Can Anyone Make a Convincing Case for Bush? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 09-06-2004, 10:11 PM

Bush by Numbers: Four Years of Double Standards

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How many of these stats can you explain away, with quality links
to support your arguments? Do any of these stats concern you, especially
considering that we are supposed to be at war, and we have about
one thousand dead now. How do you measure Bush's performance and
how do you expect Kerry would perform worse?

<div align="justify"> 
by Graydon Carter
1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa’ida.
104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defense in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.
101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defense in the same period that mentioned missile defense
65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defense in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.
0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.
73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.
$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend.
0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.
1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States.
79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.
3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi "Visa Express" program.
140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September.
14 Number of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents assigned to track down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries where al-Qa’ida is active.

$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks.
$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.
$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS’s existing terrorism budget.
$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia space shuttle crash.
$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalized gambling.
7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and mid-October 2002 for being gay.
George Bush: Military man
1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas National Guard, Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up.

$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could confirm Bush’s Alabama guard service.
600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush’s unit during that period.
0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information about Bush’s guard service.
0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove the main proponents of the war in Iraq served in combat (combined).
0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq.
8 Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives who have a child serving in the military.
10 Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier who had called the President "a joke" in a letter to the editor of a Newspaper.

46 Percentage increase in sales between 2001 and 2002 of GI Joe figures (children’s toys).
Ambitious warrior
2 Number of Nations that George Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into office.
130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with a US military presence.
43 Percentage of the entire world’s military spending that the US spends on defense (That was in 2002, the year before the invasion of Iraq.)
$401.3bn Proposed military budget for 2004.
Savior of Iraq
1983 The year in which Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs as a gift.

2.5 Number of hours after Rumsfeld learnt that Osama bin Laden was a suspect in the 11 September attacks that he brought up reasons to "hit" Iraq.
237 Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by top Bush administration officials between 2002 and January 2004, according to the California Representative Henry Waxman.
10m Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets on 21 February 2003, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the largest simultaneous protest in world history.
$2bn Estimated monthly cost of US military presence in Iraq projected by the White House in April 2003.
$4bn Actual monthly cost of the US military presence in Iraq according to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in 2004.
$15m Amount of a contract awarded to an American firm to build a cement factory in Iraq.
$80,000 Amount an Iraqi firm spent (using Saddam’s confiscated funds) to build the same factory, after delays prevented the American firm from starting it.
2000 Year that Cheney said his policy as CEO of Halliburton oil services company was "we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq".

$4.7bn Total value of contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan.
$680m Estimated value of Iraq reconstruction contracts awarded to Bechtel.
$2.8bnValue of Bechtel Corp contracts in Iraq.
$120bn Amount the war and its aftermath are projected to cost for the 2004 fiscal year.
35 Number of countries to which the United States suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court.
92 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2002.
60 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2003.
55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before the war.

80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year after the war.
0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender in May 1945.
37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 2003, the month combat operations "officially" ended.
0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.
0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.
A soldier’s best friend
40,000 Number of soldiers in Iraq seven months after start of the war still without Interceptor vests, designed to stop a round from an AK-47.
$60m Estimated cost of outfitting those 40,000 soldiers with Interceptor vests.

62 Percentage of gas masks that army investigators discovered did Not work properly in autumn 2002.
90 Percentage of detectors which give early warning of a biological weapons attack found to be defective.
87 Percentage of Humvees in Iraq not equipped with armour capable of stopping AK-47 rounds and protecting against roadside bombs and landmines at the end of 2003.
Making the country safer
$3.29 Average amount allocated per person Nationwide in the first round of homeland security grants.
$94.40 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in American Samoa.
$36 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in Wyoming, Vice-President Cheney’s home state.
$17 Amount allocated per person in New York state.

$5.87 Amount allocated per person in New York City.
$77.92 Amount allocated per person in New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University, Bush’s alma mater.
76 Percentage of 215 cities surveyed by the US Conference of Mayors in early 2004 that had yet to receive a dime in federal homeland security assistance for their first-response units.
5 Number of major US airports at the beginning of 2004 that the Transportation Security Administration admitted were Not fully screening baggage electronically.
22,600 Number of planes carrying unscreened cargo that fly into New York each month.
5 Estimated Percentage of US air cargo that is screened, including cargo transported on passenger planes.
95 Percentage of foreign goods that arrive in the United States by sea.
2 Percentage of those goods subjected to thorough inspection.

$5.5bnEstimated cost to secure fully US ports over the Next decade.
$0 Amount Bush allocated for port security in 2003.
$46m Amount the Bush administration has budgeted for port security in 2005.
15,000 Number of major chemical facilities in the United States.
100 Number of US chemical plants where a terrorist act could endanger the lives of more than one million people.
0 Number of new drugs or vaccines against "priority pathogens" listed by the Centers for Disease Control that have been developed and introduced since 11 September 2001.
Giving a hand up to the advantaged
$10.9m Average wealth of the members of Bush’s original 16-person cabinet.

75 Percentage of Americans unaffected by Bush’s sweeping 2003 cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes.
$42,000 Average savings members of Bush’s cabinet received in 2003 as a result of cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes.
10 Number of fellow members from the Yale secret society Skull and Bones that Bush has named to important positions (including the Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. and SEC chief Bill Donaldson).
79 Number of Bush’s initial 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration.
A man with a lot of friends
$113m Amount of total hard money the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign received, a record.
$11.5m Amount of hard money raised through the Pioneer program, the controversial fund-raising process created for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. (Participants pledged to raise at least $100,000 by bundling together checks of up to $1,000 from friends and family. Pioneers were assigned numbers, which were included on all checks, enabling the campaign to keep track of who raised how much.)

George Bush: Money manager
4.7m Number of bankruptcies that were declared during Bush’s first three years in office.
2002 The worst year for major markets since the recession of the 1970s.
$489bn The US trade deficit in 2003, the worst in history for a single year.
$5.6tr Projected national surplus forecast by the end of the decade when Bush took office in 2001.
$7.22tr US national debt by mid-2004.
George Bush: Tax cutter
87 Percentage of American families in April 2004 who say they have felt no benefit from Bush’s tax cuts.

39 Percentage of tax cuts that will go to the top 1 per cent of American families when fully phased in.
49 Percentage of Americans in April 2004 who found that their taxes had actually gone up since Bush took office.
88 Percentage of American families who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of 2003 cut in capital gains and dividends taxes.
$30,858 Amount Bush himself saved in taxes in 2003.
Employment tsar
9.3m Number of US unemployed in April 2004.
2.3m Number of Americans who lost their jobs during first three Years of the Bush administration.
22m Number of jobs gained during Clinton’s eight years in office.

Friend of the poor
34.6m Number of Americans living below the poverty line (1 in 8 of the population).
6.8m Number of people in the workforce but still classified as poor.
35m Number of Americans that the government defines as "food insecure," in other words, hungry.
$300m Amount cut from the federal program that provides subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes.
40 Percentage of wealth in the United States held by the richest 1 per cent of the population.
18 Percentage of wealth in Britain held by the richest 1e per cent of the population.
George Bush And his special friend
$60bn Loss to Enron stockholders, following the largest bankruptcy in US history.

$205m Amount Enron CEO Kenneth Lay earned from stock option profits over a four-year period.
$101m Amount Lay made from selling his Enron shares just before the company went bankrupt.
$59,339 Amount the Bush campaign reimbursed Enron for 14 trips on its corporate jet during the 2000 campaign.
30 Length of time in months between Enron’s collapse and Lay (whom the President called "Kenny Boy") still not being charged with a crime.
George Bush: Lawman
15 Average number of minutes Bush spent reviewing capital punishment cases while governor of Texas.
46 Percentage of Republican federal judges when Bush came to office.
57 Percentage of Republican federal judges after three years of the Bush administration.

