Just bullshit. ElBaradei didn't think he had nuclear weapons and Hans Blix has said he was extremely skeptical of the idea that Saddam had WMD. The intelligence passed on to him kept telling him where to look and he just kept not finding anything. He figured, if this is their best intel, Saddam probably doesn't have anything.
There were alternative viewpoints. They were suppressed. Look at the aluminum tubes fiasco- a lot of people tried to tell the CIA that those tubes were for rockets, not centrifuges, but their informed opinion was disregarded because it didn't fit the party line.
Shit, it's hardly surprising that everyone in the White House thought he had weapons. When you use that as your starting point and only gather evidence that supports your idea, never get critical outside viewpoints, and refuse to consider the alternative- that he had no WMD- well, of course that's the answer you get.
Sure, at the time it was hard to rule out the possibility that he had a bunch of nerve gas artillery shells buried in a hole somwhere, or whatnot. You know what? It wouldn't have made any difference if he had. He could have used chemical weapons on us in the Gulf, but he didn't. If he wanted to attack us, he had ten years after the first Gulf War to do so, and he didn't. Why not? Because America has a massive conventional and nuclear deterrent.
Saddam was a twisted motherfucker, sure. But he had a rational drive for self-preservation and a strong sense of paranoia, which kept him from seriously attacking the U.S. And the "lots of other people thought so too" defense just doesn't cut it for the president. For one, when you take charge you are supposed to take responsibility. For another, he should have access to better intelligence than anyone else on the planet. He has access to intelligence from the CIA, the NSA plus the ability to ask other countries like the UK for their intelligence. If Bush had been seriously interested in the truth he could have gotten it.
Deaths were estimated at 98,000, but Slate points out that the 95% confidence interval on this estimate is 8,000-194,000 deaths. In other words, they are 95% sure that the true number of dead lies in this range. This estimate excludes surveys in Fallujah.
Not exactly precision estimates, you'll notice. The other critical thing pointed out by the Slate article is that this calculation tries to get at the number of deaths due to the invasion by factoring out the normal death rate. However, the Lancet study may have significantly underestimated the average Iraqi's chances of death before the invasion. For instance, if I say that 5 people would have died without the invasion, and we know that 10 people died, we know the invasion killed 5 people. BUT if my estimates says that 7 people would have died without the invasion and 10 died after an invasion, then the invasion has only killed 3 people.
Based on media reports, iraqbodycount.net estimates the (reported) deaths at 14181-16312. It is probably much higher than that, unless the media is doing a great job getting out there and reporting all the deaths. So who knows. It is probably higher than 15,000. Off by a factor of two, maybe at 30,000? Unfortunately its just about impossible to know.
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will bring back the draft. In fact, that bill was killed weeks ago.
Agreed. The public wouldn't stand for it. Maybe for a war with really broad popular support, but not for a war like Iraq where the rationale is unclear and evolves constantly (WMD, terrorist ties, Saddam was a bad guy... etc. etc.) and not for a bogged-down guerilla war with no clear end in sight.
There's also the problem of who to draft. Focusing unfairly on minorities might meet more resistance today than it did during Viet Nam, and you also have the issue of whether it is OK to draft women, now that they can serve. Finally, even assuming you signed the legislation, would people go? I think that during the last round of drafting, in Viet Nam, people were much more inclined to trust/obey the government than they are today. I would probably serve for a war I believed was just (like Kosovo or Afghanistan). With things the way they are in Iraq, well personally there's no way in hell I'd go- jail or Canada first.
You live in the land of Oz. Who do you vote for: the tin man (all brain and no heart) or the scarecrow (all heart and no brain). The tin man was supposed to represent Gore, and the scarecrow, Bush. Apparently it was dead even. This year, the tin man is winning.
You're either with us or against us. Reality seems to be against us. Therefore it is our right- no, our duty, in the name of freedom- to carpet-bomb Reality out of existence.
The Economist is a magazine which carries a lot of weight in certain circles. It is the indispensible, must-read weekly magazine of international politics and business. If you had one subscription while working at the State Department or the Federal Reserve, it would probably be this one. Though based in London, their US readership is three times their British readership and 45% of their world readership.While it has a great sense of humor (when Clinton referred to the beginning of WWII in 1941, the Economist noted that this was a "peculiarly American take on things") it is a very serious magazine full of graphs and figures of economic data. It's the type of thing you're likely to find scattered around at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Government rather than the dentist's office.
