political network. It's not "news" when the Sun publishes the same "Vote Kerry's Opponent" endorsement it's published for the last 32 years.

-Isaac

Re:Doesn't matter.

[the morgawr]

One thing that makes Bush popular here in the South is his opposal to the "death tax". Kerry claims that the "death tax" is to punish the rich, but anyone who's ever lived in a farming community knows that the death tax weighs very heavy on small farmers (who make far less money in a year then the land is worth). Sudenly being asked to pay 60+% of the value of your farm pretty much puts you out of business. The death tax is probably the single biggest factor in the rise of big agra-business in recent years.

When Democrats like Kerry come out talking about how eliminating the death tax was pandering to the rich. Farmers sitting at home trying to figure out how they are going to scrape by conclude that the Democrats have their head in the clouds.

I've known too many farmers get ruined by that tax to ever vote for anyone stupid enough to support it and I've got to conclude that if you can't (or won't) do simple research on this issue, you probably won't do it on others. I've even told some democrats about this problem and have met with nothing but name calling, denial, and rejection.

On a personal note, as someone who has personally spoken with many politicians on both sides I can at least say that whenever I've had a problem, the Republicans have listened and usually tried to help. I've NEVER had a democrat politician take the time of day to quit with their retoric and try and understand what I have to say.

That's not to say I don't disagree with the Republicans on many issues (I'm probably split about 50/50). But having repeated good experiences with them does influence my voting.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

No, it's much more complex than that. What you call "embryos" are actually zygotes, fertilized eggs that are frozen for possible future implantation.

Human embryonic stem cells are harvested from blastocysts, which are very young embryos. In order to turn a zygote in to a blastocyst you have to let it grow.

That's the key difference. Harvesting embryonic stem cells is, ethically, equivalent to letting a baby grow only to kill it and use it for experimentation.

Medical ethics is important. It's better to be overly cautious in the face of hard ethical questions to give time for the philosophers to catch up with the engineers.

Particularly in this case, since the results from tests involving embryonic stem cells have, to date, been so utterly dismal.