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Oct 8, 2004, 04:54 AM
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unplugged
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Bush- hmmm
Here is the e-mail:
I'm confused This was passed to me, but I can't understand it. Maybe you can, I'm trying to get all this political stuff straightened out in my head so I'll know how to vote come November. Right now, we have one guy saying one thing. Then the other guy says something else. Who to believe. Lemme see; have I got this straight? Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good... Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad... Clinton spends 77 billion on war in Serbia - good... Bush spends 87 billion in Iraq - bad... Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad... Clinton bombs Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslim Albanian terrorists - good... Bush liberates 25 million from a genocidal dictator - bad... Clinton bombs Chinese embassy - good... Bush bombs terrorist camps - bad... Clinton commits felonies while in office - good... Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad... No mass graves found in Serbia - good... No WMD found Iraq - bad... Stock market crashes in 2000 under Clinton - good... Economy on upswing under Bush - bad... Clinton refuses to take custody of Bin Laden - good... World Trade Centers fall under Bush - bad... Clinton says Saddam has nukes - good... Bush says Saddam has nukes - bad... Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good... Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad... Terrorist training in Afghanistan under Clinton - good... Bush destroys training camps in Afghanistan - bad... Milosevic not yet convicted - good... Saddam turned over for trial - bad... Ah, it's so confusing! Every year an independent tax watchdog group analyzes the average tax burden on Americans, and then calculates the "Tax Freedom Day". This is the day after which the money you earn goes to you, not the government. This year, tax freedom day was April 11th. That's the earliest it has been since 1991. Its latest day ever was May 2nd, which occurred in 2000. Notice anything special about those dates? Recently, John Kerry gave a speech in which he claimed Americans are actually paying more taxes under Bush, despite the tax cuts. He gave no explanation and provided no data for this claim. Another interesting fact: Both George Bush and John Kerry are wealthy men. Bush owns only one home, his ranch in Texas. Kerry owns 4 mansions, all worth several million dollars. (His ski resort home in Idaho is an old barn brought over from Europe in pieces. Not your average A-frame). Bush paid $250,000 in taxes this year; Kerry paid $90,000. Does that sound right? The man who wants to raise your taxes obviously has figured out a way to avoid paying his own. |
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Oct 8, 2004, 07:14 AM
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HardwareHeaven Extreme Member
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Oct 8, 2004, 01:30 PM
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#3 |
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DriverHeaven Extreme Member
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I actually seen a VH1 special that compared Bush to Kerry (Battle Of The Bling, or something), it said Kerry was worth 2M and Bush was worth 20M. That is individual wealth, Kerry's wife is worth about 2B (but they signed a pre-nup, so he gets jack in a divorce) and there are untold fortunes in the Bush family.
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Oct 8, 2004, 02:04 PM
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DriverHeaven Senior Member
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Well I think you are confused by the candidates. You seem to think Bush is running against Clinton - when in fact he is running against John Kerry.
If you want to pitch what might be seen as a bad historical Presidential candidate against a bad historical Presidential candidate you could try Clinton against Nixon. Nixon made a much worse Presidential candidate than did Clinton - yet you don't hear Republicans (or democrats) continually bitching against him. Despite this it is largely a matter of personal morality. Most ordinary Americans given half a chance would no doubt overwhelmingly re-elect Clinton, providing it was legal - despite his alleged 'crimes'. Why? Because probably most people can imagine at some point in their lives being placed in a similar position. Some people seem to expect their Presidents to be Gods - free of sin and blemish - but that is rarely the case. In the end they are just human like us and can f*ck up just as easy as us too. Personally Neither Clinton nor Bush are my favorite people on this Earth. The motivations behind each of the wars in Iraq and in Kosovo and Bosnia were also vastly different. The Bosnia and related wars were touted as humaniterian campaigns - whereas the war in Iraq was touted as an exercise in American power and regional dominace - a demonstration purely as it were of America's ability to 'kick ass' regardless of any deep moral or ethical imperative to do so. Sure it was a good thing to get rid of Saddam. But it would have been a much better thing to deal with those more immediate threats that faced us - to have thought a little that while were were welcomed in Bosnia and Kosovo - we might not be so welcomed in a country who's population had tended to view us as being among one of their more traditional enemies, Quote:
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Personally I remember periods were I thought I would actually go mad sitting watching the news reports that were coming out of Kossovo and Bosnia in the Early to Mid 90's. I remember too the multitude of deaths and mutilations perpertrated by your so called 'Christian brothers' during the Kosovo and Bosnia wars - how women and children were seperated from the men, the men shot en mass the women and children put into sex slave camps and repeatedly raped and how the children were left to starve to death - or in some case how they too were raped and mutilated. I do not need twisted sick American electioneering to tell me now that this is something I did not see. No mass graves? No Killing? No Genocide? I think it is time you refreshed your memory: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta= What you are touting is nothing more than a modern form of Holocaust denial - where in your twisted view this is and has always been a war in which innocent