Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

And Roger, I know that you probably don't give too much credit to anything that is written or produced by New York Times, but I want to call attention to the following claims in an article in NYT from yesterday, March 8, 2008:

If New York Times is right about this, the economic boom that was there during the best of the Bush Jr. years never benefitted the median American household. Bush's tax cuts really only benefitted the very rich Americans, who indeed got amazing "raises" thanks to their lowered taxes. Is this the sort of economic boom you would recommend, Roger? One that benefits the richest Americans enormously, but gives no raise at all to the median American?

Here is the full article. If you can't access it because you don't have a login account with the New York times, try googling for it. The article was written by David Leonhardt, and the heading of the article is Seeing an End to the Good Times (Such as They Were).

Ann

Ann,

In Bill Whittle’s essay “Magic” (which you can read on his website, Eject! Eject! Eject!, here: http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000051.html ) he recounts a story which he says is typical of the world we live in:

“Robert Wayne Jernigan is now 28 years old. People who knew him said he was quiet, somewhat stand-offish. He was not widely liked in high school.

Four years ago, a witness reported seeing Jernigan enter a building in a remote suburb of Dallas with an axe. Four people were found dead at the scene, including a nine year old girl. No charges were filed. Less than two days later, Jernigan turned up again, this time at the scene of a suspicious fire in a day care center. Miraculously, no one was injured. But it was just a matter of time.

During the next several weeks, it is possible to place Jernigan at the scene of no less than thirteen suspicious fires. Eleven people died. Eyewitnesses were unshakable in their determination that Jernigan had been on the scene. And yet the police did nothing.

Jernigan had long been fascinated with fire. A search of his apartment revealed fireman-related magazines, posters and memorabilia. Despite the deaths of fifteen people, despite repeated eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence placing Jernigan at these fires, no criminal charges were ever filed against Robert Wayne Jernigan. He remains a free man to this day.”

How can that be, you ask? Well, what would you think if I told you Jernigan’s brother-in-law was the chief of police? Would *that* explain why the police refuse to bring Jernigan in for questioning? Or, could it have to do with the fact that Jernigan donated $5000 to the mayor’s re-election campaign?

How many more “coincidences” do we need? Why has there been no public outcry? There is no public outcry because Robert Jernigan is no serial arsonist; he is an ordinary fireman for the Dallas Fire Department. If you go back and re-read, you will see that every statement is true. Whittle calls this an example of “misdirection”, or “how to tell a lie by telling the truth”.

I can understand how, in the absence of certain key pieces of information, the past elections might, at first glance, look suspect, especially to a foreigner or to an American who depends solely on the main-stream media for his or her information. However, it has been amply demonstrated that there was NO fraud and that everything was indeed done according on the up and up. It seems pointless to me to continue to insist that those who don’t have all the facts are jumping to erroneous conclusions. Other than explaining the facts, as RL has so eloquently done, I really don’t see what else you would have us do. It also seems vastly illogical to claim that this somehow reflects poorly on our election process, rather than reflecting poorly on those who have set about to mislead and those who have allowed themselves to be misled.

Actually, Vicki, I have not claimed that there was any actual fraud. I have not claimed that the ballots were counted wrongly, although the whole "pregnant" ballots thing smells quite bad to me. Even so, I can't know or claim that the ballots were counted wrongly.

But if the election of 2000 had been a hundred meter dash at the Olympics, then I'd say that George W. Bush was allowed to start 99 meters from the finishing line. Because of his father and brother, because of the design of the Florida ballots, because of the fact that Gore's popular win didn't count, and because of the bias that I personally definitely expect from a Supreme Court where seven out of nine jurors were appointed by Republican Presidents. Also, in fact, because of the incredible way that conservative media had smeared Bill Clinton's name, so that he almost got impeached over a sex scandal (which didn't even involve anything illegal - nothing like rape or anything like that), so that quite a few people probably associated Democratic candidates with lewd and off-putting people.

Al Gore, unlike Bush, had to start the race at the stipulated 100 meter mark.

Ann

Ann, my leanings are definitely liberal rather than conservative, but I have to say that you might be beating a dead horse with this 2000 election stuff. Tempting as it is to point a finger at Jeb Bush and say that he gave the election to his brother, he does not appear to have had any influence at all.

