I cannot find any reference to this on the net. Do you have a link to the report?
Targo
Aquila Be, the Bush admin has either increased levels of toxins allowed to be released or (many times) blocked legislation to reduce allowable amounts of various dangerous chemicals and elements. You wanna cite? Many cites are out there, I’m not sure where to start. Try here.
And worst of all IMO…though it’s not related to industrial waste though it’s along the same vein.
Let me know if you want more.
Yes and no. I do agree his record doesn’t support this. I also agree that he does seem comfortable just piling up debt and letting the future politicians deal with it. However, I do think that he wants to control spending. However, with all of the fires that a POTUS has to deal with, this is the easiest one to ignore, especially in a one party dominated government.
I only base my opinion of what Bush would want to do regarding spending in a perfect world on his statements (he does talk about smaller goverment from time to time).
A good comparison is Reagan. Government spending went up during his term. However, if you read the book “Reagan: A Life In Letters” you can see that in all his correspondance, both to fellow politicians, schoolchildren, personal friends and anyone else that he really wanted a smaller government and less spending. However, it’s just not that easy to do.
We need a balanced budget ammendment. (That, or some real conservatives elected to office. ;))
It may have never been the epitome of efficiency, but it was under Bush that it went under the umbrella of Homeland Security. I think some of the paralysis of the response is due to this and there are stories of incoming aid trucks being refused entry by DHS. I think Brownie could have done a heckuva job if he had been empowered to do so.
Yet people on the SDMB do it with Reagan all the time.
Bush is hated because he is a Republican, at least on the SDMB. If everything Bush did was successful, he would still be almost universally condemned here for not doing something else, as well as condemned for being successful at what he did.
It’s like how the economy gets covered. There is always something bad to find - if employment is high, then you can talk about the dangers of inflation. If inflation is low, then you can talk about how “there are still pockets of the country that have been bypassed by the recovery” and then go on to cover some community in Appalachia or inner-city Motown where poor people live.
Are home values going up? That’s bad - couples starting out are less able to afford a house. Are they dropping? That’s bad - people are losing out on their major investment. Are we creating a lot of new jobs? That’s bad - the new jobs don’t pay as well as they would if people had seniority and experience. Is the dollar strong? Bad. Is the dollar weak? Bad. Etc., etc.
Regards,
Shodan
Which of those wonderful Reagan accomplishments should we be singing the praises now? Arming the Ayatollah? Deregulating the S&L industry? Cutting the EPA budget in half? Ignoring AIDS? Directing wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua? Embracing the old apartheid regime in South Africa? Giving tax cuts to the rich? Adding more to the debt than presidents Washington through Carter combined? Cutting the social safety net?
Yessiree, if you don’t love everything Saint Ronald did, you jus’t aren’t a good American.
Is Bush actually hated around here because he is a Republican, or because he is a fiscally-irresponsible, corporate-cronyist, anti-science, theocrat-pandering, unitary-executive, anti-transparency, anti-diplomacy, aggressive-warmongering, quagmire-enabling, torture-approving, lying Republican?
I mean, there are several other prominent Republicans who don’t attract anywhere near the hatred that Bush does around here (John McCain and Colin Powell come to mind), although they’re certainly not universally approved either. Nor do I think that people like McCain and Powell would be anywhere near as hated as Bush is even if they were sweating under the fierce light that beats upon the Oval Office.
I don’t think you can just chalk up Bush-hatred to mere anti-Republican partisanship. If Bush is that widely hated, it’s because he’s earned it.
(And it strikes me as somewhat odd that someone who expects even extreme anti-Democrat criticisms to be taken seriously—e.g., when he suggests with a straight face that Clinton and Carter were two of the three worst Presidents ever in all of American history, along with Harding—is so quick to dismiss criticisms of Bush as mere anti-Republican partisanship. Sauce for the goose, dude.)
Causing the fall of the Soviet Union? Making great strides with nuclear disarmament? Being immensely popular? Helping Britain recover the Falklands? Laying the foundations for the prosperity of the 1990s?
Equally, if you ignore the things at which he did succeed, you’re a typical SDMB Democrat.
Being competant in the Iraq war doesn’t mean that Iraq would have become a democratic paradise. It’s open to debate just what the best case realistic scenario for Iraq would have been but it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t be better than it is now.
Indeed, you make a good point. I didn’t realize that DHS interfered w/ aid trucks, but such stories do not surprise me.
Yet conservatives do it with Clinton all the time.
I dunno, this article makes it sound like it was dramatically overhauled in the mid-'90s. Not that conservatives will give Clinton credit for that. 
Because he is a Republican.
See what I mean?
Regards,
Shodan
Behold! Friend Shodan obliterates Bobs arguments and examples in a mere nine words! I can readily see why one wouldn’t want to weaken such sublime and succinct eloquence with mere facts!
The 2004 election is the answer: Iraq was still plausible to the public (those who knew better, knew better, but at that time you could still be Swift-boated, the usual right-wing tactic of questioning your patriotism, if you pointed out that it was a disaster getting worse by the day), and Bush won.
