I recommend taking this quiz:
http://www.presidentmatch.com/Guide.jsp2
Vote for whomever you agree more with on the issues. That’s what matters.
One good reason that might spur you to change is that your starting position has errors:
- Dem ideology is not “enforcing equal outcomes”
- Rep practice is not “small government”
- Consider “Not…W. actually lied about what he knew about Iraq.” There is plenty of evidence that he lied in exactly this way. So much so that it cannot justly be said to be an extreme view to hold.
Secondly, you’ve have shifted your position: Countering the “growing government” charge with “added people to security.” So now you’ve changed your mind and don’t mind large government? That’s fine, but don’t blame people for addressing the points you raise.
If you intend to shift the basis of your Rep support in response to legitimate criticisms then you don’t project the image of someone able to be rationally persuaded.
Well, guess that puts me in my place O_o
Good theory, but really… Kucinich!?
Sorry you couldn’t take the time to actually read [my cite supporting Bush’s devotion to big government](my cite supporting Bush’s devotion to big government):
You CAN limit it to people who are actually still in the race, if a third name at the top throws you into unfathomable confusion… 
I appreciate that, but I think it only fair that if Shodan is going to generalize to put words in my mouth, I get a chance to re-formulate the words themselves. I would prefer to talk about Kerry’s plans, but Shodan and Debaser, and to a lesser degree, you yourself appear to prefer to preempt a real discussion with, well, debasing comments.
But frankly, I don’t really care if you read your own thread or not.
I’ve made debasing comments? I have no idea where.
I’ll also note the tone here is sometimes frankly angry. People are angry that I would not be already sold on voting for Kerry. I tried to ask for good reasons, and a great many of the responses are basically, “it’s self evident”.
I also don’t like being called what are essentially bad names. You may not have fully understood what I meant by things like “small government”, but finding one way to spin the statement doesn’t mean that I’m a back-tracking idiot. I meant “as small as reasonably possible”, not “as small as I can possibly imagine, ever”, which would be something like having only the military and local sheriffs.
Good point about the bigger govt, but I wonder what those contractors were doing. It’s just as unfair for Dems to scream “big govt!!” without detailing what the workers were actually doing as it is for Reps to scream about it. I’m just so tired of either side pointing out things with phrasing that makes their side seem unassailable, until more detail comes out, that is.
Ok, this is more like what I was looking for, but so far it’s of the “it’s self evident” variety. Who/what says that W. actually lied?
It seems there will always be someone willing to get really mad about something like this and get nasty about it. You don’t have to care about whether I read my “own” thread, but you could lose the ability to make your point, and I did ask nicely. If you think that’s overbearing, take it to the Pit, where I won’t read it or care about your opinion. I think I have the right to ask for people to be nice, even if my only way to enforce it is to unfortunately take away everyone’s ability to preach to me.
So let’s get this straight. You’re already interested in hearing about an alternaBush, and even list the reasons why you are a little nonplussed, but then expect us to feed you more reason to prefer alternatives without “slamming” him or giving debatable plusses for other candidates (as if this were even theoretically possible), and you don’t want us to say that it is already obvious when you already quite obviously list reasons not to like him? And you’re holding over our heads that you didn’t really want to start this thread and are ready at a moments notice to not read it?
Vote libertarian and ask the thread to be locked.
Cardinal
There must be about a billion threads traversing the “Bush Knowingly Lied” terrain.
I’m not concerned that you accept or reject that idea. What seems to me wrong is that you might dismiss it as an extreme position, when the facts don’t really allow that.
Do you really want me to dig up the previous discussions, or can you do it?
Well, Cardinal, I did say that you were debasing to a “lesser degree,” but I did find your “you: not a nut case” to be off-putting, as it tends to suggest some probability that I will be a nut case, before I have even said anything. I know that you were framing this and the “insulting just because you viscerally hate him” as things you did not want, but to me it read as if you expected this from, well, me, since you said “you.”
But more to the point, BobLibDem posted a bunch of Kerry proposals that he liked, and you have yet to say a word about them, focusing instead on what you characterize as “it’s self evident.”
