Swift Boat Vets - supported by the same people (wealthy Texas home builder and veterans) that dragged McCain through the mud in the 2000 primaries. Same tactics, same MO. They take a character strength of an opponent and twist the truth to make it a weakness and/ or non-factor. McCain was a POW for over 5 years and they labelled him as someone who " doesn' t support the veterans" . They do the same to Kerry by saying that he didn' t earn one of his 5 medals in Vietnam. Also, they say that he called Vietnam vets war criminals when he was just the spokesman for a group of 150 decorated Vietnam vets. They misquote people and take their words out of context to paint a false picture of them.
They aren' t connected to Bush? (Presidents can' t contact 527' s). Two people (a veteran and Legal Counsel) from the Bush campaign resigned because of their ties to the Swift Boat Vets.
Personally, I think that 527' s should exist. It gives regular people freedom of speech and has the potential to be a good part of the process. I think that they should be somewhat regulated because lies and slander can ruin someone' s election chances. Moveon.org is guilty of this too. They should be held to some litmus test of truth before they perpetuate lies about candidates.
The economy - thanks for the economic lesson, I took the class too.
you read that report you posted didnt you? i would assume that if your going to use some information you would read it first right? only 1.3 million jobs were displaced after bush took office.
This is the first paragraph of the report.
During the January 2001 through December 2003 period, 5.3 million
workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3 years, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.
The number of displaced workers increased from 4.0 million in the previous
survey that covered the period from January 1999 through December 2001. 1.3 million
more jobs were displaced while he was in office compared to the prior 3 year period. Not only 1.3 million. Take that with the new economic reports that just came out:
- The Commerce Department said Americans' personal incomes rose a scant 0.1 percent in July -- the slowest growth since November 2002
- Consumer Confidence is down to 98.2 from 105.7 in July
- The Census Bureau states that 1.4 million
more people are living below the poverty line and 1.3 million
more people are living without health care.
Good job, Mr. President.
Could Gore or Kerry have done better? I am not sure, but they aren' t the ones that cut tax revenue by trillions and called it an economic stimulus package.
Also, the fact that 20% of those people are still unemployed is terrible. It is ridiculous to say that that is an OK job. The country has a historic unemployment rate around 5-6%, so being at 20% for a segment of the population is terrible.
The war - I already got into that, in a previous post - see that. All that I will say is that our intelligence was wrong. Have we attempted to revamp the bad intelligence function that missed the warning signs of 9-11, misread the WMD potential of Iraq, outed a CIA double agent, and revealed the identity of an Al Qaeda double agent? No. No one has been fired (Tenet resigned), there has been no restructuring, and his cooperation with the 9/11 Commission is a politicized response to the Kerry-Edwards promise. Bush tried to block the 9/11 Commission. Maybe the truth hit to close to home.
< Message edited by Beef Shala -- 9/1/2004 2:22:25 PM >