33 Percentage of the $15bn Bush pledged to fight Aids in Africa that must go to abstinence-only programs.
The Civil libertarian
680 Number of suspected al-Qa’ida members that the United States admits are detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
42 Number of nationalities of those detainees at Guantanamo.
22 Number of hours prisoners were handcuffed, shackled, and made to wear surgical masks, earmuffs, and blindfolds during their flight to Guantanamo.
32 Number of confirmed suicide attempts by Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
24 Number of prisoners in mid-2003 being monitored by psychiatrists in Guantanamo’s new mental ward.
A health-conscious president

43.6m Number of Americans without health insurance by the end of 2002 (more than 15 per cent of the population).
2.4m Number of Americans who lost their health insurance during Bush’s first year in office.
Environmentalist
$44m Amount the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and the Republican National Committee received in contributions from the fossil fuel, chemical, timber, and mining industries.
200 Number of regulation rollbacks downgrading or weakening environmental laws in Bush’s first three years in office.
31 Number of Bush administration appointees who are alumni of the energy industry (includes four cabinet secretaries, the six most powerful White House officials, and more than 20 other high-level appointees).
50 Approximate number of policy changes and regulation rollbacks injurious to the environment that have been announced by the Bush administration on Fridays after 5pm, a time that makes it all but impossible for news organizations to relay the information to the widest possible audience.
50 Percentage decline in Environmental Protection Agency enforcement actions against polluters under Bush’s watch.

34 Percentage decline in criminal penalties for environmental crimes since Bush took office.
50 Percentage decline in civil penalties for environmental crimes since Bush took office.
$6.1m Amount the EPA historically valued each human life when conducting economic analyses of proposed regulations.
$3.7m Amount the EPA valued each human life when conducting analyses of proposed regulations during the Bush administration.
0 Number of times Bush mentioned global warming, clean air, clean water, pollution or environment in his 2004 State of the Union speech. His father was the last president to go through an entire State of the Union address without mentioning the environment.
1 Number of paragraphs devoted to global warming in the EPA’s 600-page "Draft Report on the Environment" presented in 2003.
68 Number of days after taking office that Bush decided Not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases by roughly 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States was to cut its level by 7 per cent.
1 The rank of the United States worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

25 Percentage of overall worldwide carbon dioxide emissions the United States is responsible for.
53 Number of days after taking office that Bush reneged on his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
14 Percentage carbon dioxide emissions will increase over the next 10 years under Bush’s own global-warming plan (an increase of 30 per cent above their 1990 levels).
408 Number of species that could be extinct by 2050 if the global-warming trend continues.
5 Number of years the Bush administration said in 2003 that global warming must be further studied before substantive action could be taken.
62 Number of members of Cheney’s 63-person Energy Task Force with ties to corporate energy interests.
0 Number of environmentalists asked to attend Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings.

6 Number of months before 11 September that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil reserves.
2 Percentage of the world’s population that is British.
2 Percentage of the world’s oil used by Britain.
5 Percentage of the world’s population that is American.
25 Percentage of the world’s oil used by America.
63 Percentage of oil the United States imported in 2003, a record high.

24,000 Estimated number of premature deaths that will occur under Bush’s Clear Skies initiative.
300 Number of Clean Water Act violations by the mountaintop-mining industry in 2003.
750,000 Tons of toxic waste the US military, the world’s biggest polluter, generates around the world each Year.
$3.8bn Amount in the Superfund trust fund for toxic site clean-ups in 1995, the Year "polluter pays" fees expired.
$0m Amount of uncommitted dollars in the Superfund trust fund for toxic site clean-ups in 2003.
270 Estimated number of court decisions citing federal Negligence in endangered-species protection that remained unheeded during the first year of the Bush administration.
100 Percentage of those decisions that Bush then decided to allow the government to ignore indefinitely.
68.4 Average Number of species added to the Endangered and Threatened Species list each year between 1991 and 2000.

0 Number of endangered species voluntarily added by the Bush administration since taking office.
50 Percentage of screened workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from long-term health problems, almost half of whom don’t have health insurance.
78 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from lung ailments.
88 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who Now suffer from ear, nose, or throat problems.
22 Asbestos levels at Ground Zero were 22 times higher than the levels in Libby, Montana, where the W R Grace mine produced one of the worst Superfund disasters in US history.
Image booster for the US
2,500 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State Department to further the image of the US abroad in 1991.
1,200 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State Department to further US image abroad in 2004.

4 Rank of the United States among countries considered to be the greatest threats to world peace according to a 2003 Pew Global Attitudes study (Israel, Iran, and North Korea were considered more dangerous; Iraq was considered less dangerous).
$66bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and diplomacy in 1949.
$23.8bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and diplomacy in 2002.
85 Percentage of Indonesians who had an unfavorable image of the United States in 2003.
Second-party endorsements
90 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 26 September 2001.
67 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 26 September 2002.
54 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 30 September, 2003.
50 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 15 October 2003.

49 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president in May 2004.
More like the French than he would care to admit
28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 2003, the second-longest vacation of any president in US history. (Record holder Richard Nixon.)
13 Number of vacation days the average American receives each Year.
28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 2001, the month he received a 6 August Presidential Daily Briefing headed "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike US Targets."
500 Number of days Bush has spent all or part of his time away from the White House at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, his parents’ retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, or Camp David as of 1 April 2004.
No fool when it comes to the press
11 Number of press conferences during his first three Years in office in which Bush referred to questions as being "trick" ones.

Factors in his favor
3 Number of companies that control the US voting technology market.
52 Percentage of votes cast during the 2002 midterm elections that were recorded by Election Systems & Software, the largest voting-technology firm, a big Republican donor.
29 Percentage of votes that will be cast via computer voting machines that don’t produce a paper record.
17On 17 November 2001, The Economist printed a correction for having said George Bush was properly elected in 2000.
$113m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, the most in American electoral history.
$185m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, to the end of March 2004.
$200m Amount that the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign expects to raise by November 2004.

268 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Pioneer status (by raising $100,000 each) as of March 2004.
187 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Ranger status (by raising $200,000 each) as of March 2004.
$64.2mThe Amount Pioneers and Rangers had raised for Bush-Cheney as of March 2004.
85 Percentage of Americans who can’t Name the Chief Justice of the United States.
69 Percentage of Americans who believed the White House’s claims in September 2003 that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 11 September attacks.
34 Percentage of Americans who believed in June 2003 that Saddam’s "weapons of mass destruction" had been found.
22 Percentage of Americans who believed in May 2003 that Saddam had used his WMDs on US forces.

85 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map.
30 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a map.
75 Percentage of American young adults who don’t know the population of the United States.
53 Percentage of Canadian young adults who don’t know the population of the United States.
11 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the United States on a map.
30 Percentage of Americans who believe that "politics and government are too complicated to understand."
Another factor in his favor
70m Estimated number of Americans who describe themselves as Evangelicals who accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and who interpret the Bible as the direct word of God.

23m Number of Evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2000.
50m Number of voters in total who voted for Bush in 2000.
46 Percentage of voters who describe themselves as born-again Christians.
5 Number of states that do not use the word "evolution" in public school science courses.
This is an edited extract from "What We’ve Lost", by Graydon Carter, published by Little Brown on 9 September
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For a former college drop-out from Ontario and, briefly, a lineman stringing up telegraph wires on the railways of Canada, Graydon Carter, 55, has risen to impressive heights. The editor of Vanity Fair since 1992 after succeeding Tina Brown he is one of America’s celebrity editors with clout, glamour and a nice line in suits.
It is hard to imagine Carter doing physical work of any kind, beyond exercising his thumb on his silver Zippo lighter. His labor is restricted to rejigging headlines in his magazine he is a self-confessed failure at delegation of duties and swanning to Manhattan parties. Martini in hand, he cuts an almost princely and dandyish figure, with billowing shirts and similarly billowing silver hair.

