"You are putting words into my mouth. I believe the statement in question is rhetoric because it is designed to be taken at face value and not debated or discussed. It's one of those "slippery slope" reasons that could be used to justify all sorts of things, and arguably already has. It is not right that country A can simply decide unilaterally that country B on the other side of the world is a threat, when country B has never threatened country A, and go off and attack them. Why didn't they hunt down al Qaeda first?"
You're right, I put words in your mouth, I thought I might have been when I typed it, but I thought that maybe you did think that about everything his administration says... I should have taken more time to word it better.
"Oh dear. I thought I'd heard everything. I suggest you take a step back, read what you wrote, and think about it."
I wasn't defending the actions of the prison keepers. I was just saying, that one would be a lot worse than the other.
In reference to your theoretical story. I believe that it was estimated that 6-10% of the people were wrongly imprisoned. Yes, that is a horrible number. I believe the military is doing the best they can. I believe it's a difficult job to do, I don't exactly what it's like over there, so I'm not going to condemn the military for that, but it is difficult to defend too.
"But what you _don't_ do is go and put a whole bunch of laws and procedures in place that have less to do with terrorism than generally expanding powers. You don't use terrorism as an excuse to pass laws the country doesn't need, and you also don't exaggerate the threat of terrorism in order to convince people that such laws are necessary."
I don't know what all the laws and rules were that were in the patriot act, I don't know how much it helped police agencies actually capture bad guys - I know it didn't affect me in anyway, except psychologically. I would have to find some numbers to see if it did, in fact, help catch bad guys. Generally I am against expanding government in any way, but I do believe that there are too many laws protecting criminals, instead of the citizens, but it is a difficult thing to do because until a criminal is a criminal he's a citizen - so how do you separate them out?
"Terrorism by its very nature is as much about instilling fear as it is inflicting damage, and since 9/11 the Bush administration seems to have done a lot to keep the level of fear raised unnecessarily"
Now you should back the boat up a bit here. When 9/11 happened the Bush administration, and all the intelligence officials in the U.S. were crucified for letting it happen. The news kept saying "why didn't you know?" "why didn't you warn us?" "how did this happen?" And now some intelligence is shared with the general public, and they get crucified for spreading fear. We can't have it both ways. And even if the administration had warned against the 9/11 terror attack, would anyone have believed them - here's a possible scenario - the administration warns of the attack, but they don't have an exact date, so are the twin towers really going to shut down for days or weeks until the threat is over? No, I don't think so, for several reasons: 1. They aren't going to let terrorists run their lives. 2. Yeah, right, like people would actually crash planes into the twin towers - that would never happen. 3. Costs too much money to shut down that many bussiness for that long (I'm just saying in terms of a non-cautious business owner). So while the twin towers are thumbing their noses at the terrorists, airport security pays more attention and catches the creeps before they crash into the twin towers. Then the attack never happens, and the administration get's blamed for spreading fear needlessly for an attack that never happened, and you can't prove was going to happen because they don't have any proof (because Osama doesn't use memo's or faxes), all they have is "some discussions that 'might have' happene
I'm still reading the article you referred me too, so I'll respond to that later.
As far as reading the news on the internet - okay so it looks like in print, they say "President Bush" - but when they're saying it on the news on the T.V., they say Mr. Bush very frequently, and they have been since he was elected - I'm not just making this up, it shouldn't take you anything more than one-two sessions of the nightly news to see what I'm talking about, but I haven't recorded data on this - and it's difficult to quote seeing as how I would have to get a recording, put it on an mp3 and post it somewhere for you, and I have no web-space to do that - but it really shouldn't take anything more than a session or two of the nightly news. If you don't watch T.V. news that's probably why you never heard that - and that's fine, T.V.'s mostly just a bunch of garbage anyway, it's reassuring to know that you read more to get your news.
Condoms don't prevent AIDS, they just decrease the probablity, they do fail. The only way to prevent 99% (jsut a quessed percent) of AIDS is to be abstinent until marriage, and then be monogamous. And yes there are people that still do that, I did that, my wife did that, and there are hundreds of thousands of people world wide that do that. There would be more, if it were promoted as the only way to prevent 100% of STD's, and prevent teen pregnancy. Beside that though, Bush poured more money than any other president, into defeating the actual virus through scientific research that could produce a vaccine or a cure, but he gets no credit, just ignored or criticized. What's better to have a condom, or a cure? A cure can prevent all AIDS, with or without a condom.
I stopped using google or any of their services, because of their obvious political views. Now I know they actually search the news, and just repost articles, but I'd rather search through the news sights myself. If you don't think that google is anti-bush then go to google.com and type in 'weapons of mass destruction' and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. This 'feature' was up a long time ago, I'm pretty sure it was over a year ago. Don't you think that is an anti-Bush view? So did they change their news search engine, to reflect their political views - I don't know, maybe they did maybe they didn't - but they lost my trust.
-As far as making the terrorist situation worse, that depends on the exit strategy. Several people have said what you said, and I just posted a response to it, so I'm not gonna retype it here.
"You seem to be making the unfounded assumption that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. To date, no proof has been shown that this was the case."
I don't believe Saddam was directly responsible, I believe he was indirectly helpful (different from responsible - but I'll agree my wording was a little sloppy). I don't believe that it is unfounded, I believe that Iraq was giving money to terrorists, and I believe he harbored them. I believe the reports - you don't - I guess that's okay, that's your perrogative to believe what you want to. In the end it cames down to two choices, either Saddam was helping terrorists, or he wasn't. I think he was.
