Bush Cousins Launch Pro-Kerry Website

Family connection by byolinux · 2004-10-26 04:13 · Score: 4, Informative

These are the grandchildren of his great-aunt (George Bush Senior's Father's Sister).

Re:Family connection by Rayonic · 2004-10-26 04:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

(George Bush Senior's Father's Sister)
...former roommate?

The funny thing is that since Bush and Kerry are distant cousins, we could take George's siblings, daughters, and parents, and point to them as "Kerry Relatives for Bush."

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[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation

fwiw by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 04:18 · Score: 2, Funny

I saw on TV last week something about Bush and Kerry already being distant relatives of each other, maybe these are the Bush relatives that are closer to Kerry?

Re:fwiw by SkyWalk423 · 2004-10-26 04:32 · Score: 2

Wouldn't Bush supporters tell you that we are all distant relatives, if you go back far enough?
Re:fwiw by baldass_newbie · 2004-10-26 04:37 · Score: 2, Informative

They're cousins. They went to the same school and belonged to the same Fraternity.

Oh, and Kerry is worth more...

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The opposite of progress is congress
Re:fwiw by antifoidulus · 2004-10-26 04:54 · Score: 2

From that article: Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is the president's ninth cousin, twice removed
So why vote for either of the cousins running when you can vote for Hef!

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Monstar L
Re:fwiw by pudge · 2004-10-26 05:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

Everyone in the Bush family who is for Bush is a Kerry Relative for Bush. And everyone in the Kerry family who is for Kerry is a Bush Relative for Kerry.

Yawn.

what's next? by rixdaffy · 2004-10-26 04:29 · Score: 4, Funny

www.monkeysforkerry.org ?

sorry, couldn't resist... :)

Another Useless (but funny) Site is... by dan_sdot · 2004-10-26 04:35 · Score: 2, Funny

...this one.
It's nominally anti-Kerry, but if this site really convinces you to vote for Bush, then your voting priveledges should be revoked. It's just a funny site.

No Political Bias on /. by Col.+Klink+(retired) · 2004-10-26 04:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Slashdot is doing a great job covering both sides of this election: both Pro-Kerry and Anti-Bush.

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-- Don't Tase me, bro!

Re:No Political Bias on /. by macinrack · 2004-10-26 04:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

It certainly does seem like that. However, the crowd that runs this site, as well as the majority of readers, are a pretty bright bunch that generally takes time to think, and it's hardly surprising that the tendency is anti-Bush. I would disagree with the pro-Kerry statement, though. A lot of kerry supporters (myself included) are not so much FOR Kerry as we are AGAINST Bush. It's all about removing the unprecedented incompetence, not about electing a blue blood from Massachusetts.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by fnord123 · 2004-10-26 04:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

A significant number of commentators are pretty immature, in that they assume bright people must be anti-Bush. Part of maturity is realizing those who disagree with you are not necessarily stupid.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by superyooser · 2004-10-26 05:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

No political bias on CNN either.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by benhocking · 2004-10-26 05:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Granted, there are a lot of bright people who are pro-Bush. I'm sure the assumption comes from people's first-hand experience that most bright people they know are pro-Kerry. I've spent significant time in both academia and in the commercial world, and my experience is that most (but not all) bright people in academia are anti-Bush (and some are even pro-Kerry), and most (but not all) people in the commercial world (including, but not limited to the bright people) are pro-Bush. Of course, I realize that these generalizations are based on my own experiences, so YMMV.

Personally, I always enjoy finding a bright person who disagrees with me so I can understand an intelligent alternative view point. Frequently the differences center around your priorities and moral beliefs. E.g., if you're pro-life and pro-environment think that overtuning Roe v. Wade is more important than anything else, Bush is a logical choice. If however, you are think that the environment is more important than anything else, anti-Bush is a logical choice. (Seriously, it's hard to imagine anyone doing more harm to the environment than he has.) There are other reasons to support either belief, and I have made obviously over-simplified statements just to illustrate that differing priorities can lead to differing logical choices, even if both people have the same moral stances and agree on the facts. (Big "if" of course.)

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Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Re:No Political Bias on /. by Relic+of+the+Future · 2004-10-26 05:45 · Score: 2

I've been looking for an intelligent pro-Bush person to try to convince me that voting for Kerry is anything but the logical choice.
So far, there has been little attempt and no success. Please, point these people to me. My east-coast post-college psuedo-intellectual social group only has a few weak Bush supporters who prefer not to argue about it.
(The pro-life argument is the closest thing I've seen to a competent pro-Bush argument, but I'm not pro-life and it's not my biggest issue.)

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Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2004-10-26 05:47 · Score: 2, Informative

A significant number of commentators are pretty immature, in that they assume bright people must be anti-Bush.

