DescentBB

"It's a shame you gave up on it, V."

Thats ok, I'll read partial transcripts and democratic websites tomorrow.

Actually, I heard another 20 minutes of it in the car. I thought Bush delivered it excellently, which I guess is above expectation. But the speech itself was mostly the same boring "better schools," "more jobs," etc... political speech that leaves hanging the niggling details of how those goals are to be achieved. Though, I didn't hear all of it. I guess I prefer policy speeches over "apple pie and puppy dogs are good" speeches.

I thought Miller's speech was -awesome-. He's seriously old school, and man, I wish it wasn't so. I wish they still made senators like that. I want my state to have one. Talk about telling it like you see it, with thunder. The spitballs line had me on the floor lauging--

Zell Miller wrote:The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40 percent of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom. The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Husseinâ??s command post in Iraq. The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifiâ??s Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora. The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nationâ??s Capital and this very city after 9/11.

I could go on and on and on: against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Husseinâ??s scud missiles over Israel; against the Aegis air-defense cruiser; against the Strategic Defense Initiative; against the Trident missile; against, against, against.

This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?

Vander, I'm surprised you thought he had a hard time backing himself up. I saw the Matthews interview, and it was my impression that he'd done his homework quite well. I do wonder if there's another side to the story on some of the votes he reported, but that notwithstanding, I think he built a powerful case about Kerry's voting record with respect to the military.

I really enjoyed Bush's speech, too. It started off pretty slow, but I thought he communicated very clearly and well, and had some good ideas. He talked about some very grand and beautiful things, and on the whole I found it very uplifting.

As always, he was very upfront about where he stands on controversial issues.

George W. Bush wrote:Because family and work are sources of stability and dignity, I support welfare reform that strengthens family and requires work. Because a caring society will value its weakest members, we must make a place for the unborn child. Because religious charities provide a safety net of mercy and compassion, our government must never discriminate against them. Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges. And I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law.

His take on the meaning of the changes thus far in the war on terror was beautiful.

George W. Bush wrote:I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region. Palestinians will hear the message that democracy and reform are within their reach, and so is peace with our good friend Israel. Young women across the Middle East will hear the message that their day of equality and justice is coming. Young men will hear the message that national progress and dignity are found in liberty, not tyranny and terror. Reformers, and political prisoners, and exiles will hear the message that their dream of freedom cannot be denied forever. And as freedom advances â?? heart by heart, and nation by nation â?? America will be more secure and the world more peaceful.

And the closing of his speech is well worth reading.

George W. Bush wrote:In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand. You may have noticed I have a few flaws, too. People sometimes have to correct my English â?? I knew I had a problem when Arnold Schwarzenegger started doing it. Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called "walking." Now and then I come across as a little too blunt â?? and for that we can all thank the white-haired lady sitting right up there.

One thing I have learned about the presidency is that whatever shortcomings you have, people are going to notice them â?? and whatever strengths you have, you're going to need them. These four years have brought moments I could not foresee and will not forget. I have tried to comfort Americans who lost the most on September 11th â?? people who showed me a picture or told me a story, so I would know how much was taken from them. I have learned first-hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right. I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers, some with a very tough road ahead, who say they were just doing their job. I've held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom.

And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers â?? to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong.

The world saw that spirit three miles from here, when the people of this city faced peril together, and lifted a flag over the ruins, and defied the enemy with their courage. My fellow Americans, for as long as our country stands, people will look to the resurrection of New York City and they will say: Here buildings fell, and here a nation rose.

Deeply eloquent. It's such warmth and boldness that make this guy one of my heroes. Wonderful speech.

"Vander, I'm surprised you thought he had a hard time backing himself up. I saw the Matthews interview..."

I was actually talking about the CNN interview. He was pressed on the fact that Dick Cheney was also for cancelling many of the weapons systems he stated, which, uh, didn't quite make it into his speech. His response to this was something like "I'm talking about John Kerry, not Dick Cheney."

When future historians look back upon this election they will see that the outcome of will have been decided by beach footware. Chaney's "flip flop" speech, as they're calling it over here was classic in my opinion. The site of all those people waving their footware was so surreal but dead funny.

On a more serious note the "flip flop" speech has caused me to further research past statements by Kerry, and if i was American i'd be worried that he'd have a chance of leading the country. If you like it or not the strongest nation needs a decicive leader, and Kerry dosn't seem to live up to the description.

i caught the end of it...not a bad speech...but didnt matter to me

Hmmm... looks like it's mattering to some though

New poll

Will Robinson wrote:To answer your question: "Let me ask you this: How would you like it if another bigger country installed whoever they pleased whenever it was in their interest?"

