Well I dont think ppl are going to trash you for liking Bush…just think you will find most dont agree.
Funny seems some of his ideas have resorted back to cold war and ancient ideas. Building walls. He wants one on the boarder with Mexico and another inBaghdad. Im sorry but walls never work out. This is silly. People have to approach this problem differently. I dont want to see the United States of Former Mexican Citizens either. However we are a nation of immigrints so…
BTW this is a common problem accross Europe ive run into. Just about every country is getting pissed about the amount of foreigners in the country.
To Rising Sun:
I think alot of Americans are getting pissed coz of the powers of the 2 system party. Or at least the 2 parties that really do much. And the choice most of the time is between 2 morons. Although the independents are starting to play a much bigger factor than in the past. The whole system need to be revised IMO. Last election I didnt vote coz Indiana hasnt gone democrat since FDR or something like that. What really pisses me off is the hand full of ppl that won the popular vote but didnt win the presidency coz of this stupid electorial college.
And one more thing…to all Americans…dont use the electronic voting machines. Boycott them. One of the guys that wrote the source code for them admited before congress that they could be tampered with and no one would know untill you went almost line by line thru the code. Which the company wont release coz they have the patent. OMGWTFBBQ! :evil:
You want to see xenophobia as an election winning policy? Get down here.
None of this would be a problem if all the people in the world could just get over their narrow nationalistic, religious and other divisive attitudes and accept that we all have a common interest in harmonious survival.
I just read my last sentence. I’ve just realised that I’ve had far too much to drink and have drifted way beyond the realm of fantasy.
Why would humans ever choose a pleasant life over death and destruction?
Next I’ll be on about ebony and ivory living together in perfect harmony.
Or nonsense such as: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
What sort of world would that be.
To Rising Sun:
And the choice most of the time is between 2 morons.
Lucky you!
We have wider choices, as independents and minor parties can get the balance of power here.
Sometimes we have the choice between two morons and a drongo. If the drongo gets the balance of power, the minority drongo gets to make the decisions by voting with one of the major morons.
I just Googled ‘drongo’ so you’d have a clearer explanation than I might give (every Australian knows what it means, but it’s hard to explain). Joy of joys, I was rewarded with an unusually apt statement from Wiki:
"In Australian slang, the word drongo is a synonym for a total loser or idiot. Like most Australian slang the meaning of the word changes with the way it’s said.
In the Bush Dance sometimes called the drongo the person who misses out on a partner (musical chairs style} becomes ‘the drongo’ for the next time through the dance and is the butt of a gentle humorous use of the word - spill hot soup in a customer’s lap and you may hear a distinctly vitriolic use!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drongo
As an american I can’t blame every bad impression of Americans on the President; I’ve traveled the world both as a civilian and a soldier, and the term “Ugly American” is oft justified due to the boorish behavior of a LOT of idiotic tourists who can’t seem to see beyond the end of their noses…
Rudeness based on ignorance is doubly damning…failure to appreciate the differences in culture and national politics is indicative of short sightedness and again, ignorance. For every dolt any of you have had to contend with I sincerely apologize…
As for the occasional person I meet on my travels, who hates Americans for being American, where it is possible to engage them in a civil conversation, I oft find the cause of their vitrol based (in large part) on media representation of Americans, reinforced by a bad personal experience with one of those Dolts I described earlier…sad to say that a few bad apples tend to ruin things for the rest…
Truth is; I do not control the Government of My Country any more than they control theirs…I actually understand their disdain, although it is often misdirected at individuals.
the reason that many younger people don’t vote is that with the lobbyists and special interest groups running up and down the halls of the capitol waiting with a cellphone so that a crony in the visitors gallery can call them to let them know that the one hold out congressperson is headed to the bathroom before the next vote so the lobbyist can bottonhole them on their way to the head to get them to change their vote…younger people see elected officials mouthing the stuff their party spouts but then when they get in, the status quo stays the same…i really doesn’t matter which side you vote for you still get the same result…so many don’t bother…
many older germans are thankful regarding the USA. after the war it was mainly the US that helped a lot to build up this smashed country again.
among the younger germans there are - on the other side - some that are really pissed with bushs politics, f. e. the pollution of the enviroment (namely the Kyoto protocoll, which is not signed by the US until now) is a problem, indeed.
