Why did you ignore what I said about the Balkans? Clinton reversed himself in Somalia in the way that many feel Bush should have in Iraq, but Clinton was a major actor in the UN involvement in the Balkans which persists to this day. (Albeit under the purview of the EU.) If Iraq is a quagmire, then Bosnia is a quagmire
I think where we differ is that I see Bosnia as a competently executed action with a successful outcome, not as a botched ongoing quagmire. The Bosnian intervention was well handled, had full support of NATO, and the reasons put forth for doing it were factual and valid. Just as importantly, the costs and the casualties were light, and were spread across multiple countries. According to figures I have in front of me, the only NATO casualties during the war were two Americans killed when their helicopter crashed. Estimates of civilian casualties inflicted by NATO range from 1200 to 5700. The political situation in Bosnia stabilized within months, not years.
Compare that to what happened (and continues to happen!) in Iraq. Compare the casualties and costs there. Examine who did (and didn't) bear the vast majority of the costs in Iraq. And finally, examine the validity of the reasons put forth for invading Iraq, and therefore the justness and morality of the invasion. Iraq comes up short on all counts, IMHO.
But Hillary Clinton and John Kerry authorized Iraq. None of this seems to add up to there being a clear difference between the parties.
True, which is one of the main reasons why I didn't support Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries. Obama, on the other hand, was against Iraq from the start, and articulated very clear, common-sense reasons as to why Iraq was a bad idea... which is why I supported Obama (and still support him, despite his bad vote on FISA). Again, the parties are made of individuals, not of a monolithic borg collective, and you can only generalize so far before the generalization becomes more misleading than helpful.
Neither party is running an anti-FISA presidential candidate. Done deal. Both parties have anti-FISA members.
Perhaps, but FISA is not the only important issue to me. The Iraq war, the environment, the economy, women's reproductive rights, the role of corporations in our government and society... those are all issues that I care about, and on all of those issues I much prefer the Democratic policies to the Republican ones. So despite my dissappointment on the whole warrantless-wiretapping issue, I still think that our country will be significantly better off under the Democratic Party than with another four years of Republican rule.
To your larger point, the electorate largely gets the candidates we deserve. I think, however, that your attitude that only Democrats and Republicans are worthy of consideration is part of the problem. The only way you can waste your vote is by voting for a candidate you don't want.
I think your perception of my attitude is a little bit off -- it's not that I don't think third-party candidates are worthy of consideration (hell, I was a registered member of the Green Party for a number of years)... it's just that I can see that in a plurality election system, what usually happens is that the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. In an ideal world, we'd use an adequate voting system (e.g. Range Voting or Condorcet Voting) that would properly handle elections with more than two viable candidates, and everybody could always vote for the candidate they liked best and that would lead to good results. However, I have to be realistic and acknowledge that we don't live in that world: we live in a country that uses Plurality Voting, which is indisputably the worst electoral system when it comes to generating the desired result in races with three or more competitive candidates. In a Plurality Voting s
To address your specific point, Bush certainly is throwing the US military might around on a more grandiose scale, but it is nothing more than a matter of proportion.
Sometimes proportion makes all the difference. 4,000+ American soldiers are dead because Bush lacked a sense of proportion... unlike his father, he didn't realize that Iraq is a sinkhole, and he didn't have any plan for leaving. When Clinton saw that Somalia was a mistake, he quickly took the necessary steps to correct the mistake and got the U.S. out of there before it became a quagmire. When it became clear that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, Bush could not bring himself to admit that, and so he repeatedly doubled down instead. I think that is a demonstrable and important difference between the two leaders, and I think the poor results we currently see in Iraq would not have happened under a Democratic administration (a less bombastic, more competent administration would not have preemptively invaded an country that was irrelevant to 9/11... or in the unlikely scenario that it did, it would have done its homework in advance and would have known ahead of time what the steps were to keep the country from falling into chaos).
As long as we keep tuning in to the arguing over the scraps we'll keep getting run over by stuff that really matters, like FISA.
