Bush or Kerry, vote today!

[Neutrino]

The same could be said for you. Right now you seem more content to insult then debate.

Alright, I apologize for that comment as it wasn't really needed. I only said it because you seem to be stuck on purely personal attacks on Kerry while ignoring larger issues. But I believe that was the only thing I've said that could be construed as a personal insult. So sorry for that.

However, how exactly are you claiming the same could be said for me? I've mosly focused on foreign affairs, the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and domestic religious policies. Please tell me how these are not significant issues to the election?

I'll try to bring up more domestic affairs later on too. I just haven't had the time to go digging through that yet.

 

[SaL]

it's called polarization. it sucks, you're right

A candidate needs to have so many signatures to get on the Presidential ballot.

There's a bunch of political parties in the U.S.

http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm

 

[blahblahblah]

how come there's only 2 respectable party's in the US, and in the end both candidated representing 2 different rivalising party's will do about the same thing?
That's hard to understand for me...in Belgium the government is divided into 4-5 big party's...where they all have to learn to compromise...and they succeed to it to. So what we've got is a sort of mixture of what everybody wants...
And if I understand your post correctly America's only candidates would do about the same? Then what's the point in voting? What's the point in having such an ingenious democratic system (yes it is)?
Since both eventually will follow the public opinion..right?
If i'm wrong please explain...

The foreign policies are the same, but the domestic policies are quite different. The average American is more concerned about having food on their table than about what other countries think about the United States. That is a fact. It may seem like I am apathetic to foreign policy, and partly I am. I am more worried about other issues that affect me directly than worry something that has indirect consequences. Blame me for not having enough mental bandwith to consider everything in the world.

Only 40% of all eligible voters in the United States, vote. For the most part Americans don't vote. There are numerous theories, but none can identify why so few people vote.

I'm taking an honors seminar that is teaching about electoral behavior. A very interesting class. It is opening up my eyes about the democracy in America and about its theories on democracy. Nothing bad, but more of an explanation of what I see in the political landscape today.

 

[Anable]

I'm taking an honors seminar that is teaching about electoral behavior. A very interesting class. It is opening up my eyes about the democracy in America and about its theories on democracy. Nothing bad, but more of an explanation of what I see in the political landscape today.

A large part of me wants to go back to school (having only been out for one year) and mainly for classes like this. Unfortunately I live in a (relatively) small community in Oklahoma with a university that caters more to the study of the local Walmart than national politics. I wish I were kidding.

 

[aeroripper]

Everyone you both are making good points and been a interesting read

keep em up.

What bothers me are people that wear entire outfits in american flags and they don't know anything about government, they never watch the news, and have no real idea what's going on the world but they vote, even though they don't know about the current issues.

It's just so messed up anymore in beaucracy (sp) between "liberals" and "conservatives"... whatever that means anymore... It is just crappy that people have to die overseas in a very questionable war. I just try to imagine it from their point of view... how would you feel if you were walking down your sidewalk in your home town a b-2 bomber started dropping bombs on the apartment building you just walked out of killing everyone?

I don't know but I feel sorry for people in the middle east, south america, and a lot of other countries that are under constant fears like this and almost everyday they hafta worry about that sort of thing.

As for americans, 9/11 was very sad and those people didn't deserve to die... but many people die all the time in other countries constantly ...

i don't really know how to put it into good words cause i'm not a good at making debate points like you guys (WOW! I couldn't remember some of those facts if i tried)... but i know i'm graeful that i'm in one of the areas of the world that doesn't have to have that day to day fear... (i'm including a lot of european contries, australia, new zealand, etc...)

I've just started to think that any system of government you come up with will be flawed, no matter what candidate or how many good\bad deeds they have done will be somewhat universal, and how many times Democrat V. Republican issues can be debated, its always gonna be the same.

Also what's the difference anymore? Does it really matter if I vote for Kerry or Bush? It seems like i'm voting for 2 sides of the same coin.

I honestly think the united states won't meet its demise from "invasion" or "nuclear\chemical terrorist attack" but from the infastructure collapsing... i think its only a matter of time in any society no matter how good they are set up. Look at rome! Wasn't it pax romana (sp) that had a lot of the known world in peace and standards (roads, lanauge, etc)... but then the emperors came and it went downhill... i'm not sure if that's even good to throw in there or not...

