"Personally, I want any war the US is in to be very unfair. The point is it win."
If the U.S. uses its military power with discretion you might have a case. For example if the U.S. uses its force to defend itself or others from aggression or to dissuade or to counter aggressive warfare by a rogue nation that is discretion.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of most of the world since Iraq, the U.S. is the rogue nation now engaging in aggressive warfare and invading countries without provocation and based on fabrication. The doctrine of preemptive warfare is rightly setting off alarm bells around the world.
You want "any war the US is in to be unfair". The rest of the world doesn't wany any war the U.S. enters in to to be unfair(based on deceit, aggression and fabrication).
With great power comes great responsibility. The U.S. appears to be increasingly inclined to only exercise its power without exercising responsibility. This leads the rest of the world to being rightly concerned when the U.S. tries to unilaterally impose its will on the rest of the world.
As I pointed out in another post the U.S. is almost certainly signaling Europe/China that if they field the Galileo GPS system in the next couple years the U.S. is going to take it upon itself to field the capability to jam it since unfortunately GPS is dual use technology. If the world moves to using high resolution GPS to land airplanes in bad weather, for example, I assure you they wont appreciate the U.S. unilaterally jamming it even if its temporary and non destructive.
"he want to destroy those that would pose a danger to this country"
In what way did Iraq actually pose a threat to this country. There are countries that are far more threatening than Iraq which is why your house of cards falls. If this was the reason then North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have been taken down first because they all pose a much more direct and immediate threat to the U.S. Pakistan, ostensible our ally was an intimate and direct supporter of the Taliban, they were their closest ally. The U.S. had to let them evacuate the hundreds of agents they had working with the Taliban when Afghanistan fell. Pakistan was in fact actually selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and who knows who else and the ringleader, A.Q. Khan when exposed was instantly pardoned by Pakistan. Pakistan's tribal regions are actually Al Qaida's current home base and Pakistan hasn't really done anything to root them out of it.
"It's a matter of do you believe that Bush wants to become a "colonial" power or does he want to destroy those that would pose a danger to this country"
There is an easy test. If we aren't planning to be a colonial power we will pull out as soon as Iraq's great democracy is on its feet. All indications are the Bush administration is instead working to establish 4 to 14 permanent military bases in Iraq. From GlobalSecurity. The U.S. is dismantling its problem plagued bases in Saudi Arabia and all indications are they will be replaced with permanent Iraqi bases which will have fewer constraints than those in Saudi Arabia did. They will be much better to threaten Iran and Syria in particular.
That is the most basic indicator of colonial aspirations, as is the enormous size of the permanent U.S. embassy in Baghdad. One of the few things in Kerry's defense is he says he is going to pull out of those bases at the first opportunity.
This is fundamental. If we are putting huge and permanent military bases in Iraq we are planning a permanent occupation and and it will lead to a permanent Iraqi insurgency fighting that occupation. If we let Iraq go its own way, good or bad, then we are not a colonial power.
" Every single person in the country got a tax cut"
Tax cuts only work if you cut spending at the same time. When you cut taxes and increase spending, dramatically, as the Republicans have they are creating a false prosperity. They are handing out borrowed money in exchange for votes and it works. This can be good in the short term to stimulate a struggling economy but when you continue it in perpetuity as is the Republican plan the debt is eventually going to come home to roost and crush future generations.
"and instead implement a National Sales tax system"
Unfortunately this is the most regressive form of taxation which is why rich conservatives always favor it. The poor and middle income spend most of their income which is why sales taxes are regressive. You would have to exempt everything the poor and middle income buy to make it not regressive and at that point you are only taxing luxuries which isn't going to pay the bills. The wealthy don't spend most of their income, they accumulate it, so they also don't carry much of the burden. Switching to a regressive tax system will just accelerate the rate at which the wealthy accumulate wealth, and will probably bankrupt the government unless you lay a huge sales tax on the poor and middle class.
America already went down this road in the late 1800's and early 1900's, it resulted in the progressive movement and progressive income taxes to slow the concentration of wealth by a few and the expansion of poverty for everyone else.
If you want to insure the rich get taxed just delete the entire tax code with all its shelters and dodges and go to a simple income tax with no deductions, no shelters and no dodges.
One of the more interesting uses for jamming satellites coming real soon now is Galileo, the European/Chinese GPS constellation, coming on line in a couple of years. The U.S. is most unhappy that there will be a GPS system with 1 meter resolution, with wider coverage, they don't control, because it will break their monopoly on GPS guided weapons and navigation during a conflict unless they have the capbility to jam it. The U.S. GPS system can be selectively crippled/encrypted by the U.S. to deny its use to its enemies.
I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. is making this threat public to send a signal to the Europe/China that if they proceed with a GPS system free of U.S. domination the U.S. is going to counter with the technology necessary to cripple it.
China's Xinhua has a pretty biting commentary on the subject that appeared on SpaceDaily a couple days ago.
It is a further indicator that as the U.S. continues to seek its global empire and world dominion it is going to continue to place itself against and at odds with the entire rest of the world.
Apparently only the U.S. is allowed to decide who can use and deploy basic technology.
"HMMWVs were never really armored from the beginning. Flack jackets were never made for everyone and were always special issue."
Until you are fighting an insurgency where all of your troops in theater are being subjected to daily sniper fire and IED's. At that point the Pentagon should have gone in to overdrive to adapt to the conditions of the theater. Making soldiers driver around in unarmored vehicles facing those conditions for this long borders on criminal neglect by all the powers that be, especially since they've had huge sums of money at their disposal and their rhetoric is they are giving the troops everything they need (and are filleting Kerry for not supporting the troops). Evidence is they are in fact not giving the troops in Iraq some of the most basic essential equipment. This is how you spell hypocrisy.
"Bush is suppose to have friends in the military supply chain why hasn't he offered them a big contract to do all these things and fix these problems?"
You tell me. I don't know. Me and others would like to know especially as much time as they spend telling Americans that the troops are getting everything they need when its obviously not the case. Are they just lieing as is their way, incompetent or are they busy filling their friends pockets with money elsewhere so there isn't any left to keep our troops alive.
"I'm sorry but defending the Democrats by pointing at the bad that the Republicans have done is just not going to convince me of anything."
Uh, your the confused one here. You were the one that started this thread by defending the Republicans by blaming the long gone Democrats. I'm not a Democrat and am not defending them. If you read my slashdot posts I have a long history of bashing both parties.
I am just way past sick of people, doing what you just did, and blame everything on the Democrats though the Republicans have a stranglehold on power and have had it for a while now. I'm especially sick of the fact that this administration is the worst in memory for deflecting blame, refusing to admit mistakes or to take responsibility when they occur and taking action to fix them. When you refuse to admit a mistake you tend to never take corrective action which is whats happening in equipping soldiers in Iraq.
Republicans have the power now, they have the responsibility that comes with that power. It would be a joy if they actually accepted the responsibility and not just the power for a change.
"I support the current US administration but this description definitely does not apply to me. I support the current administration for various none of which has anything to do with imperialism or global domination."
So maybe you could list the reasons you do support them? You kind of leave your argument hanging when you say these are not the reasons but don't list any others.
If you support the Bush administrations military and foreign policy you do support these things where you like it or not or believe it or not.
If you like their domestic policy its presumably because you are on the winning side of the wealth divide and like tax cuts for the wealthy in particular or maybe you like massive deficit spending or outsourcing?
If you support them because of their positions on abortion and gays then it suggests you are supporting them on a religious and moral basis.
"There are also many in the country that would say that America has a large number of enivornmental extremists which they would describe as unfortunate."
"There are also many in the country that would say that there is a large number of socialist in this country which "they" would describe as unfortunate."
Yes but these two group no longer have any power. We are talking about the extremists who are in power in the U.S. now and whom are making the rest of the world hate America. Being pro environment tends to be better for the world than being pro war and pro wealth concentration. If we screw up our environment, and indications are we are due to green house gases, especially burning coal, we may massively screw up our weather and lots of things will die, maybe including us. How do you put being pro war and pro environment on the same plane?
"Come on, is this another one of those Repubs=Nazis remarks?"
No, its a remark about the willingness of people to support bad governments who do bad things which is where this thread started and in particular there responsibility when they do it.
The gist of what I'm saying and maybe badly is it was wrong for the original poster to say America's government is bad but its people are not responsible. Maybe that is OK if the Bush administration fooled the American people who voted form him in 2000. He did say he was going to be a moderate president and ended up being an extremist. But if the American people reelect him tomorrow that means most Americans endorse having an extremist President who does bad things. So if the world dislikes Bush, and he is reelected after tomorrow the world needs to start blaming the American people for him and come to accept many Americans are as bad as their government.
Americans need to start taking personal responsibility for their government and in particular hold bad government accountable. The Republicans have become amazing and reprehensible for their ability to take credit for everything good whether they had anything to do with it or not, and to shirk responsibility for everthing bad, wrong and deceitful for which they are directly responsible. Many of them are still trying to blame Clinton for everything bad though he's been gone for 4 years and the Republicans now completely control the government.
"less than 35% of the US population belongs to a Evangelical organization"
And about 48% of the U.S. population supports the Republican party and Bush. There is an extremely strong correlation between attending a white, evangelical protestant church and voting Republican/Bush. If all evangelicals supported Bush which is probably not the case though its close, using your numbers, that translates to 2/3rds of the republican base are evangelicals. Its probably not that high but it is a huge percentage of their base which is why they have come to dominate the Republican party and its agenda.
"They do not vote their hearts. They vote what they believe is their faith."
Uh, I think that is the same thing though if you want to split hairs OK they vote their faith. That means they don't weigh issues like economics, taxes, military and foreign policy using their brain and intellect. They decide things through a religious lens. It makes them very easy to manipulate, all you have to do is say you pray every day, say God is guiding your policy, and be extremely anti abortion, anti gay and you have this huge block locked up. Its like shooting ducks in a barrel for a cynical political handler like Karl Rove.
"they are free to have whatever faith (or lack thereof) they choose"
Yes they are. The problem comes when they, and in particular their elected representatives inject their faith into a government which is predicated on separation of church and state and seek to inflict their unique twist on faith and morality on those who don't subscribe to it though political power. We have separation of church and state precisely to prevent one religious sect from inflicting its views on other sects. Our forefathers were fleeing just that in Europe and they didn't want it in their new home.