Christians were targeted and routinely butchered by the barbaric practitioners of what is commonly referred to as the Muslim faith - an idealogy in my view that undoubtedly belongs in the mad house of history. It is similar thinking that led Hitler to attempt the extermination of the Jews - and if left unckecked may lead Bush and his chums to attempt a similar tactic. But this time things are not so easy for you to deny, we have not just witnesses, we have video too and dead bodies - and many more mass graves than you appear to be aware of - who's victims all have their own stories to tell. In the end I admire neither Clinton nor Bush. If you wish to make comparisons niether seem very interested in the true sufferings of the world - preferring instead to pursue their own personal self interests. It took 7 years for Clinton to act in any significant way in Bosnia - and each day the horror grew worse. For this I blame all of America (both Republican dominated houses of congress and of Senate that tied his hands for so long), all of the West and all of affluent society - and is why I feel great sympathy (though I do not agree with their methods) with many Muslim people when they say that it is they who have become the new Jews of the world, the new persecuted, the new hated among men - and why they feel they must fight back at all costs. But this does not mean I wish to see the instigation of a world order in which one country is seen to dominate all others - where the views and opinions of the world are drowned out by the military and economic aspirations of a small section of the American political far right Christian elite - where no other opinions matter than those who believe that destroying freedom and principal is a worthwhile sacrifice in some short term short sighted, misguided belief in nationalism and national superiority. I do not want to see the liberty of the world, or of America butchered in the name of an ideology that puts itself, it's military and corporate profits above those of human lives. I am certainly no pacifist - but I might be forgiven for finding the prospect of a small far right Christian section of American society with a poor understanding and little care for the constitution of alternative cultures, jack booting themselves and their military about the world without feeling any need to consult with others, or feeling any need to promote the ideals of cooperation, internationalism and international justice - something a little less appealing than death itself. As far as the 2000 stock market crash - who do you think was to blame for that? Anybody with any sanity and insight into technology could see that comming. $50 million dollar advances to companies often doing nothing more than writing a few Java/web based interactive 'on line' screen savers, just because someone touted them as the next technological stress relieving utility of our time? And who bought it? Was it just democrats who bought it - or were there just as many dumbass republicans who bought it as there were democrats? That would have happened if you had had God himself running the country (yes we all know I don't believe in God) because it was motivated by an explosion of mass greed and ignorance of technology - not because anything fundamental had failed in the economy. Regardless of this when Clinton ended his term, the economy itself remained strong, with more manufacturing jobs, more jobs in retaiing and heavy industry than had been available for the last 30 years, not to mention a 3 trillion dollar surplus in the bank to help shield against any bad times when they came.. The people who bitched most were the middle classes who were dumb enough to believe that their online jobs selling techno 'colour coffee cups' or FLAK jakets for cats were not going to last forever. It was them who opted to throw their money away, not the government. And Clinton did turn up the heat in Iraq on many instances - by keeping an air war going there for almost the virtual entire duration of his presidency. Whenever Saddam appeared to step out of line, he on more than one occasion shot a few dozen cruise missiles up his ass and sent in the stealth bombers to bomb his palaces. Together with his cooperation with the UN and his other international allies, via sanctions weapons inspection and other tactics, appears - given recent evidence - to have been spectacularly successful in dismantling all of Saddam Husein's WMD programs and rendeing him no threat to either any of his imediate neghbours or to the US itself. Or perhaps you missed, or choose to ignore the final report of the Bush appointed final survey group that was released ONLY LAST NIGHT, which said finally and conclusively that all Saddams WMD programs were dismantled shortly after 1991 - and that prior to the war in 2002 none of these WMD programs had yet been re-instigated. That is to say (and if you gave half a damn you could read it for yourself) prior to the war in 2002, there were no WMDs, no active programs to develop WMDs and no available resources to develop any WMDS either. Of course being a Bush inspired and politically motivated body, they had to be able to toss Bush some kind of bone, where it said that Saddam may have intended to restart his WMD programs after sanctions had been lifted - but like the mysteriously disssapearing vast stockpiles of WMDs - no conclusive evdence exists for what his intentions might or might not have been. So never mind the idea of whether it is a good idea or not to invade countries pre-emtively - you guys seem to think it is a good idea to fight wars psychically too, based on what they 'might or might not do in the future - and on resources that they do not have. In any case since you appear to be unaware that this report even exists now, you can read a little about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/...aq.wmd.report/ Your difficulity is in digging up a bunch of old unrelated and now roundly discredited information that bares little or no relation to the reality we are now confronted with. If Bush had continued with Clinton's policy in Iraq there would undoubtedly have been little threat to US national security. And it was national security that he made the central plank for going to war. Moreover it would have save the US billions in maintaining and fighting a war in which there now appears to be no winning strategy and no immediately clear way of how to get American forces out - or how to refocus on fighting the real battles with the war on terror that have now been ignored for far too long. Still more useful in fighting any international war on terror, old international relationships would have been preserved, old allegiances shored up - and perhaps new agencies formed with our allies similar in structure to that of Nato that would have allowed us to fight terror and the causes of terrorism whenever and wherever we may have found it. Instead all we have is some pointless 'willi waving' contest in Iraq - and not anything very substantial to show for it. I could go on - but I am hungry and have things to do. Clearly your friend is not a good friend because he has not thought out his argument very well. Moreover it appears to be the same friend who has been sending the same email to millions of people for the last two years - which no doubt explains why a lot of the information it contains is now horribly old and out of date. Best regards, GJ Last edited by raid517; Oct 9, 2004 at 01:52 PM. |
