That’s not the impression I get from a large number of Democrats.
I try not to be “passionate” about anything, if I can avoid it, but I do find myself taking this election personally. My parents are die hard Republicans (Rush/Fox exclusives), but didn’t push too hard to instill that in my brother and me. I was 19 for Clinton/Dole, and didn’t care enough to vote. Bush/Gore, I paid attention to and considered both before deciding on Gore mainly out of concern for the Supreme Court balance. By 2004, I had been reading a lot more, and was pissed off. I forgive a 2000 Bush vote as a vote for the party, a politician you liked, conservative principles, etc. But 2004 was beyond that. A 2004 Bush vote was a vote to condone the way he led and all the things he had done. I have still not quite forgiven America for that. (I know you’re all crushed!) As for my family, there were some frictional Thanksgiving dinner conversations, but it was all civil. As much as I hated Bush, I had to admit that Kerry was pretty much a boob, and the way Iraq looked back then, I really didn’t expect a Kerry admin to be a whole lot different… but at least we wouldn’t be condoning the way Bush had done things. But America did. So we got more of it, but cranked up to 11 for four more glorious years.
This year… I almost hung up on my mother when I talked to her a week ago. I love my mother. She has a heart of pure gold, and can do no harm. I keep telling myself that. But I am having a harder and harder time trying to reconcile that lovely person I know with the values, policies, documented behaviors and results that she votes for and apparently whole-heartedly believes in. It almost boiled over last Saturday with them cheering for Palin the morning after her first speech. By that time, I had read some fact-checking of that speech, troopergate, broken-watergate, oh! and some Jesus! I know they didn’t read those things (or worse, would apparently approve of them). They got all they needed from her speech, and they felt good about her. I am afraid to call again today to find out what they haven’t learned in the last week. Also afraid of snapping, and saying something unnecessarily mean to my mom. No election or anything outside of personal family matters has ever affected me this way. I know it shouldn’t be so personal. My life and theirs will go on just about the same regardless of who wins. It just really burns me up that they fall for it.
So to me: if 2000->2004 was a difference in voting for republican ideas versus condoning Bush’s actions. Then 2004->2008 is that and more. Now, voting R is not just condoning what has happened in the last 4-8 years, but from the way the campaigns are going it’s also a difference between Buying Bullshit and Not Buying Bullshit. Today, McCain is running as the Change Candidate, with a straight face. Anyone who buys this shit is too far gone for me to respect their intellect any longer. Apparently that is just about 50% of the country. Luckily, I only really have to forgive my mother and father.
It feels beyond difference of opinion to me. It has gone as far as an election about right vs wrong. Voting for the past vs the future. It should be as simple as the Right Track-Wrong Track Poll, which has actually given me a little hope for America in the last year or so. But somehow, instead, it is going to be another referendum on abortion and communism. Pathetic. I expect a 49-48% squeaker for McCain. We might as well not have candidates and just have a ballot every 4 years that asks: “Does America still love Guns, Jesus, and Babies?”
My first post! /bow:cool:
Some of you younuns don’t know what it was like before abortion could be had. heres a little story.
http://www.counterpunch.org/schulte01202006.html
It was a hard time. People will find a way.
Sampiro, I’m right with you on this one. I have always been passionate about politics, but this year I find myself with a HUGE dog in this fight. I truly believe that we are fighting for America’s future in this election. I fail to see how anyone can ever trust the GOP again after the cesspool that has been the last 8 years. Lying this country into Iraq, Gonzo-gate, Swiftboat–my Og, are people so blinded by their own prejudices and jingoism that they choose to ignore what’s staring them directly in the face, burning holes in their skulls?
Passionate? I watched or listened to both Palin’s and McCain’s speeches and was actually talking back to the screen/radio! Palin said, "Obama wants to negotiate with our enemies!" I’m yelling, "You mean like Nixon? Or Reagan?. I saw all those “Country First” signs and I’m saying, “No, it’s People First!” Sorry, but “Country First” sounds a bit too, well, shall we say, Teutonic for my tastes. Not a Nazi comparison, you understand, just my personal observation–YMMV.
As for Obama, many have accused him of personifying “style over substance”. Well, if we’ve learned anything from the last two elections, it’s that the majority of the voting public doesn’t give a sack of fetid dingo’s kidneys about “substance”, so “style” is what it will take to ultimately prevail in this one. I believe he has both, but “style” is what brings people to the table, like it or not. I believe he has some great ideas for this country. Anything is better than what we’ve been put through the past 8 years.
McCain says, if he wins, he will reach across the aisle to make government work again. Well, John, I hope you’re prepared to do the same if–sorry, when you lose. You and your fellow travelers will have to regain the trust of the American people–a trust you all so foolishly squandered.
Passionate? Yes indeed–and apparently I’m not alone in this. According to this, in the 24 hours after Palin’s speech, the RNC raised $1 million in donations. Obama’s campaign raised $10 million in the same time period.
Nice first post, IMHO. I’d modify the above with one addition, which exactly describes why I will not vote Republican (at least on a federal level) for a good long time – it’s not just that anyone who is currently Republican is condoning the last 8 years, it’s that they are complicit in the abuses.
Perhaps my favorite indication of the farce that has been the last 8 years is that, here in WA state, many Republicans refuse to put “Republican” next to their names on the ballot. Rather, they’re listed as running for the “GOP”.
