VOTE FOR BUSH, PEOPLE!

I am going to try to be objective as possible here. The media (centered in NY and L.A., two democratic strongholds) is very liberal. This is where everyone gets their news. What makes good news? Bad news. Good news doesn't really make 'good news.' The news, as we get it, is very distorted.

Bush should be held responsible for the situation in Iraq. So should his admistration, so should the Senate (which included John Kerry) that unanimously voted to go to war, the CIA, foreign countries from which we received bad intelligence.

The economy is fine. No matter how badly Democrats tell you it is, it is fine. I have an economics/business degree from college. This doesn't make me an authority on this but I have some sense what I'm talking about. The tech boom (NASDAQ) in the late Clinton Administration was so overspeculated and overhyped, I'm surprised we did not fall flatter on our faces. The DOW was over 11,000 and the NASDAQ over 5,000. The DOW was at 4,000 in 1995. People were throwing money away into these dot.coms that had no assets whatsoever but a web address.

So we started falling into a recession in 2001. Then 9/11. Boom! Tourism shot, travel/airline business decimated. Without major tax cuts and the promise of future personal and corporate tax cuts, investors would have been even more heavily discouraged. Thanks to tax cuts prospects and Greenspan cutting interest rates, we held our own for a while. Yes, this would eventually catch up to us, but it was necessary for the time being.

Never buy into this 50% of the tax cuts go to the top 1% of the nation's wealthiest. There is a little thing called the trickle-down theory which says tax cuts will result in more jobs for the middle class and lower classes. What good is raising taxes for the middle and lower classes with less jobs? All this Gore/Kerry rhetoric does is promote class warfare.

Technology, innovation is moving so fast, it is difficult for jobs to catch up. Unemployment is the same as it was in 1996. So, not bad.

Education has improved dramatically.

Health care, social security...well, those are a mess and have been a mess for a while and will be a mess no matter who is president.

I give this admistration an A- on the economy. Yes, jobs were lost. But, there have been so many factors over the past 4 years that have posed some of the biggest challenges ever for our economy. China opened up its world economy in 2000. So have India and Russia. That's 2 billion people right there. All of a sudden the world isn't as dependent on the U.S. anymore. This economic expansion drives up demand for oil. Oil prices go up. People bitch.

As far as Iraq, I am not pleased. We did well in Afghanistan in my opinion. We acted on poor intelligence. Mistakes are going to be made in any war. I wish Kerry would tell General Tommy Franks how poorly planned his war was instead of Bush because he probably had a lot more to do with that than Bush. Yes, it's a mess and it will be for a while. Only time will tell.

Terrorism- we're doing well I think. No more attacks here in the U.S. is good news to me. Ever since 9/11, terrorism has taken over the news- any news on that will never be good. UBL's latest videotape says it will target states that vote for Bush. He says they will be at peace with us if Bush is removed. Sure, UBL. I'll believe that one . What had Bush done in 2001 for us to deserve 9/11? Al-Qaeda wants Kerry to win.

Finally, this country is coming to a moral crossraods. So many people are apalled by Bush's moral bearings. I think a lot of these people in Hollywood and all of these rock starts have lost sight of the fact that half of this country is still religious. The good majority of these actors/ rock 'n rollers are not and they are trying to impose their liberal, traditionally amoral views and lifestyles through the media. It's backwards.

OK, I'll quit. Food for thought.

I actually thought Kerry would win to be honest. I respect the man despite disagreeing with him on issues. It's interesting how all these exit polls heavily favored Kerry. Wonder if there is a liberal bias there.

I've been looking at those county maps, too. It's amazing how the democratic party is really only rooted in urban areas. And where do we get our news?

As I've hinted before, one of my biggest beefs with this campaign was how many celebrities got involved. Considering how morals played into this election, they might have done more to hurt Kerry's campaign than help. People in the breadbasket states, midwest, and the southern Bible belt are by nature more conservative. Many of these people view these entertainers as godless, hedonistic liberals living charmed lives. Which is true in a lot of respects. These people don't realize how different their realities are from the rest of the country.

I was also disgusted how the media tried to manipulate this election. I think that may have turned off some voters too. When you have The New York Times, Washington Post, and magazines like Rolling Stone blatantly endorsing Kerry is sickening. Probably the most essential trait to have in journalism is being objective. That was clearly violated. I know in pretty much all past elections these publications have leaned one way, but they crossed the line this time.

The Democratic Party is in trouble. They are too divided amongst themselves to accomplish much of anything. Really the only uniting factor they had this election was disdain for Bush.

But, now that the election is over, I feel a huge weight has already been lifted off of this country's shoulders. I am already starting to feel this dissention dying down. Kerry and Bush both gave excellent concession and acceptance speeches, respectively. I thought the line about Bush thanking Kerry voters and how he has to earn their trust was great. Kerry was great, too. I am pleased.

Sleeping Beauty, how wrong you are. I can't claim to not come from a fairly well-off family. I went to a competitive, private high school. Yes, most people were by national standards, rich. But, a lot of us also worked our asses off in school. People went to some of the best colleges in the country and they are going to be well off as a result. Success is contagious. When you grow up around rich, successful people, there is an enormous pressure to do the same.