While surprisingly progressive on social issues (the Economist is against the war on drugs for instance), and other times conservative (they supported the war in Iraq), it's a centrist to center-right magazine, balancing its values against pragmatic considerations. I think this makes the endorsement particularly condemning. A NY Times endorsement for Kerry is expected (anything else would be a sign of the End Times). An Economist endorsement of Kerry means that some very level-headed moderate conservatives and centrists looked at Bush and found him wanting. They say: we like his vision best. But it's clear he lacks the ability to carry it out. They aren't as thrilled by Kerry's vision, but feel he's all in all more capable for the job.
Probably a fair assessment. It's hard to disagree with Bush when he advocates freedom. But turning Iraq into a giant guerilla war and locking people up without due process or trial isn't the way to create that. Perhaps Bush would be more fun on a fishing trip. But John Kerry is clearly the better man to lead the United States.
Meanwhile, Republicans prevented black people from entering 7-11s across the nation, as Democrats furiously worked to keep Ralph Nader cups out of the stores...
I'm fairly sure that Democrats are less likely to vote than Republicans, so heavy turnout favors Democrats. This year, turnout is expected to be high (by American standards)- 55-60%.
"A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency." -nytimes.com
In other words, just what the Iraqis said. The explosives went missing after the 9th, after US troops arrived- the first US troops arrived at Al Qaqaa on the 3rd. The video- which shows boxes and barrels of high explosives in a sealed bunker- was taken on the 18th.
Assuming (against all evidence) the expplosives really had gone missing earlier, it would be surprising if the Bush administration couldn't prove it: the reconnaissance should be good enough to pick up the 40 or so large trucks it would take to move a stash like that. It also ignores the fact that even if they had moved them, the Bush administration still should have secured those explosives wherever they ended up, and should not have stood by to let Iraqis loot weapons depots. The Bush administration's primary problem is that it simply denies reality and accountability. The sad thing is that so many Americans are perfectly happy with this situation.
My conclusion: kids are stupid. What remains to be seen is whether the general populace is any more intelligent.
Frankly, that's worrisome. The Weekly reader poll going to Bush last time was one of the reasons I bet on a Bush win. It does seem to be a pretty accurate barometer of public sentiment.
Regardless of what happens, Kerry has run a lackluster campaign. If he wins, it will be because the Bush administration hasn't been able to cover all its errors. Selecting Bob Shrum was stupid. Sure, the guy has a lot of experience working on Democratic presidential campaigns: he lost them all. Why the hell would you recruit a guy who's got a track record of losing? Kerry should have gotten those weasely-smart Clintonians to run everything.
Assuming "God" is a code-name for some Islamic fundamentalist ninja super-assassin sleeper agent who is supposed to whack Dubya, it defeats the entire point of using a code name to then spend the rest of the message saying "PLEASE KILL THE FUCKING PRESIDENT!!!!".
Ooops, gotta go. I was gonna write more, but I hear somebody knocking at the door.
Tolkein fans unite! We've found Frodo and friends!
Hobbits, are you crazy? Someone has clearly been reading too much Tolkein. Read the article: they were found in CAVES. So obviously, we're not dealing with hobbits, but dwarves.
I think whatever it is will be far less flamboyant and far more sneaky- like staging a fake terrorist attack in January to prevent the transfer of power.
The tar sands of Northern Alberta have about 1,000,000,000,000- one trillion- barrels of oil. For comparison, I think ANWR has maybe 10 billion. It's expensive to extract (they actually *mine* the oil) but I imagine they are making out pretty well at 50$ per barrel.
Take heed Canada: your days of harboring weapons of mass destruction are over, eh?
I have my doubts about how credible this all is. "The Horserace Blog" for instance, says, "Given this result, we can be 99.997% confident that George W. Bush presently has a lead."
Does anyone seriously believe that you can accurately measure this kind of thing to three decimal places? 99.997? Please. Remember 2000, when the polls said Gore took Florida? People's voting tendencies and opinions are very difficult to measure things, not something you measure with digital calipers. Hell, I do real, hard science with digital calipers, and none of the measurements I take are that accurate. Sure, "given these results" you can make very precise statements about probability. But how accurate are these polls as a metric of what we really want to know- people's likelihood of (a) going out to the polls Nov 2., and (b) selecting a particular candidate. People may say that they intend to vote or not, but we don't know if they will- maybe they don't. How much does the turnout of 2000, when voter apathy was at a record high, tell us about 2004, when the nation is incredibly polarized?
