Oh please, there is no comparison. The Bush family has a sordid history. Clinton was just a bumpkin. m
HA! You mean the Bush states can discover the joys of an authoritarian regime, lose their rights and liberties and quickly become another third world banana republic. The blue states can enjoy greater freedom and liberty once they are free of the despots on the right. m
Yo, stupid fuck, LOVE your sign-off. The Patriot Act is NOT an executive order. It's a piece of legislation PASSED BY CONGRESS and KERRY VOTED FOR THE PATRIOT ACT!! Kerry Voted For Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was passed nearly unanimously by the Senate 98-1, and 357-66 in the House. (H.R. 3162, CQ Vote #313: Passed 98-1: R 49-0; D 48-1; I 1-0, 10/25/01, Kerry Voted Yea) Kerry Used To Defend His Vote. âMost of [The Patriot Act] has to do with improving the transfer of information between CIA and FBI, and it has to do with things that really were quite necessary in the wake of what happened on September 11th.â (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At Town Hall Meeting, Manchester, NH, 8/6/03) In 2002, Kerry Said He Supported Death Penalty For Terrorists. KERRY: âThe law of the land is the law of the land, but I have also said that I am for the death penalty for terrorists because terrorists have declared war on your country.â (NBCâs âMeet The Press,â 12/1/02)
AAA, maybe we should try it again. After all, each State as a separate country, functioning separately from each other was the ORIGINAL intent of the Framers of the Constitution. Limiting the power of the Federal Government. Hamilton and a few others are the ones that wanted a big central government. And look what we have today. Seceding from the "Gore" States would allow them to embrace Socialism, while affording the rest of us an opportunity to start over and focus on finding leaders that actually support the Constitution. We'll have the 10 Commandments in every classroom and government office (of course other religions are free to display their emblems as well). Our Constitution will include term limits, no more professional politicans who become corrupt and self serving. The "Gore" States lean towards Socialism which invariably leads to Communism so if thats what THEY want, they can pursue it. They have nothing to offer that we need. We'll continue to prosper as only a free people can. There will be plenty of work as we can close our borders. Mexicans can go to the "Gore" States where they'll find a welfare system to their liking. Our "welfare" system will only be for those UNABLE to work, as opposed to those UNWILLING. We'll have to arm everyone as history has proven those who have not always want to take away from those who have. As a politically neutral zone, something like Switzerland, we'll let them park their money in our banks. We'll mine the gold and silver freely since there won't be a Federal Government trying to control the wealth in our "Nation". Also as a politcally neutral zone, we won't be financing every country in the world or every political whim, so our taxes will be minor, allowing "the people" to amass as much wealth as they want. Gee AAA, this is starting to sound better all the time.
Funny, I never mentioned the patriot act, did I. That's only part of it and you know damned well, it is that whacked out Ashcroft's baby. The secretiveness, dirty dealing, end-justifies-the-means mentality...this administration is gawdawful. Conservatives are all ass-kissers by definition...E. Abbey. m
Oh yeah, right. Get yourself a good old theocracy, cut your womens clits off and all will be right with the world. It would be great fun to stick all the Islamic and Christian fundamentalists...oh hell, include fundamentalists and zealots of very stripe...in one place and let them slaughter each other off. m
No Mack, we won't have to do that. Without a lot of bloodsucking liberal antiChrists around lowering moral and social standards and I'm sure we'll get along just fine.
Today, what you say anywhere you say everywhere. This will not go down well with those US voters who are unemployed or concerned they might lose their jobs due to the transfer of the entire US manufacturing sector to Asia. Soon, manufacturing in the US will be a shadow of what it used to be given the unending quest of the bottom line by business management driven to consider short term considerations only.......jim sinclair Powell Reassures India on Technology Jobs By STEVEN R. WEISMAN Published: March 17, 2004 NEW DELHI, March 16 â Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, encountering the other side of a tempestuous debate in the United States, sought to assure Indians on Tuesday that the Bush administration would not try to halt the outsourcing of high-technology jobs to their country. In discussions with Indian leaders and college students, Mr. Powell found that the issue of the transfer of American jobs to India by leading technology companies was as emotional in India as in the United States. But whereas American politicians have deplored the loss of such jobs, it was clear that the anxiety in India focuses on threats by some members of Congress to try to stop the transfer by legislation. Responding to a questioner in a session with students who asked if he supported or opposed outsourcing, Mr. Powell said: "Outsourcing is a natural effect of the global economic system and the rise of the Internet and broadband communications. You're not going to eliminate outsourcing; but, at the same time, when you outsource jobs it becomes a political issue in anybody's country." Mr. Powell told the students what he had said to reporters earlier in the day after a meeting with Foreign Minister Yaswant Sinha: an appropriate American response to outsourcing was to press India to open up to imports of American investments, goods and services. He said one purpose of his trip was to explain to India that because outsourcing had created a political problem in the United States, India could help by lowering its trade barriers. He said he was making that request, not as a condition for the United States allowing outsourcing to continue, but because it was in India's interest to be more open more...
