Post here if you are going to support Bush for another presidency . . .

[CuriousGene]

I would simply like to hear people's opinions on why they are going to support Bush for another term. I myself believe history will look back on his horrible performance and use his presidency as a departure point to where America went wrong. I often a get a deer-in-headlights look when Bush supporters tell me their list of reasons which I think are asinine.

So post up and tell me why oh why you would support Bush.

[Pakman]

Sigh. I loathe the policies and the actions of this oxymoron, but with Howard Dean no longer a forerunner in the 2004, I'm left with voting for Bush over Kerry. Plus, Bush would give me more to stuff to debate about for the next 4 years. And with this guy screwing up over everything, obviously he sucks at being President, I'm beginning to apprectiate how the world is now standing up to America's policies. Bush is definately showing the true side of America's foreign policy and he's not even wearing a good enough disguise to get away with it.

[cosmictraveler]

1.We haven't been attacked since Mr. Bush started his campaign against terrorists. True , there have been a few isolated incidents with germs and the like but all and all he's done a very good job under the harshest of conditions.

2. The economy is looking very good isn't it? The stock market is almost to 11,000 points, the unemployment rate is lower.

This doesn't mean I'm voting for him , just stating why many people will.

[travis]

Although I voted for Bush, I've been too disappointed with his treasonous actions to vote for him again.
The Patriot act, amnesty for illegals, record breaking spending, he's worse than klinton.

If I found Bush in the desert dying of thirst, I wouldn't let him have the sweat off my...feet.

Of course his fellow bonesman Kerry is out of the question. I suppose I'll waste my vote on an independent, Constitution Party, maybe.

[otheadp]

if i were an american i'd vote for him

[sweet Pentax]

of course ,otheadp !
everybody knew that :D

[Mystech]

1.We haven't been attacked since Mr. Bush started his campaign against terrorists. True , there have been a few isolated incidents with germs and the like but all and all he's done a very good job under the harshest of conditions.

2. The economy is looking very good isn't it? The stock market is almost to 11,000 points, the unemployment rate is lower.

This doesn't mean I'm voting for him , just stating why many people will.


Unemployment rate is lower than what? Three weeks ago? Remember, Bush is going out of office with far less jobs in the nation then when he went in.

People who remenis about the Regan era should really be enthusiastic about Bush, though, after all Regan's greatest legasy was his fucked up economic policy and the biggetst deficit in the history of the world, and now Bush has managed to top him in that by a startling amount! What ever happend to the party of fiscal responceability?

[Mystech]

if i were an american i'd vote for him

Aww you just wanna' see the fall of the western world, dontcha?

[zanket]

1.We haven't been attacked since Mr. Bush started his campaign against terrorists. True , there have been a few isolated incidents with germs and the like but all and all he's done a very good job under the harshest of conditions.

Obviously a Democrat would have done something too. There’s nobody to compare Bush to. I think a Democrat, whose actions are typically a lot more caring to the common man, would have done a better job.

I suppose I'll waste my vote on an independent, Constitution Party, maybe.

You’ll be voting for Bush then. The majority doesn’t win, a plurality does. Most of the non-Republican parties are liberal.

[zanket]

What ever happend to the party of fiscal responceability?

Surely you know it only ever existed in the party brochures. Giving away the store to the rich and being fiscally responsible are mutually exclusive.

[otheadp]

Aww you just wanna' see the fall of the western world, dontcha?

more like its preservation...
i would however want to see the fall of fascist islamist xenophobe dictatorships

[truth]

Bush has done things that I do not appreciate such as issues regarding illegal immigrants, Social Security for immigrants, not placing troops on the Mexican border to curb illegals.

Given the alternative, none, he is the best one to vote for. We need another Ronald Reagan! A vote for any other candidate is a waste and risks placing a Democrat in the White House.
--------------------------------
Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. George Washington

[zanket]

Why would a Democrat be a risk? The last one was a boon to the country. You never really know how someone will do as prez until they’re in there. (Look at Schwarzeneggar as governor, doing great so far.) We do know that Bush is a disaster. Odds are Kerry will be better. We need another Reagan? C'mon, why?