But the grandparent poster didn't say that. What he said (emphasis mine) was:

[T]he crowd that runs this site, as well as the majority of readers, are a pretty bright bunch that generally takes time to think, and it's hardly surprising that the tendency is anti-Bush.

Tendency != necessity. Are there bright Bush supporters? Sure; I even know a few. But the observation that more intelligent people tend to be anti-Bush is not invalidated by these exceptions.

Not all ideas are created equal. Some ideas are better, and appeal more to intelligent people, than others. The reflexive hip cynicism we're taught to apply to political arguments -- all politicians lie, they're no differ from each other, all we get to do is vote for the lesser of two evils, blah blah blah -- tends to obscure the fact that certain policies, and those certain politicians who espouse these policies, are better than others. Intelligent people recognize this, on the whole if not in every individual case.

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The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by MillionthMonkey · 2004-10-26 05:49 · Score: 3, Informative

Sorry, this has been debunked. According to contemporary reports the explosives were still there when we arrived, no matter what Drudge would like to have you think during the next few days.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by jilles · 2004-10-26 05:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I agree It's dangerous to put things black and white. However, I do notice that most arguments for Bush in threads like these attack the pro Kerry attitude instead of giving us sound arguments about why we're supposedly wrong about Bush & Kerry.

Bush has had to deal with some specific and very serious accusations. He's accused of being a poor leader, a liar, a proxy for some dark neocon movement, of having a low iq and many other traits we're not looking for in the next president of the USA. Before Bush I don't think it would have been very polite or appropriate to attack someone like that. However, given his lack of a good response to any of these accusations (he has chosen the way of misrepresenting rather than addressing issues) I don't think that it is very surprising that people who bother to inform themselves about stuff that matters are mostly pro Kerry.

Maybe a slashdot poll on this matter would be nice. I have a feeling that Bush would loose badly (even if only american slashdotters would vote) but please prove me wrong.

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Jilles
Re:No Political Bias on /. by fnord123 · 2004-10-26 06:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

The reason many of the arguments in these threads attack the article selection is because that is the issue - the article selection being quite biased.
That being said, there are plenty of thoughtful, well reasoned arguments for Bush out there, if people take the time to look for them. Try Hugh Hewitt for example. I've actually been looking for thoughtful, well reasoned bloggers for Kerry and had little success. Many of them are pure propaganda (e.g. Michael Moore) or are mostly just sarcasm and snide comments with little real substance (e.g. Joshua Marshall).
As to Bush being a liar, a proxy, or a poor leader, you would need to be more specific to get a good counter argument. In regards to the accusation of Bush being a low IQ, there is evidence that Kerry's is lower.
A /. poll would only prove that bored computer people have a certain opinion. Generalizing from that to the "tendency" of the general population's intelligence is silly. Maybe /. is mostly slackers and all the really hardworking, intelligent computer people don't bother reading/posting/moderating here, in which case the Kerry support is simply a symptom that lazy computer people support Kerry. Of course, this theory I just made up is entirely lacking in factual basis - just as the theory that bright people choose kerry is lacking in any solid factual basis.
Re:No Political Bias on /. by Bombcar · 2004-10-26 06:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

I in no way claim to be intelligent, but one reason I have for supporting Bush (ignoring guns & abortion, which are big issues for me) is that he recognizes that the War on Terror is not like the War on Drugs.

Bush has also answered questions many times, while Kerry has refused to answer questions from a reporter that many consider to be left-leaning!

Bush has also had the balls to say that Social Security is in danger, and will need to be revamped. Kerry's response was, "It'll work long enough." I was pleasantly suprised to find that I actually agreed with Bush's domestic policy.

Perhaps the main reason is that Bush's reelection is going to be 4 more years of the same, which (for me and my friends) has not been too bad. But Kerry's election would be (potentially) 8 years of who knows what. I have no real hope that either party will work to fix the DMCA, as both parties supported it whole-heartedly, but perhaps we can at least keep Congress involved with howling about Iraq and not passing any more extensions.

The PATRIOT act is troubling, but Kerry just says he wants to "review" it. If Kerry says that he passed it without reading it, then he is admitting that he didn't do his job as a Senator. That is frightening. At least Bush seems to know (and do) what his job entails.

And furthermore, we need a decisive electoral victory for Bush, to show Iraq and Afghanistan that we really are going to support them, not dump them like a hot potato the moment it becomes convenient. That was the biggest mistakes we've made as a country recently - pulling up short of Baghdad in 1991, which resulted in many Iraqis who thought we were going to help them overthrow Saddam dying, and ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviet Union fell, which resulted in the Taliban taking control.

