Alas, Natasha, truth is not always the ally of virtue.
Remember Mondale? His naive Minnesota candor, how he said “Look, the budget is the shit, has been for years, the Pubbies have Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Taxes will be raised, revenue enhanced, no matter what anybody tells you, two plus two isn’t eight. So, yeah, if elected I will raise taxes, so will he, nobody has any choice in this…”
Now, perhaps, if he had been a bit less ingenuous, he might have only lost to St. Ronnie of Bakersfield, rather than being totally creamed, coast to coast.
Kerry’s position is no less problematic. Our situation is so dreadfully screwed up, Jesus Horatio Christ can’t fix it in four years, whoever sits in the WH has a real shitstorm in his immediate future. We’re on our way to Hell in a handbasket, I’m not dreaming of reversing course, I’ll be content just to apply the brakes.
If Kerry tells the real truth about the likely nature of our next four years, Teresa can forget about picking out drapes for the Lincoln bedroom.
Talk about yer cognitive disonance! How about some facts to back up that doomsday scenario which, even for you, is over-the-top in its melodramatic predictions. “To Hell in a handbasket”? Please tell us you’re exagerating for effect.
Just to amplify DSeid’s comment (and the stance I infer from his post), Barack Obama said it well:
This seems especially true even in pracitcal terms, in light of situations such as this. But then, I believe one essential and fundamental strength of human society, in contrast to almost all other animal species, is that we care for the elderly, sick, weak, and disadvantaged among us. We can disagree over the extent the government should be involved in such things, but clearly some such is mandated by the constitution (“provide for the general welfare”), and in some situations relying on the goodwill of local institutions, both secular and religious is simply not enough.
In a nutshell, we cannot afford as a civilization to be selfish. In that direction lies ruin.
For me, Kerry’s presidency will mark a strong turn away from the kind of ruinous selfishness which characterizes Bushite doctrine.
Except for the current resident of the White House, according to his defenders.
As you know, GWB’s defenders give a laundry list of terrorist actions that happened on Clinton’s watch, then excoriate him for not having responded to the terrorist threat. If GWB knew about those earlier attacks (except the Cole, of course) from July 2000 on, then he’s really got no excuse for having been caught flat-footed on September 11, 2001.
Actually, he doesn’t anyway, since the attacks on the laundry list were a matter of public record, and by 2000 it was clear that AQ was behind a fair number of them.
Obviously this was not directed at me, but I will share some general observations.
[ol]
[li]It is my impression that our standing in the world has declined under this administration. By that I mean that we are less respected. Given that the world is more dangerous to us than it was, this is troubling. We need all of the friends that we can get.[/li][li]The economy is bad. I know that supposedly it is recovering, but I don’t know anyone that is better off now than they were 4 years ago. My guess is that there is probably more money floating around, but it seems more concentrated.[/li][li]The current administration seems very willing to let a conservative god that I do not believe in inform their decisions. I am talking about things like the faith based initiatives, anti-gay marriage amendments, draping over the lady justice statue because it showed a boob and so forth. [/li][li]The closed door meetings in which things like energy policy get decided strikes me as undemocratic, as do no-bid contracts for reconstruction and the like. In general, this administration is coming off as very insider trading and corrupt.[/li][li]The Patriot Act. I know that this piece of legislation has been over hyped as being worse than it is, but I think that it as well as a lot of security measures that this administration have put in to place, when looked at as a whole, point to a theme in which civil rights are viewed as an inconvenience to be circumvented.[/li][li]Prisoners held without being charged for months (or years) on end.[/li][/ol]
I could go on, but I think the point is that many of us have never felt so alienated and un represented by our government as we do now. It feels as though we are going to hell in a hand basket.
Aw, c’mon, John-boy, you’re enticing me to do for “hijack” what outer space does for “empty”! But one can fairly say that the expression “Hell in a handbasket” is, in fact, a rhetorical device. If that is sufficient to permit me to wriggle off the hook and obviate any need for a 10-page treatise on the dire condition of the Republic, good. If not, well, la-di-dah, la-di-dah…
Nonetheless, I commend your awareness of the dreadful implications of the epidemic of Cognitive Dissonance (the number one theat to the Republic!) and will forward to you pamphlets and other literature upon your request.
Absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, but that’s OK. I don’t understand half of what you write even on a good day.
You are now free to wriggle about the cabin.
Save them. There’s a good chance that Bush will get reelected, in which case many around these parts will need to understand how “we’re going to hell in a handbasket” and “Bush won” can both be true at the same time (or not).
[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
Oh; then I did see it, I just didn’t understand how that quote matched with your statement. He was busy, so he hadn’t been briefed by the evening of the announcement. That’s not exactly “declin[ing] to be briefed”, is it? If I say “today’s no good for me, how’s tomorrow?”, I’m not refusing to meet with someone. Apart from which, wasn’t that the announcement that Ridge made clear was not based on any new intelligence? Nothing about this implies wilful ignorance on John Kerry’s part, as you seemed to be suggesting. Not to me, anyway.