Statistics are powerful tools, but you have to understand what they mean and what their potential sources of error are. Maybe the polls are accurate. On the other hand, I've never seen a race like this before, so I suspect that many assumptions based on previous elections will not hold.
"Lies... damned lies... and statistics."
"Statistics can prove anything, Kent. 14% of Americans know that."
That's the thing though- I'm not particularly liberal. The Economist is my favorite news magazine, I really thought John McCain would make a good president, I find Michael Moore intellectually dishonest, and I find Bay Area knee-jerk liberals to be infuriatingly smug and uninformed (although I have to admit they were right about Iraq). Also having read up on it, I believe that the first Gulf War was both justified and necessary(by strategic concerns- oil- if not moral ones).
When did the Republicans convince the nation that anyone to the left of Genghis Khan was "liberal"? You don't have to be liberal to loathe George Bush for what he's done to this country. You just have to be informed and care about the values he claims to promote, like liberty and justice. For many of us, it's not that we're left- we're in the center, same as always. It's that George Bush has taken the nation too far to the right while claiming to speak for the whole nation.
This is largely why I will be voting for Bush. I disagree with the rhetoric on the war, I think it is going as well as can be expected (Please, this is not a request to "correct" me on this; I've heard it all before. I mean, sure, feel free to whack that reply button, it's your right, but don't expect me to suddenly see the error of my ways or anything. Caveat over.)
In other words, let's not be so silly as to bring reality into this: the war is going well, so any facts brought forward are just "rhetoric". Well, look at the rhetoric.
Things in our favor:
-Overwhelming military superiority. We have better training, guns, armor, APCs, tanks, gunships, medics, precision bombs, and communications.
-The insurgency lacks a coherent political agenda. Beyond being against the occupation, it's unclear what they are for.
-The insurgency lacks central command and coordination. In fact, it is better viewed as a network of separate insurgencies, with separate aims- radical Islaamists, Baathists, Sunni Nationalists, Shiites, organized criminals, and I'm gonna guess Iranian agitators. So (unlike the US) they couldn't all get together and attack simultaneously.
-Several regions are fairly stable- the Kurdish North is under control, and the Shiites are able to organize and coordinate themselves. It's primarily the center of the country we have the huge problem with.
So yes, there are some things in our favor. OK, stuff against us:
-Money. About 500 million from the former regime is helping to fund the insurgency.
-Arms. Besides the Kalashnikov-in-every-house factor, arms caches were looted (often as US troops stood by) in the wake of the invasion. Weapons are widely available, and cheap. They include the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle as well as machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, plastic explosives, and shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles. The IEDs seem to be getting better- the insurgency can now take out the tracked Bradley fighting vehicle.
-Motivation. The American people have limited patience for large number of casualties in a war with no clear justification. The insurgents have already demonstrated their willingness to lose thousands of people, and thousands more- even for people to kill themselves in suicide attacks. Even if we kill 10 insurgents for every 1 GI, we may tire of all the blood before they do.
-Understanding of the battlefield. We don't know the Iraqi language, culture, people, or country very well. Iraqis, of course, know all these things really well.
-Widespread resistance to the occupation, sypathy for the insurgents, and fear. Guerrilla warfare depends on a friendly, or at least passive, population base. It forms their logistical support. These factors also mean that people are reluctant to cooperate with the occupation- or even be seen talking to foreigners. People could speak out, but they are too afraid.
-Ineffectiveness of American military force for the present conflict. The American military is designed to take on a Soviet tanks and aircraft, not guys with RPGs. Many of our weapons systems are useless in urban areas because of high civilian casualties. Many of the military's tactics and advantages- for instance its ability to move rapidly and outmaneuver enemy forces- are of limited use in a stationary guerilla war. I would go further and say that the American military simply lacks the mindset for this kind of operation, which requires fundamentally different tactics and strategies than engaging a conventional force.
-Excellent intelligence on the part of the insurgency. The slaughter of 50 Iraqi troops was clearly planned by people with a detailed inside knowledge of their movements. Likewise, the ability to strike inside the Green Zone suggests an inside job. The United States is surrounded by many of the people it is supposed to be fighting.
PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER -CNN scrolling banner, 10/15/2004
If I hear just one more Democrat tell me those LIES about how President Bush creates hostility and anger among the American people, I WILL STRANGLE HIM WITH MY BARE HANDS!!!
(b) every so often there are certain elections which one can tell, almost from the get go, that previous historical norms won't apply and hence polls will mispredict the outcome.
This seems very likely to be one of those races. There are a number of reasons I think you may be right.
(1) The country is more polarized than it has been in a generation, and the democrats are more motivated than I've ever seen. High turnout should favor the Democrats.
(2) Bush is basically campaigning against his own war; he and Rumsfeld have to go out day after day to tell people we're not losing in Iraq. We haven't lost a single battle, but it's clear we're losing the war. Any major developments in Iraq are bound to be bad ones.
(3) Bush being a former alcoholic and cocaine user, it would hardly be surprising if people have been saving up some particularly nasty dirt (like that drunk driving report in 2000) for a last-minute smear. The other possibility is an Iraq scandal along the lines of the missing explosives or Abu Ghraib. In particular, Bush and the CIA are on poor terms. The CIA feels it has been used- first to justify the Iraq war and then to take the blame when the WMD intelligence fell apart. They are still pissed about Scooter Libby outing Valerie Plame. This isn't positive for Bush- you want to be on good terms with the guys whose business is to know everyone's secrets.
Democrats aren't infatuated with John Kerry, but he's more than capable. And Dems are angry like I've never seen before: they feel that they won in 2000 and yet have had to endure four years of the most incompetent and arrogant presidency in generations. I had no great fondness for Bush Senior but you had to respect him. I have not a shred of respect for W.
In the debates, Kerry seemed like a president. Bush came off as arrogant and petulant. Bush can be charismatic, but if he was during those debates, I didn't see it. He struck me as a spoiled child who needs to be taught a lesson in responsibility. When confronted with all the failures of his administration, he had this whining tone of "You just need to see it from my perspective". No, I don't. You're the president, you're supposed to be responsible. He isn't. He's an alcoholic cokehead trying to tell other people how to live their lives, he's a failure as a president, and he serves only to make the rich more rich, and the powerful more powerful. I'll vote for a lobotomized chimp before I'll vote for George W. Bush.
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There were alternative viewpoints. They were suppressed. Look at the aluminum tubes fiasco- a lot of people tried to tell the CIA that those tubes were for rockets, not centrifuges, but their informed opinion was disregarded because it didn't fit the party line.
Shit, it's hardly surprising that everyone in the White House thought he had weapons. When you use that as your starting point and only gather evidence that supports your idea, never get critical outside viewpoints, and refuse to consider the alternative- that he had no WMD- well, of course that's the answer you get.
Sure, at the time it was hard to rule out the possibility that he had a bunch of nerve gas artillery shells buried in a hole somwhere, or whatnot. You know what? It wouldn't have made any difference if he had. He could have used chemical weapons on us in the Gulf, but he didn't. If he wanted to attack us, he had ten years after the first Gulf War to do so, and he didn't. Why not? Because America has a massive conventional and nuclear deterrent.
Saddam was a twisted motherfucker, sure. But he had a rational drive for self-preservation and a strong sense of paranoia, which kept him from seriously attacking the U.S. And the "lots of other people thought so too" defense just doesn't cut it for the president. For one, when you take charge you are supposed to take responsibility. For another, he should have access to better intelligence than anyone else on the planet. He has access to intelligence from the CIA, the NSA plus the ability to ask other countries like the UK for their intelligence. If Bush had been seriously interested in the truth he could have gotten it.
Deaths were estimated at 98,000, but Slate points out that the 95% confidence interval on this estimate is 8,000-194,000 deaths. In other words, they are 95% sure that the true number of dead lies in this range. This estimate excludes surveys in Fallujah.
Not exactly precision estimates, you'll notice. The other critical thing pointed out by the Slate article is that this calculation tries to get at the number of deaths due to the invasion by factoring out the normal death rate. However, the Lancet study may have significantly underestimated the average Iraqi's chances of death before the invasion. For instance, if I say that 5 people would have died without the invasion, and we know that 10 people died, we know the invasion killed 5 people. BUT if my estimates says that 7 people would have died without the invasion and 10 died after an invasion, then the invasion has only killed 3 people.
