why bush will be re-elected

Wow. That was an amazing article.
He states some very good points. With the economy rebounding.

The Dow has gotten back to the 10,000 point level.
Retail sales are up.
The GDP is up(8.2% from 3.3% last period).
Factory orders are up.
Unemployment is down( though not moving very fast).
Inflation is down.
New home building is down but new housing starts is way up.

I understand that California is having more problems than the rest of us but things ARE on the way up!


[Edited on Dec 16, 2003 by Mike]

Mike, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you watch Fox News.

-scopitone, i'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're just another America-hating San Franciscan.

oh yeah...from your journal: "MOST HUMBLING MOMENT: I used to be a Republican. With a capital R. But living in San Francisco and Berkeley for the last 5 years changed things a lil bit. "






[Edited on Dec 16, 2003 by HonkeyKong]

All of that information was taken from a MSNBC web page.
(and yes, I watch Fox News. along with MSNBC, CNN)

Here is a link to my info

Most of them are actually pointing out the budget shit-storm that's going to hit some years after Bush is out of office.

None of which is likely to be factored into voting decisions in '04, is my guess.

having read a good share of Orson Scott Card's body of fiction, i can only ask - has he?

granted, i never imagined him a pacifist - his ender's game series is military oriented science fiction mixed with a heavy burden of ethical dilimma.

but again and again, his grand ethical statements teach that one can never know their enemy. the Bugger's, the ultimate in vanquished evil, prove to be simply misunderstood in later novels. ender works hard to undo his actions of the first novel (complete decimation of an enemy species). And then Card adds more species to the mix - the Pequeninos, the descolada (a deadly, possibly sentient virus), an artificial intelligence...

and all of these species exist in stark contrast to one another - if one exists, then another is at dire risk. again and again, his fiction asks the question - what justifies war? what justifies the destruction of an entire species of sentient life?

and more to the point, he ultimately shows us that 'the other' is constantly misunderstood and that this misunderstanding is the root of war. that destruction is not the answer. that peace can be kept through communication and empathy.

at least, that's what i got from reading Mr. Card. I guess i was wrong - his essay above, while it raises some good points, feels like it came from a different man. A shame, really. i quite liked the one i imagined him to be from reading his novels.

America-hating. I love how easily people throw around that term. It's like they've been trained to do so.

I should change my most humbling moment to "I used to be Republican...then I learned how to read"




[Edited on Dec 16, 2003 by Scopitone]

-unfortunately, it is very easy to throw that term around these days. especially in your little piece of the country.

Another point of view-

Column: Why Liberals Are Angry
By P. M. Carpenter
Mr. Carpenter is a historian and syndicated columnist.




Akin to politically motivated charges of rising liberal incivility is the seductive, if not surprising, topic of very real liberal anger: seductive, because pondering its origins is fun; surprising, because anger seems so out of character with liberals' rather spineless image they themselves allowed to prevail. When liberals got fingered by militant detractors for unraveling America's moral fiber (a neat trick the liberals pulled off with satanic glee, of course), they abruptly laid low and even cowered to the point of denying their identity.


But no longer. Liberals are pumped – and p-oed.


Some say liberals are ticked because the rest of the country hasn't yet conceded that George W. is a duplicitous bumbler with emperor envy. Some say it's only because liberalism has suffered a long decline. Others say a stolen election, a seedy impeachment, an illegal war and the pack-mentality media account for liberal wrath.


All these are true. But there's a more seminal cause of liberal anger. In view of it, the only surprise is that the anger took so long to erupt.


The post-Watergate movement of the “New Right” – a well-orchestrated confederation of political action committees, think tanks, neoconservatives, religious rightists, social-conservatives and libertarians – introduced into American politics a fresh supply of advanced disingenuousness. In a 1980Washington Post interview, one of its founding strategists, John Terry Dolan of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, described its tactical approach as “the cutting edge of politics.”


New Right activists fueled by massive infusions of cash, Dolan injudiciously bragged in a self-satisfied and rare moment of truthfulness, “are potentially very dangerous to the political process.” We “could be a menace,” he boasted. We “could amass this great amount of money and defeat the point of accountability in politics. We could say whatever we want…. A group like ours could lie through its teeth.”


And that's just what Dolan's group, “Nickpack” – along with dozens of likeminded groups – did. To discredit what it liked to call the failed Liberal Establishment, the New Right bullied opponents with outrageously false attack ads, painted differing opinions as disloyalty and contaminated America's political consciousness with an unprecedented barrage of innuendo, half-truths and whole untruths about liberal motives, the “liberal media” and the liberal agenda in general.


