I'm in school to become a engineer right now, you don't take 3 years to go through an engineering program. I've got 2 history classes, 2 political science classes, 3 english classes, economics, 4 math classes, chemistry, 2 physics classes, and speech. That's easily a third of my hours. If you don't count the required BA for a lawyer, you shouldn't count all the prerequisite non-engineering classes in a 4 year degree program. Law school is no joke, my dad is an electrical engineer and he went to law school a few years back. He did well but it was by no means easy.
Generally the kind of economic regulations I was talking about here are of the anti-trust sort, which shouldn't affect small businesses at all.
I disagree with your statement that a regulated economy is more corruptible than an unregulated one, and have seen no evidence to support this. Russia's government barely exists, and yet they have what must be the most corrupt market in the industrial world. Corruption happens with or without the government; the only difference is that it's easier to change a government than it is to change a market aristocracy. You claim it can't be done, but it happens all the time across the world, and if you haven't noticed it's happening now. Bush was in many ways a god-send to us, he woke the faithful up. The Party is so weak right now that it's primed for conquest, and we intend to take it. Liberal grass roots fundraisers raised over 100 million for Kerry this time around, making us his cash support, not big companies. We also raised dozens of millions for a support for liberal 527s, which push our agenda as much as they do Kerry's. Wealthy liberals plan to raise billions over the next few years building a liberal political apparatus. If the Democrats won't clean up then we will finally have a machine we can use to get a third party into the White House, destroying the old Party in the process, but I expect that once they see that you can win doing the right thing they will. I'll include the link from NYT "Wiring the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy", it's a very interesting read and quite encouraging from my perspective. You might like these guys too, they are somewhat Libertarian, although they are more Left-Libertarian than I would expect you would like. Soros, for example, has spent millions on trying to end the drug war.
How does doing the right thing not hurt the bottom line? Using safer equipment costs more money than more dangerous equipment. Not firing your broken employees costs you money. Cleaning up environmental messes cost money. That's why none of these things were standard practices in the laissez faire days. Maybe in the long term these things are helpful, but capitalism has always had a blind spot for the long term. Most companies don't even plan beyond a few years; you think they really care what the area around their plants will be like in 30 years, or what happens to employees no longer able to help them as efficiently as another? And noticed I never said unethical companies were punished under our system, unless they break the law in which case they are, but not as severely as they should be. Really what the system does is take the question of ethics right out of it; Regardless of what kind a scum bag a CEO is, his employees have the same disability protections as a good CEO. Normally, the scum bag CEO could have passed the money saved on not providing this kind of insurance on to the consumer, selling his product at a lower price but at the cost of the livelihood of his employees. In a completely free market, he would have the advantage, and so his practices would become standard. Also, I don't expect the government to be perfect, as long as I can change it when it's obviously corrupted.
I've got work to do, so I'll wrap this up without going further into the income tax argument than I have and instead poke out something funny about your example of Kerry flip flopping.
"KERRY: "George, I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the President made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him." (ABC News, Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate, Columbia, SC, 5/4/03)"
"KERRY: "I am -- Yes, in the sense that I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have,
While I agree with much of what the Libertarians have to say, especially on social issues and matters of civil rights, I disagree with much of what they have to say about economic regulation and taxation. I don't think markets are natural, I think they must be sustained by rules that maintain the integrity of the free market by stopping larger companies from leveraging their awesome power against their smaller competitors. Libertarians believe that by its very nature a truly free market will reward smaller competitors, but I see no evidence to support that. If power will decentralize on its own naturally like that, then why is history full of one centralized power after another? If government is the thing which prevents free markets, then how did such a state come to exist from the utopian existence of having no government? Obviously, people work the rules of any system to maximize the amount of power they wield; they would find ways to do that through a free market too. Except that in a free market without a publicly run democratic government, power is controlled entirely by wealth, so the non-affluent would find no way to change their circumstances except through violence, and so revolution would be the only recourse to shake off a disliked power elite. At least right now we can vote out those members of the elite in the public sphere, broken though the system currently is.
I also support worker safety protections and environmental regulations. I'm from the old school of business ethics, the companies obligation is to maximize its profits and nothing else. The markets tend to support this kind of thinking, and so it must be true. In such a non-utopian outlook on the market, the government must step in and set a bottom line on business practices because the market won't. This is far fairer than expecting companies to go out of their way to run ethical businesses; if the government sets the line than all companies have to start from that point and nobody is at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. If the market sets the line than only the ethical companies see their profits hurt.
