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[Seth]

instead of insulting me (i thought we were friends ) maybe you can answer this question:

so why would al qaeda and iran support bush?

[Seth]

http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0410/24/a16-312995.htm

detriot news editorial, a republican newspaper, who can't support bush and pretty much sums up why i can't support him either. some highlights:

Four years ago, the choice was clear. We endorsed George W. Bush based on his promises of fiscal conservatism, limited government and prudence in foreign affairs.

Today, we sadly acknowledge that the president has failed to deliver on those promises....

The Detroit News will not lend its endorsement to a candidate who has made too many mistakes, nor to one who offers a governing philosophy that we reject.

This decision to remain silent will disappoint readers who expect The Detroit News to stand with the Republican presidential candidate come hell or high water. Their expectations are not unwarranted - we have never endorsed a Democrat for president, and only failed to endorse twice before, both times during the Franklin Roosevelt years....

To that we add: We will never feel obliged to defend a president whose blunders and misjudgments have hurt the nation....

But this president has a knack for squandering success.

With the nation and the world firmly behind his operation in Afghanistan, he turned his sights too quickly to Iraq and Saddam Hussein, his family's old nemesis.

Acting on intelligence that was faulty and too eagerly interpreted by the administration to match its agenda, Bush moved against Iraq without the support of key allies.

We backed the invasion of Iraq, accepting the Bush assertion that Saddam's weapons programs presented a gathering threat to the United States. While America, the world and the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam gone, we now believe that Iraq was a fight that might have waited, or been avoided altogether.

Regardless, a president who takes the nation to war has an obligation to win that war as quickly, efficiently and painlessly as possible.

Bush has not done that. The management of the conflict in Iraq is abysmal. The United States went into Iraq without enough international support and brought too few of our own troops to complete the job.

In shorting the generals, in allowing political concerns to trump military strategy, in assuming too much cooperation from the Iraqi people, Bush allowed Iraq to become a hotbed of terrorism, the very condition he struck to prevent. The messy result has allowed our enemies to portray the United States as a villain, and use our role as a rallying cry for terrorists elsewhere.

There were too many poor calls, including disbanding the Iraqi army, leaving the borders undefended and trusting shady Iraqi nationals, all of which combined to turn what could have been a stunning liberation into a still uncertain, nation-building morass. Iraq has stretched America's military capabilities, strained friendships and will hamstring future strikes against rogue regimes.

Such bad management cannot be forgiven in a wartime president.

At home, Bush has shocked us with his free-spending ways. Non-defense, domestic spending increased more than 30 percent during his term. At the same time, the president cut taxes. Together, the two resulted in a massive federal budget deficit that could have been mitigated had Bush kept his promise of fiscal conservatism.

This was a failure of leadership. The American people will accept a call to sacrifice in times of crisis. But instead of asking for sacrifice, Bush delivered excess.

He plunged the federal government even deeper into the day-to-day operations of local school districts with the ill-advised No Child Left Behind Act; he failed to veto even one of Congress' pork-laden spending bills; he pushed ahead with his own spending agenda, including a confusing and deceptively expensive prescription drug plan, without regard to the budget demands of homeland security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On trade, he exhibited protectionist tendencies that hurt American industry.

Finally, on the matter of civil liberties, Bush has turned away from the conservative doctrine that the Constitution must be strictly observed. His Patriot Act contained many important elements to break down the walls between law enforcement agencies and allow them to respond to advancements in technology.

But it also trashed personal privacy protections, suspended due process safeguards and upset the balance between the power of the government and the rights of the individual.

The president's record does not recommend him for re-election.

[extoere]

We most definitely are friends. So too are Roger and I. Friends can disagree and even get cute with each other!

And why would Osama bin Laden endorse Kerry?

Politics, dear Seth, makes Strange Bedfellows.

There is no right and no wrong in politics. Each of us is possessed of both; possessed by both. There are only winners and losers, and we can only make judgements in retrospect --- and then only in a very tenative way, knowing with absolute certainty, those judgements will be overturned by subsequent events and changes in perspective. Throughout our lives, we strive in such frustration for moral and intellectual consistency. Until we run head first, inevitably, into that honored maxim that consistency itself is sometimes little more than a hobgoblin of narrow and foolish minds. When losers become martyrs and heroes. And winners become sops and fools.

So no matter who wins and who loses the election, Seth .... Get Over It. Don't let politics consume an inordinate part of your life. There's so much more. Breathe in that wonderful All-American Indiana air and be grateful to the cirumstances that gave you such wonderful faculties and such unending horizons. Enjoy. You may not pass this way again.

Very, Very Best
ex

[Roger]

...but George Bush does LOOK GOOD, you can't deny this! Have you ever seen a caricature of him? It's hard to do, very hard! He just doesn't have the Disney features that so many others showe...

[extoere]

He looks --- and is --- in good condition. Fit and healthy. But he has the most god-awfully tortured expressions I've ever seen on a public figure. He simply cannot contain his visceral reactions to criticism. In a way, that's to his advantage, simply because many voters are turned off by what they see as a lack in so many politicians of genuine emotional reactions in an effort to project balance and rational thought. Which comes across to many as "phony." Think Vince Lombardi, a man of obvious joy and explosive anger, versus Tom Landry, the most methodically controlled, unemotional coach ever to set foot on a football field.

Both were great coaches. One was the perennial winner and is remembered far more than the other.

cheers,
ex

[Seth]

[extoere]

Seth: The correct answer to your question, as I sometimes answered in essays in college, is: I Don't Know.