Paul Weyrich, a right-wing PAC-man contemporary of John Terry Dolan, effused in 1980 that the fight against liberalism was “the most significant battle of the age-old conflict between good and evil … that we have seen in our country.” That zealous excess inspired the right to bar no holds. Any expediency drafted in the cause against godless liberalism was legitimate. The end, quite simply, justified the means.


Success soon followed. The new conservatism flourished like no political movement ever flourished before – leading to the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions and the revolution now in progress – because the New Right “could,” and did, “lie through its teeth.”


There are, of course, softer and more diplomatic terms than “lies” to describe the right's rhetorical record, but none so plainly accurate. Intimidated liberals used to call them “fabrications” or “distortions.” All that's over: hence best-selling titles like Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush and Joe Conason's Big Lies.


Today it's no more Mr. Nice Guys, but their angry lingo was long in the making.


In their rush to political supremacy, conservative strategists such as Weyrich and Dolan forgot a basic law of human behavior: Even the intimidated, the vanquished, will take bullying just so long. In time they'll get mad and push back. In time they'll explode.


Paul Weyrich forgot, that is, until the recent avalanche of published liberal anger triggered a wake-up call. “Republicans had better worry,” he acknowledged a just few days ago. “Angry people are motivated to get out to vote.”


He oughta' know.


Sure, liberals still seethe from a doubtful election, an illegal war and political prosecutions. But there's a genuine anger out there engendered by something rooted far deeper in the past: a quarter-century of callous right-wing tactics. Its purveyors now carping about liberal anger have no one to blame but themselves.

what the fuck kind of democrat is card? a dixiecrat?

I don't see why the author feels he is a Democrat, I also don't know what news he watches because the national media is so far up Bush's ass it is repulsive. Anyway sure the economy is up, that is typically where it goes after it tanks hard. what, did everyone think we would go into a depression? The war on Iraq has not been justified period. They are one of the few middle eastern countries who havent had terrorist organizations (we created some there). They should have started with Saudi Arabia, however I would bet you wont see that happen nor will anyone from Enron be convicted. None of the democratic candidates that I listened to said they want to stop the war on terrorism, They want to FOCUS on it by getting OUT of Iraq. There is no more reason to hate Iraq then there is to hate China or any other totaltarian/Communist government. I guess my point is there were and are much better targets then Iraq, we have soldiers getting killed for someone elses cause We are over there purely becuase Dubya's getting revenge for his half wit father. No soldier in Iraq has died for our freedom, they have died in vain for an Assholes grudge.

Sorry it's the same author, but he expands the ideas from the last column here-

Column: Why Democrats Have to Go Negative to Win
By P. M. Carpenter
Mr. Carpenter is a historian and syndicated columnist.



Republicans are big on giving Democrats advice these days, especially on how to conduct campaigns. It's like Tonya Harding coaching Nancy Kerrigan on the finer points of sportsmanship.


The advice is simple. If you guys, the Democrats, have any chance of winning in 2004, it's only by staying upbeat and positive in message. Negative themes and negative campaigning are voter turnoffs. You'll go nowhere just being against things.


One hates to appear ungrateful in the face of all this magnanimous Republican counsel, but thank you, no, Democrats should pass.


On the surface, the advice seems sensible. There's no question that voters say they prefer the positive to negative and prefer candidates who propose new ideas versus slamming old ones. That's what voters say, anyway. The reality is they love to see, and are often persuaded by, a gladiatorial contest in which the provincial underdog tears the Roman Goliath into little political pieces.


Conservatives began appreciating this concept when taking on “the liberal establishment” 30 years ago with fresh verve. A review of their tactics shows what put them in power. There was one key: New conservatives – the New Right – whined and fumed and grumbled and griped their way to the top.


They campaigned against everything.


They ridiculed government spending (remember those days?), always neglecting it included such things as immunizing Johnnie and feeding Aunt Maggie. They denounced federal deficits (remember those days?), a real conservative bête noire until the Reagan administration began racking them up with childlike abandon.


They portrayed labor unions as all-powerful people oppressors. (I recall receiving an “objective” questionnaire from Jesse Helms' political action committee once. It began, “Do you want labor unions to control your life? Yes [ ] No [ ].”) They trashed environmental regulations purely as love interests of starry-eyed tree- and frog-huggers.


They ripped into abortion rights, homosexual rights, school busing, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment, the U.S. department of education, school-prayer prohibitions, strategic arms limitation talks and the United Nations as Satan's commandments, notarized and executed by vile liberals out to close church doors and ban baseball.


Republicans were against everything but shiny new weapons programs. They went negative all the way, all the time.