Since I'm not a US citizen I have never had a chance to fill out a ballot here, but based on the picture that you posted I see no problems with the way the names are placed. Somebody has to be listed first, and if state law requires that it is the candidate of the same party as the current governor, then obviously Republican had to be at the top. To me, at least, it seems very clear which was the proper place to punch for the candidates.

And whether or not people like it, right now the system in the US is that the electoral vote takes precedence over the popular one. Many people are unhappy with this, many others see no problem with it at all. If this is the way the system is designed, then there is no fraud involved. The rules are clearly laid out, it's just that most people before 2000 probably weren't aware of it, because I don't think such an occasion had ever arisen before.

So I can understand how suspicious it all looks to people "looking in", but I do believe that the legal issues were in fact on the up-and-up, and the same would have held true if Bush and Gore's positions had been reversed.

Kathy

I can't speak for Ann but here is what I think: If he lied about something major that would change our country then of course I would mind. I would be furious! But like I said before I don't get why lying about who you slept with or not is such a big deal. A president is also a man and any man in that same circumstance would have lied or do you think there are many ordinary American men who would go on TV and admit to the world that he had had sex with a woman other than his wife? Throw the first stone who think under the same circumstance any man would be honest

I guess it's just different here where people think that to be a good president your past has to be clean (God forbid if you used marijuana in college! Or if you cheated on your wife ). IMHO a good president is the one that has good plans for this country and after elected I see how many of his/her electoral promisses were kept and done. I could care less about his/her personal past or if they are in the same religion that I am. I do care about their political past, though but not their personal lives. His wife should be the only one worrying about what he does with other women

Raquel

Actually, Kathy, I have to agree with you here. It's time for me to stop going on about the election of 2000. But the reason why I have said so much about it is that the details of that election shocked me so deeply. And then the President who got elected by such an incredibly narrow margin - who wouldn't have won at all if the ballots had been counted individually - started behaving so outrageously, indeed as if he had been appointed by God himself, as he made dictates to the whole world.

Yes, I'm politically left-wing. Very much so. But that doesn't mean that I have some sort of blanket hatred for Republican politicians in America! Absolutely not. The first American President that I can remember clearly is Richard Nixon. And no, I didn't like him very much at all, because of the Watergate scandal. But guess what? I admired America like heck because of the way it went to the bottom of the Watergate scandal and because of the way it dealt with Richard Nixon! Wow! I thought it was all so great. Those of you who are Americans, you don't know how much I admired your country during the last two Nixon years!

Besides, it wasn't as if I hated Nixon himself, either. I really, really admired him when he went to China and started his "ping-pong diplomacy". Really! I thought that he made the world so much safer than before! You think that I always hate Republican Presidents? Think again.

(And besides, Nixon ended the Vietnam war. He didn't start it, but he did end it. Now wasn't that admirable? You bet I thought so!)

Then there was Gerald Ford. He didn't make very much of an impression on me, and what I can clearly remember about him is that our Swedish newspapers wrote that Gerald Ford couldn't chew gum and walk a straight line at the same time, because he had played football when he was young and gotten so many concussions... No, I didn't really believe that Gerald Ford was slow, and I most certainly didn't think that he was brain-damaged, but I couldn't help giggling at him a little. I regarded him as "mostly harmless", as Earthlings are famously described by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Don't be angry at me for giggling at Gerald Ford. I was a kid.

Then Jimmy Carter became the next President. Ah, poor Carter. I really think that he was unlucky about the kidnappings of American diplomats in Khomeini's Iran.

Then there was Reagan. I'll be honest with you... when I saw how right-wing Reagan was about certain things, I realized that I just couldn't define myself as right-wing anymore. Yes, I had voted for right-wing parties in Sweden up until that point, but because of Reagan I redefined myself politically. I have called myself politically left-wing ever since then.

But does that mean that I hated Reagan? Absolutely not! I, too, was touched and moved by Reagan's charm. You think Bush Jr. is charming? Hah! He can't hold a candle to Reagan's charm.

But there was more to Reagan than a charming smile. I'll never forget how he behaved after he was shot. People, consider. Someone had tried to murder him. And they had hit him, too, and he was in hospital, and he had had to have surgery. But afterwards, he was smiling, leaning on his wife Nancy, and that smile... oh wow! The optimism that was there in that smile, the faith in the future, both his own future and America's future... it almost blew me away. The sheer power of his personal strength and optimism.

