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[siamesedreamer]

Yeah, I agree with the healthcare costs Nerevar. But, the same shoe fits you too. Its a combination of a lot of factors and just saying overall wealth is decreasing isn't the whole truth.

I am surprised though that all the libruls here are not championing Bush's Prescription Drug Benefit program. I mean, aren't y'all the ones who like horribly bloated social entitlement programs?

Oh I get it, it wasn't your guy who gave out the freebie to the drug companies......

 

[TAJ]

>>>Can you honestly sit there and say that the people at the top of the economic ladder are the only ones benefitting from the current housing boom?<<<

Real estate agents, maybe. Oh, and the companies selling insurance to contractors. That's pretty much it. For people who don't own a home, it's a disaster. I read recently that the percentage of working adults in southern California who can afford the median home price is 12% and falling.

 

[siamesedreamer]

It's things like rising housing prices that are making average americans lose wealth.

Well, if they couldn't afford the home in the first place, then how did they lose any wealth?

 

[thefit]

Unemployment rates go up and down ALOT the lsat anouncement does not reflect the entire year but just a quarter. Meanwhile the economy is solely being held up by the war because without that cash cow for defense contractors there wouldn't much of anything right now. Its the reason they won't pull out anytime soon. Anyone and everyone that has a stake in any kind of defence is making $$ right now meanwhile everyone else is stuck with rising prices in oil wich in turn effect everything else. Oil is posting profits because they are gauging us and we can't do anything because they wrote the energy policy secretly with Cheney.

Just yesterday Bush anounces a deal with India to sell them high end arms and who benefits from this? Lockhead and Boeing among others that lobbied heavily for this, Bush gets his cut and doesn't have to worry about a re-election at the same time we just pissed of Pakistan with this deal because they don't get along with India and they both have Nuclear arms. This move was entirely based on $$ alone. We are so broke we are selling everything to foreign government owned firms take the ports debacle. We need cash bad for the next budget and Bush just added move for sale signs in the local penny-saver.

The global market movement has destroyed americas employment and chances of more people reaching the middle class in a few years that calss will be a myth it will only be a land of haves and have nots.

Bush has done nothing for you and I before we could tax and tariff overseas companies the money they save by making products at cheap pay this kept companie in the US and kept jobs here now we have done away with that in favor of companies paying off DC at the cost of Americans losing it all.


Bush quote from TODAY.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/03/bush.india.fri/index.html

"It's ... important to remember that when someone loses a job it's an incredibly difficult period for the worker and their families," Bush said in a speech in New Delhi.

"It's true that some Americans have lost jobs when their companies move their operations overseas," he said.

"Some people believe the answer to this problem is to wall off our economy from the world through protectionist policies. I strongly disagree."

 

[Forgotten Ancient]

Well, if they couldn't afford the home in the first place, then how did they lose any wealth?

If I'm able to save up $10,000 a year for a house, but the average house price in the area is $150,000 and going up at a rate of 10% a year, I'm losing wealth. I can't afford it this year, and after a year of saving, I can afford it even less next year.

Sure, I can use that $10,000 on something else...my money isn't being taken away, but the likelihood of me affording a decent home decreases daily.

A lot of people can't afford a house "in the first place". But the current trend suggests that a lot more people, year after year, won't be able to buy a house in the first place. Of course, supply and demand will eventually cause this to balance out - but the current trend sucks for those trying to save up for a down payment that will make a meaningful dent in their loan.

 

[Solo]

He pulls off that mentally retarded look phenomenally. Kudos, Bush!

 

[tedtropy]

Well, his daughters are kind of hot. That's fine Republican semen doing that there!

 

[Dsal]

On a daily basis, he marches inexorably one step closer to his inevitable death. He does have that goin' for him. Special little guy.

 

[Drensch]

Well, his daughters are kind of hot. That's fine Republican semen doing that there!

If you do a little Google, you can see Jenna' bush on the internets.

 

[ErasureAcer]

He's making it easy for the Democrats to win in 2006.

 

[Triumph]

Yeah, I agree with the healthcare costs Nerevar. But, the same shoe fits you too. Its a combination of a lot of factors and just saying overall wealth is decreasing isn't the whole truth.

I am surprised though that all the libruls here are not championing Bush's Prescription Drug Benefit program. I mean, aren't y'all the ones who like horribly bloated social entitlement programs?

Oh I get it, it wasn't your guy who gave out the freebie to the drug companies......

Riiiiiight. You're divorced from reality. Look, wealth IS increasing. The number of people and companies that it is going to is DECREASING. That is what's wrong.

As for Bush's Prescription Drug "Benefit" program: read this.

 

[ronito]

He hasn't nuked anyone.

He hasn't invaded another country.

Its a tough one, folks.