Politicians should be free to have their faith, its maybe its even a net positive having it, but they should refrain from letting it guide policy decisions that effect millions of Americans not of that faith and even worse inflict that faith based policy on the rest of the world at the end of a gun. You know a politician has gone over the line when he says he is waging a war because God put him on earth to make people "free".
"these poor misguided souls can't tell the difference between a "forgive me for I have sinned" televangelist and an election "
It is hard to prove conjecture but indications are that is exactly what is happening. Evangelical conmen and politicians playing the faith card have more in common than they differ. The Bush administration has lied their way through their entire first term. But their faithful, thanks to cognitive dissonance, have let one lie or another slip by like it never happened, they never questioning obvious deceit and refuse to hold anyone accountable. The Bush administration can SAY anything and their faithful will accept it without questioning it because they are working on faith and not intellect. The Bush administration says there is an imminent threat of a mushroom cloud of an America city because of Saddam and they accept it. The Bush administration says Saddam was tied to 9/11 and they accept it. Both of those assertions proved to be false yet nearly 70% of Republicans, probably mostly evangelicals, still believe them to be true, though they fly in the face of reality. They are beliefs based on faith, not on reality. The mess that is America and its government today is because people are working on "belief" and not on truth and reality.
"American Christians are somehow all Pro-War, and Pro-Bush, the polls don't support this."
I dont think you either read or understood the poll you are referencing, it supports my point not yours. It says:
"When churchgoers do hear a point of view, it mostly comports with the national stance of their religious faith: white Catholics and African-Americans are hearing anti-war messages, while white evangelical Protestants are getting a pro-war point of view. "
"sorry it takes far more than 2 1/2 years to build up 8 years of down sizing of the military."
Sorry but the Republicans have been in power for 4 years now, they've controlled the House much longer than that and the House drives the budget process. It was OK to scale down the military during a time when the world was at peace and the U.S.S.R. was gone, Republicans were just as much a part of it as the Democrats. Sane nations cut back their military when there isn't an imminent threat of war because its economic suicide to maintain a war footing military forever.
The basic problem here is if the Republicans wanted to launch an optional war they should have made sure they had the soldiers and the equipment to do it. They didn't because they thought it would be over in a couple weeks and the Iraqi's would shower them with flowers. They were wrong, they either lied or were incompetent and haven't been held responsible for that failure. They've now had draft the guard and reserve, indefinitely, for combat duty and they've failed to equip them properly for combat duty. They are to blame, get over it. They've had 18 months, and big buckets of money, to fix these problem now and they have once again failed to do it.
The equipment we are talking about here probably costs a couple billion tops, the armored Humvees price tag is 800 some million. There is no reason the Pentagon and Congress couldn't have fixed it by now but for incompetence and corruption on both sides of the aisle and in the the Pentagon. The key point is Republican's have near complete control of the budget and the agenda. Equiping the guard and reserve is always the first thing Congress sacrifices to pay for exorbinant big ticket items like the missile defense program. The problem is that thanks to the Republicans and their optional war those gaurdsmen are now dieing everyday driving around in unarmored vehicles while people set off bombs underneath them, bombs using explosives from all the ammo dumps the U.S. failed to secure after the war.
The bottomline on all this is the Republican's run their mouths with empty rhetoric that says:
- they are fiscally conservative and responsible - they make sure the troops in the field have everything they need.
Now that they have complete power its become obvious neither of these are true, they aren't fiscally responsible, they aren't giving the troops the equipment they need, this stuff is their fault, with power comes responsibility and they are irresponsible. That is how you spell hypocrisy.
"However, the American government is NOT a good representation of its people."
Unfortunately the current American government is pretty representative about half of the American people. Its a nice copout to think Americans aren't to blame for the current government but half of American's are and they are adamant in trying to continue it like it is in perpetuity. They like the idea of America dominating the world politically, economically and militarily. They are citizens of a new empire and most citizens of most empires through history like empire and the power and wealth that usually follows.
Unfortunately America has a huge born again fundamentalist Christian block, something you probably dont have anything quite like in Europe. It has acquired huge power in and through the new Republican party. They vote with their hearts and not their intellects. They are very easily manipulated, reference how Jim and Tammy Fay Baker played them like a fiddle and how Bush/Cheney/Rove play them now. Unfortunately they favor policies that are the usually antithesis of the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was very tolerant of the poor and people out of the main stream. Today's American Christians appear mostly intolerant of the poor, those who aren't Christian and those out of the main stream, and instead appear to favor wealth and people that are like them in defiance of the real teachings of their religion.
Jesus was for the most part vehemently opposed to the use of violence while unfortunately many Americans favor the use of violence as a first resort instead of a last resort. There is an inevitability in that because when you build and worship a military as large as America's which can squash most countries in the world like a bug people become fond of using it, especially when it always wins. The German people were fond of their military and government too because it always won in the late 1930's and early '40's.
The insurgency in Iraq is the first time the American military and people have suffered any real consequences, since Vietnam, for using war as the first resort. Unfortunately Americans don't see footage of the carnage in Iraq, either wounded Americans or civilians screaming in pain or the bodies of the dead so the fact wars are bad hasn't registered yet, except with those who've lost a loved one or had one come home maimed for life. Unfortunately the government and the media are heavily filtering what American's see of Iraq because they learned that if people see the real carnage that is war, as they did during Vietnam, they are likely to turn on it, especially when the rational for the war was based on deceit.
No I don't think I'd really give the American people a free pass when they encourage their government to do bad things in their name. The German people were to blame for the Nazi's and the American people are to blame for the new Republican party.
Not sure I follow your point. Are you, in classic Bush style, trying to blame Clinton that the guard and reserves in Iraq are woefully under equipped for combat duty? That is just so sweet.
Clinton has been gone for 4 years now. The Iraq war has been going on like 18 months. The Republicans have complete control of the government. With the next supplemental they are going to request right after the election the price tag for the war is going to hit around $220 billion dollars. There is no one you can blame but the Republicans if the troops in Iraq don't have the most basic and not very expensive equipment like secure radios.
It might have been OK to woefully underequip guard units when they were weekend warriors but now, thanks to the Bush administration, they make up 40% of the troops in Iraq and are for all intents and purposes active duty. With the huge sums being poured in to Iraq the first priority should have been to make sure they were properly equipped, not the last priority. Soldiers having their legs blown off on a daily basis, doesn't seem to rate versus pouring money in to Halliburton's coffers for some reason. I wonder why?
You also gloss over the point that a key reason they are underequipped is because congressmen on the armed services and appropriations committee are shaving money that could go for this basic equipment and rerouting it to pure pork in their home districts. A key ring leader is Ted Stevens, chairman of the appropriations committer, Republican from Alaska. For some reason the Republican delegation from Alaska currently reigns supreme in dishing out pork.
Just further confirmation that with Republicans the buck stops any place but with them, especially so with George W. Bush. If Republicans keep control of all branches of government after this election someday they are in fact going to have to start taking the blame and not just the credit. You can't keep blaming Clinton forever as much as you'd like to and probably will.
"Is it "voluntary" or do they have to follow the political view of their platoon/division leader?"
When the President is addressing a whole unit I think they are following the orders of their Commander in Chief, the President. I'm pretty sure they have no choice but to attend and look happy about it unless they want their life to be made miserable. Maybe they are given an option to not attend but I really doubt it or that anyone would risk a career full of misery by refusing to go.
When you see soldiers behind him in campaign appearances I'm pretty sure the local Republican party officials who screen and loyalty test everyone attending the President's campaign events locate loyal Republican servicemen, encourage them to attend and seat them behind the President so they will be on camera.
However when the President dropped in to Iraq for a suprise Thanksgiving visit the officers in charge of the unit he visited hand picked the people who got in and the rest were turned away from Thanksgiving dinner without explanation and ate MRE's in their tents. Its kind of ironic that the President's photo op, morale building trip actually screwed over everyone in the unit that wasn't the commanders favorite.
60 minutes had a pretty good piece this evening on how the Congress and the Pentagon are screwing the soldiers in Iraq, especially the guard and reserve. 18 months in to the war and many of them are still riding around in unarmored Humvees where they've surrounded in plywood boxes they've filled with sandbags and armor plates off old Iraqi tanks. So much for America's vaunted, gold plated military. Unfortunately its hard to armor the floors which is the weak spot so if they run over a mine or IED they still die or lose their legs. Its noteworthy that in Iraq the KIA count is at historic lows thanks to the quality of the air evacuation and field hospitals. It however means there is a very high rate of soliders who are severely maimed who would have died in previous wars. The casualty count is currently around 9200, 1100 dead and 8100 wounded.
The Pentagon is apparently sending some armored Humvees but amazingly they still dont have armored floors, just doors. Many of the gaurd soldiers have no radios so their families are sending them unencrypted walkie talkies they buy in Walmart which insurgents can listen to. Same story for nigh vision goggles, GPS gear, body armor(though I think body armor is finally getting fixed). Many of the guard units are using M-16's that date from Vietnam which are rated as OK for stateside duty but not combat duty because of the propensity for old M-16's to jam. They are also short on ammunition so they can't target practice. Helicopters, Bradleys, and Abrams tanks are all suffering critical parts shortages.
60 minutes had on Winslow Wheeler, (a.ka. Spartacus). Wheeler has been a congressional staffer in the armed services committee for 30+ years. He was recently forced to resign because he's been writing exposes, under the pen name Spartacus, on pork barrel spending by Congressman on the armed services committee and the Pentagon. There is at least $9 billion in pure pork in this years Defense budget. It appears big ticket, high budget weapons contracts can't be touched to cover this pork, so a good portion of it is shaved out of the budget for maintenance, spares, and basic equipment especially for guard and reserve units. Despite the Bush administration rhetoric to the contrary the Pentagon isn't giving the troops in Iraq some of the most basic, essential equipment to insure their survival.
This is not really a great time to be a grunt slogging through the dirt and mud in Iraq because they are they ass end of the Pentagon.
"Actually, that would be if you sucked down all the hysteria sites and propaganda garbage."
Uh, I was replying to the parent coward who claimed Republican's were having no trouble getting elected, which is obviously false since they are hanging on to the White House and the Senate by a razor thin margin which is a situation ripe for election fraud on both sides.
