Michael Moore To Be On O'Reilly Factor Tonight...

Here's the thing, though - do I want to see my President kissing French ass for four years to "regain their respect"? Not particularly.

It's good to have the support of an international community, but it can also be stifling, especially when it comes to matters of security. Because other nations will look after their own hide whether you do or not.

Like, look at the thing with Israel vs. Palestine. Clinton tried to handle it diplomatically for 8 years. Obviously, that is what the international community wanted, right? But look what happened? Arafat played him for a fool, he continued to steal millions of dollars from benefactor nations, and the security situation has gotten no better. Terrorist attacks continued to rise, infitadas, etc.

Now, Bush has done things from the standpoint of, basically, saying, "We will pressure Israel to change/get rid of the fence/whatever when you guys crack down on terrorists, and not a second sooner". The international community hates him for that, especially those countries with large Muslim populations (like, umm... France!), but what has happened? Terrorist attacks have dropped dramatically and Arafat's position is dangling by a thread while the PLO implodes.

So.... what do you think? Im not gonna say, "fuck the planet!" but Im also not gonna say its a prerequisite to anything to have the support of the entire world on your side, because the world is a complicated place, and working too hard to ensure that Old Europe or whatever loves you can end up handcuffing you.

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He's dumped your economy in the toilet

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LOL. That's just a dirty lie. The economy is in the best place its been since 2000, and speaking as someone who has seen friends struggle after graduation finding a job up until last year, and now there's plenty of jobs for new graduates. The economy is, most definitely, not in the toilet.

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Originally Posted by diffx

LOL. That's just a dirty lie. The economy is in the best place its been since 2000

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You just negated your own point. Basically, even by the most optimistic standards, he simply broke even after this administration's screw-ups were corrected naturally over time. And even then, there are long-term negative effects that will rest squarely on their shoulders, such as speeding up and worsening the imminent market downturn for the younger generation, rather than trying to take measures to prevent it or soften the impact. Bush's administration has had absolutely no regard for our nation's future, and I and everyone else will pay for it down the line. The only situation in which I would say Bush did a passable job with our economy is if I were dying in a couple of years.

Bacon, umm... come on. The economy was great in the 1990s, but it was riding on an internet bubble. That bubble broke in late 2000/early 2001, which was great news for Clinton but thats just the way it happened. Remember when shit like Pets.com was rated at like 250 bucks a share? That was driving the economy!

So then the bubble burst, and a few months later, we had 2 planes crash into the World Trade Center, which further devastated the economy. And then you had things like the Enron scandal and Tyco and WorldCom, which (A) were defrauding the marketplace in the 1990s, when Bush was not in office, and (B) their collapse ruined the economy even more.

So you had... the internet bubble bursting, September 11 attacks, and the largest corporate scandals in US history all happening at the same time.

Honestly, it was not good times, and its unfair to say that any current/living administration was at fault for this (yea you could say Clinton or Bush should've done more for 9/11 blah blah but it happened and thats that).

Economically we've had to dig ourselves out of a hole for the past few years. It's seriously fucking ludicrous to blame the economy of 2000-2002/2003 on Bush, and in any case it's better now. I'm glad Im graduating now and not say 2 years ago because the job outlook is so much better.

Yeah, I'm aware things were lined up pretty shittily for Bush from the get-go, but even after all that, he put frivolous tax cuts in place and kept them there. That was a completely unneccessary action that did a lot towards setting back our national debt and, once again, ensuring that following administrations and generations have a deeper hole to climb out of.

So what would you have done? The Federal Government doesnt have a whole lot of tools to jump-start the economy (tons to slow it down, though), and one of them is tax cuts. Another is, erm... increased defense spending. Got us out of the Great Depression, that one did.

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Originally Posted by diffusionx

Here's the thing, though - do I want to see my President kissing French ass for four years to "regain their respect"? Not particularly.

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It isn't a question of kissing ass. No president will ever do that anyway - when you have the money and the guns and votes back home to protect you don't need to. It's a question of nobody wanting to go along with a man widely percieved as an ignoramus.

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Like, look at the thing with Israel vs. Palestine. Clinton tried to handle it diplomatically for 8 years. Obviously, that is what the international community wanted, right? But look what happened? Arafat played him for a fool, he continued to steal millions of dollars from benefactor nations, and the security situation has gotten no better. Terrorist attacks continued to rise, infitadas, etc.

Now, Bush has done things from the standpoint of, basically, saying, "We will pressure Israel to change/get rid of the fence/whatever when you guys crack down on terrorists, and not a second sooner". The international community hates him for that, especially those countries with large Muslim populations (like, umm... France!), but what has happened? Terrorist attacks have dropped dramatically and Arafat's position is dangling by a thread while the PLO implodes.

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1. The situation in Isreal practically disintegrated as soon as Sharon came into office. There weren't waves of suicide bombers during Clinton's term, because he understood this wasn't a problem that could be solved by pointing guns at people or building a Berlin wall. And terrorist attacks haven't dropped off dramatically in the big picture - they are far, far more frequent than they were 4 years ago.

2. The international court ruled the wall was illegal. How can you claim moral authority over anyone else if your own country supports illegal action?

3. How can you win over the middle east if you're seen as giving carte blanche to the most anti-arab government on Earth? You cannot underestimate how much that has done to undermine the US efforts there. The Isrealis aren't being hard-nosed anti-terrorist heroes here, they're launching cruise missiles into crowded city streets, torturing prisoners and destroying countless homes. Which is how the whole cycle started in the first place. A wall ain't gonna make the Palestinians forget all that, give up and stay home.