[shrubby pegasus]

another reagan would potentially the worst thing that could happen to this country. bush is practically another reagan and look at all things have gone so far.

[Undecided]

Yay! More Debt,more Militarism,more Poverty, More Republicans!

[gregoftheweb]

Bush it is. Easy choice.

Go here if you are unsure: http://news.mpr.org/collections/special/2004/campaign/selectacandidate/selectapres.shtml

Bush 66%
Kerry 25%
all the rest were 8% or less.

I was actually surprised that I agreed with Kerry that much

[zanket]

Decent site. For me, Kerry came 2nd and Bush came last. A lot of criteria that is major to me is missing from the survey though.

[RonVolk]

LOL yea missing the "budget" criteria that Bush and pals will probably be dodging in the debates. I got Edwards, Kerry, Bush, Kucinich. I like Kerry more than edwards though and I don't really like Bush. Maybe there's something in SC's water cause I used to live there but I didn't hear about Edwards till this election started.

[Mystech]

more like its preservation...
i would however want to see the fall of fascist islamist xenophobe dictatorships

Warmongering facist christian dictators are ok, though?

I've had enough of these goofy republican screw-ups, lets get someone with at least half a brain in his head into the white house. I long for the days when the only scandals in the whitehouse is who blew who, at least no one died needlessly for that.

[Voodoo Child]

People who remenis about the Regan era should really be enthusiastic about Bush, though, after all Regan's greatest legasy was his fucked up economic policy and the biggetst deficit in the history of the world

Reagan defeated communism. He parachuted into the Kremlin and snapped Gorbachev's neck. Honest. Other similarities include: dubious* military interventions(Nigarargua, El Salavador, Grenada etc.), big loads of bullshit regarding foreign interventions("I do not recall senator", iran/contra), asinine missile shield program.

* by dubious, I mean evil.

[Tano]

83% Dennis Kucinich!
66% Kerry
58% Sharpton and Dean

A whooping zero for George!

God dammit, I can't see how anyone can support Bush. The man is an ubsessed conservative afraid of liberalism (run for cover, the content homosexuals are invading!).

[Eluminate]

I m gonna vote for G.Bush in next elections I live in new york.

[certified psycho]

i support bush. I just hope he will beat John Kerry and go for a second term :D

[zanket]

Thank goodness you're too young to vote and Eluminate lives in NY which Bush has no hope of winning.

[DeeCee]

From my side of the Atlantic It seems difficult to understand why anyone would want another term with GW. He has done more to promote anti-americanism over here than any other prez I can remember, even the vile Millhouse Nixon did less damage to your collective reputation.
Even The Republicans seem to agree. Their campaign don't tell me anything about Georges achievements they just do down the other fella.
"He's bad! Vote for me!"
Is that the best they can do?
On the more specific points...
1.We haven't been attacked since Mr. Bush started his campaign against terrorists. True , there have been a few isolated incidents with germs and the like but all and all he's done a very good job under the harshest of conditions.
You should see the UK industry record of recent Sea Serpent attacks on shipping. Not a one since Tony Bliar came to power!
I hear alien abductions are down too!
I admit America did have that nasty 9/11 thing but what prez allowed that to happen?
So what was ,say, Carters record on terrorism? Suicide bombers all over the place if his soft centered reputation is to be believed.
They tell me that this is a new age but I don't recall the Koran getting a recent rewrite, so whats changed?
2. The economy is looking very good isn't it? The stock market is almost to 11,000 points, the unemployment rate is lower.
The problem with the US Economy is simply that it's based on America's ability to suck other countries dry. The economy may look good. (Though even in a 'conventional' sense it still looks pretty rough to me) but what happens if the world wakes up and decides to stop working for you? You might even have to pay the going rate for gas and what a shock that would be!

