Stick a fork in Kerry--

[Scodiddly]

OK, I'll give it a whirl-

1. Where are the WMDs? -Good question. Everyone thought they were there, including Kerry. We need to know just what happened to those things. Luckily, Saddam isn't in power and we are investigating. Unluckily, they may have gone to Syria or something. Saddam will never again be able to threaten people with his WMD capabilities, which did indeed exist.

Um, no. Some of the arguments used by Bush were provably wrong. Meanwhile, through the war the administration kept "restating" its position on WMDs, making the claims more and more vague.

2. Why is the economy near collapse? It is not anywhere near collapse, and is expanding quite nicely (not as strikingly nicely as earlier, but still good). The unemployment rate is low, historically, things are good and getting better.

The unemployment rate is low because it only measures people still trying to get jobs or on welfare. Many people have given up and/or have hit their welfare limits. The official rate is a bogus statistic.

3. Who committed treason by leaking Valerie Plame's name? No one did. She had been out of the field for years, and the leak wasn't intentional. Meanwhile, Joe Wilson has been proven to be a LIAR and a political hack by the 911 Commission report and a british report.

Wrong - she was in a position that was classified. Somebody committed a federal crime and endangered her (and/or other agents) by leaking her name. Furthermore... her name was leaked to more than one journalist. How could that have possibly been accidental?

4. Why did the Bush administration prevent New Yorkers from learning about the toxic dust from 9/11? Dunno about that one-

Yup. Guess who spearheaded the effort to make the EPA finally admit that a problem existed? That she-demon hack, Senator Hillary Clinton.

5. What did the Cheney task force on energy really talk about? Why all the secrecy? --Who knows and it's none of our business. Here's why-administrations have to be able to think through policies and get candid advice from all kinds of people. The tradition of the separation of powers between congress and the white house is a real and important thing. Cheney is right to protect it. It could end up benefiting a democrat president in the future on some other issue.

"Government by the people, for the people". There's no reason why they would need such secrecy, unless they were discussing things that the people would not approve of. Secrecy has been the obsession of this administration, and with no legitimate justification.

6. Why did Bush, in his first action as President, (possibly illegally) close the records on the Reagan and Bush I administrations? Was he covering up illegal activities? --Drawing a blank there.

Yup. You were successfully distracted.

[JES]

Hooboy. I was going to write in and suggest that to say Bush is principled is to digest and cough back up literally decades worth of lies. He's a lot of things, but principled isn't one of them. But instead, I'll deal with the potshot at Hillary Clinton.

I'm so sick of hearing about evil Hillary. I'd vote for her over any republican any day of the week. An intelligent first lady with a career hits the White House and suddenly she's like the worst thing to ever happen. Usually from the same fools who say we don't need feminism because women are already equal. She's now a senator and should be judged on her record. On that record, I don't see supporting her in a democratic primary, but that's not the question on the table, and my decision to vote for her or not certainly won't be on an ad feminem basis. You're ignorant if yours is.

XO,
--JES

PS -- Mr. PC, you may be right about Kerry losing. I just hope not. And the whole celebration of Vietnam thing is pretty twisted.

[Scodiddly]

By the way, did you see the recent story about likely voter intimidation in Florida? Apparently the police have been conducting an investigation on "voter fraud" which necessitates that armed officers question elderly black "get out the vote" activists. Hmm...

[JES]

Yeah, well, the elderly black people ARE a threat to the Bush administration if they turn out in big numbers on election day.

[Greenlander]

Is anyone concerned about the Kerry campaign and their connections with Move On and the rest of the lefty 527's?

Let's cut straight to the real point here, cause this 527 debate is pretty much bullshit. The only reason Bush is now concerned about 527s is that they're working against him and diluting his $$$ advantage. So whereas before Bush had an extra (say) $40 million to spend on negative advertising than Kerry had, now the 527s have allowed Kerry to draw pretty much level in terms of buying power.

