Quote "Bush is an idiot and shoud be gone, but I didn't trust Kerry."

I had an interesting conversation with my son. He's 39 and lives and works in Sicily. He spent 14 years in the Navy, and now works for the Navy under a civilian contract. He has NOTHING good to say about shrub, and says he should be out of office, along with Rummy and the rest of his crowd, but when I asked him who he voted for, he said Shrub because I just dodn't trust Kerry. "We know what Shrub is and how bad he is, but we don't know what Kerry is really like, and I wasn't willing to take the chance."

I just thought you all might be interested in hearing the opinion of a military guy who does pay a decent amount of attention to politics, and is directly affectd by a lot of things an administration does. I think it helps explain at least part of the reason Shrub got elected. Knowing the devil you have v/s fear of the unknown????

a decorated combat vet?

even if you take 'em with a large grain of salt, a shot of Cuervo and a slice of like... most of 'em did vote for a deserter over a decorated combat vet.

It's much easier for them to distort who the other guy is. Gore turned into a liar, even though he was your allaround basic good guy; and Kerry was turned into a senator who never did anything, even though he investigated and exposed more government corruption than any lawmaker in modern history.

He who owns the media and the voting machines wins....the end.

Demonization of Kerry was effective eventhough it was all lies.

"He who owns the media and the voting machines wins....the end."

Bingo!

That is EXACTLY what the election process has become.

That any sentient being would voluntarily make the decision to support someone who has done so much harm, so much damage, so much evil, rather than take a chance on someone with an exemplary record tells me all I need to know about the continuing degradation of what was once known as the American character.

So much for backbone. So much for courage. So much for loving your country so much you'll do whatever it takes to save it, including casting a vote for a man who would do things differently.

Let the soldiers keep dying. Let the civilians keep dying. Let the economy crash and burn. Let our homeless shiver. Let our children get sick and have no access to medical care. Let the hungry stay hungry.

Who cares about all of that? Not the voters who chose to stay with a monster because he was familiar to them.

Gutless wonders, people who think like this. Idiots of the highest order.

Your son said "... we don't know what Kerry is really like, and I wasn't willing to take the chance."

What does that mean? Does he honestly think he "knows" what Bush "is really like"? Couldn't he see Kerry's record compared to Bush's?

I think you're right, and that's a large part of why this election went the way it did - when you overlook the obvious fraud, which is probably the larger part of why this election went the way it did.

For your sake, and for your son's sake, I hope he finds a way to rationalize his decision, his lack of courage, and his unwillingness to do something to rescue his country from the grips of madmen.

Alot of people I know who voted for Bush did it reluctantly bacause they were unsure about Kerry on defense and most anything else. I liked Kerry and still do but he didn't go over well with people I knew in small towns.

What was wrong with people in rural America. Then I asked him, do most of these rural and small town people think that voting for Bush was the very same as voting for Dwight D. Eisenhower. My father told me that he had talked to several people (rural & small towns), and he said that they actually did think that and they had no clue what so ever about what Bush was doing to this country. Insanity!

machine. Rove has never underestimated the (lack of) intelligence of his audience.

Flip-flopper, didn't-deserve-his-medals TV ads seemed to work with those not savvy. Sigh.

Spilled milk, I guess. But don't blame me for the continuing deaths of the military in Iraq. I didn't vote for the idiot.

If he didn't trust Kerry, why didn't he just not vote? Or, if he had a choice between bad and worse, why did he chose worse? Statements like this really depress me.

The good news is that a lot of his support is pretty weak. The bad news is that so many felt Bush is a lousy President but preferred him to a decorated war hero. Shows you just how successfully the GOP has demonized Democrats/liberals/progressives.

Believe me, someday they will pay for it!!!

:mad:

That was the position of a lot of moderates.

but at least he didn't end up voting for Bush...he just didn't vote at all.

While I voted for Kerry without the slightest hesitation, he made it pretty clear that his foriegn policy goals were pretty much the same as Bush's. Of course domestically he would have been much better.

