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Bush gets his Iraq Trophy


monsoon

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heckles -

There is a sense in which your animus towards Bush strikes me as strange. In so many ways the man has governed as a dream Democrat. One of my chief dissapointments with the man is that he has not undertaken the *truly bold task* of really laying the axe to government.

Are you that angry about Iraq ? Clinton took us to war as well, without UN approval to boot. Is it 800 dead in Iraq ? I think this is terrible, but as a matter of perspective, more than that were lkilled in 1944 in a single training exercise for D-Day.

And it can't be corporate fraud, campaign financing or patronage for these things are not peculiar to this president. And of course you were fed up with him before the gay marriage contraversy came to prominance.

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Guest donaltopablo

And it can't be corporate fraud, campaign financing or patronage for these things are not peculiar to this president

Remember, the industries that support the President are often different. If you remember, the big questionable practice Clinton has was his real estate deal, Bush Sr happens to be defense.

You would still have a hard time getting me to changed my mind that the war was started purely to earn money, but I certainly believe that while we were at war, it's a prefect opportunity to make money for his buddies.

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Remember, the industries that support the President are often different. If you remember, the big questionable practice Clinton has was his real estate deal, Bush Sr happens to be defense.

You would still have a hard time getting me to changed my mind that the war was started purely to earn money, but I certainly believe that while we were at war, it's a prefect opportunity to make money for his buddies.

You're losing me (and it could just be me), but are you saying that the war was started to earn money ? It would be easier for me to envision that the war was wrong for other reasons than to believe this.

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Paul - every administration has friends that are helped. The thing about Bush is that he is so blatant, its so obvious, the misuse of funds is so massive and people still don't seem to think about it when it comes to the voting booth (or at least I'm not seeing the outrage yet). Bush has the nerve to spew ads crying "mad spending liberal from MA" on John Kerry - yet Bush himself has had the most wasteful, most rediculous waste spending then any president in history. ANY president - no matter the party.

People need to get over this liberal and conservative idea that liberal means more spending, conservative means less. That simply is not the case in modern politics. There are libertarian leaning liberals that don't like major spending - but when they do spend its more on domestic programs. Conservatives have libertarian leaning people that don't believe anything should be spent except military and basic things like that. Its just a matter of where the money is spent - its not like liberals and conservatives are small or big spenders as a group. Why is it people can't think outside that bubble I don't know.

Bush is only compassionate toward big whigs in these gov't contracts. Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, etc. He's about the most irresponsible President fiscally speaking however.

Bush's corrupt spending and connections are well documented. Before Enron collapsed, he had Enron executives at the energy policy discussions (both Cheney and Bush have ties to them - not either/or). The countless no-bid contracts are overkill - it makes anything Bush's predecessors from either party look small.

www.fairtax.org speaks of one of the most unfair taxes of all - a regressive tax that hurts the retail sector of business (particularly small business) and it hurts lower income brackets while allowing those with more income to evade paying as much. Dale - I'd only support a national sales tax if we got a benefit from it - such as universal healthcare. That's how Canada pays for its program, most provinces have 10-15% sales taxes up there (Alberta has a 7% GST/sales tax however) and comparable income taxes to here.

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Its probably you.

But the war was waged to earn money. As of 1:20pm EDT the USA has spent $116,075,645,982.00 in Iraq. The military portion is approximately $1 billion/week We have been in Iraq around 62 weeks, then that leaves $54 Billion so far that has been spent on non-military activities in Iraq.

$54 Billion on civilian contracts that are not being competitively bid. Its pretty clear who the real beneficiaries of the Iraqi war are. (and it is not the Iraqis nor the American taxpayer)

BTW, they have run out of bullets in Iraq so the soldiers are being told not to fire their weapons unless it is really necessary.

You've not established that the war was fought to earn money. You've only underscored the bleeding obvious - there are always those who will profit from war. Hopefully the Iraqis will one day acknowledge that they have profited from the war. Maybe one day Americans will come to acknowledge that the war was part-and-parcel of a process which made the world safer.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

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heckles -

There is a sense in which your animus towards Bush strikes me as strange. In so many ways the man has governed as a dream Democrat. One of my chief dissapointments with the man is that he has not undertaken the *truly bold task* of really laying the axe to government.

Are you that angry about Iraq ? Clinton took us to war as well, without UN approval to boot. Is it 800 dead in Iraq ? I think this is terrible, but as a matter of perspective, more than that were lkilled in 1944 in a single training exercise for D-Day.

And it can't be corporate fraud, campaign financing or patronage for these things are not peculiar to this president. And of course you were fed up with him before the gay marriage contraversy came to prominance.

You have got to be kidding yourself.

Clinton took us into Iraq in 1998 after getting UN approval - it was a bombing campaign and not a ground war. Clinton went into Kosovo as a human rights mission with only a few bombs and troops (a few thousand) - with NATO support.

You don't think this is different from a ground force of nearly 200,000 troops to invade a nation and take over its government in which we got neither UN nor NATO approval? Also - Bush didn't make the case for human rights to begin with - he mislead us. His administration actively ignored conflicting intelligence reports. Again - I'm not going back into the Iraq debate, we've already had that.

Truly bold task of laying the axe to government? Bush has been the biggest spender on questionable programs while cutting necessary things like education and etc. Instead of allowing the government to negotiate drug prices, he created a Medicare bill which has no regulations to keep costs from rising above the discount being offered by the government. Bush has no concept of fiscal responsibility - he only pretends that he does care.

