"The FACTS are that we DID go to Afganistan and remove most of OBL's organization and their protectors. Finding one man-regardless of his hight and alleged health problems is not an easy task and our first person intelligence will take a very long time to cultivate, which is the only way we'll catch someone who is the ideological spearhead of an entire movement. People used that same argument when we hadn't yet caught Sadam."

That's exactly my point, do you honestly think that we couldn't have gotten OBL within the same time frame we got Sadam if we had sent 130,000 troops to Afghanistan instead of only 8,000 troops. And Okay, lets just say that OBL is that clever to avoid capture, don't you think a mention of his name and the assurance to the U.S. public and more importantly to the 9/11 families that he is still our number one priority would have been the right thing to do.

And sure there are a lot of politicians in bed with the Saudi's, but guess what they wouldn't get my vote either...Democrat or Republican. And if building a Democratic example in the Middle East is such a high priority goal, then why not rebuild Afghanistan as that example after doing the honorable thing and getting rid of the dreaded Taliban. Those poor people actually were throwing flowers at our troops instead of shooting at them.
But I guess Iraq's oil is more useful than Afghanistan's opium.

 

What planet are you from?

President Bush was an Air Force fighter pilot; a graduate of the Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT), and F-106 RTU. He was an officer in the Air Force of the United States. That is NOT "avoiding national service".

That's the problem with this election...uninformed voters.

 

Doc,

"What planet are you from?"

No need to get offensive, that's the problem with talking politics.
We're all friends sharing our different points of views. If this post is going to get ugly then we should all just stop and go back to talking Porsches.

The jist of what Mcfly said is true, how much of a service could he have done if he had to show dental records to account for his whereabouts?

 

The problem with politics is that too many people are under-informed, and do not remember their history. If we could only discuss the facts of the issues, and not the minutia and retoric, we would have better people in office. The fact about the Saudi's and Bush is that the Saudi's have invested over $200 million in Bush enterprises. That kind of money would sway even my thinking.

Also, if foreign policy wasn't affected by big business, then why did Halliburton get the contract, unopposed, to rebuild Iraq? Could it be something to do with the fact that Dick Cheney was their previous CEO?

Bush cannot hope to pay for what he has vaguely promised in this version of his acceptance speech. We are already 3 or 4 trillion? back in debt from the balance budget we had 4 years ago. How much more will Bush borrow from our kids?

Finally, all you have to do is re-read Bush's first acceptance speech (4 years ago) to see how little he actually accomplished verses what he promised. What happened to "I am a uniter, not a divider"? Why do you think that he will be different this time around?

 

Larry,

Under-informed and forgotten history is right!

1) Who do you think Clinton brought in on a sole source deal to restore Kosovo after going to war WITHOUT first getting the UN's approval?
2) Please look at all the facts when you address fiscal and economic issues. Recession began at receding years of Clinton/Gore. Attacked on 9/11 (do you have any idea what that cost us both in dollars and psychology to our economy?). Frankly, I'm stunned at how quickly we've started to recover from these 2 things! I'm 100% for tax cuts and believe in incentivizing success not subsidizing failure, but even I didn't think the tax cuts could start to take effect so soon.
3) Care to share some of what Bush supposedly didn't accomplish as he promised?

Respectfully submitted

 

Hmmm, Larry, make sure you get the whole family to vote, coz it looks like you're out numbered here in GT world!

 

Topspn, what you state has nothing to do with what I posted. If Clinton brought in Halliburton, unopposed (a fact of which I am unaware) he had no political ties to them. I do not agree that the recession to which you refer started while Clinton was in office. I seem to remember rising stock market prices, higher interest rates and unemployment dropping to 4%.

I also did not state anything about the current economy, nor it being entirely Bush's fault, but since you mention it, yes 9/11 was an extreme situation and you cannot blame anyone for the impact that it had on our country. The Bush administration did their best to handle the situation, (they do have some smart people), and the country is recovering. Wether or not the democrats could have done better is pure conjecture. However the continuing rising unemployment (over 6%) that only now is abating, albeit slowly, is not being helped by the Republican position of outsourcing jobs.

And as far as what he promised to do that he didn't, I would need to re-eaxmine his speech to give you the specifics that you request, which I do not have on hand. However, I can say that he has managed to polarize the country to a much greater degree than before, and our international relationships are at an all time low. So much for unity.

As far as tax cuts, how will Bush pay for his new plans and how will he reduce the deficit that he has created? I dislike taxes as well as the next guy, and I pay a lot, but you don't get anything for free, and less taxes means less services. Reaganomics didn't work long term, just ask George senior, and it sounds like that all over again.