Here are some sample analyses from earlier this year:

http://pilger.carlton.com/print/133205

<snip>
While the rise to power of the Bush gang, the neoconservatives, belatedly preoccupied the American media, the message of their equivalents in the Democratic Party has been of little interest. Yet the similarities are compelling. Shortly before Bush's "election" in 2000, the Project for the New American Century, the neoconservative pressure group, published an ideological blueprint for "maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests". Every one of its recommendations for aggression and conquest was adopted by the administration.

One year later, the Progressive Policy Institute, an arm of the Democratic Leadership Council, published a 19-page manifesto for the "New Democrats", who include all the principal Democratic Party candidates, and especially John Kerry. This called for "the bold exercise of American power" at the heart of "a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party's tradition of muscular internationalism". Such a strategy would "keep Americans safer than the Republicans' go-it-alone policy, which has alienated our natural allies and overstretched our resources. We aim to rebuild the moral foundation of US global leadership ..."

What is the difference from the vainglorious claptrap of Bush? Apart from euphemisms, there is none. All the Democratic presidential candidates supported the invasion of Iraq, bar one: Howard Dean. Kerry not only voted for the invasion, but expressed his disappointment that it had not gone according to plan. He told Rolling Stone magazine: "Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." Neither Kerry nor any of the other candidates has called for an end to the bloody and illegal occupation; on the contrary, all of them have demanded more troops for Iraq. Kerry has called for another "40,000 active service troops". He has supported Bush's continuing bloody assault on Afghanistan, and the administration's plans to "return Latin America to American leadership" by subverting democracy in Venezuela.

Above all, he has not in any way challenged the notion of American military supremacy throughout the world that has pushed the number of US bases to more than 750. Nor has he alluded to the Pentagon's coup d'etat in Washington and its stated goal of "full spectrum dominance". As for Bush's "pre-emptive" policy of attacking other countries, that's fine, too. Even the most liberal of the Democratic bunch, Howard Dean, said he was prepared to use "our brave and remarkable armed forces" against any "imminent threat". That's how Bush himself put it.



http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand02092004/
<snip>
On the next page, Kerry informs his reader that it’s time we stop questioning U.S. foreign policy intentions:

"As a veteran of both the Vietnam War and the Vietnam protest movement, I say to both conservative and liberal misinterpretations of that war that it’s time to get over it and recognize it as an exception, not as a ruling example, of the U.S. military engagements of the twentieth century. If those of us who carried the physical and emotional burdens of that conflict can regain perspective and move on, so can those whose involvement was vicarious or who knew nothing of the war other than ideology and legend."
This last passage is probably the most unsettling part of Kerry’s book and one that every advocate of the Anyone-But-Bush 2004 election strategy should read before heading to the polling station in November.

In this one passage, Kerry seeks to justify the millions of people slaughtered by the U.S. military and its surrogates during the twentieth century, suggests that concern about U.S. war crimes in Vietnam is no longer necessary, and dismisses the antiwar movement as the work of know-nothings.

Kerry and his comrades in the progressive internationalist movement are as gung-ho about U.S. military action as their counterparts in the White House. The only noteworthy difference between the two groups battling for power in Washington is that the neocons are willing to pursue their imperial ambitions in full view of the international community, while the progressive internationalists prefer to keep their imperial agenda hidden behind the cloak of multilateralism.

negotiate an exit strategy with Hussein that had a greater chance of peaceful regime change. He never veered from that and consistently said Bush rushed to war.

Those distortions you posted of his position are not helpful. Some of us are capable of recognizing quotes taken out of context by political operatives.

"win" the war in Iraq. It doesn't take a military genius to know that a guerilla war can only be won by eroding the base of support from the population at large. After Abu Graib, it would have been quite a job for Kerry to win the war through military power.

The "New Democrats" have exactly the same foriegn policy goals as Bush, they just want to bring in more nations.