I am not angry at you at all, but if you are in fact interested in learning about Kerry, please discuss what has already been presented about Kerry. If not, it seems to me you have some other agenda.
Well Cardinal, BobLibDem has started the ball rolling. Kerry advocates for:
Getting government out of micromanging the schools and stomping on local control.
Meaningful tax reform.
So on.
Let me add one. Kerry’s military service record. At a time of war or of potential war, I want a military man in charge. The reason? Those who have not served seem all too willing to use war as an option of foreign policy and to believe that it can be finely calibrated as a response. Those who have served tend to understand what an out of control monster war is, how ugly it is, and what it is to kill and to watch your friends die. They have shown that they are willing to sacrifice themselves and they are wont to ask my kids to do it. Bush seems to believe that this is some fantasy game. Kerry knows what is really at stake.
Kerry won’t be able to undo all the damage that Bush has inflicted on us and on our place as a respected world leader. But maybe he can limit how much more damge is done.
Yes, if slamming means “He’s an obviously an idiot”
I’m afraid I don’t get what you mean. I DO mean for people to give reasons to vote for Kerry, and a few have indeed mentioned some policy differences and articulated why they think those are better.
I asked for reasons to vote for Kerry, not for reasons that you personally are worked up over Bush. Although of course they could overlap. I guess I’m going to have to give an example:
Kerry has these positions, 1, 2, ,3, 4. I like them because they will do A, B, C, D. Bush has done X, Y, Z in this area, which has resulted in Foo, Bar.
Bush lied about THIS, as cited in THAT, by THEM.
I have taught enough school to know that people respond the consequences that will befall them. The consequences here are so slight as to be almost laughable, and I don’t expect anyone to be broken up about them, but I am done with putting up with obnoxiousness in my life that I just don’t want any more.
Which means that you don’t have any good reasons to give me? You don’t want to take the time? You don’t think that I’m being reasonable or asking nicely? You have such a hatred for W. or anyone who might vote for him that you just can’t stand talking about it?
This is starting to be like when the conservatives hated Clinton with a fist-clenching passion because of his problems with sex and the truth. I had big problems with that too, but if someone asked me for more “regular” reasons, I would have had the decency to try to give them to him, and not just scream that he’s a lying pervert and it should be obvious that anyone else is preferrable.
I don’t usually read GD at all, because of the nastiness that comes out, so I haven’t seen these threads, mostly. When I have read them, I haven’t noticed any incontrovertable cites, but I could have missed something. Mostly, I think I noticed that the tone was so vile toward W. that I just couldn’t trust the person much to be presenting the whole story.
There is a segment that hates him with the fire of a thousand suns, and I can’t readily imagine that they are going to tell the whole story. Again, the same goes for the people who hated Clinton like that. In fact, one of the reasons I don’t get along with one of my roommates all that well is that he’s one of those people who’s sure that Clinton did absolutely nothing right in 8 years, and will state it in those terms, in a tone that begs for a fight on the subject.
As for the “nutcase” remark, I meant the kind of responses that show that the poster hated W. before he was even elected, and I mean really hated him. On both sides of the spectrum there are groups who are so into the fight and so sure that they’re right that they’re not even willing to consider if the other side has a point. Limbaugh pretty much falls into that category. When I listen to him, I agree for about 5 minutes before he says something so biased or insulting that I have to change the station.
So could you clarify this a little more? Is the cite saying that government is actually larger under Bush persuasive to you in this regard? If not, why’s that?
Before the Iraq war, W said that:
- there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
- Iraq was cooperating with al Qaeda
The weapons
While no particularly persuasive evidence of the existence of WMD was made public, the best evidence probably being in Powell’s presentation to the UNSC, it was suggested that there was a lot of hush-hush info that was being held back. It was said that Iraq almost certainly possessed WMD. We now know that the public evidence was the best evidence they had, and that most of their hush-hush evidence came from Chalabi and his cronies and was therefore nonsense.
If you do not construe the President’s definitive statements about Iraqi WMD on the basis of scanty or dubious evidence to be lies, how about seeing them as misleading or irresponsible? When you’re making a decision that could lead to the deaths of many thousands of people and affect the future of a country, there is a pretty high standard of proof.
