The reason Bush will lose

Politics International Politics
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Under the Bush administration and GOP majorities in the House and Senate, they simply cannot take responsibility. This is the fundamental reason why they’re going to lose in November.

The Republibots spend money like crack whores on their cronies but then create massive unfunded/underfunded messes at home. Really odd that hypocritical GOPsters have no problem defending a no-bid deal for Halliburton on the specious grounds that “there’s a war on… we gotta move fast” but when it comes to Homeland Security, they have completely left the U.S. port cities with their pants around their ankles for nearly 3 years. (“Hey, we had so many bidding and budgeting formalities to comply with, but at least we got 1 port ready…” they lamely offer up.) Bush will lose because Americans know we don’t need the smoking-gun proof of Republican incompetence to come in the form of a mushroom cloud on U.S. soil.

Not that competence even matters to Bush. Whenever massive, cringe-inducing incompetence is found, the Bush administration is absolutely unwilling to root it out. No shakeups at the CIA, FBI, the cabinet or elsewhere. No amount of whistleblowing by the people in the trenches even matters. Even if nobody thinks Bush is smart (Republicans try to point to his cluelessness to excuse his worst failures as a president), there was at least an expectation that Bush would at least use his limited faculties to pick and choose among the ideas floated by highly skilled advisers. Bush will lose because he clearly cares more about appearing to have a unified silent front than taking even baby steps toward encouraging excellence.

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AA?

:raspberry: :wink: :smiling_imp: :laughing:

BroonAlky

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Sorry you are correct those numbers are 435 billion and 371 billion for last year as you have said, but they show a rapidly improving situation.

July 18, 2004 – IF it’s not bad enough that rapid economic recovery has neutered Sen. John Kerry’s principal domestic criticism of President Bush, now comes even worse news for the Democratic campaign: The budget deficit is starting to substantially shrink.
The latest budget numbers show a $19.1 billion surplus for June, $3 billion higher than the $16 billion Wall Street expectation. It seems that a flood of new tax collections, spurred by fatter employment payrolls and corporate profits, is rapidly reducing the federal budget gap. Tax receipts from businesses rose an astonishing 38 percent over the past 12 months, and personal income-tax collections increased almost 9 percent.

What’s happening? Could it be that stronger economic growth from lower tax rates is producing more tax receipts? I believe it’s called . . . supply-side economics.

Just as the 1.5 million new jobs created since last August has terminated talk of a jobless recovery, the chatter over widening budget deficits will end. The fiscal-year 2004 budget deficit now looks to come in around $435 billion, less than 4 percent of GDP. This would be almost $100 billion below estimates early in the year from the Office of Management and Budget and about $50 billion less than Congressional Budget Office forecasts.

The administration is also getting its arms around federal spending. Fiscal year to date, growth in spending on domestic discretionary programs has slowed to 2.7 percent from 6.8 percent a year ago.

As the tax-cut-led recovery continues, deficits will rapidly wane over the coming years.

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Fred, and if only Bush could produce OBL out of a hat then everything would be rosy eh. No worries at all

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Does it matter who captures OBL as long as he is captured? If Bill Clinton were to go out and nab him I would still be glad, but would you if Bush were to be the one to capture him? Interesting.

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Fred, both yes and no, yes in the fact it would mean OBL was off the streets etc, no because Bush would bask in the glory that does not belong to him.

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I believe the war on Terror and the situation in Iraq are the most important issues now.

Despite all of the mistakes Bush has made in the occupation of Iraq and the War on Terror, I will again vote for him because at least he has the right plan (treating terrorism and Iraq as military rather than legal matters) and Kerry has the wrong plan (treating terrorism and Iraq as legal rather than military matters).

I prefer a leader who will bumble through the right plan to a leader who will perfectly execute the wrong plan.

I mean, taking the right road, even if you stumble along the way, will eventually get you to your destination, while walking with all the style and grace possible down the wrong road will not get you to your destination.

Its that simple, IMO.

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[quote=“The Magnificent Tigerman”]I prefer a leader who will bumble through the right plan to a leader who will perfectly execute the wrong plan.