The spotlight on his activities has never burned brighter. In recent months he has transformed the regular editor’s letter at the front of the magazine into less of a chat about its coming contents the spreads of Annie Leibowitz and rants of Christopher Hitchens and more a full-bore diatribe against the world of George Bush.
<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0903-04.htm">by Graydon Carter</a></div> 
Monday 6th September 2004 
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</table>Can Anyone Make a Convincing Case for Bush?

whocarz · 09-06-2004, 11:51 PM

You ask for quality links to support arguements. I clicked on the link to the original article. I was looking for references. I find it hard to take everything this gentleman claims as "the truth". I'm not saying that any of this ISN'T true, but I am wary of people that calim to spout facts, yet don't do anything to back them up. If you'd like an example of what I would look for, here is a article which has references: http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html

Whether or not you agree with it isn't the point. The point is that it has something (almost 300 somethings in fact) to back up it's claims to validity. Perhaps you doubt the sources of the information, but atleat there is SOMETHING.

In closing, all I can say is that, whoever wins, I'll be happy that all this election talk will finally be over. It hurts my head.

pedro padilla · 09-07-2004, 01:15 AM

well, lets see........ummmm.........he looks damn good in a flight suit. and if that ain´t good enough, you´re for sure with al qaeda. you know, them iraqi guys that had the nukes. who reads that numbers mumbo jumbo anyway? damn right i´m voting for arnold.

scout · 09-07-2004, 02:55 AM

HAHA, most of that is pure crap. There's even a reference to 1996, Clinton was president in '96. Who cares if it was 68 days into the Bush term he got us out of the Kyoto treaty? The main thing is, he done what was right for America. Or what does it matter that 5 states don't mention the word evolution in their public science courses? That's a state issue, not a global or even a national issue. It's Bush's fault that 46% of registered voters call themselves born-again Christians? Or that 70 million call themselves Evangicals and believe in the Bible? One could go on and on about the list, there was even a list at one time of all the people that had died a strange premature death when Clinton was President, but in the end it won't matter. It's not going to persuade anyone to vote one way or another. I must say this has been one of the most divisive elections I've ever seen in my short 40 years. Being one of the few undecided voters, I keep coming here looking for a few good reasons to vote for Kerry, and so far there hasn't been any real good reason to vote Democratic. Come on surely out of all the Democrats there isn't a better choice than Kerry? How in the world did he get nominated? Heck even the Communist party endorses Kerry, that should be some concern to at least part of the Democrats. If you don't believe me go look at their website. I refuse to vote for Kerry, even though I don't really want to vote for Bush.

MSD · 09-07-2004, 04:48 AM

Are we in the business of passing along chain letters now? That spacing is barely more readable than having everythign run together, but what I did read will probably be shot down as fast as the nonexistent "Clinton body count"

host · 09-07-2004, 06:24 AM

My motivation in posting this list, "Bush by the numbers", is try to
examine the mindset of people who don't (or won't) reveal any
negative reaction to Bush or his record; no matter how serious or
substantive the item is. Taking 500 days vacation (even if it is only
half that amount, it is more than any past president took off), much
of it during a war that Bush declared, and only holding 14 news
conferences during his time in office, along with the controversy over
the premise and conduct of the war in Iraq, seem to be matters
too serious to just brush off, with predictable supporter responses;
by "shooting the messenger" and by trying to trivialize the entire list
of observations on Bush, presented by the author in a journalistic
style pioneered by USA Today. Is is it really so hard to give the list
a critical an studied appraisal and reaction, rather than the cursory
review of some respondents so far, who cite a few examples of
weak items, and then dismiss the validity of all the listed factoids,
with no referenced links to back their comments, and no serious
response to critical items, such as Vacation time and observations
about lack of references to Saudi Arabia in state of the union
addresses, and items about the war in Iraq. Who is Bush? Do you
really know? Do you notice that he has answered fewer spontaneous
questions put to him by members of the press, than any other
4 year president, and what do you make of that?

tecoyah · 09-07-2004, 06:44 AM

I think the problem here is not the Inadequacies of GWB, but rather the lack of research in the information posted. Yes, much of the above "By the Numbers" post has a basis in reality, and many of the stats may indeed be true, but there is no proof availible without major searching by the rest of us.
I cannot speak for others but, I simply do not have the time, nor the desire to verify these statistics. This coming from someone who is currently rather disgusted with the man. If I won't look it up, I can guarantee you the Bush suppoters will not, And I assume those are the people you have directed this towards.

The intellect of Bush is well known, even by the republican base. It obviously is of little importance to his supporters, and the detractors are too nice to bring it up.

student · 09-07-2004, 07:41 AM

I have a theory that I came up with while trying to respond to a letter in the opinion section of my local newspaper. The guy had multiple contradictions in the same 250 word or less letter than I could even deal with and ended up not responding. Hence my epiphany...The problem with Bush is that there are too many problems with Bush. Almost like the survival tatics of zebras and schools of fish. A lion or some other predator is seen. The zebras get together and appears as a jumbled mess and the lion cannot single out a target. One attempts to attack Bush's policies, service record, alledged cocaine use, ties to Saudi Arabia, electronic voting machines, etc, and you get side tracked, furious, frustrated. On the other hand, you have only a few reasons to like him. The converse is true with Kerry, there are only a few reasons not to like him, mainly these days being his disputed military record and flip flopping. I think it is by just some stroke of unimagineable luck that it could play out like this.

Stompy · 09-07-2004, 10:34 AM

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.

I won't count ALL the other items, but I will try to validate the "0" items and important mentions (Saddam, terroris*):

Inaugural: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/inaugural-address.html

0 mentioned for all of those items;

2002 State of the Union: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...020129-11.html

0 for all except terroris* which was 23 times. Iraq - 2

2003 State of the Union: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030128-19.html

Osama - 0; Saudi Arabia - 0; Saddam - 19; terroris* - 17; Iraq - 22

2004 State of the Union: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040120-7.html

Osama - 0; Saudi Arabia - 0; Saddam - 5; terroris* - 15; Iraq - 24

Scipio · 09-07-2004, 10:41 AM

I'm confused. Is this thread about what the title says, or about what the first post says?

brianna · 09-07-2004, 11:23 AM

0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.

0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.

i find these two facts (i know the first is absolutly true and i'm pretty positive about the second) really off putting -- does nayone know what the administrations defense of such acts is?

Mojo_PeiPei · 09-07-2004, 12:03 PM

Perhaps respecting wishes of the family to not have the deaths of loved ones politicized, nor in the case of the memorials to have the hassel of hosting the president.

Pacifier · 09-07-2004, 12:24 PM

like respecting the family members of the 911 victims when they showed the coffins in an ad?

scout · 09-07-2004, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianna

0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.

Actually that's not true, the coffins was photographed once and there was a big brew-ha-ha and it was decided there would be no further photographs released.

host · 09-07-2004, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scipio

I'm confused. Is this thread about what the title says, or about what the first post says?

I guess, if I comprehend what you are asking, the thread title could be
changed to "Anyone want to defend Bush against the negative reaction
about half of those who read "Bush by Numbers: Four Years of Double Standards" by Graydon Carter, will probably display after they read it.
There was Bush on TV this AM, repeating his daily mantra that Kerry is
a flip-flopper. I guess Graydon Carter heard this mantra one too many times,
and decided to counter Bush's mantra about Kerry by publishing one on Bush.
I was visiting my elderly in-laws today, and their elderly friend was with them.
They know that my opinion is that Bush was appointed, and by his deeds over
the last 32 months, is a failed President. I accept that because they have
been conviced by the efforts of the Republican party to believe that it is
the christian party, and that Bush is a saved christian, they have no other
political options to consider. I remained silent while the three enthusiastically
discussed how impressed they were with the convention last week, and
their unanimous approval of speeches by Arnold and Zell. When their friend
commented about the terrorist attack in Russia, I offered that since Russia
insisted that Chechnya must remain part of their confederation, and in view
of the terrible suffering of Chechnyan people at the hands of the Russian
government, Russia must negotiate or will probably have to kill or imprison
every Chechnyan to end the terrorist attacks. The woman replied that
Kerry wants to negotiate with terrorists to end our involvement in Iraq.
A news item perceived unfavorable to Bush suddenly caught our attention
on CNN, and both my in-laws immediately griped about the media bias against
Bush. I countered by naming the ownership of the three major networks,
and stated my belief that the corporate media's top priorty is profits, and
if anything, their bias actually favors Bush, since they don't emphasize
his avoidance of holding news conferences, or his consistant policy of
public and campaign appearances in front of pre-screened audiences who
ask him only pre-approved questions, or at military installations. They cut me
off at that point, and they told me that I was entirely wrong.