I agree that the FISA evisceration is a big problem that needs to be addressed, but I don't see how pretending that the two parties are alike is anything but an unhelpful oversimplification and an invitation to cynicism and apathy. If you really want to address the "stuff that really matters, like FISA", then you need to take into account not only the differences between the two parties, but also the differences between individual politicians. Some Democrats supported the FISA changes, some did not... we need to reward those who did not, and make those who did very aware of our displeasure. It's also important to be involved at the primary stages and between elections, so that by the time the general election comes around we have good Democratic and Republican candidates to choose from. I'm not accusing you of this, but many people ignore politics until a month or two before the Presidential election, and then complain that they have lousy choices and therefore aren't going to vote (or they are going to vote for a marginal, symbolic third party candidate, which is the same as not voting for all practical purposes). Those people have largely sacrificed their influence in the political process by not getting involved until it was too late -- by the time they expressed a preference, all the decisions that would have mattered to them had already been made by other people.
idiots like you... fucking retards like you... your shit-colored glasses...
Perhaps the reason people don't take your arguments seriously is because you're so extremely rude and insulting. Try civility some time, you'll find it makes your online discussions much more pleasant and interesting.
Does that give you some perspective, or do you continue to boggle?
Well... I guess I continue to boggle.:^) To show that there is no difference between the two administrations, it's insufficient just to list a few alleged similarities. You have to show that there are no differences.
So. As a proof-by-example, here is one major difference: Clinton followed the Powell Doctrine, whereas Bush (Jr) ignored it. That is why Bush lead us into a 5+ year, trillion-dollar-plus, ongoing war and occupation, and Clinton did not.
Aha, now I see the distinction you were making. You're saying that while he was publicly advocating for war, he was privately advocating the opposite because he knew the war was a mistake. Yes, that's exactly the sort of honest, upstanding behavior I look for in a President.
If Powell was doing all he could behind the scenes to prevent a needless war
Powell was the guy out there knowingly and publicly lying to the UN, holding up fake bags of poison on TV, trying to scare the world into supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq. If you think propagandizing for the war is "doing all he could to prevent war", then I'm afraid I don't follow your logic.
hey like their simple cut choices. Good/Bad (they'll assign one of those to Republican or Democrat, and the other to the left over party), and everything else is not just bad but evil and "un-American".
Maybe I'm just one of those simplistic morons... but what if one of the parties actually is evil? I mean, there is room for argument and moral ambiguity and gray areas on a lot of issues, but when it comes to things like torture, indefinite detention without trial, deliberate subversion of the Constitution, or killing tens of thousands of human lives in unnecessary wars based on lies, sometimes you've just got to put your foot down and call a spade a spade. Evil is as evil does, and the last eight years have seen a lot of evil perpetrated by the party in power.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony that the moral absolutism in my preceding paragraph sounds suspiciously like W's rhetoric in the running to the Iraq War. One of the most pernicious strategies of miscreants is to cloak their crimes in the rhetoric of the Good and Just, to confuse well-meaning people into supporting their criminal behavior.
The whole US system has a fucking cancer of strategic voting
Agreed... that is the inevitable result of using plurality voting, which demands exactly that sort of behavior if you ever want to win. The best way to solve the problem would be to switch to another system (e.g. range or condorcet) that allows people to vote sincerely without penalizing them for doing so. Of course, the problem is that the people in power were all elected using the current system, so the current system (by definition) works for them... which makes them reluctant to change it. Only a real tidal wave of popular support will bring in the necessary electoral reforms, but too many people's eyes glaze over when you start discussing game theory...
When I tell people that there isn't a nickle worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans these are the examples I cite. They don't govern differently, they just campaign differently.
Really? You can't think of any differences between the governing styles of, say, the Bush administration and the Clinton administration? The mind boggles.
The quoted factor of 40 improvement is a comparison against unconcentrated solar cells, which nobody uses.
Aren't all those photovoltaic panels I see on people's rooftops unconcentrated? Or is there some non-obvious concentration method that they use, that I'm not aware of?