"But you see, that's the key problem here: Bush wants to rewrite the US Constitution to ban it throughout the US. He's not interested in whether individual states can consider that they want to allow it. He's not even interested in asking the people if they think it's right full stop."
okay, I see your point. Where I live, it is being voted on - I just kinda took that for granted. It should be a voted on by the people.
"I am from another country, and trust me when I say that a lot of people where I live have much lowered opinions of the US (actually, more of the US's administration and recent behaviour) since Bush has been in power. I am not French, either, if that makes any difference."
yes, that does mean something more to me, that you are from another country, French or not (all I meant by French was -not part of the French government). So do you live in that country now, or do you live in the U.S.? It seems strange that someone living in another country is so concerned about so much the U.S. is doing, but then, I don't live in another country, so I don't know how much other countries focus, or don't care about what we do.
"Then perhaps you shouldn't yourself be making any parallels with anyone and Hitler. Clearly you don't understand how the parent poster made the parallels between Bush and Hitler, and more importantly that making parallels does not mean equating - he was not trying to say that Bush _is_ Hitler, just that some of his administrative decisions have been rather frighteningly similar."
The only reason I don't know where to start was because I thought what was trying to be said was Bush = Hitler, and it was more of a jaw-dropping response, than an - I'm so stupid I can't address the issue - response. Some of the items that were in the patriot act were disconcerting - like the invasion of privacies. I'm not going to entirely defend it, but I am going to say that I believe there are too many laws protecting criminals, and it needs to be easier to bust them. But balancing between that and invading privacy is difficult.
"Unfortunately it's a bit deeper than this Bush administration rhetoric which you are repeating. In fact, it's possible that the Bush administration has made things much more dangerous for the US. Now the terrorists will be able to bring in more recruits. "Look how the US bombs, invades and occupies other countries just to get oil! Look how they torture and demean Iraqi prisoners of war!" they will say. Now they have an even greater reason to hate the US than ever before. Surely more terrorists with even greater hatred equals more danger."
I don't believe it's rhetoric, I believe it is the truth, just because Bush or his administration says something, doesn't automatically make it rhetoric. What if I said that about everything Kerry ever said, you would find it equally frustrating to talk to someone with a closed mind - I'm not saying you have a closed mind, I'm just saying that retorting an argument with a quote by saying it's rhetoric, shuts down openness and conversation. -- Yes there is a possibility of creating more terrorists, if we screw up in Iraq, but if we leave Iraq better than we found it, I think that possibility will be highly diminished. Just look at Japan. We dropped two nuclear bombs on them, and then we went and helped them rebuild... do
I agree, that a humanitarian premise would've been a better forefront for reasons, and WMD's should have been a "well, they might have these too, and while we're there, changing regimes, we'll make sure they don't", and I'm surprised Bush hasn't brought it up more frequently as a defense for the war.
And you're probably right about facing more terrorists in 10 years. As long as the U.S. is wealthy, and people enjoy their freedoms here, we will be a magnet for terrorists, and angry people trying to hurt us. As far as I can tell, we will always have terrorists wanting to hurt us, until we show what good we can do in the world. Perhaps the people of Iraq will like their new government after we get out of Iraq. If we are able to leave the country better than it was before we went in then I think that is the only way to attenuate the growth of terrorists. The same is true for Afghanistan. What do the people think there that were fed from food provided by the U.S.? We dropped food before we dropped bombs. The only way to really stop terrorists in the long run, is to help make their countries better places.
Well I'm glad to see that you did some thinking on your reply. But calling people names and saying "I'm full of it" because I disagree with you, is the same kind of attitude that creates gridlock, civil war and dissaccord. I would like to think that you replied because you wanted to share your point of view, but it's hard to believe that when your being derrogatory toward me because I disagree with you. It seems more that your reply was out of anger against me because I'm such an idiot. Remember the vote for president is usually split pretty close to 50/50 it's pretty unlikely that just because someone disagrees with you that they must be a moron as well.
Do you really think Bush is devicive enough to lie about WMD's, don't you think he's kind of an idiot? If he was 'smart' enough to lie about WMD's don't you think he would be 'smart' enough to plant them in Iraq so that he could say 'we found em!' How embarassing, and politically hurtful is it to Bush to not have found very much that's significant yet. If he was really as evil and devicisive as you thought he was, he would have planted some WMD's there to trick us. The fact that he fesses up to saying there may be no WMD's there, is a hard thing to do, but there were several other reasons we went to Iraq.
"* His VP is very hawkish."
Your going to have to elaborate on that. So he's a CEO of an oil company, and that automatically makes him evil? Yes, his company got the contract with Iraq, and we're told they overcharged - but what are the costs really, does anyone outside of his company know? Here's some I can think of - His company is sending it's employees to a very dangerous place where they might get decapited or shot or injured. -They'll have to pay money to that employees family for the rest of his/hers productive work life. -They're likely to get sued by the employees family, for a 'wrongful death' -Where does the gas for the U.S. vehicles come from, many of the oil supply lines in Iraw were damaged or out of commission, so are we getting oil directly from there or is it refined here in the U.S. and then shipped over, how much does this cost - I don't know, I don't even know if this is what's happening with the fuel. The fact of the matter is this venture into Iraq for the VP's company could cost them a lot of money, is that money enough to justify what they charged the U.S. tax payers. I don't know, nobody has shown me a balance sheet, and I don't think anyone else has either, but it would be good to see one before we hang Cheney, and call him a thief don't you think?
