artie_fufkin wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

"Seems to me that this is a victory for the USA, not a specific political party."

I'm not suggesting it is. But the contrast is rather stark. Obama, a duly-elected President, avenged the deaths of 3,000 Americans by targeting and authorizing the mission that killed the man who is responsible, at the expense of none of our troops.
His predecessor, who was only in office because his handlers manipulated one election, maybe two, used 9/11 to avenge an entirely unrelated attempt to kill his father by a man who was directly responsible for murdering zero Americans, at a cost of what, about 5,000 of our servicemen?

And yet you can't resist a chance to take a shot about the 2000 election. The man served two terms as President of the country.  It's like Cardinal fans who still complain about the 1985 World Series. Get over it.

If you read the post thoroughly, I also called into question the 2004 election.

I read it thoroughly.  It's an assertion so ridiculous it doesn't dignify a response. 

As for the 2000 election, the results in Florida were counted and re-counted.  Bush won both counts.  But because the Democratic Election Commissioners in 4 heavily-Democratic counties weren't allowed to apply inconsistent and subjective criteria during a manual recount, the Republicans manipulated the election.  Oh, and then there's the Republican bias on the US Supreme Court.  I'm sure the Democratic majority on the Florida Supreme Court had issued completely unbiased opinions.

artie_fufkin wrote:

Would you tell the families of all the thousands of servicemen who lost their lives fighting in Iraq on behalf of an idiot using the office of the Presidency to settle a personal vendetta to "Get over it?"

If you sincerely believe that's the case there really isn't a point in continuing this discussion.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"As for the 2000 election, the results in Florida were counted and re-counted.  Bush won both counts.  But because the Democratic Election Commissioners in 4 heavily-Democratic counties weren't allowed to apply inconsistent and subjective criteria during a manual recount, the Republicans manipulated the election.  Oh, and then there's the Republican bias on the US Supreme Court.  I'm sure the Democratic majority on the Florida Supreme Court had issued completely unbiased opinions."

The issue ultimately isn't with the count, but with the ballots themselves. Please explain to me how Pat Buchanan managed to carry cities in Palm Beach County that had voted overwhelmingly Democratic for decades. 


"Would you tell the families of all the thousands of servicemen who lost their lives fighting in Iraq on behalf of an idiot using the office of the Presidency to settle a personal vendetta to "Get over it?"
"If you sincerely believe that's the case there really isn't a point in continuing this discussion."

Then please enlighten me. Why did Bush go into Iraq? What was the goal?

If you really want to continue this, I'll be happy to, but I'm at the game and this requires more typing than I care to do on a blackberry. But, I'm not sure what the point is. I get it. GWB is the most evil man ever to walk the earth. He's Hitler, Atilla the Hun and Judas all rolled into one. The funny thing is that if you believe the left he's the dumbest man on the planet and the mastermind of an array of global conspiracies. That's kind of like Jethro Bodine discovering the Theory of Evolution, curing cancer, solving a rubics cube and mastering computer science before completing the 4th grade.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"The funny thing is that if you believe the left he's the dumbest man on the planet and the mastermind of an array of global conspiracies."

Watch the game. Don't bother with this nonsense until you have more time.
But you can sleep on this. I've never considered Bush a mastermind. In fact, I've consistently thought the exact opposite. I think he was an electable figurehead for people who weren't electable - like Cheney, Rove, Wolfewitz, et al.

Your response is a nice lead into my answer.

I think GWB genuinely believed that Iraq either possessed, or was a legitimate threat to develop in the short term, weapons of mass destruction.  Obviously, that belief would be mistaken, but I think that's what he believed.

Over the years I think I've developed a pretty decent ability to read people.  It's a required skill for a police officer, and a valuable one for an attorney.  I don't think GWB is as stupid as people make him out to be, but I don't think he's the sharpest tool in the shed either.  Having said that, the one thing I genuinely believe is that many more times than not his decisions were based on what he believed was in the best interests of the US. 