Both the Republicans and the Democrats are pretty bad. See: Obama and McCain, who were proved yesterday to just be one more iteration of "same guy, different parties". If we keep the system as it is, the quality of leadership is pretty damned likely to be as terrible as you paint anyway, so why on earth shouldn't we change while we can?
This was the argument made by Nader in 2000 -- that the R's and the D's were both equally bad, and therefore it didn't matter which of them was in office, and therefore you might as well vote third party. I think the last 8 years have shown that argument to be false. (try to imagine Al Gore using 9/11 as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq... or try to imagine Al Gore spending 8 years doing everything possible to deny that climate change exists, and when that failed, to delay action on addressing it)
we're going to have to grit our teeth and put up with a certain period of seeing schmucks get elected if we ever want to change the status quo.
"Please vote in a way that will cause the worst candidate to be elected, so that things will become so bad that electoral reform will be passed".... not a very compelling argument, I'm afraid. In fact, it's so bad that I'd argue that the whole idea is academic, since it's simply Not Going To Happen. You might get a few thousand idealists to do it, but the American people really aren't into deliberate masochism that way.
Not to mention that by the 3rd or 4th cycle of that process, the quality of leadership would be so bad that we might have a Mugabe-style thug government on our necks, and you've seen how well "political reform" is working in Zimbabwe these days.
If the Democrats had any balls, they'd push Hillary through at the convention.
Not that it excuses Obama, but do you really think Hillary, as the Democratic Nominee, would have done anything differently? She's the one who voted for both the Iraq war and the (upcoming) Iran war, in order to avoid appearing "weak on security".
George Carlin said "think of how dumb the average person is. Now remember that half of all people are dumber than that."
Bill Gates, George Carlin, and four homeless people walk into a bar. Bill Gates announces that the average net worth of the people in the room is $9 billion. George Carlin starts asking the homeless people for money, since he thinks that at least two of them must be worth more than that amount.
What we need to do now is say "as of 2014, no more people will be added to the Social Security rolls." And as of 2017, we all stop paying for it.
That is certainly an option, at least theoretically speaking. However, Social Security is one of the most popular programs around, and the chances of getting scrapped are extremely unlikely. So you might as well stop fantasizing about that, and instead start coming with ideas on how to make it work.
Liberal fucktards are big on "fairness," aren't they? Where's the "fairness" in making people like me pay for something we'll never, ever, ever get?
Whatever happened to "American can-do spirit"? At one time, Americans were renowned for being optimistic and making things work, even when other people thought it was impossible. It seems now the sentiment, at least on the Republican side is: "everything is doomed to fail anyway, so we might as well fuck it up some more while we can". Which is one big reason why the Republican party is in so much trouble right now. People want a government that makes things work, not one that whines about the challenges being too difficult.
ps Calling people "liberal fucktards" does not make your argument more effective, it only makes you look like a intolerant jerk.
The problem is very, very few people outside of the far left will buy into this. No one in their right mind wants to elect someone to the most important job in the world who hasn't proven he/she can handle it.
Really? How do you explain the 2000 election then? Had George W. "never set foot outside the US" Bush proved he could handle the Presidency? I thought he ran on the "better guy to have a beer with" ticket.
...someone please tell me what a President has to do to deserve it. Seriously, if this shitwit isn't removed from office, what will a President have to do to have that happen?
Oh, he richly deserves it. But don't confuse "deserves" with "will get". Impeachment is a political tool, not a judicial one, and right now neither side wants to play that game.
It's anything but pointless. Allow Bush to set the precedent of what a president should be and it will only get worse.
On the plus side, Bush's approval rating is now hovering around 25%, and he's on the verge of dragging the entire Republican Party down and out of power with him in the November elections. So I don't think anybody is going to look at Bush as "what a president should be". Maybe as "what a president could be", but even then only as a cautionary example...
If (Bush) is not impeached, the bar for impeachment will have been raised so high that it might as well no longer exist. Future presidents will know that they can violate the Constitution at will, confident in the fact that Congress does not have the courage as an institution to do anything about it
Well, the "impeachment bar" is a funny thing -- its height is based on little other than the President's popularity in the Congress. If a sufficient number of Congressman want to impeach the President, they can do so, citing any reason they care to name. If there isn't a sufficient number, then there will be no impeachment, no matter how egregious the President's crimes.