And i agree with the one remark about how the US is damned if we do, and damned if we don't... there is always gonna be someone who hates us somewhere and would love to see us go down. I just think what we are seeing in the world is human nature playing itself out over and over again... in a never ending cycle of peace, war, peace, war, peace, war etc.... human history is all of that... the only way we can just have peace is to have absolute control of free will and human thought, or the death of human beings...

Sorry i havn't worded or backed a lot of this stuff as well as some of you others have but its more just general ideas i think... well least i think about

Please correct me factually on some of these i might be incorrect on some of the facts, i'm not as well educated as some of you are on here

 

[Operation Ivy]

Kerry citation a 'total mystery' to ex-Navy chief

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign Web site came from, he said Friday. The citation appears over Lehman's signature.

"It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me," he said.

The additional language varied from the two previous citations, signed first by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt and then Adm. John Hyland, which themselves differ. The new material added in the Lehman citation reads in part: "By his brave actions, bold initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty, Lieutenant (jg) Kerry reflected great credit upon himself...."

Asked how the citation could have been executed over his signature without his knowledge, Lehman said: "I have no idea. I can only imagine they were signed by an autopen." The autopen is a device often used in the routine execution of executive documents in government.

Kerry senior adviser Michael Meehan could not be reached for comment on Kerry's records.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-lips28.html

and so u kerry ppl dont get to angry

For well over a decade now, right-wingers and Republicans have heaped insult, lies and slander on liberals and Democrats, who responded for the most part by becoming starchy, self-doubting and depressed. To complain was to be labeled elitist and fuddy-duddy: Rush and Ann and Bill and Sean say liberals are traitors and hate America? They're populist entertainers! Jerry Falwell hawked a video accusing Bill Clinton of murder? Shut up and finish your latte. It took ages, not to mention a suspect election and a suspect war, but suddenly everywhere you look Democrats and liberals are fighting back.

The prissy and thin-lipped are cracking jokes, policy wonks are gabbing on Air America, voters once proud of being as unherdable as cats leap aboard the projects of MoveOn.org and write checks to long-shot red-state candidates because Howard Dean says it's a good idea. Do some of these newborn activists feel an intense personal dislike of Bush and all his works? Think he's a blithering idiot? Quiver with rage and loathing when they watch him flash that arrogant sneer and speak in that weird lurching way, as if he's on the edge of blanking out totally? Sure. Probably some of them even enjoy seeing his features merged with an ape's on smirkingchimp.com. But so what? This is America, where pundits have for years reassured us politics is a down-and-dirty contact sport with no room for girly men.

Bush hatred wasn't supposed to happen. Liberals were supposed to be lofty and wistful and clueless, even as their enemies slimed them into irrelevance; they were supposed to say things like "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"--not cram into movie theaters to laugh hysterically at the President sitting in that classroom reading "The Pet Goat." Something must be wrong with these Bush-haters, with their No More Years bumper stickers and their obsessional blogs--could they be insane? "Monomaniacal," as Tucker Carlson put it on Crossfire: "Their hatred has become the focus of their lives. It's actually a clinical description."

In The New York Times Book Review, Leon Wieseltier uses his review of Nicholson Baker's thin, sensationalistic novella Checkpoint, about a man holed up in a hotel with fantasies of assassinating the President, to deliver a long, sanctimonious lecture to the anti-Bush crowd: "The virulence that calls itself critical thinking, the merry diabolization of other opinions and the other people who hold them, the confusion of rightness with righteousness, the preference for aspersion to argument, the view that the strongest statement is the truest statement--these deformations of political discourse now thrive in the houses of liberalism too. The radicalism of the right has hectored into being a radicalism of the left. The Bush-loving mob is being met with a Bush-hating mob.... American liberalism, in sum, may be losing its head." Wieseltier sees "signs of the degradation...everywhere": Janet Malcolm wrote a letter to the Times in which she claimed the present moment is "as fearful as the period after Munich"; an anti-Bush anthology is decorated with anagrams like "The Republicans: Plan butcheries?"; MoveOn publishes an ad--a "huge" ad--that reads "The communists had Pravda. Republicans have Fox." Liberalism, it would seem, is supposed to consist of constantly reminding ourselves that we do not live in a murderous totalitarian regime. Things could be worse! This too shall pass!

