Jay Leno Asks Why - OT
- Thread starter Wesley
- Start date
Just to fill you in, there is no need to rebutt an idea that is counter to our way of life. Anyone in the United States can get ahead, if they have the ability to do so. And there is nothing wrong with having the ability to do so, whether it is because they are hard working, intelligent, creative or just plain lucky.
Oh, and most people who have lost an argument don't go back to look:wink0st: .
No, not a great amount as in World War amounts, but significant enough for the architects of this war to keep them off the books to try to shape their image of the war. Much like not letting the media show coffins coming home, pumping up the Jessica Lynch story, and burying the real truth of Pat Tillman's death.
Well for starters we can begin with 9/11. Now I don't blame him any more, or really less than previous admins. But it is apparent that they did have certain amounts of knowledge and did little. Condi's memo's. Various briefings. Could they have stopped it, most likely not.
The complete disaster that is Iraq. The fact that we were wrong on nearly every talking point about why we were going in. Link to 9/11. WMD's, etc.
Harriet Miers,
Alberto Gonzonles
Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame.
No bid contracts to Haliburton.
Karl Rove about umpteen times over.
Katrina relief - or lack thereof, Michael Brown.
Near record spending
No energy policy aside from Big oil making as much as they can.
No environmental policy.
And that's just what I can come up with in the first 60 seconds.
Here's an easier question - what HAS he done?
(Edit, Ok I have one. I don't know the details about it, but the "No child left behind" program is, at the very least a concept, that I can get behind. Accountability within schools and not pumping endless dollars at failing systems is a good thing. Of course it's counterbalanced with the end result being less funding for schools. One would think there's a better way, but I don't know what it is)
And before you and CR91 want to accuse me of partisanship, it would be best for you to understand that I voted for his highness - twice, and have been a lifelong Republican.
I can just see the forest through the BS.
The way I see it, in response to both of you. There's two sources of information. The media and White House press releases. I regularly discern info from various sources. Fox, NBC, NPR, a variety of web sources. So my views come from a wide background and Conservative perspective.
Or I guess I can just believe everything that Tony Snow says as gospel..... Boy, there's a tough question for the better source of independent thought.
The complete disaster that is Iraq. The fact that we were wrong on nearly every talking point about why we were going in. Link to 9/11. WMD's, etc.
Harriet Miers,
Alberto Gonzonles
Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame.
No bid contracts to Haliburton.
Karl Rove about umpteen times over.
Katrina relief - or lack thereof, Michael Brown.
Near record spending
No energy policy aside from Big oil making as much as they can.
No environmental policy.
And that's just what I can come up with in the first 60 seconds.
Here's an easier question - what HAS he done?
(Edit, Ok I have one. I don't know the details about it, but the "No child left behind" program is, at the very least a concept, that I can get behind. Accountability within schools and not pumping endless dollars at failing systems is a good thing. Of course it's counterbalanced with the end result being less funding for schools. One would think there's a better way, but I don't know what it is)
And before you and CR91 want to accuse me of partisanship, it would be best for you to understand that I voted for his highness - twice, and have been a lifelong Republican.
I can just see the forest through the BS.
The way I see it, in response to both of you. There's two sources of information. The media and White House press releases. I regularly discern info from various sources. Fox, NBC, NPR, a variety of web sources. So my views come from a wide background and Conservative perspective.
Or I guess I can just believe everything that Tony Snow says as gospel..... Boy, there's a tough question for the better source of independent thought.
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That's why I love those Enron guys so much. They were hard working, intelligent, and definitely creative.
That might make more sense had Iraq been found with WMD's or if they had been in any way linked to Al'Qaeda.
First of all, you're wrong. Frequent car bombings or suicide bombings would drastically affect our way of life. Second, of course I do not think we should "let" terrorist cells or hostile states harboring terrorists operate unchecked.
Some of your list points are very valid...some are not. Like blaming 9/11 on the administration, that's just humorous.
With 8 years as president, I could go back to any 2 term administration and put together a similar, if not longer, list.
No, the President hasn't been perfect...or even remotely close. But I don't think he has been absolutely terrible like some want to portray. It just annoys me when people disrespect the President of the United States by calling him childish names. You may not like him, in fact, you may hate him and think he is dumb. However, even if I thought my boss at work was dumb or my dad or my significant other, I would never publically call them that. But I guess that's just me.
