It's interesting reading both points of view on this. Bush supporters thought it was great that he listed the reasons for the Iraq War.

By the way you just toss off the statement, "misadventure in Iraq", you apparently don't agree with his reasons.

I don't know for sure what I think should have been done. I do believe Saddam was not a good ruler and that he deserved everything that happened. As President, I assume Bush has a lot more information about things than I do. It's his job. So I support what he did.

As for the tax breaks for the rich. I find your (apparent) view to be mushy, feel-good thinking. "Tax the rich more! They have more money than I do! It's not fair!" Bah!

What do the rich people _do_ with their money, huh? They spend it or invest it. What does it do then? It goes into the economy and everybody gets some. The rich want their money to grow, so they invest it where it will grow the economy. When the government spends it, the money goes to whatever politicians think will get them more votes.

An article I read recently (conservative, of course) made a very good case for not giving more money to the government. Private spending and investing grows the economy and reacts more flexibly to changing conditions. Government is very inflexible, always spends more money, and is very inefficient compared to private companies.

I believe all charities should be privately financed or done at the State level, at most. It isn't the Federal government's job, and the Constitution actually forbids it. (Not that anyone Democrat or Republican seems to care anymore.)

Hah. Next time you're at a Dean rally, see if you can ask him if he really believes in enforcing the Constitution, like the Presidents oath of office requires. He'll say yes, but if he can agree to this line of reasoning which is the basis of aurhority for the 1968 Gun Control Act, then I say he's either a liar or an idiot. "Gun shootings create an unsafe environment for children. Children can't learn in an unsafe environment. Uneducated children can't contribute to interstate commerce. The Constitution gives us the power to regulate interstate commerce."

Most of federal law is written like that. You can justify _anything_ if you put enough steps in to get from wherever to "interstate commerce." And if you can use all those steps to justify any law you like, then what was the point of writing a Constitution that limits the power of the Federal government and gives the rest of the power to the states and the people?

As for the rest of it, Bush is conservative. What seems to surprise a lot of people is that he's honestly conservative and not anxious to compromise when he doesn't have to. Because of that, his supporters love him and his enemies really hate him.

As for me, I don't think Bush is perfect. I don't think Dean would do much better. It would still be bigger government, more interference in our lives, and more taxes. Dean might lower taxes on the "middle class" but I'm sure he'd love to raise them on corporations which sell to the middle class, which is just another way of raising taxes.

Whew! What a rant! I don't mean any of it personally, by the way. Don't take it that way.

"I don't know for sure what I think should have been done. I do believe Saddam was not a good ruler and that he deserved everything that happened. As President, I assume Bush has a lot more information about things than I do. It's his job. So I support what he did."

I would also assume Bush has more access to information than I do. (At least I would hope so.) However, unlike you, I don't necessarily trust his intentions. World history has proven that time and again, leaders of many countries have been willing to lie and deceive the populace in order to convince them to go to war. The evidence so far would indicate that this case is no exception.

Was it a good thing that Saddam Hussein was caught? Of course. You'd be hard pressed to find any American who would argue otherwise. The question we should be asking is: Was it worth the price?

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers have died, thousands wounded, countless Iraqis killed, houses raided, bombs detonated, and a country destabilized. So I would say no, it wasn't worth it. "Misadventure" is an understatement.

As for whether the rich should be taxed more or less, it's a discussion we've already had, so I'm hard pressed to think of something to say that wouldn't just be repeating what I or others have already said on this site earlier.

This time, since you make the argument for supply side economics, I'll go with the tack that putting more money in the pockets of poor people is arguably more effective at stimulating the economy, because a poor person will be more likely to spend it immediately on tangible goods, whereas a rich person would be more likely to sit on the money for a while. If they invest it in the stock market, it might eventually make it around to creating a job for somebody, although the poorest of the working poor (i.e. Walmart employees) are least likely to benefit from it because of corporations' mandate to maximize profit (as opposed to putting money into worker benefits or raises).

Either way, whether by government or large corporations, it ends up going through a bureaucracy. To quote you:

"When the government spends it, the money goes to whatever politicians think will get them more votes."

That is the biggest reason I would use to argue in favor of having the government spend the money. Flawed as it is, an elected government does have a mandate to convince voters that their money is being put to good use. Voters means everybody, or at least it should, provided there is good voter turnout.

By contrast, a corporation's only mandate is to maximize profits for its stockholders, who, in many unfortunate cases, never once come into contact with those who are actually turning the nuts and bolts of the company. Even stockholders who might care how workers are treated, or whether waste is dumped into rivers and oceans, are kept ignorant because they never come within 1000 miles of the businesses they "own". They are only told about the numbers; the methods employed to get those numbers is kept far from their view.

