[Nick]

Ditto, I'm going to pick on you for a few minutes because I'm bored.

They've also been against him on every policy since the beginning of the Administration.

They're the OPPOSITION PARTY, they're supposed to oppose him.

Education,

Bush policy arguably didn't do much to help the education crisis in this country. NCLB essentially leaves children behind.

the economy...

this is the weakest bush link. Is anyone better off economically than they were 4 years ago? I'm certainly not, as the job market looks like complete **** and the wages haven't risen with the cost of living. Stocks overall are down (granted, tech fallout), but things like Enron, etc and the lack of governmental prosecution doesn't help confidence. Taking the largest surplus in the country's history and changing it into the largest deficit is inexcusable and shameful. Personally, i think Bush should be kicked in the groin for this as a massive deficit will only hurt the country in the medium and long run economically.

and then after 9-11, he wasn't handling Afghanistan properly,

You're kidding, right? They didn't start to even say anything negative about him until about this time last year. The reason they started to say Afghanastan wasn't handled properly is because its still a wartorn ****hole. Sure, nobody is expecting it to become some gleaming technological Eden, but surely we expected something slightly better than what we have. Even then, you're not hearing much complaint about afghanastan from public politicians, as those complaints are mainly coming out of the academic journals and a few opinion pieces.

the Patriot Act was a restraint on our liberties,

Well, it can be and it is a threat to liberties. The potential (and probability) of abuse is extremely high, and this law is extremely dangerous to political speech as well as privacy. It should say something that many of these provisions have been repeatedly rejected by both Republican and Democratic Congresses over the last 20 years.

the Department of Homeland Security was a 'farce',

Uh, it is. FBI says one thing, Ridge says another. It isn't doing what it should have done, which is coordinate FBI, military, and other law enforcement agencies. It can still work, but it isn't really working as people think it should.

our National Terror Levels are stupid, everything's stupid.

I hear TV people saying that, not politicians. Sorry, Conan O'brian, as much ass as he kicks, does not really matter.

I'm surprised this doesn't make anybody suspicious. It looks to me like all they want is to regain power, no matter WHAT.

As opposed to doing such underhanded tactics as pushpolling people, running ads that show a Senator's face and morph it into Osama bin Laden's, trying to exploit a horrible act of terrorism for political gain by holding your convention in NYC right before the anniversery? Politicians are supposed to gain power, hence their career. Successful politicians do not run to lose. Come on, stop being dumb. If you want to be elected, you have to do everything to ensure that, even if its hypocritical and distasteful. Nice guys may not always finish last, but they seem to do that in politics.

Once again: We did Iraq because we weren't getting any solid intelligence out of there. All that came out were mixed messages going both ways.

Really? Because...uh...a year ago, you as well as the President, Sec of State Powell, PM Blair, Condi Rice, Chaney, Rummy, and everyone else here that supported the war seemed to cite this "clear, solid, smoking-gun evidence" of Iraq's clear and present WMD program.

There's an unspoken policy we have about the third world, and totalitarian regimes in general, folks: Kindly let us spy on you, all we want, or we'll nail you to the wall.

Outside of the current administration, PROVE IT.

don't think we were this bad over Clinton.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHA Oh god that's funny. Remember Bush's "I'm a uniter, not a divider" campaign slogan? That wasn't just a catchy song-and-dance. People were sick of the polarized state Washington had been in since Clinton was elected. As soon as he stepped in, they hounded him over EVERYTHING from personal life to policy. Come on, are you that blind in hindsight? And furthermore, look what happened when Clinton stepped into Kosovo to help stop the ethnic cleansing, REPUBLICANS WENT APE****. You know, I've always found it ironic that the same republicans who said "It isn't our duty, etc etc etc" in 1998 are now saying the exact opposite.

There's holding to a set of values, and then there's maniacal, hand-wringing, mouth-watering power hunger.

Sort of like the Republicans throughout the Clinton administration?

[edit: corrected format errors]

[ July 28, 2004, 02:27 AM: Message edited by: Lurch1982 ]