DescentBB

Birdseye wrote: Wow. What hateful speech. Homosexuals don't deserve validation. Do you know how horrible you sound? You can still continue to not validate their life and make them feel bad if they can legally marry, you know.

Homo's have validation in the sense they have laws that protect their civil rights. So the good old days (scarasm here you noob) where straight guys would go beat the crap out of some limpy are thankfully long gone. Their sexual acts are no longer considered (mostly) a crime and they also have the right to live togeather without being ostracised by the community around them. The validation of marriage is another case entirely. Gays can live as common law mates if they so choose. The problem we have is now these self same people want to be recognised as true married couples for one reason only...spousal benifits. At this juncture the gay marriage goes beyond mere acceptance of their partnership to one where some party has to bear an additional cost to allow that,.
To arrive at the point where fringe bennies come into play, employers and insurance companies will only recognise legally married couples as recipients.
To force the issue the gays resorted to activist measures that did not really set well with mainstream america. To say that it is horrible that one refuses to accept the idea of a homosexual marriage is basically ignoring society's moral structure. Nothing horrible about it. There are any number of sub classes within our society that will not be accepted by the mainstream. Kinda like pissing into the wind and then complaining you got wet.

Birdseye wrote:I didn't see any reply to my economic content, so I am assuming you realized you now agree with me sirian

Wouldn't be the first time you underestimated me.


- Sirian

Man, I really wanna see a Sirian vs Birdseye thread. That would be very entertaining.

Quantity != Quality;

Sirian vs Birdseye was much more entertaining as a Descent match. Too bad only Birds and I will ever know exactly what went on during those.

you know me better than that! ha. Just competitively calling ya'll out!

If there are new laws being passed that deny civil unions, not marriage but civil unions, between gays then we *do* have a problem.

yes, there are. The president was and is silent.


from some website I accidently closed, but I don't think this is under debate:

Ohio's governor and two US senators -- all of them Republicans who back Bush -- have opposed the referendum because of the restriction on civil unions.

I believe Kentucky also passed a ban on civil unions, and I think even further other states have previously passed such bans. This is an outrage.

I would give the president EXTREME props for healing if while proposing a ban on gay marriage, he proposed a nationwide civil union recognition. Bush, ushering in a new era of protection for gays, while protecting the "marriage instituion"? Wow. But it won't happen.

Geraldine Ferraro comment that she made on Hannity & Colmes on Monday night:
" that the creativity is all in the blue states, and if the blue states seceded, where would the red states be?"

Remind her where Bill Clinton comes from. Also isn't it interesting we are now hearing limp weenie liberal spokes people now starting to spin cessation from the United States as a possible option. So lets see. Liberals lose and instead of setting down and figuring out what is wrong, they want to secede. Can't hack it so we're going to go by by. Go ahead folks, head on up to Canada and don't let the door slam on where the sun don't shine. At least James "The Corpse" Carvil gets it right when he says that the democratic party needs to be "born again".

Then we have this unifying statement:

"Ninety percent of the red states are welfare-client states of the federal government," said Mr. O'Donnell, who was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat."

So if democrats pushed welfare for 40 years, shouldn't they be blue states?

Carole Simpson from ABC News: "I look at the election, and I'm going, "Well, of course our kids are not bright about these things because their parents aren't."

Aha! There all this time I thought the inner city ghetto-ites were the ones poorly educated and collecting the welfare checks.

And then we have the die hard Greg Palast, contributor to Hapers Bizzare:

"I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry."

So instead of Florida, Ohio is now the corrupt state even though in 2000 it was just hunky dorey. Again the liberal left is trying to raise the ghost of Bush being a illegitimate president. Too bad most americans have looked under the bed and found nothing but the dust of decrepit democratic rhetoric.

So what ever happened to the old hippy statement of, " Why can't we all just be friends?"

I read that article woodchip (Did you?) and if you think about it, he had some good points.

Secession will never happen. The south tried that crap back in the 1860's and look at how they ended up the next 40 years. Burned to the Friggin' Ground. Unless its done peacefully, which will never happen, dont expect a paranoid push for Cesession anywhere other than California.

I'll refer you to my rants on Electronic voting for the remainder of my post. I dont feel like harping on anymore when you zombies wont listen. The Exit Polls shoulda matched, and they did everywhere but in eVoting states.

Birdseye wrote:I would give the president EXTREME props for healing if while proposing a ban on gay marriage, he proposed a nationwide civil union recognition. Bush, ushering in a new era of protection for gays, while protecting the "marriage instituion"? Wow. But it won't happen.

