Who to vote for? (for US President)

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I don't think this thread was ever funny (admit it, the attempts at jokes of voting based on their record for fighting the Kilrathi were pretty lame), and to be honest, I think it's a little disrespectful to have tried. The stakes in the upcoming presidential election are much too high.

We may not be worrying about mutual assured destruction like in the Cold War, but then again, the Soviets never killed 3,000 Americans, let alone in downtown Manhattan. You could reason with them. Islamic fundementalism is much more scary. Sure, it might take them 50 years to deploy a single nuclear weapon, while the Soviets could build 10,000 in the same time and launch them half way around the world, but who's more likely to use them? Who's more likely to focus on killing as many people as possible, rather than trying to achieve a diplomatic or political aim? The killing of 300+ children in Beslan is simply an unconscionable horror--who can go against their very genetic hard-wiring and sanction the murder of so many innocent children in cold blood? So yes, the war on terror is something we should be worried about, and I dare say it might be even more dangerous than the cold war.

It's for this very reason why I'm so concerned about Bush's record in office. Sure, he says all the right things and acts tough, but looking at his execution, I really can't understand how even those who are whole-heartedly for an aggressive strategy can support him; it's simply incomprehensible to me. I get the feeling they must have a darn good reason, but the reasons I've heard them state (he's "stronger" on national defense, counterterrorism, etc.) actually seem like reasons (to me) to vote for the other guy!

Unlike a growing percentage of the American public (who I consider to be fair weather hawks), I still support the invasion (on humanitarian grounds, mainly, as I've had all along), but I've been shocked at how poorly things have been run since, on both the political and military fronts. Sure, it's easier said than done, but people at the State Department who had more experience with this stuff had anticipated much of what has gone wrong in the last year plus, with looting and overly ambitious mega-reconstruction projects that don't show any benefit to people on the ground.

Sure, the invasion of Iraq was accomplished with great speed and success, but nobody bothered planning for the aftermath. Tommy Franks planned the first 3 phases of the war, up to the end of major combat operations, and left phase 4 up to the civilians who would supposedly be administering the country afterwards; the administration never bothered putting together a feasible phase 4, despite spending a year on an invasion that only ended up taking weeks. Meanwhile, we've lost something like 900 more soldiers since the "end" of major combat operations, and thousands more wounded, many with lost arms or legs. We lost 120+ in April in fighting in Fallujah, yet the administration pulled out in the end and the insurgency is only stronger there than before. It's easy to get desensitized to the numbers, but is that right? Each one of those brave men or women who has died and sacrificed so much had parents, family, many had spouses, children. Each person that dies affects many more at home.

How can we be claiming to support the troops when we actually do so little for them? Most of us will just live our comfortable middle class lives without knowing danger, paying our taxes to fund our troops. Although even then, the military budget is about the size of the deficit, so you could say that we're really jusy borrowing money from future generations to support our troops. Meanwhile, the president urges us to not let the terrorists win and do our part for America by buying ourselves consumer goods and subsidizing Middle East terrorism through unpredecentedly high oil prices.

The best thing we can do for our troops is ensure they have a clear mission, support them in accomplishing that mission with the maximum application of American power, and not force them to sacrifice themselves for anything beyond that mission. We shouldn't cut and run, but imagine what we could have done with 500,000 troops, like we had in the first Gulf War for a much more limited mission, instead of 1/4th that number to occupy the whole of Iraq. Instead, the administration has been shuttling troops back and forth across Iraq and the world to conduct just 1-2 operations at a time, calling up IRR and other reserve forces because there aren't enough units to rotate to and from the theater. It seems pretty obvious to me that this behavior is the result of not having enough manpower on the ground to stage simultaneous assaults on all our enemies at once, which is like trying to destroy an ant infestation by stamping on ants.

And then we have the whole situation in Afghanistan. What if we had used our own troops to root out Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, instead of relying on undisciplined Afghan militia? We have 18,000 troops in Afghanistan today--just think of what we could have done there with the resources we've put into Iraq. Instead, Afghanistan has hot spots all over the place, with violent riots breaking out just this last week, in previously quiet western Afghanistan, killing almost a hundred people just weeks before the presidential election.