Actually, I too bridle when people start talking about Hitler. It sounds naïve and overwrought. If the Republicans really were Nazis, you wouldn't be holding this magazine in your hands. And I don't like the endless theme of Bush's stupidity, either--it's mostly a way for the marginalized to feel culturally superior. I don't even believe that Bush is so dumb--he seems to have plenty of political cunning and skill, and that's a kind of intelligence, albeit not the kind that has much relation to making good policy decisions in a complex and dangerous world. On the Times op-ed page, Dahlia Lithwick made some good points about the impulse to portray Bush as a child: It insults people who voted for him in 2000 and whom we hope are persuadable this time, and it lets him off the hook, since children aren't responsible for the damage they cause.

And yet there is a schoolmasterish quality to all this finger-wagging. What are we talking about here? Some over-the-top e-mails? Whoopi Goldberg's off-color jokes? Nicholson Baker's novel has the obsessive-compulsive look-at-me creepiness of all his fiction, but surely it's LA Times book reviewer P.J. O'Rourke who has the problem when he compares its characters' dismay at suburban sprawl to the hatred of humanity that fuels Robespierre and Pol Pot. Is it anti-humanity to wish for more trees? Imagining characters named "Ann Coulter" and "Bill O'Reilly" up in that hotel room, he writes, "Hmmm, they don't appear to be discussing whether to kill Bill Clinton." Well, maybe not in the novel in O'Rourke's head--but in real life, Nicholson Baker's would-be assassin doesn't exist, while Ann Coulter has called for the murder of Islamic heads of state, the invasion of their countries, the forced conversion of their citizens to Christianity, the execution of liberals and a terrorist attack on the New York Times. Hilarious, I know.

It's really a stretch to suggest that the newly awakened anti-Bush advocates are just the lefty equivalent of the hard-right disinformation machine. Al Franken is no Bill O'Reilly. The New York Times editorial page equates MoveOn PAC's ads with those of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and it's true both are funded through gaps in campaign-finance laws, and both attack the enemy candidate on his war record. But the Swift Boat vets' charges are a mess of smears and lies with Karl Rove's fingerprints all over them, while MoveOn's ads raise genuine questions about Bush's service record that have never been answered.

One group protesting at the Republican convention is planning to hand out 3,000 fortune cookies with messages like "Do not change horses midstream unless horse lies to you and stream is on fire," and lists of ways Bush has mispronounced "Abu Ghraib." You can be sure the Republicans will portray these mild jabs as demonic howls of rage and fury.

Where's their sense of humor?

 

[Mechagodzilla]

make no mistake bush is a criminal

Yeah, it's shame that people just dismiss that. Bush has commited war crimes. There's no real argument around it. The very concept of a pre-emptive war is a violation.

LOL at least he isnt a self-admitted war criminal like your Johnny Boy.

So you're saying that it's worse to admit to a crime than pretend that a much larger crime never happened?

If you ask me, that's not a very strong argument.

Kerry's telling the truth. The fact is, he was drafted into the war, and he's not lying about what he did. What pretty much everyone there did.

Kerry commited crimes as a soldier in the midst of the worst fighting the US has ever seen. Bush commited his crimes to an entire nation from a comfy chair in an office.
That's kinda like the difference between first and second degree murder. Crime of passion vs. planned attack.

 

[Apos]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html please dont say 0 wmd's. and thank you for having the intelligence to read and reply to the rest of that statement. iraq is a huge place, you can hide wmd's anywhere.

Sigh.

Iraq is littered with such relic, unexploded shells from the Iraq/Iran war. Many people in Iraq have shells like these on their mantlepieces having picked them up from old battlefields without knowing what they were. Everyone in the WMD knew about these sorts of things going in: they aren't what ANYONE means when talking about WMDs: they don't even count in terms of the sanctions treaties, since no one could ever have concievably tracked them all down.

