George W. Bush Resume

[Anonymous]

Food for thought for the current administration supporters -

Halliburton's alleged corruption in the reconstruction of Iraq is an old Republican story.

Few Americans remember Operation Ill Wind. It was the late 1980s Justice Department sting that unveiled a multibillion-dollar defense scandal that occurred during the Reagan administration. Reagan threw so much money at the military industrial complex that it wasn't able to spend it honestly. Instead, the defense industry invented and the Pentagon accepted the revolving doors, pricey hammers and golden toilet seats that have become the iconic symbols of government waste.

Rather than blame Reagan's bad public policies and corporate greed, the right wing spun the scandal as another example of government's intrinsic failure. Reagan himself said government was not the solution but the problem. History and current events show otherwise.

Republicans offer no solutions; they are the problem

[ClayL]

Ginger - Imagine my dismay, I thought republicans were for smaller gov't also.

All Others - Like corruptions is a single party issue. A good portion of the stupidity y'all have mentioned were the product of Cold War Politics. We and every other NATO country over-looked a whole lot of things to keep nationalists from calling themselves Communists. Blaming the current Bush for these policy decisions is not a fair streach of logic. Hell, he was still snorting cocaine when most of these things happened.

[ This Message was edited by: ClayL on 2003-12-18 06:38 ]

[Anonymous]

Thank God somebody said it!!!!!

[Anonymous]

(Republicans offer no solutions; they are the problem)

Thank God somebody said it!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Everything I put in the original post (George Bush's Resume) is true and happened in the 3 short (or long) years under George W.  Everything.  And yeah, in some ways Clinton was no better; except it is one thing to lie to the American people about having a young intern suck on his pecker and quite another to lie to the American people and end up having thousands of people die in Iraq.  This "thousands" number includes Americans and Iraqi's.  Many Americans don't realize the number of Iraqi's that have died since our invasion.  And, NO, I'm not saying Saddam is better, in fact he is worse.  I just expect honesty from the president, not some politico concoctions similar to the honesty we had in straight.

[Hamiltonf]

I say again:
The consistent nature of Western foreign policy suggests that focusing on individual leaders and parties ? finding cause for optimism in Tony Blair?s endearing smile or George Bush?s Christian faith ? is a gross form of self-deception at best. Policy flows from a stable framework of domestic power pursuing similar goals in similar ways over many decades.

This institutional framework is rooted, not just in greed, but in the limitless greed of corporate fundamentalism ? there are no limits, no acceptable costs that have to be tolerated where they can be avoided. People pay the price.

Again, whether you are Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, in politics today, it's too often two sides of the same coin. Is that democracy when both sides are bought by the likes of Halliburton, Enron, Bechtel and a handful of others?  This is not just a U.S. problem but is a problem around the world that demands answers.

[ClayL]

Balko has a good piece on what greed produces today.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,106052,00.html

CL

All the commas are messing up the link. just copy and paste.

[ This Message was edited by: ClayL on 2003-12-18 13:26 ]

[ClayL]

I find it quite difficult to shed tears for dead Iraqi's. As soon as they stop killing American's I predict there will be less dead Iraqi's.

CL

[Anonymous]

WHOOAA!!!!

[Anonymous]

The US should just lock this country down period. Get rid of everyone that was not born here and don't let a single person into this country thas is not from here originally. Every time I walk into a gas station and see a towel head, I often just stand there and wonder...... It sucks that it is like that now but, I sometimes (depending on my mood of course as I am gemini) just think that this country should just clean house.

[Antigen]

On 2003-12-18 13:02:00, Hamiltonf wrote:

Is that democracy when both sides are bought by the likes of Halliburton, Enron, Bechtel and a handful of others? This is not just a U.S. problem but is a problem around the world that demands answers.

Yes, yes! The fruits of Democracy are just what we're reaping today.

Just look over some of what the founders of the US Federal Government, and their critics, had to say about Democracy:

http://fornits.com/cgibin/fed-search.cg ... =substring

This is just exactly what the founders predicted and why they so strenuously insisted that we model our government as a Republic not a Democracy!

