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I didn't vote for Bush either time, but I rooted for him over Gore in 2000. I voted for Harry Browne that time, and didn't have high expectations of Bush, but wanted to see some accountability for the criminality of the Clinton years and knew Gore wouldn't provide it (of course as we now know, Bush didn't either.) Bush also talked about a humbler foreign policy in 2000, which I still favor but Bush does not.
Soon after 9/11, of course, Bush turned into Jack D. Ripper and obviously he lost whatever tepid support he had from me. I voted for Kerry in 2004 merely because by then I despised Bush with every fiber of my being.
Gore was a loser. The guy PERSONALLY let China get most favored nation trade status when he could alone have stopped it. So he screwed the unions. Now he just shlobs around going on and on about global warming while he himself is an energy hog.
Kerry was another loser. A guy who just went along with whatever was popular at the time to get what he could out of it and acted like he deserved whatever he got. These two phoney baloneys made Bush look authentic and down to earth.
Bush had his downfall which was Dick Cheney. I think without him the guy could have made a decent, if lackluster, President. Oh, well.
Obama is a very polished, very bright, very charismatic phoney who is only out for power and for himself. I think its laughable that now HE's being given his orders just like Bush was. So either Obama will be an empty suit, like Bush, or he'll try to be a statesman and go nuts being thwarted at every turn by "friend" and foe alike, or he'll just fail miserably. Unfortunately, we may all go down with him.
All this is if the Constitutional Crisis doesn't make it all moot.
I voted for Bush in 2000 - I didn't realize and admit to myself for a few years that I had made a big mistake in voting for him...
His pushing of the Patriot Act, his destruction of so many of our liberties, his lying and deceiving us into invading Iraq, his patronizing obsession with serving the rich... it all left a terrible taste in my mouth for him and for his Republican minions in the Congress that backed him each and every step along the way...
I admit I was wrong to vote for Bush in 2000 - terribly wrong...
I tried to make up for that mistake in 2004 by voting for Kerry...
Does anyone else out there who voted for Bush regret having done so? And why?
The short answer is NO.
Let me elaborate a bit... First of all, you have to look at how Bush was running against. Al Gore? Oh man, give me a break! The man is a dim-witted pathological liar - thinking he invented the internet, and crying "The Sky Is Falling!" about Global Warming, while all the while live one of the single LEAST environmentally-friendly lifestyles a human being can live. And John Kerry? Nothing short of embarrassing! The 2000 and 2004 Elections were handed to the Democrats in a basket, and they BLEW IT!
That said, there has been no President, within the past several decades, who has faced a FRACTION of the crises faced by America during the Bush years. I shudder to think of how Gore would have handled the 9-11 aftermath. And if Clinton had been doing his foreign policy work, instead of getting blow-jobs from 20-year olds in the Oval Office, Al Queda would have been squelched long ago.
The problem is that "Bush Bashing" got started by the whining Democrats, then became a national past-time. But history will not prove that to be his legacy.
I voted for Bush in 2000. No, I don't regret it. While I do not like Bush and he lost my vote for 2004, I do not even want to think what it would suck like if we would have had Al Gorebal Warming for pres. I'm glad we didn't find out. Bush really wasn't doing too horrible until the Patriot Act came along and he mismanaged the Iraq war terribly. While I wasn't crazy about the idea of going in to Iraq, if we could have been in and out quicker, it wouldn't have been so bad. And his spending just kept growing and growing and he seemed to really not care at all about our national debt. Tax cuts coupled with massive spending increases cannot work. As much as I support fiscal conservatism, we are at a point where spending cuts need to come first so that tax cuts will make more sense.
I voted for Bush in 2000. No, I don't regret it. While I do not like Bush and he lost my vote for 2004, I do not even want to think what it would suck like if we would have had Al Gorebal Warming for pres. I'm glad we didn't find out. Bush really wasn't doing too horrible until the Patriot Act came along and he mismanaged the Iraq war terribly. While I wasn't crazy about the idea of going in to Iraq, if we could have been in and out quicker, it wouldn't have been so bad. And his spending just kept growing and growing and he seemed to really not care at all about our national debt. Tax cuts coupled with massive spending increases cannot work. As much as I support fiscal conservatism, we are at a point where spending cuts need to come first so that tax cuts will make more sense.
You make some excellent points, and I'd love to be able to have a civil and intelligent discussion about some of this stuff without some knot-head jumping in with the inevitable "Bush sucks!" nonsense.
Concerning the Iraq War:
The Premise: The whole world was saying we needed to go in - so it wasn't just a "Bush War For Oil" or a "I'm gonna avange mah daddy" deal. Regrettably, there was apparently faulty intelligence information. But Saddam needed to be taken out.
The Goal: Personally, I think they went in thinking that it'd be a quick wuppin', we'd institute The Marshall Plan #2, and we'd leave as heroes. But there were not conquered Germans or Japanese that wanted nothing more than for the war to stop. These are POd Muslims, feeling that The Infidels are invading God's country. And there's no way to underestimate the power for evil that lies with these radical clerics.