Military Families Urge Censure for Bush as Congress Marks Iraq Anniversary Coalition Critical of White House Deceptions Delivers 560,340 Petition Signatures to House Offices As Members Debate Resolution on the War Win Without War Announces New Phase of Censure Campaign WASHINGTON, March 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Families of soldiers serving, as well as of those who have been casualties, in the occupation of Iraq came to Capitol Hill today with other volunteers, urging Congress to censure President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, volunteers carried petitions that filled 18 large boxes, signed so far by 560,340 members of MoveOn.org from every congressional district, to each office in the House of Representatives, reinforcing the demand for a censure resolution. The groups also displayed print and TV ads that will begin running this week. "My son, Army Lt. Seth Dvorin, who died last month while serving in Iraq, met his responsibility to the nation he loved," said Sue Niederer of Pennington, NJ. "As his mother, I am joining hundreds of thousands of Americans today in asking that the Congress of the United States meet its responsibility, as well." Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War, said the combined activities represent an escalation of efforts that will continue. "The truth matters. By not holding the President accountable, the Congress is saying it doesn't. This is unacceptable," said Andrews, a former congressman and member of the Armed Services Committee. "The resolution now before Congress is silent on the many ways Bush betrayed our trust, misleading us to make the case for this war," said Peter Schurman, executive director of MoveOn.org, an Internet issues organization with more than two million members. Also participating in the news conference were Joseph Cirincione, director of non-proliferation studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Richard Torgerson, a principal with Progressive Asset Management in Maryland and a leader of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, and several military families. The ongoing campaign for censure of the President is led by Win Without War, a national coalition of 42 membership organizations, and MoveOn.org, True Majority, Working Assets and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities. Richard Torgerson, a financial services executive in Maryland, represented Business Leaders and unveiled their new print ad, which will run this week in The New York Times. Cirincione is an author of the Carnegie Endowment's critical study on the Bush Administration's distortion of intelligence and other evidence leading up to the war. Entitled "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications," it found that Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons programs "did not pose an immediate threat to the United States," or to regional or global security. It also said "there was and is no solid evidence of a cooperative relationship between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda." "The President and the Administration systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq," Cirincione said. "President Bush didn't have the facts, so he made them up." "We are honored to be joined in our nationwide campaign for accountability by a growing number of families whose sons and daughters have served or are serving our nation in uniform," Andrews said. Mildred Mortillo, whose son is serving in Iraq, accompanied Ms. Niederer. Speaking for herself and other military families, Ms. Niederer said: "Our message to Congress today is clear: spare us the platitudes, the pious rhetoric, the empty slogans. Give us the truth. Do your job and hold those accountable who have denied us the truth. Censure President Bush for the deceptions and manipulations that led our nation to war. You owe the American people, my son and all those patriots who have sacrificed for their nation no less." SOURCE MoveOn.org; Win Without War Web Site: http://www.MoveOn.org
The Boston Globe 3/16/2004 "IT MUST BE considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things." This warning is from Niccolo Machiavelli, yet it has never had sharper resonance. More than a decade ago, after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush explicitly sought to initiate, as he put it to Congress, a "new world order." He made that momentous declaration on Sept. 11, 1990. Eleven years later, the suddenly mystical date of 9/11 motivated his son to finish what the father began. A year ago this week, Bush the younger launched a war against the man who tried to kill his dad, initiating the opposite of order. The situation hardly needs rehearsing. In Iraq, many thousands are dead, including 564 Americans. Civil war threatens. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is choked by drug-running warlords. Islamic jihadists have been empowered. The nuclear profiteering of Pakistan has been exposed but not necessarily stopped. Al Qaeda's elusiveness has reinforced its mythic malevolence. The Atlantic Alliance is in ruins. The United States has never been more isolated. A pattern of deception has destroyed its credibility abroad and at home. Disorder spreads from Washington to Israel to Haiti to Spain. Whether the concern is subduing resistance fighters far away or making Americans feel safer, the Pentagon's unprecedented military dominance, the costs of which stifle the US economy, is shown to be essentially impotent. In America, the new order of things is defined mainly by the sour taste of moral hangover, how the emotional intensity of the 9/11 trauma -- anguished but pure -- dissolved into a feeling of being trapped in a cage of our own making. As the carnage in Madrid makes clear, the threats in the world are real and dangerous to handle, but one US initiative after another has escalated rather than diffused such threats. Instead of replacing chaos with new order, our nation's responses inflict new wounds that increase the chaos. We strike at those whom we perceive as aiming to do us harm but without actually defending ourselves. And most unsettling of all, in our attempt to get the bad people to stop threatening us, we have begun to imitate them. The most important revelation of the Iraq war has been of the Bush administration's blatant contempt for fact. Whether defined as "lying" or not, the clear manipulation of intelligence ahead of last year's invasion has been completely exposed. The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" has been transformed. Where once it evoked the grave danger of a repeat of the 9/11 trauma, now it evokes an apparently calculated American fear. The government laid out explicit evidence defining a threat that required the launching of preventive war, and the US media trumpeted that evidence without hesitation. The result, since there were no weapons of mass destruction, as the government and a pliant press had ample reason to know, was an institutionalized deceit maintained to this day. At the United Nations, the United States misled the world. In speech after speech, President Bush misled Congress and the nation. And note that the word "misled" means both to have falsified and to have failed in leadership. To mislead, as the tautological George Bush might put it, is to mislead. The repetition of falsehoods tied to the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq has eroded the American capacity, if not to tell the difference between what is true and what is a lie, then to think the difference matters much. The administration distorted fact ahead of the invasion, when the American people could not refute what had not happened yet. And the administration distorts fact now, when the American people do not remember clearly what we were told a year ago. That Bush retains the confidence of a sizable proportion of the electorate suggests that Americans don't particularly worry anymore about truth as a guiding principle of their government. In that lies the irony. The Bush dynasty has in fact initiated a new order of things. The United States of America has become its own opposite, a nation of triumphant freedom that claims the right to restrain the freedom of others; a nation of a structured balance of power that destroys the balance of power abroad; a nation of creative enterprise that exports a smothering banality; and above all, a nation of forcefully direct expression that disrespects the truth. Whatever happens from this week forward in Iraq, the main outcome of the war for the United States is clear. We have defeated ourselves.