Income tax collection was established in the 16th amendment, so it must be Constitutional. If you don't like it vote to have the amendment removed. And you'll find that when you look at Kerry's "flip flops", most are merely Republican over-simplifications of Kerry's positions. For instance, the "flip flop" over "No Child Left Behind". He supports the bill, but critized Bush* for not funding it properly. Yet somehow the "liberal" media has managed to turn that into a flip flop. He notably has changed position on the PATRIOT act, probably because they were expected to vote for it a few hours after recieving the several hundred page document and so didn't realize some of the nastier provisions contained therein. It's a shame stuff like that happens in the Senate. But people make mistakes, I'm willing to forgive if it means getting better policies.
Bush uses those zones at every event, and this is the only time I've ever seen Democrats use these zones. If you watched Democratic events, you'd notice something you don't see at Republican events, little things called protesters. I imagine the only reason they're using these zones now is the hyper inflated "risk" of a terror attack on the convention, a scenario pushed by the Bush administration. Back to the issue at hand, which side wants to escalate the War on drugs and remove your rights. Bush has recently called for a federal crackdown on marijuana users, and has redirected police resources to handle the "scourge" of pot-smoking. Kerry on the other hand has already said he views pot as little worse than alcohol and has called for defacto decrim of personal possession in a rolling stone interview he did a year ago. He also called for the elimination of manditory minimum sentences for drug crimes. He also supports medical marijuana, and wants to remove the provisions from the PATRIOT Act that allow police to monitor library records, require more judicial supervision, and restrict its use to strictly anti-terrorism cases,( unlike Ashcroft who apparently cares more about people buying whores than about Osama attacking America). All of which isn't enough for Libertarians and it's not enough for me, but it's a start and it proves the equivilance of the two Parties to be a lie.
As for the Parties as a whole, in a recent bill to allow states to set their own rules for Medical Marijuana, only 10% of Republican Reps voted in favor of it, while nearly two thirds of Democrats did. While we need to flush the bad third of Dems out, most of them chose the sane option. They aren't the same, one Party is salvageable, whilst the Republicans are wholly controlled by an evil, backward, sect of Puritanical monsters.
They make you register that too, and for good reason. To ensure legal use of the road ways and that your car is up to standards. There is also a good reason to register firearms; the same reasons states across the country already do register firearms. If you break the law with a registered gun, it can more easily be traced back to you. As a result of this, registration helps police distinguish between law abiding gun owners and those who wish to commit crimes with their weapons, as a citizen who didn't intend to break the law should have no reason to not register their gun, aside from paranoia about future acts of the government. And it is paranoia, as half the country owns firearms and only an extremely small fringe support confiscation. I'm not sure why they want you to keep the weapons and ammo separate, it seems frivolous and I hope it gets overturned but it's not gun confiscation, either. Now, as for assault weapons, you're getting into a murky area. When I talk about gun confiscation I mean rifles and handguns, not military scale weaponry. I'm sure she does support a ban on that, as the vast majority of Americans do, although for the record I don't. Of course, the NRA also makes exceptions for powerful weapons, they scoff at the idea that a person should be allowed to own nuclear weapons under the 2nd amendment. So they obviously agree with Hillary that there is a line between weapons that should be owned by the people and those that should be restricted to the government even if none is explicitly stated in the Constitution. Obviously they disagree on where that line is but the idea than none should exist is an extreme one to say the least.
I, of course, disagree with your voluntary based system of government. No modern system of government works on like this, and I highly doubt it's even remotely feasible. No public education, military, police, firemen, or social safety net of any sort? Thanks, but no thanks, I hate some of the stupid laws we pass but I'd rather live here than a place that wouldn't do a thing to help me if I needed it.
It should be pointed out that the "things" referred to by Hillary Clinton in your signature are tax dollars. She was addressing a group of rich Democratic fundraisers and telling them that she would stop the Bush tax cut and that doing so would cost them money. Then she would use that money to fix some of the problems that face this country and the deficit. It's the difference between a rich Democrat and a rich Republican; rich Democrats don't mind paying the tax man because they recognize the debt they owe to society, and so opposed Bush's attempt to move the tax burden to the working class. Knowing Republicans as I do I can tell you are trying to spread that quote to make it sound like she's for confiscating Bibles and firearms to those too stupid to look it up. It's your right I suppose, but it seems awfully disingenuous to me.
So I guess the lack of a wysiwyg editor is to scare nontechies away. Forgive me I'm new.