As we have seen, the actual reasons for why an impeachment is (or is not) appropriate have no direct bearing on what will happen. It's purely political, and while many people think it ought to work more like the judicial system (i.e. "you do the crime, you do the time"), it just isn't like that. It's more like getting voted off the island.
Yet I'm regularly amused (and annoyed) when I'm behind an SUV in a parking lot going over the speed bumps even more gingerly than I am. They should be barreling right over them.
It's not the vehicle they're worried about, it's their own personal comfort. When you're that high off the ground, every little bump is amplified by the extra height. It's similar to to being in the top of a tall building during an earthquake -- a small change at the bottom is levered into a large change at the top. I've been made rather carsick in an SUV on a road that never caused me any problems in a regular car.
I don't like Obama because of much of where he will take the country. How is he supposed to unite me when I don't like his politics... magic?
Clearly he won't unite you, because it's not possible to do so. You would be one of the 30% who can't be reached. But as I said in my post, it's not possible or necessary to unite 100% of the nation. You need only to unite enough of the nation so that the political will is present to effect the changes that need to be made.
Anyway, have a nice day. I hope you'll feel better later on.
Leaving race out of the issue, how many republicans do you think would vote for someone named Barack Hussein Obama.
Geez, give the Republican voters a little credit, won't you? They're not all knee-jerk automatons whose brains freeze up at the first mention of an unusual name. A lot of them actually think about, you know, the issues and stuff.
In any case, Obama doesn't have to win that many Republican votes. The fact is, there just aren't that many Republican voters anymore. Obama can win easily with a strong Democratic turnout and half the independents.
Is it really worth the risk of having republican bullshit for the next 4 years?
Frankly, yes. After 8 years of Bush depravity, this nation needs an inspiring, principled leader more than it has in a long, long time... and Hillary, for all her good qualities, is not that leader. You can't change things for the better without taking some risk. And you're ignoring the fact that Hillary would have been just as much of a risk, because the Republican propaganda machine has been training people to viscerally hate and distrust her for the last two decades. So if we're going to take a risk either way, then we might as well choose the better candidate. Hell, look what happened in 2004, where the Democrats were cowed into choosing the "safe" candidate, and lost anyway. "Safe" is often just the flip side of "uninspiring", and uninspiring doesn't win a lot of elections.
Slashdot Mirror
Why did you ignore what I said about the Balkans? Clinton reversed himself in Somalia in the way that many feel Bush should have in Iraq, but Clinton was a major actor in the UN involvement in the Balkans which persists to this day. (Albeit under the purview of the EU.) If Iraq is a quagmire, then Bosnia is a quagmire
I think where we differ is that I see Bosnia as a competently executed action with a successful outcome, not as a botched ongoing quagmire. The Bosnian intervention was well handled, had full support of NATO, and the reasons put forth for doing it were factual and valid. Just as importantly, the costs and the casualties were light, and were spread across multiple countries. According to figures I have in front of me, the only NATO casualties during the war were two Americans killed when their helicopter crashed. Estimates of civilian casualties inflicted by NATO range from 1200 to 5700. The political situation in Bosnia stabilized within months, not years.
Compare that to what happened (and continues to happen!) in Iraq. Compare the casualties and costs there. Examine who did (and didn't) bear the vast majority of the costs in Iraq. And finally, examine the validity of the reasons put forth for invading Iraq, and therefore the justness and morality of the invasion. Iraq comes up short on all counts, IMHO.
But Hillary Clinton and John Kerry authorized Iraq. None of this seems to add up to there being a clear difference between the parties.
True, which is one of the main reasons why I didn't support Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries. Obama, on the other hand, was against Iraq from the start, and articulated very clear, common-sense reasons as to why Iraq was a bad idea... which is why I supported Obama (and still support him, despite his bad vote on FISA). Again, the parties are made of individuals, not of a monolithic borg collective, and you can only generalize so far before the generalization becomes more misleading than helpful.
