The Next President

[beer good]

Huckleberry?

Nah, the current one.

 

[sparkchaser]

Nah, the current one.

Who? Rove?


This Presidential election will indeed be one to watch. Definitely be sure to watch for news about voting irregularities with regards to these new electronic voting machines. *cough*Diebold*cough*

 

[BeerWench13]

Personally, I'm leaning toward Obama. He is a very well-spoken man and, since he doesn't have a huge amount of experience in politics, in my opinion, that means he's been less tarnished by corruption. Naturally I could be wrong about this, but I'm tired of people who are lifelong politicians. I don't want a politician for President. I want someone with new ideals and the ability to do what they think needs to be done without destroying the reputation of the U.S. in the rest of the world, or, more importantly, actually destroying the rest of the world. I also seem to agree with a great deal of his political agenda (at least what is known to the public).

I can't say that I'd vote for Clinton. Not because she's a woman. In fact, that's really the only reason I would consider her, but because she talks out of both sides of her mouth and, in the end, I believe would set a precedent that would inhibit any more-qualified women from ever being elected.

Just my two cents (not sure it's even worth that ).

 

[SFG75]

I've been a life long democrat and have supported the party in past years. For some reason, I just don't have a lot of faith in them regarding a number of things. I don't think any of the presidential candidates could lead the military to victory in Afghanistan or Iraq, let alone lead the military in the first place. I like Ron Paul, whose libertarian philosophy is more to my liking. He would shrink the size of government and he has a great position on education, especially on homeschooling. I would also support Huckabee, though his church-state views are a bit too rigid for me. I do like the idea of a national sales tax and abolishing the IRS. He also has a good view on abortion and he would be an honest and sincere president.

 

[Sybarite]

An email currently doing the rounds.

RESUME

GEORGE W BUSH

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE :

Law Enforcement:

I was arrested in Kennebunkport , Maine , in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

Military:

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam .

College:

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for US Congress and lost.

I began my career in the oil business in Midland Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.

With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas .

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:

I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.

I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became president of the United States, after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week .

I spent the US surplus and effectively bankrupted the US Treasury.

I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in US history.

I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the US stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues.

I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any admini stration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire", Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a US President.

I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history, Enron.

My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the US Supreme Court during my election decision.

I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

I presided over the biggest energy crisis in US history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

I presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history.

I changed the US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I appointed more convicted criminals to my administration than any President in US history.

I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.

I've broken more international treaties than any president in US history.

I am the first President in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

I withdrew the US from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspector's access to US "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US election).

I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.

I garnered the most sympathy ever for the US after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the US the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest against me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.

I am the first President in US history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of US citizens and the world community.

I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families in wartime.

In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.

I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.

I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review. I specified that my sealed documents will not be available for 50 years.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

 

[Motokid]

Please keep this in mind. Especially you Democrats when voting in the Primaries.

WASHINGTON - Forty percent of Americans have never lived when there wasn't a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. Anyone got a problem with that?

With Hillary Rodham Clinton hoping to tack another four or eight "Clinton" years on to the Bush-Clinton-Bush presidential pattern that already has held sway for two decades, talk of Bush-Clinton fatigue is increasingly cropping up in the national political debate.

The dominance of the two families in U.S. presidential politics is unprecedented. (The closest comparisons are the father-son presidencies of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, whose single terms were separated by 24 years, and the presidencies of fifth cousins Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, whose collective 20 years as president were separated by a quarter-century.)

"We now have a younger generation and middle-age generation who are going to think about national politics through the Bush-Clinton prism," said Princeton University political historian Julian Zelizer, 37, whose first chance to vote for president was 1988, the year the first President Bush was elected. And as for the question of fatigue, Zelizer added: "It's not just that we've heard their names a lot, but we've had a lot of problems with their names."

And now, if Hillary Clinton were to be elected and re-elected, the nation could go 28 years in a row with the same two families governing the country. Add the elder Bush's terms as vice president, and that would be 36 years straight with a Bush or Clinton in the White House.

Already, for 116 million Americans, there has never been a time when there wasn't a Bush or Clinton in the White House, either as president or vice president.

Does a nation of 303 million people really have only two families qualified to run the show?

 

[sparkchaser]

I saw this on Jeepforum yesterday. Interesting that it comes from a Canadian.

