How is Kerry going to as you said "I will hunt down and kill the terrorists" when he will not fund it. Come on you actually believe a man who has voted against spending on defense over 90 plus times will be strong on defense and terrorism. He is for bigger government and huge spending programs like Clinton was for but could not pass as he liked. ie: National Health care better know as socialist medicine. By the way Kerry talks about 5 million more without insurance in America but how many turn down insurance for more pay in there pocket. I know a few people who do not take insurance because they are young and feel they don't need it yet. Also does the uninsured include illegal aliens? I know in California they get free benefits which is why California is in the red as bad as it is.
Buck: I understand why the Swiftboat Vets raised those ads, but personally I think anyone who served the nation, during peacetime or war, should not have their war records scrutinized and ridiculed.
I think it is ridiculous to call Bush a deserter for his service in the Air Guard, and I think it is equally ridiculous to call Kerry "unpatriotic" for his actions in Vietnam and question his injuries.
If we make it a habit of doing so, we diminish the role that our brave men and women serve in the military and for anyone running for office in the future, will render them into thinking twice about making it known about their service. Actions that people have undertaken decades ago prior to their roles in government should be dismissed.
Henry, you seem to be forgetting that Kerry made his Vietnam service the center piece of his early campaign up and into the Democratic Convention. Once he did so it is not easy to dismiss the contradictions of his service. When you ignore his situation that is diminishing the role of our brave men and women who served in a more honorable capacity. As I stated, I served in Vietnam and deeply resent his actions and favorable treatment during that period. The majority of army and marine vets share my opinion. I guess its one of those things you can't get out of a book. I guess you had to be there to understand it.
Oh, and what part of "I will hunt down and kill the terrorists" would classify Kerry as a pacifist? Or is that the ultimate IHOP waffle? I feel you may not have been listening to both agruments clearly. I know because that statement has become the staple of Kerry's policy regarding homeland defense.
Precisely Spun why Kerry is straddling both sides of the stream. He is vocal in term of aggressiveness towards terrorists (as he should be), but his actions fall short in terms of his language (global test, sensitive war on terror i.e) and his actions (voting against the funding of the troops, calling Allawi a puppet).
I am sure Kerry would make a wonderful President, but just not now. He would make a better peacetime President than a wartime one, and the terrorists would exploit his passiveness if he were elected.
I really can't sleep.
You could be right Henry, but there seems to be tremendous inaccuracies on both sides. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of all of it before November 2nd, but not likely.
Until then, I'll chose the candidate I feel will be more apt to make positive strides. Right now, I feel it's not George Bush. Embracing his simplistic world views, and the application of catch phrases like "It's hard work", just doesn't cut it for me. After all, the terrorists also initially exploited Bush's passiveness. I personally didn't find My Pet goat to be that good a read. :p
Henry your 500 times more intelligent than both men combined. I just can't see someone with your intellect supporting a man who has assaulted the English language as badly as Dubya continues to do during his presidency.
Perhaps it is all of us who will suffer the 10 years it will take for you to qualify to run. It's a damn shame we are reduced to picking the "lesser of 2 evils". God I hate admitting that! Either way, I weap for my children's future.
Many of you talk that kerry isnt qualified to be president.Enlighten us all and tell us what qualifies w to be president?Was it his ng service or his being gov of texas or was it that he raised a lot of money?Bill Uconn,I know many people who opt not to take insurance because the need to buy groceries and pay the rent or heat.JFM,I'm glad you have never been screwed by your employer.I have,HARD!The thanks I got for working hard and making sure the machinery stayed running was a big pay cut.It had nothing to do with the economics of the plant,it was just because they could.Unions are still needed in this country.To be fair,Bush looked better tonight but Kerry also looked better as well.Kerry did a better job.
Buck, First off, I would like to profoundly thank you for your military service during such a turbulent time in our Nation's History. It's clear that you served honorably and heroically. From reading your post, I would empathetically agree with the reasons for your bitterness towards Sen. Kerry.
