in the hopes of On topic discussion, a continuation - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Paq · 10-29-2006, 05:03 AM

ok, so, after reading 2 pages of responses to host's question and seeing that everyone jumped on the way he worded his question, ie, the "tell me why i should be proud of my stepson's service", i decided to try a new approach

in original form: host asks:

Quote:

Can any of you who still support republican politicians, please post some information that will reliably inform the rest of us as to why you keep your support for that party and those politicians? Are they more honest, less hypocritical, more constructive, more accomplished, more open, less intrusive, more representative of working class concerns, and of our constitional rights, than I am thinking, this weekend...that they are?

Tell me what principles and rights, my stepson is fighting for....if republicans maintain total control of the government, after this coming election. Post about why you trust republicans over democrats. Is it their fiscal discipline, or their ethics and openness?

so, I'm still stuck on this part. I haven't heard very many very vocal republicans even mention anything of note in the past few months on why they still support bush and the republican party and i'm really interested. I know i have done things that i later thought, "Gee..wish i would have done 'this' instead" and i can admit that freely, but it seems like the more screwups there are, the more the people come out in support...i dont' get it

So, in basic, simple terms, can i have some info on why people support bush and his administration? Why support republicans over democrats? Even glenn beck said he was sick of republicans doing basically nothing while having control of both houses. I'm just bewildered by the current state of affairs.

Thanks, and can we please keep the focus off host and his stepson

cyrnel · 10-29-2006, 05:22 AM

Isn't support often a response to attacks from the other side? I've noticed less dem->gop 'attack marketing" recently and assumed this was the reason.

flstf · 10-29-2006, 05:38 AM

I think the President and the Senate is wrong to propose a bill giving amnesty to illegals and the employers who hire them. If the Republicans loose the house I believe this bill will go through since they are opposing their own President to block it. This is at least one reason to vote for house Republicans in November even if one doesn't support the administration.

On most other issues I don't think it will make much difference which party is in control.

ratbastid · 10-29-2006, 06:33 AM

Here's an interesting read--

An article in Washington Monthly that features columns by several prominent conservatives (Christopher Buckley, Joe Scarborough, and others) on why the Republicans should lose in the midterms.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...610.forum.html

I was very heartened to see that the blind "can do no wrong" puppy-love that the administration has engendered over the last few years is finally cracking.

host · 10-29-2006, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paq

.....So, in basic, simple terms, can i have some info on why people support bush and his administration? Why support republicans over democrats? Even glenn beck said he was sick of republicans doing basically nothing while having control of both houses. I'm just bewildered by the current state of affairs....

I guess that we have an answer....from Paul Burgess.....but first, a flashback to another ANGRY, former Bush administration official:

Quote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3661134.stm
Thursday, 16 September, 2004, 09:21 GMT 10:21 UK
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
Iraq war illegal, says Annan

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.

He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.....

.......When pressed on whether he viewed the invasion of Iraq as illegal, he said: "Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

Mr Annan's comments provoked angry suggestions from a former Bush administration aide that they were timed to influence the US November election.

"I think it is outrageous for the Secretary-General, who ultimately works for the member states, to try and supplant his judgement for the judgement of the member states," Randy Scheunemann, a former advisor to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the BBC.

So the former Bush administration officials are angry, and they hate....they sit in their comfortable homes, they enjoy the presence of their entire families at their holiday dinner tables, and they offer what you see here to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign country, and the deaths of more than 2500 of our troops, who seem to me, to have died for.....nothing...is this all they've got....to persuade us, as Burgess but it, "If I have to, I'll crawl over broken glass to do it. And this year I'm voting a straight Republican ticket right down to dog catcher, because I've had it."

Quote:

http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/F...inter_friendly
Friends, neighbors, and countrymen of the Left: I hate your lying guts
October 28, 2006 12:50 am

WHEN I WAS speechwrit- ing at the White House, one rule was enforced without exception. The president would not be given drafts that lowered him or The Office by responding to the articulations of hatred that drove so many of his critics.

This rule was especially relevant to remarks that concerned the central topic of our times, Iraq. Having left the White House more than a year ago, I conclude that the immunizing effect of that rule must have expired, because I now find that I am infected with a hatred for the very quarter that inspired the rule--the deranged, lying left.

