vote Bush

I’d be voting for him if I could. Who would vote for an economic pansy man?

You’ll be saying differently when you get into college. (or when you come up with a better reason than “the other candidate would like to fix the economy”)

You act the part, but my country has not been turned into a sea of flames yet. Whats with the delay? I mean, come on, do it already, we all know you have a weather controlling device/other evil thing.

You’re not voting for Kerry because he is a democrat and you don’t think there have been many great democrats lately…but then does this mean you’d rather stay with Bush, who is already not a great republican?

Bush is worthy of a vote because of a quick response to an emergency? It is hard to imagine any president not responding quickly to an emergency. We don’t know what Gore would have done and it doesn’t matter. So Bush didn’t completely drop the ball at a time when our course of action was fairly clear. When things were less clear…well…

As far as social welfare goes, there is a certain stigma attached to living off of welfare when you don’t have to. And I don’t believe the cost is that high, compared to the benefits of a welfare system. Preventing poverty, providing better services to everyone, these things benefit society as a whole. Also you stereotype democrats a lot. Kerry’s said that he’ll only raise taxes on the top 2% (people making over $200,000 a year). And the money will go towards helping America as a whole, by helping to fund better healthcare. More funding for healthcare will help the medical industry and lower insurance costs, which even benefits businesses and the economy by making it cheaper for companies to hire more employees (lower benefits costs). President Bush’s plan would…help the rich get richer, provide less money for healthcare, leave more people uninsured, decreasing public health, hurting the healthcare industry, cause higher insurance costs for the insured people, ultimately hurting public health and the economy. Unless more money in the pockets of the well off is going to finance public healthcare?

Kerry’s “reputation” as a flip-flopper is something his opponents have stuck on him. They take quotes out of context and oversimplify issues to make it seem like his position is incoherent. But his position on Iraq has been clear to me for a few months now, and seems to make sense. Especially given the way Bush did seem to hurry off to war awfully fast. Do you still trust Bush, after Iraq? Even if he does have good intentions, his leadership style seems to encourage groupthink and discourage listening to opposing views. He could be prone to making more poor decisions in the future because of this.

And finishing the messes he’s gotten us into??? What if he gets us into even more messes along the way? Yeah, I’m sure that if we just elect him one more time he’ll realize that there are so many problems that people are concerned about and he’ll try to fix them. Or he could just ignore public opinion and go off on his own radical neo-conservative agenda. Amend our relationship with the UN? Bush has made it clear that he is not going to change his policy for any other nation. He doesn’t care about the UN. The neo-conservatives believe that we need to aggressively use the might of the United States to bring order to the chaotic world. Which sounds like a pretty dangerous philosophy. I think the Romans tried it a few thousand years ago.

Oh Jesus it’s happening again!

What you mean another long, drawn out, and rather nasty battle of politics through the threads of the Agora?

Sounds like fun. And I’d like to point out that Bush hardly “rushed” to action during 9/11. after being told, “America is under attack.” Bush sat around for nearly 12 minutes in a classroom while a teacher read “My Pet Goat” to the children. And when he did act, one of the first things he did was to let Osama bin laden’s relatives, and some other saudi arabians, go home scott free. no questions asked. And while i can’t really zing bush on attack Afgainistan, i can say that he couldn’t have truly been concentrating on find Osama soo much, as he was trying to get one of his business friends into the control of the country so that he could build a “magic” natural gas/oil/something pipeline that went through Afganistan. And I’m not even going to mention more about Bush later saying that he didn’t think much about Osama anymore, or that there was hardly a reason to attack iraq at all. 15 of the 19 high-jackers of 9/11 were saudi arabians, Osama is Saudi Arabians, Saudi Arabia is more of a human rights issue than Iraq last i checked with beheadings, but under Bush, who is almost personal friends with so many royal saudis, The US will never attack that country.

You’re worried about your taxes going up? All right. So why aren’t you concerned about the fact that Bush has expanded the size of the government more than any other president in recent history? He hasn’t vetoed a single spending bill that was ever sent to him. He’s created new bureaucracies. He lied about setting aside 2.5 billion for Social Security (what was that about “flip-flops” again?). He then lied us into a war that costs us a billion dollars every single day. As he did this, he cut income and dividend taxes for the rich, depriving the government of large amounts of revenue. Where do you suppose he’s going to get the money to pay for all these things? If the government isn’t getting as much revenue from taxes, it’s going to give much less money to the states, meaning that the states will have to raise their own taxes. Unsurprisingly, property and sales taxes have gone up as a result. Hell, my state of New York just tried to add a fucking <i>retroactive</i> sales tax on shit that people buy over the Internet. (And that’s not even touching on the rampant increases in other areas, like college tuitions and health care costs.) The total tax burden hasn’t decreased, it’s increased, except now more of it is going to be borne by the lower and middle classes rather than the rich.

