Fear mongering

[imported_Chuck Weinstock]

[ QUOTE ]
President Bush is urging Florida seniors to reject what he calls John Kerry's "politics of fear."

At a rally in The Villages, a Florida retirement community, the president said Kerry's trying to scare people into thinking he'll privatize Social Security in a second term, and that it will mean a cut in benefits. WOKR Florida (http://tinyurl.com/4gpzj)

[/ QUOTE ]



[ QUOTE ]
Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the threat of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear or other weapons as he began a bus tour through Republican strongholds in Ohio two weeks before the election.

Cheney defended President Bush's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and questioned whether Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was up to the challenge of combating such a threat.

"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us - biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans," Cheney said. MiamiHerald.com (http://tinyurl.com/44xax)

[/ QUOTE ]

[vulturesrow]

Do you think that Cheney was wrong in his assessment of our greatest threat?

On the other hand you have the Kerry campaign who has:

Tried to scare young voters with the nonexistent threat of a draft.

Tried to scare senior citizens with the false threat that Bush was going to take away their benefits.

Tried to scare black Americans with the false threat of voter suppression.

Politics of fear seems a pretty apt description of the Kerry campaign right now.

[imported_Chuck Weinstock]

I purposely posted these without comment because I think that both campaigns are using the politics of fear. However, I think that Cheney's offense is much much worse than Kerry's. Yes, the threat of a terrorist attack in our cities is important. But I don't for a minute think that Bush/Cheney can make us safer against such attacks than Kerry/Edwards. And if Cheney think they can given their past performance he is deluding himself.

[Nepa]

Nothing like a pokerplayer setting a trap.

I do agree with you. Cheney is out of line and has been for months.

[wacki]

Cheney is out of line about what? Nukes? WMD's? Do you actually think the terrorists are ok taking out the 2 WTC's which held 50,000 innocent people, but they aren't ok using a nuke?

[vulturesrow]

[ QUOTE ]
I purposely posted these without comment because I think that both campaigns are using the politics of fear. However, I think that Cheney's offense is much much worse than Kerry's. Yes, the threat of a terrorist attack in our cities is important. But I don't for a minute think that Bush/Cheney can make us safer against such attacks than Kerry/Edwards. And if Cheney think they can given their past performance he is deluding himself.

[/ QUOTE ]

The difference is that the threat Cheney outlined is not an untrue claim and for better or worse, has become a central issue in this election. Should he not make the administration's case in this regard? On the other hand, you have Kerry using outright falsehood to scare votes up for himself. I think that is far worse.

[PITTM]

there have been many many reports of voter suppression. bush took us to war in iraq based on threats of imminent attack by weapons of mass destruction. would you rather have people use scare tactics to get us to vote or use scare tactics to get us to go to war?

rj

[PITTM]

there werent, and still arent any nukes in iraq, unless we brought some with us...

rj

[adios]

You didn't address his point. He wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
Do you actually think the terrorists are ok taking out the 2 WTC's which held 50,000 innocent people, but they aren't ok using a nuke?

[/ QUOTE ]

If al Qaeda had a nuke they wouldn't hesitate to use it. Both candidates agreed during the second debate that nuclear proliferation was the biggest issue regarding terrorism.

[nothumb]

Kerry is right about suppressing the black vote. It was done with great success in 2000 and will be done again this year.

As for a draft, Bush has repeatedly denied it, and the specific scare-mongering from some internet folks (regarding the bill introduced by a Democrat and subsequently killed) glosses over its purpose, which was to draw attention to who is actually fighting this war. However, Bush will not be able to carry out his military agenda without major military expansion. Period. He will either have to pay soldiers 100 grand a year or have a draft. Or lose.

As a soldier, how do you feel about Bush trying to cut combat pay for troops currently on the ground in Iraq? I think you know that I'm not asking this to be snide. I'm very serious.

NT

[natedogg]

If only Bush WOULD promise to privatize social security I'd actually vote for him.

Privatizing SS is the best possible turn of events with that failed program, other than phasing it out entirely.

natedogg

[Chris Alger]

"But I don't for a minute think that Bush/Cheney can make us safer against such attacks than Kerry/Edwards."

True, but they can probably make us less safe if the voters fail to cooperate. One can never entirely discount threats by the powerful.

For example, let's say Bush loses and then gets a classified report warning "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," hands it back unread and heads off for his ranch. Probably just my paranoia....

[wacki]

The military has no problem making it's recruitment needs, and reenlistment is high.

Did those cuts actually go through? I'm curious, because I don't know, but it's looks like they didn't.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/08/14/MN94780.DTL

And how do you suppress the black vote? How do you scare a man that lives in the ghetto from going into a voting booth?

[nothumb]

Chris -

If I said I thought we should rape Cris Brown's 12-year-old daughter, but then somebody stopped me, would that make me less of a scumbag? (To resuscitate a wildly popular rhetorical device.)

I think you're dodging the issue, which isn't something you usually do.

Good question about scaring a black guy. If I was going to do it, I'd probably just have an independent company wipe him off the voting rolls beforehand, just in case he made it down there.

NT

[lastchance]

People react to fear. You threaten a guy's kids, or his income and he's going to react. If someone can see a direct correlation between a threat to his kids and who becomes President, that person will vote, and same if he believed he could get more food or a better job because of it.

People can be complicated, but they do react very strongly to fear of things that are very important to them. Shortstacked people go all-in multiple times, and they really need and want every edge they get on things that matter to them. Basics. Very simple stuff a lot of us take for granted, but I'm willing to fight tooth and nail for it, and so are most people.

[wacki]

Agreed, but how much much of the suppression of the black vote is documented? Where is the proof that it went on? I find it very hard to believe that you can implement this on a vast scale without making atleast some kind of errors and leave proof behind. Where are the witnesses/plaintiffs? I would think the NYT and CBS would be all over this. Have they covered this? Or is this just another conspiracy theory?

[nothumb]

Did you watch the 2000 election? What does Bush have to do for his party to be held responsible for this? Go around beating black people up himself?

Seriously, there have been a lot of dirty tricks that benefited nobody but Bush (i.e. McCain in SC during the primaries) but that he vehemently denies involvement in. It stinks. And his closest people have a long history of the same tactics.

I just wish you guys would acknowledge that he's at the very least letting these things be done in his name. It's not like the other guys don't do ridiculous things too. But for some reason people want to pretend that racist political tricks are a thing of the past. They aren't.

NT

[wacki]

OK I found it, NYT did cover this. They are called ''ballot integrity'' programs. I can't read the whole article though... costs $$$$.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30615F8385F0C7B8DDDAD0894DC4044 82

[The once and future king]

The voter:

To cynical for dreams but gullible enough for nightmares.

[GWB]

Say, could you convince some more Brit papers to tell us how to vote? That whole thing is starting to work out great for me over here. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[vulturesrow]

Thats funny because the US Civil Rights commission was unable to find a single incident of voter suppression in the 2000 election in Florida.