I loved Bush

[thatpfunk]

Well, not exactly. However, 3 years ago, after 9-11, I was happy with GWB as a president.

Alot of the time in this forum we get into a lot of arguments and some of the cons claim the libs are hateful towards GWB. Personally, this was not the case at all. I was not happy that GWB won the election, to be honest. However, up until after 9-11 I had no major problems with him. After the tragedy I thought he had dealt with things well; he appeared strong, assertive, etc.

As time passed and we went to war, etc etc etc, I grew to dislike his policies more and more. I now dislike him enough that you could say I hate him.

This post is pretty pointless, but I would be interested to hear any other liberals opinions. I hope some of the cons would understand though, that it is not GWB (the person) that I hate, it is the choices that he has made after the most horrible moment in our nations's history that have made me hate him.

[iraise50]

I really like your avatar. It is one of my favorite paintings ever. Very passionate and intense.

On to your post...I'm a conservative. I wish we had a different president, though. Kerry and Dean both wouldn't have bene good presodents...to be honest, there aren't many people who I think would be. Rudy Giuliani, I would certianly vote for him. McCain. Bob Kerry, from Nebraska. A Democrat former Navy Seal and Medal of Honor winner. Maybe Edwards...but he looks to game show hosty for me, all style no substance type of appearance. I would have to learn more about him.

I agree, in part, with your assesment. I was in NYC, one of the people that actually went through the WTC scene. I saw the people jumping wit hmy own eyes, and as much as I'm sure it bothered those of you that watched it on tv, losing some friends and your business in the attacks along with watching people fall/jump out...well it really sucked to be there witnessing it. When GWB came to town and was trying to help, I was touched. I wanted those responsible to be brought to justice.
Why do we spend millions and can't find Osama?
Why aren't the Saudis who finance this stuff busted?
We got Saddam! Oh...he wasn't a major player in terrorism was he? I'm not saying he's a choir boy...but...holy crap man, let's go get some terrorists. The hard core ones...we have some highly trained and effective military. Use them.
Leave Afghanistan.
Leave Iraq.
Domestic issues need help. Instead of legislating bedroom activities, we have 100,000 homeless people in NYC alone. Our national debt is horrific. Our trade policies are profound in thier stupidity. Poker is illegal in some states. WE HAVE WORK TO DO PEOPLE.

One thing I have to say to liberal demonatrators/protestors. Don't lay down in the middle of the street pouring ketchup in your shirt saying thsi is what war is. Idiots. War is not pouring hot dog condiments on your clothing in a horrific display of dumb-assism.

I don't think strictly along party lines...I tihnk the leaders of both parties in general suck. I tihnk we ahve a dearth of quality leadership in this country.

Like you I experienced a roller-coaster effect with GWB. That isn't a liberals only thing. I'm a conservative, but dissappointed. Polarizing politicians, like GWB, Hillary, Frist and Ted Kennedy aren't helping us any.

This thread deserves a bump.

[Roybert]

Nice post (by both you and the OP).

[newfant]

[ QUOTE ]

Domestic issues need help. Instead of legislating bedroom activities, we have 100,000 homeless people in NYC alone. Our national debt is horrific. Our trade policies are profound in thier stupidity. Poker is illegal in some states. WE HAVE WORK TO DO PEOPLE.


[/ QUOTE ]

Don't forget the $2 trillion dollar prescription drug/pharma pork/socialized medicine plan. That POS bill was passed with Republicans ruling the House, Senate and White House. When Hillary tried that she about got her balls chopped off.

Didn't Bush also try to annex Mexico at one time?

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Leave Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

We can't. Iraq was fine when Saddam was in charge. Sure he was a terrorist among his own peoples, but he wasn't much of a threat to America. Now he's gone and we can't pull out of there because if we do either (a) there will be a civil war or (b) some new terrorist group that is worse than Saddam was will come in and take over.