The 2006 election is the answer too: What the majority thinks can be pointed out by the results for two Senators I know of who voted for the military commissions bill, the one where the Prez gets to rewrite the Geneva conventions as he sees fit, in this past election: Menendez here in NJ was re-elected comfortably, as was Lieberman in CT. Menendez you could explain by way of the Dem sweep of this past election, but Lieberman is a different story: if anyone really cared what Bush has done to civil liberties and really cared that we were in Iraq in the first place, that man wouldn’t be able to make dog-catcher. Instead, he’s now getting ovations for being a “man of principle”, despite his principles being imperialism and, well, imperialism.
The people continue to get the government they deserve.
All of his actions show exactly the opposite.
See above.
Is *that * why neither one ever even considered trying? :dubious: Really?
Yes, friends, if the facts were exactly the opposite of what they are, Bush would be competent and successful and admirable, and he and Reagan would be fiscally responsible. The conservative partisans would be right.
In Bizarro World.
While I have a great deal of respect for Reagan, and consider that he was ‘benignly rather thick’, WTF is that stuff about the Falklands ?
We were left to hang out to dry by the USA, it would have taken two words from the USA to sort out the problem, rather than F.O. a polite G.O. would have done it.
We lost good troops, stretched ourselves to the limits and killed a lot of people that we liked - silly bastards did not understand surrender - b/oody conscripts
My view is that the USA Government was interested to see how far we would go, and they found that if somebody sticks a pin in our arse we will just lose it.
Personally I think that it is sensible to keep ones standing army ‘blooded’, it is sad to see kids die, but live ammunition training is necessary.
The Falklands War was unnecessary and the USA should have stepped in.
Personally I would have taken it into Argentina, a few torpedos in the harbours and ballistic missiles with minimal warheads would have made people think.
Then how do you explain the fact that, as I noted above, there are other prominent Republican politicians who are nowhere near as hated around here as Bush is?
(And, as I noted above, if you refuse to consider denigration of Bush as anything more substantive and serious than mere partisan Republican-hating, why should we consider your denigration of Clinton and Carter as anything more substantive and serious than mere partisan Democrat-hating?)
Relying on bitter little sarcastic quips in place of detailed substantive arguments doesn’t make you right, although it may make you somewhat safer from refutation.
Don’t worry - the instant they start acting like Republicans, or trying to appeal to any of the groups that make up the Republican base, or are associated with Bush in any way, they will be excoriated as well.
Then people will say things about McCain like:
Isn’t it interesting that you would like to forget a third of my list in your haste to mischaracterize my list as mere Democrat bashing?
But feel free to offer a counter-example. Perhaps you could cite the many, many instances where you praised a Republican President.
Spare me. None of the Usual Suspect address “substantive arguments” in debates like this.
But at least you recognize your failures to refute me.
Regards,
Shodan
Thinking Reagan caused the fall of the USSR is fanciful indeed, worthy of a thread unto itself. By the time he got into office, both the US and USSR had enough weaponry to turn the civilized world into rubble and then bounce the rubble. Any disarmament that took place in his tenure was welcome but not significant. I don’t think the British needed US help in the unfortunate conflict in the Falklands. Laying the foundations for the prosperity of the 1990s? Sure was nice of him to have 8 years of wasteful spending and irresponsible tax cuts so that Clinton could give us 8 years of peace, prosperity, and government surplus.
Um, dude, are you seriously trying to claim that John McCain and Colin Powell have not been “associated with Bush in any way”? For example, in case you’ve forgotten, Powell used to be Bush’s Secretary of State.
And my point stands: even when closely associated with Bush, Powell and McCain weren’t ever as hated around here as Bush appears to be. So evidently it is not merely “being a Republican” that is the source of such levels of hatred.
The rest of your attempted explanation is just True Scotsman fallacy: you claim that merely being a Republican is what gets Bush so hated, but the reason that Republicans like Powell and McCain aren’t equally hated is because they aren’t real Republicans. Uh-huh. :rolleyes:
Hey, I never said that I personally was a big fan of McCain. I just pointed out that around here, he is nowhere near as unpopular as Bush is, even though he too is a Republican politician.
I didn’t say that “your list was mere Democrat bashing”; in fact, the thread I linked to was specifically about selecting a list of the three worst Presidents in American history, so there is nothing “bashy” about having produced such a list.
What I question is the rationality of your putting the two most recent Democratic Presidents on that list, which is a pretty extreme negative evaluation of them. Even severe critics of Clinton and Carter don’t usually go so far as asserting that they were two of the three worst Presidents in all of American history.
But my point, which you seem to have missed in your defensive reaction, is not to accuse you of Democrat-bashing but simply to inquire why we should take your criticisms of Democrat presidents any more seriously than you’re willing to take our criticisms of a Republican president. Seems to me that if you expect your fellow debaters to give you any credit for arguing deliberately from a rational basis rather than just indulging in mindless partisanship, you need to be willing to extend the same credit to them.
Well, by investigating the comparisons with other Republicans and with Democrats, I’m at least being more substantive in this debate than you are.
Well, as I noted, while you were limiting your response to caustic little free-floating epigrams there was nothing to refute. Now that you’ve been forced to actually back them up with attempts at factual assertions, though, I have refuted you, e.g., with my detection of your “True Scotsman” fallacy.