I personally like the americans for their cars (I own a chrysler and adore old detroit iron), their wonderful country, their patriotism (which totally lacks here) and their relaxed habits. I visited the states two times and I cannot tell too many bad things about the yanks. the only incident we hat there was with east-german (!) iditots, that occupied a billiard-table a whole evening long and so some kind of a nearly-fight started.
Here in California I meet an old German man, he was a WWII veteran. He was taken prisoner by the Russian army and spent a couple years in prison after the war. In 1950 he moved to the USA, California to be exact.
I asked him what he thought about California, the way it is NOW. He told me he loves America and that it has been good to him but if it was like it is now back then he would not have stayed. That says a lot…what has changed from the 1950’s & 60’s to now??? I grew up in the 60’s I can think of a few things. ;(
Yes, I see where you are coming from. However, lobbying is a part of the democratic process, and can be rather exciting if one gets involved. One of the differences with the UK and the US is that the US is a vaster country, and, I presume, it is less easy for many people to pop accross to D.C.to do some lobbying - but then again, I would think they are able to lobby their Senators?
My personal belief is that if one has the right to vote, one should exercise that right. There are many people in the world that would give their right arm for an opportunity to exercise such a right. We, in the UK, have small independant parties e.g. The Raving Monster Luny Party. These parties enter candidates for election in many of the constituancies. They must pay a deposit (I forget the exact amount, but it isn’t much), if they fail to get a certain number of votes, they lose their deposit, if they acquire the minimum, they get their deposit back. These parties, in my opinion, do a great job, becausethey enable people to enter a protest vote. The better these parties do in an election, the greater the signal to the major parties that people are pissed off with them. Even voting for them is better than not voting. The democratic system of the UK has been a long time in the making, and votes ought not wasted by abstaining.
It seems to me, that your two major parties in the US are very similar. It also seems rather bizarre, that the loser of an election will ask the nation to support the winner - John Kerry in his speech conceding defeat asking the nation to get behing George Bush - that is totaly alien to us in the UK. Can anyone imagine, for instance, Margaret Thatcher losing to Tony Blair, and asking the nation to support him - what!!!
Seriously, I understand why that happens - head of state and all - but it wouldn’t/couldn’t work for us. Conflict of interests. The two major British parties don’t appear to be very different to each other, right now, but we have to compare policy. We feel we need a change of government. It just isn’t healthy to keep the same party in power for too long.
You have a great point there, you arent that bad. I’d rather live in the US than lots of other countries. The US may have appeared to have lost its way but its a far better place to live and bring up your family than most of the countries in the world. When we look at the news regarding the US we that dont live there tend to see the bad things, but in reality I think the good things far outweight the bad. Thats not to say I agree with US policy or that I think its better to live in the US than the UK (cause I dont think its better not to live in the UK). But for the most part I do think its better to live in the US than anywhere else except Western Europe, which has essentially the same ethos.
I’m an american and I would rather live in Canada. However it’s more important to me to be near my kids and grandkids and so I continue to live here. Well, at least the weather is better down here.
“I don’t know half of you half as well as I’d like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve!”
I have American friends and family. When they first came to visit, they couldn’t or, rather, wouldn’t understand why I wouldn’t prefer to live in the U.S. than in England. After being here a little while and visiting places beyond London, they came, at first, to understand, and then, to wish they could live here also.
When I was 7 years old, I spoke not a word of English, yet found myself, along with my family, in the tiny town of Kerrville in the heart of theTexas Hill Country. We were little Dutch boys and the locals couldn’t have been more courteous and hospitable if they tried, which they did a lot of. The Texas Hill Country above San Antonio for those who don’t know it, is a primarily German-settled part of Texas with towns called Friedrichsberg (Fredericksburg), Wolfahrt (Welfare), Bergheim (Mountain Home) and so on. In the 1890s, if you didn’t speak German in San Antonio, you couldn’t get elected to public office! These were Germans descended from German free thinkers who emigrated to Texas well before the civil war, and who politely refused to go along with the Confederacy when it seceded from the Union in 1860. For this singular act of civil disobedience, Confederate raiders massacred a lot of military age German boys. Unlike much of the rest of Texas, you will find no monuments to the Confederacy in the Texas Hill Country.