There isn't any propaganda or hysteria required to point out Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, its a fact, and Florida was a squeaker by anyones standard, thus I prove my point without any real need to whip the dead horse on who actually won in Florida. Are you going to try to tell me Bush won Florida and 2000 going away?
You are the one tilting off in to the hysteria. I wager from the sound of your post if Bush loses the election in the first round in a squeaker you are going to be the first one cheering on the Republican legal army as they try to steal it back. I assure you if they lose a squeaker they wont go quietly in to the night either.
There is a high probability this election will be very close which suggests one big plus with paperless electronic voting depending on your viewpoint. If there is a anomaly with paperless electronic voting in a close election this time there wont be any hanging chads, of course there just wont be anykind of verifiable recount which is mandated by election law in most states. They are going to return the same answer everytime you ask them and you have absolutely no way to verify if they reflect the choice of the voters who were forced to use them. They could have been malfunctioned, they could have been rigged, they might be accurate, there is no way to tell.
If either side loses another squeaker election they can use these machines, and the inability to do a true recount, to cry foul, and the country can become even more bitterly divided than it already is.
"Lack of freedom of speech Lack of freedom of assembly Lack of freedom of thought Lack of freedom of movement...etc..."....and an abundance of jobs, many formerly held by Americans, a booming economy, rising income and exploding consumerism.
I hate to break it to you but your list closely corresponds to nirvana for big businesses looking for an obedient work force. This is a key reason you don't hear the U.S. government and multinationals complain about China's repressive dictatorship as much as they did. GM recently announced China is soon going to be their second largest market for cars. It is already the world's largest cell phone market by far.
The new China is a wet dream for execs at big multinationals, socially repressive, capital friendly and a huge wave of new consumers with money which == $$.
THX-1138 is out on DVD now. If you've never seen it or haven't seen it lately check it out. It shows you a worst case scenario for where this may be heading. When it first came out its portrayal of mandatory sedation probably appeared somewhat extreme, while today it almost looks normal.
Actually if you recall President (sic) Bush had nothing but trouble getting elected in 2000 and lost the popular vote. Its highly unlikely he would have won if his brother and his brothers partisan secretary of state hadn't done everything in their power to suppress the democratic vote and if the Supreme Court hadn't handed him the election on a silver platter.
Chances are also pretty high the Republicans control the senate today partially because of electronic voting machines. The highly controversial and disputed George Republican Senate win in 2002 was cast entirely on electronic voting machines, I think all made by Diebold. The Republican Governor of Georgia may well be in office for the same reason.
The Republicans are in another potentially razor close election that could easily swing against them, in particular because there are so many new voters who have woken up to the fact these elections do matter, so this election is probably going to see the highest turnout in recent history and be very unpredictable. In such a scenario if you want to insure you hold power paperless electronic voting is exactly what the doctor ordered, they are a great insurance policy.
Its a fact of life that with so much power and money at stake anyone who thinks they can steal this election and get away with it will. The Republicans still haven't forgotten that Kennedy may have won by stealing Illinois. I'm sure there are Democrats who will steal this election if they can and so will Republicans. The Republicans just have an inside track because they control all the electronic voting machine manufacturers and Republican partisans dominate the electoral process in the two biggest swing state prizes Ohio and Florida and of course they control the White House and Congress, and at times the Supreme Court.
"Because everything said at the Republican Convention wasn't said in a rally for a supposivly (last time I checked) non-partisan groups."
The same rhetoric has been coming out of the White House in state of the union speeches, addresses to the nation, policy speeches, and from Fox News. Remember the prewar rhetoric, supposedly backed by America's vast supposedly non partisan intelligence apparatus, that America was in imminent danger of seeing a mushroom cloud and Iraqi UAV's spreading Anthrax over their cities. Which is worse your government stretching the truth or MTV.
So these groups are just countering massive, state sponsored, deceitful propaganda. Somebody has to do it. An incumbent party, especially one with control of all the branches of government has an enormouse bully pulpit and the Democrats would be nearly powerless to counter it were it not for all these outside groups and money.
"...thought of a President pushing for the reinstation of the draft. But so far that hasn't been the case."
Thats only because he is trying to get elected. If he gets elected and especially by wide enough margin he thinks he has a mandate he is going to do all kinds of pent up extreme things he's been reluctant to do before an election. Instituting the draft right before an election would be political suicide. Is telling in a Freudian slip a week or two ago Bush said he was going to end volunteer army and someone in the crowd had to correct him. He is a recovering acute alcohol, his slips of the tongue are far more telling than the carefully crafted lies his speech writers put in front of him which he just reads.
Bush didn't have a mandate in 2000 and he still followed the election with a binge of extremism. The Republicans rushed in to Iraq as fast as they did in hopes of winning and it being over before the election season started which didn't happen.
Something is going to have to give after the election, either they are going to have to stop throwing the military around as their tool of first resort or they are going to have to put more young people in army boots. The fact that a crisis is looming in Iran in 2005 when they try to bring a nuclear reactor on line tends to indicate more feet in boots will be required.
The Pentagon has figured out they have way to many people in the cool, volunteer friendly, relatively safe Air Force and Navy and nothing close to what they need for the new era in the down in the mud Army and Marines. They were trying to transfer Air Force and Navy truck drivers to the Army, with limited success because no one wants to drive a truck in Iraq because its suicidal. Again there is a high probability they will have to offer obscene incentives to volunteers, I heard recently the incentive package is up around $80,000 or restart the draft and use the power of their police state to suppress the dissent that will ensue.
Yes, those little teams of old ladies and gents watching paper ballots like a hawk is a pretty good system though its increasingly hard to find enough of them because younger people don't value elections like they do, and of course politicians are so pathetic most people are completely disenchanted with the whole process.
They beauty of electronic voting without a papertrail is all these little old ladies and gents are completely cut out of the system. They are wasting their time sitting there because the software in the machines could steal the election out from under their noses and there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it. I'm not even sure a tech savvy youngester who can read code, route networks and sign binaries could stop it either.
If you want to steal an election these machines are a complete god send, which is why I figure so many Republican started companies to make them. I figure Republicans got tired of being out of power and now they will do whatever it takes to keep it, especially since they believe their own rhetoric that they are the only ones capable of running America and through America the world, so they can rationalize to themselves destroying America's democracy in order to save America.
We are talking about voter verifiable paper trails. You enter your vote on the machine and it prints out what you voted in human and ideally machine readable form so you can verify the machine did what you told it to do and there is a record that is put in a box like an old fashioned paper ballot. There are two forks here.
In one fork the paper trail is machine readable and it gets fed into an optical scanner which actually counts it. In this scenario the electronic voting machine is of marginal value though it can reduce errors, double voting for example or not filling in the ovals properly for an optical scanner. But the main thing they do is provide electronic assistance to the blind so they can vote without assistance. We are blessed with these machines partially because the handicapped, especially the blind, are rightly complaining they are denied their right to anonymous voting by most/all non electronic voting machine.
In the other more likely fork the electronic machine does the count, but their is a paper receipt for every vote so you can:
A. randomly recount a subset of the machines to verify that the paper trail matches the machine count and catch fraud.
B. If the election is close or their is a dispute you can do a complete manual recount and disregard the machine count if it appears suspect.
Venezuela recently had a hotly contested recall electon for Hugo Chavez and they used all electronic machines, but with a paper trail unlike the U.S. which is sorely lacking paper trails. Here is a good writup on some of the issues the Carter foundation found in trying to monitor and audit the election.
Uh, how exactly is this different from the rhetoric coming out of Bush/Cheney and the Republican convention. Remember how they said if you elect the wrong person you risk another 9/11 attack, how you and your children are in grave danger if you make the wrong choice, or the wolves lurking in the forest. Humans have a strongly imprinted fear of wolves, using them in an add is designed entirely to stoke primal fear.
So, are you equally upset about that rhetoric or are you only upset when liberals engage in these tactics.
This is called the politics of fear, both sides are doing it on a range of issues, and doing it so much many Americans are voting entirely out of fear. The Republicans are almost certainly benefiting from it and far better at it than the Democrats. It sucks, but unfortunately it tends to work really well.
I assure you there are plenty of ill informed voters of all ages and many of them are voting out of fear and not on issues, so don't try to hang it on young people. Numerous studies of Bush voters show they consistently have no clue what Bush's actual position is on most key issues, and frequently get his positions exactly backward. They are just voting for him because he says he will make the "safe" or because he is God's chosen one, or at least so he says.
I'm not sure mandatory training of all young voters to be good Republicans or good Democrats before they are allowed to vote is how these democracy things are supposed to work. Its a personal responsibility to educate yourself, and unfortunately most Americans are pretty bad at it.
As for the whole draft proposition there is a reasonable chance the draft is going to come back real soon now, and it may come back under either Bush or Kerry. Unless the U.S. pulls out of Iraq soon or slashes its troop commitments elsewhere it is going to run out of bodies to put in the boots on the ground. The volunteer army works a lot better when you just get great benefits and aren't volunteering to drive a truck in Iraq and get your ass blown off, literally.
Indications are volunteers for the Army and Marines are in fact slowing and the U.S. can't use the current tactics indefinitely(calling up the guard and reserves in perpetuity and using stop loss to keep people in the military indefinitely). So there is a pretty good chance young voters may be voting over whether they are going to get drafted after the election. The only catch is Kerry is about as likely as Bush to reinstate it. Kerry after all has said he is going to put about 40,000 more bodies in army boots first thing and I doubt he is going to do that with volunteers if it entails combat duty.
"one candidate would not only have to have unrealistic access to countless voting machines"
Uh, the people at Diebold had exactly this kind of access in California and Georgia in previous elections and all the manufacturers probably have it this time around too. Local election officials who all tend to be very partisan have it too. California is pursuing Diebold in court for precisely this kind of unauthorized access to their machines. Unrealistic indeed.
Unless there are extraordinarily rigorous procedures followed in auditing the source, doing builds controlled environment, and making sure properly signed builds are on the machines, they are constantly vulnerable to compromise. If they had a paper trail it would be less bad because you could do random audits to catch cheating. With these paperless machines you have absolutely no way to catch fraud.
You only need a compromised software load distributed across all machines. Its silly to act like some guy in black needs to go around and stuff ballots in each machine individually like they have to with good old paper ballots.
