I found it humorous how this topic went from a relatively intelligent responses to the debate to an all out bash the other candidate, and Non-american slugfest on Bush.
Allow me to toss in my two cents on many of the issues that have been raised.
Princess:
With regards to the poll of European and some World countries about our presidency, the conclusions are hardly compelling. With relatively few exceptions the entire world finds itself to the left of our political spectrum, far beyond even the Democrats. It has hardly compelling that countries which pride themselves on their social programs would choose a Democrat over a Republican.
As far as them saying 52% of Chinese support Kerry, I would highly dispute this poll and question the validity of whom the BBC polled. It's not like everyone in China has a phone, and even if by some fluke of nature you had the man with the superman talent flying across the countryside polling people, most of them I would wager don't even know who the hell either of the candidates are, much less their stance on various world topics. If you read the fine print, they even mention that many of the polls were done in the Cities only, precluding the generally more conservative aspect of societies which tends to live in the countryside.
Quote:
My point is not that you should let other countries decide for your country, it is that the U.S is one of the only countries that would elect a man like Bush.
France is the only country I would wager with the exception perhaps of a few colonies that would elect Chirac over a more moderate candidate. Hell, Chirac only got 20% of the vote in his own country, and won the runoff because the opponent Le Pen was a Nationalist (an even worse word than Republican in Europe). Germany is the only country that would probably elect Schroeder to the utterly pathetic job he did with their nations economy. Any intelligent voter would have sent him packing after his abysmal first term, but due to his vehement Anti-US/Anti-Iraq war rhetoric, he managed to get elected. How many in the world do you think would have elected Paul Martin after his patronage scandal? Anyone wanna even bother to question whether Berlusconni would be elected in say.. Germany or France? Unfortunately, the world doesn't do polls on whether these leaders would be elected in other places, because quite honestly, nobody cares.
My point is simple in that many times officials tend to adopt their viewpoints with an outlook for their constituency. Our candidates tend to reflect our constituency and adopt a more conservative (with regards to the rest of the world) platform. Germans on the other hand are becoming more conservative due to their failing social programs, and even the French somehow managed to get a flaming Nationalist racist psychopath into the final round of Presidential voting in Le Pen. For those Americans reading, Le Pen would be the equivalent of George Wallace vs. George Bush. It would be a walk.
Quote:
"I want to make sure the medication cures you, not kills you."
I don't recall the specifics but I believe this was in regards to all offshore generic medication. If you've ever bought prescription drugs (without a prescription) in Juarez, you would appreciate the above quote.
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But what it really demonstrates is that American mentality of: me first, I don't care what anyone else thinks, I'm the most important.
I found this assessment of our socio-economic model to be incredibly short sighted. The most unbiased observation of this model is that you should be rewarded based on what you can contribute to society, but there is a low level baseline of support. The Canadian system is actually much like ours, encouraging people to succeed, but also has a higher "low" bar for people who can not (or will not) succeed. Germany's is even higher, with perhaps China being even higher relative to their population's means.
For the United States: The plus side of setting the low bar at close to the bottom is that it encourages more people to succeed as they can progress higher up the bar. The obvious downside is that not everyone can be at the top of the bar. Unfortunately if the bar is too low, society suffers as a whole.
For Canada: The plus side of setting the low bar higher is that there is only so far you can fall. The obvious downside is it limits how high the bar can go, with high levels of taxation tending to take most of the profits from the most profitable people. Additionally, the higher you set the bar, the more unlikely people are to want to go higher since they can enjoy a comfortable life at the base level. Unfortunately if too many people adopt this, society becomes unprofitable, and then you get a whole host of problems, mostly revolving around inefficient beaucracy and corruption. (See: USSR collapse) I would have thought that the Patronage scandal would have woken most Canadians up to this simple fact, but you guys just kept happily plodding along with a corrupt ruling party. Who would have figured.
In Germany's case, they've recently found that they set their low bar too high, and it was slowly destroying their economy, thanks in no small part to the mass influx of poor East Germans. They have now gone about changes to move their low bar lower, stripping away some of the government jobs from lifelong social servants and it's pissing some people off who have been milking society.