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Oct 9, 2004, 01:20 AM
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Delete Me
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Oct 9, 2004, 02:26 AM
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HardwareHeaven Extreme Member
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Quote:
Quote:
http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/dk/Kerr...radictions.pdf
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Oct 9, 2004, 03:52 AM
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#7 |
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DriverHeaven Senior Member
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Ahh screw this contradictions crap. It's old already.
Anyway looking at tonights debate (the most recent one) Bush looked a little more rehersed and relaxed - but Kerry was on star form. He pretty much took everything Bush had to say - and whacked it clean out of the ball park. In any case Bush came up with the biggest contradiction of all this week when he said that UN sanctions and weapon inspections weren't working - and that's why he invaded Iraq. Now this week from his own commision set up to find WMDs in Iraq they have said unequivocally that the weapons inspections and sanctions did work - and there were no WMDs in Iraq - and hadn't been since 1991 - that there was no clear and present danger to the interests of the USA. He said too and keeps saying that he invaded because he was certain that Iraq would give WMDs to Al Quada - when clearly since the commision said there were no WMDs this simply couldn't happen - because Saddam had no WMDs to give. That's one massive flip flop. The flip flop of the decade by the look of it. This was one time when Bush's ability to simply repeat himself over and over didn't look so convincing. Overall a very interesting performance from Kerry I didn't think he had that in him. GJ Last edited by raid517; Oct 9, 2004 at 04:28 AM. |
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Oct 9, 2004, 04:09 AM
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Unbiased.
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Kerry fumbled on the stem cell issue though, which made me really wince, as that's one of my key issues personally.
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[img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator) |
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Oct 9, 2004, 04:21 AM
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#9 |
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DriverHeaven Senior Member
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What, you mean for or against? He had to tread a careful line I guess. He took what I would call a more traditional Catholic line to the issue - comming over more like a confiding Catholic priest who might advocate caution than some fanatic who would rabidly legislate against it.
Personal choice and resonsible concience rather than using the consitution at some kind of personal baseball bat to hit people over the head with. I wonder if anyone remembers the value of this kind of idealism? I seem to remember that this is more in line with what America used to be about? Isn't that what you call real traditional American values? GJ |
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Oct 9, 2004, 04:34 AM
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#10 |
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Unbiased.
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I want no federal restrictions on funding for stem cell research, and I especially want no federal restrictions on the research itself. Kerry's fumbling, in my eyes, was limited to stylistic problems; he just couldn't find a way to justify embryonic stem cell research versus adult/umbilical stem cell research, even though there are great justifications for it.
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[img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator) |
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Oct 9, 2004, 04:52 AM
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#11 |
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DriverHeaven Senior Member
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Well it was a matter of perception really. To my ears I heard him say, 'I'll let the people decide rather than legislate.' That sounds more like a pro-choice position - while allowing people to preserve their own personal morality on the subject. I mean he practically said I might advise against a 15 year old girl who has been raped by her father from having an abortion - but I wouldn't ban her. I think that is pretty poignant stuff.
Just as much as i support stem cell research (I'm pretty much with you on this) I don't think you can shove it down people's throats any more than you can the issue of abortion. You have to allow some element of choice. More so perhaps in this type of issue than in many others. I think that's what Kerry was saying. That doesn't seem like so much of a fudge to me. Certainly it's a better approach than those few crazies in the Bush administration who want to change the constitution to permenantly ban it. And definately better than some of Bush's buddies who are running about the country telling young people that even something as fundamental as using condoms can help promote the spread of aids. It isn't hard for me to see which position is more enlightend. GJ Last edited by raid517; Oct 9, 2004 at 04:59 AM. |
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Oct 9, 2004, 05:02 AM
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#12 |
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Unbiased.