And how did Reagan deal with the world? Not by making war on it. Not by telling the other countries of the world that they were either for America or against it, and if they were against it, they would have to deal with the consequencies. Not on your life! Not Reagan! No, what Reagan said was this: "Please, Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall." And the wall fell, only a few years later. And the cold war ended. Those were the days.

Then Bush Sr. became President. George Herbert Walker Bush. He made war on Iraq because Saddam had invaded Kuwait, and I thought that Bush was so totally justified in his decision. And he went about the war so cannily, too. He made sure that almost the entire Arab world was behind him and took part in the war. It was brilliant. It was not Bush Sr's war, it was just as much the Arab world's war against one errant Arab nation.

And Bush bravely raised taxes. Bravo! When Clinton came after Bush, he was given such a great starting point because of the extra money that Bush Sr. had brought in to the Federal coffers. Clinton was in a position where he could lower taxes - and unless I remember wrongly, he did, too - and yet he didn't create economic problems for his country. Instead, during the Clinton years, the U.S. economy was booming.

And during all this time, I felt so good about the United States. I liked it so much. I felt so lucky that the United States was the strongest country in the world. I could think of no other country that I would be even remotely as happy with in the role of "stern but kind Daddy to the world".

And then Bush Jr. came along. Sigh.

How do I describe Bush? Do I hate him? Oh, what a simplistic word. Hate. It doesn't explain what I feel about Bush at all.

I guess the closest I can get is to say that this is what Bush Jr. has done to my image of America:



A new President will be coming soon. I can hardly wait.

(But I hope it won't be McCain... bomb, bomb, bomb Iran... )

Ann

Ignoring all the rest because Roger spelled it out so well already [things like 2 of the Republican SC Justices are so not Republican it's almost funny regardless of who they were appointed by]...

Clinton WAS impeached. Probably 90% of AMERICANS would tell you he wasn't because he wasn't removed from office, but he was. Two Presidents have been impeached. Andrew Johnson, immediately after the Civil War, for violating part of the Tenure of Office Act that was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court anyway. He was acquitted by one vote.

Richard Nixon WAS NOT impeached, though those same 90% of Americans would probably tell you he was. He resigned before the House of Representatives could vote on the Articles of Impeachment. He is the only president to leave office without dying or reaching the end of his term. In doing so, Ford became president - the only president to not have been elected either president or vice president [Spiro Agnew, Nixon's VP, had resigned over his own scandal some time earlier - Ford had been appointed by Nixon and approved by the Senate to replace him. There are allegations that Ford's later pardon of Nixon was part of the deal, but I don't believe it's ever been definitively proven. Rockefeller was appointed/approved as Ford's VP, also never having been elected. 2000 election aside - that's a odd way to get a president...]

Bill Clinton WAS impeached. He was impeached for lying/perjury and obstruction of justice, NOT because he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Though inappropriate as a married man, it was doubly so as her 'boss' and could easily constitute sexual harassment though there was nothing 'illegal like rape' involved. (Sexual harassment however, is illegal *gasp* - and sexual relationships with bosses can *almost* always devolve into harassment.] So the only thing that the impeachment had to do with the sexual relationship was that he lied about it and encouraged others to do so.

The Constitution says certain government officials can be impeached for treason and high crimes and misdemeanors. Perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes, but are they high crimes? That's the biggest point of contention. As Roger pointed out, Clinton lost his license to practice law. Very few people would argue that he wasn't guilty of perjury at least - but was it an impeachable offense? Depends on who you ask.

The way impeachment works:
1. The appropriate committee in the House of Representatives votes on and then presents the full House with Articles of Impeachment. There was 4 in the Clinton case - 1 each of abuse of power and obstruction of justice and 2 of perjury

2. The House of Representatives acts as a Grand Jury to determine if there is enough evidence to charge the official with the crimes listed in the Articles of Impeachment. Once there is a majority vote to approve the Articles, the official is impeached. Clinton was impeached on one count of perjury and one of obstruction of justice.

3. The Senate acts as a petit/trial jury like you'd see in a legal drama. Members of the House Judiciary committee act as 'managers' or prosecutors. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial [in this case Rhenquist].

4. If the Senate votes with a super majority [2/3] to convict, the official is convicted and removed from office. Clinton was not convicted and it really wasn't even close. In the end, a number of Republicans basically decided that perjury/obstruction were not impeachable offenses, as mentioned earlier. To the best of my recollection, his actual guilt was in question by few people.