I dare you to read "All the President's Spin" a book that lays out in detail how the Bush administration has used modern PR tactics, first pioneered in full force by the Clinton War Rooms (but in those cases used mostly to fight scandal not to actually mislead people about policy matters), to mislead the public. It's completely damning, in part because it shows exactly how some of the myths and half-truths many people have parrotted in this thread get planned out and implemented. The book also notes that the Kerry camp has started to adopt these deceptive tactics: they are incredibly successful, and it's a real danger to our country if they come to dominate our political debate.

 

[CrazyHarij]

None of them are going to lead the world into any particularly better future in my opinion.

I say Arnold!

 

[SaL]

David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.



In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Dr Kay's comments will intensify pressure on President Bashar Assad to clarify the extent of his co-operation with Saddam's regime and details of Syria's WMD programme. Mr Assad has said that Syria was entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own biological and chemical weapons arsenal.

Syria was one of Iraq's main allies in the run-up to the war and hundreds of Iraqi officials - including members of Saddam's family - were given refuge in Damascus after the collapse of the Iraqi dictator's regime. Many of the foreign fighters responsible for conducting terrorist attacks against the coalition are believed to have entered Iraq through Syria.

A Syrian official last night said: "These allegations have been raised many times in the past by Israeli officials, which proves that they are false."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixnewstop.html

 

[seinfeldrules]

I dare you to read

... Any book by Sean Hannity.

Kerry's telling the truth. The fact is, he was drafted into the war, and he's not lying about what he did. What pretty much everyone there did.

See there you go again. Just because Kerry commited war crimes doesnt mean the millions of other soldiers did.

I only said it because you seem to be stuck on purely personal attacks on Kerry while ignoring larger issues

My main difference with Kerry is his foreign policy approach. I also disagree with his domestic policy to an extent, but not as much. I usually get drawn into these 'insult wars' by others (not mentioning names), who do nothing but post incorrect statements about Bush, or respond with little pictures that they think prove their point. I'm just sick of seeing Bush's character being assassinated by the left. As a person I am pretty blunt so I suppose I fight fire with fire, although it is not always the best thing to do.

 

[CptStern]

David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.

here's a good read; it's an article on a lecture by Noam Chomsky:

"Chomsky questioned the sanctions saying Syria has never been known for its support for terrorism, as Washington claims.

He attributed the move to American and Israeli pressure on Damascus to halt its support to Palestinian resistance factions.

Chomsky cited reports that former U.S. President Bill Clinton had offered Syria a deal to lift the Arab country’s name from the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries in return for agreeing to U.S. and Israeli demands in this regard.

Damascus accuses Washington of double standards and of not doing enough to rein in its close ally Israel, which still occupies the Golan Heights, a strategic Syrian plateau since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war."


source

 

[seinfeldrules]

rein in its close ally Israel, which still occupies the Golan Heights, a strategic Syrian plateau since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war

That always got to me. All those Arab countries invaded Israel, then Israel easily defeated them. Now excuse me if this sounds crazy, but why should the Arabs demand land back when they were the ones to start the conflict? Do you think the Arabs would have given Israel back if they had won? To the victor go the spoils...

 

[CptStern]

That always got to me. All those Arab countries invaded Israel, then Israel easily defeated them. Now excuse me if this sounds crazy, but why should the Arabs demand land back when they were the ones to start the conflict? Do you think the Arabs would have given Israel back if they had won? To the victor go the spoils...

ummm the israelis took the land from jordan syria and egypt.

Sinai and Gaza Strip were captured from Egypt, East Jerusalem and West Bank from Jordan and Golan Heights from Syria.

 

[SaL]

here's a good read; it's an article on a lecture by Noam Chomsky:

"Chomsky questioned the sanctions saying Syria has never been known for its support for terrorism, as Washington claims.

He attributed the move to American and Israeli pressure on Damascus to halt its support to Palestinian resistance factions.

Chomsky cited reports that former U.S. President Bill Clinton had offered Syria a deal to lift the Arab country’s name from the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries in return for agreeing to U.S. and Israeli demands in this regard.