Why should race and gender take into account of being a Justice? I want the best on the bench, not a quota.

I'll agree that there isn't a quota. Nor do I want a justice to be selected because of their race/gender, it should be on qualifications. However, you mean to tell me there wasn't a non-white male person that was equally qualified? It would've been nice to be able to tell my daughter, "Hey a woman's been appointed to the Supreme Court." or to have something for the hispanic community to look up to. Instead we get more old white men.

 

[Dr_Cogent]

This thread won't find a lot of actual success on GAF.

Aint that the truth.

 

[ronito]

oh and since it's been played.

(man I'm tired of playing that card)

 

[PhoenixDark]

I would say his public speaking skills have increased greatly over the last 5-6 years. When he was elected, I couldn't stand listening to him speak; he was very bad at talking in front of crowds. Now he's more confident and prepared when speaking; I will concede that.

 

[Incognito]

I liked the selection of Roberts.

 

[MIMIC]

No.

 

[Mandark]

Based on Noam Chomsky's figures of sanctions killing 5,000 children a month, he has killed fewer Iraqis than President Clinton.

Hahaha, classic Guileless "argue from a point I obviously don't believe in" moment. Not quite as good as earnestly citing Osama Bin Laden, but still pretty good.

Guileless' point rests on these premises:

1) That you accept Chomsky's figure of deaths directly attributable to sanctions on Iraq.

2) You assume the deaths Chomsky attributes to the sanctions immediately and completely stopped when the US invaded Iraq (or on "Mission Accomplished" day, not sure).

3) You cover your ears and yell "LALALALALA" whenever a more reliable source on excess deaths in Iraq comes along.

4) Whenever Clinton gets mentioned, you think to yourself "Oh no! I've been zinged!"


It's telling that when asked to list one single thing that Bush has done right, Guileless apparently feels he can't. So instead, he quotes someone he obviously doesn't believe to make an argument he obviously has no faith in.

Yep.

 

[KingGondo]

He's making it easy for the Democrats to win in 2006.

I'll believe it when I see it. As of this point, the Democrats have still shown little demonstrable leadership, other than whining about what Bush does.

 

[KingGondo]

It would've been nice to be able to tell my daughter, "Hey a woman's been appointed to the Supreme Court." or to have something for the hispanic community to look up to. Instead we get more old white men.

Too bad he didn't take people's feelings or daughters into account. People act as though they don't want race and gender to matter, yet that's the first card pulled when we start discussing Bush.

Picking a Justice is a combination of politics, race, personal judgment (on the part of Bush and his advisors), personal connections, and lots of other factors. Both Roberts and Alito withstood the harshest scrutiny of the Democrats and were approved.

Yet you act as though his choices should have been a "feel-good" story. What reason does Bush have to pick a Latino or woman specifically? He saw a chance to move the court to the right, found two well-qualified (by any standard) candidates, and got them pushed through. Those are the consequences of having ideologically similar executive and legislative branches.

 

[WrathOfOtaibah]

I'll agree that there isn't a quota. Nor do I want a justice to be selected because of their race/gender, it should be on qualifications. However, you mean to tell me there wasn't a non-white male person that was equally qualified? It would've been nice to be able to tell my daughter, "Hey a woman's been appointed to the Supreme Court." or to have something for the hispanic community to look up to. Instead we get more old white men.

I can't say but I don't think we need to limit our scope of finding new Justices to people of color and without a penis. You're right, the best Judge right now in the US might actually be a woman or a minority. I just think we need to base our choices on experience and how they interpret the Constitution.

I don't care much for Roberts or Alito but they're pretty much on par with Bush's shortsighted policies and tactics. Bush has pretty much done nothing right since he stepped into office on January 20, 2001. I'm not defending these guys at all and I'd say there were much better choices, including women and minorities, that would have been better.

I definitely understand your position, though.

He's making it easy for the Democrats to win in 2006.

I wish. I hope so. I'm going to be pretty active in my State's Democrat Party to push some more Representatives and a Governor in. The Democrats lack unity or a unified goal. They just seem to attack Bush but not offer a clear cut alternative that the people will go for. Maybe they will since its still pretty early before elections take place.

The US is heading down a path of regression and I think 2006 is crucial for Democrats to have the fires lit under their asses to work harder to win back America. In my State, every year the GOP is trying to pass the Death Penalty but the Governor and the State Senate Chairman are fighting it and keeping it at bay. With a Republican governor, things might change.

 

[Javaman]

Lockhead and Boeing among others that lobbied heavily for this, Bush gets his cut and doesn't have to worry about a re-election at the same time we just pissed of Pakistan with this deal because they don't get along with India and they both have Nuclear arms.

"Bush gets his cut"?