The Iraq - al Qaeda nexus
It was extremely unlikely that Iraq would ever cooperate with al Qaeda, for reasons extensively discussed on these boards (look back a couple of pages in my posting history for many discussions). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there was practically no evidence of a Iraq - al Qaeda nexus at all.
To state, with certainty, that Iraq was involved with al Qaeda (when that is extremely unlikely and no real evidence exists) is therefore a lie, or at the very best dramatically misleading.
What about in a time of potential peace?
Unfortunately I see little potential for peace in the near future. We will be asking our sons and daughters to sacrifice their lives for a good long while to come.
And, on the Iraq war issue, there is also the growing evidence that the Bush Administration basically allowed themselves to serve as pawns of the Iranians and the Iranian intelligence service:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001935950_iranchalabi22.html
Admittedly, this was most likely not intentional on their part, but personally I prefer my President and their advisors to be reasonable people who can look fairly objectively at the facts, rather than so driven by ideology that they get themselves into these sort of bad situations.
And, then there is the issue of someone in the Administration apparently giving to Chalabi super-duper secret information about us having broken the Iranian intelligence codes, which he apparently then passed on to the Iranians:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00815FF3F550C718CDDAF0894DC404482
As SimonX, a conservative poster on these boards who is disgusted by Bush because of the Iraq issue, likes to put it in regards to the whole Iraq fiasco (this may be a paraphrase since it is my rough recollection): “Incompetence or Mendacity, you decide”… Either way, it ain’t pretty.
Here, by the way, is an opinion piece by someone from the libertarian Cato Institute discussing the Iranian-Chalabi connection and the need for a thorough investigation: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,122301,00.html (The only thing I find a bit strange about this piece is the author presenting the idea about Chalabi funneling disinformation from Iran to us as if it is his own hypothesis without noting that there have been credible news stories actually suggesting that this was the case.)
But he opposes the Federal We Hate Gay People and Hope They All Just Go Away Amendment, which Bush supports like it’s the second coming.
Kerry supports civil unions, and that’s gay marriage by any other name. Equality is equality, I refuse to fight over a term. The Bush WHGP&HTAJGA Amendment would even outlaw gay civil unions.
In no nation where the government can demand from public libraries a complete list of every book you’ve checked out, or from bookstores the books you’ve bought, are civil liberties fine. This is just one minor way that the Patriot Act will make it easier for future governments to crack down on those who don’t “think correctly,” or who support the “wrong ideas.”
I’ll look around, but I don’t have time now. I know the Cato Institute has done studies.
Huh? You said, and I quote:
You honestly don’t see that, already in your first post, you came out against the Democratic party and for the Republican party? It’s like saying, “I hate motorcycles - convince me to ride a motorcycle.” I mean, honestly - what the fuck? You say you agree with the Republican platform, then ask us to convince you to vote Democrat? You REALLY think that makes sense?
A lot of us are trying to reason with you. You just refuse to listen.
See, I don’t get you. You say you’re for smaller government, but then when it’s pointed out that Bush made the government bigger, then you defend him. YOU’RE the one who brought up the subject, but now you want to dismiss it out-of-hand. It’s like you’re saying, “I’m for x,y,z, unless Bush does it, then it’s o.k.”
Well can’t you just ignore the “doodyhead” responses?
I never said “it’s unfair”; that’s preposterous. I asked you to take a serious look at yourself, and ask yourself what it is that you expect us to convince you of. If you think Bush is so fucking great, then vote for him already. Sheesh.
My opinion - Bush isn’t doing a good job as president, and I think we’ve covered the reasons why pretty well, so I won’t repeat them. Kerry has experience, good ideas, and a platform that I for the most part agree with. He believes in rebuilding our relations with our allies, getting the U.N. more involved in Iraq, protecting the environment, supporting education, and rolling back those big tax cuts that Bush gave to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, which we sorely need to do in order to start putting a dent in the defecit. He is far and above the better choice. And if you’re into “character” issues (personally, I’m more concerned with policy issues), Kerry is a war hero, whereas Bush shirked his responsibilities during Vietnam.