This is a very real danger. STOP TRYING TO DOWNPLAY IT.
"he'd have had to have guessed WHICH machines he needed unrealistic access to beforehand."
Both sides know exactly the places where they need to jigger the results to steal the elections. They are called swing states and two of them with huge electronic voting presence are Ohio(home of Diebold and where Diebold's execs are a key part of the Bush campaign apparatus) and Florida where the election apparatus is dominated by the President's brother and his appointed Republican secretary of state.
"Finally - see that horse? It's dead. You can stop beating it. Electronic voting has happened, is happening, and will happen."
You are so wrong. This horse is just out of the gate. If this election ends up at all close the jockeys(thousand strong armies of lawyers on both sides) are going to being whipping this horse all the way around the track. Its likely the losing side will blame these machines whether they are at fault or not forever because they are so fundamentally untrustworthy.
This issue isn't ever going to be over until all machines have a paper trail at a bare minimum. I'm inclined to say all of the purely electronic machines should be replaced with paper ballots run through a national standard optical scanner like most sane precincts are using. You can take the all electronic machines and put one in each precinct for the handicapped to use but otherwise get them out of the process because they are fundamentally untrustworthy.
I wouldn't give her long at Yale once the powers that be get wind of some of her rhetoric. Most interesting question I'd like to hear her answer is why in God's name she took a position at Yale other than maybe she wants to live in NYC.
She would fit at Berkeley or maybe even Stanford but Yale and Connecticut is the belly of the beast (the beast being the establishment). Yale is the ivy league school for future Wall Street power brokers thanks to its proximity to New York. Its home to Skull and Bones, the secret Yale fraternity whose 800 living members include both current Presidential candidates. Connecticut and Yale were the center of the Bush family's power base before they moved to Texas, Prescott Bush, George W's grandpa was their senator.
A short list of some Yale Alumni:
- Prescott Bush, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barbara Bush - John Kerry - Joe Lieberman - Howard Dean - Dick Cheney though he dropped out before he flunked out
I'm guessing her strategy must be to get inside the cocoon and see if she can corrupt the minds of the future Wall Street power brokers and American presidents while they are still young and malleable.
"I am more of a Reagan Republican than I am of the current ilk in this party."
Uh, Reagan is the patriarch and role model for the current ilk of the Republican party. They all idolize him, especially George W. All indications are Reagan and George H.W. Bush didn't actually like each other but George W. is not his fathers son in his politics.
Reagan is the one that started the ball rolling for the Republican return to power, after the disgrace of McCarthyism and Nixon, and made George W. and todays Republican party possible.
Reagan's fiscal policy of cutting taxes, spending more and running up huge deficits in order to fake prosperity is the model for the Bush fiscal policy though Bush has taken it to a whole new level.
John Ashcroft is like Ed Meese Jr.
Reagan was a likable guy, who gave good speeches written for him by good speech writers and who had staff who did all the heavy thinking for him exactly like someone else we know.
Reagan was less extreme than the current Republican party because:
- He didn't have control of the Congress when he was in office.
- He didn't have 9/11 to use as an excuse so he couldn't push the right wing agenda as fast as George can.
If he had all the tools George W. has I doubt you would have been able to tell the difference between them.
"...hate speech/hate crime laws..."
That might be a good one I guess but I'm pretty clueless as to who actually pushes that crap. Seems to me like more a product of a whole politically correct era, and saturation media coverage of anyone who says off color things.
Whoever pushes it, I'm not sure how you can compare suppressing hate speech which isn't a particularly a good thing in the first place, with the current administration's suppression of most forms of dissent, which is fundementally important and good for any healthy democracy. Suppressing hate speech and supressing dissent really aren't in the same league.
"The left/liberal/progressive side also tends toward extremism, censorship and suppression of free speech."
This isn't really a right versus left thing either. Libertarians and true conservatives are a shining light in this regard from the right. Unfortunately they've been buried under the extremism that is the new Republican party. I'm not really interested in framing this as left or right, my problem is almost entirely with the new Republican party and the fact its completely abandoned its civil libertarian and small government roots.
But, could you cite some example of excess on the left. Some that comes to mind, Roosevelt did step over the line on numerous occasions during World War II, but the whole country left and right was on that band wagon. The Chicago DNC in 1968 was bad. Maybe you could cite suppression of prayer and religion in public institutions but that is a hard issue. Fact is Christians shouldn't be able to inflict their beliefs on others in public schools and courts if we believe in separation of church and state and religious freedom for all.
Here are a few examples from the right.
McCarthyism took place the last time Republicans had power in Congress. You will be hard pressed to find a left equivalent of this rabid attempt to destroy our constitutional liberties than that.
Free speech zones are an invention of today's Republican controlled government, a cyncial name since they are in fact cages designed to hide and suppress people expressing opposition to the people in power. Again you will be hard pressed to find a liberal sponsored equivalent of this major attempt at suppression of free speech. You can claim the Free Speech Zone at the DNC but that was created by Homeland Security and the Secret Service which are run by the Bush administration.
Its been a while since we've had a government thats been willing to say "you're either with us or you're against us" or you are unpatriotic, aiding and abedding terrorists, if you question or criticize us.
"To say that Bush/Cheney have lied more than Clinton/Gore seems a little bit like sticking your head in the sand."
Please list some of these lies? I can't wait. We can do a head to head comparison of the gravity and magnitude. Again Clinton/Gore were savaged for theirs including impeachment which as serious an accounting as our Constitution allows.
As nearly as anyone can tell no one in Bush/Cheney have paid in any way for theirs and constantly deny they've ever lied or done anything wrong or made a mistake. Well there was George Tenet, the scapegoat who fell on his sword (and its likely most of the bad intelligence on Iraq came out of the DOD not the CIA, the CIA just didn't fight it) but he was a Clinton hold over and not one of the Bush faithful. I'm exactly pro Clinton/Gore but I'd sure like to see some equity in the political weapons of mass destruction.
You can attribute the lack of equity to the fact the Republicans completely control the government so there is no one to hold Bush/Cheney to account while Clinton was mauled by a Republican controlled house engaged in a one hatchet job after another. The Republicans can quite literally get away with murder.
I shopuld add I don't "hate" either of them but I don't like either of them either. Unfortunately neither one of them appears to have the level head, integrity and honesty I want in a President.
"I just hope that whoever wins on Tuesday wins by a landslide."
I hope you get your wish but chances are high its going to be a really close election and the losing party is going to be fighting legal battles for months trying to seize power. You don't build two lawyer armies and expect them to go home without fighting a major war first. Neither of these candidates can win on merit so they win with attack ads, smear campaigns, election rigging and a legal spectacle that will likely dwarf 2000.
"I am tired of the incivility being expressed by both sides"
Not sure you follow my posts but I slam both candidates equally. I'm not on either side though I really want to Republican stranglehold on power broken. It is extraordinarily unhealthy. I want gridlock again so the nutcases on both side can't keep changing things for the worse.
Re:Well, since I can't get to the article...
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Verified Voting
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"I don't have to defend my decision to you."
Well you are right, no you don't. It may not register with you but your posts so far, especially the extent to which you are losing it, suggests that its not because you "don't have" to or don't want to its because you can't. If you read your posts you'll find your the one being rude and profane. I'm just making points about issues, most of which I can support. That is how civilized debate works in democratic societies. You make your point and I make mine. Unfortunately civilized debate and thoughtful consideration of issues seems completely lost on you, like most Americans and especially most Republicans. You just want empty rhetoric that reaffirms your established world view.
Its actually OK you can't make your "safety" case because the fact is the rhetoric by both side on the subject is nothing but empty rhetoric, stuff they are telling you because its what you want to hear. You want to be safe, they tell you they are making you safe, you are happy, until and unless there is another attack. What do you do if there is another 9/11 or worse attack on Bush's watch proving he isn't actually making you safe? Go in to denial, write it off and assume he will make you safe next time.
If you are facing determined suicidal terrorists who really hate you, chances are they will find a way to do their dirty deed eventually. Israel has been trying to make itself "safe" from terrorists for more than 50 years and failed miserably. Terrorists with wide support and a pool of willing volunteers are extraordinarily hard to defeat. Thats why they choose the tactics they do, versus putting on uniforms and standing in a field so the U.S. can pulverize them. Israel is a tiny place with oppressive security and they haven't been able to make themselves "safe" so how are you going to make a sprawling place like the U.S. "safe".
I've seen a number of editors of conservative newspapers explain why they endorsed Bush in 2000 and are either endorsing no one, Kerry or Bush only reluctantly in 2004. They are pretty consistent in what they say. They endorsed Bush in 2000 based on the policies he said he supported in the campaign, since it was all they had to go on other than his stint as Texas governor which wasn't a very good guide.
They are all disenchanted with him because his actual record in office has run counter to everything they thought he stood for.
In particular they naively though he would be fiscally conservative while he is instead dramatically expanding spending, while cutting taxes leading to a staggering debt. They were naive in thinking he would be fiscally conservative since Bush idolizes Reagan and Reagan ran up the deficit exactly the same way though Bush has taken it to a who new level. Reagan could blame the Dems for the spending since they controlled Congress. The Republicans have no one to blame but themselves and its especially bad since its massively, hypocritical juxtaposed to their fiscal responsibility rhetoric. All the editors put this at or near the top of their list for turning on him with the war in Iraq being the other top reason.
- During the campaign Bush said he was dead set against nation building but they are instead doing it all over the place especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti. Conservatives hate nation building.
- Bush/Cheney have established a track record of either lieing or being so completely wrong it borders on incompetence, especially on the reasons for invading Iraq. Most newspaper editors are thoughtful, educated and informed people. Bush/Cheney have been able to lie their way out of the lies with less thoughtful, less educated and less informed American. I don't think its working with newspaper editors who are smart enough to see that the Republicans are being consistently untruthful and are getting away with it.
There is a paper in Orlando, Florida who has been getting a lot of press for endorsing Kerry. They haven't endorsed a Democrat since Johnson in 1964. Its telling that Johnson was running a right wing extremist, Barry Goldwater, which is no doubt why they endorsed LBJ. You could conclude this paper is placing George W. Bush in the same class as Barry Goldwater. They do have a lot in common for their severe tilt to the far right, lack of judgement and thoughtful discretion.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, nice login, you are a goof. I don't think I'm going to spend the time pointing out why in detail.