America is a stunning patchwork of people and races, languages, religions and beliefs. I usually resent those who generalize about “Americans” because they often don’t know what they are talking about, just as I resent those Americans who talk about “Europeans” as if they were one people with a single history. There is much ignorance about Americans in the world and much that we Americans have to learn about the world. To generalize and say that the people on the borders are more outward looking than those on the interior is rather funny, considering that Americans do a phenomenal amount of traveling, not only in their own country which is big enough, but outside of its borders as well. Here I sit in San Antonio and I have traveled all over the world, as has my wife and my brothers and my children. We know where the land stops and the ocean begins, believe me.
The trouble with all generalizations, including this one, is that they are as often wrong as right.
I agree with that Royal, When I read the title of this post I thought it was rather goofy and a little rude but after reading several of the authors posts it seems to me he has a rather large chip on his shoulder.
Sigh, Rising Sun, the low voting numbers has been and continues to be a problem in this country. Partly it is the choice between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, although I would submit that the last mid-term elections demonstrated convincingly that the people do want a change and are willing to get off their derrieres and vote for one. Whether or not it actually produces a change is another matter entirely.
It’s interesting that the Right, or the “Conservatives”, especially the Christian Right which has captured the Republican Party, voted George Bush into office the 2nd time. The first time, the election was pretty clearly stolen from Al Gore, but that is my opinion buttressed by a whole lot of evidence. What I find interesting about this is that Bush - we call him “Shrub” too, RS because by comparison his father makes him look like stunted vegetation - is not really a conservative at all. He’s merely an opportunist who took on the coloring of whatever group could get him into the White House.
He was my governor here in Texas and I did meet him a couple of times, but he wouldn’t know me from Adam. He has a lot of personal charm, which is not the same thing as charisma. Texas governors actually have little or no power. The Lt. Governor has all the power. This is an artifact left over from the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
He did very little as governor and was at least as unqualified to be governor as he was to be president. Only as president, he permitted himself to become the tool of people like Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz, not to mention Rumsfeld. These folks definitely had a “neo-conservative” agenda but also didn’t know what they were doing. Beware the idealogues.
The famous conservative Senator Taft would be aghast at what Bush has wrought in office. He has spent the nation blind ands brought us to the brink of bankruptcy - not exactly a conservative idea. He has steadfastly kept our southern border wide open to the crossing of illegal aliens, aslo not exactly a conservative idea. He has attacked the civil rights of ordinary citizens and made them subject to domestic spying which conservatives would traditionally have frothed at the mouth over. Attacks on privacy are not a traditionally conservative idea.
He has packed the Supreme Court with charlatans and tried to impose another such clown, Harriett Miers on the country before it finally balked. He has an Attorney General who is as supine as a latex doormat who had the unmitigated gall to call the Geneva Convention “quaint”, and who sanctioned spying on his own people.
Perhaps worst of all, he attacked a country “just because he wanted to”. Since there was zero evidence of WMD - widely known and recognized by people and governments all over the world - and actively pursued perverting the findings of his own intelligence community, he lied to his own people with the finesse and aplomb of others in history who lived in places where they speak a guttural central European tongue and a Slavic one extending well into northern Asia. He created a situation as a result of his stupendous ignorance that now has allowed Iran to move into Iraq, a country that fought an 8 year war against Iran. He has allowed moslem fundamentalists to gain the upper hand everywhere, and, because his Iraq invasion drained away necessary resources, he is in the process of losing Afghanistan, the only part of this that I did support.
The definition of a Greek tragedy is that the protagonist is brought down by his own failings. Settle back folks, we are watching this in action big time. It won’t take history long to render its verdict on what is in my opinion, the rock bottom absolute worst president in all of American history.
The Republicans will not win the next presidential contest if they put up Jesus Christ as their next candidate. It’s over.
Sigh, Rising Sun, the low voting numbers has been and continues to be a problem in this country. Partly it is the choice between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee, although I would submit that the last mid-term elections demonstrated convincingly that the people do want a change and are willing to get off their derrieres and vote for one. Whether or not it actually produces a change is another matter entirely.