Whisp:
I hope you weren't trying to be serious with the ant farm analogy.
With regards to Kerry's actions in Vietnam vis a vis the War crimes being committed, it struck me more as a man passing on rumors he heard. I didn't really see the point of his war crimes testimony before congress at the time, with the exception of pandering to the Anti-Vietnam sentiment that was rampant in the country.
I fail to see the link between people "listening" to Kerry and all of the sudden some of the more sadist members of our society and by extension our armed forces at Abu Ghraib would all roll over and be good boys and girls. I think you're getting into fanciful wishing in that regard. The US Army does try to weed out the nutballs ever since the My Lai massacre and similar attrocities were committed in Vietnam, but even psych evaluations miss some things.
If my CO comes to me and says, I need you to rough these guys up for some intelligence, I assure you that putting collars on their naked bodies and leading them around by their dicks is not the first, second, or even the umpteenth million thing that enters my mind. It's the difference between a person who has common sense, and the people in the world I like to call "fucking morons". There are plenty of ways you can fuck with people's minds and throw them off balance without causing them physical harm, or permanent mental damage. If you grew up with a brother or sister, you've already got a good repertoire to start.
To all
With regards to all the Bush said this, Kerry said that crap
Do yourself a favor and educate yourself before you look like a rhetoric repeater.
Factcheck.org is an excellent site that deals with many of the political advertisements from not only the two campaigns, but also hits back at most of the crap released by the various 527's. Living in the television market of one of the swing states, I find this site to be invaluable for deciphering the fact from fiction.
To our out of country readers
The buzzwords for derogatory references to the opposite this year are Liberal (when Referencing Democrats who are to the left of the party moderates), and NeoCon, Neo-Conservative (when Referencing Republicans who are to the right of the party moderates)
What really sucks in this election?
I think the most obvious thing is that neither side is being realistic about the state of our affairs. Bush needs to wake up to the fact that he can make a decision, and be wrong about it at the same time after the fact. Hindsight is 20/20. It's so terribly obvious that the only reason he's "sticking to his guns" is that it's an election year.
I would have found a compelling argument from him at the debates to be, 'Look, my Intelligence, and the Intelligence apparati of the world were saying the guy hadn't come clean, and after 10 years of waiting for him allow unrestricted access for Weapons Inspectors had not been working. Even UNSCOM reported that Saddam was not substantially cooperating. So I had a choice, I can either let the Inspectors go for a few more years, and pray Saddam isn't doing anything under the books, or I can remove him. I made the call and I've got to stick by it regardless of what the pundits with hindsight say on this issue.'
Kerry similarly is beating around the bush (hoho a pun), and feeding the US pointless soundbytes and little substance. If I hear "I have a plan" one more time followed by white noise, I'm going to stab myself repeatedly with a spoon.
I would have found a compelling argument from him during the debates to be, 'I think we all know Saddam was pulling our chain and wasn't going to come clean. We also know from history that the guy was fairly unstable. This in and of itself made him dangerous, regardless of whether he had WMD or not. We knew he retained the knowledge to make them, and ever indication was that he would continue his programs up once Sanctions ended. However, we should not have rushed blindly into Iraq without getting everyone on board in the International community. If they had been loading up Scud B's with nuclear weapons, than I can see the arguement for going alone, but because they might at some point in the future give them to terrorists?'. We have... I'm sorry.. had enough political currency in the world to get everyone on board in time, and once we have a grand alliance, we could have easily gone in there, removed Saddam, and then left the patrolling of the streets to our Muslim allies who would not incur the same antipathy that our American troops must now endure.'
Ironically, in the end, I think if Kerry was running the show, we would have ended up going with a relatively small coalition as well, but it might have looked better on Diplomatic paper. France, Germany and Russia had too many economic ties to Saddam, and I doubt they were going to piss that away just to stop him from some day wasting a few Israeli's or Kurds.
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