"Personally, I want any war the US is in to be very unfair. The point is it win."
If the U.S. uses its military power with discretion you might have a case. For example if the U.S. uses its force to defend itself or others from aggression or to dissuade or to counter aggressive warfare by a rogue nation that is discretion.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of most of the world since Iraq, the U.S. is the rogue nation now engaging in aggressive warfare and invading countries without provocation and based on fabrication. The doctrine of preemptive warfare is rightly setting off alarm bells around the world.
You want "any war the US is in to be unfair". The rest of the world doesn't wany any war the U.S. enters in to to be unfair(based on deceit, aggression and fabrication).
With great power comes great responsibility. The U.S. appears to be increasingly inclined to only exercise its power without exercising responsibility. This leads the rest of the world to being rightly concerned when the U.S. tries to unilaterally impose its will on the rest of the world.
As I pointed out in another post the U.S. is almost certainly signaling Europe/China that if they field the Galileo GPS system in the next couple years the U.S. is going to take it upon itself to field the capability to jam it since unfortunately GPS is dual use technology. If the world moves to using high resolution GPS to land airplanes in bad weather, for example, I assure you they wont appreciate the U.S. unilaterally jamming it even if its temporary and non destructive.
"he want to destroy those that would pose a danger to this country"
In what way did Iraq actually pose a threat to this country. There are countries that are far more threatening than Iraq which is why your house of cards falls. If this was the reason then North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have been taken down first because they all pose a much more direct and immediate threat to the U.S. Pakistan, ostensible our ally was an intimate and direct supporter of the Taliban, they were their closest ally. The U.S. had to let them evacuate the hundreds of agents they had working with the Taliban when Afghanistan fell. Pakistan was in fact actually selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and who knows who else and the ringleader, A.Q. Khan when exposed was instantly pardoned by Pakistan. Pakistan's tribal regions are actually Al Qaida's current home base and Pakistan hasn't really done anything to root them out of it.
"It's a matter of do you believe that Bush wants to become a "colonial" power or does he want to destroy those that would pose a danger to this country"
There is an easy test. If we aren't planning to be a colonial power we will pull out as soon as Iraq's great democracy is on its feet. All indications are the Bush administration is instead working to establish 4 to 14 permanent military bases in Iraq. From GlobalSecurity. The U.S. is dismantling its problem plagued bases in Saudi Arabia and all indications are they will be replaced with permanent Iraqi bases which will have fewer constraints than those in Saudi Arabia did. They will be much better to threaten Iran and Syria in particular.
That is the most basic indicator of colonial aspirations, as is the enormous size of the permanent U.S. embassy in Baghdad. One of the few things in Kerry's defense is he says he is going to pull out of those bases at the first opportunity.
This is fundamental. If we are putting huge and permanent military bases in Iraq we are planning a permanent occupation and and it will lead to a permanent Iraqi insurgency fighting that occupation. If we let Iraq go its own way, good or bad, then we are not a colonial power.
" Every single person in the country got a tax cut"
Tax cuts only work if you cut spending at the same time. When you cut taxes and increase spending, dramatically, as the Republicans have they are creating a false prosperity. They are handing out borrowed money in exchange for votes and it works. This can be good in the short term to stimulate a struggling economy but when you continue it in perpetuity as is the Republican plan the debt is eventually going to come home to roost and crush future generations.
"and instead implement a National Sales tax system"
Unfortunately this is the most regressive form of taxation which is why rich conservatives always favor it. The poor and middle income spend most of their income which is why sales taxes are regressive. You would have to exempt everything the poor and middle income buy to make it not regressive and at that point you are only taxing luxuries which isn't going to pay the bills. The wealthy don't spend most of their income, they accumulate it, so they also don't carry much of the burden. Switching to a regressive tax system will just accelerate the rate at which the wealthy accumulate wealth, and will probably bankrupt the government unless you lay a huge sales tax on the poor and middle class.
America already went down this road in the late 1800's and early 1900's, it resulted in the progressive movement and progressive income taxes to slow the concentration of wealth by a few and the expansion of poverty for everyone else.
If you want to insure the rich get taxed just delete the entire tax code with all its shelters and dodges and go to a simple income tax with no deductions, no shelters and no dodges.
"It seems to me that the environmentalists a
One of the more interesting uses for jamming satellites coming real soon now is Galileo, the European/Chinese GPS constellation, coming on line in a couple of years. The U.S. is most unhappy that there will be a GPS system with 1 meter resolution, with wider coverage, they don't control, because it will break their monopoly on GPS guided weapons and navigation during a conflict unless they have the capbility to jam it. The U.S. GPS system can be selectively crippled/encrypted by the U.S. to deny its use to its enemies.
I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. is making this threat public to send a signal to the Europe/China that if they proceed with a GPS system free of U.S. domination the U.S. is going to counter with the technology necessary to cripple it.
China's Xinhua has a pretty biting commentary on the subject that appeared on SpaceDaily a couple days ago.
It is a further indicator that as the U.S. continues to seek its global empire and world dominion it is going to continue to place itself against and at odds with the entire rest of the world.
Apparently only the U.S. is allowed to decide who can use and deploy basic technology.
"HMMWVs were never really armored from the beginning. Flack jackets were never made for everyone and were always special issue."
Until you are fighting an insurgency where all of your troops in theater are being subjected to daily sniper fire and IED's. At that point the Pentagon should have gone in to overdrive to adapt to the conditions of the theater. Making soldiers driver around in unarmored vehicles facing those conditions for this long borders on criminal neglect by all the powers that be, especially since they've had huge sums of money at their disposal and their rhetoric is they are giving the troops everything they need (and are filleting Kerry for not supporting the troops). Evidence is they are in fact not giving the troops in Iraq some of the most basic essential equipment. This is how you spell hypocrisy.
"Bush is suppose to have friends in the military supply chain why hasn't he offered them a big contract to do all these things and fix these problems?"
You tell me. I don't know. Me and others would like to know especially as much time as they spend telling Americans that the troops are getting everything they need when its obviously not the case. Are they just lieing as is their way, incompetent or are they busy filling their friends pockets with money elsewhere so there isn't any left to keep our troops alive.
"I'm sorry but defending the Democrats by pointing at the bad that the Republicans have done is just not going to convince me of anything."
Uh, your the confused one here. You were the one that started this thread by defending the Republicans by blaming the long gone Democrats. I'm not a Democrat and am not defending them. If you read my slashdot posts I have a long history of bashing both parties.
I am just way past sick of people, doing what you just did, and blame everything on the Democrats though the Republicans have a stranglehold on power and have had it for a while now. I'm especially sick of the fact that this administration is the worst in memory for deflecting blame, refusing to admit mistakes or to take responsibility when they occur and taking action to fix them. When you refuse to admit a mistake you tend to never take corrective action which is whats happening in equipping soldiers in Iraq.
Republicans have the power now, they have the responsibility that comes with that power. It would be a joy if they actually accepted the responsibility and not just the power for a change.
"I support the current US administration but this description definitely does not apply to me. I support the current administration for various none of which has anything to do with imperialism or global domination."
So maybe you could list the reasons you do support them? You kind of leave your argument hanging when you say these are not the reasons but don't list any others.
If you support the Bush administrations military and foreign policy you do support these things where you like it or not or believe it or not.
If you like their domestic policy its presumably because you are on the winning side of the wealth divide and like tax cuts for the wealthy in particular or maybe you like massive deficit spending or outsourcing?
If you support them because of their positions on abortion and gays then it suggests you are supporting them on a religious and moral basis.
"There are also many in the country that would say that America has a large number of enivornmental extremists which they would describe as unfortunate."
"There are also many in the country that would say that there is a large number of socialist in this country which "they" would describe as unfortunate."
Yes but these two group no longer have any power. We are talking about the extremists who are in power in the U.S. now and whom are making the rest of the world hate America. Being pro environment tends to be better for the world than being pro war and pro wealth concentration. If we screw up our environment, and indications are we are due to green house gases, especially burning coal, we may massively screw up our weather and lots of things will die, maybe including us. How do you put being pro war and pro environment on the same plane?
"Come on, is this another one of those Repubs=Nazis remarks?"
No, its a remark about the willingness of people to support bad governments who do bad things which is where this thread started and in particular there responsibility when they do it.
The gist of what I'm saying and maybe badly is it was wrong for the original poster to say America's government is bad but its people are not responsible. Maybe that is OK if the Bush administration fooled the American people who voted form him in 2000. He did say he was going to be a moderate president and ended up being an extremist. But if the American people reelect him tomorrow that means most Americans endorse having an extremist President who does bad things. So if the world dislikes Bush, and he is reelected after tomorrow the world needs to start blaming the American people for him and come to accept many Americans are as bad as their government.
Americans need to start taking personal responsibility for their government and in particular hold bad government accountable. The Republicans have become amazing and reprehensible for their ability to take credit for everything good whether they had anything to do with it or not, and to shirk responsibility for everthing bad, wrong and deceitful for which they are directly responsible. Many of them are still trying to blame Clinton for everything bad though he's been gone for 4 years and the Republicans now completely control the government.
"less than 35% of the US population belongs to a Evangelical organization"
And about 48% of the U.S. population supports the Republican party and Bush. There is an extremely strong correlation between attending a white, evangelical protestant church and voting Republican/Bush. If all evangelicals supported Bush which is probably not the case though its close, using your numbers, that translates to 2/3rds of the republican base are evangelicals. Its probably not that high but it is a huge percentage of their base which is why they have come to dominate the Republican party and its agenda.
"They do not vote their hearts. They vote what they believe is their faith."
Uh, I think that is the same thing though if you want to split hairs OK they vote their faith. That means they don't weigh issues like economics, taxes, military and foreign policy using their brain and intellect. They decide things through a religious lens. It makes them very easy to manipulate, all you have to do is say you pray every day, say God is guiding your policy, and be extremely anti abortion, anti gay and you have this huge block locked up. Its like shooting ducks in a barrel for a cynical political handler like Karl Rove.
"they are free to have whatever faith (or lack thereof) they choose"
Yes they are. The problem comes when they, and in particular their elected representatives inject their faith into a government which is predicated on separation of church and state and seek to inflict their unique twist on faith and morality on those who don't subscribe to it though political power. We have separation of church and state precisely to prevent one religious sect from inflicting its views on other sects. Our forefathers were fleeing just that in Europe and they didn't want it in their new home.