I just love baseless comments like that. If anything is easily trackable it's money. How do you suppose he gets rich off of these deals without anyone knowing about it? Big suitcases of money?

 

[Guileless]

Aren't there a lot of people here who accept Chomsky as an authoritative source? I seem to remember him being quoted at me. Mandark, are you going on record as saying he's not reliable?

I think President Clinton was a good president and Madeline Allbright was a good secretary of state. The sanctions were good policy in 1998, and had to be tried before escalation to armed conflict. The point I'm making is that everyone now espousing the theory that Saddam was completely contained in his kite-flying paradise before the war are ignoring the great hue and cry that you previously raised against the sanctions.

Because of Bush policy, the sanctions are gone now. The reason for the sanctions--you know, the guy with the solid gold toilet seats who ruled over the 5,000 children dying a month--is being tried by his peers. This is "right" by some standards.

 

[ronito]

Too bad he didn't take people's feelings or daughters into account. People act as though they don't want race and gender to matter, yet that's the first card pulled when we start discussing Bush.

Picking a Justice is a combination of politics, race, personal judgment (on the part of Bush and his advisors), personal connections, and lots of other factors. Both Roberts and Alito withstood the harshest scrutiny of the Democrats and were approved.

Yet you act as though his choices should have been a "feel-good" story. What reason does Bush have to pick a Latino or woman specifically? He saw a chance to move the court to the right, found two well-qualified (by any standard) candidates, and got them pushed through. Those are the consequences of having ideologically similar executive and legislative branches.

Ah but see. That's what I miss about a proper politician. He could've found just as qualified female or minority nominees that buy into his ideaology, and could've made america feel good about it, and make dems look bad for opposing them. He wins either way that way, and his opponents lose either way. That, my friend, is how politics are properly played.

And Guiless so your saying that we took Iraq off this imaginary 5,000 kids a month payment (Choamsky lol) and forced them into a very real at the very least 30,000 (british estimates around 90,000) one time payment. Um, yay Bush?

 

[Guileless]

Allright, let's use the high end estimates for argument's sake: 5k/month deaths from sanctions, or 90k total deaths from the war. If it has been 90k killed in the war, that would be only 18 months of sanctions. In other words, the war started saving lives 18 months after the end of sanctions. But obviously a full understanding goes way beyond speculative numbers of deaths. The war deposed Saddam and offered some modicum of hope for the future, which the sanctions did not. The sanctions were isolating Iraq and taking it further away from ever becoming a functioning, modern state as it regressed while the rest of the world progressed.

My larger point is this: people criticize President Bush harshly without think about things in a larger context. Saying "the war is bad" and stopping there, as most people do, is simplistic and basically a worthless statement. You have to consider it in the larger context of the other available options in order to judge it fairly. Starting a war in 2003 was an unfavorable option, but how favorable were the rest of them? People generally ignore this.

I guess the option Mandark would have favored, had he been president, would have been to not invade, end the sanctions, and allow Saddam to taunt the world indefinitely and hope nothing happpens--even after 9/11. There's plusses and minuses to all of the options, mostly minuses though.

 

[ronito]

Allright, let's use the high end estimates for argument's sake: 5k/month deaths from sanctions, or 90k total deaths from the war. If it has been 90k killed in the war, that would be only 18 months of sanctions. In other words, the war started saving lives 18 months after the end of sanctions. But obviously a full understanding goes way beyond speculative numbers of deaths. The war deposed Saddam and offered some modicum of hope for the future, which the sanctions did not. The sanctions were isolating Iraq and taking it further away from ever becoming a functioning, modern state as it regressed while the rest of the world progressed.

My larger point is this: people criticize President Bush harshly without think about things in a larger context. Saying "the war is bad" and stopping there, as most people do, is simplistic and basically a worthless statement. You have to consider it in the larger context of the other available options in order to judge it fairly. Starting a war in 2003 was an unfavorable option, but how favorable were the rest of them? People generally ignore this.

I guess the option Mandark would have favored, had he been president, would have been to not invade, end the sanctions, and allow Saddam to taunt the world indefinitely and hope nothing happpens--even after 9/11. There's plusses and minuses to all of the options, mostly minuses though.

That's up to this point. What about the ensuing civil war? Gotta take that into account too. True is not cut and dry as some would make it, but it's also not as cut and dry as you make it either.

 

[Guileless]

Nothing is cut and dried when you're talking about complex subjects like this. You're right, the possibility of civil war should be factored in. But you also have to factor it into the costs of leaving Saddam in power. Eventually, he would have died or been deposed even without US military intervention. And the most likely outcome of his death would have been a situation similiar to Yugoslavia when Tito died, as the disparate ethnic and religious groups he had held together by ruthlessly iron-fisted rule disintegrated into civil war.