I mean, taking the right road, even if you stumble along the way, will eventually get you to your destination, while walking with all the style and grace possible down the wrong road will not get you to your destination.

Its that simple, IMO.[/quote]

The problem is that Bush has been bumbling and stumbling down a wrong road – and it’s been a one-way dead end. Troops go in and they can’t get out. What, you think we can take a 3-point-turn out of Iraq?? :loco:

The deal is that Kerry at least knows how to read a map and knows what street signs mean. That might seem “legalistic” to you, but most Americans would prefer a guy who, at the end of the day, gets us where we want to go.

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[quote=“The Magnificent Tigerman”]I prefer a leader who will bumble through the right plan to a leader who will perfectly execute the wrong plan.

I mean, taking the right road, even if you stumble along the way, will eventually get you to your destination, while walking with all the style and grace possible down the wrong road will not get you to your destination.

Its that simple, IMO.[/quote]

I think he has us on the right road. We travelled on the wrong road under Clinton (and all previous administrations) and look where that got us.

He wants to go back to treating the problems the way Clinton and everyone else treated them for the last 50 years.

We may not be at our destination yet, but I think 50 years of travelling on the previous road sufficiently illustrates that the old road was the wrong road.

Its too early to judge whether Bush’s plan is right. But, it is not too early to judge the previous plan, which Kerry wants to use again, was wrong. 911 proved that (as if it needed proving by that time).

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Well I for one would say having 3/4ths of al Qaeda dead or captured, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Sudan out of the picture, the Palestinians rumbling for reform, the Saudis and Pakistanis cutting off funding, Pakistan negotiating with India regarding Kashmir, Pakistan ending its nuclear program, the Algerian civil war winding down, the Sudanese government forced to deal with and face criticism regarding its ethnic cleansing, etc. are pretty damned big accomplishments in three years. Compare this to the previous five decades.

Now, we still do have Iran and its nuclear development but we had that before in spades. Syria is quieter. What’s to regret.

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Tigerman,

Show me where Kerry said he was going to pretend 9/11 didn’t happen and that the troops weren’t bogged down in the Iraq quagmire? You say Kerry is going to go back to an old pre-Bush-era policy. Links, please.

For that matter, please indicate what global terror networks threatening the United States existed 50 years ago. 40 years ago? Since we’ve been on the “wrong road” for all that time, it would be great to hear you explain how Eisenhower was dropping the ball against Al Qaeda and its ilk.

Also, please explain how the “right road” involves a massive detour into Iraq. The tactical incompetency of the Iraqi officers in the field was only exceeded by the massive strategic incompetency of the Bush administration in invading the wrong damn country. WMD? Whoops!

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The wrong road is turning our back on the Middle East

We went in the Middle East we occupied and colonized it for years. Then 50 years ago bags were packed and we were out of there.

Extremism in the Middle East does not stem from events of recent times. It goes back further. Simply not engaging in the Middle East, and putting our heads in the sand, lets a big problem and a growing problem there

Do you think that when Al Qaeda slammed planes into TWTC, they cared whether they killed other nationalities rather than Americans? No they didn’t they were aiming for Westerners?

Do you not think if we sit back that they will not get the idea that the west is soft and passive? Is that not inspiration for them and a morale boost?

Do you think that letting the roots of the problem remain while dealing with the symptoms ( Al Qaeda) will fix the problem in the long run?
No it won’t, we got to get in there and fix it. How do we do this by trying to install democracy and education in these places so the roots of the problem will be removed

Now I think the whole argument of the WMDs is done. I think there is something fishy in there beyond conveniently labelling it as bad intelligence and a system problem.
But would people be so entrenched in this ping pong argument on WMDs if Iraq was a nice safe peaceful place tomorrow morning and the USA soldiers were coming home? No they wouldn’t.

In a way it is oppurtunism, mixing things; that being the WMDs, the state of Iraq and the number of soldiers killed.

The bad situation of Iraq today has nothing to do with WMDs or wether it was right to invade or not.

Do you think the insurgents in Iraq are using “NO WMDs found” as a call to war? No their not

But do you think some countries are using “NO WMDs found” as an excuse not to help in Iraq? Yes

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TNT: What part of the Middle East did the United States “colonize” for years?