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=197547

Democrat or Republican? The question is shockingly easy

Theo Caldwell, National Post (Canada) Wednesday
December 26, 2007

An obvious choice can be unnerving. When the apparent perfection of one option or the unspeakable awfulness of another makes a decision seem too easy, it is human nature to become suspicious.

This instinct intensifies as the stakes of the given choice are raised. American voters know no greater responsibility to their country and to the world than to select their president wisely. While we do not yet know who the Democrat and Republican nominees will be, any combination of the leading candidates from either party will make for the most obvious choice put to American voters in a generation. To wit, none of the Democrats has any business being president.

This pronouncement has less to do with any apparent perfection among the Republican candidates than with the intellectual and experiential paucity evinced by the Democratic field. "Not ready for prime time," goes the vernacular, but this does not suffice to describe how bad things are. Alongside Hillary Clinton, add Barack Obama's kindergarten essays to an already confused conversation about Dennis Kucinich's UFO sightings, dueling celebrity endorsements and who can be quickest to retreat from America's global conflict and raise taxes on the American people, and it becomes clear that these are profoundly unserious individuals.

To be sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish and rhubarb on the Republican side (Ron Paul, call your office), but even a cursory review of the legislative and professional records of the leading contenders from each party reveals a disparity akin to adults competing with children..

For the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani served as a two-term mayor of New York City, turning a budgetdeficit into a surplus and taming what was thought to be an ungovernable metropolis. Prior to that, he held the third-highest rank in the Reagan Justice Department, obtaining over 4,000 convictions. Mitt Romney, before serving as governor of Massachusetts, founded a venture capital firm that created billions of dollars in shareholder value, and he then went on to save the Salt Lake City Olympics.

While much is made of Mike Huckabee's history as a Baptist minister, he was also a governor for more than a decade and, while Arkansas is hardly a "cradle of presidents," it has launched at least one previous chief executive to national office. John McCain's legislative and military career spans five decades, with half that time having been spent in the Congress. Even Fred Thompson, whose excess of nonchalance has transformed his once-promising campaign into nothing more than a theoretical possibility, has more experience in the U.S. Senate than any of the leading Democratic candidates.

With just over one term as a Senator to her credit, Hillary Clinton boasts the most extensive record of the potential Democratic nominees. In that time, Senator Clinton cannot claim a single legislative accomplishment of note, and she is best known lately for requesting $1-million from Congress for a museum to commemorate Woodstock.

Barack Obama is nearing the halfway point of his first term in the Senate, having previously served as an Illinois state legislator and, as Clinton has correctly pointed out, has done nothing but run for president since he first arrived in Washington. Between calling for the invasion of Pakistan and fumbling a simple question on driver's licenses for illegal aliens, Obama has shown that he is not the fellow to whom the nation ought to hike the nuclear football.

John Edwards, meanwhile, embodies the adage that the American people will elect anyone to Congress -- once. From his $1,200 haircuts to his personal war on poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his 28,000-square-foot home, purchased with the proceeds of preposterous lawsuits exploiting infant cerebral palsy, Edwards is living proof that history can play out as tragedy and farce simultaneously.

Forget for a moment all that you believe about public policy. Discard your notions about taxes and Iraq, free trade and crime, and consider solely the experience of these two sets of candidates. Is there any serious issue that you would prefer to entrust to a person with the Democrats' experience, rather than that of any of the Republicans?

Now consider the state of debate in each party. While the Republicans compare tax proposals and the best way to prosecute the War on Terror, Democrats are divining the patterns and meaning of the glitter and dried macaroni glued to the page of one of their leading candidate's kindergarten projects.

Does this decision not become unsettlingly simple?

 

[SFG75]

I'm just amazed at how wide open the republican nomination is. They've had three winners in three states so far, which is absolutely unheard of. Now that Romney has won Michigan, he'll be the talking-head favorite flavor of the week.

 

[sparkchaser]

I'm just amazed at how wide open the republican nomination is. They've had three winners in three states so far, which is absolutely unheard of. Now that Romney has won Michigan, he'll be the talking-head favorite flavor of the week.

To me that just means that there is nobody that really sticks out to the voters.

Hillary barely won 55% for her vs. 40% uncommitted.

The Democrats and Republicans both have the same problem: nobody is standing out.

