No Child Left Behind

[Swithin]

Good work, GK.

[random guy]

My point for 2 is that you can easily see the similarities between the war on communism and the war on terrorism - which is why Bush n co worked so hard to try to implicate Hussein with bin Laden and Iraq with weapons of mass distruction. I mean come on, anyone to whom the propaganda the Government spreads has been successful would tell you that we went into Iraq to stop terrorism - just like Vietnam with communism

3. The fact remains that guardsmen signed up to protect the homefront in the event of an invasion, not get sent over to a hazardous foreign battleground.

8. Don't get me wrong, I subscribe to the "democracy's the worse form of government, except for all the others" theory

Edited October 29, 2004 by random guy

[Sturmvogel]

Good Lord Swithin.....you put to much into that one pal. Take a weeklong break...you deserve it.

 

I just want to comment on some of the charges against Kerry on his voting record, especially on weapons and so forth. I think Swithin mentioned in his "essay" it was the post-Cold War era and there was bipartisan support to scale back some weapons funding. In any case, Dick Cheney, our vice president, voted with Kerry on many of those cuts that his Republican critics charge day in and day out.

[Swithin]

Thanks guys.

 

Random One, you're absolutely right about the National Guard. Defending your homeland from invasion and volunteering to "enter the breach" of foreign soil are very different things - although I stick to my position of not being "soft" on our hired killers. We need them, so if they want the job it's theirs - but they're *not* Barney the dinosaur.

 

Sturmvogel, thanks for the kind words. It helps that I'm pulling an all-nighter so I've got nothing better to do, and can't go to sleep or I'll wake up at 6pm. Plus I hate hearing the same arguments day in day out - sometimes it's actually worse to ignore them, because they just won't go away even if you do.

 

And about the votes, if I can say ONE THING to you guys, it's this:

 

IGNORE ANY CLAIM OR ATTACK THAT IS BASED ON VOTING RECORD. YOU DON'T KNOW THE WHOLE STORY.

 

Seriously, that one pisses me off more than the others. Maybe all combined. The way our government works, if you want to build a bridge that costs 250,000 dollars, you end up writing a 2 million dollar bill to get enough support to pass it. In the end, those who were originally *for* building the damn bridge vote against the bill because too much money is being wasted. And then 15 years later "John Kerry voted against building the Wamquatqua bridge!" It's ridiculous.

 

It's like the whole 87 billion. Do you know how *few* of the bushies I've talked with actually know the differences between the draft Kerry voted for and the draft he voted against? NONE! None of them knew the differences between the two drafts. And yet they call him a flip-flopper.

 

Some days you want to shoot yourself in the head when you realise these people control the greatest superpower and military might on earth. It makes it even more tempting when you don't live in a swing-state. Not that fanatics on the other side are any better. I just happen to align with the Democrats because they're the only party at the moment not looking to run the US further into the ground.

 

Oh, and a parting thought: remember how Republicans deride academics and journalists for being too liberal? Ever wonder why they never stopped to think why nearly the entire body of America's politically educated vote Democrat? Good thing for my temple I don't own a gun this morning.

 

[edit: oh yeah, and about Kerry "voting 98 times to raise taxes"... they don't mention that they're counting 13 separate votes (thanks Republican minority) on the Balanced Budget Act, and that by those standards he's voted *OVER 600 TIMES* to *LOWER* taxes... although I'd rather make 20,000 and pay 1000 in taxes than make 17,000 and only pay 100. Call me crazy, but I liked "high-tax Bill Clinton."]

Edited October 29, 2004 by Swithin

[random guy]

I agree with you there (apart from the owning a gun part, that's a bit scary )

Oh, and don't forget the irony that a man who once used the national guard SPECIFICALLY to avoid going into combat is the one responsible for guardsmen being placed in active duty (ie the president)

Edited October 29, 2004 by random guy

[Gryph]

Heh, I just saw this at Yahoo! News: Halliburton Contracts Bypassed Objections

 

Haha, Tracy Morgan (former SNL person) could so be her.

[random guy]

Heh, I just saw this at Yahoo! News: Halliburton Contracts Bypassed Objections

 

Haha, Tracy Morgan (former SNL person) could so be her.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hoo Hoo! Great find Gryph. No conspiracy with haliburton my arse! I bet skythe isn't going to comment about THIS!