Politicians should be free to have their faith, its maybe its even a net positive having it, but they should refrain from letting it guide policy decisions that effect millions of Americans not of that faith and even worse inflict that faith based policy on the rest of the world at the end of a gun. You know a politician has gone over the line when he says he is waging a war because God put him on earth to make people "free".
"these poor misguided souls can't tell the difference between a "forgive me for I have sinned" televangelist and an election "
It is hard to prove conjecture but indications are that is exactly what is happening. Evangelical conmen and politicians playing the faith card have more in common than they differ. The Bush administration has lied their way through their entire first term. But their faithful, thanks to cognitive dissonance, have let one lie or another slip by like it never happened, they never questioning obvious deceit and refuse to hold anyone accountable. The Bush administration can SAY anything and their faithful will accept it without questioning it because they are working on faith and not intellect. The Bush administration says there is an imminent threat of a mushroom cloud of an America city because of Saddam and they accept it. The Bush administration says Saddam was tied to 9/11 and they accept it. Both of those assertions proved to be false yet nearly 70% of Republicans, probably mostly evangelicals, still believe them to be true, though they fly in the face of reality. They are beliefs based on faith, not on reality. The mess that is America and its government today is because people are working on "belief" and not on truth and reality.
"American Christians are somehow all Pro-War, and Pro-Bush, the polls don't support this."
I dont think you either read or understood the poll you are referencing, it supports my point not yours. It says:
"When churchgoers do hear a point of view, it mostly comports with the national stance of their religious faith: white Catholics and African-Americans are hearing anti-war
messages, while white evangelical Protestants are getting a pro-war point of view. "
"Just one-
"sorry it takes far more than 2 1/2 years to build up 8 years of down sizing of the military."
Sorry but the Republicans have been in power for 4 years now, they've controlled the House much longer than that and the House drives the budget process. It was OK to scale down the military during a time when the world was at peace and the U.S.S.R. was gone, Republicans were just as much a part of it as the Democrats. Sane nations cut back their military when there isn't an imminent threat of war because its economic suicide to maintain a war footing military forever.
The basic problem here is if the Republicans wanted to launch an optional war they should have made sure they had the soldiers and the equipment to do it. They didn't because they thought it would be over in a couple weeks and the Iraqi's would shower them with flowers. They were wrong, they either lied or were incompetent and haven't been held responsible for that failure. They've now had draft the guard and reserve, indefinitely, for combat duty and they've failed to equip them properly for combat duty. They are to blame, get over it. They've had 18 months, and big buckets of money, to fix these problem now and they have once again failed to do it.
The equipment we are talking about here probably costs a couple billion tops, the armored Humvees price tag is 800 some million. There is no reason the Pentagon and Congress couldn't have fixed it by now but for incompetence and corruption on both sides of the aisle and in the the Pentagon. The key point is Republican's have near complete control of the budget and the agenda. Equiping the guard and reserve is always the first thing Congress sacrifices to pay for exorbinant big ticket items like the missile defense program. The problem is that thanks to the Republicans and their optional war those gaurdsmen are now dieing everyday driving around in unarmored vehicles while people set off bombs underneath them, bombs using explosives from all the ammo dumps the U.S. failed to secure after the war.
The bottomline on all this is the Republican's run their mouths with empty rhetoric that says:
- they are fiscally conservative and responsible
- they make sure the troops in the field have everything they need.
Now that they have complete power its become obvious neither of these are true, they aren't fiscally responsible, they aren't giving the troops the equipment they need, this stuff is their fault, with power comes responsibility and they are irresponsible. That is how you spell hypocrisy.
"However, the American government is NOT a good representation of its people."
Unfortunately the current American government is pretty representative about half of the American people. Its a nice copout to think Americans aren't to blame for the current government but half of American's are and they are adamant in trying to continue it like it is in perpetuity. They like the idea of America dominating the world politically, economically and militarily. They are citizens of a new empire and most citizens of most empires through history like empire and the power and wealth that usually follows.
Unfortunately America has a huge born again fundamentalist Christian block, something you probably dont have anything quite like in Europe. It has acquired huge power in and through the new Republican party. They vote with their hearts and not their intellects. They are very easily manipulated, reference how Jim and Tammy Fay Baker played them like a fiddle and how Bush/Cheney/Rove play them now. Unfortunately they favor policies that are the usually antithesis of the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was very tolerant of the poor and people out of the main stream. Today's American Christians appear mostly intolerant of the poor, those who aren't Christian and those out of the main stream, and instead appear to favor wealth and people that are like them in defiance of the real teachings of their religion.
Jesus was for the most part vehemently opposed to the use of violence while unfortunately many Americans favor the use of violence as a first resort instead of a last resort. There is an inevitability in that because when you build and worship a military as large as America's which can squash most countries in the world like a bug people become fond of using it, especially when it always wins. The German people were fond of their military and government too because it always won in the late 1930's and early '40's.
The insurgency in Iraq is the first time the American military and people have suffered any real consequences, since Vietnam, for using war as the first resort. Unfortunately Americans don't see footage of the carnage in Iraq, either wounded Americans or civilians screaming in pain or the bodies of the dead so the fact wars are bad hasn't registered yet, except with those who've lost a loved one or had one come home maimed for life. Unfortunately the government and the media are heavily filtering what American's see of Iraq because they learned that if people see the real carnage that is war, as they did during Vietnam, they are likely to turn on it, especially when the rational for the war was based on deceit.
No I don't think I'd really give the American people a free pass when they encourage their government to do bad things in their name. The German people were to blame for the Nazi's and the American people are to blame for the new Republican party.
Not sure I follow your point. Are you, in classic Bush style, trying to blame Clinton that the guard and reserves in Iraq are woefully under equipped for combat duty? That is just so sweet.
Clinton has been gone for 4 years now. The Iraq war has been going on like 18 months. The Republicans have complete control of the government. With the next supplemental they are going to request right after the election the price tag for the war is going to hit around $220 billion dollars. There is no one you can blame but the Republicans if the troops in Iraq don't have the most basic and not very expensive equipment like secure radios.
It might have been OK to woefully underequip guard units when they were weekend warriors but now, thanks to the Bush administration, they make up 40% of the troops in Iraq and are for all intents and purposes active duty. With the huge sums being poured in to Iraq the first priority should have been to make sure they were properly equipped, not the last priority. Soldiers having their legs blown off on a daily basis, doesn't seem to rate versus pouring money in to Halliburton's coffers for some reason. I wonder why?
You also gloss over the point that a key reason they are underequipped is because congressmen on the armed services and appropriations committee are shaving money that could go for this basic equipment and rerouting it to pure pork in their home districts. A key ring leader is Ted Stevens, chairman of the appropriations committer, Republican from Alaska. For some reason the Republican delegation from Alaska currently reigns supreme in dishing out pork.
Just further confirmation that with Republicans the buck stops any place but with them, especially so with George W. Bush. If Republicans keep control of all branches of government after this election someday they are in fact going to have to start taking the blame and not just the credit. You can't keep blaming Clinton forever as much as you'd like to and probably will.
"Is it "voluntary" or do they have to follow the political view of their platoon/division leader?"
When the President is addressing a whole unit I think they are following the orders of their Commander in Chief, the President. I'm pretty sure they have no choice but to attend and look happy about it unless they want their life to be made miserable. Maybe they are given an option to not attend but I really doubt it or that anyone would risk a career full of misery by refusing to go.
When you see soldiers behind him in campaign appearances I'm pretty sure the local Republican party officials who screen and loyalty test everyone attending the President's campaign events locate loyal Republican servicemen, encourage them to attend and seat them behind the President so they will be on camera.
However when the President dropped in to Iraq for a suprise Thanksgiving visit the officers in charge of the unit he visited hand picked the people who got in and the rest were turned away from Thanksgiving dinner without explanation and ate MRE's in their tents. Its kind of ironic that the President's photo op, morale building trip actually screwed over everyone in the unit that wasn't the commanders favorite.
60 minutes had a pretty good piece this evening on how the Congress and the Pentagon are screwing the soldiers in Iraq, especially the guard and reserve. 18 months in to the war and many of them are still riding around in unarmored Humvees where they've surrounded in plywood boxes they've filled with sandbags and armor plates off old Iraqi tanks. So much for America's vaunted, gold plated military. Unfortunately its hard to armor the floors which is the weak spot so if they run over a mine or IED they still die or lose their legs. Its noteworthy that in Iraq the KIA count is at historic lows thanks to the quality of the air evacuation and field hospitals. It however means there is a very high rate of soliders who are severely maimed who would have died in previous wars. The casualty count is currently around 9200, 1100 dead and 8100 wounded.
The Pentagon is apparently sending some armored Humvees but amazingly they still dont have armored floors, just doors. Many of the gaurd soldiers have no radios so their families are sending them unencrypted walkie talkies they buy in Walmart which insurgents can listen to. Same story for nigh vision goggles, GPS gear, body armor(though I think body armor is finally getting fixed). Many of the guard units are using M-16's that date from Vietnam which are rated as OK for stateside duty but not combat duty because of the propensity for old M-16's to jam. They are also short on ammunition so they can't target practice. Helicopters, Bradleys, and Abrams tanks are all suffering critical parts shortages.
60 minutes had on Winslow Wheeler, (a.ka. Spartacus). Wheeler has been a congressional staffer in the armed services committee for 30+ years. He was recently forced to resign because he's been writing exposes, under the pen name Spartacus, on pork barrel spending by Congressman on the armed services committee and the Pentagon. There is at least $9 billion in pure pork in this years Defense budget. It appears big ticket, high budget weapons contracts can't be touched to cover this pork, so a good portion of it is shaved out of the budget for maintenance, spares, and basic equipment especially for guard and reserve units. Despite the Bush administration rhetoric to the contrary the Pentagon isn't giving the troops in Iraq some of the most basic, essential equipment to insure their survival.
This is not really a great time to be a grunt slogging through the dirt and mud in Iraq because they are they ass end of the Pentagon.
"Actually, that would be if you sucked down all the hysteria sites and propaganda garbage."
Uh, I was replying to the parent coward who claimed Republican's were having no trouble getting elected, which is obviously false since they are hanging on to the White House and the Senate by a razor thin margin which is a situation ripe for election fraud on both sides.