If you want to try to convince me that Cheney, Rove or others manipulated Bush into starting the Iraq War for nefarious reasons, I'll listen.  But I personally believe that GWB cares enough about the men and women of the military that he wouldn't have sacrificed their lives simply to exact some revenge on Saddam.  Quite frankly, it wouldn't be necessary.  If you believe that they concocted the evidence needed to start the war, it wouldn't have taken much effort to concoct enough evidence to justify sending a couple hundred cruise missle in Saddam's direction.

You yourself said in one of your earlier posts, you believed that GWB was sincere in his actions.  Apparently, you saw some of the same things as I did.


BTW, switching back to the topic of UBL, I agree with Obama's decision not to release the pictures.  For those who don't want to believe he's dead, the pictures wouldn't solve anything.  Hell, there are already plenty of fakes making their way around the internet.  The only thing that would come from releasing those pictures would be to inflame the terrorists.

One last thing, forgive me if I don't cry foul if a man who masterminded the death of over 3,000 civilians was unarmed when he was killed.

I could careless that he was unarmed and killed.  3,000 people in New York were unarmed and killed.  This wasnt a police matter in the Unisted States.  It was a military action.  They cant be held to the same standards.  However I could see from the begining that there was going to be trouble backing this story up.  However I am not sure what should have been done differently.  I have not thought about it alot.  It isnt like it can be changed.  I think alot of questions have yet to be addressed.  They misIDed the son.  They didnt killed Bin Laden's wife in the raid.  It was an aid or something and she wasnt being used a human shield instead being killed in crossfire.  The longer this goes the less squared away it seems.  At least the son of a bitch is dead.  And by killing him I think it sends a message to other leader of terrorist.

Last edited by APRTW (5/04/2011 6:50 pm)

forsberg_us wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

"The funny thing is that if you believe the left he's the dumbest man on the planet and the mastermind of an array of global conspiracies."

Watch the game. Don't bother with this nonsense until you have more time.
But you can sleep on this. I've never considered Bush a mastermind. In fact, I've consistently thought the exact opposite. I think he was an electable figurehead for people who weren't electable - like Cheney, Rove, Wolfewitz, et al.

Your response is a nice lead into my answer.

I think GWB genuinely believed that Iraq either possessed, or was a legitimate threat to develop in the short term, weapons of mass destruction.  Obviously, that belief would be mistaken, but I think that's what he believed.

Over the years I think I've developed a pretty decent ability to read people.  It's a required skill for a police officer, and a valuable one for an attorney.  I don't think GWB is as stupid as people make him out to be, but I don't think he's the sharpest tool in the shed either.  Having said that, the one thing I genuinely believe is that many more times than not his decisions were based on what he believed was in the best interests of the US. 

If you want to try to convince me that Cheney, Rove or others manipulated Bush into starting the Iraq War for nefarious reasons, I'll listen.  But I personally believe that GWB cares enough about the men and women of the military that he wouldn't have sacrificed their lives simply to exact some revenge on Saddam.  Quite frankly, it wouldn't be necessary.  If you believe that they concocted the evidence needed to start the war, it wouldn't have taken much effort to concoct enough evidence to justify sending a couple hundred cruise missle in Saddam's direction.

You yourself said in one of your earlier posts, you believed that GWB was sincere in his actions.  Apparently, you saw some of the same things as I did.


BTW, switching back to the topic of UBL, I agree with Obama's decision not to release the pictures.  For those who don't want to believe he's dead, the pictures wouldn't solve anything.  Hell, there are already plenty of fakes making their way around the internet.  The only thing that would come from releasing those pictures would be to inflame the terrorists.

One last thing, forgive me if I don't cry foul if a man who masterminded the death of over 3,000 civilians was unarmed when he was killed.

I don't disagree with any of it. Well-written.

"Bush was either completely wrong about WMD in Iraq or he had a score to even up."

