Poll: Do you think Bush is doing a good job as President?

Bush is a dipshit. Who left him in control of the new-KYA-lehr bomb when he's not even smart enough to pronounce it?

"dipshit" is kind. he's a sociopath. the man is extremely dangerous. much more dangerous for America than Saddam Hussein could ever hope to be.

Hmmm. Saddam ought to be out of a job soon. Maybe we could hire him to replace Bush. Might be interesting to see him try to run a democracy. Who knows, maybe he missed his calling when he became a dictator?

Actually, I started this as a joke, but it just got me thinking. What a waste. Clearly Saddam is a man of considerable talent. What might he have accomplished had he used that talent for good purposes? Now despite his talent, he is useful for nothing more than stopping a couple of american bullets. That really is a tragedy.

Saddam is a man obsessed with his own survival and power. He may have talent, but it's the talent of a brute thug.

In fact, I heard recently from someone who'd read a linguistic analysis of W's much-discussed misspeaking. When he's talking about "compassionate conservatism" -- human services, health care, education, foreign aid, economic development-- that's when he makes verbal blunders. When he's talking about violence and destruction-- the Texas death-penalty machine, Osama (bin forgotten), Iraq-- he doesn't make grammatical errors. This speech pattern is, indeed, consistent with those linguists have found common in violent sociopaths.

Please don't bomb Florida. My little sister, a firebrand feminist and indie folk/rock fan, lives there. Tempting though this course of action might be, please keep in mind that there are at least some cool people in Florida.

If you felt like bombing the statehouse, though, I wouldn't be opposed. Unless there were protesters--like my sister--exercising their right to free speech there when you fired a missile at it.

I think that it's cute that Bareena feels the need to defend her little sister's life...as if Fruheads were about to actually bomb Florida. And I was going to support the "Bomb Florida" initiative. Whoops.

You mean we aren't supposed to bomb Florida? I hope I can find those recall codes. POE? PEO? I know it's some combination like that.

We'll get your sister out first. :)

Let's get Disneyworld, while we're at it. Give those greedy tycoons something to worry about.

Bush scares me. Rumsfeld scares me. Ashcroft REALLY scares me. I don't know really intelligent things to say about it all. I'm just scared.

I'm proud to say that I voted for a dead man instead of John Ashcroft. Seriously. And the dead man won! Go Missouri. (2000 election)

Unfortunately, his losing the senate election caused him to be available to be attorney general. Sorry America (and world).

Well, so far Bush has managed to:

1. Introduce the biggest federal budget in over 50 years. 2. Through his Gestapo Chief Herr Ashcroft, managed to trample what little liberties we have left in the Constitution (hell, they are even circumventing the Second Amendment while they pay lip service to it). 3. Managed to invade and occupy one sovereign nation and has plans to do it to another. (Okay, a case could have been made for invading Afghanistan, but not the occupation.) 4. Managed to increase social and corporate welfare both domestically and worldwide. 5. Insulted and demeaned our allies. 6. Partially caused a potential nuclear showdown with a truly crazy dictator.

Yah, he's doing a FINE job as president. If anyone says there's a difference between Republicans and Democrats now, it's in the minutia, not the basic philosophy of either party.

Bush and his henchmen (particularly Ashcroft) are some scary dudes. I just can't figure out if they are plagarizing Orwell, or just channelling his dead spirit.

What I wonder is if this poll is accurately aligned with conservative/liberal leanings...or if Bush pisses people off across party lines. :)

You mean there's a difference between modern liberals and modern conservatives? ;-)

I know several "true" conservatives and they are pissed off at Bush, so I'm sure there are some conseratives out there that don't like what he's doing.

Absolutely there is a difference... it is just that all our mainstream politicians fall smack in the middle these days, along with much of America. I suppose I can't speak for the real conservatives, but I know for a fact that there are real liberals still out here.

Right on, sista'!

You betcha!

Unfortunately, we don't seem to be too well-represented at the polls. Gotta fix that.

Actually, I think we are better represented at the polls than it would appear... we just have nobody to vote for, or when we do, we are afraid to give them our vote for fear of splitting the so-called liberal vote and letting Mitt Romney become governor. Oh wait, that happened anyway. Oops. Maybe you're right after all.