It describes Fox News and the rest of the conservative media perfectly. Notice how Sheridan = insane matches the Gore = insane to a tee. Both sides faked concern for condition of the person they were viscously attacking, claiming to once have had respect for them but now are utterly dismayed at the "turn for the worse" they've taken. The Republicans and Clark's people both used appeals to xenophobia and over-generalized hate and fear to imply a sinister connection between dangerous Aliens (read foreigner - John Kerry looks French) and their political enemies, and both groups say that you can only trust those within their closed society, ( aliens/foreigners and political disruptors are all conspiring to destroy YOU). Both sides take their opponents grossly out of context, like the way Bush is trying to say Kerry would have our soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks because he voted against a couple of pork laden defense appropriation bills. It's a perfect primer to dealing with the right wing media in our country.
Comparing it to Michael Moore though seems kind of weak though. I still haven't heard valid answers to many of the questions he raised. Why did we do such a poor job on Afghanistan? i.e. allowing so much of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get away, not building a decent government but rather just relying on the old warlord ruling class, not moving the country away from radical Islam. 11,000 troops? Is that really all we could muster against the man who took 3000 of our lives? Why did we invade Iraq, a secular country with 1 brief contact with Al Qaeda to broker some kind of peace so Al Qaeda would quit targeting them that went no where and happened a decade ago? We knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but if you listened to Republican sources they always carefully chose language which would leave you with the impression that they were. Over 70% of the American people believed Iraq caused 9/11; they didn't just pull that idea from nowhere.
I simply don't understand what you guys thought you were doing over there. It wasn't protecting us, it didn't help us. At least Moore has a believable explanation for why we did what we did, greed and lust for power. I sure as hell know we didn't go over there out of the goodness of our hearts. I simply don't believe that the same people who rail night and day against the evils of "socialized" medicine, welfare, and public education have turned into bleeding heart liberals. If you won't pay a few thousand dollars a year to help out your suffering American brothers, then how can you expect me to believe that you'd pay with your son or daughter's life to help out some suffering Iraqi's?
hmm, looked ok in the word processor, let's try again.
It describes Fox News and the rest of the conservative media perfectly. Notice how Sheridan = insane matches the Gore = insane to a tee. Both sides faked concern for condition of the person they were viscously attacking, claiming to once have had respect for them but now are utterly dismayed at the "turn for the worse" they've taken. The Republicans and Clark's people both used appeals to xenophobia and over-generalized hate and fear to imply a sinister connection between dangerous Aliens (read foreigner - John Kerry looks French) and their political enemies, and both groups say that you can only trust those within their closed society, ( aliens/foreigners and political disruptors are all conspiring to destroy YOU). Both sides take their opponents grossly out of context, like the way Bush is trying to say Kerry would have our soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks because he voted against a couple of pork laden defense appropriation bills. It's a perfect primer to dealing with the right wing media in our country.
Comparing it to Michael Moore though seems kind of weak though. I still haven't heard valid answers to many of the questions he raised. Why did we do such a poor job on Afghanistan? i.e. allowing so much of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get away, not building a decent government but rather just relying on the old warlord ruling class, not moving the country away from radical Islam. 11,000 troops? Is that really all we could muster against the man who took 3000 of our lives? Why did we invade Iraq, a secular country with 1 brief contact with Al Qaeda to broker some kind of peace so Al Qaeda would quit targeting them that went no where and happened a decade ago? We knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but if you listened to Republican sources they always carefully chose language which would leave you with the impression that they were. Over 70% of the American people believed Iraq caused 9/11; they didn't just pull that idea from nowhere.
I simply don't understand what you guys thought you were doing over there in Iraq. It wasn't protecting us, it didn't help us. At least Moore has a believable explanation for why we did what we did, greed and lust for power. I sure as hell know we didn't go over there out of the goodness of our hearts. I simply don't believe that the same people who rail night and day against the evils of "socialized" medicine, welfare, and public education have turned into bleeding heart liberals. If you won't pay a few thousand dollars a year to help out your suffering American brothers, then how can you expect me to believe that you'd pay with your son or daughter's life to help out some suffering Iraqi's?
It describes Fox News and the rest of the conservative media perfectly. Notice how Sheridan = insane matches the Gore = insane to a tee. Both sides faked concern for condition of the person they were viscously attacking, claiming to once have had respect for them but now are utterly dismayed at the "turn for the worse" they've taken. The Republicans and Clark's people both used appeals to xenophobia and over-generalized hate and fear to imply a sinister connection between dangerous Aliens (read foreigner - John Kerry looks French) and their political enemies, and both groups say that you can only trust those within their closed society, ( aliens/foreigners and political disruptors are all conspiring to destroy YOU). Both sides take their opponents grossly out of context, like the way Bush is trying to say Kerry would have our soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks because he voted against a couple of pork laden defense appropriation bills. It's a perfect primer to dealing with the right wing media in our country.