Neither party is running an anti-FISA presidential candidate. Done deal. Both parties have anti-FISA members.
Perhaps, but FISA is not the only important issue to me. The Iraq war, the environment, the economy, women's reproductive rights, the role of corporations in our government and society... those are all issues that I care about, and on all of those issues I much prefer the Democratic policies to the Republican ones. So despite my dissappointment on the whole warrantless-wiretapping issue, I still think that our country will be significantly better off under the Democratic Party than with another four years of Republican rule.
To your larger point, the electorate largely gets the candidates we deserve. I think, however, that your attitude that only Democrats and Republicans are worthy of consideration is part of the problem. The only way you can waste your vote is by voting for a candidate you don't want.
I think your perception of my attitude is a little bit off -- it's not that I don't think third-party candidates are worthy of consideration (hell, I was a registered member of the Green Party for a number of years)... it's just that I can see that in a plurality election system, what usually happens is that the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. In an ideal world, we'd use an adequate voting system (e.g. Range Voting or Condorcet Voting) that would properly handle elections with more than two viable candidates, and everybody could always vote for the candidate they liked best and that would lead to good results. However, I have to be realistic and acknowledge that we don't live in that world: we live in a country that uses Plurality Voting, which is indisputably the worst electoral system when it comes to generating the desired result in races with three or more competitive candidates. In a Plurality Voting s
To address your specific point, Bush certainly is throwing the US military might around on a more grandiose scale, but it is nothing more than a matter of proportion.
Sometimes proportion makes all the difference. 4,000+ American soldiers are dead because Bush lacked a sense of proportion... unlike his father, he didn't realize that Iraq is a sinkhole, and he didn't have any plan for leaving. When Clinton saw that Somalia was a mistake, he quickly took the necessary steps to correct the mistake and got the U.S. out of there before it became a quagmire. When it became clear that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, Bush could not bring himself to admit that, and so he repeatedly doubled down instead. I think that is a demonstrable and important difference between the two leaders, and I think the poor results we currently see in Iraq would not have happened under a Democratic administration (a less bombastic, more competent administration would not have preemptively invaded an country that was irrelevant to 9/11... or in the unlikely scenario that it did, it would have done its homework in advance and would have known ahead of time what the steps were to keep the country from falling into chaos).
As long as we keep tuning in to the arguing over the scraps we'll keep getting run over by stuff that really matters, like FISA.
I agree that the FISA evisceration is a big problem that needs to be addressed, but I don't see how pretending that the two parties are alike is anything but an unhelpful oversimplification and an invitation to cynicism and apathy. If you really want to address the "stuff that really matters, like FISA", then you need to take into account not only the differences between the two parties, but also the differences between individual politicians. Some Democrats supported the FISA changes, some did not... we need to reward those who did not, and make those who did very aware of our displeasure. It's also important to be involved at the primary stages and between elections, so that by the time the general election comes around we have good Democratic and Republican candidates to choose from. I'm not accusing you of this, but many people ignore politics until a month or two before the Presidential election, and then complain that they have lousy choices and therefore aren't going to vote (or they are going to vote for a marginal, symbolic third party candidate, which is the same as not voting for all practical purposes). Those people have largely sacrificed their influence in the political process by not getting involved until it was too late -- by the time they expressed a preference, all the decisions that would have mattered to them had already been made by other people.
idiots like you ... fucking retards like you ... your shit-colored glasses ...
Perhaps the reason people don't take your arguments seriously is because you're so extremely rude and insulting. Try civility some time, you'll find it makes your online discussions much more pleasant and interesting.
the relevant illustration
Does that give you some perspective, or do you continue to boggle?
Well... I guess I continue to boggle. :^) To show that there is no difference between the two administrations, it's insufficient just to list a few alleged similarities. You have to show that there are no differences.
So. As a proof-by-example, here is one major difference: Clinton followed the Powell Doctrine, whereas Bush (Jr) ignored it. That is why Bush lead us into a 5+ year, trillion-dollar-plus, ongoing war and occupation, and Clinton did not.