 

[Litany]

TThe Democrats and Republicans both have the same problem: nobody is standing out.

I don't know about that. Huckabee is sticking out like a sore thumb.

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Nice.

 

[sparkchaser]

You got me there.

 

[Litany]

I don't envy anyone having to choose from that bunch. I'd have a hard time finding the one I hated least. Not that I'm particularly impressed with my own options over here, but the US election is helping me see the silver lining.

 

[Sybarite]

I don't know about that. Huckabee is sticking out like a sore thumb.



Nice.

Aren't we all supposed to be in a war on fundamentalist fruitbats?

I don't envy anyone having to choose from that bunch. I'd have a hard time finding the one I hated least. Not that I'm particularly impressed with my own options over here, but the US election is helping me see the silver lining.

It's not brilliant over here, no. And there is a frightening (IMO) amount of religious influence going on government. It's visible in planned legislation such as the bill On possession of extreme pornography, the consultation document for which is a perfect illustration of ideology overcoming reason and logic (religion and extremist feminism, I should say, in this case, and in the suggestion of criminalising men who visit prostitutes). Last year, when we were watching various religious groups – but the Catholic church in particular – attempt to squirm out of anti-discrimination legislation (because religious groups should be allowed legally to discriminate homophobically), I discovered that my local MP was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ruth Kelly, who couldn't hardly make up her mind between her duty as an elected MP and a minister of state, and her religious views. I presume she had to wear her spiky garter belt a little longer than usual.

 

[SFG75]

Looks like Hillary had a good weekend in Nevada. I doubt Obama can pull it off at this point. Charisma only goes so far, you have to be seen to have "substance" behind your ideals. So far, he's proving to be another Gary Hart in that regard, minus the monkey business. I will say that I'm quite shocked that McCain won South Carolina. Since 1980, the winner of S.C. has won the GOP nomination. I didn't know the old war horse had it in him!.

 

[Leyland]

I will say that I'm quite shocked that McCain won South Carolina. Since 1980, the winner of S.C. has won the GOP nomination. I didn't know the old war horse had it in him!.

Perhaps it is precisely that McCain is an 'old war horse' that he made it through. McCain is certainly a proven former military leader and may be the man best suited as commander-in-chief at least for the next four years. He sounds like he'll try to make good on economic and other domestic issues as well. Romney - a bit too Mormon and Huckleberry - a bit too Baptist. Maybe Mac the Maverick will ride in to the rescue! Anybody got a white charger they can loan to the man?

 

[beer good]

Anybody got a white charger they can loan to the man?

I'm not sure a man of his advanced age should be encouraged to ride horses...

 

[ylris611203]

John McCain because he is conservative.

 

[BeerWench13]

John McCain because he is conservative

I don't understand the big "conservative" trend in the U.S. Perhaps it's because I'm not a religious person and feel that religion and politics should not influence one another other than the law allowing the freedom to worship as you choose. Are there really that many right-wing folks in our country or are they just the ones who speak up about their beliefs?

I'm such a liberalist that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that there are those who want "big government" to tell them what to do in every aspect of their life. However, my impression of "conservativism" may be flawed.

 

[ylris611203]

I don't understand the big "conservative" trend in the U.S. Perhaps it's because I'm not a religious person and feel that religion and politics should not influence one another other than the law allowing the freedom to worship as you choose. Are there really that many right-wing folks in our country or are they just the ones who speak up about their beliefs?

I'm such a liberalist that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that there are those who want "big government" to tell them what to do in every aspect of their life. However, my impression of "conservativism" may be flawed.

I'm not from the US. But John McCain will be your best choice whoever comes up against him.

For ten years we have had to put up with, a 'younger inexperienced labour' politician who became Prime Minister and made a complete mess of our country.

Mrs Thatcher was one of the countries best Prime Ministers, but she did not follow in the wake of Mr Thatcher.

 

[sparkchaser]

I don't understand the big "conservative" trend in the U.S. Perhaps it's because I'm not a religious person and feel that religion and politics should not influence one another other than the law allowing the freedom to worship as you choose. Are there really that many right-wing folks in our country or are they just the ones who speak up about their beliefs?

I'm such a liberalist that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that there are those who want "big government" to tell them what to do in every aspect of their life. However, my impression of "conservativism" may be flawed.

There's a book that explains this. it's called What's the matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. It is a must read.