 

Not to add flame to this argument, but I dont belive the man has much on the side of intelligence and common sence, nor do most republican presidents for that matter:

In a report published Monday, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania detailed its findings of a four-month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush. Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the education community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.

According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 50 years, from F.D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking.

The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:

147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald Ford (R)
175 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald Reagan (R)
098 George HW Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
091 George W. Bush (R)
The six Republican presidents of the past 50 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91.

The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126. No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176.

Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.

"All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers. Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking."

The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist.

This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001 and released on July 9, 2001 to subscribing member universities and organizations within the education community.


Media Services Coordinator
Educational Service District 123
547-8441, ext. 271

 

That study sure seems fair to me.

Looks like they gave all the ones with D after their name around 180, and all those with R after their name about half of that.

Sounds like the mainstream media is up to their usual tricks.

 

"The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist. "

Looks to me like they have a lot of smart people working on their hands... and its not a coincedece that the Republicans have a low IQ, its just what these Rebuplican presidents have.. now, IQ is only a small factor of if a person should be a good president, however, I find it hard to believe that anyone with a 91 IQ could run a country, no matter what their other good traits are...

also, Bush was the first president that has published nothing, and his vocabulary is paltry at best

 

Here are a couple of interesting comments from the BBC news website (British Broadcasting Corp www.bbc.com) I still get all my news from them, old habits die hard!

And in the absence of any detailed picture from Mr Kerry himself, Mr Bush filled in the blanks on Mr Kerry's political record sheet.

He criticised Mr Kerry for a policy of "expanding government", saying that Mr Kerry wanted more than two trillion dollars in new federal spending. John Kerry has left himself vulnerable to Republican attacks

George Bush neatly glossed over the fact that he himself has expanded federal spending by 29% since coming to office and sent the budget plummeting into the red.

The "tax and spend" attack on Mr Kerry works partly because that is what many Americans assume Democrats do, despite the fact that former President Bill Clinton successfully balanced his budget.

But it also works because Mr Kerry created the opening for the Republicans to attack.

and they go on to say......

In these troubling times, will Americans prefer someone as absolutist and unwavering as George Bush? Or will they go for someone with a more nuanced approach? Excellent arguments can be made for both sides.


Also I believe President Bush was the first ever US President to have never been to Europe before being elected.

 

Most people don't realize it but WWIII is essentially on, and as such, it is virtually impossible for any president to balance the budget during wartime.

 

Excellent post, Andrew. A more objective look at both sides.

 

I must say that most all of these posts have had excellent points on both sides. Most of us also have pretty much made up our minds as to who we feel will lead our country best. Is a strong and proactive foreign/military policy your major concern or is domestic policy to include health care, s.s., and jobs your focus? I can repect opposing view points and find merit when it presents itself. I think usually we vote our wallet first with other issues running a close second. As for me, my living is derived from servicing and enhancing the cars we on 6speed love to drive. Even with 9/11 and the war in Afganistan and Iraq, the past 3 years have been nothing but growth for my business. Granted i live in a part of the country that has experienced higher than average growth in general but from what i see first hand, people have more money to spend, especially on high perfromance and racing mods. When things are poor even the better off of us tend to tighten the purse strings. Bush 1 fell to Clinton on a resession inherrited from the cold war spending of the 80's and having been succesful against sadam the first time and winning the cold war, we rode the bennefits of unopposed military domination. Under Clinton we became mostly introspective focusing on domestic policy and our economy grew. Now however, i think that global stability is a neccesity to our security and continued economic prosperity. I think Bush has done a fairly good job with the economy all things considered and is executing a fairly successful foreign policy. Afganistan has been a very good example. As for IQ and think tanks, it is interesting to point out that even if they are not politically motivated, they DID show democrats as having substantially higher iq's- Carter has the second highest IQ but he was a miserable failure and had no real backbone in dealing with terrorists, seems a common theme. Clinton had the highest yet no moral convictions, and sold secret technology to the Chinese and had to stick his finger in the air every time he made a decision.
In Afghanistan we ARE building that country as a succesful model and it seems to be working- they are about to have national elections for president even with threats of bombings and such from terrorists.
It is said that a politicians' first goal is to get elected, the second to get reelected. Cinical but true. It is common with presidents to be more careful in their first 4 years and the second 4 is where they make their major gains. That was true of Clinton. Bush has honored most of his first election promises and i am willing to trust him with another 4.

 

The following is a typical IQ test questions from a left wing think tank and the score for the answers:

How much money should the Government spend on AIDS?

(R) Presidents = $50 Billion.

(D) Presidents = $500 Billion.


Score:

Republican Presidents = 90 IQ.

Democratic Presidents = 180 IQ.