Which sounds awfully much like they’re just plain corrupt. Why would you criticize the sort of administration that has clearly shown it doesn’t walk its talk and therefore won’t likely go after you if you do awful things. So long as you aren’t foreign. I’m starting to think that people who love Shrub do so because he’s just like them. And that is scary.
On the bus the other day, I saw the core of the conservative thinking laid perfectly bare.
Someone had posted up a rather stupid little sticker that had Bush on it wearing an armband. The band was red, with a white circle, and inside the circle was a dollar sign rotated 45 degrees. The impression was of a nazi symbol. The text of the sticker was something along the lines of “First was the lying, and then the spying.”
Very unimpressive, not at all clever, largely embarrassing and forgettable.
However, someone had responded by writing on it in pen exactly this:
“Your protected. So shut up.”
Elegantly, they expressed exactly what the Bush administration hopes that they will. They didn’t even need a terror alert warning, apparently.
75% of all Republicans are not on the take, unlike Abramoff, Cunningham and Wilkes. Most Republicans do not enjoy the fruits of having the top 1% of US income, though they may think they do.
But many Republicans watch Fox News and listen to Rush. Not for information: rather they listen to these types because their sensitive dispositions require continual stroking and reinforcement.
No, it’s not that most Republicans are evil or even stupid: they just lack character.
Scolding won’t work though: we need other strategies.
I think I would bring up the point that Saddam had more to fear from Al Qaeda than most people.
Also that Afghanistan should have been finished off. Very shoddy.
If there had been WMD, and if it had been a threat, then Israel would have known, they took away his supergun and bombed his nuclear plant.
A pity that the Saudis had to kick out the US bases - I would guess that really annoyed the House of Saud - who also have more to fear from Al Qaeda than the USA
Of course G Bush Snr understood the situation in 1991 - seems odd that he did not explain the setup to his son.
GWB has not handled things well.
linksie?
Guess what?
That’s probably true, but I’d like to make the point that it’s a people problem, not a Republican one. You’ve seen the arch-lefties who can’t seem to live in the real world and think that making statements equals actually doing something. Here I’m thinking of people like Rage Against the Machine, who seem to actually think that Che Guevarra and Fidel Castro are societal and economic heroes.
God almighty, this is the sort of blather that gets this board tagged as a leftist echo chamber. :rolleyes:
I said “at least” trivial quantities. And remember, I’m responding to the incorrect notion that for Bush to have lied about Iraqi WMDs, he needed to have believed there were no WMDs. My point is that Bush surely expected to find some WMDs in Iraq that could be held up and trumpeted as the justification for the war, even if it didn’t really represent a threat.
And I’m not arguing about the intel itself; I’ll let others who’ve mined that territory debate that. I’m arguing from Bush’s actions - his endorsement of a war plan that had nothing to do with securing WMDs.
The implications, as I’ve pointed out, are pretty devastating.
What Elvis and jshore said. Can’t think of anything to improve on their responses.
True, unfortunately.
If the 75% number is correct, explain it. How in the name of anything that’s holy can that many people think this moron has done a good job? Really, I’d love to hear the explanation.
Because they’re partisan. Republicans are their people. A Republican president must be supported, because Democrats are far worse. That’s their thinking.
And Democrats aren’t immune to it. Before Clinton came along, the Democrats were really big on ‘women’s issues’. Feminists held a lot of sway in Democratic circles. I can remember many indignant dorm-room speeches from lefties on subjects such as how a boss who propositions a woman is committing harassment even if the woman agrees to go out with him, because there’s a ‘power differential’.
Along comes Bill Clinton, the most powerful man in the world, who seduces a young woman who works in government, right in the White House. And the feminists didn’t just go dead silent, they actively worked to support Clinton’s reputation.
These were the same people who complained that rape and sexual harassment trials are devastating to a woman because their character is always attacked, and who deplored how the woman’s sexual background has no bearing in a rape trial and who supported things like rape shield laws. The same people who demanded Clarence Thomas’s head on a platter because he was accused of making raunchy jokes and putting a pubic hair on a Coke can. But when Bill Clinton was charged with sexual harassment, they immediately started smearing the woman involved as a slut and trailer trash. And when he perjured himself in testimony in that trial, they found a way to claim that there was nothing wrong with it, because he never should have had to answer questions like that in the first place.
When people will allow their basic values to be overridden or suppressed like that when ‘their’ guy is in the White House, they can come up with a way to excuse almost anything.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
And I was one of the first to criticize President Clinton when he decided to invade Iraq based on such flimsy intelligence. Oh wait…
I think I agree with this. IOW, I believe that Bush surely believed he’d find enough WMDs to satisfy the average citizen that he was right. Any nuanced discussion about whether yellowcake was anywhere to be found wouldn’t matter if they could get the photo op of a warehouse filled with other scary stuff. Whether or not Bush used this as a convenient excuse, again, my point was that is I do believe he truly thought he’d find some of the damn things.
I hear you. All I’m saying is I don’t rule out simple incompetence.
The only conclusion can be that they lack character. Now I see it.
The fact that she admitted actively going after him notwithstanding…
I don’t agree with your example. It’s depressing to think that you’re right in this latter regard. So what you’re saying is that it’s pack mentality, and that the dichotomy of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ overrides all other considerations, including morality? Are we not talking about ‘honour among thieves’
Ask Sam Stone, who managed to figure it out.
That didn’t used to matter to radical feminists. They claimed that ANY relationship between a male boss and a woman employee was wrong, because the disparity in power put the man in a position of dominance over the woman. Of course, that’s crap. But then, radical feminists issued a lot of crap in their heyday. But they went stone silent on Bill Clinton, just as Republicans are violently opposed to deficit spending - until a Republican is in power. Then they apparently don’t care.
Cardinal, Sam is on target. It really depends what kind of conservative your Dad is.
Did he do right by the libertaian side? Nope. Many intrusions into our personal spaces.
The fiscal conservatives? Nope. A spendthrift.
The neocons? Well he followed their playbook and proved how wrongheaded that playbook is.
The Religious Right? I do not think that they feel that the Supremes they got were hardline enough or that they got enough out of him either.
The Big Tenters? He has fractured what looked like a Republican lock on Congress that would last forever. They are now as splintered as the Dems have always been.
He has failed as a Conservative on every count. Except maybe protecting the interests of Big Business. And that is highly debatable.
“Has he done anything right from a Conservative POV?” is the discussion that you want to have with your Dad, not what I or anyone else from the center or points left of it disrespect him for.