"* Bush is willing to invade and occupy countries for reasons that I do not consider sufficient to invade and occupy countries."
That's fine if you don't consider it sufficient, that's your perrogative, and it's your right to think that way. I disagree, and I think that when 9/11 was still fresh in our memories, many of us did agree, but since then, that memory has faded, and we have forgotten, though many of us said 'we would never forget.'
"* Bush backs changing the Constitution to ban gay/lesbian marriage. I don't like this."
That's fine if you don't like it. I do agree with it, as I guess you could have guessed by now. What I disagree with is the tax system. I think that a gay couple should be equally taxed as a straight couple - that's what's really unfair. However healthcare offered by an employee, (which is another big issue about gay marriage) should be left up to the private companies. If the market demands that a company insure a gay couple the same way they insure a straight couple, it'll happen. In fact, I'm pretty sure it has happened here in Oregon, but you can't force a company or an employer to insure even a straight couple, if you can't force a company to insure a straight couple, you can't force them to insure a gay couple either. I do believe there should be economic equality treatment, and if gay people want to invent or belong to their own religion that endorses gay marriage and get
You have some good points, some good refreshingingly logical points. I didn't say Bush was the best guy, I just said that I think he's better than Kerry. I would like to vote for someone better, if there was someone better who I thought could win.
When President Bush made his speech about the axis of evil a couple years back, he implied a war with Iraq, Iran, and N.K. but we can't handle that many wars in parallel. It would be difficult to do it series, but I believe that was the original agenda. Though it wasn't said directly, I got the impression that it was implied that we would have a war with these countries in the future. I think we just started with the weakest one's first. I don't think it's the 'bully on the playground' mentality, I think it's the logical succession mentality.
I don't think we are disrespected around the world, as much as the T.V. would like you to believe. I know that 'News' people thrive on sensationalism, and you don't get the whole story. For example, do you remember the humongous peaceful protest against the world bank in Seattle a couple years back... well if you were there, or if you know someone who was, you'll know that 99% of the people there were peaceful and 1% were rioting and throwing things through windows, and being violent, but the news media made you believe that 99% of the people were rioting. Another case in point. I went to a political rally in Eugene, OR a couple weeks ago, and I saw about 12 protestors, but there were around 5000 supporters, but when I got home and watched the news, the protestors got 80% -90% of the coverage, the news even reported that they were veterans and families of veterans protesting, but there were hundreds more veterans and families of veterans inside the rally, than outside, I am a family member of a disabled veteran, I was inside the rally, with my father the veteran, and I know the cost of freedom, I grew up with it... but I'm getting side-tracked - the point is. The news reports what gets people riled up, not what's true. Out of every story I've seen done on people I know or places I've been they never get it right, and they always sensationalize and exploit whatever is aggravating or conducts their political bias.
About Saddam being brutal in his own country - that's not okay to do that - we let Hitler be brutal in his own country and then he got out of hand, and we regretted it. And we will probably regret letting a lot of other dictators be brutal. I know we empowered him, and armed him and Osama, when we (may have) thought they were on our side -- it may have been just to serve our political agenda -- I don't know. Since then things have changed, the world has changed, and these people's actions have changed, people aren't static, they're dynamic. A simple anlogy- If you had a friend that you bought a set of steak knives for when he got married, and 20 years later, you found out he killed one of his kids with the same steak knife you bought him - would it be your fault the kid died? No, people are held accountable for their own actions (or at least they should be - you might get sued in this day and age however). Then if you found out that the same friend had hired hit men to come and kill you, would you not defend yourself because 20 years ago you were friends? No, people are dynamic, not static, and so are world polotics, people change, countries change - look at our own country, it gets a new leader every 4 years, and many policies change with the same frequency.
And yes the justification for the war with Iraq means we should have gone to war against China when they killed the protestors in Tienemen square... and or stopped trading with them... and done a lot more than what we did do, this country has done a lot of things or not done a lot of things I disagree with, but President George W. Bush was not in power back then, we can't blaim failures of the party from years ago on the current administration, it just doesn't make any sense.
We are still in Afghanistan, Kerry said we are ignoring Afghanistan, but it's not true, we're still there.
Saddam Hussein wasn't "taken out" by the first President Bush, he was trapped in his own country, killing his own people, and making plans to launch missles at neighboring countries (Israel). His power had to be taken away. And since the government of Iraq was based on a dictatorship, we had to stay there to rebuild the government. If we didn't stay there, we would have let chaos reign in Iraq, and ticked off a lot more people and would have created thousands more Osama Bin Laden's from the people who were bitter about the chaos we left their country in. You may say that it is in chaos now... and to a degree you are right... but the country is being rebuilt, it just takes a long time to do it. Remember we were in Japan for 7 years after WWII, helping rebuild.
-- I know the top is a 'dupe' I hit the submit button early - sorry
We are still in Afghanistan, Kerry said we are ignoring Afghanistan, but it's not true, we're still there.
Saddam Hussein wasn't "taken out" he was trapped in his own country, killing his own people, and making plans to launch missles at neighboring countries (Israel). His power had to be taken away.
yes, I do, and I'm proud of it, but I'm also a senior in chemical and electrical engineering, so I'm not an idiot. Making snide comments isn't going to help anything, it doesn't help in politics, it doesn't help any 'bi-partisinism' the only thing it helps to do is create dissaccord. I hope you have something positive to focus on, do you have a family, or any kids... that would be a good place to start. Though I know that most of modern christianity hasn't done well to science, the religion I belong to is different, and it is the only one I have found that is logically sound.