Some people do have everything handed to them. I've known people who jerked-off in school and wouldn't have amounted to crap and then go and work for their daddy's company and do well for themselves. But many of the born-rich people I know are some of the hardest-working people I've ever seen. It's unbelievable. They get out of college and work 80-90 hour weeks. And a lot of it's genetic. Their family didn't come off of the Mayflower like that. They earned it.

There is something called working class arrogance. People with lower paying jobs feel they are better than rich people because they have to work their asses off to keep their head above ground. They feel they've earned something special because they started out with nothing. I've seen it and it's just as bad as snobbery.

Your utopian dream is noble, Gavin D, but it is just a dream.

I can't claim to be poor and know what it feels like. OK, "better than" was a poor choice of words, I'll admit. But, it is an arrogance more like "resenment." My first jobs in high school, starting out at the bottom, there were people 20 years older than me, working the same job. They hated me from the start. They especially hated me after I came in and was a better employee. I have seen working class arrogance and know it's there. It's kind of like reverse discrimination. The likelihood of a rich, white person being accepted by a group of poor minorities is just as likely as a poor minority being accepted by a group of rich, white people. Argue all you want, but there is alot of truth to that.

I'll agree people born-rich have a head start. And the American Dream is not all it is cracked up to be. But, the secret to success isn't all that secret. If you can work hard enough in school and go to college and keep up the hard work, you will do well for yourself. A lot of school is what you make of it, despite if it is public or private, how good the facilities are or whatever. The problem is when few people around you don't have the ambition to go to college and have lower expectations of themselves, it rubs off on you. When you are not pushed to go to college, and your parents make you work every day after school since you are 15, it makes things harder. But, that doesn't mean there is no chance. Success is contagious and so is failure. I know it takes money to go to college but everybody has hurdles in life. Poorer people have more hurdles to overcome when it comes to making money, but there is always a chance. Some people aren't born with innate smarts. It's harder. But, by your rationale, people with natural high intelligence also have a silver spoon.

Gavin, good point about the U.S. and liberalism vs. land per capita. It's no secret here that urban areas are more Democratic, largely for reasons you pointed out and because of higher minority concentrations, which overwhelmingly vote Democratic. That also explains why the Northeastern U.S. is much more liberal. People who live in the midwest/breadbasket states (Nebraska, Kansas) aren't exposed to what people in New Jersey or Massachusetts are. You're not going to find a large minority population in buttf*ck Alabama. Minorities are concentrated in urban areas as are gay populations. People who are gay tend to flock to cities where diversity is concentrated and more tolerated, hence the so-called "Gay Meccas" like San Francisco, New York City, and Miami.

Europe just has so much more history than the U.S., full of conflict and war, church corruption, that you are just over a lot of the issues that face Americans. Seperation of church and state is in our Consitution, so we haven't faced the corruption like many of Europe's past governments, and a lot of people have remained religious. You all have seen it all. I don't mean to say the U.S. is behind Europe, we just face different problems and issues. The socialism/meritocracy you espouse could never be feasible in the U.S. where farmers in Iowa could give a rat's ass about poverty on city streets. The U.S. is "the land of opportunity", so a lot of people (republicans mainly) believe that people are personally responsible for their successes and failures.

Interesting little point, one of my best friends that I grew up with in Tennessee was the biggest Democrat I knew. He then went to college in California and came back a huge Republican because, as he put it, "I realized how stupid being a liberal Democrat was." He said there were just non-stop protests on campus about animal rights, the environment, and other crap. The people were just so extreme, he found them much more revolting than any religious zealot he ever met.

Lost track of what this thread was even about. Later

I said separation of church and state is in our constitution. Never said politicians couldn't be religious. We have never had people here forcing others to accept their religion or denomination a la Henry VIII or the Nazis. i think that has a lot to do with why people have remained religious here.

I have more respect for George Bush who has the balls to wear his religion on his sleeve than John Kerry who completely feigned his devotion with his "i was an altar boy growing up" crap. I saw right through that. The guy is a once-a-year Christmas Catholic, and it was a piss-poor attempt to attract Christians.

Mixing religion and politics is dangerous ground in politics, even in the U.S. You are just as likely to turn off voters as you are to attract them. The thing with this election is that nobody really loved John Kerry, the only thing that united Democrats was their hate of Bush and opposition to the war. John Kerry was THE most liberal member of the Senate and I think a lot of people were worried his presidency could compromise traditional Christian values, not Christianity. They felt more comfortable with Bush.

People blow Bush's faith and politics way out of proportion. Opponents threaten that he will appoint conservative Supreme Court judges and have Roe v. Wade overturned. Total scare tactics. He really only talks about it when confronted about it, which the media likes to do all the time. I think Christian values influence his agenda, but religion doesn't pass legislation in Washington. It is very easy to associate values with religion, because what are considered to be traditional values, right vs. wrong, are dictated in the The Bible, the Torah, the Koran, etc. Christian values of right and wrong, the Ten Commandmentsand such, coincide with the general population's concept of right and wrong. So, if you want to say his faith influences his politics, I guess you have an argument.

Bush is not going to come out and say he supports stem-cell research, partial-birth abortions, and gay marriage because he doesn't, but if Congress passes bills in support of any of these (stem-cell research is probably the only one that could be passed any time soon), he is not going to veto it. Most Americans are against partial-birth abortions and gay marriage so he can oppose those all he wants for now. When stem-cell research came up 2 or 3 years ago, it was such a new issue, I think people just took the conservative route to ban it for the time being.

I know people can argue against this. Whatever.