Based on media reports, iraqbodycount.net estimates the (reported) deaths at 14181-16312. It is probably much higher than that, unless the media is doing a great job getting out there and reporting all the deaths. So who knows. It is probably higher than 15,000. Off by a factor of two, maybe at 30,000? Unfortunately its just about impossible to know.
It's still a tragedy regardless.
Come on, look at that beard. The dude ain't had a shave in a long, long time.
Agreed. The public wouldn't stand for it. Maybe for a war with really broad popular support, but not for a war like Iraq where the rationale is unclear and evolves constantly (WMD, terrorist ties, Saddam was a bad guy... etc. etc.) and not for a bogged-down guerilla war with no clear end in sight.
There's also the problem of who to draft. Focusing unfairly on minorities might meet more resistance today than it did during Viet Nam, and you also have the issue of whether it is OK to draft women, now that they can serve. Finally, even assuming you signed the legislation, would people go? I think that during the last round of drafting, in Viet Nam, people were much more inclined to trust/obey the government than they are today. I would probably serve for a war I believed was just (like Kosovo or Afghanistan). With things the way they are in Iraq, well personally there's no way in hell I'd go- jail or Canada first.
I am offended that anyone would call George W. mentally challenged! He's "special".
You live in the land of Oz. Who do you vote for: the tin man (all brain and no heart) or the scarecrow (all heart and no brain). The tin man was supposed to represent Gore, and the scarecrow, Bush. Apparently it was dead even. This year, the tin man is winning.
You're either with us or against us. Reality seems to be against us. Therefore it is our right- no, our duty, in the name of freedom- to carpet-bomb Reality out of existence.
While surprisingly progressive on social issues (the Economist is against the war on drugs for instance), and other times conservative (they supported the war in Iraq), it's a centrist to center-right magazine, balancing its values against pragmatic considerations. I think this makes the endorsement particularly condemning. A NY Times endorsement for Kerry is expected (anything else would be a sign of the End Times). An Economist endorsement of Kerry means that some very level-headed moderate conservatives and centrists looked at Bush and found him wanting. They say: we like his vision best. But it's clear he lacks the ability to carry it out. They aren't as thrilled by Kerry's vision, but feel he's all in all more capable for the job.
Probably a fair assessment. It's hard to disagree with Bush when he advocates freedom. But turning Iraq into a giant guerilla war and locking people up without due process or trial isn't the way to create that. Perhaps Bush would be more fun on a fishing trip. But John Kerry is clearly the better man to lead the United States.
Meanwhile, Republicans prevented black people from entering 7-11s across the nation, as Democrats furiously worked to keep Ralph Nader cups out of the stores...
I'm fairly sure that Democrats are less likely to vote than Republicans, so heavy turnout favors Democrats. This year, turnout is expected to be high (by American standards)- 55-60%.
"A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency." -nytimes.com
In other words, just what the Iraqis said. The explosives went missing after the 9th, after US troops arrived- the first US troops arrived at Al Qaqaa on the 3rd. The video- which shows boxes and barrels of high explosives in a sealed bunker- was taken on the 18th.
Assuming (against all evidence) the expplosives really had gone missing earlier, it would be surprising if the Bush administration couldn't prove it: the reconnaissance should be good enough to pick up the 40 or so large trucks it would take to move a stash like that. It also ignores the fact that even if they had moved them, the Bush administration still should have secured those explosives wherever they ended up, and should not have stood by to let Iraqis loot weapons depots. The Bush administration's primary problem is that it simply denies reality and accountability. The sad thing is that so many Americans are perfectly happy with this situation.
I meant to vote for Kerry, dammit!
Frankly, that's worrisome. The Weekly reader poll going to Bush last time was one of the reasons I bet on a Bush win. It does seem to be a pretty accurate barometer of public sentiment.
Regardless of what happens, Kerry has run a lackluster campaign. If he wins, it will be because the Bush administration hasn't been able to cover all its errors. Selecting Bob Shrum was stupid. Sure, the guy has a lot of experience working on Democratic presidential campaigns: he lost them all. Why the hell would you recruit a guy who's got a track record of losing? Kerry should have gotten those weasely-smart Clintonians to run everything.
Eating John Kerry's hummus head? Is there NOTHING those Republicans won't stoop to!?