The Future: I'm going to go out on a limb here, and speculate that 25 years from now, people are going to be saying that this Iraq War started a process of Middle-East Peace. And they won't be smearing Bush.
That said, I'm NOT taking a flippant approach to this war. I have two sons who are both draft age - so if it got out of hand, I'm first in line to face MAJOR personal loss!
You make some excellent points, and I'd love to be able to have a civil and intelligent discussion about some of this stuff without some knot-head jumping in with the inevitable "Bush sucks!" nonsense.
Concerning the Iraq War:
The Premise: The whole world was saying we needed to go in - so it wasn't just a "Bush War For Oil" or a "I'm gonna avange mah daddy" deal. Regrettably, there was apparently faulty intelligence information. But Saddam needed to be taken out.
The Goal: Personally, I think they went in thinking that it'd be a quick wuppin', we'd institute The Marshall Plan #2, and we'd leave as heroes. But there were not conquered Germans or Japanese that wanted nothing more than for the war to stop. These are POd Muslims, feeling that The Infidels are invading God's country. And there's no way to underestimate the power for evil that lies with these radical clerics.
The Future: I'm going to go out on a limb here, and speculate that 25 years from now, people are going to be saying that this Iraq War started a process of Middle-East Peace. And they won't be smearing Bush.
That said, I'm NOT taking a flippant approach to this war. I have two sons who are both draft age - so if it got out of hand, I'm first in line to face MAJOR personal loss!
Have you read any of the newspaper articles quoting administration insiders that Bush intentionally disregarded all intelligence reports that did not support his plan to invade??? It's not that the intelligence was faulty, it is that he intentionally picked that which he would release to the public to sell the war.
We did NOT have to take out Saddam - he was pretty tightly contained with the No Fly Zones, and we could have gotten inspectors back in there to assure us that no nuclear program was in place (which it wasn't)...
I do not agree that it was a simple mistake about the outcome. Bush didn't even know or care about the differences and hatreds between the Sunis and Shias and Kurds- many people were adivising him that he was opening a hornet's nest and that there would be civil war and a 3-way partition of the country at best if Saddam were toppled - he just chose to ignore that advice.
I do not agree either that 25 years from now we will be looking back at a peaceful Middle East. Bush's toppling of Saddam played right into Iran's hand, and they are the big winners in this mess - the only winners. There will never be a functioning democracy in Iraq - there is too much hatred between the Muslin sects - and Iran is able to easily destabilize the country as soon as we leave.... So we either stay there forever, or the area collapses into chaos eventually.
I think it is far far more likely that Israel will eventually attack the Iranian nuclear program - which we have done very very little to contain - and that that will set off a long and bloody regional war...
These may be the 'good old days' in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran...
Have you read any of the newspaper articles quoting administration insiders that Bush intentionally disregarded all intelligence reports that did not support his plan to invade??? It's not that the intelligence was faulty, it is that he intentionally picked that which he would release to the public to sell the war.
We did NOT have to take out Saddam - he was pretty tightly contained with the No Fly Zones, and we could have gotten inspectors back in there to assure us that no nuclear program was in place (which it wasn't)...
I do not agree that it was a simple mistake about the outcome. Bush didn't even know or care about the differences and hatreds between the Sunis and Shias and Kurds- many people were adivising him that he was opening a hornet's nest and that there would be civil war and a 3-way partition of the country at best if Saddam were toppled - he just chose to ignore that advice.
I do not agree either that 25 years from now we will be looking back at a peaceful Middle East. Bush's toppling of Saddam played right into Iran's hand, and they are the big winners in this mess - the only winners. There will never be a functioning democracy in Iraq - there is too much hatred between the Muslin sects - and Iran is able to easily destabilize the country as soon as we leave.... So we either stay there forever, or the area collapses into chaos eventually.
I think it is far far more likely that Israel will eventually attack the Iranian nuclear program - which we have done very very little to contain - and that that will set off a long and bloody regional war...
These may be the 'good old days' in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran...
Nevermind that the Senate Intel Committee - with the same information Bush had - came to the same conclusions.
Either way, I'm sorry you're not able to put a cap on your seething hatred of the man long enough to rationally discuss anything.
I hate to break it to you, but you are in a VERY SMALL minority nowadays.
Regarding liberties lost - that's an easy one. You have lost your right to privacy. Your phone calls, credit reports and e-mails can all be monitored - legally and without a warrant by any relatively low-level member of Homeland Security or other law enforcement agency for any virtually reason they choose - all without any checks and balances on what they do or why they do it.
That kind'a sounds like old East Germany to me.
Ken
I'm more concerned about someone stealing my credit card numbers than I am about the government (FBI) looking at my accounts..
That little click in the background when I am on the phone, you are telling me the FBI is listening in?
Bet that agent is real bored!
I did not vote in 2000 and voted for Kerry in 2004 although in retrospect I believe Kerry might have been a mistake as well. Who knows. And although I believe Bush has made many bad choices during his term, he is not to blame for the current state of our country. I think he makes some bad decisions, but I do not believe he is a bad person. Just a little blind to some things.
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