Frankly, I'm not at all certain we wouldn't have been better off under Articles of Confederation. Who knows how any or all of the independent members of the Confederacy might have evolved by now. No one, that's who. We'll never know.

But, as to Büsh being easily re-selected, Uh ...  Oh :exclaim: .....

Could have foiled 9/11, Kean says
 

 
By JAMES GORDON MEEK in Washington
and DAVE GOLDINER in New York
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
 
The World Trade Center attack could have been prevented, but officials in Washington "simply failed" in their vigilance, the Republican head of the Sept. 11 commission said yesterday.
"This was not something that had to happen," said Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor whom President Bush put in charge of the bipartisan panel investigating the worst terror attacks in American history.

Kean said he was flabbergasted that unnamed officials who should have done more still have their jobs.
 
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/ ... 9811c.html

Hail to the thief! This is especially comforting coming from the NYD. It's the LEO daily newspaper of choice in NYC. If the cops come around and enough vets come around and enough local authorities start to wake up from their slumber, we may be able to get ourselves back on track mostly with pens, very little need for swords.

Oh, btw, I'm pretty sure Clinton has some complicity in this as well. If not this particular mess, I know there are some former residents of Kosovo (or their survivors) who might have a bone or two to pick with ol'e Bill.

Does anyone remember anything about the early daze of the Whitewater investigation? They didn't set out looking for the smoking blowjob. They were looking into allegations of foreign influence in the election and trillion-dollar fraud, bordering on treason, relating to the S&L collapse and subsiquent bailout.

It was my opinion then, and remains so today, that Lewinsky-gate was nothing more than a smoke-screen constructed by both branches of the Dempblican party. When it came right down to where the rubber meets the road (and where office workers in Arkansas simply lose rooms full of legal documents), if that investigation had been properly and honestly conducted, it would have lead to indictments against the entire upper echeolon of both branches of The Party.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
Anonymity Anonymous

[ This Message was edited by: Antigen on 2003-12-18 15:38 ]

[ClayL]

Ginger:

I am pretty sure that neither the United states nor the Confederate States of America would have survived the imperialism period if they had remained confederacies. I think that America would more resemble Europe with it's tribal infighting and ethnic cleansing. The United States would not be one nation but many smaller nations with many of these nations not having enough natural resources to support it's population. The only reason the US is near as powerful as it is, is the ease which the US can throw around it's economic might.

I am not going to say this hasn't been abused because it has. Most of the mess of South America is the US's fault.

Maybe a confederation would work today, but I still suspect that many nation-states would vie to bring the confederation under their sphere of influence.

CL

[Anonymous]

Technology, especially in cell phones, has evolved to the point of absurdity.  It is now a fact that you are being tracked at all times.  If you purchased a cell phone in the last 6 months odds are you have the new tracking technology in use.  I fear that in time, Republicans or Democrats  ?The Establishment? will use this technique to further enslave all of us.  Can you imagine the implications of the following article?  Big brother is NOW watching your every move and it?s being stored in a database somewhere?..

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/techn ... ner=GOOGLE

This is real technology in place now.  Say goodbye to anonymity forever??

[Froderik]

Interesting. Perhaps you also know something about this.

[Antigen]

Clay, I'm not sure we would have been better off to remain as independent states. Just that I'm not sure we wouldn't.

We tend to get hung up on the more famous events and dates in history and forget the bigger picture. But if you think of the wording of the Declaration of Independence, it doesn't say "This document will change everything", it says "Things have changed, this document describes how things really are now." People in different states were trading goods and services with each other just fine for hundreds of years before the Constitutional Convention.

I think that ability to throw "our" weight around has caused us a whole lot more problems than it's worth. We could stand to bust ourselves up into a couple of different federations. Alone, none would be the super-power that the USFG is today. But we'd still have all of the same shared interests, just served by a more distributed power structure.

Any Irishman who doubts the reality of selective enforcement ought to take just a moment to comtemplate the etymology of the term "paddy waggon".
--Antigen