Hah yourself! Now you get a visit- because YOU just included a threat in your subject line. What a doofus, including a threat in the subject li-
Aw, shit...
Ooops, gotta go. I was gonna write more, but I hear somebody knocking at the door.
You go, girl.
Hobbits, are you crazy? Someone has clearly been reading too much Tolkein. Read the article: they were found in CAVES. So obviously, we're not dealing with hobbits, but dwarves.
The tar sands of Northern Alberta have about 1,000,000,000,000- one trillion- barrels of oil. For comparison, I think ANWR has maybe 10 billion. It's expensive to extract (they actually *mine* the oil) but I imagine they are making out pretty well at 50$ per barrel.
Take heed Canada: your days of harboring weapons of mass destruction are over, eh?
Does anyone seriously believe that you can accurately measure this kind of thing to three decimal places? 99.997? Please. Remember 2000, when the polls said Gore took Florida? People's voting tendencies and opinions are very difficult to measure things, not something you measure with digital calipers. Hell, I do real, hard science with digital calipers, and none of the measurements I take are that accurate. Sure, "given these results" you can make very precise statements about probability. But how accurate are these polls as a metric of what we really want to know- people's likelihood of (a) going out to the polls Nov 2., and (b) selecting a particular candidate. People may say that they intend to vote or not, but we don't know if they will- maybe they don't. How much does the turnout of 2000, when voter apathy was at a record high, tell us about 2004, when the nation is incredibly polarized?
Statistics are powerful tools, but you have to understand what they mean and what their potential sources of error are. Maybe the polls are accurate. On the other hand, I've never seen a race like this before, so I suspect that many assumptions based on previous elections will not hold.
"Lies... damned lies... and statistics."
"Statistics can prove anything, Kent. 14% of Americans know that."
When did the Republicans convince the nation that anyone to the left of Genghis Khan was "liberal"? You don't have to be liberal to loathe George Bush for what he's done to this country. You just have to be informed and care about the values he claims to promote, like liberty and justice. For many of us, it's not that we're left- we're in the center, same as always. It's that George Bush has taken the nation too far to the right while claiming to speak for the whole nation.
In other words, let's not be so silly as to bring reality into this: the war is going well, so any facts brought forward are just "rhetoric". Well, look at the rhetoric.
Things in our favor:
So yes, there are some things in our favor. OK, stuff against us:
If I hear just one more Democrat tell me those LIES about how President Bush creates hostility and anger among the American people, I WILL STRANGLE HIM WITH MY BARE HANDS!!!
This seems very likely to be one of those races. There are a number of reasons I think you may be right.
(1) The country is more polarized than it has been in a generation, and the democrats are more motivated than I've ever seen. High turnout should favor the Democrats.
(2) Bush is basically campaigning against his own war; he and Rumsfeld have to go out day after day to tell people we're not losing in Iraq. We haven't lost a single battle, but it's clear we're losing the war. Any major developments in Iraq are bound to be bad ones.
(3) Bush being a former alcoholic and cocaine user, it would hardly be surprising if people have been saving up some particularly nasty dirt (like that drunk driving report in 2000) for a last-minute smear. The other possibility is an Iraq scandal along the lines of the missing explosives or Abu Ghraib. In particular, Bush and the CIA are on poor terms. The CIA feels it has been used- first to justify the Iraq war and then to take the blame when the WMD intelligence fell apart. They are still pissed about Scooter Libby outing Valerie Plame. This isn't positive for Bush- you want to be on good terms with the guys whose business is to know everyone's secrets.
Democrats aren't infatuated with John Kerry, but he's more than capable. And Dems are angry like I've never seen before: they feel that they won in 2000 and yet have had to endure four years of the most incompetent and arrogant presidency in generations. I had no great fondness for Bush Senior but you had to respect him. I have not a shred of respect for W.
In the debates, Kerry seemed like a president. Bush came off as arrogant and petulant. Bush can be charismatic, but if he was during those debates, I didn't see it. He struck me as a spoiled child who needs to be taught a lesson in responsibility. When confronted with all the failures of his administration, he had this whining tone of "You just need to see it from my perspective". No, I don't. You're the president, you're supposed to be responsible. He isn't. He's an alcoholic cokehead trying to tell other people how to live their lives, he's a failure as a president, and he serves only to make the rich more rich, and the powerful more powerful. I'll vote for a lobotomized chimp before I'll vote for George W. Bush.