I'll do y'all a deal.
You get rid of George and we'll get rid of Tony, If only we Brits could come up with an alternative:(
Dee Cee

[shrubby pegasus]

I'll do y'all a deal.
You get rid of George and we'll get rid of Tony, If only we Brits could come up with an alternative:(
Dee Cee

you have yourself a deal. consider it done.

[SwedishFish]

"(Look at Schwarzeneggar as governor, doing great so far.) "

he ordered a stop to the same sex marriages. great job (for someone whose fan base is represented by more homosexual males than any other demographic)

[zanket]

No matter how good of a job a politician does, they’ll always do something with which you disagree. Considering the debate is about whether gays can get government benefits of dubious value, I don’t consider that a big black mark against Schwarzeneggar. If gays get their way, will you then disagree with the governor who disallows polygamist marriages? By the same logic they should be marriageable too.

[shrubby pegasus]

If gays get their way, will you then disagree with the governor who disallows polygamist marriages? By the same logic they should be marriageable too.

yes i will disagree

[SwedishFish]

absolutely. let adults marry or not marry who they will. polygamy is a religious institution and the state must (doesn't but should) keep their distance from anything religious.
but anyway, it was a horribly stupid move both on the political front and for his acting/body building career.

[zanket]

The state doesn’t have anything to do with the religious angle of marriage. The state just doles out benefits and collects a different tax rate and otherwise enforces/upholds the financial/legal contract that is marriage. Gays are fighting for the state’s business angle of marriage. If you are really against discrimination then you’ll want the state to get out of the marriage business entirely. Why should they give special consideration to any person in regards to their relationships? That discriminates against single people and others. For example, I, a single person, may wish for my brother or my son to receive my assets tax-free when I die (a benefit married people get with their spouse). But I’m out of luck; the state discriminates against me in favor of the married. If gays get their way there’ll be an even larger group getting special consideration from the state to my detriment. I may not agree with Schwarzenegger’s reason for being against gay marriage, but he is effectively holding the line on discrimination.

[daGUY]

Bush it is. Easy choice.

Go here if you are unsure: http://news.mpr.org/collections/special/2004/campaign/selectacandidate/selectapres.shtml

Bush 66%
Kerry 25%
all the rest were 8% or less.

I was actually surprised that I agreed with Kerry that much

My results:

Kucinich: 83.0
Bush: 0.0

It's amazing. I knew I never liked Bush, but usually these types of things aren't THAT accurate! Haha.

[Voodoo Child]

If gays get their way, will you then disagree with the governor who disallows polygamist marriages? By the same logic they should be marriageable too.

Ah, the slippery slope. By that logic regular marriage should lead to pig fucking.

[zanket]

Funny. How?

[Stokes Pennwalt]

Small "L" libertarian here. Normally, being a pragmatist dictates that I cast a majority of my votes for Republican candidates, because they've traditionally embodied laissez faire capitalism - one of the tenets that I preach. Recently they've gravitated toward quasi-socialism as much as some of the Democrats out there, so that plus is no more. Add in a small but influential portion of the party being hijacked by the religious right and becoming socially authoritarian (I am very liberal socially) and I have developed a distaste for them that I once harbored only for the Democrats.

My opinion, and that of some other self-described libertarians that I know, is that anyone voting pragmatically as a true conservative would probably vote democrat in this election simply because the reality of such an outcome is a strong republican congress and a democratic executive. The end result of this, of course, being gridlock and the inability of a fiscal liberal like Bush to use his support in congress to spend drastically, drastically broaden the size and scope of government power, and do other things that were massively unpopular with Republicans until they co-opted the practices. The only really viable reason any true conservative ever offers for voting for Bush in my eyes is when they say that they're worried about what kind of judge a democrat might appoint, or some other such ancillary concern. Well if that's your presidential litmus test, then yeah I guess you should vote for Bush. Otherwise, it's all down to the politics of perception.