However, generally speaking, you have a good point that the United States should not be isolationist with regards to the Middle East. Perhaps it would have also been smart for us to learn from the ill-fated British effort to run Iraq after World War I – i.e., not to go blundering into some place with an occupying army and expect anybody to welcome us.

Oh, and the rallying cry that the Iraqi insurgents are using doesn’t have to be “no WMDs found” – they probably never believed we were after WMDs in the first place. Much of the world seems to think we were after black gold, Texas tea… oil.

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But was the British effort in Iraq a failure? I do not see it that way. There were rebellions in Iraq but the country was essentially stable from 1918 to 1958 and it was only in 1979 that Saddam came to power. So the British gave Iraq 40 years of stability and from 1958 to 1978 during those 20 years, Iraq was quite prosperous and well off. I would give the British credit for much of that. Why not?

Or how was it a failed effort? I do not see that? Just because there were rebellions against British rule and involvement?

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payk.net/mailingLists/iran-n … 00266.html has a Knight-Ridder article on the British occupation that was not so rosy:

“Iraqis remember 1920 as one of the most glorious moments in modern history, one followed by nearly eight decades of tumult. The bloody rebellion against British rule that year is memorialized in schoolbooks, monuments and mass-produced tapestries that hang in living rooms. … In 1920, the League of Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of secret deals made during World War I. Just six months into British rule, Iraqi opposition was growing. After the unrest deteriorated into three months of death and anarchy, the British plucked an Arab nationalist fighter from exile in the United Kingdom and installed him as king. The monarchy lasted until 1958, when a military coup turned Iraq into a republic.”

History News Network also did not look too kindly on the era. hnn.us/roundup/entries/4927.html

"Most telling is the British war cemetery in Baghdad known as North Gate.

"Row upon row of graves - more than 3,000, mostly unidentified - mark the last resting places of invading soldiers killed during more than four decades of occupation from 1914.

"That, according to historians, is the tip of the human cost of Britain’s attempts to militarily hold on to the region once known as Mesopotamia as part of its empire. Tens of thousands of civilians died fighting to oust the occupiers, sometimes in aerial bombings and mustard gas attacks.

"The rumblings from Iraqis continued, though, and eventually the main dissenters, Shi’ite religious leaders, were exiled to Persia. Fresh elections were held, an Anglo-Iraq treaty signed in October 1922 to supplant the mandate and, through behind-the-scenes manipulation and skill, relative stability was created.

"Iraqi independence was recognised by a British treaty in 1927, although the nation still retained three air bases on Iraqi soil. The pact was formally recognised by the Iraqi parliament in November 1930, confirming independence, sovereignty and British base rights for the next 25 years. Statehood was finalised with admission to the League of Nations in October 1932.

“Political instability persisted, though, with a military coup in 1936. The onset of the second world war in 1939 and Iraq’s pro-German stance prompted a second British invasion and occupation in 1941, which ended six years later.”

Interestingly, they call the 1958-1968 period after the monarchy was done away with as the “golden era” of Iraq – a period in which despite martial law the country’s main institutions were largely functional and in which the Iraqi people had pretty good freedoms.

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3,000 British dead. 10,000 civilians dead. A three month insurgency and this is a disaster? How so? Looks like the British did a pretty good job and that is why Iraq had its “golden years.” You are comparing Iraq with a European country. Look what happened under Saddam. Given those two comparisons, I would say the British occupation looks remarkably enlightened and stable by comparison. Nor during those years was Iraq at war or a threat to its neighbors. No?

I mean by comparison how many deaths and how many months of fighting did it take to subdue the jackbooted racist nazis who took Germany on a blood-drenched fanatic-driven mission to conquer the world? How long did it take to “pacify” and “civilize” that nation of crazed fanatics who slaughtered Jews, Poles, Gypsys, homosexuals, mentally retarded, TB patients, the elderly and infirm? How long did it take to put an end to that ideologically crazed nation’s massive extermination camps where people were gassed and shot in mass graves and tortured and abused and had sick whacko medical experiments conducted on them? Quite a while.