The whole hand-wringing about 527s is a crock because we all know that the anti-Bush ones are tacitly supported by Dems and the anti-Kerry ones are tacitly supported by Repubs. The real problem is that your whole political system is completely fucked up (no offence guys). It's awash with money and it's corrupted everything. The fact that the guy with the most money, donation-wise has won every election over there should tell you something.

Here in Ireland there's no political advertising in TV. Each political party gets what's called a "Party Political Broadcast" on our state channel once a week or so in the run up to an election. Nobody watches them, because we're all pretty well informed politically by our news media, which isn't particularly biased to one party or another. No attack ads. No "independent" groups. None of that shit.

The political system seems to consist of two parties using hundreds of millions of dollars to kick the metaphorical crap out of each other every election time. I just feel sorry for any American voter who cares about whether he or she can afford health care cause actual issues are barely on the radar screen.

My two cents.

[inverseroom]

OK, I'll give it a whirl-

1. Where are the WMDs? -Good question. Everyone thought they were there, including Kerry. We need to know just what happened to those things. Luckily, Saddam isn't in power and we are investigating. Unluckily, they may have gone to Syria or something.

Bullshit. The weapons inspectors got rid of them during the Clinton administration. They were gone ten years ago. The defectors lied to give us what we wanted. Then Bush pulled Blix. Read the fucking papers.

2. Why is the economy near collapse? It is not anywhere near collapse, and is expanding quite nicely (not as strikingly nicely as earlier, but still good). The unemployment rate is low, historically, things are good and getting better.

Bullshit. The unemployment books have been cooked. The poor are getting poorer, nobody has insurance, public health money is gone, the states are floundering. Give me a break. Do you have kids in school? Have you taken a peek at school budgets lately? No child left behind, my ass.

3. Who committed treason by leaking Valerie Plame's name? No one did. She had been out of the field for years, and the leak wasn't intentional. Meanwhile, Joe Wilson has been proven to be a LIAR and a political hack by the 911 Commission report and a british report.

Bullshit. Plame's outing collapsed a whole communications arm of intelligence. NOBODY has "proved" Wilson was any kind of liar--what is that shit? The administration ASKED the dude to investigate the Niger papers and he came back with a different answer than the one they wanted.

4. Why did the Bush administration prevent New Yorkers from learning about the toxic dust from 9/11? Dunno about that one-

That makes you four for four.

5. What did the Cheney task force on energy really talk about? Why all the secrecy? --Who knows and it's none of our business.

Bullshit. Government in a free state is transparent--elected officials cannot have secret fucking meetings with enormous corporations, especially those that have now collapsed under the weight of their deception and bilked billions out of American energy customers.

6. Why did Bush, in his first action as President, (possibly illegally) close the records on the Reagan and Bush I administrations? Was he covering up illegal activities? --Drawing a blank there.

Gee, wonder why.

I am literally shaking with rage, Mr. PC--you have no idea what you're talking about. Your desire to oppose yourself against people you consider shrill and/or distasteful has overwhelmed your sense of public responsibility. WE ARE BEING FUCKED UP THE ASS by this administration--there hasn't been a more overt expression of cronyism, abuse of public trust, flouting of constitutional law, and redaction of civil liberty since Warren Harding.

Who I encourage you to look up in the encyclopedia.

[inverseroom]

Scodiddly, I didn't even see your post before lashing out with mine. Great minds think alike!

[Rick Hunter]

I allways knew you were cool as a fucking cucumber. Go get'm John!

[inverseroom]

And Hillary Clinton, against all expectations, is a great senator. And I mean great. She has come to my town--a small town of 25,000 in upstate New York--TWICE for the sole purpose of talking about how to get city people to buy more upstate apples and cheese. She is absolutely genuine and a great local leader--and I was as suspicious of carpetbagging as anybody. I have gone from grudging support to absolute fandom in these few years, and you should too.