I never used to feel hatred for people such as Cindy Sheehan, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, or other pop-culture notables who, for example, sing the praises of Central American dictators while calling President Bush the greatest terrorist on earth. I do now.

And though these figures might be dismissed as inconsequential, their views seem mild compared with those of some of our university professors charged with the "higher" education of our youth.

Thus have I come to hate Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who called the Sept. 11 victims of the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns"; Nicholas De Genova, the Columbia professor who loudly wished "a million Mogadishus" on American troops in Iraq; and Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin professor who teaches his students that President Bush was the actual mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

I used to laugh these people off. Now I detest them as among the most loathsome people America has ever vomited up.

I have also grown to hate certain people of genuine accomplishment like Ted Turner, who, by his own contention, cannot make up his mind which side of the terror war he is on; I hate the executives at CNN, Turner's intellectual progeny, who recently carried water for our enemies by broadcasting their propaganda film portraying their attempts to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

I now hate Howard Dean, the elected leader of the Democrats, who, by repeatedly stating his conviction that we won't win in Iraq, bets his party's future on our nation's defeat.

I hate the Democrats who, in support of this strategy, spout lie after lie: that the president knew in advance there were no WMD in Iraq; that he lied to Congress to gain its support for military action; that he pushed for the democratization of Iraq only after the failure to find WMD; that he was a unilateralist and that the coalition was a fraud; that he shunned diplomacy in favor of war.

These lies, contradicted by reports, commissions, speeches, and public records, are too preposterous to mock, but too pervasive to rebut, especially when ignored by abetting media.

Most detestable are the lies these rogues craft to turn grief into votes by convincing the families of our war dead that their loved ones died in vain. <h3>First, knowing what every intelligence agency was sure it knew by early 2003, it would have been criminal negligence had the president not enforced the U.N.'s resolutions and led the coalition into Iraq.</h3> Firemen sometimes die in burning buildings looking for victims who are not there. Their deaths are not in vain, either.

Second, no soldier dies in vain who goes to war by virtue of the Constitution he swears to defend. This willingness is called "duty," and it is a price of admission into the highest calling of any free nation--the profession of arms. We have suffered more than 2,300 combat deaths in Iraq so far. Not one was in vain. Not one.

These are the people I now hate--these people who seek to control our national security. The best of them are misinformed. The rest of them are liars.

So I intend to vote on Nov. 7. If I have to, I'll crawl over broken glass to do it. And this year I'm voting a straight Republican ticket right down to dog catcher, because I've had it. I'm fed up with the deranged, lying left. They've infected me. I'm now a hater, too.

PAUL BURGESS of Spotsylvania County was director of foreign-policy speechwriting at the White House from October 2003 to July 2005.

Seaver · 10-29-2006, 01:38 PM

Oh yeah, nice host.

Ignore that that came out the same week the Oil-for-Food scandal came out. Ignore the fact that Kofi Anan and his son were proven to be recieving funds from Saddam to keep the Oil-for-Food illegal weapon purchases quiet.

Sorry, for some reason Kofi's claiming that the war was illegal does not trumpet "legitimate" for me.

host · 10-29-2006, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Oh yeah, nice host.

Ignore that that came out the same week the Oil-for-Food scandal came out. Ignore the fact that Kofi Anan and his son were proven to be recieving funds from Saddam to keep the Oil-for-Food illegal weapon purchases quiet.

Sorry, for some reason Kofi's claiming that the war was illegal does not trumpet "legitimate" for me.

Here's the opinion of other experts, Seaver, including a former chief Nuremberg prosecutor, Benjamin Ferenccz

Quote:

Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on October 29, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/

The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.

While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.

From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."

Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.

But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferenccz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.

Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."

It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."

Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."

Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.

Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."

Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:

U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."

Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution … [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. … There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."

As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."

The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.

George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility … or is it?

Seaver, the point that I'm making is that the excuses have turned to anger and hate directed at the critics. Sen. Pat Roberts promised to release the information that would vindicate Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, in the "Phase II report" of his senate select intelligence committee, back in....ohhhh.... July, 2004....and here is just tidbit of what he has tried so hard to divide into small segments and delay for 2-1/2 years...... and it's Paul Burgess, who proclaims that he is now a "hater"???? Paul Burgess now looks like a war criminal who wrote the speeches for the war criminal in chief.....and he tears of a public rant, abbout the president being the victim? He even has the balls to say that

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Burgess

These lies, contradicted by reports, commissions, speeches, and public records, are too preposterous to mock, but too pervasive to rebut, especially when ignored by abetting media.