Aha, now I see the distinction you were making. You're saying that while he was publicly advocating for war, he was privately advocating the opposite because he knew the war was a mistake. Yes, that's exactly the sort of honest, upstanding behavior I look for in a President.
If Powell was doing all he could behind the scenes to prevent a needless war
Powell was the guy out there knowingly and publicly lying to the UN, holding up fake bags of poison on TV, trying to scare the world into supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq. If you think propagandizing for the war is "doing all he could to prevent war", then I'm afraid I don't follow your logic.
hey like their simple cut choices. Good/Bad (they'll assign one of those to Republican or Democrat, and the other to the left over party), and everything else is not just bad but evil and "un-American".
Maybe I'm just one of those simplistic morons... but what if one of the parties actually is evil? I mean, there is room for argument and moral ambiguity and gray areas on a lot of issues, but when it comes to things like torture, indefinite detention without trial, deliberate subversion of the Constitution, or killing tens of thousands of human lives in unnecessary wars based on lies, sometimes you've just got to put your foot down and call a spade a spade. Evil is as evil does, and the last eight years have seen a lot of evil perpetrated by the party in power.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony that the moral absolutism in my preceding paragraph sounds suspiciously like W's rhetoric in the running to the Iraq War. One of the most pernicious strategies of miscreants is to cloak their crimes in the rhetoric of the Good and Just, to confuse well-meaning people into supporting their criminal behavior.
The whole US system has a fucking cancer of strategic voting
Agreed... that is the inevitable result of using plurality voting, which demands exactly that sort of behavior if you ever want to win. The best way to solve the problem would be to switch to another system (e.g. range or condorcet) that allows people to vote sincerely without penalizing them for doing so. Of course, the problem is that the people in power were all elected using the current system, so the current system (by definition) works for them... which makes them reluctant to change it. Only a real tidal wave of popular support will bring in the necessary electoral reforms, but too many people's eyes glaze over when you start discussing game theory...
When I tell people that there isn't a nickle worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans these are the examples I cite. They don't govern differently, they just campaign differently.
Really? You can't think of any differences between the governing styles of, say, the Bush administration and the Clinton administration? The mind boggles.
The quoted factor of 40 improvement is a comparison against unconcentrated solar cells, which nobody uses.
Aren't all those photovoltaic panels I see on people's rooftops unconcentrated? Or is there some non-obvious concentration method that they use, that I'm not aware of?
Both the Republicans and the Democrats are pretty bad. See: Obama and McCain, who were proved yesterday to just be one more iteration of "same guy, different parties". If we keep the system as it is, the quality of leadership is pretty damned likely to be as terrible as you paint anyway, so why on earth shouldn't we change while we can?
This was the argument made by Nader in 2000 -- that the R's and the D's were both equally bad, and therefore it didn't matter which of them was in office, and therefore you might as well vote third party. I think the last 8 years have shown that argument to be false. (try to imagine Al Gore using 9/11 as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq... or try to imagine Al Gore spending 8 years doing everything possible to deny that climate change exists, and when that failed, to delay action on addressing it)
we're going to have to grit our teeth and put up with a certain period of seeing schmucks get elected if we ever want to change the status quo.
"Please vote in a way that will cause the worst candidate to be elected, so that things will become so bad that electoral reform will be passed".... not a very compelling argument, I'm afraid. In fact, it's so bad that I'd argue that the whole idea is academic, since it's simply Not Going To Happen. You might get a few thousand idealists to do it, but the American people really aren't into deliberate masochism that way.
Not to mention that by the 3rd or 4th cycle of that process, the quality of leadership would be so bad that we might have a Mugabe-style thug government on our necks, and you've seen how well "political reform" is working in Zimbabwe these days.
If the Democrats had any balls, they'd push Hillary through at the convention.
Not that it excuses Obama, but do you really think Hillary, as the Democratic Nominee, would have done anything differently? She's the one who voted for both the Iraq war and the (upcoming) Iran war, in order to avoid appearing "weak on security".
George Carlin said "think of how dumb the average person is. Now remember that half of all people are dumber than that."