Removal from office is the only punishment that can be given through impeachment. Acquittal or conviction in impeachment proceedings has absolutely nothing to do with any criminal charges brought by the appropriate authorities outside the federal government.

I teach American government/political science at a community college and the majority of students in my classes believe that:
a. Nixon was impeached
b. Clinton was not impeached

And they're wrong on both counts.

And thus ends my participation in the poli sci lesson for today.
Carol

Oh my, where to start?

Paul and Ann, yes, Bush believes in a personal God who gives people things to do. So do I. And we know that human beings *never* do things exactly the way they should. But I do think people see this as a lot more scary than it ought to be. He's not hearing voices, here. He's in this job, and he's got choices to make, and he tries to make the best choices he can -- and in his case, figuring out the "best" choice involves considering what God might want. Millions of Americans do the same thing every day.

I don't agree with all his choices, of course. I think his heart's in the right place, but that's sometimes insufficient.

Yes, even if. The election went according to the rules. Those were the circumstances, that was the outcome. Can't change the circumstances, can't change the outcome. You don't like the rules, fine, you can try to get them changed for next time, but wanting to go back and change the rules *after* the votes were cast strikes me as deeply unfair. Not to mention whiny.

Glad we got that settled

Can't speak to that, really, except that I don't think he's managed the economy very well at all. I never liked his economic approach, personally. I think he's added billions of entitlement spending that's just going to keep getting more expensive. Tax cuts are good, but if spending's not reigned in, the revenue's still going to be insufficient, hence a deficit.

No. But we're resigned to the fact that election fraud does occur, from time to time. In some countries a lot more than others. Like the last time Saddam Hussein was "elected" -- with an astonishing 100% of the vote! Oh, no, wait, he was hostile to the US. So it can't have been fraud.

Unless of course fraud and hostility of outcome aren't really correlated at all.

Of course they haven't. They don't have our election system. The electoral college is fairly unique, I believe.

Really? The New York Times was negative about the state of the economy under a Republican president? No relation, no relation! But I respect Bill Whittle a lot so I should have known better.

I think the theory is that a guy who blatantly lies in one area might just be much more likely to lie about other, more national-interest type things. If he doesn't honor his vow to his wife, I get nervous about him honoring other vows -- like the one to uphold the Constitution, protect the country, etc. But I understand how that would have looked weird to Europeans; it sometimes seems like *all* their politicians have mistresses. They don't lie about it, 'cause they don't need to.

As a matter of fact, no. Nixon (and Congress) abandoned millions of people we'd said we would protect, leaving them to be slaughtered, and in the process showed that Americans would run away from a fight if enough grisly pictures showed up on the evening news. What exactly is admirable about that?

Yeah, poor Jimmy. He was incompetent from the start. 5th graders were making fun of him.

That's how you remember Reagan? And here I thought everyone was convinced he wanted to end all life on earth because he was so eager to nuke the Commies...

Well, Ann, of course I'm devastated that you don't like my country. But I'll try my best to soldier on -- no, wait, you probably don't like soldiers -- do my best to keep going anyway... somehow...

PJ

Kathy, such a thing as the loser of the popular vote winning the White House had happened three times previously to 2000 (with # of presidency in parens): John Quincy Adams (#6), Rutherford B. Hayes (#19), and Benjamin Harrison (#23).

Funny thing about Florida was that before election day, George Bush had been in the lead in the polls all the way to the end. The speculation in the press was what would happen if Bush won the popular vote but Gore won the electoral college vote since the polls were so close with Bush leading by roughly 1-3% in all major polls but Zogby International which had them in a dead heat. Nobody in their wildest dreams thought it would happen the other way around since Gore had never led in any poll up to election day after they had settled after the conventions.

If it had happened the other way around and Bush had challenged the election in the way Gore had, I would have lost a great deal of respect for him. While I didn't like Gore, he was no Clinton and would likely have done a much better job than Clinton up to the point where he turned into Enviro-man, going off the deep end.

Roger, I didn't realize that this had happened before. I guess it must have come up with news reports at the time of the 2000 election results, but I don't remember reading it.

Kathy

Roger, I love your posts, (although I suspect you're a tad more conservative than I )

but i stand in awe

c.