With 8 years as president, I could go back to any 2 term administration and put together a similar, if not longer, list.
No, the President hasn't been perfect...or even remotely close. But I don't think he has been absolutely terrible like some want to portray. It just annoys me when people disrespect the President of the United States by calling him childish names. You may not like him, in fact, you may hate him and think he is dumb. However, even if I thought my boss at work was dumb or my dad or my significant other, I would never publically call them that. But I guess that's just me.
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I agree with you completely there. Too often when politicians / right-wing or left-wing hacks aren't intelligent enough to put forth an actual argument they resort to childish name calling. If we'd actually have real debates on real issues fewer people would be unhappy with the state of politics in this country.
You forgot to add "major contributors to the Democratic party" and "pushing alternative energy and the global warming agenda". Our society has ways of dealing with idiots like this. But for some reason, people want to take money away from everyone, even those who have acquired it by being better at their jobs than everyone else.
Despite everything that is going on in the world today, we still do live in the greatest country in the world. The faux-Leno essay gets that right. But to me, this only reinforces my opinion that we can do better, and aren't. In my opinion, we have gone backwards as a country in the last decade, both morally and in other countries' view of us. We are using our power and standing to bully and meddle, not to help. Imagine the resources we're sending to Iraq helping those in Darfur, or even Kentucky for that matter.
There are three theories out on Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction.
Theory #1- They never had them. Saddam Hussein went out of his way to project the thought that he might. Maybe he just did a good job.
Theory #2- They had them, and they were moved to Syria ahead of the invasion.
Theory #3- They had the blueprints to them, and were actively pursuing that agenda, but never put them into operation.
Notice that they are all theories, as none of them is completely proven.
It could be said that 9/11 changed our way of life drastically. I would contend that it did. But I would also say that we have been able to overcome it, and our economy is rolling along as strong as ever. The complete loss of an American city, along with 100's of thousands of lives, and the billions in cleanup would not only drop our economy completely in the toilet, our reaction would be way more serious than our reaction to 9/11. We have no draft, no rationing, nothing of the sort. If you never turned on the news, you wouldn't know there was a war going on.
I agree with you that, when compared to previous wars, fewer American lives have been lost in Iraq. That wasn't really my point, though. Every time an American soldier is killed their commander-in-chief had better have a dang good reason. That's the same no matter whether it's Lyndon Johnson / Richard Nixon in Vietnam, George H.W. Bush in the Persian Gulf War, Bill Clinton in Kosovo or President Bush in Iraq. Because all the main previous reasons (WMD, pre-war Al-Qaeda connection, freedom for people who want it) have no support, I'm struggling to understand why even one more American soldier has to die. Because I think we could neutralize more terrorists if we came home from Iraq and spend a portion of that money for expanded worldwide intelligence, targeted strikes on known al-Qaeda strongholds, and increased economic / diplomatic pressureon those nations that support international terrorism, I can't support the commander who keeps our troops at risk. But I do agree that it is a tribute to our massive military budget that we can occupy such a hostile country for over 4 years and only lose 3300 lives / 24,000 wounded.
I would add theory #4 as being GWB (more likely Cheney) tweaked and/or cherry-picked intelligence to make it seem to the American people and the world that the #2 or #3 theories were correct. I would love to talk to Colin Powell in private and see what he believes now. He has been very quiet on this matter since leaving office after being paraded in front of Congress holding up that vial and showing blueprints of the mobile biological weapons labs the Iraqis "had".
I agree with a lot of what you say here. And invading Iraq may have been a mistake but the fact of the matter is that we are in it now. We are all pretty good at Monday morning quarterbacking.
But right now, we have 2 options: fix our "mistake" or pull out and walk away from it. I know in my line of work if I make a mistake, I am expected to fix it. Not just walk away from it. Which is why I don't understand why some want to just pull out and throw away everything good we have done there.
This sounds like spin to me. The conservatives would say that even one American life lost to terrorism on our soil is unacceptable. Why can't the same be said about our soldiers' lives in Iraq?
Yeah, I am sure there are more theories. And I am not naive enough to discount that people in power may have agendas. However, the operative word in your quote was mobile. As in, could be driven away.