There isn't any propaganda or hysteria required to point out Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, its a fact, and Florida was a squeaker by anyones standard, thus I prove my point without any real need to whip the dead horse on who actually won in Florida. Are you going to try to tell me Bush won Florida and 2000 going away?
You are the one tilting off in to the hysteria. I wager from the sound of your post if Bush loses the election in the first round in a squeaker you are going to be the first one cheering on the Republican legal army as they try to steal it back. I assure you if they lose a squeaker they wont go quietly in to the night either.
There is a high probability this election will be very close which suggests one big plus with paperless electronic voting depending on your viewpoint. If there is a anomaly with paperless electronic voting in a close election this time there wont be any hanging chads, of course there just wont be anykind of verifiable recount which is mandated by election law in most states. They are going to return the same answer everytime you ask them and you have absolutely no way to verify if they reflect the choice of the voters who were forced to use them. They could have been malfunctioned, they could have been rigged, they might be accurate, there is no way to tell.
If either side loses another squeaker election they can use these machines, and the inability to do a true recount, to cry foul, and the country can become even more bitterly divided than it already is.
"Lack of freedom of speech ...etc..." ....and an abundance of jobs, many formerly held by Americans, a booming economy, rising income and exploding consumerism.
Lack of freedom of assembly
Lack of freedom of thought
Lack of freedom of movement
I hate to break it to you but your list closely corresponds to nirvana for big businesses looking for an obedient work force. This is a key reason you don't hear the U.S. government and multinationals complain about China's repressive dictatorship as much as they did. GM recently announced China is soon going to be their second largest market for cars. It is already the world's largest cell phone market by far.
The new China is a wet dream for execs at big multinationals, socially repressive, capital friendly and a huge wave of new consumers with money which == $$.
THX-1138 is out on DVD now. If you've never seen it or haven't seen it lately check it out. It shows you a worst case scenario for where this may be heading. When it first came out its portrayal of mandatory sedation probably appeared somewhat extreme, while today it almost looks normal.
Actually if you recall President (sic) Bush had nothing but trouble getting elected in 2000 and lost the popular vote. Its highly unlikely he would have won if his brother and his brothers partisan secretary of state hadn't done everything in their power to suppress the democratic vote and if the Supreme Court hadn't handed him the election on a silver platter.
Chances are also pretty high the Republicans control the senate today partially because of electronic voting machines. The highly controversial and disputed George Republican Senate win in 2002 was cast entirely on electronic voting machines, I think all made by Diebold. The Republican Governor of Georgia may well be in office for the same reason.
The Republicans are in another potentially razor close election that could easily swing against them, in particular because there are so many new voters who have woken up to the fact these elections do matter, so this election is probably going to see the highest turnout in recent history and be very unpredictable. In such a scenario if you want to insure you hold power paperless electronic voting is exactly what the doctor ordered, they are a great insurance policy.
Its a fact of life that with so much power and money at stake anyone who thinks they can steal this election and get away with it will. The Republicans still haven't forgotten that Kennedy may have won by stealing Illinois. I'm sure there are Democrats who will steal this election if they can and so will Republicans. The Republicans just have an inside track because they control all the electronic voting machine manufacturers and Republican partisans dominate the electoral process in the two biggest swing state prizes Ohio and Florida and of course they control the White House and Congress, and at times the Supreme Court.
"Because everything said at the Republican Convention wasn't said in a rally for a supposivly (last time I checked) non-partisan groups."
The same rhetoric has been coming out of the White House in state of the union speeches, addresses to the nation, policy speeches, and from Fox News. Remember the prewar rhetoric, supposedly backed by America's vast supposedly non partisan intelligence apparatus, that America was in imminent danger of seeing a mushroom cloud and Iraqi UAV's spreading Anthrax over their cities. Which is worse your government stretching the truth or MTV.
So these groups are just countering massive, state sponsored, deceitful propaganda. Somebody has to do it. An incumbent party, especially one with control of all the branches of government has an enormouse bully pulpit and the Democrats would be nearly powerless to counter it were it not for all these outside groups and money.
"...thought of a President pushing for the reinstation of the draft. But so far that hasn't been the case."
Thats only because he is trying to get elected. If he gets elected and especially by wide enough margin he thinks he has a mandate he is going to do all kinds of pent up extreme things he's been reluctant to do before an election. Instituting the draft right before an election would be political suicide. Is telling in a Freudian slip a week or two ago Bush said he was going to end volunteer army and someone in the crowd had to correct him. He is a recovering acute alcohol, his slips of the tongue are far more telling than the carefully crafted lies his speech writers put in front of him which he just reads.
Bush didn't have a mandate in 2000 and he still followed the election with a binge of extremism. The Republicans rushed in to Iraq as fast as they did in hopes of winning and it being over before the election season started which didn't happen.
Something is going to have to give after the election, either they are going to have to stop throwing the military around as their tool of first resort or they are going to have to put more young people in army boots. The fact that a crisis is looming in Iran in 2005 when they try to bring a nuclear reactor on line tends to indicate more feet in boots will be required.
The Pentagon has figured out they have way to many people in the cool, volunteer friendly, relatively safe Air Force and Navy and nothing close to what they need for the new era in the down in the mud Army and Marines. They were trying to transfer Air Force and Navy truck drivers to the Army, with limited success because no one wants to drive a truck in Iraq because its suicidal. Again there is a high probability they will have to offer obscene incentives to volunteers, I heard recently the incentive package is up around $80,000 or restart the draft and use the power of their police state to suppress the dissent that will ensue.
Yes, those little teams of old ladies and gents watching paper ballots like a hawk is a pretty good system though its increasingly hard to find enough of them because younger people don't value elections like they do, and of course politicians are so pathetic most people are completely disenchanted with the whole process.
They beauty of electronic voting without a papertrail is all these little old ladies and gents are completely cut out of the system. They are wasting their time sitting there because the software in the machines could steal the election out from under their noses and there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop it. I'm not even sure a tech savvy youngester who can read code, route networks and sign binaries could stop it either.
If you want to steal an election these machines are a complete god send, which is why I figure so many Republican started companies to make them. I figure Republicans got tired of being out of power and now they will do whatever it takes to keep it, especially since they believe their own rhetoric that they are the only ones capable of running America and through America the world, so they can rationalize to themselves destroying America's democracy in order to save America.
We are talking about voter verifiable paper trails. You enter your vote on the machine and it prints out what you voted in human and ideally machine readable form so you can verify the machine did what you told it to do and there is a record that is put in a box like an old fashioned paper ballot. There are two forks here.
In one fork the paper trail is machine readable and it gets fed into an optical scanner which actually counts it. In this scenario the electronic voting machine is of marginal value though it can reduce errors, double voting for example or not filling in the ovals properly for an optical scanner. But the main thing they do is provide electronic assistance to the blind so they can vote without assistance. We are blessed with these machines partially because the handicapped, especially the blind, are rightly complaining they are denied their right to anonymous voting by most/all non electronic voting machine.
In the other more likely fork the electronic machine does the count, but their is a paper receipt for every vote so you can:
A. randomly recount a subset of the machines to verify that the paper trail matches the machine count and catch fraud.
B. If the election is close or their is a dispute you can do a complete manual recount and disregard the machine count if it appears suspect.
Venezuela recently had a hotly contested recall electon for Hugo Chavez and they used all electronic machines, but with a paper trail unlike the U.S. which is sorely lacking paper trails. Here is a good writup on some of the issues the Carter foundation found in trying to monitor and audit the election.
Uh, how exactly is this different from the rhetoric coming out of Bush/Cheney and the Republican convention. Remember how they said if you elect the wrong person you risk another 9/11 attack, how you and your children are in grave danger if you make the wrong choice, or the wolves lurking in the forest. Humans have a strongly imprinted fear of wolves, using them in an add is designed entirely to stoke primal fear.
So, are you equally upset about that rhetoric or are you only upset when liberals engage in these tactics.
This is called the politics of fear, both sides are doing it on a range of issues, and doing it so much many Americans are voting entirely out of fear. The Republicans are almost certainly benefiting from it and far better at it than the Democrats. It sucks, but unfortunately it tends to work really well.
I assure you there are plenty of ill informed voters of all ages and many of them are voting out of fear and not on issues, so don't try to hang it on young people. Numerous studies of Bush voters show they consistently have no clue what Bush's actual position is on most key issues, and frequently get his positions exactly backward. They are just voting for him because he says he will make the "safe" or because he is God's chosen one, or at least so he says.
I'm not sure mandatory training of all young voters to be good Republicans or good Democrats before they are allowed to vote is how these democracy things are supposed to work. Its a personal responsibility to educate yourself, and unfortunately most Americans are pretty bad at it.
As for the whole draft proposition there is a reasonable chance the draft is going to come back real soon now, and it may come back under either Bush or Kerry. Unless the U.S. pulls out of Iraq soon or slashes its troop commitments elsewhere it is going to run out of bodies to put in the boots on the ground. The volunteer army works a lot better when you just get great benefits and aren't volunteering to drive a truck in Iraq and get your ass blown off, literally.
Indications are volunteers for the Army and Marines are in fact slowing and the U.S. can't use the current tactics indefinitely(calling up the guard and reserves in perpetuity and using stop loss to keep people in the military indefinitely). So there is a pretty good chance young voters may be voting over whether they are going to get drafted after the election. The only catch is Kerry is about as likely as Bush to reinstate it. Kerry after all has said he is going to put about 40,000 more bodies in army boots first thing and I doubt he is going to do that with volunteers if it entails combat duty.
"one candidate would not only have to have unrealistic access to countless voting machines"
Uh, the people at Diebold had exactly this kind of access in California and Georgia in previous elections and all the manufacturers probably have it this time around too. Local election officials who all tend to be very partisan have it too. California is pursuing Diebold in court for precisely this kind of unauthorized access to their machines. Unrealistic indeed.
Unless there are extraordinarily rigorous procedures followed in auditing the source, doing builds controlled environment, and making sure properly signed builds are on the machines, they are constantly vulnerable to compromise. If they had a paper trail it would be less bad because you could do random audits to catch cheating. With these paperless machines you have absolutely no way to catch fraud.