Bill Gates, George Carlin, and four homeless people walk into a bar. Bill Gates announces that the average net worth of the people in the room is $9 billion. George Carlin starts asking the homeless people for money, since he thinks that at least two of them must be worth more than that amount.
Hmm. Such as? It's just that some people in our government have very, um, interesting views of what "techniques short of torture" may include.
That is certainly an option, at least theoretically speaking. However, Social Security is one of the most popular programs around, and the chances of getting scrapped are extremely unlikely. So you might as well stop fantasizing about that, and instead start coming with ideas on how to make it work.
Liberal fucktards are big on "fairness," aren't they? Where's the "fairness" in making people like me pay for something we'll never, ever, ever get?
Whatever happened to "American can-do spirit"? At one time, Americans were renowned for being optimistic and making things work, even when other people thought it was impossible. It seems now the sentiment, at least on the Republican side is: "everything is doomed to fail anyway, so we might as well fuck it up some more while we can". Which is one big reason why the Republican party is in so much trouble right now. People want a government that makes things work, not one that whines about the challenges being too difficult.
ps Calling people "liberal fucktards" does not make your argument more effective, it only makes you look like a intolerant jerk.
Really? How do you explain the 2000 election then? Had George W. "never set foot outside the US" Bush proved he could handle the Presidency? I thought he ran on the "better guy to have a beer with" ticket.
Oh, he richly deserves it. But don't confuse "deserves" with "will get". Impeachment is a political tool, not a judicial one, and right now neither side wants to play that game.
On the plus side, Bush's approval rating is now hovering around 25%, and he's on the verge of dragging the entire Republican Party down and out of power with him in the November elections. So I don't think anybody is going to look at Bush as "what a president should be". Maybe as "what a president could be", but even then only as a cautionary example...
Well, the "impeachment bar" is a funny thing -- its height is based on little other than the President's popularity in the Congress. If a sufficient number of Congressman want to impeach the President, they can do so, citing any reason they care to name. If there isn't a sufficient number, then there will be no impeachment, no matter how egregious the President's crimes.
As we have seen, the actual reasons for why an impeachment is (or is not) appropriate have no direct bearing on what will happen. It's purely political, and while many people think it ought to work more like the judicial system (i.e. "you do the crime, you do the time"), it just isn't like that. It's more like getting voted off the island.
At that point the debate shifts to God's character, and why a deliberately deceptive entity should deserve to be worshipped.
It's not the vehicle they're worried about, it's their own personal comfort. When you're that high off the ground, every little bump is amplified by the extra height. It's similar to to being in the top of a tall building during an earthquake -- a small change at the bottom is levered into a large change at the top. I've been made rather carsick in an SUV on a road that never caused me any problems in a regular car.
I'm running Windows ME, so yes.
Clearly he won't unite you, because it's not possible to do so. You would be one of the 30% who can't be reached. But as I said in my post, it's not possible or necessary to unite 100% of the nation. You need only to unite enough of the nation so that the political will is present to effect the changes that need to be made.
Anyway, have a nice day. I hope you'll feel better later on.
Geez, give the Republican voters a little credit, won't you? They're not all knee-jerk automatons whose brains freeze up at the first mention of an unusual name. A lot of them actually think about, you know, the issues and stuff.
In any case, Obama doesn't have to win that many Republican votes. The fact is, there just aren't that many Republican voters anymore. Obama can win easily with a strong Democratic turnout and half the independents.
Is it really worth the risk of having republican bullshit for the next 4 years?
Frankly, yes. After 8 years of Bush depravity, this nation needs an inspiring, principled leader more than it has in a long, long time... and Hillary, for all her good qualities, is not that leader. You can't change things for the better without taking some risk. And you're ignoring the fact that Hillary would have been just as much of a risk, because the Republican propaganda machine has been training people to viscerally hate and distrust her for the last two decades. So if we're going to take a risk either way, then we might as well choose the better candidate. Hell, look what happened in 2004, where the Democrats were cowed into choosing the "safe" candidate, and lost anyway. "Safe" is often just the flip side of "uninspiring", and uninspiring doesn't win a lot of elections.