Damascus accuses Washington of double standards and of not doing enough to rein in its close ally Israel, which still occupies the Golan Heights, a strategic Syrian plateau since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war."


source

Syria invaded Lebanon in 1976 they still occupy it to this day.Thousands of Christians were killed by muslim mercenaries Hezbollah,Islamic Jihad and just about every Islamic terror group have forces in Lebanon's Bekka Valley as well as offices in Damascus.

http://www.meforum.org/article/546

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_current_christians.php

 

[SaL]

ummm the israelis took the land from jordan syria and egypt.

Sinai and Gaza Strip were captured from Egypt, East Jerusalem and West Bank from Jordan and Golan Heights from Syria.

I posted this in another thread to you which you never responded to.Never in the history of the world has there ever been a Palestinian State.The British Mandate for Palestine was a 2-state solution not 3

Israeli occupation?

This is a map of the land was to be the homeland for the Jews

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/Israel+in+Maps/British+Mandate.htm

This is a map of the land Britain gave the Hashemite Bedouin Abdullah (Saudi kings cousin) with the ole *wink wink* of the UN

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/Israel+in+Maps/Separation+of+Transjordan-+1922.htm

78% of the land went to the Arabs.The Jews got boned with the only 22% of the Mandate.Now the winking UN wants them to part with another 10% of their land for a paper peace.

 

[seinfeldrules]

ummm the israelis took the land from jordan syria and egypt.

I think the UN set up Israel, so its not the Israeli's fault.

 

[blahblahblah]

I'm not jumping in this discussion right now, its not my area of speciality.

However, my sig has been updated with some really good non-partisan links. (asides the officials links for Bush and Kerry).

 

[CptStern]

I posted this in another thread to you which you never responded to.Never in the history of the world has there ever been a Palestinian State.The British Mandate for Palestine was a 2-state solution not 3

this map shows the formation of the israeli/palestinian (arab) state

here's a current map ...notice the disappreance of the palestinian state?(arab)


"The UN made the recommendation for a three-way partition of Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally administered zone including the religiously significant towns Jerusalem and Bethlehem."

source

 

[Rupertvdb]

The fact the Israelis were simply 'given' their state is kind of strange, somehow they feel it is their right to own this area so regardless of the fact there are already poeple there they want to claimtotal ownership.

This could be resolved in a peaceful way but no, the Palestians have to be relocated because otherwise there would be tensions, can't have those so lets 'encourage' them to all leave. Ok we have almost totally created an atmosphere of intense segregation and are doing a prety good job of persecuting those nasty other people, let's now send tanks to patrol areas under contention (the Jewish state claiming more gift land) as well as highly armed patrols. So that little kids can get shot because they have nothing better to do than throw stones at the tanks thatare part of the presence that caused them to be practically removed from their homeland and forced into an almost refugee like position.

 

[Rupertvdb]

grr post edit limit rubbish, ignore the post above me...

The fact the Israelis were simply 'given' their state as a result of the war always intrigues me, they suddenly were being recognised by various superpowers and given athroity to have their own state. This led to the issues regarding what to do with those pesky locals, which by the by they had been living next to for generations.

This could be resolved in a peaceful way but no, the Palestians have to be relocated because otherwise there would be tensions, can't have those so lets 'encourage' them to all leave. Ok we have almost totally created an atmosphere of intense segregation and are doing a prety good job of persecuting those nasty other people, let's now send tanks to patrol areas under contention (the Jewish state claiming more gift land) as well as highly armed patrols. So that little kids can get shot because they have nothing better to do than throw stones at the tanks thatare part of the presence that caused them to be practically removed from their homeland and forced into an almost refugee like position.

However i read this article:

http://www.nclci.org/Articles/art-flan-foundation.htm

Which was fairly interesting. We can attribute an awful lot of the problems to the British and Allies for causing such a confusing mesh of conflicting commitments.

Saying that the article does not actually dela with the fact that Jews was simply 'given' the state of Israel, it cites the fact 7 arab states achieved recognition, but it presents this as evidence against the arabs in Israel, almost saying well come on guys you have your own states over here so give up the one you are in right now. Which i don't agree with. Anyways check the article it'll at least highlight a few facts people miss even if it isn't all that great.