Also, I do not believe that an administration that supports the Clinton view of the Second Amendment is good for the long-term freedom in America.

Those are some of my reasons.

Things I disagree with Bush on:

1. Outsourcing. It needs control, but I don't care if an Indian has my job if I'm been blown up by a terrorist, so priorities.
2. Education. I think that education should either be controlled by local politics (cities & counties) or not by the government at all.

In fact, I am more in agreement with the Constitutional Party than with the Republicans in many ways, but I feel that especially after the 2000 election, we need to have a decisive victory. Otherwise every election from now on will be decided in courts by lawyers. This is unacceptable.

Here is a link to a blog that explains some of the reasons behind my thinking.

Other, more personal reasons I don't like Kerry:

1. He attacks Bush about this "Draft," yet the draft bills were introduced by Democrats, defeated 402 to 2, and John Kerry himself supported "National Service" as very recently. This is not just politics, but downright shameful. Also, given that many military personell have said they won't reenlist if Kerry wins, the only way he can keep his 40,000 more troops promise would be to instate a draft. Note that the link is to the archive.org's copy of the John Kerry website; this draft stuff has been modified in his current platform. Even Rumsfeld doesn't want a draft.

2. Why the hell does he try to pret

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Fellowship 9/11

This is not flamebait! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-26 04:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

He's right. Slashdot's politics section is a veritable soapbox for Kerry supporters, which isn't surprising, since most of the editors here are liberal. Sure, they point out that pudge is a Republican, but who cares? Alan Colmes is a liberal, but most people think Fox News reeks of conservative bias anyway.

This place is becoming like the lite version of Democratic Underground. How about some criticism of Kerry and the left? They're not perfect either.

Re:This is not flamebait! by dan_sdot · 2004-10-26 05:07 · Score: 2, Informative

A better site for polling breakdowns is this one.
It averages out all the polls to get a global view of what is going on. It also has and electoral map and electoral count breakdown, as well as polls for each state.
They actually show you the data that they are basing their numbers on.

This is my letter to the Bush relatives: by Futurepower(R) · 2004-10-26 05:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is my letter to the Bush relatives:
_______

Bush Relatives,

The three movies and 35 recently published books reviewed in the article linked below describe U.S. government corruption:

Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government

There were several books published before and during the Clinton administration about former U.S. President Bill Clinton. However, the situation with Clinton and previous presidents was not even remotely comparable. There are many more books discussing the Bush administration, and the negative issues are far, far more serious.

Also see this well-documented article from The Nation magazine:

100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

Michael Jennings
Futurepower Publishing

P.S.: I learned about your site from a front-page story on Slashdot.org.

_______

In past elections, there has been a reason to vote for the other side. I didn't choose Bob Dole, but if he had been elected, the nation would have been okay, because Bob Dole is a decent man.

This election is different. It is not a matter of preference. The Bush Administration is extremely corrupt. Those who vote for Bush are not well-informed.

An old DEC manual for technical writers said that only 2% of Americans read non-fiction books not connected with work. That seems correct to me. I have found that even Slashdot readers, who are more intelligent than most people, have little knowledge of the activities of their government. Instead, some of them have picked up and believe Bush campaign lies like "Bush is Christian" and "Bush will protect us in the war against terrorism".

so what? by dh003i · 2004-10-26 05:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

The fact that these people are distant relatives of Bush is completely irrelevant. They have added nothing to the discussion that hasn't already been said in a more intelligent fashion elsewhere. All I see is a poorly designed website that's like a run-on sentence with no organization.

PS: Vote Badnarik (Libertarian).

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social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen

Big deal by jbarr · 2004-10-26 05:18 · Score: 3, Informative

So he has relatives who don't agree with him. So what? Don't we all? The problem with these types of stories is that they make an issue out of a non-issue. Imagine if a story was run that stated that EVERY relative backed Bush: there would then be whining of collusion and conspiracy.

Nothing to see here. Move along...

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My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!

Re:Wow by 2short · 2004-10-26 10:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

Well then you've got something in common with the people who set up this site.

I've got a cousin who does some pretty stupid things too, like helping architect Reaganomics and being GWBs cheif economic advisor. Then he went and actually admittted his estimate of how much the Iraq war would cost. I respect him for telling the truth, and for the fact that his estimate has turned out to be dead on. But I've got to admit that that too was stupid. He really should have known that telling the truth was a no-no for members of GWBs administration. Bush promptly fired him.

Hey Larry - I'm no longer embarrased to tell people I'm related to you now that George fired you. But you're going to have to do a big Paul O'Neil style expose if you want to get back on my Christmas card list.

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Bush Cousins Launch Pro-Kerry Website

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