There are intelligent people on both sides, so why are so many people acting like anyone that votes for someone besides your candidate is an idiot? That's just rude, and it's not going to help anything except for civil war.
Look I'd like to vote for someone better than Bush, but I don't think Kerry is the man, if you think Bush lies, guess what, so does Kerry. People are attracted to voting for Bush because we always know where he stands, and yes I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks (and yes I do know somewhat of the sacrifice military people make, my dad was in the military, and was half paralyzed and half brain dead from the time I was 7 due to his injuries in the service).
Does anyone remember September 11th? Does anyone remember Osama declaring war on the U.S.? Does anyone remember the feelings they had that day, or the day after 9/11,... the feelings that justice must be done for these several thousand people that died, and we must prevent it from happening again. Look, Kerry voted for this war too, he supported it. Bush just stuck to his guns, I know where he stands and that's why I'm voting for him.
Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves. He also financially supported the people that want to kill U.S. citizens, which I think most of us are. His sons would torture their own Olympians after they returned to Iraq if they didn't perform well. There's more, but I'm not going to continue on the tyranny for now. I don't care if he had WMD's or not, there were several other reasons to go to war with him (supporting terrorists, being a tyrant and killing his own people). There are too many parallels between Saddam and Hitler. Remember what happened when we tolerated Hitler, it cost over 50 Million lives to stop him. If we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. We have learned from history that 'dictators that kill their own people because they don't like their point of view' are dangerous, and need to be stopped. So we learned from history, we took him out before he got out of hand. And yes, this means we should be at war with other countries now too (i.e. North Korea, Iran), but I'm pretty sure we can't support that many war fronts without reinstating a draft.
Now you may say we're stuck in Iraq. Does anyone remember how long we were in Japan after WWII? about 7 years. How about the U.S.'s own revolution how long was it before the 13 colonies could agree... 11 years if my memory serves me correctly. Remember history, the rapid progress in Iraq is unprecedented. Yes it costs human lives and that is horrible, but it is a choice between less people dying now or more people dying later. It's a tough choice to make, but we made the right one.
And if you don't think that the media is slanted left, why is it that they call President Bush "Mr. Bush" and they call President Clinton, "President Clinton." or any other former president, is called "President." It's just one more way they undermine him. Just something interesting to think about. Also why is it that the media only reports the bad news and the deaths from the war, they never tell about power being restored, or schools being built, I've never heard a letter from a soldier who's actually in Iraq on the media on the T.V. I have heard several of their letters on the radio, and they paint quite a different picture from the one we see every night on the evening news. I'd talk more about their slant to the left, but I've been too long winded already.
I think it might be nature's way of saying "I hate you" but it has nothing to do with polution or the president. If most of you really are hippies, which seems like you are from reading the responses, then you'll agree that everything has a sense of intelligence, including "mother earth."
Yeah I think the earth is pissed off, but I think it's more pissed off at the state of the inhabitants than it is in the state of it's material composition.
Look at all the lies being spewed out of our poloticians, and all the hate coming from the supporters of the said politicians for the supporters of the opposing politician or political view. Look at all the broken families from people being selfish, and only concerned about their own feelings and or careers. How many people actually get on their knees and tell God how grateful they are for what they receive. I think everyone has a feeling for what the answers to these questions are.
I think the earth is tired of all the hate and lies and arrogance and selfishness and hipocracy. We may be doing it to ourselves, but it is not because of our SUV's, it's because of our "negative energy" for lack of a better word. Don't point a finger at the President. Point a finger at yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you did something nice for a complete stranger, or your neighbor, or even your own kids or wife? You might think I'm crazy, and that's fine, I'm just telling you natural law, and the way things actually are. Negative energy gravitates toward negative energy and positive energy gravitates toward positive energy.
And if you think you have me pegged as a liberal hippy type, your wrong, I'm a Christian conservative Republican, and if the voting system were better, I would vote for someone better than Bush, but I got to 'play' the politics game, so I'm voting for Bush, because Kerry vaselates on too many important issues. I believe that he would do a worse job than Bush. There is no way to really tell what Kerry would do because he changes his mind on important matters too frequently.
There were a higher frequency of worse storms in the 40's and 50's than there are now. This is nothing more than a load of political crap. There is no link between global warming and the intensity of hurricanes. If there was, where did the horrible hurricane's from half a century ago come from, if we've been warming up the world ever since then. This is nothing more than a trumped up load of crap put out there by "scientists" that are Bush haters that are trying to blame the bad weather on president Bush. Who these people funded by, would be a more informative on what their report meant, than the report itself. Remember weather is a chaotic system, and as far as I know, there is no one that can predict chaotic weather patterns, to a very good accuracy. They can barely tell if it's going to rain in a week, how then can they pretend to know what the weather will be like next year.
The fact of the matter is that the consumer is almost always better off without the government control. Who thinks the government is competent? Just look at VA hospitals, or the insistance of the FAA to use old parts in old aircraft instead of using newer better parts. I could go on about the governments incompetence... The fact is if the government decides what's best the consumer loses and the companies lose simply because of the nature of the government, it's too huge to be efficient. Compare the government to computer code, it's got billions of lines of code, lots of the code doesn't even work, and no one knows what the heck a lot of the code is doing, the code doesn't even know what to do sometimes, it's like trying to compile Basic with a C compiler.
We most likely will be imposed with some sort of copyright protection, but it will be created by companies that need money from our pockets to buy their products. They will compete with each other to make something reasonable that will induce us to buy it or they will go out of business. They are smart, but they're also profit motivated, and their profit comes from pleasing consumers.