I wouldn't and I strongly support the kind of leadership that will maintain our strength so we can deter that from happening when it doesn't serve our interests.
I'm not about fair, I'm about winning, this is not a sport.
My recipe for success. One planet, one culture. Only then world peace, *then* luxuries like fairness.

I'm not an american, that kind of stuff scares me.
Global peace has to come by itself, and should not be enforced. The world isn't yet ready for it... It'll be for the generations to come.
You should put these Pax-Romana ideologies out of your head, Will.

Peace isn't a natural state. You should put these tree-hugging ideologies out of your head, Tricord.

Or to actually elaborate instead of leaving you with just a dangling one-liner, I ask you to find me proof that humans living together in a natural order will not fight with each other.

Drakona wrote:It's such warmth and boldness that make this guy one of my heroes.

Will Robinson wrote:One planet, one culture. Only then world peace, *then* luxuries like fairness.

Will Robinson wrote:We armed him to kill Iranians. He did just that. We picked the right guy for the job...we did a good job.

I really, really want to start crying. Oh wait, I forgot, I'm a "girly man" so it's okay.

One of your heros Drakona? Is that serious? Even if you agree with the Republicans, if you agree with their responses to various social issues and the war on terror, how in the world can George Bush seriously be one of your heros? (Serious question).

Oh yeah, and Will, you sound like a Nazi.

Herculosis wrote:Hmmm... looks like it's mattering to some though

To paraphrase a famous quote: Nobody ever lost money betting on the gullibility of the American people.

Flabby Chick wrote:On a more serious note the "flip flop" speech has caused me to further research past statements by Kerry, and if i was American i'd be worried that he'd have a chance of leading the country. If you like it or not the strongest nation needs a decicive leader, and Kerry dosn't seem to live up to the description.

The flip flopping isn't as bad as it looks, but I'll admit it's there. However, consider the strength of character to realize you made a mistake and act on it, as opposed to the supposedly desirable characteristic of deciciveness, which implies continuing along a certain course, even when it's widely recognized as a mistake.

Drakona wrote:

Georeg Bush wrote: I have learned first-hand that ordering Americans into battle is the hardest decision, even when it is right. I have returned the salute of wounded soldiers, some with a very tough road ahead, who say they were just doing their job. I've held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom.

And I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved. I am awed that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers â?? to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know their loved one was last seen doing good. Because they know that liberty was precious to the one they lost. And in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong.

It's such warmth and boldness that make this guy one of my heroes.

Drak, your posts are always very well-reasoned and I was very surprised to see this statement from you. GW has been slashing veteran's benefits, and then he has the nerve to pretend to be a friend to veterans and their families. This is yet another case of him saying one thing and doing another, and is very insulting to veterans.

I think it would be great if candidates weren't allowed to make election speeches at all, and instead had to be judged on their actions alone.

One final note: While the war on terror is foremost in everyone's minds, I'm also heavily weighing the candidates' policies on other issues, such as free speech, privacy, the environment, the space program, the economy, promoting good science, women's health, the right to bear arms, government spending, and foreign policy. I believe that no matter who is in office there will continue to be terrorist attacks, and I distrust Bush's flip flop on whether we can win the war on terror.

Drakona wrote:I thought Miller's speech was -awesome-. He's seriously old school, and man, I wish it wasn't so. I wish they still made senators like that. I want my state to have one. Talk about telling it like you see it, with thunder.

Yeah my state had a Senator like that. He was killed in a plane crash tho, and now his replacement is Bush's b*tch.

Vander wrote:"Vander, I'm surprised you thought he had a hard time backing himself up. I saw the Matthews interview..."

I was actually talking about the CNN interview. He was pressed on the fact that Dick Cheney was also for cancelling many of the weapons systems he stated, which, uh, didn't quite make it into his speech. His response to this was something like "I'm talking about John Kerry, not Dick Cheney."

Oh, I didn't see that interview. That does make me curious. I had wondered if there was another side to the story with some of those votes, as there so often is.

Both Bush and Miller (and perhaps others) criticized Kerry for voting against the $87 billion funding for the war, saying he was denying troops armor and supplies. On the one hand, that's true, that's what the funding was for, at least in part. And I can certainly agree with Bush's retort--asked why he voted that way, Kerry said, "it's a complex matter," and Bush in his speech said, "there's nothing complex about supporting the troops."