The US has a very poor record of follow-through and Vietnam is probably one of our more shameful ones, another being the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, once the US achieves its goals or leaves the area, we tend to wash our hands of it all. In Vietnam, we essentially withdrew all support to the North Vietnamese and didn't even try to support those in Laos and Cambodia. In part, it was the weakness of President Ford and in part it was the fecklessness of the Congress, which defunded the entire region, leaving our allies to their fate. What happened next was the bloody rise of Pol Pot and the massacre of millions. It also led to the large numbers of Vietnamese who risked death to reach our shores.

In the aftermath of our success in Afghanistan, we also turned tail and left the region, feeling that our money was better spent elsewhere. The result of the failures of President Bush (the elder) and the Congress was the rise of the Taliban, who stepped into the vacuum we created. We all know what happened around a decade later with the Taliban in place in Afghanistan.

A third one was our removal of support for the Shah of Iran. Granted he was a despised dictator, but the result of President Carter's withdrawal of support was the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. We all know how little trouble fundamentalist Iran has been in the subsequent 28 years.

I predict that a poor follow-through in Iraq will lead to similar or worse problems than the three above if we were to pull out prematurely.

Pam, what I think of the United States matters zilch to nobody. But there is a lot of evidence that so many people in so many countries feel the same way as I do. This quote is from Dipnote, U.S. Department of State Official Blog, and it was Question of the Week on January 9, 2008:

The article below is a bit old, as it is from January 2005, but it might be worth calling attention to anyway:

Global poll slams Bush leadership

Fareed Zakaria, who used to be editor of Newsweek (and who may still be that) stood firmly behind Bush when Bush called for war against Iraq. But Zakaria has grown increasingly disappointed with Bush. I remember that Zakaria reported from an economic forum for Southern Asia a couple of years ago. Bush was invited, and Zakaria reported how representatives from the other countries listened politely, but without much interest, as Bush devoted his speech to the matter of terrorism. But when the representative of China spoke of his country's commitment to the sound economic development of southern Asia, people were interested and enthusiastic.

The way that much of the world has been fed up with the Bush administration was made very clear during the U.N. climate summit on Bali last year, when the United States stalled and wouldn't sign an agreement. That is when Kevin Conrad, representative of Papua New Guinea, spoke up (the full article is here :

After that, the United States gave in and signed the agreement.

And just a week ago or so, OPEC rebuffed President Bush when he asked for an increase of OPEC's oil supply. The spokesman for OPEC said that the high oil price was caused by the American mismanagement of its economy.

My point is that something has happened internationally. The United States doesn't have the clout that it used to have. Oh, it has every bit as much military clout as it ever did, but it really seems to have lost so much of its moral leadership. People in other countries aren't listening to the Bush administration much any more.

I think that many people all over the world are eager for a new American President. I think that whoever the new President is, he or she will be welcomed by the world. For all of that, I think that the new President will have a tough job giving America back the international respect that it used to get from people everywhere.

Ann

All people everywhere? I'm sorry, but I don't remember that time. Sounds like I'm about ten years younger than you, but that still leaves me with about 25-30 years of political memories, and I really don't remember a time when "people everywhere" admired and respected America. And when there is a choice to be made between American interest and international goodwill, I really prefer a president who acts in America's interests. That is, after all, his (or her) job.

Oh, and to go back to an earlier point -- someone mentioned that the idea of W being the son of a former president didn't get nearly as much skepticism as the idea of Hilary being the wife of a former president. I think the order of events has a lot to do with it.

We've had father-son presidents before (cousins, too). Not frequently, but it's happened. A long time ago. Then too, W worked hard to distinguish himself from daddy, and he'd had executive experience of his own as the governor of Texas. GHWB was seen as a northeasterner, whereas W managed to come across as a southerner, which played better in the Republican party. All this put together blunted any appearance of nepotism or duplication.

Eight years later, along comes Hilary. She hasn't got direct executive experience. From what I've seen, she's not coming across as very distinct from Bill, and she's not distancing herself from him. (Personally, I can't understand why she hasn't divorced him, but that's neither here nor there). And I think people looked at the Bush-Clinton-Bush years and got a little more uncomfortable with the political dynasty idea. (There was speculation that Jeb Bush might run for President someday, making these the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton-Bush years. And how old might Chelsea be by then? It could definitely get ridiculous.)