I'm glad these companies are standing up to fight the government oppression. We should support them. Governments does have some great functions, but regulating the tech industry any more than it does isn't one of them.
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You're right, I put words in your mouth, I thought I might have been when I typed it, but I thought that maybe you did think that about everything his administration says... I should have taken more time to word it better.
"Oh dear. I thought I'd heard everything. I suggest you take a step back, read what you wrote, and think about it."
I wasn't defending the actions of the prison keepers. I was just saying, that one would be a lot worse than the other.
In reference to your theoretical story. I believe that it was estimated that 6-10% of the people were wrongly imprisoned. Yes, that is a horrible number. I believe the military is doing the best they can. I believe it's a difficult job to do, I don't exactly what it's like over there, so I'm not going to condemn the military for that, but it is difficult to defend too.
"But what you _don't_ do is go and put a whole bunch of laws and procedures in place that have less to do with terrorism than generally expanding powers. You don't use terrorism as an excuse to pass laws the country doesn't need, and you also don't exaggerate the threat of terrorism in order to convince people that such laws are necessary."
I don't know what all the laws and rules were that were in the patriot act, I don't know how much it helped police agencies actually capture bad guys - I know it didn't affect me in anyway, except psychologically. I would have to find some numbers to see if it did, in fact, help catch bad guys. Generally I am against expanding government in any way, but I do believe that there are too many laws protecting criminals, instead of the citizens, but it is a difficult thing to do because until a criminal is a criminal he's a citizen - so how do you separate them out?
"Terrorism by its very nature is as much about instilling fear as it is inflicting damage, and since 9/11 the Bush administration seems to have done a lot to keep the level of fear raised unnecessarily"
Now you should back the boat up a bit here. When 9/11 happened the Bush administration, and all the intelligence officials in the U.S. were crucified for letting it happen. The news kept saying "why didn't you know?" "why didn't you warn us?" "how did this happen?" And now some intelligence is shared with the general public, and they get crucified for spreading fear. We can't have it both ways. And even if the administration had warned against the 9/11 terror attack, would anyone have believed them - here's a possible scenario - the administration warns of the attack, but they don't have an exact date, so are the twin towers really going to shut down for days or weeks until the threat is over? No, I don't think so, for several reasons: 1. They aren't going to let terrorists run their lives. 2. Yeah, right, like people would actually crash planes into the twin towers - that would never happen. 3. Costs too much money to shut down that many bussiness for that long (I'm just saying in terms of a non-cautious business owner). So while the twin towers are thumbing their noses at the terrorists, airport security pays more attention and catches the creeps before they crash into the twin towers. Then the attack never happens, and the administration get's blamed for spreading fear needlessly for an attack that never happened, and you can't prove was going to happen because they don't have any proof (because Osama doesn't use memo's or faxes), all they have is "some discussions that 'might have' happene
... I meant "...for the fact of where they were born.", not "where I was born." at that end paragraph, it sounds a little silly the way it's posted.
I'm still reading the article you referred me too, so I'll respond to that later.
As far as reading the news on the internet - okay so it looks like in print, they say "President Bush" - but when they're saying it on the news on the T.V., they say Mr. Bush very frequently, and they have been since he was elected - I'm not just making this up, it shouldn't take you anything more than one-two sessions of the nightly news to see what I'm talking about, but I haven't recorded data on this - and it's difficult to quote seeing as how I would have to get a recording, put it on an mp3 and post it somewhere for you, and I have no web-space to do that - but it really shouldn't take anything more than a session or two of the nightly news. If you don't watch T.V. news that's probably why you never heard that - and that's fine, T.V.'s mostly just a bunch of garbage anyway, it's reassuring to know that you read more to get your news.
Condoms don't prevent AIDS, they just decrease the probablity, they do fail. The only way to prevent 99% (jsut a quessed percent) of AIDS is to be abstinent until marriage, and then be monogamous. And yes there are people that still do that, I did that, my wife did that, and there are hundreds of thousands of people world wide that do that. There would be more, if it were promoted as the only way to prevent 100% of STD's, and prevent teen pregnancy.
Beside that though, Bush poured more money than any other president, into defeating the actual virus through scientific research that could produce a vaccine or a cure, but he gets no credit, just ignored or criticized. What's better to have a condom, or a cure? A cure can prevent all AIDS, with or without a condom.
I stopped using google or any of their services, because of their obvious political views. Now I know they actually search the news, and just repost articles, but I'd rather search through the news sights myself. If you don't think that google is anti-bush then go to google.com and type in 'weapons of mass destruction' and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. This 'feature' was up a long time ago, I'm pretty sure it was over a year ago. Don't you think that is an anti-Bush view? So did they change their news search engine, to reflect their political views - I don't know, maybe they did maybe they didn't - but they lost my trust.
-As far as making the terrorist situation worse, that depends on the exit strategy. Several people have said what you said, and I just posted a response to it, so I'm not gonna retype it here.
I don't believe Saddam was directly responsible, I believe he was indirectly helpful (different from responsible - but I'll agree my wording was a little sloppy). I don't believe that it is unfounded, I believe that Iraq was giving money to terrorists, and I believe he harbored them. I believe the reports - you don't - I guess that's okay, that's your perrogative to believe what you want to. In the end it cames down to two choices, either Saddam was helping terrorists, or he wasn't. I think he was.