You are right in the sense that most people can't relate to being a soldier under the extreme conditions you endured. I for one, being a veteran during a relatively peaceful time, certainly am not able to.
However, I would tend to agree with Henry in regards to questioning the military pasts of both candidates. Yes Kerry did make his military service an issue in his campaign, but to a lesser extent so did Bush.
Although I do find that Kerry's postwar activities were questionable, the mere fact that Bush had difficulties fulfilling his cushy Air Guard obligations tends to equally annoy me.
In my humble view, niether candidate served as admirably as you did, Buck. In fact, from what my father told me about the infastructure of the Air Guard and service in general at the time, they didn't even come close.
I just find the Swift Boat for Truth gentleman to be rather farcical. They consist of people with an agenda mostly motivated by their anger over Kerry's post-service protest of the war, and their own skewed ideology.
The group is for the most part funded by long-time Republican donors, and their leaders have a history of radical partisanship. Many have completely contradicted their own past statements in their complaints about Kerry.
Their methods are completely different; rather than presenting facts, they present alleged eyewitness stories from people who didn't know Kerry particularly well and didn't serve on his boat. Their stories conflict with those of all of Kerry's actual crewmates and official Naval records.
These are unqualified, biased people making things up to smear Kerry, and the only "evidence" they give is their word. To me this reeks of a conflict of interest! The president did in fact condemn the negative ads they produced as well.
With all due respect Buck, I wouldn't suscribe to their rubish anymore than I would a flawed CBS story. While I deeply admire and appreciate the contributions you made to keep all of us free, we should attempt to stick to the issues affecting us today.
Buck: I too want to thank you for your service, and you're right...nobody can gather the true sentiments of the Vietnam era out of a book.
My personal qualms are in ridiculing any politican's service. Now, what I really detest is Kerry's actions AFTER Vietnam...I felt they were treasonous and extremely counter-productive.
Spunfisher said:Henry your 500 times more intelligent than both men combined.
I Don't think so....if that were true then you and Baitrunner would be debating on TV right now. I feel you guys grasp alot of what is at stake, along with John from Madison, Spin, NU2SALT, and Buck.
We gotta meet up and go fishing sometime...I wanna catch my first salmon on a fly rod.
More than a dozen species of salmon in the Columbia and Snake River basins are at risk of extinction. One would think that these fish - culturally significant to Indian tribes and commercially valuable to a large regional fishing industry - could get a break. But they can't. A recovery plan devised by the Clinton administration was tossed out in 2003 by a federal judge who found its recommendations too speculative and ordered the Bush administration to draw up a better one. The Bush plan may be worse.
True, the administration proposes technological fixes to help fish over and around the Columbia and Snake River dams. Yet its habitat protections are no stronger and, worse, it removes from future consideration the idea of breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River - an option the Clinton plan held in reserve in case all other measures failed. Finally, in a bizarre misreading of the Endangered Species Act, it abandons salmon recovery as the goal of federal policy and asserts, in so many words, that its only legal obligation is to keep the current rate of decline from getting any worse.
Salmon seem especially disadvantaged by this administration's tendency to bend science and the law to its political agenda. Despite a huge fish kill in the lower Klamath River in Oregon in 2002, attributed by many scientists to federal irrigation policies that robbed fish of the water flows they needed, the Interior Department has yet to produce a plausible long-term plan to redistribute scarce water in a manner that satisfies all claimants.
And earlier this year, the administration proposed to count hatchery-raised salmon in its assessments of wild salmon populations. This mathematical commingling ignores crucial differences between wild and manufactured fish. But it would instantly make wild salmon populations look healthier than they are and give federal agencies a green light to lift protections against commercial activities in the watersheds where wild salmon spawn.
The decline of the once-abundant wild salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest ranks high on any list of environmental blunders. Despite recent healthy salmon runs, the result of unusually favorable weather and ocean conditions, the trend line for many wild salmon species is still downward. It will not be easy to turn this around. It will be harder still if the federal government ignores its obligations.
It's a damn shame we are reduced to picking the "lesser of 2 evils". God I hate admitting that! Either way, I weap for my children's future.
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