Absolutely not, corporate fraud and corruption isn't unique to Bush. Bush just has a disproportionate number of bad things surrounding him. That's why I am flabergasted people like you still support the man. He's even turning Republicans away from him for a reason.

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heckles -

Better yet, let us stop clamoring for beneficient government.

And conservative does mean smaller government. That's why I suggested that, in some ways, Bush has been a dream Democrat (or liberal, if you prefer).

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LOL - Bush is not a liberal, he's an elitist conservative. You are making the case against liberals using Bush as the example? If that's how you justify Bush's "bad side" just to keep yourself as a convicted conservative - fine. But its laughable at best.

Instead of focusing on terminology, however, I'm focusing on Bush's actions.

Beneficient government? What the heck does that mean? Where do you draw the lines? Do you think the government should offer public education, basic health services, and etc? Or are you someone with the belief that its not the role for anything but law enforcement and security?

The entire reason why government exists is because the people benefit - and without it things don't work. The question is how much government do we need? I think we're doing quite well in 2004 to be totally honest. We don't need a major dismantling of our government. Restructuring absolutely - cut it in half? Heck no. That'd cause a recession in and of itself anyway. LOL

Hard libertarians don't seem to understand that government jobs are just that - jobs. It isn't money for nothing. :rolleyes:

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Here's my biggest problem with the conservative Republican establishment. In 1998 - as Clinton was dealing with intelligence supporting a threat in Iraq - the congress spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to impeach him and held the vote during the bombing campaign.

Republicans held up some 160 (approx) judge appointees Clinton wanted - Democrats have held up barely a handful, and they are crying foul and are still trying to shove through some pretty extreme bench appointees while crying foul. Clinton just gave up and sent other appointees to be reviewed.

Republicans are all for small government, then they turn around and create programs that spend more in corporate welfare and offer less benefit to the beneficiaries then the Democratic plans just for political gain. The Medicare issue is the biggie here, but so are other issues such as educational loans. Bush tried to dismantle the loan consolidation program this year, as a step towards privatizing student loans so that we couldn't be eligible for the same type of loans at the lower rates without the big penalties of a private bank.

Democrats may be for social programs, but at least we don't pretend not to be then turn around and create the more wasteful program.

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Really I didn't finish the last post - my reason for being upset is that the Newt Gingrich/post-Reagan Republicans do this consistently - then they turn around and parade to be the moral, strong, character filled leadership we need.

An Ohio Republican was just found to be sleeping with his secretary. I don't really care, I think that's his business. But if a Democrat does it - we're demonized far beyond what happens on the right. A matter of fact - i bet none of you heard about it. It was a 10th page headline in the papers. Republican congressman from Ohio found sleeping with secretary. woo hoo.

If it were a Democrat, we'd been dragged through the mud and called unethical and disgusting - not fit for being elected.

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Another annoying as hell feature of the modern Republican party - they "privatize" programs through creating more bureaucracy.

What the heck do I mean? I'll take Tennessee's TennCare program as an example. Our last Republican governor "reformed" the program so that the state government gave a blank check to MCO's (really its just private insurance companies within the state - MCO is a fancy name for it). These private insurers take that money and pick and choose how many people benefit from it under the TennCare program (In Tennessee TennCare replaced Medicare and Medicaid over 10 years ago - we are one of a few states in the nation that experiemented with a program, California has MediCal I think).

How is that more efficient - by creating a 3rd party need? Why doesn't the government have a department that files insurance claims and pay directly? It hasn't saved the state of Tennessee anything to have the government write blank checks to a group of 10 or so private insurance firms around the state to offer health benefits to Medicare and Medicaid eligible subscribers.

Democratic/liberal ideology:

Taxes--->Government-->Direct benefits to consumer

Neo-Republican/Post Reagan conservatism:

Taxes-->Government-->Transfer payments to private companies-->Benefit to consumer

Libertarian

No program-->No benefit (market has the solution - if you aren't covered, tough luck)

Republicans have found a way to "privatize" things by making the program need more spending. Its amazing really. Run on privatization, yet actually bloat the government.

I understand there is a legitimate argument against government programs - people have a right to believe whatever they want. But all I see out of the Republicans in 2004 is deception.

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If you end up voting for Bush - you might as well call yourself Republican.

Bush already has a proven track record. If you approve of it enough to vote - that's your right.

This fall I doubt my vote counts - depends on how Tennessee's mood swing is. This state has PMS when it comes to elections. In 2002 when the nation was on a Republican upswing, we reverted our congressional representation from 5-4 Republican-Democrat to 5-4 Democrat-Republican and elected a New York state native Democrat as Governor (albeit by a slim 1-2% margin, it still happened).

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If you end up voting for Bush - you might as well call yourself Republican.

Bush already has a proven track record. If you approve of it enough to vote - that's your right.

Helluva choice we have. Maybe there are other ways and means. Maybe politics are grossly overrated. Maybe they should be grossly overrated.

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If you are in Florida, and you vote for Bush, I'll hate you. :)

I'm in rural TN, lived in Memphis back a few years ago. When I graduate college this august I'm hoping to move to Chicago maybe.

Maybe I won't vote then.

But can I still turn African-American voters away from the polls ? :huh:;)

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