So let’s give the British some credit and let’s give the Americans some time to deal with Iraq. I mean if the Americans could turn Germany into a decent, law-abiding nation with a civilized population that respects human rights and abides by democratic traditions, they might be able to do the same for Iraq, no?

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Well, if you checked out the links, within 3 months the Brits apparently had their nuts in a wringer and were trying to get rid of Iraq. The political fallout back in Britain, then as now, made things a huge mess for the politicians who supported the occupation of Iraq.

On a sidenote, I consider the deaths of 3,000 of my fellow Americans on 9/11 to be a tragedy. How many fellow countrymen of yours need to die before you start to give a crap?

Let’s see… the Brits went in and had their asses handed to them by Iraqi insurgents so bad that within 3 months they rushed to install a monarchy. So little love was lost that Iraq briefly sided with the Axis during World War II. In 1958, the Iraqi monarchy was knocked out of power and for the next 10 years the Iraqis had their “golden years”. To be absolutely clear, the “golden years” were during the years immediately after the British-installed monarchy was knocked out of power. Please explain how the British “did a pretty good job”. Use facts, please, not the mushy things that Republicans usually use to support their nonsense.

Am I comparing Iraq with a European country? How so? And, again, please explain how the British occupation was very enlightened and stable.

With Nazi Germany and Japan, is was quite clear that they were our enemy. Japan had blown up Pearl Harbor. Germany was sinking anything that moved off the U.S. coast. No need to try to convince me that World War II was worth fighting, nor that that the war took time and many American lives.

In order for these points to be valid, there would 1) have to be a reason to give the British credit for their old occupation of Iraq, an effort that one would be hard put to find supporters of (other than you, of course); and 2) “time” would have to be the only key thing that the Americans need to “deal with” Iraq. Perhaps the U.S. needs a lot more than merely “time” to fix this quagmire… like a new president.

Oddly, Germany had been a decent, law-abiding nation for centuries before the Nazis took over – hence the nickname “land of poets and thinkers.” This is also why their descent into barbarity continues to shock. While they may not have had a strong democratic tradition given the rapid failure of the Weimar government (under the weight of WWI reparations and the global economic depression), they had a society that craved order – so much that U.S. and other occupation authorities have made various comments as to the odd German civilians’ habit of immediately cleaning up everything as soon as a battle was over.

Might the U.S. do the same thing for Iraq? Well, they might. But the circumstances (continuing armed insurgency, lack of any real tradition of a fair/just legal system, etc.) would tend to make a comparison between post World War II Germany and today’s Iraq meaningless. Keep in mind that the Germans back then had pretty much had the fight beaten out of their population – near the end they were putting old men and boys onto the front lines and had already lost millions of their people through the battles and bombings. The Germans also had more than 5 years of continuous death to ponder the simple pleasures of peace.

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But you have no way of knowing that Iraq would have been better had the British not been there. There is no way of knowing how Iraq would have fared but given the traditions in the region, I think the British presence was beneficial. The British certainly brought a lot of positive good to nearly every nation that had the benefit to be ruled by them. Open markets, rule of law, human rights, democracy. I think that many of these important institutions were planted by the British. Whether they withered and died however is something that only the people of said country are responsible for.

Anyway, agree to disagree. I think that the Americans can give Iraq a good shot. We are not there to colonize or rule. We have passed the country over to the Iraqis. The insurgency continues but today, there is no other choice but democracy and respect for human rights. Communism is a bankrupt faith except for those that go to American universities and believe that Noam Chomsky is somehow a brilliant thinker. Islamofacism has been discredited in Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban. What are the competing ideas this time? The British had to fight nationalism and pan-Arabism. What are the Iraqis going to fight the Americans about? Nothing. They know that the way of the future is the one that we are offering them. If they fail to make the grade, no one will suffer more than they do. I believe that they know that. That is why I am so optimistic.

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Fred, please explain how in this specific example Iraq benefitted from British rule. You can use facts anytime now…

To start you off, please explain how the British installation of a monarchy in Iraq helped to further democracy in that country.

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I don’t know about Iraq but we could sure use some good old fashioned British Colonial rule in Taiwan for a while. Teach the buggers a thing or two about driving for a start. :smiling_imp: (yes :offtopic: i know)