As I drove home, I told my wife that the exchange with her parents had
reinforced my admiration for the results of Karl Rove's four year Psych Ops
on the American electorate on Bush's behalf. He has programmed people to
believe that all negatives reported about Bush are malicious and baseless,
instigated by a biased press establishment that persecutes Bush by
reporting negative stories about him, but reports truthful and instantly
accepted negatives about Kerry. Rove has manipulated these followers into
total, unquestioning acceptance of everything Bush says or does, no need
for any independent thought or research. If you are a Christian, Rove has
your soul, as well as your brain, locked up for Bush.
I don't see (m)any posters here who defend Bush by offering linked factual information to be accepted or further debated. I'm becoming ever
more certain that to support Bush, one must not give any weight or inquiry
to negative news and comments about him. Will anyone defend his record
and justify voting for him with a linked, fact based argument that does not focus on trying to discredit Graydon Carter, me, the media, or the list
of Bush factoids. Are the major points unfair to Bush, and......why?

Ustwo · 09-07-2004, 04:06 PM

Anything that has Henry Waxman as a source MUST be true.

Its drivel and if it were a conservative thread it would be locked due to the troll posts that follow.

lurkette · 09-07-2004, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Anything that has Henry Waxman as a source MUST be true.

Its drivel and if it were a conservative thread it would be locked due to the troll posts that follow.

Are you suggesting the mods are biased? Care to present some evidence? We lock down threads that deteriorate into personal attacks, that are redundant, or that have no potential for actual discourse. I don't think it's unreasonable to present claims that are being made in the media and request that someone either defend or refute them with evidence.

As far as I can tell, this post is the only real troll so far.

FoolThemAll · 09-07-2004, 05:34 PM

I like Bush's tax policies. I like Bush's handling of the war, for the most part, and I believe we were justified in attacking Iraq. I like Bush's position on abortion. I like Bush's economic policies...more than I like Kerry's. I like outsourcing, I regularly outsource my letter delivery tasks to the post office and am satisfied with the results (despite the trade deficit).

And what I consider negatives about Bush (spending, tariffs, drug policy, gay marriage, Ashcroft, Patriot Act portions) isn't enough to dissuade me. I skimmed through the list and much of what I saw seemed picky/irrelevant, a bit dishonest, overshadowed by more important issues, or a combination thereof. Could you (or anyone else) point to what you consider the 3-5 most important points here? Or 10, if you want. (Or you can refuse to cater to my laziness here, a perfectly acceptable response.)

hammer4all · 09-07-2004, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scout

Actually that's not true, the coffins was photographed once and there was a big brew-ha-ha and it was decided there would be no further photographs released.

No, it is true. The big "brew-ha-ha" only happened after The Memory Hole had obtained the coffin photos via a FOIA request unbeknownst to the Bush administration.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/

scout · 09-08-2004, 03:24 AM

After checking the link, it appears the memory hole won it's appeal and the photos was released. It also states on the link you provided that if the media wants to use any of the photos, all they need to do is ask and the memory hole will provide a high resolution copy. Maybe I'm reading to much into it, but it looks like democracy worked, and there isn't a "total ban". On the front page the bottom 2 lines, and I quote

"We were not allowed to see the war dead arriving at Dover.

Now we are."

Stompy · 09-08-2004, 04:13 AM

haha, I don't get what the big deal is about not showing coffins.

It's not like there's a big sign on it with the deceased's name, nor is the coffin see-thru for us to peek at the corpse. For all that we know, it could be an empty box wrapped in a flag. Nothing identifiable whatsoever and not disrespectful in the least!

People complain about the most retarded things just to complain about SOMETHING.

Bill O'Rights · 09-08-2004, 05:31 AM

1: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters.

2: Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3: In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4: More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

5: Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!

6: Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low occurrence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis.

7: Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat, actually begged for bread after only two days.

8: Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to harder items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter and even cold cuts.

9: Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

10: Newborn babies can choke on bread.

11: Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

12: Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

I originaly posted this in humor, last March. Not only do I find it humorous, but I also feel that it points out how any number can be twisted to fit an agenda. Not to say that a lot of the figures presented in this thread aren't eye opening...just that some need to be taken with a grain of delicious Morton's brand salt. Remember; when it rains, it pours. Ask for it by name. /shamless plug.

Ustwo · 09-08-2004, 05:42 AM

Atkins, it does a body good!

host · 09-08-2004, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

1: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters.

2: Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3: In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4: More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

5: Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!

6: Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low occurrence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis.

7: Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat, actually begged for bread after only two days.

8: Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to harder items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter and even cold cuts.

9: Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

10: Newborn babies can choke on bread.

11: Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

12: Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

I originaly posted this in humor, last March. Not only do I find it humorous, but I also feel that it points out how any number can be twisted to fit an agenda. Not to say that a lot of the figures presented in this thread aren't eye opening...just that some need to be taken with a grain of delicious Morton's brand salt. Remember; when it rains, it pours. Ask for it by name. /shamless plug.

Sorry to single you out, but no one seems to be able to defend
the items in the list bnegative to Bush's performance or record by
making proi-Bush points and backing those arguments with links.

Ustwo · 09-08-2004, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Sorry to single you out, but no one seems to be able to defend
the items in the list bnegative to Bush's performance or record by
making proi-Bush points and backing those arguments with links.

A number of those points are quite silly on the surface.

If you expect someone go to through each one, and discuss each one thats great, but I think most of us have lives.

You didn't take the time to make such a list, you did a cut and paste, why should we take the time?

Bill O'Rights · 09-08-2004, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Sorry to single you out, but no one seems to be able to defend
the items in the list bnegative to Bush's performance or record by
making proi-Bush points and backing those arguments with links.

Ok...let's staighten a coupla things out here.

A) I'm in no way shape or form defending Bush

B) Pro-Bush points? I don't see 'em. How is my spoof on statistics pro-Bush?

C) And to top it all off, you've forced me to have to agree with Mr. Ustwo up there. I hate it when I have to agree with him, but yeah...that's a hell of a list for you to expect people to disseminate. Most of which, by the way, are just "gee whiz" points that need no repudiation.

tecoyah · 09-08-2004, 12:56 PM

Host....you will not likely, get a defense of Bush by posting weak statistics. Should you actually request single issues , and then ask the community to bebut the data you may indeed get results. Many have attempted to goad the conservatives here into true debate, and failed for similar reasons.
My recommendation is to pick an issue that has hard data, and set it as an idividual topic.....as I will do now.

Let's see if it can be defended.