On the other hand, it makes a very big difference why he voted that way. Bargaining to reduce the price tag? Objection to some smaller piece of the package? Symbolic vote to express spite in a bill he knew was going to pass? The Repubs didn't try to guess, and indeed Miller seemed to give him the benefit of the doubt, expressly noting that he was questioning Kerry's judgement, not his patriotism. As far as I've heard, Kerry hasn't clearly said. (That raises suspicion for me, though--if you're voting on principle, it's easy to explain.)

But surely there's another side to the story. There has to be. Nobody would vote to not support troops, for petty political reasons. That would be slimy lameness to a degree that I'm very hesitant to assume -anyone- posesses.

So I have this nagging feeling that there's another side to the story that's just not getting out there. And this is just a single example--I'm curious about most of the military votes that were mentioned.

I would love if the Kerry people would take the various votes that have been mentioned and say, "Oh, the bill to approve the B1 bomber, it was like this, and this was the situation in the senate and the world at that time, and these are Kerry's principles, and so he voted this way." I would love to hear an argument from them such that I could say, "Okay, my principles are different, but that's noble and I can respect that."

Instead, I have been hearing claims that Miller's claims were half-truths, but no specifics as to which claims, or explanation of what the other half of the truth is. I have heard people say Miller betrayed his party, that he only gave the speech to sell books, or that he's in the pay of the Republicans. I have heard much lamentation about how angry, offensive, or scary the speech was. I have read people calling him a Dixiecrat and accusing him of racism. But I have not heard -anyone- say, "Oh, that vote of Kerry's he mentioned, here's how things were and why his take on it is wrong."

Now, to my eyes, if your comeback to an argument is flames rather than substance, it means you don't -have- any presentable substance. I'd like to think I'm slow to form conclusions, and I like to be able appreciate the other side of the story, even when I don't agree. But I can't -find- another side of the story here. As far as I can tell, everyone's responding to Miller's speech by attacking his character or his style rather than the substance of the speech. To me, that's a resounding endorsement of the substance.

It sounded like Kerry's voted irresponsibly in the past, in ways that--if he'd had his way--would have crippled the military. And right now a powerful military is a big deal. Now, I know the left's response to this is partly that if we didn't go to war so much--and we don't need to--we wouldn't need so many weapons. Nonetheless, the long list of useful weapons really made it sound like Kerry was off the deep end in that direction. That was the case Miller made. (Or one of them--it was the case he was making in the piece I quoted). Was he right? Was his take on Kerry's past votes fair? Did the world look different back then? Why did Kerry vote the way he did, and what does it indicate about the way he'd lead the country?

The question you mentioned, Vander, is the first indication I've heard that there might be another side to the story. Shoot, if Kerry and Cheney agree on -anything- there has to be more to that story! I'd love to hear the homework behind the question. Was the interviewer talking about one or two of the weapons systems, or all of them, or what?

That's even beside the point, though, in my eyes. It hints that there's another side to the story, but stops short of saying what it is. Whether or not Cheney did the same thing, it matters to me why Kerry voted the way he did--because that tells me what his principles are, and therefore how he'd lead the country. Any less response just doesn't cut the mustard with me...

Ah well, I'll watch and see what people have to say in the coming days. I can hope...

==================

Zell's speech had some other good lines I wanted to quote, too. They are angry and offensive, but they ring true to me. I love what he said because I think these are some things that it's high time somebody had the guts to say...

Zell Miller wrote:President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America â??all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.â?

For Kufyit and Tricord:

Nothing like being taken out of context, or worse, taken without any thought at all!
Of course I did deliver my opinion with all the finess and delicacy of a brick through a windshield so I'm not really complaining.
I truly enjoy riling up the more delicate members of the hoi polloi

I never said we should force the 'one culture' on the world just that I want us to be powerfull enough to keep others from doing that to us while we give the rest of them a nudge in the "right" direction here and there.

Nazi?!? Nawwww!
I'd say more like a good sheep herder than a psycopathic dictator over compensating for bad hair and stunted growth.

I believe that until this planet has one relatively common culture/values there will be wars and global strife.
Not that we all need to be christians or capitalists or white but we need a common enough foundation to allow each countries laws to co-exist without conflict and share the same standards for human rights.

In america you can say say "God sucks bloody goats" while eating a porkchop with your left hand as your half naked girlfriend and her sister massage your feet with their oiled breasts, all the while placing bets over the 24 hour bookmakers line in Vegas on which sports team will win the cup.