Bush believed what he was told in the context of his own notion that one of his first priorities was to settle the score between Saddam and his father. When he stood up before Congress and started talking about Iraq trying to buy yellow cake uranium from the Nigerians, it's because that's how he was briefed by people he trusted, the people who had cultivated his Presidency.
I don't think Bush is particularly smart, but I don't think he's a moron, either. I think he has a language-based learning disability, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way. It's been well-documented that Bush doesn't like to read. I don't think it's because he wants to be ignorant, it's because he's embarrassed about being unable to read as well as the CEO of an oil company or a governor or a President ought to. Considering the pressure that comes with being raised a Bush, I probably would have felt more sympathy for him than anything else, if his reaction to any sort of criticism hadn't been that arrogant sneer that served as a defense mechanism.
The real bad guys in his administration were the Roves and the Cheneys with whom his father surrounded him. Bush's candidacy was a fraud. They took the original rich kid who was born with indigo blood in his veins and a platinum spoon in his mouth whose father pulled every string he could and turned him into a god-fearing, rugged champion of the common man. It got them eight years to do whatever they wanted, but at an unfathomable cost to the country, and the entire world.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (5/04/2011 8:46 pm)

forsberg_us wrote:

The funny thing about that description is that it applied equally, if not more so, to Gore. Rich kid raised in an Embassy Row hotel who attended an all-boy prep school designed to utilize mommy and daddy's connection for a trip to the Ivy League. And Gore is exponentially more arrogent than Bush could have ever been on his worst day.

We'll just have to agree to disagree whether the country and the world is better or worse off with Bush having served as President.  But we'd have been a lot worse off with Gore as President on 9/11. I doubt Bin Laden would have been dazzled by Gore's Oscar.

I've never liked Gore. I was pretty jazzed about Wellstone, but he ended up not running. Ultimately, I filled in Nader's dot (notice I didn't write "voted for"), mostly because I felt obligated to vote for someone. Retrospectively, I should have blanked it.
As far as your second paragraph is concerned, I remember the Fox types saying things like "The terrorists are happy Obama won" after the '08 election. Without being flippant, I'm pretty sure the Al-Qaeda folks don't feel that way right now.
Economically, Gore presumably would have continued Clinton's blueprint to pay down the debt, and it's almost certain he wouldn't have thrown money toward implementing a regime change in Iraq. This part is wildly speculative, but I have a suspicion China's emergence would have been a real problem for Gore, and his Iraq might have been North Korea.

"Gore always struck me as extremely condescending--to the point where it appears he regards anyone who doesn't agree with him too stupid to share the same air."

I don't know if the PMRC hearings have made it to You Tube, but if I get a chance, I'm going to have to go back and watch. When you end up taking a right cross to the jaw from an intellectual lightweight like Dee Snider as Gore did, you know you  have no business being in the ring in the first place.
It'd be worth it anyway just to see Zappa's testimony again. He set up those Senators so perfectly. They thought he was just this eccentric guy they could use as a pinata. When Zappa wanted to be, he had the capacity to be as genteel as a rabbi.

For whatever reason, Obama doesn't seem to be getting the approval bounce a lot of people expected after UBL was killed.

I'm not convinced he's a lock to win in 2012.  There are a lot of factors in play, in particular, who the RNC runs against him and the economy.  I have no idea who might be the Republican candidate, but if gas is still $4/gallon (or higher), unemployment remains near 10% and nothing has been done to start reducing the deficit, I'm not sure Obama gets another 4 years.

artie_fufkin wrote:

Though I did see a "Trump for President" lawn sign the other day.

Run a Trump/Palin ticket, and I'll vote for Obama.

forsberg_us wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

Though I did see a "Trump for President" lawn sign the other day.

Run a Trump/Palin ticket, and I'll vote for Obama.

That is alot of hair.

The census has put the Republicans in the drivers seat. 

States won by Democrats in 2000, 2004, 2008

Illinois – 1 less vote
Massachusetts – 1 less vote
Michigan – 1 less vote
New Jersey – 1 less vote
New York – 2 fewer votes
Pennsylvania – 1 less vote
Washington – 1 more vote
States won by Republicans in 2000, 2004, 2008

Arizona – 1 more vote
Georgia – 1 more vote
Louisiana – 1 less vote
Missouri – 1 less vote
South Carolina – 1 more vote
Texas – 4 more votes
Utah – 1 more vote
Remaining states

Florida – 2 more votes
Iowa – 1 less vote
Nevada – 1 more vote
Ohio – 2 fewer votes