09-06-2004, 10:11 PM	#1 (permalink)
host Banned	Can Anyone Make a Convincing Case for Bush? <font size="+1"><b>Bush by Numbers: Four Years of Double Standards</b></font> <span class="text2"><font color="#CC0033"></font></span> <div style="height:5;"><img border="0" SRC="images/rien.gif" WIDTH="5" HEIGHT="5"></div> <i>How many of these stats can you explain away, with quality links to support your arguments? Do any of these stats concern you, especially considering that we are supposed to be at war, and we have about one thousand dead now. How do you measure Bush's performance and how do you expect Kerry would perform worse?</i> <div align="justify"> <p class="spip"> by Graydon Carter</p> <p class="spip">1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa’ida.</p> <p class="spip">104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defense in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.</p> <p class="spip">101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defense in the same period that mentioned missile defense</p> <p class="spip">65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defense in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.</p> <p class="spip">73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.</p> <p class="spip">83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.</p> <p class="spip">$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.</p> <p class="spip">1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States.</p> <p class="spip">79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.</p> <p class="spip">3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi "Visa Express" program.</p> <p class="spip">140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September.</p> <p class="spip">14 Number of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents assigned to track down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries where al-Qa’ida is active.</p> <p class="spip">$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks.</p> <p class="spip">$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.</p> <p class="spip">$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS’s existing terrorism budget.</p> <p class="spip">$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia space shuttle crash.</p> <p class="spip">$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalized gambling.</p> <p class="spip">7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and mid-October 2002 for being gay.</p> <p class="spip">George Bush: Military man</p> <p class="spip">1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas National Guard, Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up.</p> <p class="spip">$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could confirm Bush’s Alabama guard service.</p> <p class="spip">600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush’s unit during that period.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information about Bush’s guard service.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove the main proponents of the war in Iraq served in combat (combined).</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq.</p> <p class="spip">8 Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives who have a child serving in the military.</p> <p class="spip">10 Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier who had called the President "a joke" in a letter to the editor of a Newspaper.</p> <p class="spip">46 Percentage increase in sales between 2001 and 2002 of GI Joe figures (children’s toys).</p> <p class="spip">Ambitious warrior</p> <p class="spip">2 Number of Nations that George Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into office.</p> <p class="spip">130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with a US military presence.</p> <p class="spip">43 Percentage of the entire world’s military spending that the US spends on defense (That was in 2002, the year before the invasion of Iraq.)</p> <p class="spip">$401.3bn Proposed military budget for 2004.</p> <p class="spip">Savior of Iraq</p> <p class="spip">1983 The year in which Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs as a gift.</p> <p class="spip">2.5 Number of hours after Rumsfeld learnt that Osama bin Laden was a suspect in the 11 September attacks that he brought up reasons to "hit" Iraq.</p> <p class="spip">237 Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by top Bush administration officials between 2002 and January 2004, according to the California Representative Henry Waxman.</p> <p class="spip">10m Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets on 21 February 2003, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the largest simultaneous protest in world history.</p> <p class="spip">$2bn Estimated monthly cost of US military presence in Iraq projected by the White House in April 2003.</p> <p class="spip">$4bn Actual monthly cost of the US military presence in Iraq according to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in 2004.</p> <p class="spip">$15m Amount of a contract awarded to an American firm to build a cement factory in Iraq.</p> <p class="spip">$80,000 Amount an Iraqi firm spent (using Saddam’s confiscated funds) to build the same factory, after delays prevented the American firm from starting it.</p> <p class="spip">2000 Year that Cheney said his policy as CEO of Halliburton oil services company was "we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq".</p> <p class="spip">$4.7bn Total value of contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p class="spip">$680m Estimated value of Iraq reconstruction contracts awarded to Bechtel.</p> <p class="spip">$2.8bnValue of Bechtel Corp contracts in Iraq.</p> <p class="spip">$120bn Amount the war and its aftermath are projected to cost for the 2004 fiscal year.</p> <p class="spip">35 Number of countries to which the United States suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court.</p> <p class="spip">92 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2002.</p> <p class="spip">60 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2003.</p> <p class="spip">55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before the war.</p> <p class="spip">80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year after the war.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender in May 1945.</p> <p class="spip">37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 2003, the month combat operations "officially" ended.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.</p> <p class="spip">A soldier’s best friend</p> <p class="spip">40,000 Number of soldiers in Iraq seven months after start of the war still without Interceptor vests, designed to stop a round from an AK-47.</p> <p class="spip">$60m Estimated cost of outfitting those 40,000 soldiers with Interceptor vests.</p> <p class="spip">62 Percentage of gas masks that army investigators discovered did Not work properly in autumn 2002.</p> <p class="spip">90 Percentage of detectors which give early warning of a biological weapons attack found to be defective.</p> <p class="spip">87 Percentage of Humvees in Iraq not equipped with armour capable of stopping AK-47 rounds and protecting against roadside bombs and landmines at the end of 2003.</p> <p class="spip">Making the country safer</p> <p class="spip">$3.29 Average amount allocated per person Nationwide in the first round of homeland security grants.</p> <p class="spip">$94.40 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in American Samoa.</p> <p class="spip">$36 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in Wyoming, Vice-President Cheney’s home state.</p> <p class="spip">$17 Amount allocated per person in New York state.</p> <p class="spip">$5.87 Amount allocated per person in New York City.</p> <p class="spip">$77.92 Amount allocated per person in New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University, Bush’s alma mater.</p> <p class="spip">76 Percentage of 215 cities surveyed by the US Conference of Mayors in early 2004 that had yet to receive a dime in federal homeland security assistance for their first-response units.</p> <p class="spip">5 Number of major US airports at the beginning of 2004 that the Transportation Security Administration admitted were Not fully screening baggage electronically.</p> <p class="spip">22,600 Number of planes carrying unscreened cargo that fly into New York each month.</p> <p class="spip">5 Estimated Percentage of US air cargo that is screened, including cargo transported on passenger planes.</p> <p class="spip">95 Percentage of foreign goods that arrive in the United States by sea.</p> <p class="spip">2 Percentage of those goods subjected to thorough inspection.</p> <p class="spip">$5.5bnEstimated cost to secure fully US ports over the Next decade.</p> <p class="spip">$0 Amount Bush allocated for port security in 2003.</p> <p class="spip">$46m Amount the Bush administration has budgeted for port security in 2005.</p> <p class="spip">15,000 Number of major chemical facilities in the United States.</p> <p class="spip">100 Number of US chemical plants where a terrorist act could endanger the lives of more than one million people.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of new drugs or vaccines against "priority pathogens" listed by the Centers for Disease Control that have been developed and introduced since 11 September 2001.</p> <p class="spip">Giving a hand up to the advantaged</p> <p class="spip">$10.9m Average wealth of the members of Bush’s original 16-person cabinet.</p> <p class="spip">75 Percentage of Americans unaffected by Bush’s sweeping 2003 cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes.</p> <p class="spip">$42,000 Average savings members of Bush’s cabinet received in 2003 as a result of cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes.</p> <p class="spip">10 Number of fellow members from the Yale secret society Skull and Bones that Bush has named to important positions (including the Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. and SEC chief Bill Donaldson).</p> <p class="spip">79 Number of Bush’s initial 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration.</p> <p class="spip">A man with a lot of friends</p> <p class="spip">$113m Amount of total hard money the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign received, a record.</p> <p class="spip">$11.5m Amount of hard money raised through the Pioneer program, the controversial fund-raising process created for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. (Participants pledged to raise at least $100,000 by bundling together checks of up to $1,000 from friends and family. Pioneers were assigned numbers, which were included on all checks, enabling the campaign to keep track of who raised how much.)</p> <p class="spip">George Bush: Money manager</p> <p class="spip">4.7m Number of bankruptcies that were declared during Bush’s first three years in office.</p> <p class="spip">2002 The worst year for major markets since the recession of the 1970s.</p> <p class="spip">$489bn The US trade deficit in 2003, the worst in history for a single year.</p> <p class="spip">$5.6tr Projected national surplus forecast by the end of the decade when Bush took office in 2001.</p> <p class="spip">$7.22tr US national debt by mid-2004.</p> <p class="spip">George Bush: Tax cutter</p> <p class="spip">87 Percentage of American families in April 2004 who say they have felt no benefit from Bush’s tax cuts.</p> <p class="spip">39 Percentage of tax cuts that will go to the top 1 per cent of American families when fully phased in.</p> <p class="spip">49 Percentage of Americans in April 2004 who found that their taxes had actually gone up since Bush took office.</p> <p class="spip">88 Percentage of American families who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of 2003 cut in capital gains and dividends taxes.</p> <p class="spip">$30,858 Amount Bush himself saved in taxes in 2003.</p> <p class="spip">Employment tsar</p> <p class="spip">9.3m Number of US unemployed in April 2004.</p> <p class="spip">2.3m Number of Americans who lost their jobs during first three Years of the Bush administration.</p> <p class="spip">22m Number of jobs gained during Clinton’s eight years in office.</p> <p class="spip">Friend of the poor</p> <p class="spip">34.6m Number of Americans living below the poverty line (1 in 8 of the population).</p> <p class="spip">6.8m Number of people in the workforce but still classified as poor.</p> <p class="spip">35m Number of Americans that the government defines as "food insecure," in other words, hungry.</p> <p class="spip">$300m Amount cut from the federal program that provides subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes.</p> <p class="spip">40 Percentage of wealth in the United States held by the richest 1 per cent of the population.</p> <p class="spip">18 Percentage of wealth in Britain held by the richest 1e per cent of the population.</p> <p class="spip">George Bush And his special friend</p> <p class="spip">$60bn Loss to Enron stockholders, following the largest bankruptcy in US history.</p> <p class="spip">$205m Amount Enron CEO Kenneth Lay earned from stock option profits over a four-year period.</p> <p class="spip">$101m Amount Lay made from selling his Enron shares just before the company went bankrupt.</p> <p class="spip">$59,339 Amount the Bush campaign reimbursed Enron for 14 trips on its corporate jet during the 2000 campaign.</p> <p class="spip">30 Length of time in months between Enron’s collapse and Lay (whom the President called "Kenny Boy") still not being charged with a crime.</p> <p class="spip">George Bush: Lawman</p> <p class="spip">15 Average number of minutes Bush spent reviewing capital punishment cases while governor of Texas.</p> <p class="spip">46 Percentage of Republican federal judges when Bush came to office.