"But you see, that's the key problem here: Bush wants to rewrite the US Constitution to ban it throughout the US. He's not interested in whether individual states can consider that they want to allow it. He's not even interested in asking the people if they think it's right full stop."
okay, I see your point. Where I live, it is being voted on - I just kinda took that for granted. It should be a voted on by the people.
"I am from another country, and trust me when I say that a lot of people where I live have much lowered opinions of the US (actually, more of the US's administration and recent behaviour) since Bush has been in power. I am not French, either, if that makes any difference."
yes, that does mean something more to me, that you are from another country, French or not (all I meant by French was -not part of the French government). So do you live in that country now, or do you live in the U.S.? It seems strange that someone living in another country is so concerned about so much the U.S. is doing, but then, I don't live in another country, so I don't know how much other countries focus, or don't care about what we do.
"Then perhaps you shouldn't yourself be making any parallels with anyone and Hitler. Clearly you don't understand how the parent poster made the parallels between Bush and Hitler, and more importantly that making parallels does not mean equating - he was not trying to say that Bush _is_ Hitler, just that some of his administrative decisions have been rather frighteningly similar."
The only reason I don't know where to start was because I thought what was trying to be said was Bush = Hitler, and it was more of a jaw-dropping response, than an - I'm so stupid I can't address the issue - response. Some of the items that were in the patriot act were disconcerting - like the invasion of privacies. I'm not going to entirely defend it, but I am going to say that I believe there are too many laws protecting criminals, and it needs to be easier to bust them. But balancing between that and invading privacy is difficult.
"Unfortunately it's a bit deeper than this Bush administration rhetoric which you are repeating. In fact, it's possible that the Bush administration has made things much more dangerous for the US. Now the terrorists will be able to bring in more recruits. "Look how the US bombs, invades and occupies other countries just to get oil! Look how they torture and demean Iraqi prisoners of war!" they will say. Now they have an even greater reason to hate the US than ever before. Surely more terrorists with even greater hatred equals more danger."
I don't believe it's rhetoric, I believe it is the truth, just because Bush or his administration says something, doesn't automatically make it rhetoric. What if I said that about everything Kerry ever said, you would find it equally frustrating to talk to someone with a closed mind - I'm not saying you have a closed mind, I'm just saying that retorting an argument with a quote by saying it's rhetoric, shuts down openness and conversation. -- Yes there is a possibility of creating more terrorists, if we screw up in Iraq, but if we leave Iraq better than we found it, I think that possibility will be highly diminished. Just look at Japan. We dropped two nuclear bombs on them, and then we went and helped them rebuild... do
I agree, that a humanitarian premise would've been a better forefront for reasons, and WMD's should have been a "well, they might have these too, and while we're there, changing regimes, we'll make sure they don't", and I'm surprised Bush hasn't brought it up more frequently as a defense for the war.
And you're probably right about facing more terrorists in 10 years. As long as the U.S. is wealthy, and people enjoy their freedoms here, we will be a magnet for terrorists, and angry people trying to hurt us. As far as I can tell, we will always have terrorists wanting to hurt us, until we show what good we can do in the world. Perhaps the people of Iraq will like their new government after we get out of Iraq. If we are able to leave the country better than it was before we went in then I think that is the only way to attenuate the growth of terrorists. The same is true for Afghanistan. What do the people think there that were fed from food provided by the U.S.? We dropped food before we dropped bombs. The only way to really stop terrorists in the long run, is to help make their countries better places.
Do you really think Bush is devicive enough to lie about WMD's, don't you think he's kind of an idiot? If he was 'smart' enough to lie about WMD's don't you think he would be 'smart' enough to plant them in Iraq so that he could say 'we found em!' How embarassing, and politically hurtful is it to Bush to not have found very much that's significant yet. If he was really as evil and devicisive as you thought he was, he would have planted some WMD's there to trick us. The fact that he fesses up to saying there may be no WMD's there, is a hard thing to do, but there were several other reasons we went to Iraq.
"* His VP is very hawkish."
Your going to have to elaborate on that. So he's a CEO of an oil company, and that automatically makes him evil? Yes, his company got the contract with Iraq, and we're told they overcharged - but what are the costs really, does anyone outside of his company know? Here's some I can think of
- His company is sending it's employees to a very dangerous place where they might get decapited or shot or injured.
-They'll have to pay money to that employees family for the rest of his/hers productive work life.
-They're likely to get sued by the employees family, for a 'wrongful death'
-Where does the gas for the U.S. vehicles come from, many of the oil supply lines in Iraw were damaged or out of commission, so are we getting oil directly from there or is it refined here in the U.S. and then shipped over, how much does this cost - I don't know, I don't even know if this is what's happening with the fuel.
The fact of the matter is this venture into Iraq for the VP's company could cost them a lot of money, is that money enough to justify what they charged the U.S. tax payers. I don't know, nobody has shown me a balance sheet, and I don't think anyone else has either, but it would be good to see one before we hang Cheney, and call him a thief don't you think?
"* Bush is willing to invade and occupy countries for reasons that I do not consider sufficient to invade and occupy countries."
That's fine if you don't consider it sufficient, that's your perrogative, and it's your right to think that way. I disagree, and I think that when 9/11 was still fresh in our memories, many of us did agree, but since then, that memory has faded, and we have forgotten, though many of us said 'we would never forget.'
"* Bush backs changing the Constitution to ban gay/lesbian marriage. I don't like this."