It wasn't the 9/11 commission, and it wasn't the Robb Silberman commission, they were instructed that they were specifically not authorized to determine how the Bush admin. handled pre-Iraq invasion intelligence....only Pat Roberts committee was authorized to determine and report on that, and he divided his report into two parts, and then the second part into five little parts, and then delayed release of the last four of those parts, until....after the 2004, and then the 2006 elections....the senate democrats staged a walkout from the senate chamber, 11 months ago, over Pat Robert's coverup.....but Paul Burgess now hates the critics...and would crawl through broken glass to vote "straight republican".....he couldn't even write a rant that was true and accurate.....

Gimme an effin' break, Seaver:

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5409538
Transcript for July 11
Guests: Sen. Pat Roberts, (R-Kan.); Sen. Jay Rockefeller, (D-W.Va.); David Broder, The Washington Post; Ron Brownstein, Los Angeles Times; William F. Buckley, Editor Emeritus, National ReviewJack Germond, Baltimore Sun
NBC News
Updated: 11:18 a.m. ET July 11, 2004

.......MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, you...

SEN. ROBERTS: And also bottom line in terms of those statements, they indicated, "Was there any real pressure to change the product?" Answer? "No."

MR. RUSSERT: ...mentioned Curveball. Secretary Powell went before the United Nations in February and talked about the evidence that he had seen about Saddam having trucks and railroad cars to be used to disperse biological-chemical weapons. Secretary Powell then came on this program in May and said, "It turned out the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberately misleading."

SEN. ROBERTS: He's right.

MR. RUSSERT: And you talked about Curveball. Curveball was the son of Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile's friend who came forward and said, "I'm a high-school--number one in my class. I know all about this." He was a fraud. And in the report, this is what the e-mail from the deputy chief of the CIA's Iraqi task force had to say. "Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."

SEN. ROBERTS: OK. That's an isolated memo that we obviously now know is absolutely incorrect. Curveball really provided 98 percent of the assessment as to whether or not the Iraqis had a biological weapon. Yet, the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, knew of his background. He has a very troubled background. Secondly, he was a single source that we did not have access to. And on the basis of that came the statement in the WMD section that Iraq had a biological capability. That's the kind offlaw in intelligence, and I think--I won't say willful, but the DIA should have shared that information with the CIA and the CIA should have gone from there.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent out before the United Nations and the world based on...

SEN. ROBERTS: I know. It was wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: ...that information.

SEN. ROBERTS: You couldn't be more upset or frustrated than both Jay and I. And let me tell you something else. Curveball and all of that information that is in our report, much of it is redacted. I can't really tell you some of the more specific details that would make your eyebrows even raise higher.

MR. RUSSERT: With all this being said, the second phase of your investigation as to whether or not the Bush administration deliberately altered, massaged the data, the intelligence in order to mislead the American people. Why shouldn't the American people have the benefit of your report before the November election?....

Quote:

http://www.columbiajournal.ca/06-09/11bushsaddam.html
Bush and Saddam Should Both Stand Trial, Says Nuremberg Prosecutor
Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
25 August 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 25 (OneWorld) - A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferenccz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

He said the atrocities of the Iraq war--from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car bombs--were highly predictable at the start of the war.

"Every war will lead to attacks on civilians," he said. "Crimes against humanity, destruction beyond the needs of military necessity, rape of civilians, plunder--that always happens in wartime. So my answer personally, after working for 60 years on this problem and [as someone] who hates to see all these young people get killed no matter what their nationality, is that you've got to stop using warfare as a means of settling your disputes."

Ferenccz believes the most important development toward that end would be the effective implementation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is located in the Hague, Netherlands.

The court was established in 2002 and has been ratified by more than 100 countries. It is currently being used to adjudicate cases stemming from conflict in Darfur, Sudan and civil wars in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But on May 6, 2002--less than a year before the invasion of Iraq--the Bush administration withdrew the United States' signature on the treaty and began pressuring other countries to approve bilateral agreements requiring them not to surrender U.S. nationals to the ICC.