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Nah, I have no issue with his stance, I take issue only with the weak way he argued it. Bad pauses (the only time during the whole debate for Kerry that he paused for that long), bad examples (Reeves and Fox <> the difference between embryonic stem cell research and adult/umbilical stem cell research), and he didn't address the question directly by showing how embryonic stem cells were much better than adult/umbilical stem cells.
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[img][/img] [color=White]Peace be with you, Joe.[/color] Driverheaven Staff Member (Supermoderator) |
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Oct 9, 2004, 05:12 AM
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#13 |
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DriverHeaven Senior Member
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Well I don't pretend to fully understand that. I'm not sure a debate of this nature is the place to start going into that level of detail either. You are just going to confuse a lot of people. They don't have that long for their answers, lol. I think he would have to draw more than a few diagrams before most people would know what he was gettng at. But on the broad issue itself - I think he did well. He certainly ran away with the rest of the debate. Does that make me a rabid Kerry supporter? Well I might like him a little (or a lot) better - but I still don't think there has been a really decent American presidential candidate for the last 30 years.
But then again, that's another topic. GJ |
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Oct 9, 2004, 05:13 AM
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DriverHeaven Extreme Member
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Oct 9, 2004, 06:02 PM
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#15 |
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DriverHeaven Junior Member
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Contrary to what some on this forum believe I thought Bush did a good job with the latest debate. Some believe Kerry ran away with the debate as the clear victor. I ask how? Kerry claims that Bush retired General Shinseki for saying we needed more troops in 2003 as evidence Bush wasn't listening to the Generals in regards to Iraq... Yet, General Shinseki's retirement was announced in 2002 according to the Washington Times. Does Kerry just not know what he's talking about, or is he lying? Shinseki announced his retirement in 2002, and didn't say anything about the number of troops until 2003. So how is that forcing him to retire because of what he said about the troop numbers?
Kerry still brings up the issue of "no WMD's" as cited by Duelfer's Report. Bush and the administration acknowledged there were no WMD's - the result of key faulty intelligence. That intelligence indicated that Saddam had WMD's. Other nations came to the same conclusions. What Kerry didn't mention with Duelfer's Report was: http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_...y_Findings.pdf "The introduction of the Oil-For-Food-program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad's economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development." By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Recent reports surfacing have concluded the OFF reaped hudge monetary benefits for the likes of France, Russia and China - all members of the UN Security Council. In other words bribes to off-set or eleminate the sanctions that were imposed during that time. No wonder these three nations were consistently against the US and it's allies in regards to Iraq and Saddam. Kerry and others have said the sanctions were working and that there was no need to invade Iraq - really? It has been suggested Clinton was a wonderful and successful president. In many ways he was and yet in other ways he wasn't. The one opportunity the Clinton administration had to remove Bin laden never became reality. I wonder if they regret that now? Kerry brought up the issue of "outsourcing" and said he would do all he could to prevent this corporate practice. Funny Teresa Heinz-Kerry's company is one of the biggest examples of this business practice. How's he going to manage that? Kerry brought up the issue of health care and said he would provide health care to approximatley 5 million un-insured people in the nation at no cost to the taxpayer. Kerry said he would remove the tax break imposed by Bush on the middle class to pay the costs. If you believe that I'll sell you some beach front property in Kansas. Kerry said Bush's tax relief only benefited the rich. Not true a classic example - my daughter-law who is most assuredly not rich received a healthy tax refund as a direct result of the tax break given by the Bush administration. I wonder how Kerry can explain that one. Kerry says he has a plan for everything. Okay what do you do about both houses of Congress being controlled by the Republicans? Does his plans include this inevitability and barrier? So much for my rant - I'm sure the flames will start shortly...
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Oct 9, 2004, 07:40 PM
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#16 |
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DriverHeaven Senior Member
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Ok I'm officially reserving this space for an answer when I have more time.
I have to take a break ATM. GJ |
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Oct 9, 2004, 07:56 PM
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HardwareHeaven Extreme Member
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John Kerry, D-Massachusetts: $163,626,399 http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/...tors.finances/ desn't matter they are married regardless of the prenump he's a very very rich man 100X richer then the bush family.... bushes number isn't just his money ither....
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Oct 9, 2004, 09:41 PM
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#18 |
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Delete Me
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kerry is a wealthy retard, yes...i know...but so is george...so why does it matter?
both had extremely close ties with enron, kerry denounces walmart, ter owns over $1million in stock, Kerry owns masnion upon mansion, bush owns a ranch and has been through several now debunked oil companies. |
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