And I don’t think anybody in the country who plans to vote for McCain is thinking that.
:dubious:
As far as policy is concerned, fine. I don’t want to impeach nor indict Bush for leading us into an ill-advised war; that’s not a crime, just abysmally bad policy. But when someone disregards the constitution & undermines systems of oversight to commit crimes, then the investigation & impeachment is a constitutional duty. Impeachment is in the Constitution. It’s part of the system, not an abrogation of it. So too is the principle that the government is subject to the law.
Naw, not that many. And considering Bush’s record-breaking deficits, it will be. So those threads will be fighting ignorance.
The first attitude is surer way to keep every administration honest.
Can you give me a few examples? Because I’m not at all sure that lying to Congress isn’t a prosecutable offense, and it seems to me that pressuring your intelligence agencies to give you reports that say what you want them to say rather than what they actually believed can be construed as lying. At the very least, I’d think it would be indictable, even if the case couldn’t be won.
Personally, I’d like to see the President legally held accountable for the actions and decisions taken by his direct reports and a level or two down, but I understand that that is extremely difficult. Apparently the old days of Truman no longer hold - the buck stops at Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and their assorted underlings.
Unfortunately, Search isn’t working in Chrome or Firefox at the moment so I’ll have to come back to this when it is
OK, whenever you get the chance. It happens with computers. A lot. 
Right, it’s working now - I think that there’s an issue with Search where if you plug in a search which returns no results, it mucks things up for some time. And no message is issued if you try to do a second search too quickly.
Baldwin would like Bush shot (presumably after a trial).
Vincent Buliosi wants to prosecute Bush for murder.
The Tao’s Revenge wants Bush sent to Syria.
BarnOwl wants to prosecute him.
And so on.
Looks to me like no one wants to prosecute Bush for recreational purposes. They want to prosecute him for crimes - torture, primarily, but murder in the sense of leading into unnecessary war by lying also. Whether or not these are actually crimes is arguable and would best be left to a grand jury and ultimately, probably the Supremes. But I don’t see people just casually wishing to prosecute Bush for the heck of it. I see them as wanting to prosecute him for things they have moderately good reason to believe are crimes, even if ultimately they were not found to be (crimes, that is).
You’ve got battleground states around you. Spend a weekend in one. I just had a young woman that drove in from Ottawa to help with the campaign for a day. that’s a 9 hour trip she made and she’ll make again (probably) during Thanksgiving.
[OT] Speaking of battleground states, I’ve been watching Discovery Channel all evening, through Mythbusters and a couple of 9/11 retrospectives (I realized I had watched absolutely no TV during the period it occurred, so while I knew the facts at the time, the footage was all new to me - even the collapse of the towers), and I must have seen at least half a dozen, maybe more McCain commercials, but not a single Obama commercial. There were also several on the BMW golf tournament. This the the Delaware Valley market, encompassing Philadelphia and its wealthier suburbs, as well as across the river here in its decidedly less wealthy surroundings. I wonder why McCain is making such a drive here while Obama seems to be ignoring it for now. 
[/OT]
The hard core Republican good ‘ol boys and girls are a bunch of barely literate, red-neck, homophobic, xenophobic, hypocritical bible-thumping, bully pulpit, war mongering, gun-fanatic, bold-faced racists - and they are fuckin’ proud of it.
I grew up around these type of people. They are idiot assholes.
These same idiot assholes elected Dubya twice, and now these same assholes at the Republican Convention couldn’t distance themselves far enough away from “their” President.
The Republican smear campaign never talks issues. They play off fear. They have turned popularity here and abroad into a bad thing; they ridicule education at Ivy League universities; they mock working with the community. They seem to feel if you can’t light a beer fart in the parking lot with your candidate, he ain’t worth voting for.
Passionate?! Hell yes!!
America is becoming a country that is a laughing stock and a major disappointment to the rest of the world. While that might be a badge of honor to the dumbasses in Billy Bob’s Bar, it makes me pissed off.
Ok, Quartz, you believe that Bush’s administration officials should suffer no penalty for bad acts committed while in office. Fine. Many Americans agree with you. *No repercussions, whatever. Ever. *Left, right, centrist, you can find a majority of my countrymen who agree with you.
“If the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” You know who said that? A President of the United States, & he would know. There’s a reason we call former Presidents “Mr President” long after they’ve left office. Holding the office means holding the trust of the American people, & that means we trust you to break the law for the right reasons.
Ever hear the words, “extraordinary rendition”? That’s a policy where US agents kidnap someone who is not a US citizen, outside US borders, thus outside our jurisdiction, & ship that poor soul off to an undisclosed location in a third country.
What happens there? Well, there have been some claims (almost certainly outright lies from attention-seeking schizophrenics) that persons so kidnapped are tortured. But as an American, I can be assured that no American agent would actually violate the spirit of the law; even though these people were kidnapped & are being held incommunicado, I know that our noble American boys would never, ever torture anyone–unless they deserved it, or they had to… well, mistakes are sometimes made. But this policy keeps us safe from evil foreigners! Eeeevillll foreigners with non-Midwestern accents like the villains in our Hollywood movies.
Like you, actually, Mr British person. You seem awfully interested in our politics. Are you threatening our sovereignty? Huh? Are you, bitch?
You’re on a list.
And should something ever happen to you, well, you’re not an American, so you don’t count.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. That’s not what I said.
Where did our current and most recent Republican presidents go to school?