Yes, clean air, potable water, protecting what little wilderness we have left, and not torturing animals is pretty “extremist”, isn’t it?
Dude, Kerry is NOT left-wing. Not even close. Nader, maybe. Kucinich, maybe. Sharpton, maybe. Kerry? No. If you would change your vote because some liberals on an internet message board pissed you off, that doesn’t say much for your critical reasoning skills. In all honesty, though, Bush sounds like just the kind of guy for you. You don’t get much more right-wing than Bush. If you want to have assault weapons, allow big business to plunder the economy with scant reprisals, and undo all the progress that’s ever been made in protecting the environment, he’s definitely the guy to do it. It’s unbelievable to me that anyone would want that, but I guess everyone’s entitled to his opinion.
I wasn’t implying that they weren’t left-wing. I just said “maybe” because I was actually trying to stave off a sidetrack where people might say. “Well, Sharpton [Nader, Kucinich] isn’t really blah, blah, blibbity, bling…” Obviously, I was unsuccessful, since you sidetracked it anyway.
The point was that Kerry is further to the right than any of those guys.
You did know that Kerry voted in favor of the Patriot Act, do you not?
As far as Kerry being right-wing, I wouldn’t say that. Neither does the National Journal,who ranked him as the most liberal member of the Senate - further to the left even than Edwards.
And according to the CNN breakdown of candidate positions, he backs letting it expire without Congressional approval. I don’t mind my choice of politician making a mistake, as long as they fix it later. I won’t say the Patriot Act was a good idea at the time… but it was reasonable at the time, considering the overall climate.
Which says nothing against my point that Kerry is a liberal. Quite the opposite - when Kerry thinks a vote is important, he votes liberal. On the votes he doesn’t care about, he still usually votes liberal, but not as lockstep. QED - Kerry is a liberal when he thinks it counts.
Read the links for discussion of the votes leading to the ranking. Keep in mind that the ADA rating is a lifetime rating, and is therefore less likely to be affected by Kerry neglecting to vote because he is out campaigning.
Well, you are correct that liberals generally want to raise taxes, and conservatives want to cut them. And certainly Kerry has already promised to raise taxes if elected. But a centerpiece of Bush’s economic policy is the tax cuts he credits with our recovery from the recession he inherited from the Clinton administration, which Kerry wants to repeal. Kerry wants to increase some other taxes - his belief is that this will create jobs.
So if your objection to Bush is that he raised taxes, Kerry is not going to be any more conservative - far less so, in fact, since Kerry favors large spending increases that will far more than offset his tax increases. So far, Kerry has proposed about $1.7 trillion over ten years in spending increases, which he says he will pay for by rescinding the Bush tax cuts, to the tune of about $650 billion. (Washington Post, March 24, 2004). So we would wind up with big tax increases, a huge increase in the size and complexity of the federal government, a stalled recovery, and a bigger deficit.
Kerry’s best hope, if elected, would be that the Republican-controlled Congress will block all his initiatives on spending and tax increases. Not sure they can do that in all circumstances, as Kerry wants to send more troops to Iraq, increase spending on health care for veterans, and so forth. So he doesn’t even have the usual liberal excuse of cutting military spending to pay for increases in domestic spending.
Which points out a lot of “what is wrong with Kerry”. The best you can hope for is that he can’t do what he says.
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blowero, you claimed that Kerry was further to the right than Kucinich. According to the ADA and National Journal, you are talking out your ass.
Interestingly, I find his behavior in 1971 to be an enormous vote in his favor. He served in the military, then after leaving the military, protested against what he viewed (and what the consensus of history seems to view) as an unjust war. So he wasn’t a draft dodger. Nor was he a jingoistic warhawk. What course of action could be more admirable?
This is the same wonderwench who thinks that we shouldn’t be asking questions about 9/11 while we are engaged in war.
As a side note, reading this thread to get caught up, the fact that people are more concerned about a ban on assault weapons than laws restricting rights and invading sovereign nations in a disastrous attempt to (one can only imagine) get more terrorists pissed off at us is frightening. O_o I mean, I’ve heard of loving guns, but…
The basic gist of this thread is: “Kerry is evil because he is a liberal.”
Doesn’t do much to convince me, but some people are more partisan than others.
Actually, what Kerry wants to do is cut the part of the tax cuts on the richest folks…I believe those making over $200,000 per year. And, he want to keep the tax cuts for everyone else and even have some further targetted tax cuts to create jobs.
Bush’s tax cuts were so pathetic in their targetting that, as economists like Krugman pointed out, the cost per claimed created-job was ridiculously high. (It would have been considerably more efficient to just hire people onto the government payroll.) And, of course, there is no evidence that they have lived up to their claims in terms of job creation. I don’t think one could have devised a better plan to balloon the deficit as much while creating so little economic stimulus if one had made this their goal!
So it goes from “maybe” to “of course”. And your assertion that Kerry is “further to the right” than Kucinich is as idiotic as it has ever been.
This is moronic. You people either don’t realize how stupid you are sounding, or you know and don’t care. Or else you are so used to spouting off in front of others of your kind who don’t challenge your half-witted reactive Bush-bashing that you have no realization of how dumb you sound.
You made an argument - that Kerry is to the right of even the far left like Kucinich. This argument is horseshit, according to the ADA, the National Journal, and other organizations with at least a nodding acquaintance with reality. And all you can come up with is assinine crap about smoking crack.
If you ever want to work on some discussion that is not a far Left circle jerk, let me know.
On the “O’Franken Factor” today, Al Franken presented a nice debunking of the core flip flip charges against Kerry, as presented in wonderfully right-wing fashion by Sean Hannity. Enjoy it here. Perhaps those making the assertion that Kerry flip flops could specify a bit more precisely what they are talking about in the future.
Surely Shodan will start a pit thread soon, where he can more appropriately express how moronic, stupid and masturbatory those who disagree with Bush are. Or perhaps he might model more appropriate behavior here, so that we might aspire to improve ourselves.
Oh, the circlejerk bit. Yes, that is a keen debating tactic used commonly by some types. I like to call it the, “Why does everyone disagree with me? It must be some conspiracy. You’re all wrong. I hate you” gambit.
All I’ll say is this - Democrats? Getting head in the Oval Office. Republicans? Duct taping tarps over statues of the Lady Justice.
Unfortunately, I’m still a Republican, but you can see which side is more appealing.