</p> <p class="spip">57 Percentage of Republican federal judges after three years of the Bush administration.</p> <p class="spip">33 Percentage of the $15bn Bush pledged to fight Aids in Africa that must go to abstinence-only programs.</p> <p class="spip">The Civil libertarian</p> <p class="spip">680 Number of suspected al-Qa’ida members that the United States admits are detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.</p> <p class="spip">42 Number of nationalities of those detainees at Guantanamo.</p> <p class="spip">22 Number of hours prisoners were handcuffed, shackled, and made to wear surgical masks, earmuffs, and blindfolds during their flight to Guantanamo.</p> <p class="spip">32 Number of confirmed suicide attempts by Guantanamo Bay prisoners.</p> <p class="spip">24 Number of prisoners in mid-2003 being monitored by psychiatrists in Guantanamo’s new mental ward.</p> <p class="spip">A health-conscious president</p> <p class="spip">43.6m Number of Americans without health insurance by the end of 2002 (more than 15 per cent of the population).</p> <p class="spip">2.4m Number of Americans who lost their health insurance during Bush’s first year in office.</p> <p class="spip">Environmentalist</p> <p class="spip">$44m Amount the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and the Republican National Committee received in contributions from the fossil fuel, chemical, timber, and mining industries.</p> <p class="spip">200 Number of regulation rollbacks downgrading or weakening environmental laws in Bush’s first three years in office.</p> <p class="spip">31 Number of Bush administration appointees who are alumni of the energy industry (includes four cabinet secretaries, the six most powerful White House officials, and more than 20 other high-level appointees).</p> <p class="spip">50 Approximate number of policy changes and regulation rollbacks injurious to the environment that have been announced by the Bush administration on Fridays after 5pm, a time that makes it all but impossible for news organizations to relay the information to the widest possible audience.</p> <p class="spip">50 Percentage decline in Environmental Protection Agency enforcement actions against polluters under Bush’s watch.</p> <p class="spip">34 Percentage decline in criminal penalties for environmental crimes since Bush took office.</p> <p class="spip">50 Percentage decline in civil penalties for environmental crimes since Bush took office.</p> <p class="spip">$6.1m Amount the EPA historically valued each human life when conducting economic analyses of proposed regulations.</p> <p class="spip">$3.7m Amount the EPA valued each human life when conducting analyses of proposed regulations during the Bush administration.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of times Bush mentioned global warming, clean air, clean water, pollution or environment in his 2004 State of the Union speech. His father was the last president to go through an entire State of the Union address without mentioning the environment.</p> <p class="spip">1 Number of paragraphs devoted to global warming in the EPA’s 600-page "Draft Report on the Environment" presented in 2003.</p> <p class="spip">68 Number of days after taking office that Bush decided Not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases by roughly 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States was to cut its level by 7 per cent.</p> <p class="spip">1 The rank of the United States worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.</p> <p class="spip">25 Percentage of overall worldwide carbon dioxide emissions the United States is responsible for.</p> <p class="spip">53 Number of days after taking office that Bush reneged on his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.</p> <p class="spip">14 Percentage carbon dioxide emissions will increase over the next 10 years under Bush’s own global-warming plan (an increase of 30 per cent above their 1990 levels).</p> <p class="spip">408 Number of species that could be extinct by 2050 if the global-warming trend continues.</p> <p class="spip">5 Number of years the Bush administration said in 2003 that global warming must be further studied before substantive action could be taken.</p> <p class="spip">62 Number of members of Cheney’s 63-person Energy Task Force with ties to corporate energy interests.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of environmentalists asked to attend Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings.</p> <p class="spip">6 Number of months before 11 September that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil reserves.</p> <p class="spip">2 Percentage of the world’s population that is British.</p> <p class="spip">2 Percentage of the world’s oil used by Britain.</p> <p class="spip">5 Percentage of the world’s population that is American.</p> <p class="spip">25 Percentage of the world’s oil used by America.</p> <p class="spip">63 Percentage of oil the United States imported in 2003, a record high.</p> <p class="spip">24,000 Estimated number of premature deaths that will occur under Bush’s Clear Skies initiative.</p> <p class="spip">300 Number of Clean Water Act violations by the mountaintop-mining industry in 2003.</p> <p class="spip">750,000 Tons of toxic waste the US military, the world’s biggest polluter, generates around the world each Year.</p> <p class="spip">$3.8bn Amount in the Superfund trust fund for toxic site clean-ups in 1995, the Year "polluter pays" fees expired.</p> <p class="spip">$0m Amount of uncommitted dollars in the Superfund trust fund for toxic site clean-ups in 2003.</p> <p class="spip">270 Estimated number of court decisions citing federal Negligence in endangered-species protection that remained unheeded during the first year of the Bush administration.</p> <p class="spip">100 Percentage of those decisions that Bush then decided to allow the government to ignore indefinitely.</p> <p class="spip">68.4 Average Number of species added to the Endangered and Threatened Species list each year between 1991 and 2000.</p> <p class="spip">0 Number of endangered species voluntarily added by the Bush administration since taking office.</p> <p class="spip">50 Percentage of screened workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from long-term health problems, almost half of whom don’t have health insurance.</p> <p class="spip">78 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from lung ailments.</p> <p class="spip">88 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who Now suffer from ear, nose, or throat problems.</p> <p class="spip">22 Asbestos levels at Ground Zero were 22 times higher than the levels in Libby, Montana, where the W R Grace mine produced one of the worst Superfund disasters in US history.</p> <p class="spip">Image booster for the US</p> <p class="spip">2,500 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State Department to further the image of the US abroad in 1991.</p> <p class="spip">1,200 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State Department to further US image abroad in 2004.</p> <p class="spip">4 Rank of the United States among countries considered to be the greatest threats to world peace according to a 2003 Pew Global Attitudes study (Israel, Iran, and North Korea were considered more dangerous; Iraq was considered less dangerous).</p> <p class="spip">$66bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and diplomacy in 1949.</p> <p class="spip">$23.8bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and diplomacy in 2002.</p> <p class="spip">85 Percentage of Indonesians who had an unfavorable image of the United States in 2003.</p> <p class="spip">Second-party endorsements</p> <p class="spip">90 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 26 September 2001.</p> <p class="spip">67 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 26 September 2002.</p> <p class="spip">54 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 30 September, 2003.</p> <p class="spip">50 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president on 15 October 2003.</p> <p class="spip">49 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president in May 2004.</p> <p class="spip">More like the French than he would care to admit</p> <p class="spip">28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 2003, the second-longest vacation of any president in US history. (Record holder Richard Nixon.)</p> <p class="spip">13 Number of vacation days the average American receives each Year.</p> <p class="spip">28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 2001, the month he received a 6 August Presidential Daily Briefing headed "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike US Targets."</p> <p class="spip">500 Number of days Bush has spent all or part of his time away from the White House at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, his parents’ retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, or Camp David as of 1 April 2004.</p> <p class="spip">No fool when it comes to the press</p> <p class="spip">11 Number of press conferences during his first three Years in office in which Bush referred to questions as being "trick" ones.</p> <p class="spip">Factors in his favor</p> <p class="spip">3 Number of companies that control the US voting technology market.</p> <p class="spip">52 Percentage of votes cast during the 2002 midterm elections that were recorded by Election Systems & Software, the largest voting-technology firm, a big Republican donor.</p> <p class="spip">29 Percentage of votes that will be cast via computer voting machines that don’t produce a paper record.</p> <p class="spip">17On 17 November 2001, The Economist printed a correction for having said George Bush was properly elected in 2000.</p> <p class="spip">$113m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, the most in American electoral history.</p> <p class="spip">$185m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, to the end of March 2004.</p> <p class="spip">$200m Amount that the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign expects to raise by November 2004.</p> <p class="spip">268 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Pioneer status (by raising $100,000 each) as of March 2004.</p> <p class="spip">187 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Ranger status (by raising $200,000 each) as of March 2004.</p> <p class="spip">$64.2mThe Amount Pioneers and Rangers had raised for Bush-Cheney as of March 2004.</p> <p class="spip">85 Percentage of Americans who can’t Name the Chief Justice of the United States.</p> <p class="spip">69 Percentage of Americans who believed the White House’s claims in September 2003 that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 11 September attacks.</p> <p class="spip">34 Percentage of Americans who believed in June 2003 that Saddam’s "weapons of mass destruction" had been found.</p> <p class="spip">22 Percentage of Americans who believed in May 2003 that Saddam had used his WMDs on US forces.</p> <p class="spip">85 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel on a map.</p> <p class="spip">30 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a map.</p> <p class="spip">75 Percentage of American young adults who don’t know the population of the United States.</p> <p class="spip">53 Percentage of Canadian young adults who don’t know the population of the United States.</p> <p class="spip">11 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the United States on a map.</p> <p class="spip">30 Percentage of Americans who believe that "politics and government are too complicated to understand."</p> <p class="spip">Another factor in his favor</p> <p class="spip">70m Estimated number of Americans who describe themselves as Evangelicals who accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and who interpret the Bible as the direct word of God.</p> <p class="spip">23m Number of Evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2000.</p> <p class="spip">50m Number of voters in total who voted for Bush in 2000.</p> <p class="spip">46 Percentage of voters who describe themselves as born-again Christians.</p> <p class="spip">5 Number of states that do not use the word "evolution" in public school science courses.</p> <p class="spip">This is an edited extract from "What We’ve Lost", by Graydon Carter, published by Little Brown on 9 September</p> <p class="spip">ABOUT THE AUTHOR</p> <p class="spip">For a former college drop-out from Ontario and, briefly, a lineman stringing up telegraph wires on the railways of Canada, Graydon Carter, 55, has risen to impressive heights. The editor of Vanity Fair since 1992 after succeeding Tina Brown he is one of America’s celebrity editors with clout, glamour and a nice line in suits.</p> <p class="spip">It is hard to imagine Carter doing physical work of any kind, beyond exercising his thumb on his silver Zippo lighter. His labor is restricted to rejigging headlines in his magazine he is a self-confessed failure at delegation of duties and swanning to Manhattan parties. Martini in hand, he cuts an almost princely and dandyish figure, with billowing shirts and similarly billowing silver hair.</p> <p class="spip">The spotlight on his activities has never burned brighter. In recent months he has transformed the regular editor’s letter at the front of the magazine into less of a chat about its coming contents the spreads of Annie Leibowitz and rants of Christopher Hitchens and more a full-bore diatribe against the world of George Bush.</p> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0903-04.htm">by Graydon Carter</a></p></div> <br> Monday 6th September 2004</b></font><br><br> <table width="60%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" align="center" class="text"> <tr> <td></td> </tr> </table>Can Anyone Make a Convincing Case for Bush? Last edited by host; 09-06-2004 at 10:13 PM.. Reason: Thread title displayed html tags, in error.