Edited October 29, 2004 by random guy

[SQrL]

Ahh screw it, its not worth arguing with people who argue prevarically and denigrating

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I feel your pain man....

 

I cant stand that people are voting for Krappy.. err... Kerry just because its NOT Bush... wtf.... so I guess it doesn't matter how many lies Kerry tells or how bad he is going to flock up our economy..... pfffft... might as well put a gun to my head now

 

[Swithin]

How *COULD* Kerry make our economy worse? We've gone from a 5.5 TRILLION dollar surplus to a 3.5 TRILLION dollar deficit. Bush has lost this country 9 TRILLION dollars. He has failed to veto even ONE spending bill. His policy of artificially lowering the dollar globally to induce export combined with weak foreign economic policy has led to the greatest trade deficit the country has ever seen. He's the only president in 75 years to LOSE jobs, and the ones that are being created are paying on average IIRC $7000 less per year.

 

We're beyond broke, we're THREE TRILLION DOLLARS in debt. My family has lost s lot of [edit: shouldn't be speaking for parents] income combined due to Bush over the last 3 years, while energy companies and insurance companies have gotten rich. What are you, a billionaire? How on earth do you think our economy could get any worse? How can you believe a couple hundred dollars in tax-cuts could make me feel any better about my economic situation?

 

As I was saying earlier, it's pointless debating people who believe what they believe only because they *want* to believe.

Edited October 30, 2004 by Swithin

[random guy]

Ahh screw it, its not worth arguing with people who argue prevarically and denigrating

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I feel your pain man....

 

I cant stand that people are voting for Krappy.. err... Kerry just because its NOT Bush... wtf.... so I guess it doesn't matter how many lies Kerry tells or how bad he is going to flock up our economy..... pfffft... might as well put a gun to my head now

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What are you talking about? That's all the republican party DOES. If you don't vote for Bush, you're 100% guaranteed to get attacked by terrorists (never mind the fact that the Bush administration had all they needed to know intelligence-wise to predict 9/11). Kerry's a flip-flopper, never mind the fact that the vote he "flip-flopped" on was actually 2 different ammendments - he refused one draft, and accepted the other. Kerry hates the military because he votes against the millitary, even though most of those cuts came from one group of bills which were voted for bipartisanly (Cheney voted for them as well). Kerry WASN'T WOUNDED ENOUGH to get a purple heart in Vietnam, even though Bush used his family contacts to avoid the entire vietnam war.

 

Nearly everything the republicans use daily to attack Kerry (except that he talks too much, that I'll agree with) is a either a lie or distorted-out-of-perspective untruth calculated to make Kerry look bad regardless of the facts.

[caramba]

In Response to Swithin

 

"Vietnam was to stop communism from spreading. Made sense under the zeitgeist of the time. The whole world thought that way. We didn't enter Iraq to stop anything, and it sure as hell doesn't make sense to any other country (except our personal fluffer, 'Great' Britain.)"

 

While this may be true, don't forget that much of our Cold War involment abroad was fundamentally motivated by profit. A perfect examble would be Nixon/Kissinger's "Track Two" plans to oust Salvador Allende, who campaigned on the platform of appropriating much of Chile's natural resources. While this may be decidedly left-wing, it hardly qualifies as Stalinism, or Maoism, and Track Two was only brought to the drawing table after relentless lobbying by IT&T Copper. Another example would be Guatemala, where US intervention was the result of lobbying by United Fruit.

 

"The sad truth is that America *is* racially fractured, why else would we" *need* a Black Caucus? So kinda they are [racist]... in that the stated purpose of the group, who are elected officials, is to represent black Americans more strongly than white Americans."

 

An interesting viewpoint, however that logic could be extrapolated to state that any group championing the cause of a certain demographic is fundamentally inequitious; ie...the womens suffrage movement would have been "sexist." Also, a sizable amount of the members of the Black Caucus are elected from majority-black neighborhoods, so in essence these indivuduals are just representing their constituency.

It is also worth noting that only two black men have been elected to the Senate since the Civil War.

 

"...and that's certainly not addressable without a surprise secession (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia - Let Our Powers Combine!!!)"

 

 

How about BC, Oregon, Washington, California, Hawaii, Alaska?

"People's Democratic Republic of Pacifica," anyone?

 

edit...while i realize Alaska is an |R|state, they generally tend to be Ted Negent-esque wierdo Republicans, which I can deal with.

Edited November 1, 2004 by caramba