In Ossamaland your could be killed in the name of Allah just for the eating the porkchop part!

So I'd say we have a looonnnnggg way to go before a 'United Nations' is anything other than the disfunctional international bitchfest it is right now.

Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't aspire to world peace and greater unity. By all means lets do it!
But please, lose the naivete and pass the porkchops while you're working on it.

Will you forgot that the government is compiling data on you and searching your home with no warrant while youre eating that pork chop.

Avder, what did that straw man do to you to deserve such a beating?

He trampled on the bill of rights perhaps?

Great way to follow up Drakona's very, very well written and extremely thoughtful post, Avder, what with your "He's a nosy scumbag!" thought process. I believe you are proof positive of her thinking.

I'm sorry if I dont have the time and dedication needed to write a multi page long post detailing examples of power abuses and civil liberties violations. I'm taking 18 credits this semester and I barely had time to catch as much of the RNC as I could. So all I really have time to do right now is point out what should be obvious to anyone: civil liberties are eroding faster than a sand castle in a rising tide, and privacy is going so fast that those "big brother" analogies have some legitimacy.

did the straw man say something mean about your mom? Is that why you won't quit beating on him?

Avder wrote:I'm sorry if I dont have the time and dedication needed to write a multi page long post detailing examples of power abuses and civil liberties violations. I'm taking 18 credits this semester and I barely had time to catch as much of the RNC as I could. So all I really have time to do right now is point out what should be obvious to anyone: civil liberties are eroding faster than a sand castle in a rising tide, and privacy is going so fast that those "big brother" analogies have some legitimacy.

I had a much longer post that was mostly aimed at the Cons here, but decided that it's absolutely not worth the time to talk to them. It's not worth it to talk to any of them.

Here, here, and here are a few links on the civil liberties subject, Vader.

GW has been slashing veteran's benefits, and then he has the nerve to pretend to be a friend to veterans and their families. This is yet another case of him saying one thing and doing another, and is very insulting to veterans.

Hrm. I did some searching and found people saying a lot of scary things that weren't really true. If you have any documentation about legislation that has "slashed" veterans' benefits, I'd like to read it. The info I've found seem to paint a different picture than you describe:

August 12, 2004
"Veterans groups support Kerry's approach, which would cost billions more a year and make funding for healthcare mandatory.

President Bush opposes that mandatory funding. But during his term, funding for V.A. health care has jumped 40 percent." Link

December 16, 2003
President Bush signed H.R. 2297, the "Veterans Benefits Act of 2003." This bill will provide significant new support to veterans, particularly to disabled veterans and surviving family members of veterans.
Link

"In an Oval Office ceremony held December 16, 2003, President Bush signed H.R. 2297, the Veterans Benefits Act of 2003, a bill composed of 7 titles with 39 substantive provisions. All totaled, the new law authorizes $1 billion over the next ten years for new and expanded benefits for disabled veterans, surviving spouses, and children. Link

February 18, 2004

According to Factcheck.org:

Money for Veterans goes up faster under Bush than under Clinton, yet Kerry accuses Bush of an unpatriotic breach of faith.

It is true that Bush is not seeking as big an increase for next year as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs wanted. It is also true that the administration has tried to slow the growth of spending for veterans by not giving new benefits to some middle-income vets.
(snip)
Yet even so, funding for veterans is going up twice as fast under Bush as it did under Clinton. And the number of veterans getting health benefits is going up 25% under Bush's budgets. That's hardly a cut.
(snip)
Veterans groups have called for "mandatory funding" of medical benefits, which would automatically appropriate whatever funds are required to meet demand. Kerry has endorsed mandatory funding, which would allow middle-income veterans with no service-connected disability to resume signing up.
(snip)
All this means Bush can fairly be accused of trying to hold down the rapid growth in spending for veterans benefits -- particularly those sought by middle-income vets with no service-connected disability. But saying he cut the budget is contrary to fact. Link

----------------------------

Will, you were asked how you would feel if another world power would overrun the US in order to force their peace down upon you.

You answered that that was the reason why the US should remain the biggest by keeping the others small, in order not to lose the first place.

I believe you missed the point. The question was an attempt to put you in the shoes of those which are being overrun by the US (be it military, political, economical, we've discussed those "influences" before). They might think just like you do, however they are being overrun and will go to great lengths to eleminate the "american threat".

Drakk, I am both shocked and sad from your posts. I know you value Bush for things like his outspoken christianity, his aversion from abortion, and the fact that he appoints "pro-life" judges. However, Bush is a president that has appearantly been so preoccupied by the well-fare of afghans and iraqis that he completely neglects the homeland. All those billions that go into corporate warfare and the military could just as well have been invested in health care, education and other homeland things that desperately need reforming or at least refinancing. Bush increased the deficit by an obscene amount while giving tax cuts. At first everyone might be happy about that, but it'll definitely get back to you later, and hard. Your husbands reasoning with regards to the tax cuts (give the government less money so they can spend less) is not correct, since the relation between income and outcome depends only on the administrations ambition to balance the budget or not. In case of Bush, there is no such ambition whatsoever. Furthermore, the damage that will result from this deficit will only start to surface when Bush is long gone (even if he starts a second term).
That was my first point. Bush tries to be the "good sheperd" in the rest of the world, he neglects the homeland in several aspects, yet he is loathed by pretty much the rest of the world, which is not limited to islamikazi's, muslims and arabs. Being president is all about diplomacy, Bush doesn't show much skill in that area though.

I am also concerned by an invisible veil I seem to run into quite often, when trying to understand the truth about some of Bush's actions. A veil that has been carefully placed by Bush's administration it seems, in order to hide from view what we don't need to know. I've felt the veil during the aftermath of the elections with the Florida recount. It didn't feel like an objective vote count, it felt like a power struggle which Bush won because he had more powerful friends than Gore did. There's also a veil around Bush's relations to the Sauds. There is a gigantic veil around the argumentation and the reasons given by the government to wage war in Iraq. I don't know anything for sure about all these things, except that there's something fishy about them. This doesn't help me trust Bush, on the contrary.

Bush (or at least his administration) is extremely skillful at manipulating the public opinion, I'll give them that. While this is good for their self-preservation, I'm not sure it's in the best interest of everyone.

Tricord wrote:The question was an attempt to put you in the shoes of those which are being overrun by the US (be it military, political, economical, we've discussed those "influences" before).

As far as I know we've only overrun the Taliban and Saddam and apparantly we've exported too much junkfood, rock&roll and hollywood movies to Belgium.

In all those cases I'm not the least bit interested in how it feels to be them. They got what they asked for.
Take off those fancy leather sandals and put on my boots see how it feels to have Ossama demand I and my countrymen convert to Islam, abandon our culture and follow his interpretation of the Koran or else continue to suffer attacks like 9/11?

I don't accept the premise of your question when you equate the net result of our reaction to islamikazi aggression with imerialistic world domination.
As I've said before, if we wanted to take over the world by force we would own most of the good parts by now and surely we would fall like the Romans did before too long.

The world has to move in some direction.
We are pushing one way, Islamikazi's are pushing another way, europeans are standing around arguing over which way to push and which of them gets to be in charge of their effort...

Tricord wrote:All those billions that go into corporate warfare and the military could just as well have been invested in health care, education and other homeland things that desperately need reforming or at least refinancing.

You see, the problem with that idea is that it is not the Federal Government's responsibility to fund education or healthcare. Education is funded by the state and has been since state-run education came to this country in the 1800's. The reason it's locally funded is because it's paid for by your property taxes, which are paid to your county and your state, NOT to the federal government. The reason for this is that the federal government doesn't control the land in each state; in fact the government has to buy land from the states whenever it wants the land (military bases), or it has to make an agreement with the state that the state keeps the land (the federal highway system).

The argument about healthcare still rages on. Today, as it stands, it is not the government's job to provide for your healthcare. Many states have since passed laws requiring businesses to provide healthcare to their employees, as well as paying into the state's unemployment and worker's compensation funds. Again, these are matters that are handled at a more local level than the federal government,

DCrazy wrote:You see, the problem with that idea is that it is not the Federal Government's responsibility to fund education or healthcare.

Yes, yes, but its their job to pass unfunded mandates (NCLB) that completely muck up the system due to lack of funding.

F*** that s***. If its not their job to fund education it shouldnt be their job to regulate it or throw mandates at the states for it either. WTFE happened to the Block Grant system for stuff like education? That was a good way of doing things, I think. And oh yeah, that idea was popularized by a REPUBLICAN President too.

OK, I did some more research on the veterans benefits issue. Here are my refined impressions:

(1) Bush has in fact increased overall spending on veterans programs, but veterans groups such as the VFW and DAV say that looking at just this one figure over-simplifies the issue. They claim that the budget increases are insufficient to maintain current levels of care, and that there are a number of cuts at a lower level that will disenfranchise a lot of veterans.

(2) Bush has in many cases proposed cuts, and often gets blocked by congress. The result is that many of the cuts people have complained about never actually came to pass, but Bush's intentions are clear.

So the slashing isn't at the macro level but at the micro level, where it is less noticable. None of us should be surprised that the picture isn't as black and white as painted by both sides of the fence. I'm still going to have to maintain that Bush is not the friend to veterans that he claims to be. The obvious question that I cannot answer is: If the overall budget is increasing but individual programs are getting cut, where is the extra money going? Maybe there's a whole suite of new veterans programs that are being launched to compensate for the cuts elsewhere?

I'll provide a few links, but this one is fairly eloquent:

http://bernie.house.gov/documents/opeds ... 114143.asp

snip: Thomas H. Corey, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America said, â??The budget proposed by the president for veterans' health care for the next fiscal year is not only inadequate, it's an insult to veterans.â?

wow....!


I have absolutely nothing intellegent to say on the matter!

Bash, I may be a bit confused here. The whole Saddam WMD issue is something that's still pretty unclear. From what I remember, republicans during pre-war were saying: "We know he has them because we gave them to him."

I was simply referring to our support of him militarily, rather than saying we gave him every single weapon. Maybe I'm spouting liberal MEMEs, but that is what I recall.

Bash said:
"All around I would give the RNC pwnage over the DNC. Better speeches, better organization, clearer message and better looking women."

I do too. Their claims of nice kitties for everyone and lollypops all around was scripted far better.

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LOTHAR SAID:
"Bush's speech really built up toward the end."

Toward what? Nothing new. You knew what he was going to say. No new policy. Just regurgitation. Perhaps the building was just a projection of your support.

DRAKONA SAID:
"I thought Miller's speech was -awesome-. "

I found it to be angry and not really productive. It was pretty much a Kerry attack, preaching to the choir. If you want to read an awesome speech, I suggest some reading by Gandhi. The spitballs comment is really just another silly choir appeal--debate Kerry's medals or not, regardless the man has shot a gun in combat. I think he knows you need weapons. From what I've been hearing (I should research Cheney more) Mr. Dick also opposed some of those issues. Maybe we should see the reasons for opposing issues rather than just listing them. Of course, the problem is that complex reasoning never plays as well in public as black and white.

You also didn't hear any of the measures Kerry supported. Kinda unfair, but rational argument aren't what conventions are about.


Flabby Chick said:
"On a more serious note the "flip flop" speech has caused me to further research past statements by Kerry"

Then you're buying into the republican political machine, which is better at the soundbyte game. With a little research (check the other RNC thread) it's quite easy to come up with numerous bush flip flops.

Here's a comment I read about Zell Miller's speech:

I think you miss what Miller was doing and why...possibly because you are young enough to be of the wrong generation. Zell Miller is an extremely sophisticated politician, and while I have no doubt that he is angry with his party, you can rest assured that his tone and tenor were completely calculated for the audience he was talking to...Reagan Democrats.

Zell Miller's invocation of FDR was deliberate, and was calculated to remind a certain type of Democrat of exactly the same thing Ronald Reagan reminded them of when he would quote John F. Kennedy...that the Democratic Party has mutated into something they can no longer identify with.

Miller didn't just wake up one morning and decide to have lunch with Karl Rove for funzies. He wants to demonstrate to the Democratic Party leadership that it is within his power (and the power of other conservative Democrats) to wreck the candidacy of any Democrat who fails to represent his (their) interests.

Zell Miller is staking out territory for the post-November Disaster struggle to control the DNC and the Democratic Party machinery. Miller knows he'll never get it himself, but what he's saying is that not only doesn't John and John cut it, but Hillary and Bill don't cut it, either.

The guy makes a good point -- Zell Miller's speech wasn't for Republicans, and it wasn't for the Loony branch of the Democratic party, or even the mainstream. It was for other hawkish Democrats like Zell to tell them to vote Bush, and through that, it was a message to the Democratic leadership to start addressing those concerns.

I found this comment over at Kesher Talk (a socially liberal Jewish blog), which got it from a comment by Dennis the Peasant on another blog. I'd also recommend following the other link from Kesher Talk to a post by DtP about Kerry's poll numbers.

I'll respond to some other comments later.

Birds, I think you're recalling one of the left's lamer jokes (*We know he has WMD because we have the receipts* ) but as the link indicates, the US is far down on the list of possible sources.

maybe i should um.. start building my underground shelter now..