09-06-2004, 11:51 PM	#2 (permalink)
whocarz Jarhead Location: Colorado	You ask for quality links to support arguements. I clicked on the link to the original article. I was looking for references. I find it hard to take everything this gentleman claims as "the truth". I'm not saying that any of this ISN'T true, but I am wary of people that calim to spout facts, yet don't do anything to back them up. If you'd like an example of what I would look for, here is a article which has references: http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html Whether or not you agree with it isn't the point. The point is that it has something (almost 300 somethings in fact) to back up it's claims to validity. Perhaps you doubt the sources of the information, but atleat there is SOMETHING. In closing, all I can say is that, whoever wins, I'll be happy that all this election talk will finally be over. It hurts my head. __________________ If there exists anything mightier than destiny, then it is the courage to face destiny unflinchingly. -Geibel Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else. -Marcus Aurelius Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever? -GySgt. Daniel J. "Dan" Daly

09-07-2004, 01:15 AM	#3 (permalink)
pedro padilla Insane	well, lets see........ummmm.........he looks damn good in a flight suit. and if that ain´t good enough, you´re for sure with al qaeda. you know, them iraqi guys that had the nukes. who reads that numbers mumbo jumbo anyway? damn right i´m voting for arnold. Last edited by pedro padilla; 09-07-2004 at 01:19 AM..

09-07-2004, 06:24 AM	#6 (permalink)
host Banned	<b>My motivation in posting this list, "Bush by the numbers", is try to examine the mindset of people who don't (or won't) reveal any negative reaction to Bush or his record; no matter how serious or substantive the item is. Taking 500 days vacation (even if it is only half that amount, it is more than any past president took off), much of it during a war that Bush declared, and only holding 14 news conferences during his time in office, along with the controversy over the premise and conduct of the war in Iraq, seem to be matters too serious to just brush off, with predictable supporter responses; by "shooting the messenger" and by trying to trivialize the entire list of observations on Bush, presented by the author in a journalistic style pioneered by USA Today. Is is it really so hard to give the list a critical an studied appraisal and reaction, rather than the cursory review of some respondents so far, who cite a few examples of weak items, and then dismiss the validity of all the listed factoids, with no referenced links to back their comments, and no serious response to critical items, such as Vacation time and observations about lack of references to Saudi Arabia in state of the union addresses, and items about the war in Iraq. Who is Bush? Do you really know? Do you notice that he has answered fewer spontaneous questions put to him by members of the press, than any other 4 year president, and what do you make of that? </b>