Next topic.

The 1968 Gun control act.

"Gun shootings create an unsafe environment for children. Children can't learn in an unsafe environment. Uneducated children can't contribute to interstate commerce. The Constitution gives us the power to regulate interstate commerce."

That is, of course, very screwy logic. A slightly more coherent version might go something like this (that's not to say I'm in favor of it): "Gun shootings create an unsafe environment for children. An unsafe environment for children is bad for the general welfare. The Constitution grants congress the power to 'provide the common defense and general welfare of the United States'. Therefore, this law is constitutional." (2nd amendment issues aside.)

I have no idea what a court would do with that argument.

But yes, I would agree that the constitution framers intended for most laws to be implemented at a state level except in matters where it was impractical for states to act alone. Obviously, that has been twisted to a huge degree. As to whether this is, on balance, a good thing, I have mixed feelings.

Sometimes, in certain cases, the federal government protects people from the tyranny of individual states. A prime example of this would be the Civil Rights Act. In other cases, such as legalization of medical marijuana (or any drugs, for that matter), the federal government has acted as its own sort of tyranny over the states (oddly, whenever republicans talk about states' rights, they never seem to mention their own party's transgressions on this issue). It's a tricky balance that has erred increasingly toward more federal power.

Anyway, you made a good rant. I think I'll conclude mine as well now.

While Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator, at least he provided one thing: he held his country together, even though the means were wrong. There is no way anyone is going to be able to hold Iraq together without some kind of military force, so basically even after the country is rebuilt, someone is going to have to occupy it indefinitely or it will end up like Afganistan did. So whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct morally or not, the practical implications are going to be significant down the road.

But the biggest reason I was opposed to the war was because WE were starting a war of aggression. Maybe it was for good reasons, but it opens a door for our country that will be difficult to close. There's so many countries out there with evil dictators, are we going to go and install new governments by force in all of them? And if not, that's pretty hypocritical to just go after one guy.

I don't know Bush's true reasons for ordering an invasion, maybe it was just stubbornness that he might be wrong. But whatever the reason, I haven't heard any justification that make starting a war of agression worth it.

I'm not entirely sure that Bush is "conservative" -- and I'm not the only one. A new term has been developed, "neocon" (neo-conservative).

I think the basic difference between a conservative and a neocon is this: conservatives follow a philosophy of small government, limited international interference, lower taxes, and regulation only at lower levels of government. Neocons, having realized that government may never be small, transform the government itself from a public institution to serve the people, to a public institution to serve the few. Hardly a "neo" idea, but it's only now being realized on a massive scale here.

In my never-to-be-humble-opinion, I think the one and only reason Bush went to war in Iraq is oil. There simply is no other reason, whatsoever.

Also, you might say that conservatives spend less. Neocons actually spend more. Bush has been (counting inflation) the world's biggest spender. No leader of any nation has spent more money. Much of that spending is in the form of bailouts (such as United Airlines) of private corporations.

So in the end, the difference between George W. Bush and a 100% socialist is minimal: The socialist will have government take over industry, the neocon will have industry take over government.

Bush may be many things, but conservative, in its traditional American sense, is not one of them.

I just wanted to highlight one sentence bouncing wrote, which manages to sum up the difference between socialism and corporate capitalism (or neo-conservatism, if you prefer that term) in the most succinct way I think I've ever heard:

"The socialist will have government take over industry, the neocon will have industry take over government."

Which is exactly what has been happening under the Bush regime. Well put.

MSA's are a great idea, and I like that he brought some attention to them. As for the patriot act, he sounded like a "buy now!" commercial when he commanded us to support it - and that gave me chills.

http://www.bitscape.org/aquarium.pl?article_id=1498 the comment by Yanthor represents how ... excellent american consumers are. Did they offer him a great rate? who knows, but they do have 4958 shiny card designs. :)

I'm not exactly sure whether you are criticizing me or not. I didn't care about the rate because we don't carry credit card balances. We proudly pay it off every month and only use it because of the 1% cash back and because it allows for one easy way to consolidate our non-bills to see how much we spend each month.

Discovercard has a nice feature. It groups all its merchants into categories. So when you use Discovercard for gas, that charge shows up in the "Gas" section of your monthly bill. When you use it for groceries, that usage shows up in the "Grocery" section. This is something our checking account doesn't do, so it is handy to use Discovercard for everything, pay it off every month, and have an automatically categorized list of everything.