Comparing it to Michael Moore though seems kind of weak though. I still haven't heard valid answers to many of the questions he raised. Why did we do such a poor job on Afghanistan? i.e. allowing so much of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get away, not building a decent government but rather just relying on the old warlord ruling class, not moving the country away from radical Islam. 11,000 troops? Is that really all we could muster against the man who took 3000 of our lives? Why did we invade Iraq, a secular country with 1 brief contact with Al Qaeda to broker some kind of peace so Al Qaeda would quit targeting them that went no where and happened a decade ago? We knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but if you listened to Republican sources they always carefully chose language which would leave you with the impression that they were. Over 70% of the American people believed Iraq caused 9/11; they didn't just pull that idea from nowhere.
I simply don't understand what you guys thought you were doing over there. It wasn't protecting us, it didn't help us. At least Moore has a believable explanation for why we did what we did, greed and lust for power. I sure as hell know we didn't go over there out of the goodness of our hearts. I simply don't believe that the same people who rail night and day against the evils of "socialized" medicine, welfare, and public education have turned into bleeding heart liberals. If you won't pay a few thousand dollars a year to help out your suffering American brothers, then how can you expect me to believe that you'd pay with your son or daughter's life to help out some suffering Iraqi's?
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I'm in school to become a engineer right now, you don't take 3 years to go through an engineering program. I've got 2 history classes, 2 political science classes, 3 english classes, economics, 4 math classes, chemistry, 2 physics classes, and speech. That's easily a third of my hours. If you don't count the required BA for a lawyer, you shouldn't count all the prerequisite non-engineering classes in a 4 year degree program. Law school is no joke, my dad is an electrical engineer and he went to law school a few years back. He did well but it was by no means easy.
I disagree with your statement that a regulated economy is more corruptible than an unregulated one, and have seen no evidence to support this. Russia's government barely exists, and yet they have what must be the most corrupt market in the industrial world. Corruption happens with or without the government; the only difference is that it's easier to change a government than it is to change a market aristocracy. You claim it can't be done, but it happens all the time across the world, and if you haven't noticed it's happening now. Bush was in many ways a god-send to us, he woke the faithful up. The Party is so weak right now that it's primed for conquest, and we intend to take it. Liberal grass roots fundraisers raised over 100 million for Kerry this time around, making us his cash support, not big companies. We also raised dozens of millions for a support for liberal 527s, which push our agenda as much as they do Kerry's. Wealthy liberals plan to raise billions over the next few years building a liberal political apparatus. If the Democrats won't clean up then we will finally have a machine we can use to get a third party into the White House, destroying the old Party in the process, but I expect that once they see that you can win doing the right thing they will. I'll include the link from NYT "Wiring the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy", it's a very interesting read and quite encouraging from my perspective. You might like these guys too, they are somewhat Libertarian, although they are more Left-Libertarian than I would expect you would like. Soros, for example, has spent millions on trying to end the drug war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/magazine/25DEMOC RATS.html?ex=1248408000&
How does doing the right thing not hurt the bottom line? Using safer equipment costs more money than more dangerous equipment. Not firing your broken employees costs you money. Cleaning up environmental messes cost money. That's why none of these things were standard practices in the laissez faire days. Maybe in the long term these things are helpful, but capitalism has always had a blind spot for the long term. Most companies don't even plan beyond a few years; you think they really care what the area around their plants will be like in 30 years, or what happens to employees no longer able to help them as efficiently as another? And noticed I never said unethical companies were punished under our system, unless they break the law in which case they are, but not as severely as they should be. Really what the system does is take the question of ethics right out of it; Regardless of what kind a scum bag a CEO is, his employees have the same disability protections as a good CEO. Normally, the scum bag CEO could have passed the money saved on not providing this kind of insurance on to the consumer, selling his product at a lower price but at the cost of the livelihood of his employees. In a completely free market, he would have the advantage, and so his practices would become standard. Also, I don't expect the government to be perfect, as long as I can change it when it's obviously corrupted.
I've got work to do, so I'll wrap this up without going further into the income tax argument than I have and instead poke out something funny about your example of Kerry flip flopping.
