loquitur

I find it interesting that people here seem to put a lot of stock in polls, yet no one mentioned that Bush's SOTU polled pretty well, if you believe CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/23/sotu.poll/ This doesnt' tell you anything about whether Bush really is right or not, of course. Me, I didn't watch the speech; I'm finding it increasingly painful to listen to his speaking because he sounds like he's speaking a foreign language.

This presidency is in approximately the same position as Truman's was in 1950, including the absymal approval ratings. I suspect that historians would have come up with a pie chart similar to the one in #30 if they had been polled in January 1951. We are way too close to the events to make judgments, and the effect of Bush's decisions won't be apparent until a few years from now at the very least.

BTW, George Mason Univ is a libertarian-leaning (i.e. rightish, but not theocon or socially conservative) institution. Which isn't to say everyone there is libertarian, but more than on your average campus.

I guess what I'm seeing here is that everyone views the speech, or Cheney's interview, through a lens of whether they like this administration or not, and it makes almost no difference what these people say. If you like Bush the speech was masterly, and if you don't it was a pack of lies.

host

????????????? loquitur, I clicked on the cnn link that I'm including in my excerpted quote of your last post....and I voted....<b>There is an active public poll option displayed in the lower left corner of the page that you linked to......</b> and this result came up:

....and it seems consistent with other polls and with our small number of votes in the poll on this thread.....<b>and.....unlike the tiny poll sampling emphasized in cnn's "story", it displays the results of 100,000 votes......</b>so, I'm sorry....I am missing your point....

loquitur

well, the diff is that the online poll isn't scientific. You know about sampling and self-selection, right? CNN readers aren't necessarily representative of the population as a whole.

oh, and TFP readers are not necessarily reflective of the population either, for similar reasons: self-selection.

ratbastid

Oh, I didn't say that. The Bush Administration has been a sucking disaster, both domestically and in our relations to other countries, and it has done real and lasting damage to the country.

I just don't care for the term "failed presidency". Look, it was (er... will have been) eight years long. It was a whole presidency. The man succeeded at being president. Didn't, IMO, succeed at much else, but nobody can argue he didn't succeed at becoming and being the president. So his presidency obviously didn't fail. Most every initiative or policy did. But not the presidency itself. He's president. No two ways about that.

The_Jazz

Can you tell me how you're disagreeing with me? Other than pointing out various ways that he's succeded (being president, holding the union together, etc.), how is what you said much different than what I did?

Since this is the second time this has happened to me in this thread, I'm starting to wonder if I've somehow managed to convey not only a tone of voice but a tone of voice that implies that I'm being sarcastic or disagreeable in some way...

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

dc_dux

I cant speak for others, but I dont post because its the "in" thing to do. I have serious, and I believe legitimate, concerns about Bush's performance and policies and both the short and potential long term impacts that have resulted. I havent seen others post "cheers and follow right along"; I have seen others respond with their own articulate posts expressing their concern.

How is that different from the (granted) smaller in number right wing rah rah crowd here that attempts to justify Bush policies and performance with their own cut and pastes?

To speak out in opposition is "looney" as opposed to the "sincerity" of Bush supporters?

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

Was Ken Star guilty of fornication and lying about it or was Clinton? Accusing the accusors is an old, old fallacy. I don't make Bush do the things he does, nor RB, nor host, nor rat, nor anyone else. Bush makes his own mistakes, and to point out those mistakes is to take the first step in trying to correct those mistakes, as he is our responsibility. While pointing out his mistake isn't the last step, it's better than doing nothing and MUCH better than supporting his mistakes.

To support a president's mistake is to make a mistake yourself. I'm sorry our president sucks. It hurts, I know. Let's not pretend that the "loony left" is responsible for his mistakes, though.

roachboy

thejazz: i hope that you were not referring to my post about historians when you asked the other rb about potentials for confrontation/misinterpretation of your posts--i was just riffing off the position that historians came to occupy in the process of collective evaluation of a presidency.

my point was that i know alot of historians and wouldn't necessarily accord a priori weight to what they say simply because they are historians.


reconmike: nice attempt to trivialize opposition to the bush administration by attributing it to some imaginary fashion. i assume this fantasy sequence serves a good psychological effect for you: protecting your politics by reducing opposition to the functional equivalent of pokeman. except of course that pokeman cards were a fashion in the empirical world, and the "fashion" of criticizing the bush administration is only a "fashion" in your head--shaped perhaps by the fast and easy dismissal of dissent you get from the planet limbaugh.