Right on both counts. That would be a position of high principle, and it is not going to happen. The right wing would be smart to pre-empt what is coming by doing what you suggest. They ARE going to lose this fight eventually, at least up to the line that you draw. However, it is usually not in the nature of people to give away a position easily or cheaply. Such ground must usually be fought for, and it will take a lot more debate for this to shake out.


- Sirian

Birdseye wrote:This is the weak knee jerk no think conservative argument. Because Bush and my friends who agree with me say its true, it must be the best way. It is not. The best way to stimulate business growth is not income tax cuts. It is tax cuts in the arena of business. As a small business owner myself (and I expect to be in your 'tax cuts for the rich' segment in a few years like my parents are) the best incentives to expand business are reforms that directly effect business itself. Give me a few extra hundred dollars or thousand and that's nice and all, but it doesn't show me any long term way to make a higher margin for my business. If you cut the sales tax (I know this is a CA only tax, but we have other taxes businesses pay like SS) here my business in CA is going to do siginificantly better as an online company. My prices go up 8.25% compared to the next guy if the buyer is in CA. Or you could help a loans program, as I am going to have to take out a loan soon. But if you just give me a pile of money, it doesn't really help my business much.

Good points, many of which I will agree to in whole.

However, the thing with tax cuts has some subtle aspects that you may be overlooking.

The problem has to do with how budgets are handled. If an agency manages to run efficiently and come in under budget, do they give the excess back to the treasury? Heck no. Different departments within the government are competing for priority attention, competing for budget, and any budget granted must be spent, or so the bureaucrats believe. They act on this belief, because if they WERE to give back unused funds, they'd find their baseline reset, lowered. Then when they need extra money the next year, they come up short. The government is incapable of assigning money to priorities as needed. Money is instead assigned based on political power. Seniority gets more power, gets more pork, gets more money, and every district and every department is competing with all the others for a bigger slice of the pie.

This starts to get really messy, Birds. Please tell me you understand what I'm talking about here.

The tax cuts act as a form of spending pre-emption. Or at least they apply pressure in that direction. By leaving more money in the private sector, there is less to be WASTED by the government. We get a dollar for dollar benefit from private sector commerce that is higher than commerce moving through the federal government. The Feds have enormous overhead, high rates of waste, and worse. This is all because some bureaucrat who may or may not be corrupt or incompetent is making decisions. VERY OFTEN these decisions are flawed in some way. More so than in the private sector.

I grew up in the DC area, but anyone who's been inside a County Assistance Office, a Department of Motor Vehicles, or other government departments, has seen first hand the slow and inefficient grind of our government at work.

Democrats want to spend and spend and spend, and by necessity, they are forced to raise taxes, and raise them, and raise them some more. Sometimes the battle about tax cuts is NOT about the particulars, but about the big picture. Do we want to drift toward more bureaucracy? Do we want to increase the size of the government and its impact on our lives? Or do we want to find other solutions for our problems, in the private sector, when that is feasible?

My distrust of bureaucracy runs so deep, my disdain for the waste and inefficiency so strong, that I lean toward tax cuts even when, perhaps, sometimes there might be a better way. I'm less concerned with finding the best way than I am with avoiding a return to worse problems from the past that were overcome only through decades of slow, tortuous progress.


- Sirian

Sirian wrote:

Here's the same map in 3D where the relief=# of voters. It does a better job showing how that little bit of blue actually accounts for 48% of the vote:



Urban vs. Rural. City slickers = neighbor-aware?

Birdseye wrote:I see a lot of smart people in here making some silly rationalizations for a discriminiatory point of view.

Maybe you should take this as evidence that you're not properly understanding what they're saying. If you have to conclude me, Drakona, Will, Tyranny, and Sirian are all irrational hateful Christian bigots... that reflects more on you than it does on us.

You keep dismissing everything we say as "silly rationalizations" -- and that's telling. You have yet to even attempt to take our arguments seriously. You're coming into it with the mindset that it's going to be another silly rationalization, and that's how it ends up looking because that's what you expect. Focus on understanding instead of arguing -- be truly open-minded and actually listen to what we have to say, instead of dismissing it as a "silly rationalization" based on your preconception.

Sirian wrote:The tax cuts act as a form of spending pre-emption.

Well said.

Mehyam wrote:City slickers = neighbor-aware?

I've been hearing that argument quite a bit, mostly from the left. But it doesn't match with my personal experience.

I very often run into people on the left who are like "I don't know anyone who voted for Bush" or "I don't know any Republicans except my cousins from Missouri" or "all Christians are insane and out of touch with reality." I run into a few people on the right who have similar views of the left, but not nearly as many.

I'd venture a guess that country people are just as neighbor-aware as city people, or maybe even moreso. Every time I visited relatives out on the farm, they seemed intimately aware of what was going on at every other farm in the region.

Also note that there were quite a few decent sized red blobs on your map, and a good number of low population blue areas. I'd be curious to see a better coloration of that, where even counties were colored white and counties with only small differences were just slightly tinted red or blue. I have a feeling it would really smooth out the dichotomy between city and country.

The "neighbor-aware" argument is really a dismissal of a complex question. There's a lot more to the red-blue differences we see than neighbor awareness.

Whoa whoa whoa... I'm being called a hateful irrational christian bigot?

*looks around*

Wait just one damn minute. When did this start and why?

Because I support Bush? hahaha.....sorry, had to wipe the tears from my eyes.

Mehyam wrote:Urban vs. Rural. City slickers = neighbor-aware?

As compared to what? Neighbor-unaware? Ridiculous.


- Sirian

Sirian wrote: As compared to what? Neighbor-unaware? Ridiculous.

- Sirian

Ooh, got flamed by Sirian.

I guess the basic question is - why did urban centers vote liberal? Was it a single issue, or a set of them? Is it that people who live in cities don't care about gay marriage but do object to how the war is being run?

Clearly people in more densely populated areas have different values than those who live outside of them. I think there are some obvious differences there, but I'm very curious about the discrepancy, as I've lived in both kinds of places. My personal view is a very unflattering one, which is that people who live rurally tend to be more isolationist, and as such don't care as much about the precision with which we conduct international affairs. Just a thought.

"If you have to conclude me, Drakona, Will, Tyranny, and Sirian are all irrational hateful Christian bigots... that reflects more on you than it does on us. "

Holy crap! If I didn't know any better I'd start to think you're throwng a tantrum. yikes.

Wow, my state seems to have the highest republican Peak! Go me. It's also interesting to note that the blue in Arizona almost exactly overlaps reservation land.

I told ya ur liberal sissy Texas had nothin on Arizona Will.

Mehyam wrote:My personal view is a very unflattering one, which is that people who live rurally tend to be more isolationist, and as such don't care as much about the precision with which we conduct international affairs.

The Democrats want to stick their heads in the sand, ala Neville Chamberlain. That most of Europe thinks this way is no surprise. They are fixated on their own narcissism, obsessed with proving that European diplomacy is the end-all be-all of sophisticated world affairs. That kind of thinking got them two world wars and cost them their supremacy on the world stage, but still they persist. Yet their scars from war run far deeper than ours, and from such wounds, I can appreciate their desperate pacifism. They so fear warfare that they are unable to tell the good guys from the bad guys any more. Or perhaps they were never able to do so. In our power, they see only threat, because every time THEY have held such power, they've tried to use it to dominate the world. They fear the same from us, and their fear is so strong, it has become irrational. They are seeing through a distorted lens, where any exercise of American might is automatically defined as bad, yet they will give a complete pass to a tyrant like Saddam Hussein, and look away from his corrupting influence on the UN and on their own governments, leaders and principles.

For folks inside America to hold a similar view... Well, nothing wrong with asking tough questions about our policies. I respect opposing views. However, I must heartily disagree with those who find the greater threat in our willingness to call a spade a spade rather than from the spade himself.

Democrats en masse must have missed the part of David Kay's report that claimed that the Iraqi regime was MORE of a threat than the Bush Administration had been claiming. This was due to the regime's weakness, its own internal disintegration, whereby in the chaos of the internal rot, nobody was in control, including Saddam. The possibility of dangerous secrets or materials ending up in terrorist hands was deemed to have been GREATER than the administration was claiming. So why do Democrats ignore this crucial conlusion? Because they want to. They are more concerned with their own theories and power than they are with defending this nation. And I think it is fair to say that a majority of American voters see it this way, because despite all his problems, they still chose to vote for Bush over Kerry.

Mehyam wrote:My personal view is a very unflattering one, which is that people who live rurally tend to be more isolationist, and as such don't care as much about the precision with which we conduct international affairs.

The urgency of international affairs is the primary reason that President Bush won reelection.


- Sirian

Sirian wrote:The Democrats want to stick their heads in the sand, ala Neville Chamberlain.

Well, that's your opinion. I recall that most of them voted for the war in Iraq. I don't think the debate is so much about not being aggressive. I think it's about how you go about doing it. You can't tell what the future holds, but right now it's looking like the invasion was a mistake.

And don't compare the current situation to appeasement movements of WWI and WWII. There's been no Hitler building a new army in Iraq.

Sirian wrote:I must heartily disagree with those who find the greater threat in our willingness to call a spade a spade rather than from the spade himself.

There are a whole lot of other potential spades out there right now. Some of the big ones, in Iran, now see the physical and political hurdles armed forces are having in Iraq, and are emboldening their position by developing nuclear weapons. What if a result of the Iraq war is a new cold war with terrorists linked to Iran? The potential of that cold war scares me much more than that of the one with the Soviets, because the Soviets cared about whether they died or not.

Sirian wrote:...nobody was in control, including Saddam. The possibility of dangerous secrets or materials ending up in terrorist hands was deemed to have been GREATER than the administration was claiming. So why do Democrats ignore this crucial conlusion? Because they want to.

Look... there will always be reports that conflict the reports that conflict the reports. The very truth is that the war/invasion was a gamble, with risks on all sides. Very little certainty. Some of us believe that a little more investigation would have been a good idea, others differ.

I think you're overgeneralizing liberal viewpoints too much.

Sirian wrote:The urgency of international affairs is the primary reason that President Bush won reelection.

Again, your opinion. There's still no irrefutable proof of what the key issue was. And it's likely to have varied from district to district.

Gooberman wrote:...I told ya ur liberal sissy Texas had nothin on Arizona Will.

Well hell! I've been busy out here in South Carolina keeping the crosses burning and such. I guess I'll have to go back home and see where they strayed from the fold...and then hang 'em for it

MehYam wrote:Ooh, got flamed by Sirian.

OMG HE CALLED YOU RIDICULOUS! WE MUST BAN HIM FOR TEH FLAMEZ! SIRIAN YOU WILL BE BAND IF YOU DO THAT AGAIN BeCUS NO FLAMING IS ALOUD HEAR!!!!11!~!~111!!oneoneone

I guess the basic question is - why did urban centers vote liberal?.... My personal view is....

Well, so if you still have a question, your "personal view" should probably be stated as "I have a suspicion it might be... can someone who knows better confirm this?"

Better yet... go ask people. If you want to know why I voted the way I did, ask me. If you want to know why people in Kansas voted the way they did, find some people in Kansas and ask them. Don't speculate -- ask.

Mehyam wrote:I don't think the debate is so much about not being aggressive. I think it's about how you go about doing it.

Wow, you're pitching me a lot of softballs here.

Mehyam wrote:You can't tell what the future holds, but right now it's looking like the invasion was a mistake.

Says who? On what basis? Was it a mistake to declare war on Japan? Sure looked like it, six months into the war, when we had been doing nothing short of getting our clocks cleaned nonstop. The Japanese navy owned the night. They owned every major engagement. They were gaining territory. They mopped the Phillipines with our soldiers' uniforms DESPITE our best commander controlling our troops there.

And yes, at that time, there were people not unlike you claiming it was a mistake. Four years later, the commander who fled the Phillipines on a small boat and barely snuck out of there was the virtual emperor of Japan, cracking down a hard line on OUR troops to treat the occupied Japanese people with respect and honor, as they were allowed to devise their own constitution and representative forms of government.

Short of historic rout, every sports fan knows that you don't judge a ball game while the clock is still ticking. You can't tell where it's going to go. You think war ought to be a cakewalk? Doesn't work like that. The enemy always gets his say. Enemies are serious business. Human beings can be very clever. This is something you ought to appreciate first hand, having played so much Descent. You know what it is like in the mines. Well, imagine doing that, only it's not a game and you don't know all the rules, and the losers don't get to play again the next time.

War is a test of will. The colonists lost nearly every major engagement during the American Revolution, but history marks them the victors. Why?

You could have made an argument for how badly things were going for the Union during the American Civil war. We quite nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of certain victory by fielding one incapable general after the next and watching Lee chew them all to pieces. But even the mighty Robert E. Lee stumbles now and then, as he did on a field in Pennsylvania, and there went his one chance to win. The rest was just a matter of persuading him of the inevitable.

Fortunately, we have folks made of sterner stuff in important leadership positions. Sometimes the enemy is going to meet with success. That doesn't mean that he's winning or going to prevail.

Mehyam wrote:You can't tell what the future holds, but right now it's looking like the invasion was a mistake.

Ridiculous.

Mehyam wrote:don't compare the current situation to appeasement movements of WWI and WWII. There's been no Hitler building a new army in Iraq.

Not for lack of trying. He was fifty years too late. And still, if not for Reagan's Navy, we could not have dislodged his force from Kuwait in 1991. That was a military feat the likes of which the world had never seen before. Likewise, he had the fourth largest army in the world and we cleaned his clock, but don't let the degree of victory fool you. His force was not weak. We were simply that much better with the strategy.

By all rights, we should have taken him down in 1991. History proved that it was a mistake to sign a cease fire with him. He never intended to honor it, and we played diplomatic patty-cake with him for a dozen years, then went in and took him down anyway. We would have saved at least tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand or more, who died by his orders in the intervening years. Such is the benefit of hindsight. Bush believed the Shiites could take him down from within, with him in a weakened state, but we underestimated Saddam, and then we stood by while he slaughtered Shiites by the thousands.

Mehyam wrote:don't compare the current situation to appeasement movements of WWI and WWII.

If the shoe fits, you wear it.

Mehyam wrote:Some of the big ones, in Iran, now see the physical and political hurdles armed forces are having in Iraq, and are emboldening their position by developing nuclear weapons.

They were developing the nukes anyway. HELLO? Do you think North Korea started cheating on its deal with the Clinton Administration as a PRE-EMPTIVE move against the Bush Administration that would come into office six years later? Do you think India and Pakistan developed their nukes because they could foresee the difficulties that the US military would face in Iraq half a decade later?

If you seriously believe that Iran wasn't already doing its best to develop nukes, then I really do not know what to say to you. What are you smoking?

There. Now you've been flamed.

Mehyam wrote:What if a result of the Iraq war is a new cold war with terrorists linked to Iran? The potential of that cold war scares me much more than that of the one with the Soviets, because the Soviets cared about whether they died or not.

We agree on this point. However, where you seem to think that WE are provoking/causing these actions by our adversaries, I believe you have your head in the sand. The world doesn't revolve around us like that. Despotic governments seek to dominate. They will dominate all that they can. They will seek out whatever tools, resources and weapons they can get their hands on, and they will use them to whatever extent they believe will benefit them.

Mehyam wrote:Look... there will always be reports that conflict the reports that conflict the reports.

Meaning what? That truth does not exist? That we can never draw reliable conclusions because we can't trust what we are told? That it's all relative and one opinion is the same as the next?

Your side is happy to cite only CERTAIN facts, the ones that support your position. Kerry pointed to the Kay report over and over. "Look, SEE, no weapons stockpiles." Um, yes, but Senator, that's pulling one fact out of context. The report on the whole, with ALL the facts on the table, says that the Bush Administration got it wrong by UNDERestimating the threat posed to the United States by Saddam's regime. Any comment, Senator Kerry? What? Ten more repetitions about how Bush "misled" the country? No wonder you lost the election, Senator.

Mehyam wrote:The very truth is that the war/invasion was a gamble, with risks on all sides.

We all agree on that. Where we disagree is whether NOT going to war was the bigger gamble, the worse move, involving the greater set of negative consequences.

Bush speaks to the nation and says, "We need to do something about Social Security. The costs will be high, but the costs to our children will be much worse if we do nothing. I start nodding my head. While the Democrats play fearmongering with our elderly, for bald political purposes, the GOP faces up to the facts and rolls up its sleeves to look for a solution.

Same with the war. The costs of doing nothing are understood by the folks on the GOP side. Judging by the results of the election, a majority of Americans see it that way, too.

Mehyam wrote:Some of us believe that a little more investigation would have been a good idea

That makes sense on the first or second, or fourth UN resolution. By the time we get to seventeen, sorry, that's a laughing stock.

Those of you who believe that what the USA has done in Iraq has emboldened the terrorists are smoking some serious $#!+. September 11, 2001, was quite the bold move, and it had nothing to do with us being in Iraq, because we weren't there yet.

Since we went in to Iraq, we have mopped up Saddam's entire army in three weeks, taking down his murderous regime. Any time we engage on our terms, we're killing them thirty or more to one. They can't do anything besides attack our convoys along the roads, so they've had to resort to attacking their own people at the police stations and army recruitment centers. They are killing ten of their own or more for every one of ours they manage to kill with some booby trap or other. The hostage taking is their latest weapon, and they have been emboldened by their successes on that front, as some nations cave outright to barbarous thugs. But as folks around the world see that giving in to the demands of hostage takers only leads to even more hostage taking, the jig will run its course and then our outrage at this behavious begins to embolden US.

Take a look at Belgium. The murder of Mr. Van Gogh has opened a few eyes over there. Islamic fascists are VERY MUCH like Adolf Hitler, and woe to them that stick their heads in the sand, not wanting to believe it.


- Sirian

Mehyam wrote:
Some of us believe that a little more investigation would have been a good idea

To add one tiny detail that Sirian missed, you have to understand that certain members of the security council were on the take under the cover of the Oil for Food program. So how many more year of ineffectual "investigation" do you think would have happened? Any bets that nothing would ever be found? Any bets that one day Saddam would have exploded a small nuke on some Kurds just to let the world know he now had 'em? The short of it is dithering around in foreign affairs is a sure way to get your throat slit. On the other hand, by showing force in Iraq, we give the rest of the recalcitrant middle eastern countries notice that the big boy is serious. Libya got the message and I'm sure countries like Yemen now realise allowing terrorist training camps is a sure ticket for their leaders to board the deposement cruise liner.
Iran is the next big threat. With the sale of cruise missles to Isreal, look for the shock and awe blitz on Iranian nuke plants...coming to theater near you.
Stay tuned.

Sirian, unless you wish to suffer Tricord's ankle-biting fury you'll correct Belgium to The Netherlands as the location of Theo Van Gogh's murder.

lol. Siri, are you not choosing the facts that are convenient to your point of view? I think I fairly try to see both sides of an issue; your assessment of me sounds like projection more than anything else.

And furthermore, I still can't see how the post Gulf War Iraq army could be analogous to the pre WWII Japanese Navy, the force which wiped out the Russian and (nearly) the American naval fleets.

And Loth, if it's not clear that my posts are upfront conjecture, you're not reading them closely enough. The rest of you should be so upfront about your own conjecture, because that's all it is.

Bash, so noted. Missed by a whole country. My apology for the misstatement.

Mehyam wrote:Siri, are you not choosing the facts that are convenient to your point of view?

When I criticize your point of view, I do it by putting more facts on the table: facts that you have not mentioned, which tend to refute your position. You have not put facts on the table to discredit or dispute the Kay report. Instead, you dismiss it without any facts. Why? I think Democrats do a LOT of that, and I find it sloppy. Ignoring facts just because you don't like where they lead is not going to win for you in a rigorous debate.

The Kay report shoots down the "misled" argument. That charge is on the ground in flames, its wreckage scattered. What did Bashy call that? Ankle-biting fury? I'll call it a diversion and a straw man. Pulling one item out of context and claiming that it says one thing, while the totality of the evidence points elsewhere, is only effective when preaching to the choir. When folks want to believe something, they may happily latch on to any supporting evidence, without examining the big picture. That won't change minds, though. One has to get it right to win over support from the other side.

The President got it right. So sayeth the American electorate.

Senator Kerry stuck to the charge that the President "misled" the nation, and this may have contributed to his defeat. Clearly, a majority of Americans did not buy it. People won't vote for a man they perceive to be an untrustworthy liar and manipulator. WHY didn't they buy it? Perhaps many were more informed than the Senator realized, and had paid attention to the Kay report. No, no weapons stockpiles, but Yes, the regime posed a threat, even greater than we were being told. Better the President who got it wrong on some details but right in the big picture than the Senator who ignored important facts and wanted to put the United Nations in charge.

Mehyam wrote:There's still no irrefutable proof of what the key issue was.

The exit polls lumped all moral values issues into one item, yet split economic issues into several items and war issues into two items. When you add the two war items, Terrorism and Iraq, they came out to 37% of voters citing war issues as their top priority for voting. When the four economic issues are added, they amount to 34% of voters citing the economy as their top concern. Moral values came in third, at 22%.

The exit polls are evidence of WHY the American voters decided the way they did. I look at the 37% number, and that tells me that foreign policy was foremost in the minds of the largest number of voters.

Yet you claim my conclusion is nothing but unsupported opinion, no more valid than any other unsupported opinion. You say it was likely to have varied by district, and I'll concede that point, but that's irrelevant to my point, which was that overall, Bush won reelection because of foreign policy. The American voters do not trust the Democrats with our national security.


- Sirian