That's ignoring his political Machiavellism, which seems to be willing to sacrifice any principle to stay in power. We've seen this administration constantly bait-and-switch, promising one thing, then doing another. They've lied about the cost of the Medicare drug benefit bill (breaking laws in the process, as determined in the federal courts) in order to secure passage for a bill that the seniors it's allegedly helping are unhappy with it and hardly using it. The president supports our troops, but has never attended a funeral for a single soldier brought back home in a casket. He promised New York billions in funding for homeland security after 9/11, and then lets Congress turn it into a pork barrel bill for Wyoming. He claims to be in favor of the assault weapons ban, but is too cowed by the NRA to ask Congress to even debate a bill, despite a pliant Republican Congress which still moons over the president and does whatever he asks in as partisan a way as possible. He claims that the economy is strong while job creation is insufficient to keep up with a growing population. He makes vague promises to cut the deficit in half without mentioning that making his tax cuts permanent, something he constantly harps upon, will do the exact opposite.

I think by far the saddest thing about all this is Americans never hear about it. The media makes it into a story one week, but they never follow it for very long, especially the television media. If you want to know what's going on, you need to follow the stories yourselves. The whole Swift Boat Veterans for Truth thing turned out to be 99.9% verifiable lies, and yet people never hear this and think John Kerry, Max Cleland, and John McCain (all Vietnam combat veterans who served honorably, and yet tarred by essentially the same brush at various points when they got in Bush's political cross hairs) are all scummy liars while George W. Bush is suppose to be a paragon of a commander-in-chief despite never having had a shot fired at him in anger.

At this point, I'm actually afraid that we'll have 4 more years of Bush's policies come the election in November. I know people like to say that if you think there's a better country out there than America, get out of this one, and I used to agree with them. The U.S. still is one of the best countries in the world to live in. The most frightening thing is that I've actually started to think about leaving this country, that 4 more years will be just so devestating, long term, to our economy and security that the negatives of being an American start to outweigh the benefits. I'm starting to research other places to see if I could tolerate living in Canada, or Europe, or maybe even China or India.

I'm not saying that I think the country is going to be a financial wreck and police state by 2008 (I think fears of Ashcroft are overblown--he's too incompetent), but I can definitely contemplate a depression in maybe 2020 as our budget shortfalls catches up with us, Social Security really busts the bank, our money depreciates, inflation becomes rampant, an oil shock as prices skyrocket due to plummeting reserves and rapidly expanding demand in China, stagflation of the '70s return, everyone becomes stupider as the youth of America pursue business, law, and liberal arts degrees to the exclusion of anything else, and as India, and especially China, outcompete and surpass us as economic powers (which will eventually lead to political and military pre-eminence, make no mistake about that). Reversing the tax cuts in 2008 or 2012 probably won't be enough, we'd have to change course during the next administration. I don't know if Bush would ever admit to being wrong about his tax cuts and turning the budget outlook around. What makes me so angry about all this is that the current generation probably won't have to worry about these things, it's the people who are in their 30s and below right now who will have to inherit the consequences of what their parents did. And those people are too politically disfranchised or self-centered to care about that future right now.

P.S. I like Bush's space plan, I think it's a very reasonable sequence of steps to start limited human space exploration again. Just returning to the Moon, without thoughts of ever moving on to Mars, would be a huge, huge step forward for mankind. I don't think he's going to pay for it, though--have you heard him mention it once since that one speech? He didn't even bring it up in the State of the Union address that came a few weeks later. Just another smokescreen to distract us and buy political favor from the rather small pro-space group without actually meaning anything. My biggest beef with Bush is that he's apparently incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time; he can focus on one problem for a very short while, then moves on and lets it spiral out of control while he's dealing with a different problem: Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Darfur, Israel-Palestine, the list just goes on and on... how can people say he's stronger on national defense? I just don't get that, I really don't.

Unless it's just in comparison with Kerry, and how can people claim to know how Kerry would act as commander-in-chief? If we have anything to go by, Kerry would be even more aggressive than Bush; the incident where Kerry jumped out of a boat and chased down and killed a man with a rocket launcher (yes, despite the SBVfT allegations, that has been verified by numerous witnesses) comes to mind. Think about this: Kerry has KILLED people. Plural. Up close and personal, with an M-16 at close range. He still likes his guns, and goes hunting all the time (you'd think the "rifles are only for sport, most gun owners aren't criminal elements who use them to kill people, oh no" NRA would love him), while Bush, Jr. was collecting brush and ignoring pre-9/11 reports about bin Laden. How can you call someone like that weak? I just, don't, get it!
 