Of course the larger reality of why all this is and where it's going is what's dictating things. The Democrats spent a long time holding massive power in the senate, sometimes the executive, and elsewhere and shaping America in their vision and people got sick of it over time and voted them out. The Republicans have spent the last 23 years talking about Republican persecution at the hands of those liberals and contemporaries, and over time have managed to turn the legislature Republican, get more Republican judges, get the executive back and even get their own conservative news outlet. The same thing that happened to the democrats will of course now happen to them, it's just a matter of when. The speed of information hasn't changed the process but it has made the pendulum swing faster.

From my side of the Atlantic It seems difficult to understand why anyone would want another term with GW. He has done more to promote anti-americanism over here than any other prez I can remember, even the vile Millhouse Nixon did less damage to your collective reputation.
I don't understand why. Bush's and Clinton's foreign policy are strikingly similar. The principle difference is that Clinton gave Europe a reacharound while he cornholed them. Bush doesn't even bother. The upshot is that at least you know what you're getting with Bush.

Edit: Took that cool little test:
Bush - 58%
Nader - 33%
Sharpton (lol) - 25%
Kerry - 25%
Kucinich - 16%
Edwards - 16%

[SwedishFish]

to be honest, i never really understood the government involvement in marriage in the first place. i don't know what the benefits are and why they offer them. i mean really, who decides to get married because of benefits? call me crazy. i was raised in a religious home so i guess some of it rubbed off whether i wanted it to or not. marriage is traditionally a religious institution and the government should keep its fat nose out of it. leave it to the churches, etc. to marry who they will. if nonreligious people want committment ceremonies and to call it marriage, that's their business.

p.s. my parents have a civil union because my dad was previously married and the catholic church only allows one. but they wanted to get married and have a family, not to have tax breaks.

[SwedishFish]

Dennis Kucinich
71.0
Ralph Nader
64.0
John Kerry
57.0
Al Sharpton
42.0
John Edwards
35.0
George Bush
7.0

[Voodoo Child]

How does regular marriage lead to pig fucking? It validates the idea of unions. Allowing unions between man and woman opens the door for union between man and pig. To be fair, marriage must be available to those who don't want to fuck pigs out of wedlock or not available to anyone.

The inconsistency is that one form of union is allowed and another prohibited because of society's value judgement, but for some bizarre reason a value judgement can not allow monogamous marriage but prohibit polygamous relationships. Even though value judgements are inherently a priori and need no justification other than to be held.

[SwedishFish]

wrong

a pig is incapable of giving its consent
children are incapable of giving their consent
adults of sound mind can give their consent to whatever they choose to

[zanket]

to be honest, i never really understood the government involvement in marriage in the first place. i don't know what the benefits are and why they offer them.

This site, Most Compelling Reasons for Legal Marriage (http://www.buddybuddy.com/demian01.html), lists some of the US benefits or has links to them.

The obvious ones are: if you have health insurance, your spouse can usually be signed up too; spouse can’t be compelled to testify against you in court; assets are retained tax-free by surviving spouse; social security pays survivor’s benefits to spouse; both people are automatically legal parents of an adopted child; assets are typically split 50/50 by law in a divorce (this can be a drawback if the workload is split inequitably between the spouses); when a child is born the husband's job is protected if he takes paternity leave.

A big disadvantage is that the spouses are legally joined to each other for all financial transactions. Many marriages end when one spouse discovers that the other has run up large credit card debts.

i mean really, who decides to get married because of benefits?

You are quaint. I’d say most American women do. They call it financial security.

p.s. my parents have a civil union because my dad was previously married and the catholic church only allows one. but they wanted to get married and have a family, not to have tax breaks.

Married people in the US often pay higher taxes. When I was hitched we paid enough extra taxes annually to have paid for a week-long Hawaiian vacation. The government thinking is that since you are sharing big-ticket expenses like housing, you have more money to pay in taxes. The higher tax rate is called the marriage penalty.