As rhetorically significant was their wholesale rejection of critical social analysis – the kind of policy wonking Democrats have a habit of droning on about in debates and on the stump. The New Right instead committed itself to sweeping, and simplistic, one-sided arguments. In this union of negativism, scapegoatism and one-sidedness, the movement collectively transformed itself into a political refuge for anxious working- and middle-class Americans looking to point the blame for whatever ailed them.


Sure, the transformation alienated some of the Old Right's intellectual base, but strategic newcomers didn't much care. Wrote New Right activist Kevin Phillips of the wordy Bill Buckley crowd: “We [cannot] expect Alabama truck drivers or Ohio steelworkers to sign on with a politics captivated by Ivy League five-syllable word polishers.... Most of the ‘New Conservatives' I know believe that any new politics or coalition has to surge up from Middle America.” With a little help, that is.


The surge did come, and not from complicated policy analyses, upbeat messages and pleasant words from the right. The surge came out of anger transmitted through plain-spoken negative messaging. Newt Gingrich only made New Right tactics official when he advised colleagues in writing years later to “go negative early.” That was the battle plan from the beginning. It worked.


It could work again – for Democrats. And of course that's what Republicans fear. In fact, it's about the only chance Democrats have. Tearing into the conservative record of bloated deficits, corporate handouts – oh hell, that list could on for pages – would do more to dethrone Bush II than any campaign of political pleasantries.

-hahaha...what? just drop everything and leave? "sorry guys...catch ya later!"?

"And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end."
-Orson Scott Card

Yesssss. Talk badly about California. Please! Spread the word about what a hole this place is. Then maybe the rest of the planet will stop moving here.

I wonder how a Republican with a capital R even makes it too Berkley.

Education AND the best deep dish pizza place in the world.

Why do so many of you support Bush and his policies? Is it because you think you will be rich someday? Because you won't. You most likely will stay within the same economic strata you were born into.
Is it because you are fiscal conservatives? Well Bush has raised spending. Is it because you believe in guaranteed freedoms and rights? Well Bush has done what he can to take away those rights. Is it because republicans are the party of inclusion? Well Bush has done what he can to exclude others and is lloking at ways to exclude homosexuals from getting married.
Bush is a fucking liar. His administration are fucking liars. Conservative pundits who support him are fucking liars (i.e Rush). You would rather be on the side of lies and dishonesty and war than the side of civil rights, responsibility and justice? These fucking liars are also irresponsible children who, like children, lie to get what they want.

end of rant

I still find it interesting that we are still even talking about terrorism, which, statistically speaking is far less deadly than, oh, say, cancer, less pervasive and spreading slower than say, AIDS...

surely as long as the Bush admin can ride this "fear" train and keep Americans convinced they're more at risk from a terrorist attack than being hit by a drunk driver or die in the bathroom, he'll assuredly have it in the bag. Whether you get it from Fox news or wherever.

if it looks like the media wants him out it's only because that's what their latest polls at the local mall and the Starbucks are saying. see what it says in a couple weeks.

(actually rescanning this article, I'm thinking some fact-checking is in order: how many Iraqi casualties happened in the toppling of the Hussein regime? Scant? anyone have a figure?)

well shit, if a science fiction writer says it, it must be true!

my only question is: why now? why is terrorism so much more of a threat NOW than it was, say, five years ago? did 9/11 actually increase terrorism's effectiveness? how?

and how does saddam hussein's removal make me any safer?

and how exactly do you ever win a war against A CONCEPT? because that's what terrorism is, you know, a concept. you could kill every active terrorist in the world, and two years later, twice as many will pop up in their place. how is this anything other than a ticket for bush to do whatever the fuck he wants?

a few more comments:

1) it's easy to call yourself anything. i am a {insert whatever you are against} but i think {something with an opposing view}. it's a relative of the even more consdescending {i used to be a} variant.

2) why did Card fail to mention the Saudi's in his list of more 'appropriate' targets: "Syria, Iran, Sudan and Libya"

3) i'm still waiting on any evidence whatsoever that Iraq had a damn thing to do with 9/11.

4.) His logic basically boils down to: 'you've got to finish what you start'. fine, that's easy sloganeering, but is it really true? the simple truth is no. one of the cool things about the future is that it isn't written in stone - we are capable of changing our minds. there are viable ways to back out of iraq, and to think we've got no choice whatsoever is hogwash. besides, that's some argument that. by his logic, we're practically forced into toppling governments for the next few decades.

[edited to replace punctuation with {} so that it doesn't comment out my words, hah]

[Edited on Dec 16, 2003 by ferret]

Perhaps I should start a new thread about this but...why do people ASSUME that if someone is NOT a Republican, that they are a Democrat?