Well?
Kerry should have hammered in on Bush’s “consistency” thing. Plus, I think he REALLY wanted to respond after Bush mentioned the international courts, but the moderator moved on.
It looked like Kerry was generally more composed than Bush, but only in that Bush often paused for a second or more at the beginning of his allotted speaking time.
Bush acted very agitated - he kept interrupting Lehrer with his responses so Lehrer basically had to give him another thirty seconds after Kerry said anything. He was almost yelling at different points in time. I guess that’s what happens when he hasn’t really had to answer any serious questions about his policy for years. Kerry emphasized the fact that Bush let Osama bin Laden go because he wanted to go to war in Iraq, which was good. Bush kept lying about the nonexistent “threat” of Saddam Hussein, and conflating Iraq and al-Qaeda (he even said “Saddam Hussein” instead of “Osama bin Laden” at some point, which was amusing), and he completely ignored any comments about the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
Kerry kicked Bushes ass, I feel this’ll probably be a turning point for the Kerry campaign.
I think bush did better, and made better points throughout the debate. I was disappointed that stemcell research and other important issues werent brought up. While i do support bush, i am very open minded about politics. I hope the next debate will encompass more issues than the Iraq war.
NOTE: Bush really did beat on Kerry’s political flip-flops a lot, didnt he ?
In the sense that he kept fabricating them, yes. In essence, he kept repeating the same things even after Kerry already responded to them once.
Nothing fabricated about Kerry’s political flip-flops.
still the flip-flopper he is, still the lesser of two evils he’ll always be…oh and thanks for taking my thread after I posted one like this Sin…gotta be hateful on the man like that. :noway:
Sorry , Rommel :S
I dont think so… how can you say a man who would throw away his metals, claim his comrades at arms to be war criminals, just to later use those crimes he claims he commited as an excuse to be president, is the lesser of two evils ? If Kerry was so against the war in Vietnam, why does it use it so much in his campeign ?
If Bush has morals, why does he do nothing about the DoD’ obvious support and direction of the torture of detainees?
No big deal. And maybe it’s b/c he doesn’t have full say in his DoD. From what I see…Rummy seems more powerful than Bush at times.
Ehh, i’m gonna choose now to take a step outta this one… political debates in a chat room are fine, but they are annoying on message boards…
puts his eyepatch back on and limps to the FFC forum gotta hate “cutters”…
Rommel: isn’t he supposed to be the commander “in chief”? Wouldn’t that erode on his authority? Wouldn’t that be disadvantageous for the American people to have an unlected official making these kinds of decisions?
I pray that’s sarcasm. Besides…I knew all along Rummy is far more intelligent than our CiC, and can run a whole lotta shit w/out Bush knowing all the details. Even Cheney puppeteered Bush a wee bit.
Kerry’s platform is “we can do better. we can have allies”.
Bush’s platform is “everything is already the best as it is.”
Read <i>Candide</i>, by Voltaire, and you’ll have my opinion.
I thought Kerry made a slightly better impression overall. He addressed the issues at hand. Although he did keep referring back to his participation in Vietnam, he did not dedicate a whole two-minute response session to an entirely personal anecdote that had been but poorly linked to the issue at hand (the anecdote about Missy). Bush also made a major blunder in accusing the Iraqis of somehow being involved in the attack of 9/11, and Kerry caught on quick. However, it was extremely <i>annoying</i> to see both Kerry and Bush push their own versions of their opponent’s harmartia, if you will, in their talks. Bush accuses Kerry of being <i>inconsistent and a flip-flop</i>, Kerry accuses Bush of being <i>undiplomatic and a liar</i>, multiple times, so that it starts to lose meaning.
Too much time was devoted to the issue in Iraq, even if it was an important issue.
Why does any of that add up to be flip-flopping? Did Kerry himself admit to committing crimes in Vietnam? Even if he did, when he refers to his service, is he speaking about the bad things he might of done or the commendable things he did do? He could be against the war and still proud of his service. Are doctors ashamed of their profession if they fail in a particularly difficult surgery? Are they NOT going to be proud of the lives they’ve saved if they were unable to save a single one?