09-07-2004, 06:44 AM	#7 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	I think the problem here is not the Inadequacies of GWB, but rather the lack of research in the information posted. Yes, much of the above "By the Numbers" post has a basis in reality, and many of the stats may indeed be true, but there is no proof availible without major searching by the rest of us. I cannot speak for others but, I simply do not have the time, nor the desire to verify these statistics. This coming from someone who is currently rather disgusted with the man. If I won't look it up, I can guarantee you the Bush suppoters will not, And I assume those are the people you have directed this towards. The intellect of Bush is well known, even by the republican base. It obviously is of little importance to his supporters, and the detractors are too nice to bring it up. __________________ Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

09-07-2004, 02:55 AM	#4 (permalink)
scout Psycho	HAHA, most of that is pure crap. There's even a reference to 1996, Clinton was president in '96. Who cares if it was 68 days into the Bush term he got us out of the Kyoto treaty? The main thing is, he done what was right for America. Or what does it matter that 5 states don't mention the word evolution in their public science courses? That's a state issue, not a global or even a national issue. It's Bush's fault that 46% of registered voters call themselves born-again Christians? Or that 70 million call themselves Evangicals and believe in the Bible? One could go on and on about the list, there was even a list at one time of all the people that had died a strange premature death when Clinton was President, but in the end it won't matter. It's not going to persuade anyone to vote one way or another. I must say this has been one of the most divisive elections I've ever seen in my short 40 years. Being one of the few undecided voters, I keep coming here looking for a few good reasons to vote for Kerry, and so far there hasn't been any real good reason to vote Democratic. Come on surely out of all the Democrats there isn't a better choice than Kerry? How in the world did he get nominated? Heck even the Communist party endorses Kerry, that should be some concern to at least part of the Democrats. If you don't believe me go look at their website. I refuse to vote for Kerry, even though I don't really want to vote for Bush.

09-07-2004, 04:48 AM	#5 (permalink)
MSD The sky calls to us ... Super Moderator Location: CT	Are we in the business of passing along chain letters now? That spacing is barely more readable than having everythign run together, but what I did read will probably be shot down as fast as the nonexistent "Clinton body count"

09-07-2004, 07:41 AM	#8 (permalink)
student Crazy	I have a theory that I came up with while trying to respond to a letter in the opinion section of my local newspaper. The guy had multiple contradictions in the same 250 word or less letter than I could even deal with and ended up not responding. Hence my epiphany...The problem with Bush is that there are too many problems with Bush. Almost like the survival tatics of zebras and schools of fish. A lion or some other predator is seen. The zebras get together and appears as a jumbled mess and the lion cannot single out a target. One attempts to attack Bush's policies, service record, alledged cocaine use, ties to Saudi Arabia, electronic voting machines, etc, and you get side tracked, furious, frustrated. On the other hand, you have only a few reasons to like him. The converse is true with Kerry, there are only a few reasons not to like him, mainly these days being his disputed military record and flip flopping. I think it is by just some stroke of unimagineable luck that it could play out like this.

09-07-2004, 10:34 AM	#9 (permalink)
Stompy Banned from being Banned Location: Donkey	0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses. 73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses. 83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses. 0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses. I won't count ALL the other items, but I will try to validate the "0" items and important mentions (Saddam, terroris): Inaugural: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/inaugural-address.html 0 mentioned for all of those items; 2002 State of the Union: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...020129-11.html 0 for all except terroris which was 23 times. Iraq - 2 2003 State of the Union: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...030128-19.html Osama - 0; Saudi Arabia - 0; Saddam - 19; terroris* - 17; Iraq - 22 2004 State of the Union: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040120-7.html Osama - 0; Saudi Arabia - 0; Saddam - 5; terroris* - 15; Iraq - 24 __________________ I love lamp.

09-07-2004, 10:41 AM	#10 (permalink)
Scipio Mencken Location: College	I'm confused. Is this thread about what the title says, or about what the first post says? __________________ "Erections lasting more than 4 hours, though rare, require immediate medical attention."

09-07-2004, 11:23 AM	#11 (permalink)
brianna Addict Location: nyc	<i>0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed. 0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.</i> i find these two facts (i know the first is absolutly true and i'm pretty positive about the second) really off putting -- does nayone know what the administrations defense of such acts is?

09-07-2004, 12:03 PM	#12 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	Perhaps respecting wishes of the family to not have the deaths of loved ones politicized, nor in the case of the memorials to have the hassel of hosting the president. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

09-07-2004, 12:24 PM	#13 (permalink)
Pacifier undead Location: Duisburg, Germany	like respecting the family members of the 911 victims when they showed the coffins in an ad? __________________ "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death — Albert Einstein

09-07-2004, 04:06 PM	#16 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	Anything that has Henry Waxman as a source MUST be true. Its drivel and if it were a conservative thread it would be locked due to the troll posts that follow. __________________ 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.

09-07-2004, 05:34 PM	#18 (permalink)
FoolThemAll Walking is Still Honest Location: Seattle, WA	I like Bush's tax policies. I like Bush's handling of the war, for the most part, and I believe we were justified in attacking Iraq. I like Bush's position on abortion. I like Bush's economic policies...more than I like Kerry's. I like outsourcing, I regularly outsource my letter delivery tasks to the post office and am satisfied with the results (despite the trade deficit). And what I consider negatives about Bush (spending, tariffs, drug policy, gay marriage, Ashcroft, Patriot Act portions) isn't enough to dissuade me. I skimmed through the list and much of what I saw seemed picky/irrelevant, a bit dishonest, overshadowed by more important issues, or a combination thereof. Could you (or anyone else) point to what you consider the 3-5 most important points here? Or 10, if you want. (Or you can refuse to cater to my laziness here, a perfectly acceptable response.) __________________ I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

09-08-2004, 03:24 AM	#20 (permalink)
scout Psycho	After checking the link, it appears the memory hole won it's appeal and the photos was released. It also states on the link you provided that if the media wants to use any of the photos, all they need to do is ask and the memory hole will provide a high resolution copy. Maybe I'm reading to much into it, but it looks like democracy worked, and there isn't a "total ban". On the front page the bottom 2 lines, and I quote "We were not allowed to see the war dead arriving at Dover. Now we are."

09-08-2004, 04:13 AM	#21 (permalink)
Stompy Banned from being Banned Location: Donkey	haha, I don't get what the big deal is about not showing coffins. It's not like there's a big sign on it with the deceased's name, nor is the coffin see-thru for us to peek at the corpse. For all that we know, it could be an empty box wrapped in a flag. Nothing identifiable whatsoever and not disrespectful in the least! People complain about the most retarded things just to complain about SOMETHING. __________________ I love lamp.

09-08-2004, 05:31 AM	#22 (permalink)
Bill O'Rights will always be an Alyson Hanniganite Location: In the dust of the archives	1: More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters. 2: Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. 3: In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and influenza ravaged whole nations. 4: More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread. 5: Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month! 6: Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low occurrence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis. 7: Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat, actually begged for bread after only two days. 8: Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to harder items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter and even cold cuts. 9: Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person. 10: Newborn babies can choke on bread. 11: Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute. 12: Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling. I originaly posted this in humor, last March. Not only do I find it humorous, but I also feel that it points out how any number can be twisted to fit an agenda. Not to say that a lot of the figures presented in this thread aren't eye opening...just that some need to be taken with a grain of delicious Morton's brand salt. Remember; when it rains, it pours. Ask for it by name. /shamless plug. __________________ "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony "Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

09-08-2004, 05:42 AM	#23 (permalink)
Ustwo Pissing in the cornflakes	Atkins, it does a body good! __________________ 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.

09-08-2004, 12:56 PM	#27 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	Host....you will not likely, get a defense of Bush by posting weak statistics. Should you actually request single issues , and then ask the community to bebut the data you may indeed get results. Many have attempted to goad the conservatives here into true debate, and failed for similar reasons. My recommendation is to pick an issue that has hard data, and set it as an idividual topic.....as I will do now. Let's see if it can be defended. __________________ Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha