kallend 2,106
Having a few conservative positions does not make you a conservative. You admit you like Edwards better than Kerry. Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum.
Question: If GWB predicts a growth in the economy of say 3% and it actually grows by 5%, do you still consider him a liar?
Question: If GWB predicts a growth in the economy of say 3% and it actually grows by 5%, do you still consider him a liar?
kallend 2,106
QuoteHaving a few conservative positions does not make you a conservative. You admit you like Edwards better than Kerry. Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum.
Question: If GWB predicts a growth in the economy of say 3% and it actually grows by 5%, do you still consider him a liar?
He has little control over that. He has a lot of control over the deficit. His initiatives reduced revenues and increased expenditures. He has control over what he says about veterans' benefits and over what he does about veterans' benefits. He has control over the Office of Special Plans and whether or not the USA invades another nation.
Bush is not a conservative. He does not espouse conservative values although he says he does. He is a tool of the far right.
...
The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.
The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.
tbrown 26
Mike, I'm still following this thread with interest, especially as the first one is now locked down.
It's unfortunate that political debate in an election year has to take such a nasty turn with so many personal remarks flying back & forth.
My biggest problem with the ex-Green Beret's letter is that I don't know whether the letter itself or the allegations it contains are real or something someone fabricated to spew out on the web. You not only can't believe everything you read on the web, you shouldn't as a matter of course until you've read it from enough different sources to weigh the facts and use some sound judgement.
For the record, I've never served in the military. I was a senior in high school when the Paris Accords were signed and the US pulled out of Vietnam - a VERY RELIEVED senior at that. I did regiszter for the draft and carried a draft card (1-H, a general holding category, as Selective Service's statutory authority to conscript draftees had expired).
I am old enough to recall John Kerry leading the VVAW demonstrations in Washington. 1971 was a time when just about everyone, including a lot of servicemen, had turned against the war. Why ? Well, Nixon was gradually withdrawing American forces, while Henry Kissinger and the North Viets were dawdling away the time in Paris. Everyone knew the war was going to end sooner or later, so who the hell wanted to get killed anymore in a war that was essentially over, except that they were still there and still being killed ? Things had gone really sour by then, this is when the dope, racial problems and fragging of officers was rampant. It was not at all the military that had been serving just 3-4 years earlier.
As for the atrocities, it's a pretty well established fact that they happened. The only conviction that ever came out of the entire war was Lt. William Calley, who Nixon rescued from the brig to serve his time under house arrest. The other senator/governor Kerrey, from Nebraska, has personally confessed to participating in a massacre of civilians while serving as a Navy SEAL officer. That stuff happened. I've talked to friends, some of them skydivers, who told me they personally mowed down farmers plowing their fields as they flew by in helicopters. They didn't do it because they were evil, or because America was evil. They did it because they were young kids, stressed near the breaking point in a war they just wanted to live through at the far end of the world. There's no logic to this kind of stuff, it's the dark - or some would say "sinful" - side of human nature. It's what war does to people - or so I've been told by those who were there, as I've never been so unlucky myself.
This doesn't negate the good stuff that happened either. American GI's have been famous for treating the sick and wounded, for feeding starving refugees, for building schools and clinics in war zones. That good stuff happened too, though I bet it happened a lot more in the optimististic days of the sixties than in the end game of the seventies.
I don't know how many months John Kerry served in Vietnam. I do know that he was wounded three times, maybe that had something to do with his early return. But the riverboat Navy was one of the most dangerous of combat assignments in the war and those guys took some of the highest casualties of the war. They were sitting ducks. And if the bullets didn't get them, the Agent Orange did, like the way it sickened and killed Admiral Elmo Zumwalt's own son, who was another riverboat commander. There is a guy stumping for Kerry who was a SEAL who was blown off the deck in an action where Kerry was already wounded. Kerry turned the boat around and went back, under fire, to rescue the guy. Though he's a registered Republican, this guy is out stumping for Kerry, as are some other men who served with or under him.
It's also well worth noting that Kerry wasn't drafted - he enlisted in the Navy and volunteered for Vietnam because he felt it was his duty to serve. This was something almost unheard of among his social class, especially as the war was already becoming unpopular. This alone says something about the man.
As for Bush's Guard service, I had a friend, Fred, who also went into the Guard to beat the draft. He also skipped over a long waiting list, possibly because his day was an Asst. District Attny. Also because his dad was unhappy with the way his oldest son Bob had returned from Vietnam with a drug habit and decided that one son in the war was enough for him. The Guard nowadays gets mobilized, they serve and fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then they didn't. They were a pretty safe bet for staying out of the draft and out of the war. I don't hold it against Bush anymore than against my friend Fred for taking the Guard as a way out. But Fred doesn't get up and lie to Congress, nor does he run around masquerading as a jet pilot onboard aircraft carriers. It's Bush's latter day "wannabee"-ism that really bugs me. That and Dick Cheney's answer to where he was during the Vietnam years. Cheney "had other priorities" - his own words.
So here we are, it's an election year. I'm voting with all my heart for a Kerry ticket, that I hope will include John Edwards in the no. 2 slot. I'm an American and I think Bush is bad for the country and has got to go and I intend to vote that way. And I can say that to you Mike because I know you and just met up with you a few weeks ago for the first time in 24 years and I know you're a good man.
Let's all just be thankful that we change or keep our leaders with our votes and not with tanks or rioting mobs in the street, like the shit that's going on in Haiti at this very moment. Even in the middle of our own Civil War, we held a presidential election. Lincoln insisted on it and he ran against one of his own generals who ran on a peace platform. Lincoln knew the whole war was pointless without our basic freedoms at home. So it is now.
Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !
It's unfortunate that political debate in an election year has to take such a nasty turn with so many personal remarks flying back & forth.
My biggest problem with the ex-Green Beret's letter is that I don't know whether the letter itself or the allegations it contains are real or something someone fabricated to spew out on the web. You not only can't believe everything you read on the web, you shouldn't as a matter of course until you've read it from enough different sources to weigh the facts and use some sound judgement.
For the record, I've never served in the military. I was a senior in high school when the Paris Accords were signed and the US pulled out of Vietnam - a VERY RELIEVED senior at that. I did regiszter for the draft and carried a draft card (1-H, a general holding category, as Selective Service's statutory authority to conscript draftees had expired).
I am old enough to recall John Kerry leading the VVAW demonstrations in Washington. 1971 was a time when just about everyone, including a lot of servicemen, had turned against the war. Why ? Well, Nixon was gradually withdrawing American forces, while Henry Kissinger and the North Viets were dawdling away the time in Paris. Everyone knew the war was going to end sooner or later, so who the hell wanted to get killed anymore in a war that was essentially over, except that they were still there and still being killed ? Things had gone really sour by then, this is when the dope, racial problems and fragging of officers was rampant. It was not at all the military that had been serving just 3-4 years earlier.
As for the atrocities, it's a pretty well established fact that they happened. The only conviction that ever came out of the entire war was Lt. William Calley, who Nixon rescued from the brig to serve his time under house arrest. The other senator/governor Kerrey, from Nebraska, has personally confessed to participating in a massacre of civilians while serving as a Navy SEAL officer. That stuff happened. I've talked to friends, some of them skydivers, who told me they personally mowed down farmers plowing their fields as they flew by in helicopters. They didn't do it because they were evil, or because America was evil. They did it because they were young kids, stressed near the breaking point in a war they just wanted to live through at the far end of the world. There's no logic to this kind of stuff, it's the dark - or some would say "sinful" - side of human nature. It's what war does to people - or so I've been told by those who were there, as I've never been so unlucky myself.
This doesn't negate the good stuff that happened either. American GI's have been famous for treating the sick and wounded, for feeding starving refugees, for building schools and clinics in war zones. That good stuff happened too, though I bet it happened a lot more in the optimististic days of the sixties than in the end game of the seventies.
I don't know how many months John Kerry served in Vietnam. I do know that he was wounded three times, maybe that had something to do with his early return. But the riverboat Navy was one of the most dangerous of combat assignments in the war and those guys took some of the highest casualties of the war. They were sitting ducks. And if the bullets didn't get them, the Agent Orange did, like the way it sickened and killed Admiral Elmo Zumwalt's own son, who was another riverboat commander. There is a guy stumping for Kerry who was a SEAL who was blown off the deck in an action where Kerry was already wounded. Kerry turned the boat around and went back, under fire, to rescue the guy. Though he's a registered Republican, this guy is out stumping for Kerry, as are some other men who served with or under him.
It's also well worth noting that Kerry wasn't drafted - he enlisted in the Navy and volunteered for Vietnam because he felt it was his duty to serve. This was something almost unheard of among his social class, especially as the war was already becoming unpopular. This alone says something about the man.
As for Bush's Guard service, I had a friend, Fred, who also went into the Guard to beat the draft. He also skipped over a long waiting list, possibly because his day was an Asst. District Attny. Also because his dad was unhappy with the way his oldest son Bob had returned from Vietnam with a drug habit and decided that one son in the war was enough for him. The Guard nowadays gets mobilized, they serve and fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then they didn't. They were a pretty safe bet for staying out of the draft and out of the war. I don't hold it against Bush anymore than against my friend Fred for taking the Guard as a way out. But Fred doesn't get up and lie to Congress, nor does he run around masquerading as a jet pilot onboard aircraft carriers. It's Bush's latter day "wannabee"-ism that really bugs me. That and Dick Cheney's answer to where he was during the Vietnam years. Cheney "had other priorities" - his own words.
So here we are, it's an election year. I'm voting with all my heart for a Kerry ticket, that I hope will include John Edwards in the no. 2 slot. I'm an American and I think Bush is bad for the country and has got to go and I intend to vote that way. And I can say that to you Mike because I know you and just met up with you a few weeks ago for the first time in 24 years and I know you're a good man.
Let's all just be thankful that we change or keep our leaders with our votes and not with tanks or rioting mobs in the street, like the shit that's going on in Haiti at this very moment. Even in the middle of our own Civil War, we held a presidential election. Lincoln insisted on it and he ran against one of his own generals who ran on a peace platform. Lincoln knew the whole war was pointless without our basic freedoms at home. So it is now.
Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !
Michele 1
T, I can't help but state that what you wrote is wonderful. Not because I agree with you (I don't, not completely), but because you took the time to state your personal position, without personal attack, without arrogance, without putting anyone else down for their position, and without insinuating that they are stupid if they don't agree with you.
I understand your position - again, understanding does not equate with agreement - and really, really appreciate the time and care you took to state your thoughts and reasoning...
Thanks very much!
Ciels-
Michele
~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~
I understand your position - again, understanding does not equate with agreement - and really, really appreciate the time and care you took to state your thoughts and reasoning...
Thanks very much!
Ciels-
Michele
~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~
But it''s OK for you to write:
"Go buy a GWB doll, sit in the corner, play with your lip and punch the doll.
and
"You should go buy the doll"
You're allowed to make personal attacks with impunity, it seems.
The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.
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