[mtw]

And he voted FOR the $87 billion dollars before he voted AGAINST it. And he's pro-choice, but believes that life begins at conception. And about a billion other things he flip-flops on regularly. And he's for the war and against the war. :

You do realise that you're all you've done here is repeated the Republican talking points that they hand out to the media

Folks, here's the deal with the $87B. $67B was appropriated for funding the war errort: bullets, tanks, body armor, etc. $20B was for reconstruction costs. In the first version of the bill, half of the $20B was earmarked as loans to Iraq. i.e. the US Government was going to give the money to Iraq and they were going to pay us back with oil revenues. Kerry voted for this version of the bill which Bush threatened to veto if the $20B wasn't a grant. The second version included all $20B as a grant, Kerry knew it was going to pass and voted against it as a protest.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/ ... 0877.shtml
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/ ... s.iraq.ap/

Folks should check out http://www.factcheck.org/ This is a truly non-partisan website that does a really good job at sorting out all the spin and just plain BS that both of the candidates are spewing.

[Greenlander]

3. Who committed treason by leaking Valerie Plame's name? No one did. She had been out of the field for years, and the leak wasn't intentional. Meanwhile, Joe Wilson has been proven to be a LIAR and a political hack by the 911 Commission report and a british report.

Actually, that case is coming along quite nicely. Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff is the most likely guy in the firing line, but probably others.

Anyone who thinks this is wishful thinking on my part, I'm happy to say it's not. Just this week there have been a number of reports about how the investigator (a republican actually, one who is well regarded as somewhat impartial) is reaching a climax in the investigation and indictments will follow.

[inverseroom]

Folks, here's the deal with the $87B...

And here's another look at those jobs numbers.

http://www.pkarchive.org/column/081004.html

And believing both that life begins at conception and that abortion should be legal is not "filp-flopping." It is a consistent, well-informed, nuanced point of view, and one I happen to share. I am not a fan of abortion and do believe that it is the destruction of life--but it isn't murder. It's in a gray area, like most things. And as long as our society aligns itself against the poor and uneducated, and as long as there is gender inequality, it isn't right to outlaw it. It IS right to do things to try and prevent it--better sex education, better information about adoption. But conservatives hate those things, because they don't address the true conservative agenda, which is feeling morally superior to other people. Same goes with treatment for drug addicts in lieu of incarceration--it is cheaper and results in far less recidivism, but neocons can't take the idea that "morally weak" people won't get thrown in the clink.

Seriously, people. Do the homework. There are sleazy democrats out there, but by and large, what makes liberals liberal is that they truly believe in fostering a just and happy society, that most people are basically good, that broken things can be fixed, that facts matter. Moral ambiguity is not only the province of art and literature, it's what democracy is built on. But it depends on people informing themselves well, and on the truth being made available to them. And the climate conservatives have created makes it very, very difficult for the truth to carve out a space among all the shouting. LISTEN. READ. Be skeptical, research. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT--I think Mr. PC is going off half-cocked here, and you can't base a country on that.

[phalex]

This kind of belongs at the beginning of the thread, and I have said this before in other threads, What is so wrong with politicians changing their views or flip-flopping. They recieve more information every day, and the world changes everyday, why should their beliefs stay the same every day. When I see Kerry changing his mind about things, it appears a lot more intelligent than someone who has been pushing for a war against terror and for freedom for the past four years.

[saultime]

HOW FAR DOES GEORGE W. BUSH HAVE TO SHOVE HIS DICK UP YOUR ASS BEFORE YOU REALIZE HE'S FUCKING YOU?

Or do you just not care?

GAWD you people. Seriously!

[Greenlander]

HOW FAR DOES GEORGE W. BUSH HAVE TO SHOVE HIS DICK UP YOUR ASS BEFORE YOU REALIZE HE'S FUCKING YOU?

Or do you just not care?

GAWD you people. Seriously!

It's a very small dick. It was hard to tell his was doing it at first.