You only need a compromised software load distributed across all machines. Its silly to act like some guy in black needs to go around and stuff ballots in each machine individually like they have to with good old paper ballots.
This is a very real danger. STOP TRYING TO DOWNPLAY IT.
"he'd have had to have guessed WHICH machines he needed unrealistic access to beforehand."
Both sides know exactly the places where they need to jigger the results to steal the elections. They are called swing states and two of them with huge electronic voting presence are Ohio(home of Diebold and where Diebold's execs are a key part of the Bush campaign apparatus) and Florida where the election apparatus is dominated by the President's brother and his appointed Republican secretary of state.
"Finally - see that horse? It's dead. You can stop beating it. Electronic voting has happened, is happening, and will happen."
You are so wrong. This horse is just out of the gate. If this election ends up at all close the jockeys(thousand strong armies of lawyers on both sides) are going to being whipping this horse all the way around the track. Its likely the losing side will blame these machines whether they are at fault or not forever because they are so fundamentally untrustworthy.
This issue isn't ever going to be over until all machines have a paper trail at a bare minimum. I'm inclined to say all of the purely electronic machines should be replaced with paper ballots run through a national standard optical scanner like most sane precincts are using. You can take the all electronic machines and put one in each precinct for the handicapped to use but otherwise get them out of the process because they are fundamentally untrustworthy.
I wouldn't give her long at Yale once the powers that be get wind of some of her rhetoric. Most interesting question I'd like to hear her answer is why in God's name she took a position at Yale other than maybe she wants to live in NYC.
She would fit at Berkeley or maybe even Stanford but Yale and Connecticut is the belly of the beast (the beast being the establishment). Yale is the ivy league school for future Wall Street power brokers thanks to its proximity to New York. Its home to Skull and Bones, the secret Yale fraternity whose 800 living members include both current Presidential candidates. Connecticut and Yale were the center of the Bush family's power base before they moved to Texas, Prescott Bush, George W's grandpa was their senator.
A short list of some Yale Alumni:
- Prescott Bush, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barbara Bush
- John Kerry
- Joe Lieberman
- Howard Dean
- Dick Cheney though he dropped out before he flunked out
I'm guessing her strategy must be to get inside the cocoon and see if she can corrupt the minds of the future Wall Street power brokers and American presidents while they are still young and malleable.
"I am more of a Reagan Republican than I am of the current ilk in this party."
Uh, Reagan is the patriarch and role model for the current ilk of the Republican party. They all idolize him, especially George W. All indications are Reagan and George H.W. Bush didn't actually like each other but George W. is not his fathers son in his politics.
Reagan is the one that started the ball rolling for the Republican return to power, after the disgrace of McCarthyism and Nixon, and made George W. and todays Republican party possible.
Reagan's fiscal policy of cutting taxes, spending more and running up huge deficits in order to fake prosperity is the model for the Bush fiscal policy though Bush has taken it to a whole new level.
John Ashcroft is like Ed Meese Jr.
Reagan was a likable guy, who gave good speeches written for him by good speech writers and who had staff who did all the heavy thinking for him exactly like someone else we know.
Reagan was less extreme than the current Republican party because:
- He didn't have control of the Congress when he was in office.
- He didn't have 9/11 to use as an excuse so he couldn't push the right wing agenda as fast as George can.
If he had all the tools George W. has I doubt you would have been able to tell the difference between them.
"...hate speech/hate crime laws..."
That might be a good one I guess but I'm pretty clueless as to who actually pushes that crap. Seems to me like more a product of a whole politically correct era, and saturation media coverage of anyone who says off color things.
Whoever pushes it, I'm not sure how you can compare suppressing hate speech which isn't a particularly a good thing in the first place, with the current administration's suppression of most forms of dissent, which is fundementally important and good for any healthy democracy. Suppressing hate speech and supressing dissent really aren't in the same league.
"The left/liberal/progressive side also tends toward extremism, censorship and suppression of free speech."
This isn't really a right versus left thing either. Libertarians and true conservatives are a shining light in this regard from the right. Unfortunately they've been buried under the extremism that is the new Republican party. I'm not really interested in framing this as left or right, my problem is almost entirely with the new Republican party and the fact its completely abandoned its civil libertarian and small government roots.
But, could you cite some example of excess on the left. Some that comes to mind, Roosevelt did step over the line on numerous occasions during World War II, but the whole country left and right was on that band wagon. The Chicago DNC in 1968 was bad. Maybe you could cite suppression of prayer and religion in public institutions but that is a hard issue. Fact is Christians shouldn't be able to inflict their beliefs on others in public schools and courts if we believe in separation of church and state and religious freedom for all.
Here are a few examples from the right.
McCarthyism took place the last time Republicans had power in Congress. You will be hard pressed to find a left equivalent of this rabid attempt to destroy our constitutional liberties than that.
Free speech zones are an invention of today's Republican controlled government, a cyncial name since they are in fact cages designed to hide and suppress people expressing opposition to the people in power. Again you will be hard pressed to find a liberal sponsored equivalent of this major attempt at suppression of free speech. You can claim the Free Speech Zone at the DNC but that was created by Homeland Security and the Secret Service which are run by the Bush administration.
Its been a while since we've had a government thats been willing to say "you're either with us or you're against us" or you are unpatriotic, aiding and abedding terrorists, if you question or criticize us.
"To say that Bush/Cheney have lied more than Clinton/Gore seems a little bit like sticking your head in the sand."
Please list some of these lies? I can't wait. We can do a head to head comparison of the gravity and magnitude. Again Clinton/Gore were savaged for theirs including impeachment which as serious an accounting as our Constitution allows.
As nearly as anyone can tell no one in Bush/Cheney have paid in any way for theirs and constantly deny they've ever lied or done anything wrong or made a mistake. Well there was George Tenet, the scapegoat who fell on his sword (and its likely most of the bad intelligence on Iraq came out of the DOD not the CIA, the CIA just didn't fight it) but he was a Clinton hold over and not one of the Bush faithful. I'm exactly pro Clinton/Gore but I'd sure like to see some equity in the political weapons of mass destruction.
You can attribute the lack of equity to the fact the Republicans completely control the government so there is no one to hold Bush/Cheney to account while Clinton was mauled by a Republican controlled house engaged in a one hatchet job after another. The Republicans can quite literally get away with murder.
I shopuld add I don't "hate" either of them but I don't like either of them either. Unfortunately neither one of them appears to have the level head, integrity and honesty I want in a President.
"I just hope that whoever wins on Tuesday wins by a landslide."
I hope you get your wish but chances are high its going to be a really close election and the losing party is going to be fighting legal battles for months trying to seize power. You don't build two lawyer armies and expect them to go home without fighting a major war first. Neither of these candidates can win on merit so they win with attack ads, smear campaigns, election rigging and a legal spectacle that will likely dwarf 2000.
"I am tired of the incivility being expressed by both sides"
Not sure you follow my posts but I slam both candidates equally. I'm not on either side though I really want to Republican stranglehold on power broken. It is extraordinarily unhealthy. I want gridlock again so the nutcases on both side can't keep changing things for the worse.
"I don't have to defend my decision to you."
Well you are right, no you don't. It may not register with you but your posts so far, especially the extent to which you are losing it, suggests that its not because you "don't have" to or don't want to its because you can't. If you read your posts you'll find your the one being rude and profane. I'm just making points about issues, most of which I can support. That is how civilized debate works in democratic societies. You make your point and I make mine. Unfortunately civilized debate and thoughtful consideration of issues seems completely lost on you, like most Americans and especially most Republicans. You just want empty rhetoric that reaffirms your established world view.
Its actually OK you can't make your "safety" case because the fact is the rhetoric by both side on the subject is nothing but empty rhetoric, stuff they are telling you because its what you want to hear. You want to be safe, they tell you they are making you safe, you are happy, until and unless there is another attack. What do you do if there is another 9/11 or worse attack on Bush's watch proving he isn't actually making you safe? Go in to denial, write it off and assume he will make you safe next time.
If you are facing determined suicidal terrorists who really hate you, chances are they will find a way to do their dirty deed eventually. Israel has been trying to make itself "safe" from terrorists for more than 50 years and failed miserably. Terrorists with wide support and a pool of willing volunteers are extraordinarily hard to defeat. Thats why they choose the tactics they do, versus putting on uniforms and standing in a field so the U.S. can pulverize them. Israel is a tiny place with oppressive security and they haven't been able to make themselves "safe" so how are you going to make a sprawling place like the U.S. "safe".
I've seen a number of editors of conservative newspapers explain why they endorsed Bush in 2000 and are either endorsing no one, Kerry or Bush only reluctantly in 2004. They are pretty consistent in what they say. They endorsed Bush in 2000 based on the policies he said he supported in the campaign, since it was all they had to go on other than his stint as Texas governor which wasn't a very good guide.
They are all disenchanted with him because his actual record in office has run counter to everything they thought he stood for.
In particular they naively though he would be fiscally conservative while he is instead dramatically expanding spending, while cutting taxes leading to a staggering debt. They were naive in thinking he would be fiscally conservative since Bush idolizes Reagan and Reagan ran up the deficit exactly the same way though Bush has taken it to a who new level. Reagan could blame the Dems for the spending since they controlled Congress. The Republicans have no one to blame but themselves and its especially bad since its massively, hypocritical juxtaposed to their fiscal responsibility rhetoric. All the editors put this at or near the top of their list for turning on him with the war in Iraq being the other top reason.
- During the campaign Bush said he was dead set against nation building but they are instead doing it all over the place especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti. Conservatives hate nation building.
- Bush/Cheney have established a track record of either lieing or being so completely wrong it borders on incompetence, especially on the reasons for invading Iraq. Most newspaper editors are thoughtful, educated and informed people. Bush/Cheney have been able to lie their way out of the lies with less thoughtful, less educated and less informed American. I don't think its working with newspaper editors who are smart enough to see that the Republicans are being consistently untruthful and are getting away with it.
There is a paper in Orlando, Florida who has been getting a lot of press for endorsing Kerry. They haven't endorsed a Democrat since Johnson in 1964. Its telling that Johnson was running a right wing extremist, Barry Goldwater, which is no doubt why they endorsed LBJ. You could conclude this paper is placing George W. Bush in the same class as Barry Goldwater. They do have a lot in common for their severe tilt to the far right, lack of judgement and thoughtful discretion.