Here is a sample of their manifesto, written in 2003:
http://www.ppionline.org/documents/Progressive_Internationalism_1003.pdf
"In times of danger, Americans put aside
partisanship and unite in the defense of our
country. That is why, as Democrats, we supported
the Bush administration’s toppling of the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan. We also backed
the goal of ousting Saddam Hussein’s malignant
regime in Iraq, because the previous policy of
containment was failing, because Saddam posed
a grave danger to America as well as his own
brutalized people, and because his blatant
defiance of more than a decade’s worth of
United Nations Security Council resolutions was
undermining both collective security and
international law. We believed then, and we
believe now, that this threat was less imminent
than the administration claimed and that the
United States should have done much more to
win international backing and better prepare for
post-war reconstruction. Nonetheless, we are convinced that the Iraqi people, the region and
the world are better off now that this barbaric
dictator is gone.
front, it has failed to devote sufficient energy,
focus, and resources to the pressing task"

Here they are repeating the Bush lie that "Saddam posed a grave danger to America"

unless the weapons inspections were fruitful and Saddam refused to turn them over.

Noone believes that Kerry would have gone to war the way Bush did, unless they have an agenda to fulfill.

Here's something from "If John Kerry Is The Answer, What Is The Question?" by William Blum from March 03, 2004:


"Kerry faulted Bush for providing insufficient funding for the National Endowment for Democracy. -- He probably thought he was on safe ground; the word "democracy" always sells well. But this is his most depressing comment of all. He's calling for more money for an organization that was set up to be a front for the CIA, literally, and that for 20 years has been destabilizing governments, progressive movements, labor unions, and anyone else on Washington's hit list.{6} Which would be a worse mark against Kerry, that he doesn't know this about NED, or that he does know it? It sounds like another throwaway to imply a divide between he and George W.


And here's some info about the National Endowment for Democarcy:

http://members.aol.com/superogue/ned.htm

<snip>
How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for
Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite
of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s
under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative
revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The
latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate -- the
Church committee of the Senate, the Pike committee of the House,
and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were
all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there
was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even
criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The
Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing
the powers-that-be much embarrassment.

Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop
doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was
to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with
a nice sounding name -- The National Endowment for Democracy.

<snip>
In a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs
of foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how,
training, educational materials, computers, faxes, copiers,
automobiles, and so on, to selected political groups, civic
organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups,
book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc. NED programs
generally impart the basic philosophy that working people and
other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise,
class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government
intervention in the economy, and opposition to socialism in any
shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy,
reform, and growth; and the merits of foreign investment are
emphasized.

From 1994 to 1996, NED awarded 15 grants, totaling more than
$2,500,000, to the American Institute for Free Labor Development,
an organization used by the CIA for decades to subvert
progressive labor unions.{2} AIFLD's work within Third World
unions typically involved a considerable educational effort very
similar to the basic NED philosophy described above. The
description of one of the 1996 NED grants to AIFLD includes as
one its objectives: "build union-management cooperation".{3}
Like many things that NED says, this sounds innocuous, if not
positive, but these in fact are ideological code words meaning
"keep the labor agitation down ... don't rock the status-quo
boat". The relationship between NED and AIFLD very well captures
the CIA origins of the Endowment.{4}

it was due to being brainwashed by the bushovic media hit squad

Instead of getting on the web or to the Library and researching the other candidate, they just vote the evil they know. I no longer accept this excuse from any of my friends...there is absolutely no reason not to do the reserch themselves in this day and age of information at our fingertips. I know at the beginning of the Primary season the first thing I did was look up the records and stories on ALL the candidates, printed up stuff to keep and studied, just like I was taking a test. For crying out loud - it's important who will be making the rules that make our lives heaven or hell.

intellectual laziness is not an excuse...by voting for bush you are saying that all the civilians we kill in iraq is ok with you...and you support murder.

He knows what Bush is, and does he think he can be trusted? That's a strange justification in my opinion.

one guy I knew basically said that he disagreed with almost everything Bush stood for, but voted for Bush because he hates trial lawyers (Edwards).

