Not quite. People who oppose defecit spending are pissed off at him regardless of their other positions. People who share with him the belief that the government should not be redistributing income are assuming (correctly from the evidence I've seen) that his intent is to get the budget situation to the point where eliminating social security and medicare in their current forms is politically viable. How is that not radical? Here is another good reason to hate Bush: http://slate.msn.com/id/2090244/ I hadn't even thought about the stem cell issue in a while, but Michael Kinsley points out that in light of what has happened since it was originally announced, Bush's position on stem cell research is factually incorrect, logically flawed, wrong headed and cynical as all get out, unless he's genuinely ignorant of the facts in the matter.
It's tough to support a president you don't trust. After he abandoned the war on terrorism to invade Iraq, he lost me. Then he has the balls to eliminate the working people from the economic equation and give over 100 billion dollars a year to his rich contributers then ask us for $87 billion more for Halliburton et al. Well.... good thing he is gone next year.
So you are able to make up the policy that you think the administration has, and then accuse him of being radical for having that policy? how exactly does one, "get the budget situation to the point where eliminating social security and medicare in their current forms is politically viable." without getting blamed for getting the budget so screwed up? Man I certainly don't want to get involved in the "when does life begin, and what respect should we have for that life" debate. BTW the poll could use another answer. I agree with many of his policies and think that he has about the same level of character as most successful politicians.
Boy, that's another great article. The question of Bush's anti-intellectualism came up in the "boiling cauldron" thread - and it seems to me that his position on stem-cell research showcases the very willful ignorance which inspires so much frustration among edumacated folks.
I didn't make it up. The basic idea has been floating around in Republican idealogue circles for a while now. The phrase they like to use is "starve the beast." I believe that Newt Gingrich is usually credited with inventing this strategy. The same way that Reagan backers blamed his deficits on the Democrats who controlled Congress back in the day. If you think this was the crux of the article, I am afraid you may have missed the point. If Bush believes, as he says, that life begins at conception than there is an absolute logical contradiction in two of his publicly stated positions. If the creation and destruction of embroyos for stem cell research is not OK, than how is it OK for fertility treatment? Either Bush perceives the contradiction and doesn't care (cynical) or he doesn't understand it (uncurious/unintelligent).
Jimmy Carter? He had a lot of problems (main one being surrounded by idiots), but I don't believe the three above where included in the list. Probably just a minor oversight on your part...
You know, this whole thread is just SOOOO amusing. Part of the problem with all the liberals out there is that they THINK they are smarter than W, and thereofre are just astonished that he can be President. They see him stumble with words in extemporaneous environments (if the ability to talk off the cuff is a critical criteria for being president, then JP Dellacamera or John Millier are probably overqualifed for the job), and they are just appalled. They see a guy who was a failed tax-shelter salesman (gee, who was the President who was a failed haberdasher??), a govenor of a state whose gubernatorial setup is weak and pretty much immaterail (made even more immaterial since a favorite liberal gadfly Molly Ivins finds him so appalling). And then they see him as President, and they are are just infuriated, fists clenched in rage. Well, this just in, pal. The chances are that W. is a LOT smarter than you are. A LOT smarter. No, he doesn't know the capital of Surinam, but he DOES have a pretty firm idea of what he ultimately wants, and then he hires sharp people to surround him. Add to that a well-oiled political machine. So, that's what the Dem pretenders are up against. Good luck to them.
Logical confusion from you on the sentence directly following this one. Are you saying an ignorant, good behaved fourth grader is smarter than his artful teacher? This is just SOOOO amusing.
> No, he doesn't know the capital of Surinam, but > he DOES have a pretty firm idea of what he > ultimately wants, and then he hires sharp people > to surround him. Oh, so it is just a coincidence that all the people he picked are the same faces from his father's administration? Come on. Bush the Younger did not pick those people - those people chose Bush the Younger.
Analogy by presumption? Go ahead, assume he's dumb and that you're smarter. Go ahead, assume he's in the position he's in simply because of his family name. Go ahead, continue to sneer at him and underestimate him. You do so at your peril.
So who is he SUPPOSED to have on his team?? Folks he DOESN'T know?? Take a look in your hand..the item in your palm is the straw you just couldn't avoid grasping.
Say what you want about him, Berlusconi is the the ultimate self-made man. He's also a lot more entertaining than W.
Even accepting that that is true, I can see why Bush would want to replicate it, after all it worked so well for Newt's career. Gee, last I saw the Republicans controlled congress. I know what the thrust of the article was, but I don't believe it is as simple as that. For those of us who agonize over the decision about when life begins, and what respect we should have for that life, this is not a simple issue. I can see the logic that creating embryo's for the purpose of the start of a life, is different then using embroys for research. It is like the difference between killing an enemy during a time of war, and radomly killing a person on the street. The ramifications for us as a society from stem cell research is much deeper.
Wow. You think that the solution to Dubya-ness is to read the major papers and watch tv news? I understand you completely now. To be clear, I think the solution to Dubya-ness is to get out into the world and have real, authentic knowledge about something, NOT to wait until uninvestigate reporters...well, report what they've been told by the folks who, for better or for worse, are actually DOING. The first time I've totally agreed with you; this is accurate. Its not relevant, but it's damn accurate.