It’s interesting that the Right, or the “Conservatives”, especially the Christian Right which has captured the Republican Party, voted George Bush into office the 2nd time. The first time, the election was pretty clearly stolen from Al Gore, but that is my opinion buttressed by a whole lot of evidence. What I find interesting about this is that Bush - we call him “Shrub” too, RS because by comparison his father makes him look like stunted vegetation - is not really a conservative at all. He’s merely an opportunist who took on the coloring of whatever group could get him into the White House.
He was my governor here in Texas and I did meet him a couple of times, but he wouldn’t know me from Adam. He has a lot of personal charm, which is not the same thing as charisma. Texas governors actually have little or no power. The Lt. Governor has all the power. This is an artifact left over from the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
He did very little as governor and was at least as unqualified to be governor as he was to be president. Only as president, he permitted himself to become the tool of people like Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz, not to mention Rumsfeld. These folks definitely had a “neo-conservative” agenda but also didn’t know what they were doing. Beware the idealogues.
The famous conservative Senator Taft would be aghast at what Bush has wrought in office. He has spent the nation blind ands brought us to the brink of bankruptcy - not exactly a conservative idea. He has steadfastly kept our southern border wide open to the crossing of illegal aliens, also not exactly a conservative idea. He has attacked the civil rights of ordinary citizens and made them subject to domestic spying which conservatives would traditionally have frothed at the mouth over. Attacks on privacy are not a traditionally conservative idea.
He has packed the Supreme Court with charlatans and tried to impose another such clown, Harriett Miers on the country before it finally balked. He has an Attorney General who is as supine as a latex doormat who had the unmitigated gall to call the Geneva Convention “quaint”, and who sanctioned spying on his own people.
Perhaps worst of all, he attacked a country “just because he wanted to”. Since there was zero evidence of WMD - widely known and recognized by people and governments all over the world - and actively pursued perverting the findings of his own intelligence community, he lied to his own people with the finesse and aplomb of others in history who lived in places where they speak a guttural central European tongue and a Slavic one extending well into northern Asia.
The definition of a Greek tragedy is that the protagonist is brought down by his own failings. Settle back folks, we are watching this in action big time. It won’t take history long to render its verdict on what is in my opinion, the rock bottom absolute worst president in all of American history. The Republicans will not win the next presidential contest if they put up Jesus Christ as their next candidate. It’s over.
Having said this, I believe that many people all over the world think the American government has lost its mind, and are hoping against hope that it recovers its equilibrium soon. It will.
Your right Royal, I have voted republican my whole life, I don’t agree with everything they say but for ME…its way better than the dumbocrats. I will not vote republican this next time around. I hope they get the message.
It’s an old constitution and it’s a good one and it works well as long as everyone respects it. President Bush, quoted by Bob Woodward who heard it from another source, said, “It’s just a piece of paper.” There you go. Now we know where he stands.
But, Rising Sun, there have been many lapses in our steadfast belief in democracy over the decades. The US conspired in the creation of the Panama Canal by tearing Panama away from its rightful owner. Yes, it’s true. The US fought the Spanish American War largely based on faked threats hyped around by William Randolph Hearst and the probably accidental explosion of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor. Sound familiar? It should. It’s happened before.
We didn’t keep Cuba. We did keep Puerto Rico. Ditto the Phillipines.
The US conspired with the United Fruit Company in Central America to overthrow several regimes, and of course our history with Mexico has been anything but spotless and squeaky clean. Not that others were any better, but that isn’t the point of this submission.
We overthrew the legal monarchy in the Hawaiian Islands and created a US territory out of it. We sailed into Manila harbor and after sinking the Spanish ships there, simply took it over, finally ceding independence 50 years later.
During the Cold War we made many alliances with and supported unsavory dictators all over the world purely based on their anti-communism, not the least of which was Vietnam. John Foster Dulles saw nothing wrong with this and Eisenhower supported him, aided also by Dulles’ brother, Allen Dulles who was then the head of the CIA.
I wish our history was spotless where democracy was concerned. They don’t teach this stuff in high school - too ‘disturbing’ for the kiddies. But the information is out there for anyone who wants to look.
Even with this knowledge, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I’d rather stay and fight it out and make it better.
However we are a nation of immigrints so…