I think this one qualifies as the longest post ever in the CZ.

But, as with the rest of this stupid thread, my laziness and boredom prevent me from reading it.
 
Geebot makes several decent statements - too bad the majority of them are either conjecture or based on facts which have yet to be 100% corroborated.
 
Whoa, the most interesting fact I just discovered in this thread is Trelane's post count...83K!!! An average of 43.5 a day? Now that is impressive! Who gives a crap about Kerry's alleged heroics in Vietnam? I fail to see how that's going to benefit the nation...just because he knows how to fire a rocket launcher doesn't qualify him to lead a country. If so there's a lot of privates in the army that should be on the ballot...
 
I don't think this thread was ever funny (admit it, the attempts at jokes of voting based on their record for fighting the Kilrathi were pretty lame), and to be honest, I think it's a little disrespectful to have tried.

That was the premise of the thread - which candidate would do a better job of fighting the Kilrathi. It has since turned into the generic internet circlejerk we have before us... and soon it will pass beyond the barrier from which no threads return.

The stakes in the upcoming presidential election are much too high.

No, they aren't. This generation is far too self important - the choice between Generic Candidate A and Generic Candidate One is pretty darned insignificant. There will continue to be be war, famine, horrors, atrocities, bad business and all sorts of other morally terrible things. Re-electing Bush will not cause him to destroy the world and electing Kerry will not solve any complex problems caused by thousands of years of human history. You get to choose which guy looks better on TV disagreeing with congress and pretty much nothing else.

(... but, but, but one of them *likes* abortion and won't do anything about it... and the other one *doesn't* like abortion and won't to anything about it! They're as different as night and day!)

We may not be worrying about mutual assured destruction like in the Cold War, but then again, the Soviets never killed 3,000 Americans,

Yes, they did. We fought numerous 'proxy' wars with the Soviet Union - Korea and Vietnam, for instance.

You could reason with them. Islamic fundementalism is much more scary.

No, it isn't. Ask your parents or grandparents how they felt about Khrushchev threatening to bury them. The Cold War is a funny joke to us now, but it absolutely was not fifty years ago.
 
GeeBot said:
And then we have the whole situation in Afghanistan. What if we had used our own troops to root out Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, instead of relying on undisciplined Afghan militia?
Yuhuh, because sending large forces into Afghanistan worked out so damn well for the Russians, the British, Alexander the Great, and everyone else that's ever tried.

He makes vague promises to cut the deficit in half without mentioning that making his tax cuts permanent, something he constantly harps upon, will do the exact opposite.
Never mind the fact that any real economist would tell you that tax cuts boost the economy, create jobs, and (to a certain point) actually increase tax revenues.
 
What is Kerry's position on Iraq and North Korea? I STILL haven't figured it out. He criticizes Bush's methods and says he would do things differently, but he never says what he would do differently. The only detail Kerry gives is that he would TRY to get more allies involved or bring the operations under a UN banner. If he has ever stated what he would do besides talking to other countries about the problems I would like to know.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It has since turned into the generic internet circlejerk we have before us... and soon it will pass beyond the barrier from which no threads return.

Is that the barrier at the center of the universe where "God" wanted the Enterprise - or was that the barrier that the Enterprise went through and Gary Mitchell went all white-eyed and superhero-like.
 
Vote Republican! Because the best kind of freedom is the kind when they strip you completely naked of your personal rights...
 
RiotAct218 said:
Vote Republican! Because the best kind of freedom is the kind when they strip you completely naked of your personal rights...

Its nice to be completely naked sometimes.....

And yes, I believe that was a central part of the Republican Convention in New York. Bush, his wife, his daughters, Rudy Guliani, John McCain, and every other speaker said that was the central theme of the Republican platform.
 