But that's just my theory. Might have zip-squat to do with reality

PJ
who should probably apologize for previous snarkiness -- it's not a good excuse, but all four of us in this house are sick, and three of them are counting on me to do everything for them, so I get a little ragged around the edges.

p.s., Ann, I feel for your grandfather. God does heal people -- I know some of them -- but He doesn't always, and that can be really hard to understand and live with. Been there, cried about that.

Oh? Who?

Ann

Me either. I stand corrected. But I still maintain that America has never been as internationally questioned and distrusted as it is now, at least not since the Vietnam war ended. But even during the Vietnam war, the kind of distrust that the United States received was different than it is now. I think that back then, the opponents of the Vietnam war were hopeful that the United States would change its ways. During the Bush Jr administration, people in other countries who have disapproved of Bush have not been hopeful about the George W. Bush version of the United States.

I'm certain that it has never happened before that a tiny country like Papua New Guinea has spoken up and told the United States to stand back and let others lead, and it has never happened before that the world, including the traditional U.S. allies, has listened to the tiny country and not to the United States.

Ann

John Adams [#2] and John Quincy Adams [#6]

William Henry Harrison [#10] and Benjamin Harrison [#23] - grandfather/grandson

Theodore Roosevelt [#26] and Franklin D. Roosevelt [#32] were 5th cousins and FDR was married to Teddy's favorite niece Eleanor.

Carol

Okay! That's good enough.

I've never heard of either of them... I guess they weren't much good?

And don't say anything about Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt because they were fifth cousins! Come on! And hey, even if Teddy and FDR had been father and son, I wouldn't have protested against FDR's Presidency. I think most experts agree that FDR is one of the greatest Presidents ever, and we in Europe owe FDR so much. I'd say that most of us don't feel exactly the same way about W...

Ann

I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan and remember him well as I was 14 when he took office. Reagan was as distrusted as W. I remember the jokes. He never graduated further than "amiable dunce" with Europeans. It seems Republican presidents are always thought of as mentally deficient among both the American and European press. The mildest term applied to both Reagan and W was "cowboy." A lot of the same names were used to describe both of them. Most of them thought he would destroy the world. When he pushed to have Pershing II missiles deployed in West Germany, the demonstrations rivaled those of Americans over Vietnam.

When Reagan joked over an open microphone that, "I have just signed legislation that outlaws the Soviet Union forever. The bombing begins in five minutes," there was a tremendous uproar as if that were evidence Reagan was obsessed with nuking the Soviet Union. Reagan was a radio personality from his Hollywood career and from his days as California governor and frequently said things other than, "testing, testing" when doing mike checks.

During the START talks, Europeans pressured him relentlessly to abandon "Star Wars" to get that agreement with Gorbachev. When Reagan walked out rather than give up SDI, clearly it was Reagan who was the warmonger. Gorbachev was more admired than Reagan in European public opinion polls. It's always interesting when the leader of the free world takes a backseat to a communist thug in opinion polls of the free world.

I don't even want to think of the things that were said when Reagan admitted to being afflicted with Alzheimer's, the mildest being, "No wonder."

Only when he was dead did people's opinions begin to soften about him outside of the US.

This is just another of those times with W. Republican presidents are always despised among Europeans so we kind of expect it.

As with Papua, New Guinea, it's also true that America has less interest in some of these topics as others. Most Republicans, in particular, don't believe that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon but is merely a cyclical occurrence in nature that happens regardless of whether humans are on the planet. When a single volcanic reaction spews more than all the cars that have ever existed, it's kind of tough to believe in the theory, especially with so many environmental scientists who refute the theory. Europeans care about those things like Kyoto or the Bali Climate Summit. We don't lead because we don't believe. Now Al Gore would have bent over backwards for those, but not W. With Kyoto in particular, most Republicans believe it's a plot by Europeans and Asians to destroy the American economy, not an effort to curb global warming. Would you actually want the leadership of someone who doesn't believe in your cause?

We still laughingly remember those same people crying about global warming now telling us in the mid-1970's the icebergs were approaching with the world about to suffer from global cooling.

On OPEC, they say that kind of thing all the time. At this time, though, I believe OPEC was right in their opinion that the world is well supplied with oil. Oil stopped becoming influenced by supply and demand concerns long ago and is more influenced by geopolitical issues and rampant investor speculation than it is by the latest oil supply reports. For instance, this latest run-up in the cost of oil to $104/barrel had nothing to do with American "mismanagement" and everything to do with the diplomatic incidents between Venezuela and Columbia. Constant fighting in Nigeria has also caused problems for the last decade on oil prices. For a long time, every time a bomb went off in Baghdad, the price of oil would add another dollar per barrel. And our current fall in the dollar and the sub-prime mortgage credit crunch has led investors to move money away from real estate, the bond market, and the stock market into commodities with gold and oil hitting record highs.