"KERRY: "George, I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the President made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him." (ABC News, Democrat Presidential Candidate Debate, Columbia, SC, 5/4/03)"
"KERRY: "I am -- Yes, in the sense that I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have,
I also support worker safety protections and environmental regulations. I'm from the old school of business ethics, the companies obligation is to maximize its profits and nothing else. The markets tend to support this kind of thinking, and so it must be true. In such a non-utopian outlook on the market, the government must step in and set a bottom line on business practices because the market won't. This is far fairer than expecting companies to go out of their way to run ethical businesses; if the government sets the line than all companies have to start from that point and nobody is at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. If the market sets the line than only the ethical companies see their profits hurt.
Income tax collection was established in the 16th amendment, so it must be Constitutional. If you don't like it vote to have the amendment removed. And you'll find that when you look at Kerry's "flip flops", most are merely Republican over-simplifications of Kerry's positions. For instance, the "flip flop" over "No Child Left Behind". He supports the bill, but critized Bush* for not funding it properly. Yet somehow the "liberal" media has managed to turn that into a flip flop. He notably has changed position on the PATRIOT act, probably because they were expected to vote for it a few hours after recieving the several hundred page document and so didn't realize some of the nastier provisions contained therein. It's a shame stuff like that happens in the Senate. But people make mistakes, I'm willing to forgive if it means getting better policies.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=44515
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.amendmentxvi.html
As for the Parties as a whole, in a recent bill to allow states to set their own rules for Medical Marijuana, only 10% of Republican Reps voted in favor of it, while nearly two thirds of Democrats did. While we need to flush the bad third of Dems out, most of them chose the sane option. They aren't the same, one Party is salvageable, whilst the Republicans are wholly controlled by an evil, backward, sect of Puritanical monsters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,126869 0,00.html/
http://www.cannabis.net/presidentialpot.html/
http://www.maryjanesgarden.com/legalization_of_mar ijuana.php/
I, of course, disagree with your voluntary based system of government. No modern system of government works on like this, and I highly doubt it's even remotely feasible. No public education, military, police, firemen, or social safety net of any sort? Thanks, but no thanks, I hate some of the stupid laws we pass but I'd rather live here than a place that wouldn't do a thing to help me if I needed it.
It should be pointed out that the "things" referred to by Hillary Clinton in your signature are tax dollars. She was addressing a group of rich Democratic fundraisers and telling them that she would stop the Bush tax cut and that doing so would cost them money. Then she would use that money to fix some of the problems that face this country and the deficit. It's the difference between a rich Democrat and a rich Republican; rich Democrats don't mind paying the tax man because they recognize the debt they owe to society, and so opposed Bush's attempt to move the tax burden to the working class. Knowing Republicans as I do I can tell you are trying to spread that quote to make it sound like she's for confiscating Bibles and firearms to those too stupid to look it up. It's your right I suppose, but it seems awfully disingenuous to me.
It describes Fox News and the rest of the conservative media perfectly. Notice how Sheridan = insane matches the Gore = insane to a tee. Both sides faked concern for condition of the person they were viscously attacking, claiming to once have had respect for them but now are utterly dismayed at the "turn for the worse" they've taken. The Republicans and Clark's people both used appeals to xenophobia and over-generalized hate and fear to imply a sinister connection between dangerous Aliens (read foreigner - John Kerry looks French) and their political enemies, and both groups say that you can only trust those within their closed society, ( aliens/foreigners and political disruptors are all conspiring to destroy YOU). Both sides take their opponents grossly out of context, like the way Bush is trying to say Kerry would have our soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks because he voted against a couple of pork laden defense appropriation bills. It's a perfect primer to dealing with the right wing media in our country.
Comparing it to Michael Moore though seems kind of weak though. I still haven't heard valid answers to many of the questions he raised. Why did we do such a poor job on Afghanistan? i.e. allowing so much of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get away, not building a decent government but rather just relying on the old warlord ruling class, not moving the country away from radical Islam. 11,000 troops? Is that really all we could muster against the man who took 3000 of our lives? Why did we invade Iraq, a secular country with 1 brief contact with Al Qaeda to broker some kind of peace so Al Qaeda would quit targeting them that went no where and happened a decade ago? We knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but if you listened to Republican sources they always carefully chose language which would leave you with the impression that they were. Over 70% of the American people believed Iraq caused 9/11; they didn't just pull that idea from nowhere.