I don't mean to sound like the Palestinians are blameless - they're not, this could have all been avoided had they been willing to accept Netanyahu's offer. But the domestic situation in Isreal is worse than it's ever been, not better.

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So.... what do you think? Im not gonna say, "fuck the planet!" but Im also not gonna say its a prerequisite to anything to have the support of the entire world on your side, because the world is a complicated place, and working too hard to ensure that Old Europe or whatever loves you can end up handcuffing you.

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Of course not. But right now, every European democratic government that joined the coalition of the willing is on verge of being voted out of office. As long as Bush is president, it's political suicide for nations to side with your country on anything major. The man was greeted by at least 40 000 protestors everywhere he landed on his recent tour - that's roughly a mid sized town. Sure, he's there to run your country, not theirs, but things like that should be an indication of how little savvy he has at foreign relations.

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LOL. That's just a dirty lie. The economy is in the best place its been since 2000,

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That date should tell you something.

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and speaking as someone who has seen friends struggle after graduation finding a job up until last year, and now there's plenty of jobs for new graduates. The economy is, most definitely, not in the toilet.

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You have a record deficit. You've lost millions of jobs. I don't see how a small upswing of a few months erases all that. If a democratic incumbent told you he should be re-elected because he'd managed 4 months of growth in 4 years, you'd laugh at him.

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Originally Posted by diffusionx

Economically we've had to dig ourselves out of a hole for the past few years. It's seriously fucking ludicrous to blame the economy of 2000-2002/2003 on Bush

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No, I think he has to accept some blame for launching a $200 billion war, driving up oil prices, having no particular domestic economic policy outside of a tax cut, and hampering international investment by fostering anti-US sentiment. If you can blame Clinton for 9/11, I don't see how you can't blame a president for his own economic track record and response to hard times.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

Rather, in today's world, liberals typically just don't want anyone telling them anything they have to do. They have gone from freedom fighters to anarchists, and there is a world of difference.

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And by the same token conservatives have gone from being the defenders of personal freedom and fiscal responsibility to evangelizing moralizers and exploiters on the leesh of corporate interest.

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Originally Posted by diffx

The Federal Government doesnt have a whole lot of tools to jump-start the economy (tons to slow it down, though), and one of them is tax cuts.

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Tax cuts are such a knee-jerk, quick fix reaction. Consumer spending is up, approval ratings go up, yes, but those are both very temporary effects. Long term effects, which will be felt a lot worse and will be much harder to offset, should have been a much bigger concern. Definitely not worth the strife its repercussions will cause down the line, things were already looking bleak enough without Bush worsening them. My generation is fucked, and I'm not saying that that situation is gonna be reversed in any eventuality, but it'd be nice if we were even taken into consideration in matters that will affect us greatly. Bush's government has taken a very "damn the consequences, we won't have to live with them anyway" approach, which is deplorable.

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Originally Posted by g0zen

And by the same token conservatives have gone from being the defenders of personal freedom and fiscal responsibility to evangelizing moralizers and exploiters on the leesh of corporate interest.

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Evangelizing moralizers? Whose side is Jesse Jackson on again? Not mine.

Exploiters on the leash of corporate interest? Remind me again why more Democrats received donations from Enron than Republicans?

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Originally Posted by g0zen

The Viet Cong seemed to manage just fine, despite having all those things you mentioned and fighting a war of attrition with the U.S. Armed Forces. The days of throwing bodies at a fight until one side runs out is long behind us (or atleast it should be). We have to find a better way to help these countries without destroying them and then trying to police the rubble. Our military is not a police force, yet they're being used as such in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a change of tactics, we need to admit our mistakes and learn from them, instead of simply repeating them in the vain hopes that we do better the next time.

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The VietCong was a lot better equipped then who we're fighting now. They had artillery, working AK-47's with tons of ammo (a lot of the AK-47's recovered in Iraq are in extremely poor condition and most of the time will not fire), plenty of rockets and in some instances, tanks. They had the backing of the most powerful country in the world and while not as good off as the NVA (which even had a competetive air force) they still had it much better then the terrorists we're fighting now.

Even with all of that the Viet Cong were basically combat ineffective at the end of 1967 and beginning of 1968. They were no longer able to strike with any power and were basically no longer the threat they had been. The United States won every major conflict in Vietnam and completely ravaged the North Vietnamese military, the reason we didn't win? Politics, if fought the way it should've been fought the war probably could've ended in 1965.

Since April when a large part of the occupation force was replaced with Marines (a bit of Marine pride, but let's face it, they've been performing WAY better then the Army) every attack launched by terrorists on US forces has met in destruction and extremely bad defeat on their part. A lot of the civilian population does not sympathize with them whatsoever (while there are those who do) and they've been getting the shit beat out of them by the United States. At the close of the Fallujah siege they were begging the United States for a cease fire because they were losing hundreds of troops a day to sniper fire alone.

And as for all the economic bullshit, we all need to do some research here. Even CNN which is often seen as anti-Conservative reported that 2004 will be the best year economically for the US in the past 20 years, yes that includes the economy of the Clinton administration that many of you praise. The Labour Burea reported that 500,000 jobs were created in the first three months of 2004 alone and expected the amount of jobs created to rise vastly. Just curiousl, is there anything Bush could do to make you all happy? Don't forget that most of the stuff he has done has been backed by the government, and not just the Republicans. The government voted on the war in Iraq based on the information that the President had, and you gotta figure they get a little bit better info then the common folk (such as us). So instead of crying "Bush did this, Bush killed my dog, Bush turned my daughter into a prostitute, Bush fathered Bin Laden into a terrorists" take a look at what the rest of the government is doing.