Bush would “finish” some of the messes he’s made? That terminology is unintentionally accurate. Bush doesn’t think he’s made any “messes.” He plans to “stay the course” in Iraq by doing everything the exact same way he’s been doing it. That is his platform: he campaigns on being “unwavering” and “resolute.” Well, the way to fix a “mess” is not to do the exact same things that caused it in the first place, much less to keep repeating them on a greater scale. The neoconservatives have gotten their war in Iraq, so now they want Bush to invade Iran and Syria, and destabilize other Arab nations, even those whose governments are sympathetic to us. If Bush gets elected, it’s likely that the relatively moderate Colin Powell will be replaced by some neoconservative ideologue, at which point the neoconservatives will basically get to do whatever they please. If Bush gets elected, the people will have sent a message that they don’t care that he started an aggressive war on false pretenses; why, then, would he do anything differently the second time around? This means more wars, a greater overextension of the military, and of course, all the costs that ensue from that.

Acted immediately? He continued his normal day plans after hearing about the first plane. Then he sat around for like 10 minutes after being told about the second plane before doing anything. Also, while I give credit to Bush for what he did do after sitting around a bit, despite my family being ciritcal, he mostly followed his advisors (smart thing to do). Any President’s advisors probably would ahve adivsed a similar course of action it they would have done it.

Not to mention Bush tries to legislate his religion and wants to reverse Roe v Wade, both wonderful signs why he doesn’t deserve my vote. Defense of Marriage Act? Wanting to have a Constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage? Really, what the fuck?

I don’t get why people don’t say Bush is a flipflopper for the wide array of excuses for which he went to war. They changed monthly a couple years ago.

Would anyone happen to have a good solid argument on why they want to vote Bush? I’ve yet to hear one, and I would really like to hear the opposing side.

points to BX for what is considered a solid argument Whether or not it is one is up to the individual.

Don’t worry! She’s a good Grim Reaper type cat girl! She only kills evil things!

Evil as in Nulani evil or evil evil?

No, evil evil. Not Nulani evil.

There’s no reason. You’re already slowly destroying yourselves, and as I’m immortal, I’m in no rush.

And to relate my post to the thread as it’ve reered. I would vote John Kerry. Not because I like him, not because I agree with him, but because I like to hope that he can lead America back to America and not away from America as George W. Bush has done.

You’d be surprised how often regular voters feel that they’re making that exact decision.

I’ve done my share of Bush-bashing, and I don’t like all of the man’s decisions very much, but I’m going to vote Bush rather than Kerry. My reasoning for this is simple: Bush doesn’t switch sides on hot issues just to stay popular. Yes, he makes some fucked up decisions, but he stays the course through thick or thin. Not that I support the war in Iraq; I did when I thought the WOMD threat was real, and I’m surprised we didn’t pull out ASAP after finding out it was bogus.

Kerry, on the other hand, goes with the flow, speaking out on the popular issues and changing his tactics in favor of public opinion. A good example of this is when he had the gall to blast Bush about how ‘underequipped’ our troops in Iraq were, when Kerry himself voted against spending the money to better equip our armed forces. That’s max-asshole, in my opinion. Kerry even supported the war and claimed the documents about WOMD were worth acting on, but when the war became unpopular, Kerry switched sides. Lame.

Yeah, Bush has fucked up, and often, but he’s got steel balls and is willing to ride through hell and high water. I don’t think the president should keep a country on a sinking ship like the Iraq war, but leaders can’t let the public’s opinion of them influence their decisions, and that’s what the president is for: not to be popular, but to lead.

Aldred: the only way to believe that is by unquestoningly believing the Bush campaign propaganda.

As Kerry explained, the reason he voted against the spending bill was because that version of the bill funded the war from tax revenue, whereas the version he supported funded the war using revenues from Iraq. With the war on Iraq, I pretty much understand Kerry’s argument because that is what I was thinking was happening when they voted to authorize the use of force. That it would be used to bring more pressure on Iraq. Instead Bush immediately lept to war with support from only a handful of allies.

What about Bush’s habit of making decisions and then changing his reasons for making the decisions after the fact? What about hunting down Al Qaeda? Bush says that now that Iraq has been liberated, Al Qaeda has one less safe haven. What about the parts of Iraq that are now controlled by insurgents, where terrorists are now being recruited? If Bush was so ready to turn to military force, he should have been prepared for the (predictable) aftermath. The administration even argued that the Iraqis would accept the Americans with open arms! Maybe in some parts of the country, not so much in others.

Even if Bush is doing something unpopular, that is besides the point. He is doing things that are harming our country, and that is no reason to reelect him, no matter how much he insists he is doing the right thing.