It would be great if every country in the world was a peaceful, capitalistic, democratic utopia, but we can't go forcing every country to be that way. That type of change has to come from within the country itself. I think our experiences in Vietnam and Iraq have shown us that.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
I loved Bush. Up until after 9-11 I had no major problems with him. As time passed and we went to war, etc etc etc, I grew to dislike his policies more and more. I now dislike him enough that you could say I hate him.

[/ QUOTE ]

Welcome back, Wake Up CALL.

/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[Toro]

Our political system sucks. The two party system always seems to end up giving us two bad choices because to get the nomination the parties picks are either too far to the right or left.

How often do you hear "He could win the general election, but could never get the nomination". McCain is a good example. I would have voted for him over Gore if the Republicans could have nominated him.

Sadly, this will not change.

What we need is a viable third party candidate that's not a celebrity.

I really thing Ross Perot had it correct...

Grant-it... he was a little weird... but there is no way he could have been persuaded by special interest groups (the guy was already a multi-billionaire).

Furthermore... i think a "business-man" or "business-women" could leave a lot of the petty social issues behind and focus on correcting the financial status of the states.

For god sakes... why do we spend so much time debating who is f***ing who... and whether or not it should be legal / allowed to be recognized as marriage.

The government should focus on two things.... the economy and military (.)

[ QUOTE ]
The government should focus on two things.... the economy and military (.)

[/ QUOTE ]

The economy would be far better off if the govt stopped focusing on it.

[Easy E]

He's posting with both accounts? Last Wake up CALL post wast 9/5.. /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The government should focus on two things.... the economy and military (.)

[/ QUOTE ]

The economy would be far better off if the govt stopped focusing on it.

[/ QUOTE ]

touche'

[Cyrus]

"Wake up call". "I stopped loving Bush!"

Geddit?

[CORed]

I certainly wouldn't describe myself as a liberal. Not really conservative either, maybe a lukewarm libertarian. I don't really want to pare down the government quite as much as a libertarian purist, but, in general, I'm fairly conservative on fiscal and economic issues, a strong believer in a free market, although I think some regulation is needed, I'm believe very strongly in civil liberties and the bill of rights, including the second ammendment, and I'm an environmentalist, but not an environmentalist wacko (and their certainly are some wackos in the environmental movement), though Rush Limbaugh would probably call me an environmentalist wacko. I think Ronald Reagan was a pretty good president. I also think Bill Clinton was a decent president, although his conduct in the Lewinski matter was deplorable. I think what I want from political leaders more than any particular ideology, is some reason to believe that they know what they are doing. I haven't had that from Bush for a long time now.

I voted for George Bush in 2000. For one thing, Al Gore didn't impress me at all. He seemed to be way too much the traditional New Deal, pro-union Democrat for my tastes, and I though he was perhaps a bit too extreme in his environmentalism. I saw George W. Bush as a mainstream Republican who made me just a little bit nervous by catering too much to the Religious Right types, but, i figured that was just because he needed them to get the nomination. I now think I had it exactly backwards. He was a Religious Right type, pretending to be a traditional Republican to get elected. I really thought Al Gore was the one trying to steal the election in Florida, and he was, even though he probably actually won. But both Bush and Gore were trying to gain the Presidency by any means, fair or foul, without any desire to find out who the true winner was.

His environmental and public land policies seemed, from the beginning, to be all about giving extractive industry free reign, and dismantling any semblance of environmental protection.

Initially, I like Rumsfeld. He seemed to be a no BS, buy, who didn't weasel-word or beat around the bush. However, at this stage of the game, I can't say I care much for his results.