And in that case, there would be US military to try to stop it. There would be no elections to give people an alternative to tribal fighting. The worst case scenario would be a regional conflict, where Turkey protected its interests from the north, Iran intervening on behalf of the Shiites, and Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Sunnis. And who would be blamed for this? The United States, first for supporting Saddam as he divided and balkanzied his country in the 80s, and then for sanctioning it and ruining its economy, thus making breakup inevitable once ruthless dictator ceased to hold it together. Also for leaving Saddam in power in 1991 at the end of the first Gulf War.

No good options.

 

[Kevtones]

There is so much bullshit in this thread and I don't even like Bush. Dumb. :lol

Oh and first and foremost: Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

Every bit of the recession Bush inherited/and the hit from 9-11 on the economy has been dealt with pretty well. Those that whine on and on about "tax cuts for the rich to hurt the poor and middle class" need to take an economics class. Understand WHAT it does before making retarded comments.

If you want to compare economics of the Clinton years with that of Bush, its simply unfair. Clinton had good policies for the first 6-7 years and was undoubtedly lucky to be in the middle of the internet boom. However, towards the end of his second term, the boom began to decline and a few key issues w/ certain business began hurting consumer trust (Microsoft anyone?) Bush inherited a declining economy, which you can't see by looking at the Dow Jones average.

Okay, so you can put some blame on Bush for the 9/11 attacks (just our intelligence in general) but it was an attack trying to do two things. Scare us, and break us (economically). It FUCKED our air travel business, and spread like a virus to almost every other sector. We didn't fold though and you know what, it actually had something to do with the policies that Bush installed. Believe it or not, government spending/investment, tax cuts to increse consumer spending/wealth/investment spending, FISCAL POLICIES (mostly expansionary in this case), are all being used like they've been used accordingly in the last century.

But yeah, the whole Iraq thing, that was misguided, not handled correctly, but may end up doing something good. Hopefully it does so that it won't appear in vain.

 

[TAJ]

>>>Oh and first and foremost: Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.<<<

I'm assuming you think that is nothing but a good thing.

 

[Kevtones]

>>>Oh and first and foremost: Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.<<<

I'm assuming you think that is nothing but a good thing.

As a basic fact, yes. Saddam being out of power and held for trial right now is a good thing. The way we got him, invaded Iraq; that was mishandled. But you'd have to be downright insane to think having a genocidal dictator such as Saddam in power is a good thing. (Note we are talking about Saddam, nobody else)

 

[ronito]

As a basic fact, yes. Saddam being out of power and held for trial right now is a good thing. The way we got him, invaded Iraq; that was mishandled. But you'd have to be downright insane to think having a genocidal dictator such as Saddam in power is a good thing. (Note we are talking about Saddam, nobody else)

However, as much as I hated the man, it took a ruthless dictator to hold Iraq together. Now that we've ousted him it's falling apart. I'm glad t see him gone, however I don't think it was thought through.

 

[MrSardonic]

But you'd have to be downright insane to think having a genocidal dictator such as Saddam in power is a good thing.

Wasn't so long ago that Rumsfeld thought it was a good thing.

And the US are trying their hardest to make sure that a dictator like Saddam looks to Iraqis like a better deal than the present state of affairs

 

[Kevtones]

Wasn't so long ago that Rumsfeld thought it was a good thing.

And the US are trying their hardest to make sure that a dictator like Saddam looks to Iraqis like a better deal than the present state of affairs

I'm sure any Republican/Democrat/American Politician found him to be a good thing pre-Gulf Wars everything (he was our ally right?). People change~

 

[Zaptruder]

Guiless, here's a litmus test.

If it was Al Gore that had done everything Bush had done instead of George Bush, would you still support Gore in the same way?

... you don't have to tell us your answer, just an honest answer for yourself is enough.

 

[Guileless]

The Gore question is a good one, and thinking about it really makes you realize how much the personalities of elected officials play into how you view policies. If Al Gore did exactly everything that Bush has done vis-a-vis terrorism--i.e., won the war in Afghanistan in 7 weeks and prevented any more domestic terrorism since 9/11, I would view his foreign policy in the same way.

That said, I did not vote for Gore in '00 because I did not vote at all. I was disgusted with 1)the way he tried to ignore President Clinton (who despite the Lewinsky thing was and is one of my heroes), and 2)that ridiculous lawyerly press conference he gave about the fundraising in the White House. I remember I was running that day, listening to NPR, and it came on right as I left so I hear the whole thing live. I could not vote for that guy after listening to that. (even though I actually read Earth in the Balance as an earnest teenager.)

Like most of you here, I dismissed George W. as a coked out frat boy dumbass. I ignored that whole election and probably just got high and played SSX on Election Day (I did that a lot back then). So I don't personally like Gore, but I would not deny him praise if he deserved it.