That's fine if you don't like it. I do agree with it, as I guess you could have guessed by now. What I disagree with is the tax system. I think that a gay couple should be equally taxed as a straight couple - that's what's really unfair. However healthcare offered by an employee, (which is another big issue about gay marriage) should be left up to the private companies. If the market demands that a company insure a gay couple the same way they insure a straight couple, it'll happen. In fact, I'm pretty sure it has happened here in Oregon, but you can't force a company or an employer to insure even a straight couple, if you can't force a company to insure a straight couple, you can't force them to insure a gay couple either. I do believe there should be economic equality treatment, and if gay people want to invent or belong to their own religion that endorses gay marriage and get
You have some good points, some good refreshingingly logical points. I didn't say Bush was the best guy, I just said that I think he's better than Kerry. I would like to vote for someone better, if there was someone better who I thought could win.
When President Bush made his speech about the axis of evil a couple years back, he implied a war with Iraq, Iran, and N.K. but we can't handle that many wars in parallel. It would be difficult to do it series, but I believe that was the original agenda. Though it wasn't said directly, I got the impression that it was implied that we would have a war with these countries in the future. I think we just started with the weakest one's first. I don't think it's the 'bully on the playground' mentality, I think it's the logical succession mentality.
I don't think we are disrespected around the world, as much as the T.V. would like you to believe. I know that 'News' people thrive on sensationalism, and you don't get the whole story. For example, do you remember the humongous peaceful protest against the world bank in Seattle a couple years back... well if you were there, or if you know someone who was, you'll know that 99% of the people there were peaceful and 1% were rioting and throwing things through windows, and being violent, but the news media made you believe that 99% of the people were rioting.
Another case in point. I went to a political rally in Eugene, OR a couple weeks ago, and I saw about 12 protestors, but there were around 5000 supporters, but when I got home and watched the news, the protestors got 80% -90% of the coverage, the news even reported that they were veterans and families of veterans protesting, but there were hundreds more veterans and families of veterans inside the rally, than outside, I am a family member of a disabled veteran, I was inside the rally, with my father the veteran, and I know the cost of freedom, I grew up with it... but I'm getting side-tracked - the point is. The news reports what gets people riled up, not what's true. Out of every story I've seen done on people I know or places I've been they never get it right, and they always sensationalize and exploit whatever is aggravating or conducts their political bias.
About Saddam being brutal in his own country - that's not okay to do that - we let Hitler be brutal in his own country and then he got out of hand, and we regretted it. And we will probably regret letting a lot of other dictators be brutal. I know we empowered him, and armed him and Osama, when we (may have) thought they were on our side -- it may have been just to serve our political agenda -- I don't know. Since then things have changed, the world has changed, and these people's actions have changed, people aren't static, they're dynamic. A simple anlogy- If you had a friend that you bought a set of steak knives for when he got married, and 20 years later, you found out he killed one of his kids with the same steak knife you bought him - would it be your fault the kid died? No, people are held accountable for their own actions (or at least they should be - you might get sued in this day and age however). Then if you found out that the same friend had hired hit men to come and kill you, would you not defend yourself because 20 years ago you were friends? No, people are dynamic, not static, and so are world polotics, people change, countries change - look at our own country, it gets a new leader every 4 years, and many policies change with the same frequency.
And yes the justification for the war with Iraq means we should have gone to war against China when they killed the protestors in Tienemen square... and or stopped trading with them... and done a lot more than what we did do, this country has done a lot of things or not done a lot of things I disagree with, but President George W. Bush was not in power back then, we can't blaim failures of the party from years ago on the current administration, it just doesn't make any sense.
The question we have before us, is who
We are still in Afghanistan, Kerry said we are ignoring Afghanistan, but it's not true, we're still there.
Saddam Hussein wasn't "taken out" by the first President Bush, he was trapped in his own country, killing his own people, and making plans to launch missles at neighboring countries (Israel). His power had to be taken away. And since the government of Iraq was based on a dictatorship, we had to stay there to rebuild the government. If we didn't stay there, we would have let chaos reign in Iraq, and ticked off a lot more people and would have created thousands more Osama Bin Laden's from the people who were bitter about the chaos we left their country in. You may say that it is in chaos now... and to a degree you are right... but the country is being rebuilt, it just takes a long time to do it. Remember we were in Japan for 7 years after WWII, helping rebuild.
-- I know the top is a 'dupe' I hit the submit button early - sorry
We are still in Afghanistan, Kerry said we are ignoring Afghanistan, but it's not true, we're still there.
Saddam Hussein wasn't "taken out" he was trapped in his own country, killing his own people, and making plans to launch missles at neighboring countries (Israel). His power had to be taken away.
yes, I do, and I'm proud of it, but I'm also a senior in chemical and electrical engineering, so I'm not an idiot. Making snide comments isn't going to help anything, it doesn't help in politics, it doesn't help any 'bi-partisinism' the only thing it helps to do is create dissaccord. I hope you have something positive to focus on, do you have a family, or any kids... that would be a good place to start. Though I know that most of modern christianity hasn't done well to science, the religion I belong to is different, and it is the only one I have found that is logically sound.
There are intelligent people on both sides, so why are so many people acting like anyone that votes for someone besides your candidate is an idiot? That's just rude, and it's not going to help anything except for civil war.
Look I'd like to vote for someone better than Bush, but I don't think Kerry is the man, if you think Bush lies, guess what, so does Kerry. People are attracted to voting for Bush because we always know where he stands, and yes I do want him to send the military to kill terrorists and terrorist networks (and yes I do know somewhat of the sacrifice military people make, my dad was in the military, and was half paralyzed and half brain dead from the time I was 7 due to his injuries in the service).