I thought Bush's initial response to 9/11 was okay. We needed to go into Afghanistan, get rid of the Taliban, and root out Osama and company. OTOH, the domestic response to 9/11 bothered me. It seemed he was far too willing to sacrifice basic freedoms in the name of protecting us from terrorists. He appointed Tom Ridge as Secretary of Homeland Security, whose sole accomplishment, as far as I can tell, was what Dennis Miller called the "Terrorist Mood Ring", and we had periodic "Orange Alerts" whose primary purpose seemed to be to keep everybody scared, as they were always based on unspecified threats that never seemed to materialize, in spite of the fact that damn few terrorists actually got caught. We also had the Patriot Act, which, although it contained some sensible measures to streamline law enforcement, seemed to disregard civil liberties. Then somewhere along the way, Bush asserted the right to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial, simply by virtue of declaring them to be "enemy combatants" and I started to be afraid, very afraid.

After narrowly (at least if you believe Bush's propagnda) failing to catch Osama in Afghanistan, the Bush administration began to beat the drums of war against Iraq, and what little respect I still had for him rapidly evaporated. No question that Sadaam Hussein was an all-around bad guy and a royal pain in the ass, but the Gulf war, and ongoing sanctions had pretty well neutralized him as a threat. Containment and deterrence were sufficient to keep him from using whatever WMD's he still had, and he was getting old. All we needed to do was wait for him to die. His sons, it seemed to me, had all of his brutality, and then some, but none of his savvy. His death would have been an opportunity for covert CIA operations to get somebody a little less hostile to our interests in there, if we played our cards right. I believed the invasion was a bad idea for two reasons. Number one, I thought that it would goad Sadaam into using those WMD's that we all believed he had. I feared that he would make some grand, destructive, suicidal/homicidal gesture with nerve gas or bio-weapons, possibly against Israel, possibly against American troops, possibley against his own people, possibly against all three. This was, after all, the guy who set fire to Kuwait's oil fields when it became clear he couldn't keep them. fortunately, Sadaam no longer had any WMD's. The other reason I thought invading Iraq was a bad idea was that, although I expected getting rid of Sadaam would be pretty easy, that we would face years of no-win guerilla warfare after we got rid of him. Damn, I wish I was wrong about that one, too. But then, I must be remembering it wrong, becasue I distinctly remember Rummy saying that nobody imagined that would happen before we invaded. well, nobody in the Bush administration, anyway, but it has become pretty apparent that there is a severe shortage of imagination there. It became apparent after Sadaam was toppled, that they had given very little thought to what they would do after Sadaam was gone. As has become increasingly the case, they seemed to be making it up as they went along (and doing it rather badly), always one or two steps behind events that they had not anticipated.

In the runup to the war in Iraq, we also had the sorry spectacle of Bush asking for the Security Council's permission and support for the Iraq invasion, and then thumbing his nose at them when that proved not to be forthcoming. If we were intent on invading no matter what, why did we ask? We didn't ask for permission to invade Afghanistan. If Sadaam was going to give WMD's to terrorists that they would use them against us, we didn't need the UN's permission to go in and prevent that. If we were going in to enforce UN resolutions that Sadaam had violated, then we damn well did. But it seems that Bush had his own reasons for wanting to invade Iraq that have yet to be shared with us. The reasons offered to the public keep changing when it turns out that the facts don't support them. I voted for Kerry in 2004. I couldn't stand that fool. Kerry always looked to me like a Saturday Night Live parody of a fence straddling politician who wouldn't take a clear position on anything for fear that it might lose him some votes, but I figured he couldn't be as bad as the fool we had. I'm still not sure if that was correct, but he would have had to work hard to be as bad as Bush.

Do I hate George Bush? Well, not on a personal level. I think, in general, he's probably not a terrible person, just horribly unqualified for the job he now has. But i hate the mess he has made of our country and it's reputation in the world, and I think his policies have made us less safe from terrorists, not more.

He is perhaps taking a little more flack than he deserves for the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, but not too much. OTOH, at this point, the more he and his policies fall into disrepute, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Let the damn Democrats have another turn in power. They can't screw up any worse than the Republicans have for the last 4 1/2 years.