most of the folk who post here in opposition to the bush administration and its policies have been consistently in opposition for some time--even during that period when reactionary dominance was such that critiques of this foul administration would be greeted as treason by the conservatives here.
what has changed is that quite a few of the folk who used to post here from the right have stopped posting since november.
i am not entirely sure why, as there are as many reasons to withdraw from posting as there are reasons to post.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

The_Jazz

Roach, in short, I wasn't referring to you. dc_dux and I agreed on something but it took a us a little while to sort it out. I got a huge kick out of your "riff" on historians as bad conceptual artists, especially when you're lumping yourself in there with them. If you don't mind, I may cut and paste your post to some history professors I know.

And by the way, I think you're agreeing with dc and I.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

loquitur

As I said up above in #41, "This presidency is in approximately the same position as Truman's was in 1950, including the absymal approval ratings. I suspect that historians would have come up with a pie chart similar to the one in #30 if they had been polled in January 1951. We are way too close to the events to make judgments, and the effect of Bush's decisions won't be fully apparent until a few years from now at the very least."

roachboy

loquitor: by extension, i assume that you do not find contemporary history to be a viable term. if not, when does the present drop away and the past start? just wondering.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

host

I "knew" of Harry Truman....our lives overlapped by 19 years, Harry S Truman was a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0671869205/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/002-4231307-3281667?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books">great man</a>
.....and George W. Bush, sir.....is no Harry Truman !

loquitur

c'mon, Host, I wasn't saying Bush was Truman, only that judgments made at this stage are not reliable, using Truman as an example.

Did I really have to explain that? I thought it was clear...........

host

It was a joke, loquitur....a takeoff on Lloyd Benston's response to VP pre-election debate opponent, Dan Quayle......

"Senator, I knew John Kennedy, John Kennedy was a friend of mine....."

Willravel

I knew I recognized that from somewhere!

loquitur

yes, I knew where it came from, but this being just words on a screen I couldn't tell if you were using Bentsen's words to make a point about Bush or just making a joke.

Sorry. And now I'm annoyed at you for making me think of Dan Quayle, especially on a weekend when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself..........

pan6467

Now wait just a second, Dan Quayle was not a bad guy. In many ways I see him as the public precursor to W. And well..... W isn't....... yeah sorry about your weekend there Loq.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Elphaba

Quayle is responsible for our lowered expections? Cheney, meet quayle.

loquitur

Quayle perfected that "deer-in-the-headlights" look. No one else has ever come close.

djtestudo

In elementary school, I had a student teacher spell potato with an "e", and try to defend it to a classroom of third-graders by saying the VP spelled it that way.

I swear.

__________________
"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

host

Oh....yeah ! IMO, this is what a failed presidency looks like:

aceventura3

O.k., but do you want to know why the issue of support of the troops keeps coming up? No matter how you look at it Democrats are weak on defense, and after listening to a number of our Democrats in Congress explain their position on the troop increase they don't really seem to want to convert their words into a show of real support of the troops.

Here is the deal. If Iran is in fact suppling weapons being used against our troops, your decision tree starts with two choices - you can address the issue or ignore it. If you ignore it, it is clear you don't support the troops, no matter what your position is on the war. If you support the troops you have to put your foot down and tell the world that, supplying weapons used against our troops is unacceptable. If you are against the war, you can still say that and make a promise to remove the troops ASAP, apologize for the war, whatever. So, instead of Congress debating that kind of a resolution, something that caould actually have an impact and save lives, they debate a resolution that will have no affect on policy. They should show they support the troops rather than repeatedly saying it in an empty chamber.

They could also include language in a resolution saying that they condemn the actions of our enemy, but they don't. I wonder why? I conclude they are weak on defense, and just hope that by running away everything will be better.

Bush on the otherhand, sends a clear message to Iran - we know what is going on and we are going to defend our troops, get your act together before it is too late. That is how you show support. You don't let others get away with f***ing with our guys and gals in uniform. Bush still has his balls, has not failed and truly supports our troops.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

host

I think that we have a definitive answer, with this, if it is an accurate report......yup, it's a failed presidency, and impeachment is the only realistic option, now: