US Presidential Election

Plunky

Shouldn't we just be thankful that he finally *can* read?..

Piste

Oooooooh nice.

mentalimplosion

clarification accepted. man, i have got to be less argumentative these days. also, i don't think they do, but is there proportional representation in the US?

ll=llannah

Ana - most unfortunately, we don't.
but a lot of people are working on getting it along with IRV (which ireland has used for 90 years. or was it 70? one of those...correct me if i'm wrong). We're trying. as you can tell from the current state of the election, there are a lot of people who are scared to start reforming what needs to be reformed.

and, Hugh Hefner, I did vote. Yay for being old. (turned 18 just in the nick of time, tbh. oh, and i'm american if you couldn't tell. well, i'm not so willing to admit that at this point in time. *crosses fingers for ohio and provisional ballots* not that it will happen, it's fairly sure as of the moment, which makes me ill.)

Raphael

Gummybearz!!! wrote:

Well you see, knowing him there would have been a lot of thoughts going round his head such as 'I like cats, I hope no cats were hurt' and 'Daddy won't like this'. He had to go back to his texan roots and lassoo all these important thoughts together.

That was the part I was bitching about Liz

And why the hell wasn't Darth Nader on this poll??

Hugh Hefner

Raphael wrote:

And why the hell wasn't Darth Nader on this poll??

I'm all for Nader on the poll. I would have voted or him.

And why don't we all just lay back and chillax. This thread has gotten way too negative. Beyond the bounds of a reasonable passionate debate and discussion. I mean c'mon guys. You can let things go sometimes.

It wasn't me!

Well, it's happened. The gob****e is back for another four years. I can see two benefits, though one only really works for me.

A) Four more years worth of Bushisms
The deterioration of the American economy means I can import guitars that were already cheap, cheaper.

On the other hand I can't even see the end of the list of problems he's going to cause in four years time.

Raphael

And of course, the real benefit, that America has a chance of getting Hillary into the White house in 4 years time

It wasn't me!

Well, there's that too.

flangeman

Here's what you have to look forward to,

Less Gay rights (not exactly my thing but affects many)
More links between state and church (be it Evangelical) which is against the American constitution
Less stem-cell research
Less options for women (pro-life)

and they are already talking about digging up the Artic for oil and minerals

Ya got to love Dubya.

I think the Democrat's give it their all, and it still wasn't good enough.

Crash

see i think four years from now we can look forward to Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore mudslinging in the whitehouse front lawn.

i'm all for it just so i can laugh my ass off

Raphael

The best thing would be if Powell were running against Hillary next time round. They both stand to be good presidents, they'are both minoritys, and the deep south would have no one to vote for!

Barry Aldwell

Kerry

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

That is all

Dalamar

Heh, i couldn't believe that the general population of america would elect that idiot again.

Stark

Well America has a huge population of hicks and rednecks. Offering gay marriage ballot in 11 of the most conservative states at same time as general elections as well was a masterstroke by the bastard :mad:

Plunky

"there's an old saying 'Don't pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks'" - G.W. Bush, 3/11/04
If he prayed for tasks equal to his powers then we wouldn't be in HALF the trouble the world is in today. He can't do jack right.Bah. Stupid Americans who voted Republican

StupidLikeAFox

Kerry

in fairness he must be doin SOMETHING right to have got elected again

halenger

Yes. Propaganda.

It's amazing to watch TV for example in America. It's very biased and just blah. Very America centric also from what I remember of it. Other world events may as well not exist.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Kerry

Okay, I will write something with far more weight behind it tomorrow as I have to make sure I word what I need to say correctly - I would have voted for Bush and I am glad he won.

A couple of quick points...

Hillary Clinton will run for President in 4 years and I firmly believe that it will be George W. Bush who (inadvertently) decides whether she wins or not - although I believe she will win.

Kerry was useless throughout this campaign... the Republicans practically handed this campaign to the Democrats on a plate and the Democrats, in choosing Kerry, simply refused it.

Howard Dean, Al Gore... just two people who could - and would - have trounced Bush in this election and the Democrats knew it.

I'll post more tomorrow and no, I am not a believer in conspiracy theories or other associated hippie-ness. I just think the Democrats are looking more to the future rather than the now and are playing their cards very, very tactically.

Night.

Bazookatone

Yes it's time for jack to post another definitive LIST!
1) I don't like bush's party, his politics or his smug fricking smile.

2) That the American people decided, twice, that thay want Bush to be their representative to the world tells me that the Americans are, as a nation, rather smug prats who seriously think that they can rub their "more powerful than thou", "we're so bloody powerful because we were chosen by GOD to spread America throughout the world" in everyone's faces.

3) America has a number of very serious problems that no one is dealing with ie National Debt, worsening education, growing poverty, environmental issues, crime, violence etc

4) America is destroying itself. The events occurring now mirror those events which preceeded the French and Russian revolutions ie polarisation of poltical views, divide between rich and poor, growing influence of the military.

5) I predict that within 50 years, the US economy will collapse, there will be massive civil unrest and, in general, the **** will hit the fan.

6) I predict that when this happens, the nations of the world will, collectively, remember the US reneging on Kyoto, invading Iraq against the UN mandate, the re-naming of "Freedom Fries", and that smug prick Rumsfeld telling us that America is fighting for freedom.
and
&) The nations of the world will not lift a single solitary finger to help. They won't grant extensions on US loans, thay won't import US goods, thay won't help the US in the UN, they won't make state visits to the US, thay won't let US planes land in their country.

and when that happens, those good god fearing, white, middle class US people will gather in their Southern whitewashed churches, where they praise god and hate gays in equal measure, where they demand the right to bear arms and encourage Chastity and allow under 18s to go to the gas chamber. And they'll see what a sham their whole society, of houses in the suburbs and SUVS, of gated communities and private schools and private guards and flag waving , "land of the free home of the brave", "I'm not racist, my cleaning lady is black" lifestyle is, and then they'll realise, with the shock of one giant, collective enema, that their whole preception of the world was wrong and it's too late to stop the inevitable.

Spraypaint

That is disturbingly believable. I only hope it doesn't happen. Several economies and areas depend on the U.S. and their companies to survive. Bad U.S. economy=Bad global economy.I'd like to see America get it's come-up-ends for re-electing Bush and inadvertantly screwing themselves over for another 1460 days but not in any way that would make innocent global by-standers suffer.

Spog

Hopefully Hillary Clinton will run in 4 years ... in the meantime we can all sit back and watch George Bush Jnr. try to clean up his own mess. I think Kerry can breathe a sigh of relief, he'd have inherited a big pile of problems if voted in!

Barry Aldwell

Kerry

Children, how's about we all get this through our heads: America is the only thing standing between us and anarchy. As the sole remaining superpower (Russia doesn't have the money), they have the power to pretty much wipe out any form of army that tries anything they don't like, through either conventional or nuclear means. As a result, bad people like Saddam and Osama have to stay holed up in the middle of nowhere. If America goes away, we are screwed. By the time the EU talks the French into lauching one of their nukes, and we get something vaguely resembling an army together, we'll have been destroyed several times over, either by terrorists who are convinced we are "infidels" (Which we are, even by Catholic standards. Society is a true shame to all of us), or by a conventional army approaching rapidly from the East. So before you go yapping on about how much you wish the Americans would disappear, consider what would happen.

mentalimplosion

at this stage, you're just embarassing us all.

Aoibheann

I'm not embarrassed, perhaps you are, but dont speak for all of us.

well, you can speak for the rest of them, not sure they'll be pleased though.

cheers.

Crash

might i say, most of your ideas on politics are the worst thought through ideas i've ever seen - talking to both barry and Jack.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Kerry

Okay, had a bit of time to think but I've been really busy today so this won't be the best thing I've ever written. Excuses made, let us continue.

First of all, Kerry's main strength was that he wasn't Bush. No matter how bad Bush is, or may be, "not being Bush" is not a compelling enough reason to get someone to vote for you. Right or wrong, people will vote for someone they can buy into - someone they can believe in - Kerry didn't offer this to the American people.

(Before I start this paragraph, let me state that I am not comparing Bush to Hitler.)
In Hitler's Germany he had a lot of support from the average German citizen because his propaganda machine told them that Hitler was saving the German race - their race. A lot of these people, when confronted with true stories from the concentration camps etc. did one of two things:

(1) denied that they happened at all, regardless of the evidence presented to them. This is a pretty normal response, if an institution is treating you so well (as the Third Reich treated Aryans) then it is often hard to believe that that same institution is treating someone else so terribly from something so silly as the colour of their skin or their religion.

(2) acknowledge that these things happened but steadfastly refused to believe that Hitler knew what was happening, instead they chose to blame it on insane Generals or corrupt civil servants. Their precious leader simply could not commit such atrocities.

In hindsight it is obvious to all and sunder that Hitler was an insane psychopath and he should never have gotten into power - but he did because of various social variables in Germany combined with a certain 1930s point of view that prevailed in Germany at the time. This is what I do not want people to start believing. Bush is not an insane man who is going to kill all blacks/Jews/hispanics/etc. but the reasons the American public vote for him are similiar.

What I'm trying to get at is twofold. Firstly, Bush has offered the American people something tangible... a strong, solid sense of national pride and patriotism that was absent during the Clinton years and, it could be argued, had been absent since Vietnam. This united America idea began to wear thin when American soldiers began to trickle home from Iraq destined for military burial and there was not a WMD to be found north or south of the Euphrates.

This is when the second stage set in for a lot, but not all, of the Americans. They started to believe that the bad stuff that had actually happend (maybe the war was for oil after all, all the stuff with the American soldiers torturing Iraqis in jail, etc.) and a small number of Americans began to believe this was Bush's fault (I'm not here to say whether it was or not). However, a lot of Americans still believed that this Administration which had treated them so well (and for most middle and upper class people the Bush administration has been quite financially good) could not possibly treat Iraqis so badly or destroy a country purely for oil.

That is, in my opinion, why American people re-elected George Bush in spite of his actions (mistakes? successes?) in Iraq.

However, Iraq was only one of the major issues in this election. The second as the economy, this is pretty simple: Bush takes care of the middle classes and takes really good care of the upper classes. It would appear that he is slowly forcing people who were once middle class into either poverty (the majority) or into the league of the super rich (the minority) because Bush is a man who sees things in black and white and the middle class has always been a grey area but I digress, the simple matter of the fact is that for the vast majority of the powerful American's Kerry would have meant economic loss. Not much of a loss, but some nonetheless.

As I said in my post yesterday, Kerry offered no compelling reason to vote for him: he constantly flip flopped on the issue of Iraq and his economic policies were ropey at best. The problem the Left have always had in American is becoming Center enough to secure the rich votes but ensuring they didn't slide too far into the Center and lose all definition like Kerry did.

I remain convinced that Howard Dean or Al Gore would have wiped the floor with Bush. A candidate that stuck to strong economic principles which involved putting a halt to America's spiralling deficit and beginning to rebuild an economy that is looking increasingly destroyed by the expenses of war and corruption. I'm not saying their economy will collapse tomorrow or anything but it will take a long time to recover. Finally, Gore or Dean would have been strong on the issue of Iraq and national security, unlike that invertebrate Kerry who changed his mind every hour on the hour.

I am not upset George Bush won and given a choice between Kerry and Bush I would pick Bush any day, despite his many faults Bush is a leader and that is what America needs right now. I am prepared to give Bush a chance to correct the wrongs of his 1st Administration although I fear it may be too late.

Absolutely finally, as I said in my first post, I'm not entirely sure the Democrat's apparent ambivalence to the whole election was a mistake... Kerry being in the White House now could be potentially disastorous as their is a lot of work to be done cleaning up the mistakes of the past 4 years and I don't think Kerry was up to the job. Bush will either fix those mistakes himself and create a potentially even tigther election in 4 years than now between Hillary Clinton and a Republican candidate although I haven't seen anyone who looks like a potential runner yet. The alternative is that Bush continues making mistakes for another 4 years and Hillary Clinton has a clear run to the White House fuelled by the many not-so-die-hard Republicans who will be surely pissed off if their man messes them about for another 4 years.

Phew.

hannahC

Kerry

Spog wrote:

Hopefully Hillary Clinton will run in 4 years ... QUOTE]

w
t
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Hillary Clinton should never ever run. She should go back to her home state and stop trying to pretend she's from New York. Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor of NYC during 9/11, has mentioned his interest in running for President as a Republican. I can't think of anyone better for the job. Anyone who knew me at CTYI knows that I am pretty damn happy right now. 4 MORE YEARS!

*ducks*

Piste

People do seem to forget the Ralph Nader even exists, but eventually, HE WILL TAKE OVER AMERICA

It wasn't me!

/Hurls brick at Hannah, who didn't quite duck far enough.

It sucks but Kerry would have just been an accident waiting to happen. The only difference is that Bush is an accident who has been happening for the past four years and will happen for another four years. Then he will end.