[Voodoo Child]

a pig is incapable of giving its consent

True, if consent is a necessary aspect of marriage(for most of its history it really hasn't been. And at many times kiddies were married off at 10). This also illustrates my point: the idea of consent being required is a value judgement that is derived much like the value judgement prohibiting/permitting queers to marry. The dividing line between the marriables and non-marriables is arbitarily derived; there is no qualitative difference between two schemes.

[SwedishFish]

"You are quaint. I’d say most American women do. They call it financial security."

maybe in the 50's they did. most women i know do this little thing called "go to college".

voodoo child, i can't even respond to that it's so stupid.

[zanket]

Women go to college but the majority of them also have children. Marriage lets a woman stay home for the kids yet still have a secure financial future. Or at least gives her the option. Applies to men too, but not nearly as often do they exercise the option. Women tend to choose fun careers or ones that don’t require a lot of study or skills (read, low-paying), I think because they plan to resolve the disadvantage of such career choice by getting married. That’s okay if they also plan to have children and stay home with them. In my case my wife wanted to stay home sans kids. And she wanted a maid. I got out fast.

[SwedishFish]

"Women tend to choose fun careers or ones that don’t require a lot of study or skills"

what???

[zanket]

That seems fairly obvious. But for you, just a little research quickly finds books like Women Scientists and Engineers Employed in Industry: Why So Few?. It isn’t discrimination; I work in a high-tech field that would welcome women with open arms. But 10 times more men apply than women. When it comes to careers, women tend to do what they want. Men tend to do what attracts the women. And what attracts women is financial security. My niece couldn’t wait to get married and have a child because she loves children and hates working. I don’t think she’s the exception.

[Eluminate]

I support bush for the next election cause I look more like bush then kerry therefore on some 24th cousin level bush is closer to me in terms of human race. Also I dont like asses or donkeys which is the symbol of the democratic party I think an elephant can kill a donkey fairly easialy. Yes these are the thing that get my vote. Arent you happy people like me vote.

[zanket]

You live in NY so it matters not how you vote.

[Stokes Pennwalt]

My biggest problem with Kerry is that he has an absolutely wretched national security record. He voted against funding the M1, F-14D, Patriot, B-2, B-1B, F-117, and a plethora of weapon systems that the US military uses today.

It's going to be tough voting for him, but such is binary American politics.

[Undecided]

According to Inside Politics, Kerry only turned down the 1991 Arms proposal, these were not seperate purchases. Why would the US increase it's defense budget after the end of the Cold War?

[RonVolk]

My biggest problem with Kerry is that he has an absolutely wretched national security record. He voted against funding the M1, F-14D, Patriot, B-2, B-1B, F-117, and a plethora of weapon systems that the US military uses today.

It's going to be tough voting for him, but such is binary American politics.

Stokes, but on the bright side you've got to remember currently we are the Super-power if we cut spending on weapons research and pour it into something else it wont decrease are war fighting capabilities that much. After all I doubt in four years were going to lose much of are advantage and if we do we can make Kerry a single term president too.

[Voodoo Child]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2096127/#ContinueArticle

Is an interesting article, it makes two rather good points:

That these votes were in the context of the collapse of the soviet union
That he didn't specifically vote against these things.

[zanket]

A person can be for something but be against too much of it or a bad implementation of it. Republican voters especially do not grasp this simple concept. For example, on TV they hear “he voted against apple pie” and assume that’s bad, when what really happened was, he voted against apple pie for diabetics. Republican politicians, who will gleefully ruin the country for their personal gain, leverage this ignorance by proposing asinine apple pie-like laws that the Democrats must in good conscience reject.

[Eluminate]

zanket just because I live in NY my vote doesn't matter?
I think every vote matters is what we get in last elections....

[zanket]

NY is predominantly Democrat for prez. The odds of you changing that are billions to one.

[Carnuth]

76% kucinich! 69% nader!
46% kerry, 46% edwards, 38% sharpton
bush ... 7%

obviously kucinich and nader are out of the question, but with a a tie for edwards and kerry? who do i vote for in the primary? lol

also 1/2 the people who used that thing are kucinich supporters, with bush and kerry tying...thats funny