[QUOTE]
Well, I don’t know what it means or doesn’t mean, which is why I said he’d never explained it. You seek to assume that this was the only breifing that he had turned down (and had perhaps accepted others), had not been offered it until that day, and that he did accept it very shortly after. That’s plausible, but IMO requires giving him an awful lot of benefit of the doubt.
One could also read into it that they’d been offering for weeks to give him a general breifing on the current threats, and he’d been turning them down while campaigning all over the country and skiing in Aspen. That’s plausible too, though I think it requires giving him no benefit of the doubt.
My guess is something in between.
I would have been relieved if he had clarified the next day that he was only referring to that specific briefing and that he had had others, or that he had indeed been briefed the morning after the fundraiser or something like that; but he didn’t. Given that much discussion has been and will be made about whether or not the current president went ahead with plans without adequately checking the facts, I find “hey, he’s a busy guy” inadequate. YMMV
What is going on in this thread is illustrative of what is going on in the country. A remarkably large number of people have already made up their mind about the Presidential election. For those allied with Mr. Bush and the Republican Party there is damned little that Senator Kerry can do right. He says the wrong things, he intends the wrong things, he and his works are held in distain. For those who have committed to Senator Kerry the situation is reversed. We argue every point as if it were the only issue, the last ditch to be defended to the last man and the last bullet – every position is one to be held at all costs. Nothing Senator Kerry does is going to persuade some of our friends that there is the mere possibility that Senator Kerry may be a better choice to head one branch of our national government than President Bush. I can’t think of anything President Bush can possibly say or do that will persuade me that he is a better choice than Senator Kerry. Rightly or wrongly, President Bush’s policies and the public statements made by him and his posse and surrogates have so biased my views that I will find it nearly impossible to take him at face value.
Sure the Convention in Boston was intended to rally the faithful, but more importantly it was intended to appeal to that narrow demographic that has not yet made up their mind. Every thing I see tells me that that relatively small group of voters in maybe a dozen states will decide the election. Those people must be stroked and encouraged. To do that there was a minimum of Bush Bashing in public at the Boston Convention. Kerry made no attempt to gain the support of people who have given their heart to George Bush simply because to do so is a waste of time and effort – under what circumstances, for instance, could we convince someone like Mr. Motto to vote for Senator Kerry; under what circumstances could I be persuaded to surrender my allegiance to Senator Kerry? It’s not going to happen. The undecided votes, the conscientious, the inattentive, the ambivalent, the indecisive, the perfectionists, are going to decide this election. You can be very sure that the people handling George Bush know that as well as the people handling John Kerry.
In wooing the undecided somebody is bound to screw up, over play their hand, crash and burn. Kerry has gotten through alright so far. Let’s see how the President manages to keep his unholy alliance together while appealing to the great unwashed.
Getting back to the OP – I wonder how Bush is going to follow this act? He’ll be expected to end the Republican National Convention with his own acceptance speech, which will be set beside Kerry’s for comparison. What will he say?
Personally, I look forward to the Republican Convention with the heartfelt enthusiasm of the true partriot. That, and I can’t wait to watch the Daily Show take on it.
“Vote for me because I’m already President, and we don’t wanna rock the boat.” Really, what else can he say? Bush’s record speaks for itself, and it sounds worse than Dick Cheney with an open mic.
And turning the GOP’s talking points against Kerry back on Bush is trivially easy – you don’t need to be a skilled commentator to realize how silly it is for the Bush camp to shout “Kerry only spent four months in Vietnam!” or “Kerry can’t build an international coalition for Iraq!” The only attribute Bush has over Kerry is that Bush is farther to the right, and that’s not something everyone believes is a good thing.
Actually, I expect Bush will talk a lot more about specifics than Kerry did. You keep forgetting that it’s Bush talking about his record, not you. He’ll do what every politician does-- emphasize the positive and ignore the negative:
Afghanistan liberated.
Irag liberated, S.H. behind bars
No terror attacks on American soil since 9/11
Economy recovering (after dot-com bust and 9/11 attacks)
Tax cuts mean more money in the hands of working famiiles
Give it up John. These guys LOVE to wallow in how bad things are (or should I say in how they THINK things are through their grey colored anti-bush 2000 glasses). We are going to ‘hell in a handcart’ after all. The world is simply safe for Haliburton now, and the economy is going down in flames…fast. Hell, its another depression…right around the corner, going to hit us any day now, and I keep expecting someone to tell me fire and brimstone is falling from the skys and that dogs and cats are living together. And the major jobs in the US are at Walmart…oh, and KMart of course. Sometimes its like I’m living in an alternate state of reality than the majority of the posters on this board. Maybe I am…
I guess you have to look at the bad when you are a partisan, and there certainly has been more than a fair share with this president. Certainly the Republicans I knew found enough ‘bad’ to keep them content when Clinton was in office…now its Bush’s turn. Personally no matter how apathetic I am towards Bush, things just don’t seem as grim as the people on this board love to paint it. I mean, compared to the 70’s (or even the 80’) things seem fine to me. I guess I’m just not looking in the right places…