Three months later, George W. Bush signed a new law prohibiting any U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court. The law went so far as to include a provision authorizing the president to "use all means necessary and appropriate," including a military invasion of the Netherlands, to free U.S. personnel detained or imprisoned by the ICC.

That's too bad, according to Ferenccz. If the United States showed more of an interest in building an international justice system, they could have put Saddam Hussein on trial for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"The United Nations authorized the first Gulf War and authorized all nations to take whatever steps necessary to keep peace in the area," he said. "They could have stretched that a bit by seizing the person for causing the harm. Of course, they didn't do that and ever since then I've been bemoaning the fact that we didn't have an International Criminal Court at that time."

Ferenccz is glad that Saddam Hussein is now on trial. ....

reconmike · 10-30-2006, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I and they offer what you see here to justify an illegal invasion of a sovereign country, and the deaths of more than 2500 of our troops, ."

Host please with your mighty cut and paste prove to me that the Iraqi invasion was illegal.

If you can not please stop calling it that, and by the way you can post opinions, cut and paste till your fingers fall off from anyone you like, because thats all they really are OPINIONS.

Ill post one reason why it was legal:
Saddam violated the terms of a cease-fire, and in the terms of said cease-fire he knew what would happen if he was not in compliance.

So that right there makes it perfectly legal to invade.

Is there any need for me to cut and paste the cease-fire and waste bandwith because I am sure you know all about it?

Ustwo · 10-30-2006, 12:14 PM

I support the Republicans because the alternative is worse.

Pretty straight forward to me.

host · 10-30-2006, 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

I support the Republicans because the alternative is worse.

Pretty straight forward to me.

$2699 billion in new debt accumulation....in just the last five years, a reversal...from a revenue surplus that was promised by this republican president to be used to "pay down" the existing federal debt.....

.....mired indefinitely in a war that is costing the US $2 billion per week, and 25 soldiers lives per week.....a war that the leading US expert on illegal war of aggression, has determined to be....an illegal war of agression.....

An executive that has Co-opted the authority of congress to violate the Geneva Convention, article 3, according to SCOTUS, and illegal violations of FISA law that amounts to conducting unconstitutional secret, domestic surveillance....

,,,,for starters...there is much more......what would be worse, if the party with a record for open government, as policy, and deficit free fiscal management, were to be elected in the majority in the house and in the senate.....what are your specific concerns..... especially now that "stay the course" in Iraq, is not something that the POTUS says he has ever been for....?

Ustwo · 10-30-2006, 01:21 PM

Lets not forget blew up the world trade center, and sacrifices human babies host.

I have my reasons for not liking the socialists. I have no reason to believe that an all democratic line up would be better, and think it would be worse. The only reason to support democrats I can could stomach currently would be if you wanted to see grid lock.

Otherwise I see no good comming of it.

roachboy · 10-30-2006, 01:34 PM

what socialists?
what are you talking about ustwo?
could you, for once, explain this bizarre way in which you use the word "socialist"?
what are the characteristics of socialism for you?
which democrats actually endorse anything like a democratic-socialist platform?
what are you afraid the democrats will do?

Elphaba · 10-30-2006, 06:02 PM

Gridlock, which many conservatives are now recommending and was the intention of our founding fathers, is exactly what we need. Ustwo, do you approve of the unprecidented spending, growth of government, and intrusion into private affairs? None of these represent the Republican conservative position, and I cannot fathom what defense you have for this administration. Short term personal gain due to tax cuts, at the expense of your own child, can't possibly be a logical motivation.

Are you simply unwilling to admit that you were mistaken?

dc_dux · 10-30-2006, 07:09 PM

What some may describe as gridlock, I would suggest is an opportunity for bi-partisanship and the restoration of true Congressional oversight.

It was Nixon and a dem Congress that enacted most of our current environmental laws. Reagan and a dem Congress agreed on the most comprehensive and balanced tax reform in years, as well as a medium-term fix of Social Security. And it was Clinton and a repub Congress that brought about welfare reform, trade policies, fiscal restraint and a slower growth in spending then anytime in recent history.