In some corners, people blame the fall of the dollar exclusively for the rise in oil. That's utter nonsense. The dollar has depreciated roughly 17% from a year ago with oil at around $50/barrel. If the dollar was the cause, oil would be around $58/barrel, not $104.

You know what gets me about this thread? I'm not qualified for the role I had. I deliberately avoid looking into details and specifics of this stuff because it ticks me off about things I can't realistically affect from here. And yet, despite that, even I know better than what's being said.

There were people saying that there were no WMDs. But the reports were quieted. This administration has a history of quashing and/or editing reports of things they don't want to hear. And the "liberal media" has a history of giving them a pass on it.

In fact, as I recall, the report that did support the WMD theory was pretty much entirely based on the word of one guy who was notoriously unreliable.

And the war? We settled things in Afghanistan (at least, as well as they were reasonably going to be settled - we are still there, after all), and then Bush gets up and tells everyone that, as the next stage in the "war on terror," we're invading Iraq. Next day, a huge percentage of Americans believed that a link had been found between 9/11 and Iraq. It was strongly implied by the action. And people continued to believe it. There were, I believe, people linked to the administration who were deliberately spreading rumors to that effect. It wasn't until we were committed to going in that questions about the link were acknowledged. "Oh no, we never said that there was a link. (We just wanted you to believe it.)" And, again, the "liberal media" gave them a pass on it.

And then there are abuses of executive power. Unprecedented expansion of it. Signing statements... When a bill is signed into law, the president is allowed to make a "signing statement" which modifies the law before it goes into effect. Up until recently, they were almost never used (before Reagan, only 75 had been issued), and were generally used rhetorically rather than to actually make functional changes. According to this page : "George W. Bush has issued 157 signing statements challenging over 1,100 provisions of federal law." And... well, maybe it's just better if I point you to this Slate article from 2006 . He has the right to do it, but there's a good argument for the idea that he's abusing that right.

And that's just the start. There's the PATRIOT Act. And... wiretapping? We needed immediate every-second-counts clearance for that? What have they gotten out of that program? Have they caught anyone? And is it really so hard to go to the court specifically set up to pretty much rubber-stamp requests for wiretaps as soon as they come in? And then the claims of "executive privilege" to keep his staff from being questioned when Congress finally wakes up and takes notice of activities that are, well... questionable. And on and on. Grabbing and expanding executive power at every possible chance, overriding or sneaking around checks and balances that are supposed to keep something exactly like this from happening.

Back to the media... they were behind the first Iraq war, when we had reason to go there. They even knowingly helped spread misinformation to make the invasion plan work. But no, by (finally) reporting about how going in was a mistake and how things have been bungled since, they're betraying our country and making it impossible for us to win. (Never mind that, by the words of the people who were actually in charge on the ground over there, it was our own flawed strategy.)

And WMDs... wasn't that cache they found a holdover from the first Gulf War? Which had gone pretty much untouched since? And hey, if just having WMDs is reason enough for invasion, why don't we invade the country with the biggest stockpile of them? The one that actually has gone and invaded other countries and toppled governments and which has an increasingly corrupt and autocratic government and... Oh, wait. That's us.

But... Can I prove this stuff? No. Do I know details? No. Can I quote chapter and verse and point to the right quotes and reports? No. And it's frustrating. And more frustrating that I'm the only liberal American speaking up. There have got to be more of us. And this thread has, as several people have remarked, remained remarkably civil. It's not like you need to be afraid to cause trouble or something.

As for faith... I understand and respect it. Being guided by your faith is one thing. Being blinded by it is something else. And supporting it is one thing, but... it's a matter of degree.

As for the FBCI... freedom of religion should include freedom from religion. There should not be a government program designed to promote religion over secular approaches. What bothers me even more is that the liberal-run faith-based charities I know of aren't taking advantage of it. And the conservatives are the ones saying that the government shouldn't be giving money to charities in the first place. But yet... there it is. The FBCI and, as they name it on their homepage, "the quiet revolution."