You are right LOAF, I've made a great deal of mistakes here and on IRC, I Don't care if I'm a joke to you. I said what I felt, I have no regrets. If you choose to be angry and insult me, that is your chioce. I really only live to smile and have fun, I made bad choices about posts I've made here, but I really have tried to be selective and choose things I know about to debate. Where as many people my age, debate anything just because. If I have pointed out my being crippled, it's a possible two situations, One: I'm attempting to be funny about it or Two: Someone has said something that makes it contextual to mention it. These two rules also apply to my happening to be a homosexual. I have never meant to just throw it out there, if you've felt that way, I am sorry. The only Reason I responded to this post is that I personally am affected by the choices being made by the government. I have studied hours and hours to understand just how this system works. I've had to learn legal speak, I had to fight to get the government to pay $12,000 for medical when I was having heart trouble, a year ago. I am unable to work because the system says if you make more than $20,000 a year, we can't cover you're medical However, if you go on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) we'll pay you $600 a month pay your rent $350 and give you $141 in foodstamps, though foodstamps is a state program and not federal, I felt I should include it.

My medical is around $30-36 grand a year, Average work health insurance won't cover me for up to six months because I have a pre-existing disability. So I can't really survive without it. Right now, I'm physically able to work but there aren't any guarentees. So if I went to work and then got sick my medical would have already been pulled it takes six months minimum for them for them to evaluate my case and even grant me a hearing. Meanwhile, I'm in a hospital somewhere dying because they can't just give away treatment.

So instead of just $36 grand a year, the government wastes $48-50 grand a year.
This is just one person, imagine 100. This does not include the fact that you get more depending on how many years you worked before you became disabled.

Now I know LOAF will say, why are you complaining about something that's designed to just hand you money? I want to work and earn my keep, I just can't afford it. If I could work and know that I was fully covered and protected , I would. I argue the NASA point because when we have a shitty health care system, where people who work can't get coverage, but people who can't work get coverage, how can we waste money on shooting useless crap into space?

Honestly, I don't think any candidate will ever answer this call. LOAF, if there were a way for us to trade places, I rather be normal than a cripple. I would appriciate it if you wouldn't refer to me as special, it's a term I've despised all my life. I'll probably be attacked and Trelane and LOAF will call me stupid, but I happen to actually care about this and know alot about this subject , I don't just do something because I think it's cool. It seems that people that vote for bush or give bush a plus for the NASA thing, aren't really thinking practically. Probably because they don't have to. It's almost as bad as my friends voted for bush thinking he'd legalize drugs, though maybe that's a more pratical thing than NASA, Who knows. Maybe they'll find the cure for cancer up there, but untill they do, I'll probably still say it's stupid.


-Rance-
 
Also, since I forgot, it seems that LOAF has already admitted in an ealrlier post that candidate A isn't different from Candidate B, So, hoiw then do you sit at home and justify your decison? Also, It's strange that you guys would choose to Joke about WC like that. If you remember right we started the war with the kilrathi after orphans got blown up or something so if we compare in a joking manor I'd say bush would go to war and Kerry would go to war, but bush would probably have us spread really thin and now this god awful Iran situation has me believing we're going to fight three wars. Still, I'm not voting for anyone, because it's pretty clear no one is doing anything, except talking a good game, well, not even that.
 
ck9791 said:
Its nice to be completely naked sometimes.....

And yes, I believe that was a central part of the Republican Convention in New York. Bush, his wife, his daughters, Rudy Guliani, John McCain, and every other speaker said that was the central theme of the Republican platform.
Wow... being completely naked was the central theme of the Republican platform? That's... different :p.
 
Also kinda disturbing, considering that most of those mentioned by ck9791 were rather older folks...

(No comment on the Bush daughters, though, don't think I've really ever seen them enough to make a judgement.)
 
Bush's daughters are clearly a much better option for the naked role...here's another reason to vote for Bush: "Vote for Bush, he has hot daughters!" Maybe that would make a good commercial...seems to move a lot of "Live Girls at Cancun" videos...
 
Who would be a better president for the Kilrathi.....hmmmm. Tough call, Kerry would fight hard for alliances but we know he does know how to go for the throat if it came down to it.

Bush is all down for war, as long as some Salthi pilot tried to pop his dad. Though Bush does seem to do well with the troops, but that can be just careful screening of the people who are gonna be there.

God I love politics lol
 
Maj.Striker said:
Bush's daughters are clearly a much better option for the naked role...here's another reason to vote for Bush: "Vote for Bush, he has hot daughters!" Maybe that would make a good commercial...seems to move a lot of "Live Girls at Cancun" videos...

If the daughters were naked, i'm sure the convention would have been much more interesting and tv ratings would have been higher.
 
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