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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 536 responses total. |
gelinas
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response 50 of 536:
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Sep 29 03:23 UTC 2003 |
Uh... Pointing out his mistakes *is* offering a vision we can follow.
Attacking his politics is also offering a vision, a vision of what could be,
rather than what is.
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jaklumen
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response 51 of 536:
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Sep 29 04:17 UTC 2003 |
Yep, the Republicans still think of Duyba as their boy.
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other
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response 52 of 536:
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Sep 29 05:06 UTC 2003 |
If I didn't know better, I'd think sentence 2, paragraph 1 of #49 was
flamebait.
Too bad.
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tod
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response 53 of 536:
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Sep 29 05:41 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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remmers
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response 54 of 536:
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Sep 29 12:57 UTC 2003 |
Plenty is wrong. Wow, a response from Todd that I strongly agree
with! :)
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murph
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response 55 of 536:
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Sep 29 14:29 UTC 2003 |
#49: "offer a vision of america we can follow" reminds me of something a
friend said a few days ago. In response to a slate.com article about how the
Dems are disadvantaged because they haven't presented a clear and coherant
plan for Iraq, he asked, "If you're running against Bush, isn't a clear and
coherant plan for Iraq just extra credit?"
Point being, the Dem's aren't the ones who need a plan; Bush is. The Dems
need to present general principles that can be applied to whatever the
situation is in 16 months to come up with a clear plan, while Bush needs a
clear plan last year.
Wait, did I just bite the flamebait?
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tod
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response 56 of 536:
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Sep 29 15:42 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mynxcat
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response 57 of 536:
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Sep 29 15:47 UTC 2003 |
I would, if I could
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tod
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response 58 of 536:
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Sep 29 15:57 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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polygon
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response 59 of 536:
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Sep 29 16:05 UTC 2003 |
The American electorate remains staunchly inscrutable. From here, it's
easy to imagine a November 2004 where GWB gets re-elected by a resounding
landslide, or a November 2004 where GWB gets tossed out on his ear. To
declare which on is going to happen is about as good as predicting whether
it will rain in Ann Arbor on that day.
One weak reed to stand on is historical precedent. Everybody likes to
compare GWB to his father, and wonder to what extent the son will re-enact
the history of twelve years earlier.
The Bush team points to Reagan and Clinton, who looked highly vulnerable
at this point in their respective first terms.
Meanwhile, the Clark forces look to 1952 -- a country mired in war turning
to a respected centrist ex-general.
Another possibility is the model of GWB as a kind of Republican Jimmy
Carter: elected on a very thin margin. A less moderate administration
than what the campaign led people to expect. Trouble managing the
economy. Grandiose foreign policy goals, but (arguably) poor results.
Party ideologues getting impatient.
Then, suddenly, the embattled president gets a lucky break: the other
parties nominates a candidate from what the White House regards as the
extreme ideological fringe. The President and his advisors become
arrogant and overconfident: they can't see how they could lose. But they
do.
The Republican strategists hooting with glee about Dean (as quoted by
David Brooks in the NYT, among other places) sound eerily like the
Democrats who hooted with glee about Reagan in 1980, before he won.
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mynxcat
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response 60 of 536:
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Sep 29 16:11 UTC 2003 |
Re58> Is it a pretty sign?
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tod
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response 61 of 536:
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Sep 29 16:21 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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jep
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response 62 of 536:
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Sep 29 16:57 UTC 2003 |
I've never voted for a Democrat for president, but I am troubled by
George W. Bush. Specifically, I am troubled by the Weapons of Mass
Destruction fiasco. We invaded another country because of that, or so
we were told, and we are now very clearly being told we were wrong.
This is a very serious issue to me. I don't expect, at this point, to
be voting for Bush because I don't expect an explanation which
justifies the war despite the lack of WMD.
Bush's re-election efforts would probably be helped most by a recovery
of the economy before next November. I think it'd be well to be
recalling troops from Iraq and Afghanistan by next summer as well,
following democratic government taking charge in those countries.
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tod
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response 63 of 536:
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Sep 29 17:04 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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richard
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response 64 of 536:
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Sep 29 17:21 UTC 2003 |
Bush is going to get voted out of office because he is widely seen as a
foreign policy president who has little clue about domestic policy. The
economy is in trouble, unemployment is going up, prices for everything are
going up. And all he can say is "lets spend $87 billion on Iraq" That
isn't what the people in THIS country, the people who vote in the
election, want to hear.
The stakes couldn't be higher in this election. As Dean says in his stump
speech, Bush is going to stack the Supreme Court in a second term so the
courts won't overturn his right wing agenda if congress passes it.
Rehnquist is in his eighties and O'Connor is in bad health, both are
likely to retire after next year. Stevens is in his eighties. Dean
flatly says that if he is elected it means one thing above all other
things-- that Antonin Scalia never becomes chief justice of the supreme
court.
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tod
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response 65 of 536:
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Sep 29 17:24 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 66 of 536:
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Sep 29 18:20 UTC 2003 |
Bush has no clue about foreign policy either.
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jp2
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response 67 of 536:
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Sep 29 18:42 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 68 of 536:
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Sep 29 18:55 UTC 2003 |
The unemployment rate has been climbing since January 2001. See
http://data.bls.gov/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&se
rie
s_id=LNS14000000
The 12-month % change of wages in private industry has been increasing. See
http://data.bls.gov/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&serie
s_id=ECU10002A
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jp2
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response 69 of 536:
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Sep 29 18:58 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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jp2
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response 70 of 536:
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Sep 29 19:01 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 71 of 536:
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Sep 29 19:12 UTC 2003 |
Re %69: the second graph shows that wages are climbing - the plot is of
the percent change over 12 months (previously), and it has been steadily
positive. The first graph, however, shows the serious increase in unemployment
during Bush's term: the monthly fluctuations go up and down, and one must
wait to see how the future trend, which has been increasing unemployment,
goes.
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jep
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response 72 of 536:
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Sep 29 20:32 UTC 2003 |
I don't believe a president can affect the economy that much, either,
but guys who preside over the country while the economy rises win re-
election; those who don't are not re-elected.
If the stakes are as high as richard says, then a lot of right-wingers
are going to be very active. They key in on Supreme Court justices
like nothing else. That's probably a lot of how Bush got elected in
the first place.
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bru
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response 73 of 536:
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Sep 29 22:09 UTC 2003 |
new report on the WMD's suggest tha the people running Saddams program were
fakeing it. They told him how well the program was going, and how they needed
more money, and all they did was run a minor program and pocket the money.
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richard
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response 74 of 536:
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Sep 30 02:31 UTC 2003 |
Also, as Dean regularly points out, Bush must be held accountable for all
the huge defecit spending that has been doing on. Under Clinton, the
national debt was paid down, they even turned off the national debt clock
that was keeping a running total of the national debt over on sixth
avenue. But three years of Bush and we now have a huge, record national
defecit. Bush has put us deeply in debt? And why? Because he pushed
through huge spending progams for the military and homeland security, and
at the same time promised tax cuts. How do you spend money AND cut taxes
at the same time? Same way Reagan did it, go DEEPLY into debt. Dean says
flatly that as President, he will push-- as he did in Vermont for years--
for balanced budgets and to pay off the national debt. This is why he is
promising to reverse Bush's tax cuts-- those tax cuts were irresponsible,
they only really helped those in the very high income brackets, while for
the rest of us the benefits were minimal, and the consequences-- this huge
debt-- could be crushing in years to come.
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