Drakona, I had a nice post written up in notepad last night, but my computer didn't come out of suspend, so I lost it. I've tried to recreate it here.

Dick Cheney wrote:Although he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, he then decided he was opposed to the war, and voted against funding for our men and women in the field. He voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, extra pay for hardship duty, and support for military families.

George W. Bush wrote: I proposed, and the Congress overwhelmingly passed, 87 billion dollars in funding needed by our troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. My opponent and his running mate voted against this money for bullets, and fuel, and vehicles, and body armor. When asked to explain his vote, the Senator said, "I actually did vote for the 87 billion dollars before I voted against it." Then he said he was "proud" of that vote. Then, when pressed, he said it was a "complicated" matter. There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat.

There were a few different versions of the $87 billion bill. There were versions Kerry supported, which Bush had threatened to veto ("I voted for it before I voted against it"). The differences included how it was to be funded (pay for it now with tax increases, or pay later and run up the defecit), whether or not a portion of the $20 billion earmarked for reconstruction would be loans to be repaid by Iraq, and side issues like increased funding for National Guard units. We had a thread on the topic back in real time.

If Kerry had cast the deciding vote and the bill failed (the ultimate supposed doomsday scenario for this spin point), another version of the bill would have been voted on! Kerry wanted the troops in battle to be funded, but he disagreed with how that funding was to be handled in the version that passed. It seems to me that his yes and no votes on this are consistant, even if it's possible to train a crowd of pod people to wave their hands in the air with beach sandles.

In a nutshell, both Kerry and Bush supported versions of the bill, and both were against versions of the bill. Neither was against funding the troops in battle, and for Bush and Cheney to say so during their nationally televised speeches says a lot about their level of respect for the viewers.

As for the laundry list of military weaponry Kerry is accused of being against, here is some info:

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docid=147
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docid=177
http://slate.msn.com/id/2096127/

Drakona wrote:The question you mentioned, Vander, is the first indication I've heard that there might be another side to the story.

I think the first indication of another side to the story is the fact that the story is coming from a politicians mouth. But thats just me.

I suck

Awww, crumb. I hate being lied to. In light of what your first link, Miller's statements about what Kerry opposed in the military do indeed appear so misrepresntative that I would count them as lies. (For a statement to be not a lie, in my eyes, the thrust and general implications have to be true, as well as the exact words.) I had some vague memory that the $87 billion was more complicated than it was represented as, but I wrote that off to politicking. But this is really bad...

Ah well. Good I said something, or I might never have been corrected. (Mom, when she was my music teacher, told me, "If you're going to make a mistake, make it LOUD, so we can find it!" ) Though I still don't yet entirely trust Kerry on the military, that goes a long way towards instilling some faith.

In light of that, it seems to me the liberals need some PR help, and badly. I mean, free speech necessarily allows for there to be a lot of misrepresentation and lying out there, but if the facts are on your side, why not use them and completely pwn the opposition? It's not like the nuanced view takes forever to say--I bet I could sum things up in two or three sentences. It doesn't make sense.

I listened to Kerry's response after the convention--he whined about people questioning his patriotism (something that pointedly didn't happen!). I looked up some Dem representative's comment in the news about the Miller speech, and he talked about how angry Miller was, and suggested that he had only made the speech to sell books. To my eyes, that's a flame response, and an indication you don't have anything substative to say. It's Vander, on the DBB, that finally links to an independant site that tells me the speech is in error. I'm glad I learned that, but I doubt he will get the news out to very many people! Why didn't Kerry say it? Doesn't he know that if you reply to lies with spam, all you are going to do is kill dialogue and guarantee the lies will stick? If that's all you can do, then that's what you do. But if you can do better, why not? It makes no sense.

*sigh* What a crazy world. I don't understand.

======

Other owed responses--

To Tricord: I won't address all of what you said, but at least on one point, I thought you misrepresented me, so I need to address that--

Tricord wrote: Drakk, I am both shocked and sad from your posts. I know you value Bush for things like his outspoken christianity, his aversion from abortion, and the fact that he appoints "pro-life" judges.

This is actually not true. Bush and I are both Christians, and even of a very similar flavor--so that means we share a lot of values. Though Bush is more outspoken than most, there are a -lot- of politicians out there that are, or at least claim to be, Christians. That's not why I like him. And though I like the fact that he's pro-life and anti-gay-marriage and any number of other moral issues important to me, that isn't it either. And if he were appointing rabid pro-life judges, I would actually dislike that--I want judges to respect the law, not further my interests. I don't care whether or not judges agree with me--I care how they arrive at those positions and whether they're legally reasonable.

