True. It’s also a fact that it makes Bush the first and only convicted criminal ever to become President. The simple luck of the draw, re the jurisdiction it happened in, is all that’s allowing him to be eligible to hold office, or even vote. That’s even before one gets into his attempt to keep a material fact like that from becoming public.
Anyone who wants to think that voting for Bush was voting to “restore honor and integrity to the White House” is welcome to continue to think so, of course.
I take it that Clinton represents the former and Bush represents the latter. In that case, don’t Clinton’s remarks represent a much more serious breach of “strategic ambiguity”?
I’ve followed developments in China for a while now. I would have to go back into my clippings to furnish you with all the relevant cites, but my impression is that China is indeed becoming increasingly expansionist abroad and increasingly hard-line at home. The Communist Party is on the ropes, and must increasingly appeal to nationalism to prop up its legitimacy. Even as trade ties with Taiwan strengthen, the military is conducting its largest excercises ever in an effort to intimidate that island’s democratic government. China is also becoming increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea. At home, Beijing is defending its monopoly on power with ever greater force and terror–see the tactics that they’ve employed against the Falun Gong movement in the past year. They are detaining US academic researchers on trumped-up spying charges for months without trial. If you don’t believe any of these points, I’ll provide the links for you to read for yourself.
Weakness is provocative–see the history I outlined in my previous post.
What is that “something else”? Whatever it is, I don’t think Putin would cave in on ABM merely in the hopes that an appreciative US will throw him a bone in some later negotiations. Look at the timeline. Before Genoa, Putin was threatening to re-arm his country’s missiles with MIRVs if the US pursues ABM. After Genoa, he’s buddy-buddy with Bush and says that ABM is something he can live with.
Sorry, I must be in the wrong forum–I though this was Great Debates, not IMHO. Do pardon me.
And that criticism of Clinton would be equally unfair. Clinton and Bush are both strong politicians, albeit in different ways.
I’m typing this very slowly so that you can read this at your own pace, and I’m trying to keep the polysyllabic–oops, make that “big”–words to a minimum. OK, ready?
No . . . major . . . media . . . outlet . . . takes . . . your . . . view . . . that . . . Bush’s . . . recent . . . victories (whoops, make that “wins”) . . . are . . . meaningless. Even . . . a . . . liberal . . . rag . . . like . . . the . . . NYT . . . agrees . . . that . . . Bush . . . has . . . demonstrated (sorry, “shown”) . . . himself . . . to . . . be . . . a . . . strong . . . politician . . . in . . . recent . . . weeks . . . which . . . after . . . all . . . is . . . the . . . point . . . of . . . this . . . debate. I . . . do . . . indeed . . . have . . . my . . . own . . . opinion . . . and . . . the . . . attitude . . . of . . . the . . . liberal . . . media . . . in . . . this . . . case . . . tends . . . to . . . confirm . . . it.
Oh, c’mon, december, you’re better than this. You might as well have written, “I haven’t seen the evidence and the media isn’t plastering it in my face, so it must be false.” Doesn’t firsthand accounts from his superior officers count for something? Or is fighting ignorance something we shouldn’t do if it offends your political ideaologies?
**Exactly. No superior officer said that Bush had been AWOL. Q.E.D.
I confess. McCarthyism offends my political ideology. (BTW I’m old enough to remember the fear among the older generation of leftists in my family engendered by Joseph McCarthy. The leftist version isn’t any more palatable.)
**Most people use the term “convicted criminal” to mean convicted of a felony. Are you including misdemeanors in your definition. If so, is it your allegation that no other President had so much as parking ticket?
A misdemeanor is a crime. Bush was convicted of one. QED. Deal with it.
No other person with a criminal conviction on his record has ever become President - that was discussed on this board last November, if you’d care to search.
A parking ticket is a civil infraction, btw.
You can like Bush as a President while admitting he’s a flawed human being, you know. Claiming him to be morally superior to Clinton or “liberals” is contrafactual, however.
Surplus is gone. Thanks for the tax cut Mr. Bush, now well just leave our sons and daughters to pay for the coming deficits. Now, what we should fund? Missile defense, health or education? On top of that The House in republican control has just given us TRIPLE the requested Bush tax cuts for energy (yes, that is on top of the current tax cut). 80% of it going to energy producers, I guess the profits they got recently are not enough. Compassionate Corporate indeed.