Does anyone remember September 11th? Does anyone remember Osama declaring war on the U.S.? Does anyone remember the feelings they had that day, or the day after 9/11,... the feelings that justice must be done for these several thousand people that died, and we must prevent it from happening again. Look, Kerry voted for this war too, he supported it. Bush just stuck to his guns, I know where he stands and that's why I'm voting for him.
Even if there weren't WMD's, remember Saddam was a tyrant dictator that killed thousands of his own people with WMD's and then threw them in mass graves. He also financially supported the people that want to kill U.S. citizens, which I think most of us are. His sons would torture their own Olympians after they returned to Iraq if they didn't perform well. There's more, but I'm not going to continue on the tyranny for now. I don't care if he had WMD's or not, there were several other reasons to go to war with him (supporting terrorists, being a tyrant and killing his own people). There are too many parallels between Saddam and Hitler. Remember what happened when we tolerated Hitler, it cost over 50 Million lives to stop him. If we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. We have learned from history that 'dictators that kill their own people because they don't like their point of view' are dangerous, and need to be stopped. So we learned from history, we took him out before he got out of hand. And yes, this means we should be at war with other countries now too (i.e. North Korea, Iran), but I'm pretty sure we can't support that many war fronts without reinstating a draft.
Now you may say we're stuck in Iraq. Does anyone remember how long we were in Japan after WWII? about 7 years. How about the U.S.'s own revolution how long was it before the 13 colonies could agree... 11 years if my memory serves me correctly. Remember history, the rapid progress in Iraq is unprecedented. Yes it costs human lives and that is horrible, but it is a choice between less people dying now or more people dying later. It's a tough choice to make, but we made the right one.
And if you don't think that the media is slanted left, why is it that they call President Bush "Mr. Bush" and they call President Clinton, "President Clinton." or any other former president, is called "President." It's just one more way they undermine him. Just something interesting to think about. Also why is it that the media only reports the bad news and the deaths from the war, they never tell about power being restored, or schools being built, I've never heard a letter from a soldier who's actually in Iraq on the media on the T.V. I have heard several of their letters on the radio, and they paint quite a different picture from the one we see every night on the evening news. I'd talk more about their slant to the left, but I've been too long winded already.
I think it might be nature's way of saying "I hate you" but it has nothing to do with polution or the president. If most of you really are hippies, which seems like you are from reading the responses, then you'll agree that everything has a sense of intelligence, including "mother earth."
Yeah I think the earth is pissed off, but I think it's more pissed off at the state of the inhabitants than it is in the state of it's material composition.
Look at all the lies being spewed out of our poloticians, and all the hate coming from the supporters of the said politicians for the supporters of the opposing politician or political view. Look at all the broken families from people being selfish, and only concerned about their own feelings and or careers. How many people actually get on their knees and tell God how grateful they are for what they receive. I think everyone has a feeling for what the answers to these questions are.
I think the earth is tired of all the hate and lies and arrogance and selfishness and hipocracy. We may be doing it to ourselves, but it is not because of our SUV's, it's because of our "negative energy" for lack of a better word. Don't point a finger at the President. Point a finger at yourself, and ask yourself when the last time was that you did something nice for a complete stranger, or your neighbor, or even your own kids or wife? You might think I'm crazy, and that's fine, I'm just telling you natural law, and the way things actually are. Negative energy gravitates toward negative energy and positive energy gravitates toward positive energy.
And if you think you have me pegged as a liberal hippy type, your wrong, I'm a Christian conservative Republican, and if the voting system were better, I would vote for someone better than Bush, but I got to 'play' the politics game, so I'm voting for Bush, because Kerry vaselates on too many important issues. I believe that he would do a worse job than Bush. There is no way to really tell what Kerry would do because he changes his mind on important matters too frequently.
There were a higher frequency of worse storms in the 40's and 50's than there are now. This is nothing more than a load of political crap. There is no link between global warming and the intensity of hurricanes. If there was, where did the horrible hurricane's from half a century ago come from, if we've been warming up the world ever since then. This is nothing more than a trumped up load of crap put out there by "scientists" that are Bush haters that are trying to blame the bad weather on president Bush. Who these people funded by, would be a more informative on what their report meant, than the report itself. Remember weather is a chaotic system, and as far as I know, there is no one that can predict chaotic weather patterns, to a very good accuracy. They can barely tell if it's going to rain in a week, how then can they pretend to know what the weather will be like next year.
The fact of the matter is that the consumer is almost always better off without the government control. Who thinks the government is competent? Just look at VA hospitals, or the insistance of the FAA to use old parts in old aircraft instead of using newer better parts. I could go on about the governments incompetence... The fact is if the government decides what's best the consumer loses and the companies lose simply because of the nature of the government, it's too huge to be efficient. Compare the government to computer code, it's got billions of lines of code, lots of the code doesn't even work, and no one knows what the heck a lot of the code is doing, the code doesn't even know what to do sometimes, it's like trying to compile Basic with a C compiler.
We most likely will be imposed with some sort of copyright protection, but it will be created by companies that need money from our pockets to buy their products. They will compete with each other to make something reasonable that will induce us to buy it or they will go out of business. They are smart, but they're also profit motivated, and their profit comes from pleasing consumers.
I'm glad these companies are standing up to fight the government oppression. We should support them. Governments does have some great functions, but regulating the tech industry any more than it does isn't one of them.
I got laid off for this Christmas, right before finals and four months before we have baby #2.