I like Bush for his character. I like the things he talks about in his speeches, I like the explanation he gives for his actions. I like what the things he's done have to say about him as a person. When I say he's one of my heroes, I mean he's somebody that I'd like to grow up to be like, not that I like his policies. If I have the time, I may start another thread to talk about this more specifically (here isn't the place). The political world is such a fractured place these days, as evidenced even here by the number of "Drakona, you *like* GWB? WTF??!!" comments. It would be helpful if we could see things through each others' eyes.

I can say some things about the policies you commented on, thought for much of that I'm not the person to talk to. I don't have a high estimation of my own ability to evaluate the reasonableness of a lot of policies, though I say things as best I can and how I see them. I don't think it's fruitful here, though. Maybe another day.


To Birdseye:

You said you found Miller's speech angry and uproductive--a long Kerry attack. To that, I'd say there's produvtive, directed anger, and then there's uncontrolled, abrasive angry. I thought the speech was an example of the former--more "thunder for a righteous cause" than "petty abuse."

People have compared it to a southern sermon, and I quite agree with the comparison, both in the shortcomings and strengths of such a genre. I go to a Baptist church, and the pastor there has a habit of thundering on through points I wish he'd give a more balanced exposition of. Sometimes it's painful to listen to. Speeches like that do oversimplify things, and are often they're dead wrong. But on the other hand, they have a way of identifying and exaggerating what people care about. When you mumble under your breath, "I don't particularly agree with the Democrats' priorities on defense," it flies under everybody's radar. When you scream, "The Democrats' policies are endangering our children!!" everybody takes notice. The crowd cheers if they believe you; the opposition embarrasses you if you're wrong.

It's a way of forcing issues. Many of the things he said got a cheer out of me. The spitballs line included--for a very long time I've had a perception of Kerry as irresponsibly weak on the military. I voiced a cheer here, and Vander corrected me, and now I see things weren't as bad as I thought. The whole thing would have never happened but for the speech making a hyperbolic point.

Look at it as an opportunity. Speeches like that crystallize what people believe into a form you can really say "yay" or "nay" to. The crowd really cheered; conservatives on other boards I visit are euphoric over the speech. That means these are beliefs people can really feel--ideas central to the way they view the political world. It tells you what to attack. Don't whine about how angry it was--the very thunder of it means that if you respond substantively, you're almost guaranteed to change minds.

That's what a speech like that is good for. It crystallizes a view and either sets it up to be shattered or convinces everyone who hears it. As speeches like that go, this was a good one--because it was very loud, and everybody really cheered.

I wanted to say, with respect to the Zell Miller speech and Vander's links about the weapons systems:

At first, I was as surprised as Drakona. Obviously, the thing about the $87 billion has been way overblown (though I can't believe Kerry can't come up with a better way to say it than "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.") And obviously, a lot of the 1990's votes against Pentagon spending bills aren't as bad as they sound -- I can see why he wouldn't think it necessary to keep building up the military in the mid-90's. The factcheck.org links really make this clear.

But the contention that Dick Cheney opposed some of the same weapons systems as John Kerry needs clarified. Specifically, it's mentioned that "Cheney himself... proposed canceling the Apache helicopter program five years after Kerry did.". But you'd expect a site called "factcheck" to be careful to mention an important piece of context: many of Kerry's votes were in the mid-1980's, at the height of the cold war, while Cheney's proposals were in 1989-93, as the cold war was winding down and (in some cases) after it had ended. That's definitely not something to be ignored.

From what I see there, there's definitely reason to say that some of Zell Miller's speech was unfair to Kerry. But it also seems clear that there's some truth to it. And, at the end of the day, I agree with his sentiment -- I don't trust John Kerry to protect this nation. It's not that I'm sure he'd do a bad job of it -- it's just that I'm not convinced he'd do a good job of it. Even after reading Vander's links, there are still a lot of questions out there that need answered about Kerry's voting record. And I still need to hear Kerry say "I want to get France and Germany and Russia to help out in Iraq... but even if they don't, we'll stay the course." He's said that he wants those other nations to help out, but he hasn't said what he'll do if they don't. That makes it very hard for me to trust him on foreign policy, which is why Zell Miller's speech was so powerful to me. I don't trust John Kerry on defense, period. And I don't expect him to say anything that'll make me trust him, because a lot of his base still wants the troops home now, and he's not willing to alienate that part of his base.