I simply don't understand what you guys thought you were doing over there. It wasn't protecting us, it didn't help us. At least Moore has a believable explanation for why we did what we did, greed and lust for power. I sure as hell know we didn't go over there out of the goodness of our hearts. I simply don't believe that the same people who rail night and day against the evils of "socialized" medicine, welfare, and public education have turned into bleeding heart liberals. If you won't pay a few thousand dollars a year to help out your suffering American brothers, then how can you expect me to believe that you'd pay with your son or daughter's life to help out some suffering Iraqi's?
hmm, looked ok in the word processor, let's try again. It describes Fox News and the rest of the conservative media perfectly. Notice how Sheridan = insane matches the Gore = insane to a tee. Both sides faked concern for condition of the person they were viscously attacking, claiming to once have had respect for them but now are utterly dismayed at the "turn for the worse" they've taken. The Republicans and Clark's people both used appeals to xenophobia and over-generalized hate and fear to imply a sinister connection between dangerous Aliens (read foreigner - John Kerry looks French) and their political enemies, and both groups say that you can only trust those within their closed society, ( aliens/foreigners and political disruptors are all conspiring to destroy YOU). Both sides take their opponents grossly out of context, like the way Bush is trying to say Kerry would have our soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks because he voted against a couple of pork laden defense appropriation bills. It's a perfect primer to dealing with the right wing media in our country. Comparing it to Michael Moore though seems kind of weak though. I still haven't heard valid answers to many of the questions he raised. Why did we do such a poor job on Afghanistan? i.e. allowing so much of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get away, not building a decent government but rather just relying on the old warlord ruling class, not moving the country away from radical Islam. 11,000 troops? Is that really all we could muster against the man who took 3000 of our lives? Why did we invade Iraq, a secular country with 1 brief contact with Al Qaeda to broker some kind of peace so Al Qaeda would quit targeting them that went no where and happened a decade ago? We knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but if you listened to Republican sources they always carefully chose language which would leave you with the impression that they were. Over 70% of the American people believed Iraq caused 9/11; they didn't just pull that idea from nowhere. I simply don't understand what you guys thought you were doing over there in Iraq. It wasn't protecting us, it didn't help us. At least Moore has a believable explanation for why we did what we did, greed and lust for power. I sure as hell know we didn't go over there out of the goodness of our hearts. I simply don't believe that the same people who rail night and day against the evils of "socialized" medicine, welfare, and public education have turned into bleeding heart liberals. If you won't pay a few thousand dollars a year to help out your suffering American brothers, then how can you expect me to believe that you'd pay with your son or daughter's life to help out some suffering Iraqi's?
It describes Fox News and the rest of the conservative media perfectly. Notice how Sheridan = insane matches the Gore = insane to a tee. Both sides faked concern for condition of the person they were viscously attacking, claiming to once have had respect for them but now are utterly dismayed at the "turn for the worse" they've taken. The Republicans and Clark's people both used appeals to xenophobia and over-generalized hate and fear to imply a sinister connection between dangerous Aliens (read foreigner - John Kerry looks French) and their political enemies, and both groups say that you can only trust those within their closed society, ( aliens/foreigners and political disruptors are all conspiring to destroy YOU). Both sides take their opponents grossly out of context, like the way Bush is trying to say Kerry would have our soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks because he voted against a couple of pork laden defense appropriation bills. It's a perfect primer to dealing with the right wing media in our country. Comparing it to Michael Moore though seems kind of weak though. I still haven't heard valid answers to many of the questions he raised. Why did we do such a poor job on Afghanistan? i.e. allowing so much of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get away, not building a decent government but rather just relying on the old warlord ruling class, not moving the country away from radical Islam. 11,000 troops? Is that really all we could muster against the man who took 3000 of our lives? Why did we invade Iraq, a secular country with 1 brief contact with Al Qaeda to broker some kind of peace so Al Qaeda would quit targeting them that went no where and happened a decade ago? We knew Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but if you listened to Republican sources they always carefully chose language which would leave you with the impression that they were. Over 70% of the American people believed Iraq caused 9/11; they didn't just pull that idea from nowhere. I simply don't understand what you guys thought you were doing over there. It wasn't protecting us, it didn't help us. At least Moore has a believable explanation for why we did what we did, greed and lust for power. I sure as hell know we didn't go over there out of the goodness of our hearts. I simply don't believe that the same people who rail night and day against the evils of "socialized" medicine, welfare, and public education have turned into bleeding heart liberals. If you won't pay a few thousand dollars a year to help out your suffering American brothers, then how can you expect me to believe that you'd pay with your son or daughter's life to help out some suffering Iraqi's?