Honestly, this flip-flop stuff is completely manufactured drivel. The only reason Bush’s advisors were able to pull it out of their collective ass is because as a senator Kerry has served many years and made many decisions. He has a record of service in a legislature, unlike Bush, who I believe has only served as an executive, first as the governor of Texas and now as President. In his four years there are many things he could be accused of “flip-flopping” on, not the least of which have been his ever-changing justifications for the Iraq war. This is why I was disappointed Kerry didn’t drive that particular point home: Bush is vulnerable there. Very vulnerable.
Furthermore, what do you goddamn mean when you say “flip-flop?” Do you mean he’s a hypocrite? Do you mean he changes his mind? Or did you just pick up the term through its constant repetition? As far as I can tell, this “flip-flop” phenomenon is as bad an example of propaganda as the condescending attitudes every “good German” had under Hitler towards Jews. And I don’t reference fascist Germany lightly. Don’t blow this out of proportion and discount me for saying Bush is a fascist, I’m not (though he is concentrating a whole lot of power in the executive branch). My analogy is simply for the propaganda. How dark the consequences of its success may or will be, we have yet to see.
It doesn’t matter which of them wins the election, I’m not going to be pleased with either of them. The only canidate still running that I’d actually like to see win is Ralph Nader, but with the election process in our country being so completely un-democratic, there’s really no chance of him winning.
Bush is probably the better qualified for president. Sure, only completely disillusioned bible beaters can follow him as blindly as most the people on these boards blindly follow Kerry, but at least the man comes out and states what his stance on issues are. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the press conference where Bush went up and said, “Sure the Democrats are all for pushing through tax reforms to place more burden on the rich, but that’s why the rich have lawyers and accountants, so they can avoid paying those taxes.” And the sad thing is, he’s right.
Kerry on the other hand seems to try to please everyone in his campaign for presidency. Kerry’s responses to questions remind me of something a disillusioned hobo would respond with if you asked him about the government implants in his head - his answers are long, full of gaps, and everyone can tell he’s full of crap. The sad thing is that most his supporters ignore this fact because they’ve been pressured by the whole anti-bush campaign for so long that they honestly don’t care WHO they vote for, as long as it isn’t Bush.
So that’s what we’ve got, our current president who has some seriously fucked up policies, but at least sticks to them, or Kerry, who probably doesn’t have enough balls to get much done in office and will probably just attempt to follow through on Bush’s current policies much less effectively than Bush would.
Really, I doubt that it makes too big of a difference WHO you vote for this election. The whole thing has probably been set up from the start by people who are profitting from Bush’s current policies and want to see them continued. Some great representative government we live in. Sure we get to vote, we get to vote for Bush or Semi-Bush.
Why does everyone talk this way? Has anyone <i>proof</i> or at least <i>suggestive evidence</i> of Kerry’s supposed incompetence and/or inconsistency, and if so, why isn’t it ever brought up, ever? Is it just simply <i>accepted</i> that Kerry lacks a backbone, that he would botch things up in office, simply because he’s a democrat?
No, it’s because if you asked him what he wants for lunch, he’d probably engage you in a 10 minute long speech about the qualities of a healthy lunch, but never actually tell you what he wants for lunch.
Kerry’s answers SEEM to be related to the question on the surface, but most the time he’s just dodging the question. True, it might not mean that Kerry is incompetant, but it does mean that he either doesn’t have a firm stance on the addressed issue, or he doesn’t want people to know WHAT his stance is because it would counteract with his campaign.
And really, why should the man have to be dodging so many questions if Bush is doing such an incompetant job himself and Kerry’s policies will just turn everything around? Wouldn’t everyone just be running from Bush’s side to Kerry if they were so great? It’s the fact that Kerry’s campaign relies so much on the assumption that Bush is a terrible president and that Kerry’s policies are so different, yet he’s so dodgy in his answers that bothers me. It really makes me feel that Kerry is simply going to continue Bush’s policies for the most part if he gets elected, but he can’t let people know that because it would pretty much ruin the whole base of his campaign.