Or mor importantly, splitting our vote on Ralph Nader and letting Bush be president.

Th thing is... we NEED to be out there voting for who we want instead of voting scared. If people weren't so worried about splitting votes, I think we would have a much clearer idea of what the people of this country really want. It is only by taking that risk that we have any chance of ever having a viable candidate who hasn't been bred by the increasingly indistiguishable mainstream political parties. Perhaps a real threat from another quarter would encourage them to distiguish themselves again and give us some real candidates we can put our hearts and votes behind. I can't blame people who voted for Ralph Nader. I wish I had voted for Ralph Nader. It obviously wouldn't have affected the outcome of the election, except perhaps to help send a message to the Democratic Party that they need to start giving us some strong and non-centrist *gasp* candidates who we can really believe in.

I'll take the rest of my rhetoric elsewhere, rather than bore you all with it. My real point is, we have the mainstream parties to blame when things like this happen, not the people who are brave enough to actually vote for who they want.

You have to vote for what you want. If you don't vote for what you want, you will never get it. I vote libertarian every election and yes, my guys usually garner single digit percentages, but at least I can sleep at night knowing I voted my conscience and for who I best thought could do the job.

The idea of you have to vote for X to keep Y from winning just means you get X, and if you don't support X, then why vote for him? If you choose the lesser of two evils, you get evil either way.

True... but it's better to have your vote actually DO something.

But that's my point, all your vote will actually DO is get someone you don't want elected and guarantee you don't get what you want. All you are doing is voting for evil, I can't see how that is conscionable.

Voting for evil, yes.... but I'd rather have my vote go to keep someone MORE evil out of office than have my vote do nothing.

Heh...well that explains why you ever exercise your right to vote, eh? ;P

Exactly. :)

I'm trying to think in the long term. I am hoping that my vote now for a candidate I actually WANT will help contribute to some long-term changes within the mainstream political parties, or even help bring about the viability of a third (or fourth or fifth) party in the future. Yes, there is risk in the present, but I don't see how we will ever see any change if people don't start taking risks. I don't know how long it will take for the Democratic Party to feel threatened enough to actually produce some decent candidates. I do know that it will never happen if we let them believe that we are content with the status quo. Maybe my vote isn't doing anything in the election at hand, but hopefully it will resonate further than that.

Take the recent gubernatorial election in MA. I really didn't like Shannon O'Brien. I mean really didn't like her. Sure, I hated Mitt Romney more (and continue to do so), but I really didn't like Shannon O'Brien. I really really liked Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. I wasn't alone either. After one of the debates, a big Boston newspaper (I which I could remember which one) referred to her as the only grownup in the running. Everyone I spoke to at work liked her the best and wanted to vote for her, but they were all going to vote for O'Brien anyway, for fear of splitting the vote and helping Mitt Romney to win. I wrestled with my decision up to the second I cast my vote. I cast my vote for Jill Stein. As it turns out, it didn't matter, because even if every person who voted for Jill Stein had voted instead for Shannon O'Brien, Mitt Romney still would have won. I came out of it at least with the the satisfaction of having voted for someone I actually believed in.

Whatever the outcome of the election, I hope is that the Democratic Party in Massachusetts looks at the number of votes that Jill Stein got (which was a very decent number for a third-party candidate, and in another situation could have been a real threat) and realize that they aren't losing because people are indifferent or because some third party candidate split the vote, but because they are putting forth crappy centrist candidates that nobody likes. So maybe my vote didn't help any candidate one way or another... at least I made a statement. Hopefully, if enough people start voting for who they want, someone will actually pay attention.

That is what I am trying to do... why I have started voting the way I do. So much for taking my rhetoric elsewhere. Heh.

This is one of the reasons I support Instant Runoff Voting.  You can vote your conscience without the fear of "wasting" your vote.

COMPLETELY agree.

As do I. We had a sort of vote on it out here last election-time, though it wasn't a binding vote... it was just an opinion thing they put on the ballot for our Representatives to look at I think. I don't know if anything has come of it.

That is my point however, both parties are the same with regards to the "mainstream". That's who they play towards and who forms the majority of their voting bloc. It's just one has "Democrat" written next to it and one has "Republican". Ideologically there is no difference between the two parties.

Now, yes, there are still "real" liberals (as that term is used in modern ideological classifications) and there are "real" conservatives out there. They do not form the basis of either major party in the US however.

I hate Bush but I'm not afraid. The country survived Nixon, a powermad crook and Reagan an ideologue who couldn't distinguish fiction from reality. It will survive Bush and the horrors he's appointed.

The only question is how many of your freedoms will be lost and gone forever after he's done.

This is about where I am.
Life goes on, and we'll survive this.

Which is not to say that he won't leave things screwed up, but given time...

If nothing else, maybe some things won't be taken for granted anymore.

Now Ashcroft, he scares the hell out of me.
I'd rather keep Bush and get Ashcroft out of power than the other way around.

 

Even Bush Sr. doesn't like the diplomantic incompetence of his son.

does anyone else appreciate the beautiful skewed curve of today's poll data? what does that say about FHDCers as not being a representative sample of the US population? Or is the whole US populations opinion skewed in this manner? hmmmm.

Yes, I assumed that it would be a bit skewed, but this is kind of amazing.

We might be a little more skewed than the population as a whole, but I think we're probably closer to the feelings of the rest of the US (or the world) on this question than on a lot of other questions.  (As in, FHDCers generally tend to be more liberal than the average population...but in this case I don't think that makes too much of a difference.)

I also appreciate the complete lack (so far) of the usually-popular "other."  :)

I'm Canadian, you insensitive clod! Nah, I follow US politics as much as it's in the newspaper, but *shrug* I don't know enough, or maybe haven't experienced enough, to form any sort of opinion that's based in facts, I guess.

Well, you can use your IMAGINATION! (pronounged im-aj-in-a-shin, for those who can't read that well)

I must be behind on things, I have no idea who this Ashcroft guy is.

Bush is stupid. Nothing more to it. Who were those two people that said he was doing a good job?

> I must be behind on things, I have no idea who this Ashcroft guy is.

I dunno if you were kidding or not, but he is John Ashcroft, former senator from Missouri who lost to a dead guy (long story), and who is now the Attorney General of the United States. He's a religious right kinda guy and has very little qualms about abducting U.S. citizens and throwing them into military detention and denying them lawyers all the while not formally charging them with any crimes. He just slaps a "suspected terrorist" label on you and your rights go flying down the crapper.

Or as others like to refer to him as: Herr Fuhrer

He just slaps a "suspected terrorist" label on you

See Padilla, Jose

Also, http://thisamericanlife.org/ra/229.ram

This American Life, "Secret Government," Episode 229

(You might have noticed that when I link to things in these discussions, they're often sound files.  That's pretty much because I listen to a lot of radio - mostly various NPR shows, but also CBC and BBC, and independent pieces.)

No cartoonist will be able to top this. It gave me an immediate belly laugh until a caption for this photo occured to me. "Bush's World Vision" Now I feel depressed again. Nevermind, carry on, while I search for some sand to stick my head into.

hee. i was sooooo going to post that pic of bush with the binoculars, but couldn't be arsed to go find it :D

And a joke for you:

An aircraft is about to crash. There are five passengers on board, but unfortunately only 4 parachutes.

The first passenger says "I'm Shaquille O'Neill, the best NBA basketball player. The Lakers need me, it would be unfair to them if I died". So he takes the first parachute and jumps.

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton, says "I am the wife of the former President of the United States. I am also the most dedicated woman in the world, a Senator in New York and America's potential future President. She takes one of the packs and jumps.

The third passenger, George W. Bush, says " I am the President of the United States of America. I have a huge responsibility in world politics. And apart from that, I am the most intelligent President in the history of the country and I have a responsibility to my people not to die". So he takes a pack and jumps.

The fourth passenger, the Pope, says to the fifth passenger,a ten year old schoolboy "I am already old. I have already lived my life, as a good person and a priest I will give you the last parachute".

The boy replies "Thanks, but there's no problem. There's still a parachute for you. America's most intelligent President has just leapt out with my schoolbag..."

Yes, and this was just about as funny when it was Clinton, and before that Dan Quayle.