Wait, so, you're saying that you think you're DUMBER than George W. Bush? At last! We agree! [Holy Grail] Can I have just a little peril? [/Holy Grail]
OK, I was right the first time, you really did miss the point there. No one is questioning that thousands of human embryos are created and ultimately destroyed in fertility clinics. If they are going to be created and destroyed anyhow, where is the moral fault in using some of them to create new lines of stem cells. Remember what else the article said, it turns out (determined since the original policy was established) that adult stem cells don't work the way embryonic stem cells do, and that most of the 60 lines at the time of the original policy aren't viable and/or of high enough quality for research, and finally, that once you do have enough viable lines of stem cells, there is no need to create anymore. Remember, the official White House policy on stem cell research only bans the creation of new stem cell lines, not the research that uses those cell lines. Given what's happened since the policy was originally announced, the only logical and ethical thing to do would be to revise it allow the creation of enough new lines to prevent restrictions on the research from a lack of stem cells. There have been no revisions to the policy, nor do any appear likely.
What a great post. You hit the nail right in the head. But that is only part of the problem, as you said. It is not just about Bush. The problem in a nutshell is that the liberals THINK they are smarter than ALL OF US, and therefore they are just astonished that we who are not elite progressive thinkers like them can even function in our society. Liberals look down from their ivory tower and see a scrub like me, speaking English with a strong accent, and they cannot believe that I can run a profitable business. They think I should be on welfare and under their protection. They think I should bend over to them and agree with them on everything and vote for whoever they annoint as the smart candidate. The liberals look at productive members of society who happen to agree with our president on many issues, (or to give another example, with someone who they consider a 'dumb' foreign actor like Arnold Swarzenegger, who also has a strong accent and who in their view should also be on welfare) and they cannot accept it. Once more they become infuriated, fist clenched in rage. So, the liberals resort to calling people like me names. Even here in Big Soccer, where presumably we have honest exchanges of ideas among fans of the beautiful game, I have been called names like a retard and worse. Just because I happen to believe that the war in Iraq to remove Hussein was the right thing to do and that our president showed he has great balls of brass when he stood up to the United Nations. The same pathetic United Nations who wouldn't touch Saddam and who won't do anything about other tyrants, like for example the man who is destroying Zimbwawee. But I guess we are all too stupid to realize that leaving tyrants in power so they can exploit, torture, rape and starve the poor innocent masses of people is the right thing to do. Just as we are too stupid to realize that raising taxes on small businesses and burdening them with regulations so that we are forced to lay people off and have them end up on welfare is also the right thing to do. So, these people do not just hate Bush. They hate all of us who dare be succesful and independent thinkers without having the wisdom to agree with the intelectually superior politically correct views that they want to shove down our throats.
ASF, are you and Karl Keller going into the straw man business together? Because the only way there will be more than a tiny handful of liberals who think and act as you say is if you create them for the purpose argument. Anyone who describes Bush simply as stupid is being lazy. However, he is obviously not a curious man, and he appears to believe that he is where he is because his god wills it. He is sufficiently inarticulate that it often isn't exactly clear what he really thinks. Most of his policies that I don't actively and strongly disagree with have been so poorly executed as to be self defeating. He and his staff appear to be in a perpetual campaign mode where what happened is less important than how people feel about it. They have repeatedly questioned the patriotism of people who disagree with them, and then whined loud and long when they are criticized in strong terms. We are not safer; we are not more prosperous, and we are not more respected internationally than when Bill Clinton left office. Unless you agree with W that he is president by devine right, what's not to hate?
I think it is misleading for you to try to compare the Clinton and the Bush administrations in such simple terms. What you are doing is like comparing the net yields of two farmers crops in different years, without regards for the weather and other conditions. But we can compare the last two presidents fairly if you'd like. Lets look at the economy first. I think Clinton did well during an economic expansion which was fueled by technological innovation. His main challenge was to keep inflation in check and keep the economy from overheating. With help from Greenspan he was succesful. I believe that Clinton's views on free trade and welfare reform (which would have made a republican proud) were were a big factor in the great business climate which we enjoyed during the late 90's. President Bush had a very different challenge. When he took office the economy was on a downturn and the technology bubble had burst. This was a logical outcome based on economic models and certainly I don't blame president Clinton for it. But the challenge for Bush was to make the recession as short as possible and to bring about a recovery. I think he also succeeded admirable, at least up to this point. I think it was important that he understood that, especially during a downturn, it is necesary to ease the burden on business and consumers, even at the risk of running a federal deficit. The tax cuts were instrumental in helping turn the economy around. As far as foreign policy, I think that Clinton did some good things, like his involvement in the Balkans. (Though I think it would have been better to do it sooner, when the Serbs were killing Croats, and much suffering would have been avoided). But my problem with Clinton is that he (and the CIA as well) fell asleep on the issue of Al Quaeda and Bin Laden. There were many attacks against US interests during his administration, and in retrospect we can say that we should have gone into Afghanistan sooner to keep that country from becoming the training ground for terrorists. Because we failed to do this, terrorists are now running around loose all over the world planning more attacks against society. I am glad that president Bush is finally tackling the issue, but I wish it wouldn't have taken an event like 9/11 for the United States to finally wake up to the problem.
I don't agree with all the details of your comparison, but my intent wasn't to compare the Bush II and Clinton, it was to point out that enough time has elapsed since the inauguration that we can reasonably assume that where things haven't gone the way Bush wanted that it's not for lack of effort. As for the economy and Bush's tax cuts, how can they have been instrumental in turning around the economy when a lot of them are in the future and much of the rest have the greatest impact on people whose spending habits were less effected by the weak economy? I am most mystified by the conservative defense of Bush's deficits. Deficits, especially when they are so large compared to total spending, are a slight threat in the short term, but an extremely grave one in the long term. Republicans used to know this, but they seem to have forgotten.