Another guy disliked Bush as well, but found nothing with Kerry to win him over.

Both were due to the media, but it is frustrating.

Bush was the worst candidate in the race except for the other guy. The truth is that very few Americans actually voted FOR either candidate, they voted AGAINST the opponent. Similar thing happened in the Canadian election earlier this year, where the most corrupt government in our history was re-elected because nobody knew the opposition leader (who BTW was left of Kerry on virtually every issue).

logic that both mystifies and overwhelms the senses?

A: Because that idiot Bush told me not to trust him!

Then sit back and wait to see if the little light goes on.

I mean, how much do we really know about any of the men and women who are elected to seats of power in this country.

Personally, knowing what I know about Bush, the thought of keeping him in office and allowing him to continue his destructive ways made me want him out of office all the more.

:eyes:

The Right was successful with one thing, however; they managed to create doubt about his military career and drag a fine man down in the mud.

If one really opens one's eyes and look at the voting record (as in: study the reasoning behind the decisions), it is apparent that Kerry has voted as a concerned and dedicated senator, and in the interest of the American people.
Of course politics is a rough game, you must trade horseshit for mud sometimes. But still. He is a decent fellow with very good leadership qualities, a fact that didn't show too well in the media--wether right or liberal--because the election campaign was forced into the dirty, dirty SVBT-track instead of promoting the rather splendid issues of Kerry/Edwards, their vigor and and, not the least, the enormous positive movement created within the Democrat party.
News is news, and if you shout loud enough about something, you'll set the agenda among the undecided recipients wether they believe it or not--the sheer force of so many people/media talking about it makes some of it stick. Something smells fishy.

While the truth is that something smells of bullshit.

The 'worst' thing you could say about Kerry is that he is a 10. September politician in a 11. September world, a quality he shares with a lot of other politicians.

As for your son; if he can say "We know what Shrub is and how bad he is" and then vote for him, well...
No disrespect to you intended here, but if he can accept the Bush & co presidential track record, we're on different planets.
To actually compare Kerry and Bush, fair and square, is to compare the ordinary good citizen with a proven disaster for your country.

This is a fact, not a point of view.
He, living in Europe, should have experienced it even stronger, because the Europeans never wanted this 'president' re-elected and have expressed frequently and loud why.

To live abroad and see what Bush has done to the US, and then vote for him, is IMHO inexcusable.

Feel free to quote my opinions in future conversations with your son.

Bush is wrong on every important issue. Kerry seems to be right on most issues. But you don't really know what Kerry will do because he changes position (per the Repug/Media). Therefore, you vote for Bush?

That is idiotic because if Bush is totally wrong, Kerry could do no worse no matter how much he flip-flopped--assuming you believed that bit of propaganda.

People are such sheep.

many people I know said the same thing. Bush is a failure, but they dont know how Kerry would act. This is due to the fact Kerry could never get his message across. Kerrys fault? Medias fault? Both? Thats up for debate.

I can't stand to hear shit like this and still have hope that in four years Americans are suddenly going to become smarter.

We need a good snakeoil salesman. Someone to charm the rubes. Its obvious that playing to people's brains isn't working. The lightbulbs have gone out.

"Well, we don't like Hitler but at least he's not a commie."

Stick with the devil you know i guess. :crazy:

Kerry would have faced a Republican congress and a conservative court, not to mention a press used to investigating Democrats. His every move would have been scrutinized.

*, on the other hand, has a Republican congress and court, not to mention a lapdog press. * has free rein for at least two years; assuming, of course, that the American people are smart enough to return the checks-and-balances by electing more Democrats and Independents.

I no longer believe they are -- smart enough, that is.

an employee loses customer after customer, losing money for the company. never do we know what the employee we hire to replace is going to be, but we do know the one we have is losing money and customers. you fire his ass and hope, thru looking at resume and past experience in life, we have made a better choice

that arguement from your son is so lame to me. i have heard it from others, and lordy, i just have to say oh lordy

makes no sense