Moreover, I don't much care. Fact is, I don't care much about the whole Middle East region. I think, no matter who wins or what policy we follow,
the world is in for a rough ride. And I'm no longer in any mood to Understand anybody's Legitimate Historic Grievances. If 9/ll shocked me, the complicitous reactions and failures of the Muslim world to condemn its own radical elements has permanently radicalized me. And, I might add, millions of others.

One other thing, not only am I an aethiest, with no Christian means of invisible support guiding (or restraining) my personal feelings, I also dislike guns. I sold a new Heckler-Koch .45 my son gave me because I think gun ownership, while sometimes affording protection and discouraging criminal acts, often facilitates them in the hands of non-professionals like me. I am not against personal gun ownership as a right; sometimes as a necessity. But not in my case.

Agree on McCain. We don't get the good guys in office, do we? And what does that say, collectively, about our society and our nation?

cheers,
ex

[Seth]

where i live there is no crime. all criminals know that every redneck around has 10 guns and aren't afraid to use them. if i ever see a strange person on my property that i think will threaten me or my family, i won't hesitate to shoot them. the closest police officer is 20 miles away, we have to take care of ourselves and our neighbors. this is life in rural america. i can take comfort in the fact that i don't have to lock my doors when i go out. but, again, i'm from very rural indiana. my highschool class only had 53 people. the only time i've ever been threatened with physical harm is when i lived in london.

while i think the middle east will never, ever be pro-western for obvious reasons (why should they be?), i believe al-qaeda and iran supports bush because he isn't focused on them. he's spent so much money and focus on a war that had nothing to do with WMD or links to al-qaeda, no matter how much cheney says so. it's turned the muslim world against us even more and the rest of the world as well. this is what bin laden wants. we need the worlds support to fight such a clandestine war, not their animosity. we had a ton of support directly after 9/11, such as chirac saying 'we are all americans'...now the US has never had such a low reputation. the true war on terror is fought on a thousand small fronts in a dozen different countries. not in the quagmire called iraq. if we'd spent those 200 billion fighting al-qaeda and bin laden instead of iraq we'd a lot further in the war on terror than we are now. bin laden would have been captured instead of making television statements.

read that cincinatti article again, it's the most articulate explanation on why nobody should vote for bush.

[poro]

[extoere]

Seth, Iraq was a target of opportunity, a splendid example of the "enlightened" world drifting ever steadily away from the idea of enforcing its own prohibitions against undesirable behavior. Currently, we have a moral absolutist in the White House.

Given my choice between an absolutist and a relativist, in times such as these I'll take the absolutist. With no second thoughts whatsoever. 9/ll was the line in the sand.

You're still playing by the rules. Like Kofi Annan. Like educators who refuse to impose academic standards. Like penal bureaucrats and legislators who refuse to impose capital punishment.

The cooperation of "other nations?" Just what other nations? We've been essentially going it alone for the past half-century, nurturing the public illusion that Europe is a cooperative force. Seth, that's a joke and you should know it by now. Since when has France ever viewed world events in a similar light as the U.S.? Well, I suppose when we and England liberated their asses from the Nazis. After that ....? The UN is a joke, an international shell game among three or four heavy players and hundreds of ragtag "nations" getting rakeoffs for their votes. International cooperation? Don't make me laugh. France is a very minor nation, whose cooperation isn't needed at all in the conduct of our own foreign policy. The poor French have never quite overcome their desire to be the dominant voice of Europe. Gone forever. The problems of Europe have only begun to surface. And the thinly-disguised Marist economic illusions sustained in Europe since WWII are under a massive assault by globalization that are on the brink of some radical change in both France and Germany.

The greatest threat to Bush comes from the questionable sustainability of an all-volunteer military. If he's reelected, be prepared for some changes in that regard. And if Kerry's elected, be prepared for the same changes with more deceptive variations.

cheers,
ex

[poro]

extoere, take an absolutist by all means, but does it have to be one with such abysmal judgement?

On September 13, 2001 he said that finding OBL was his number 1 priority, and now the terrorist releases yet another of his infernal tapes, thus proving that the president just isn't any good at solving his number 1 priority.

And another 8 marines were killed in Iraq today

It could drive a man to drink, I'm telling you!

[extoere]

For poll watchers, today's summaries ---- as of 9:00 A.M., PST, Saturday, Oct 30th --- Bush maintains his lead, even improves. Except for the one poll that's proved so amazingly accurate in the past: the Zogby Poll, which shows Kerry with a new one-point lead, and Nader improving from one percent to two percent.

cheers,
ex

[poro]

hmmmmm..... well if Bush wins, an almighty groan will echo all round the world.

The same kind of groan that was heard in certain circles when Egon Krenz became the head of the DDR, because that man just did not have the intellectual clout to manage a state - Bush doesn't either.

I sincerely hope Bush is not re-elected.

[ChinaEFLteacher]

there are benefits and detriments to both sides. i just don't like bush because it's so embarassing living abroad and saying i'm american with him on the throne. the guy just puts us to shame anywhere. i guess caus' we like to say he's an average guy, which doesn't say much for us.
our govt. is gonna do some nasty stuff no matter who's there, but could we at least get someone who can trick the people a little better? then we could go about business as usual without the rest of the world thinking we're bad.

[extoere]

China, I quite agree. But on that touchy subject of being an American abroad, you're the only one responsible for your behavior and, as a direct consequence, how others perceive you. If you're decent and responsible in your conduct, you should at least be able to live your life with a clear conscience. You're not responsible for terrorism or the war it's spawned; nor for the conduct of U.S. government officials or policy. Just as the Chinese in your everyday life have no responsibility for theirs. You seem to be a conscientious person. You owe nobody any apologies or excuses for your presence. Let them get over it.

cheers,
ex