To be fair, now all members of the senate have to stop kidding around. But Bush DID promise that there was going to be plenty of money to justify the tax cut.
Well, time to go to a well deserved long vacation…
“The other day Clinton opened his new office in Harlem and President Bush is a little jealous.In fact, now there’s talk that Bush might want his own office in the White House, too.”
– Jay Leno
Re: Bush AWOL. Genuine question here, not argument:
Is it only Bush’s records that are so difficult to verify, or was record-keeping in the Alabama National Guard generally spotty? If these records exist for other service members who were supposed to be there when Bush was, it should be easy for the reporters who were reporting on this subject to obtain a large list of people who, in theory, should have seen Bush, and although it would be time-consuming, I can’t imagine that no reporters would have done that.
If only Bush’s records are missing, I’d be pretty suspicious as well, but if not, I wouldn’t concern myself with spotty 30-year-old memories that can’t be supported one way or another.
The conservative consensus (and this is why I was saying history before the elections is fuzzy for Bush) was that the documents did show that he completed his duty. BUT. . . very few media outlets did report that a key document had a suspicious torn, and possible changes. But since the documents came from the army, one has to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on total time served. On the other hand, it was undeniable that Bush got more breaks than Beatle Bailey. Bush must have invented army Flextime, I have no doubts that other less influential privates would have been declared AWOL if they had done what Bush did.
One final note: the last article has one link that does not work: it is the one to the most controversial document, I figure that it was because George Magazine is dead. But I could swear thesmokinggun.com had a copy of it. Now that link is also AWOL (but not the site). IMO the document looked torn in a way that would raise healty suspicions. Anyhow, the articles do descrive the documents.
“A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.” —President Bush, July 27, 2001
Exactly. No superior officer said that Bush had been AWOL. Q.E.D.
[quote]
Ah, I see. So just because various superior officers have been quoted as saying “I don’t recall seeing George here,” that’s okay with you, as long as they don’t use the “A-word”.
Geez, this is right up their with Clinton’s “I smoked but didn’t inhale” line, ainnit? (And no, I didn’t buy that either)
I am surprised that someone with the temerity to use the media to justify his political opinions would be capable of dissenting in so charged an issue as the Lewinsky matter.
And no major media believed that Clinton’s peccadilloes were meaningless as well.
So Clinton got a blowjob in the Oval Office. If that’s the worst he was guilty of, then who cares? If he was guilty of much more than that, and he was truly a bad person, then why couldn’t his opponents muster the cajones to take him to task directly and honestly for those more serious crimes? I objected then, and I object now, to persecuting anyone–be it Clinton, Bush, or Clarence Thomas–on some trivial grounds because he can’t be caught on the real issues at stake.
In either case, there’s no doubt that Clinton is a masterful politician, and my argument is that Bush is pretty good in his own way as well. Which, after all, is the topic of this Great Debate. You and GIGO and Elvis have lost that debate, and now you’re trying to cloud the issue with a string of non-sequiters. Nice try.
BTW, why is it that when some people start losing an argument and get all huffy about it, they convey their huffiness with stilted 19th century phraseology? “I cannot believe that you have the temerity to do such and such. (Slaps Doghouse Reilly with glove.) Consider that a rebuke. Good day to you, sir.”
Well it could be that bush is the definition of a non-sequiter. And speaking of losing I got no reply for my last 2 posts, anyhow, talking as being great please remember that the tax cut was the big gun of his whole campaign, virtually no one will call you a success if the plan that has your name begins to implode the budget.
If we want to talk about Bush, the great politician, we have to cover a lot of past ground trying to find information about a politician with almost zero political history. During the primaries the local Republican party groups were making the point that the problems Texas had were not much the responsibility of the governor, since that position in Texas was a WEAK one.
Also they did many times acknowledge that Bush was not very experienced, but not to worry! He will get capable people for his cabinet. All that means that calling Bush the great politician is not right because:
It is too early to call him that.
By the own words of party members he is not the great politician, but maybe his handlers are.
I do not know Opal’s opinion
People who say X person has lost a debate when there is really no specific end to them in the SDMB are really naïve.