I don’t want to be wrestled to the ground by the Secret Service. 
I’ll resign myself to at least 4 years of escalating war in Iraq, while plattitudes like “peace with honor” make people go scrambling for more analogies to Vietnam. But I make a good living, so maybe I’ll get another rebate check.
Meanwhile, I’ll be quietly rooting for McCain’s ill health, since at that point I’ll want Palin to get the top spot, just to bear witness to the whole shithouse going down in flames.
Aren’t the troops due out in 2011?
Although I’m voting for Obama, if McCain wins it won’t bother me too much knowing that SNL and The Daily Show will be really, really funny for at least four years.
haha
sound sensible to me
That’s right, the comedians might not ever get the hang of satirizing Obama. Delicate issue.
You mean just like Nixon had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war in 1968?
I will try to keep smiling with the following jokes:
Giuliani/Rice '08!
Tancredo/Huckabee '08!
Brownback/Palin '08!
Romney/Thompson '08!
Cheney/Rove '08!
The really critical bullets have been dodged already. This one won’t hurt so bad. Perspective. And hey, we made it through Bush eh? Well most of us…
I’ll shake my head in disbelief.
I think that the Canadian election, if it happens, will take place in October, before the US election. And Kyth, don’t forget the green alternative! Whether the Greens are actually green is another question entirely.
So, uh… you female?
No idea. But I’ve read that the Iraqi PM was mooting that the troops should be out by 2011.
My point, to the extent that I have one, is that I think McCain is wed to the idea that we can’t “lose” the war in Iraq, even though it is an unwinnable war. So, just as Nixon promised us in 1968 that he could end the war in Vietnam, and later backtracked from that promise while his administration mumbled about needing “peace with honor” (all the while escalating our involvement), so too will McCain end up deepening our involvement in Iraq.
There may be talk now about removing the troops by 2011, but I don’t have much hope that this will be sustained over the course of a McCain administration.
Exactly. 
What makes me nervous is that while that may still be the first thought that pops into my head in this context, I no longer feel like I can be so sure. I was disappointed at Bush’s first win, but didn’t think any single president could do too much damage. But he did. When the 2004 elections were coming around I didn’t believe that he could possibly get a second term with the way he mishandled his first one, but he did.
So I’ve been proven wrong before and I no longer have the confidence in our government’s ability to hold to our principles as I used to. Eight years ago I would have laughed at anyone who suggested that jailing and torturing prisoners for years at a time without charging them, letting them talk to a lawyer, or even letting them talk to mom, was even a remote possibility here in this country. Not here. For that to happen way too many people would have to be complicit, asleep at the wheel for way too long. And yet now we have Gitmo. Hell, we have a whole lengthy list of civil liberties and ideals that have just been tossed out the window.
In the past eight years, “it can’t possibly get worse” has consistently turned into “oh yes, it can.”
We’ve fallen very far and it only took eight years to happen. How much farther can we fall in another four? I’d love to believe that the fall will stop or at least slow regardless who wins. I’m not so sure I can be confident in that anymore.
My primary concern would be for McCain’s good health. I don’t think he would ruin the country and he would be a damn sight better than Bush. What scares the shit out of me is that thing waiting to get behind the First Desk if anything happens to Maverick. The fundies would probably be praying for McCain to drop dead.
Jesus – the Alaskan Church lady makes me long for the days when Quayle was the worst that could happen.
That scares me. I don’t believe America can win in Iraq, but it can certainly not lose. But not the way things are going right now.
Oh it’s certainly winnable - look at the British campaign against the Malay Insurgency - but it will take measures beyond what most are willing to do.
The main problem is stopping the supply of insurgents and arms. To do that you either have to stop the arms entering the country or convince the suppliers - Iran and Al Q - that its not worth their while. Good luck there without using nukes. A secondary problem is that Iraq is an artificial country like Yugoslavia with all the strains thereof. It should be split along ethnocentric lines.
Small happy dance, sigh of relief.
And then I’ll resist the temptation to mail a packet of tissues to my niece, because I’m really not that mean.
I think, though, I’m going to have to be very careful in the next couple of months, not to cause a rift in the family. I do love her, but her utter hero worship of Obama and her absolute horror of Sarah Palin are already getting old. I may just have to quit reading the emails from her blog.
Personally, I’ve listened to too many doom-and-gloom warnings over the decades to believe the whole shebang will go to hell in a handbasket because of a McCain/Palin win. But you’re right in hoping it does. Honestly, it’s no good for things to go a little bit wrong; it’s got to be an apocalypse-style disaster to wake the public up for real.
I’m expecting McCain to win, so I’ll be disappointed but not surprised.
If there’s hanky-panky with the voting, I will be pretty motivated to do something.
When did he do that? 
(My bolding)
The problem with that is that eventually you have to give all your little minicountries full independence, and stop propping up their secular, democratically elected governments.
When that happens, half (at best) will turn into mostly peaceful Western-style democracies. Of the rest, most will turn into “People’s Republic”-style democracies- ie. authoritarian dictatorships, and the rest will turn into authoritarian theocracies.
The reason they’re maintaining the polite fiction of a “united Iraq” is to avoid just that- the idea is to poke and prod them until the liberal, secular types are firmly in control, and then leave them to run things.
I’m expecting Obama to win, so I’ll be disappointed but not surprised.
Re: election fraud, I won’t even go there; cart-before-the-horse.
I’m still pretty surprised that the same people who are vocally gung-ho about smaller government and it staying out of individuals rights/lives are the single most complacent about giving up their swiss army knives, taking off their shoes & stepping to the left for the TSA soup-nazis. I don’t even remember much of an out cry from the Right (or the Left) when the second amendment was repealed in Louisiana after Katrina. I just want the [del]Bush-Sez[/del] Simon-Sez rubber-stamp game to end.
I’ll add that the future is yet to be written and that this country is still worth fighting for. I didn’t support Baldwin when he threatened to leave; I laughed at the NeoCons with their “What is this, Russia?” mantra in the 80’s and 90’s whenever votes/rulings/elections didn’t go their way, but they didn’t leave either.
Life is a journey; sometimes rain floods the path you’d planned on taking. You make the best of it, but you don’t let arrogant sacks of crap push you around or off your path either.