The other, equally if not more important benefit of divided government is the role of Congress in providing oversight of the Executive, as envisioned by the founding fathers.....with the caveat that it is not abused for partisan purposes (not that there may not be partisan benefits as a result). This oversight has rarely occured at the level necessary when both branches are controlled by one party.

Some fear this oversight will be a witchunt by a dem Congress. But is it really a witchunt to have investigatory hearings on issues of concern to many citizens - the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance, the use of executive orders and signing statements to ignore provisions of law, the use of intelligence data, the reclassification of thousands of documents as secret and subsequent restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act....

10-29-2006, 05:22 AM	#2 (permalink)
cyrnel Adequate Location: In my angry-dome.	Isn't support often a response to attacks from the other side? I've noticed less dem->gop 'attack marketing" recently and assumed this was the reason. __________________ There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

10-29-2006, 01:38 PM	#6 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Oh yeah, nice host. Ignore that that came out the same week the Oil-for-Food scandal came out. Ignore the fact that Kofi Anan and his son were proven to be recieving funds from Saddam to keep the Oil-for-Food illegal weapon purchases quiet. Sorry, for some reason Kofi's claiming that the war was illegal does not trumpet "legitimate" for me. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

10-30-2006, 12:14 PM	#9 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	I support the Republicans because the alternative is worse. Pretty straight forward to me. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

10-30-2006, 01:21 PM	#11 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	Lets not forget blew up the world trade center, and sacrifices human babies host. I have my reasons for not liking the socialists. I have no reason to believe that an all democratic line up would be better, and think it would be worse. The only reason to support democrats I can could stomach currently would be if you wanted to see grid lock. Otherwise I see no good comming of it. __________________ Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

10-30-2006, 01:34 PM	#12 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	what socialists? what are you talking about ustwo? could you, for once, explain this bizarre way in which you use the word "socialist"? what are the characteristics of socialism for you? which democrats actually endorse anything like a democratic-socialist platform? what are you afraid the democrats will do? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

10-29-2006, 05:38 AM	#3 (permalink)
flstf Easy Rider Location: Moscow on the Ohio	I think the President and the Senate is wrong to propose a bill giving amnesty to illegals and the employers who hire them. If the Republicans loose the house I believe this bill will go through since they are opposing their own President to block it. This is at least one reason to vote for house Republicans in November even if one doesn't support the administration. On most other issues I don't think it will make much difference which party is in control.

10-29-2006, 06:33 AM	#4 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	Here's an interesting read-- An article in Washington Monthly that features columns by several prominent conservatives (Christopher Buckley, Joe Scarborough, and others) on why the Republicans should lose in the midterms. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...610.forum.html I was very heartened to see that the blind "can do no wrong" puppy-love that the administration has engendered over the last few years is finally cracking.

10-30-2006, 06:02 PM	#13 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Gridlock, which many conservatives are now recommending and was the intention of our founding fathers, is exactly what we need. Ustwo, do you approve of the unprecidented spending, growth of government, and intrusion into private affairs? None of these represent the Republican conservative position, and I cannot fathom what defense you have for this administration. Short term personal gain due to tax cuts, at the expense of your own child, can't possibly be a logical motivation. Are you simply unwilling to admit that you were mistaken?

10-30-2006, 07:09 PM	#14 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	What some may describe as gridlock, I would suggest is an opportunity for bi-partisanship and the restoration of true Congressional oversight. It was Nixon and a dem Congress that enacted most of our current environmental laws. Reagan and a dem Congress agreed on the most comprehensive and balanced tax reform in years, as well as a medium-term fix of Social Security. And it was Clinton and a repub Congress that brought about welfare reform, trade policies, fiscal restraint and a slower growth in spending then anytime in recent history. The other, equally if not more important benefit of divided government is the role of Congress in providing oversight of the Executive, as envisioned by the founding fathers.....with the caveat that it is not abused for partisan purposes (not that there may not be partisan benefits as a result). This oversight has rarely occured at the level necessary when both branches are controlled by one party. Some fear this oversight will be a witchunt by a dem Congress. But is it really a witchunt to have investigatory hearings on issues of concern to many citizens - the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance, the use of executive orders and signing statements to ignore provisions of law, the use of intelligence data, the reclassification of thousands of documents as secret and subsequent restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act.... __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire