Bush's Final F.U.

[rootbear75]

Edited December 19, 2008 by rootbear75

[FMBI]

In other news, Bush recently revealed to Martha Radditz that al-Qaeda had not had a presence in Iraq prior to the invasion, but that it didn't matter - in his words, "So what?"

 

Even until earlier this month, I thought that, although Bush is unbelievably stupid and corrupt, he would still have some respect for the country in the end. But now, with his Palin-esque interview blitz to try to make himself look better, coupled with disastrous last-minute moves (such as playing chicken with a depression by holding off on funding the automakers), I'm starting to wonder if this guy ever thinks about anything besides himself and the corporate interests that back the Republican party. He's such a total asshole.

 

edit - before Dr. Brain hops in and starts defending Bush, here's a link that pretty much encapsulates everything I just said. Link

Edited December 20, 2008 by Finland My BorgInvasion

[Confess]

I can sympathize with many of these last minute changes....We need uranium for ww3, its our right as americans to carry firearms (anywhere, and everywhere!), America is VERY sue happy - disallowing much of it will decrease OUR cost..Remember, sometimes its necessary to look at the whole rather than just its parts...although, the parts are what make up the whole. (IE, Building highways thus forcing people to sell their land), The 'endangered species act' has hindered more then helped (Im all for saving them, but if we worship them - there is a problem). Birth control is overly spread - its a proven fact that when abstinance before birth control is promoted, less side effects happen (abstinence is 99.9999% effective). The president is in control of the Executive branch...if he wants to make it so there is more unity between local and federal, whats the problem? I see a double standard - you want regulation, yet when it comes to police - you want deregulation and deunity...?

[FMBI]

I can sympathize with many of these last minute changes....We need uranium for ww3, its our right as americans to carry firearms (anywhere, and everywhere!), America is VERY sue happy - disallowing much of it will decrease OUR cost..Remember, sometimes its necessary to look at the whole rather than just its parts...although, the parts are what make up the whole. (IE, Building highways thus forcing people to sell their land), The 'endangered species act' has hindered more then helped (Im all for saving them, but if we worship them - there is a problem). Birth control is overly spread - its a proven fact that when abstinance before birth control is promoted, less side effects happen (abstinence is 99.9999% effective). The president is in control of the Executive branch...if he wants to make it so there is more unity between local and federal, whats the problem? I see a double standard - you want regulation, yet when it comes to police - you want deregulation and deunity...?

 

Don't take LSD before noon, silly.

[»Lynx]

I can sympathize with many of these last minute changes....We need uranium for ww3, its our right as americans to carry firearms (anywhere, and everywhere!), America is VERY sue happy - disallowing much of it will decrease OUR cost..Remember, sometimes its necessary to look at the whole rather than just its parts...although, the parts are what make up the whole. (IE, Building highways thus forcing people to sell their land), The 'endangered species act' has hindered more then helped (Im all for saving them, but if we worship them - there is a problem). Birth control is overly spread - its a proven fact that when abstinance before birth control is promoted, less side effects happen (abstinence is 99.9999% effective). The president is in control of the Executive branch...if he wants to make it so there is more unity between local and federal, whats the problem? I see a double standard - you want regulation, yet when it comes to police - you want deregulation and deunity...?

 

That was a joke post, right? I need some clarification.

 

-L

[Cancer+]

Abstinence is only 99.999% effective? So, if I don't have sex, I can still have a kid??? WTF?

[Sketter]

I can sympathize with many of these last minute changes....We need uranium for ww3, its our right as americans to carry firearms (anywhere, and everywhere!), America is VERY sue happy - disallowing much of it will decrease OUR cost..Remember, sometimes its necessary to look at the whole rather than just its parts...although, the parts are what make up the whole. (IE, Building highways thus forcing people to sell their land), The 'endangered species act' has hindered more then helped (Im all for saving them, but if we worship them - there is a problem). Birth control is overly spread - its a proven fact that when abstinance before birth control is promoted, less side effects happen (abstinence is 99.9999% effective). The president is in control of the Executive branch...if he wants to make it so there is more unity between local and federal, whats the problem? I see a double standard - you want regulation, yet when it comes to police - you want deregulation and deunity...?

 

That was a joke post, right? I need some clarification.

 

-L

 

No he is 100% Pro Bush. And just like any pro Bush they will do their best to justify what he does.. even if it's completely out of this world.

[Machu]

i like bush.

 

i don't understand what ppl r crying bout ;/

[FMBI]

i like bush.

 

i don't understand what ppl r crying bout ;/

 

Just that he's the worst president we've ever had, other than Buchanan (who let the entire union fall apart - Bush has satisified himself with destroying the economy, environment, military, constitution, and legislative and judicial branches).

 

By the way - I haven't been on SS since Obama crushed McCain. What's your explanation for that occurrence, Mr. Obama-will-never-win?

[aquarius]

Isn't there a comedy show 'Big Brother UK'?

 

Is that actually government cameras?

[Bak]

Abstinence is only 99.999% effective? So, if I don't have sex, I can still have a kid??? WTF?

 

http://bp3.blogger.com/_jmqW-WO5rvg/R2SN6DDtx_I/AAAAAAAACCo/DxDm7CkrI0o/s400/abstinence.jpg

[Samapico]

Abstinence is only 99.999% effective? So, if I don't have sex, I can still have a kid??? WTF?

 

http://bp3.blogger.com/_jmqW-WO5rvg/R2SN6DDtx_I/AAAAAAAACCo/DxDm7CkrI0o/s400/abstinence.jpg

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

 

 

99.9999%... that means... 1 person per million will have a baby without sex...

 

And you'd think Jesus was the only one of its kind...

[»Lynx]

i like bush.

 

i don't understand what ppl r crying bout ;/

 

Just from that sentence, I think we all do understand why you don't understand.

 

Big Brother is filmed inside a house, with Cameras. There are a lot of CCTV cameras in London, but to be fair - unless you're hiding something pretty damn big then you've not got to worry about a bunch of Cameras. Furthermore, it's not like all of the cameras in London are govt. owned, so it's hardly a 'Big Brother London' - It's more like 'Some areas of London there are CCTV Cameras, because London is full of arseholes and if you've ever been out on a Friday night in certain parts of London, you'd understand why the cameras are there'.

 

Anyway, I'm still a little too shocked to retort to Confess, and I wouldn't like to offend him - because I'd have to. I'll just wrap this up here.

 

-L

[aquarius]

Thanks for clearing that up, then again I should have looked it up. Happy to hear the Big Brother isn't actual gov. cameras. That would be messed up.

[Faither]

I can sympathize with many of these last minute changes....We need uranium for ww3, its our right as americans to carry firearms (anywhere, and everywhere!), America is VERY sue happy - disallowing much of it will decrease OUR cost..Remember, sometimes its necessary to look at the whole rather than just its parts...although, the parts are what make up the whole. (IE, Building highways thus forcing people to sell their land), The 'endangered species act' has hindered more then helped (Im all for saving them, but if we worship them - there is a problem). Birth control is overly spread - its a proven fact that when abstinance before birth control is promoted, less side effects happen (abstinence is 99.9999% effective). The president is in control of the Executive branch...if he wants to make it so there is more unity between local and federal, whats the problem? I see a double standard - you want regulation, yet when it comes to police - you want deregulation and deunity...?

 

 

I just hope he's familiar with the concept of sarcasm.

[Aileron]

Look, I hate to admit it, but the real problem is with the entire populace as a whole. One of the problems with civilians is by default civilians try to blame problems on a single person. In reality, problems are usually complicated with multiple contributors. Answer the following questions:

 

Did the fact that invading Iraq had a % approval rating affect the President's decision? If you say he 'sold' the populace, then if the populace wasn't ignorant enough to be 'duped', would not the approval rating be lower?

If the people of New Orleans had evacuated New Orleans, and if the local and state governments had stepped up, would not FEMA's job have been easier?

If people didn't commute in 4x4s and environmentalists didn't pop a gasket every time someone wanted to drill, would gas prices have shot up so suddenly?

If not as many low income people weren't trying to live in mansions, wouldn't the housing bubble have been smaller?

If the UAW weren't robbing their companies blind, wouldn't the Big 3 be more able to do business? Would they have more money to do R&D if they didn't have to pay double salaries as their competitors?

If the Democrats weren't opposing every Rebublican proposal as a matter of principle, and vice versa, would more things get done?

 

Our problems right now are not the fault of a single person. This is a collective failure. Granted, the president is a big part of that collective, but he isn't solely responsible, not by a long shot. Frankly, we deserve these problems right now because too many people are too selfish. I fear that when President-Elect Obama takes over, the country will only give him a few months. Then something bad will happen, and like all humans he'll make a few mistakes, and then the country will sell him out like we did President Bush.

 

A good movie I'd recommend to explain this is "The Caine Mutiny". It is a ficticious story about a destroyer in WWII. The ship has poor discipline, but then is assigned a new captain. The problem is that the captain is borderline paranoid. The captain tries to create discipline on his ship. His officers on the other hand notice his paranoid tendencies and then plot against him. The captain then correctly comes to the conclusion that his officers are plotting against him, and becomes increasingly paranoid. What ends up happening is that the Captain is so worried about his crew that he can't react to a hurricane, and then the officers stage the mutiny. In the trial afterwards, the officers win the case, but only because the defense attorney thought 'the wrong officers were on trail'. The truth of the matter was that while the captain had problems, if the officers had helped him rather than hinder his attempts to create discipline, and if they had supported him rather than plot against him, then their strengths would have offset his weaknesses and the ship would have functioned as a cohesive team.

 

Our problems right now are not leadership. It is a lack of teamwork. We aren't working together to solve problems. The first step we can do is to at least show the Commander in Chief the respect he deserves for the office he held and the sacrifices he made on our behalf and put these childish and counterproductive notions of blame aside.

[Bak]

you'd think Jesus was the only one of its kind...

 

 

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/10/10...46631223654965/

"You couldn't blame them for reproducing asexually because the sex is often quite violent."

[aquarius]

Aileron is right that theirs many contributors and factors, and I respect his ability to look at a bigger picture.

 

Life just has too many people with opposing views. It's like tossing 7 billion marbles and expecting them all to travel in a single straight line, it's not going to happen under these terms of reality. Maybe that was a bad analogy, but the point is that there will always be world issues, there will always be threads in this forum.

[Samapico]

but the point is that there will always be world issues, there will always be threads in this forum.

Yeah... that whole thing of people having 'opinions' is just a huge conspiracy to keep Internet alive.

[Cancer+]

You know...since Sept 11, Bush said there would be no more terrorist attacks and there wasn't. Look how many there were under Clinton's presidency.

 

And, I am on neither side.

[Lera]

You know...since Sept 11, Bush said there would be no more terrorist attacks and there wasn't. Look how many there were under Clinton's presidency.

 

And, I am on neither side.

 

yeah but you wont ever see the liberal midea talking about anything bad that the left side did! Just about how bad the right side is has its flaws. and imho neither side is better than the other. I just want to have gun rights, so I vote right

[FMBI]

Look, I hate to admit it, but the real problem is with the entire populace as a whole. One of the problems with civilians is by default civilians try to blame problems on a single person. In reality, problems are usually complicated with multiple contributors. Answer the following questions:

 

Did the fact that invading Iraq had a % approval rating affect the President's decision? If you say he 'sold' the populace, then if the populace wasn't ignorant enough to be 'duped', would not the approval rating be lower?

If the people of New Orleans had evacuated New Orleans, and if the local and state governments had stepped up, would not FEMA's job have been easier?

If people didn't commute in 4x4s and environmentalists didn't pop a gasket every time someone wanted to drill, would gas prices have shot up so suddenly?

If not as many low income people weren't trying to live in mansions, wouldn't the housing bubble have been smaller?

If the UAW weren't robbing their companies blind, wouldn't the Big 3 be more able to do business? Would they have more money to do R&D if they didn't have to pay double salaries as their competitors?

If the Democrats weren't opposing every Rebublican proposal as a matter of principle, and vice versa, would more things get done?

 

Our problems right now are not the fault of a single person. This is a collective failure. Granted, the president is a big part of that collective, but he isn't solely responsible, not by a long shot. Frankly, we deserve these problems right now because too many people are too selfish. I fear that when President-Elect Obama takes over, the country will only give him a few months. Then something bad will happen, and like all humans he'll make a few mistakes, and then the country will sell him out like we did President Bush.

 

A good movie I'd recommend to explain this is "The Caine Mutiny". It is a ficticious story about a destroyer in WWII. The ship has poor discipline, but then is assigned a new captain. The problem is that the captain is borderline paranoid. The captain tries to create discipline on his ship. His officers on the other hand notice his paranoid tendencies and then plot against him. The captain then correctly comes to the conclusion that his officers are plotting against him, and becomes increasingly paranoid. What ends up happening is that the Captain is so worried about his crew that he can't react to a hurricane, and then the officers stage the mutiny. In the trial afterwards, the officers win the case, but only because the defense attorney thought 'the wrong officers were on trail'. The truth of the matter was that while the captain had problems, if the officers had helped him rather than hinder his attempts to create discipline, and if they had supported him rather than plot against him, then their strengths would have offset his weaknesses and the ship would have functioned as a cohesive team.

 

Our problems right now are not leadership. It is a lack of teamwork. We aren't working together to solve problems. The first step we can do is to at least show the Commander in Chief the respect he deserves for the office he held and the sacrifices he made on our behalf and put these childish and counterproductive notions of blame aside.

 

Thanks for repeating, word-for-word, the standard right-wing arguments currently in vogue. Let's see how they stand up to scrutiny, eh?

 

Did the fact that invading Iraq had a % approval rating affect the President's decision? If you say he 'sold' the populace, then if the populace wasn't ignorant enough to be 'duped', would not the approval rating be lower?

 

Here's a thought for you. The Christian Science Monitor reported, on March 14, 2003, that Bush had directly convinced a huge segment of the population that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, even though he has endlessly denied this since then. Other investigations have reached similar conclusions. It's not hard to get approval for something like this if you tell the country that either they support it, or else they're going to die.

 

If the people of New Orleans had evacuated New Orleans, and if the local and state governments had stepped up, would not FEMA's job have been easier?

 

If FEMA had remained the powerful, efficient, bureaucratic system that it was decades ago, instead of being a huge political organization, wouldn't it have worked better, instead of falling apart within hours, and repeatedly ignoring problematic developments (such as the infamous poisoned trailers)? You can blame the residents for not evacuating, but I'd like to hear one place they were supposed to go, and how they were supposed to get there. You can't move people from a heavily urbanized area out into the middle of nowhere (which is what the rest of Louisiana is), on bad roads, and then expect them to have adequate food, shelter, or medical care. Texas had a godawful time accommodating the relatively small amount of people that actually did leave - are you suggesting that ramping things up 400-500% would have been a good idea?

 

If people didn't commute in 4x4s and environmentalists didn't pop a gasket every time someone wanted to drill, would gas prices have shot up so suddenly?

 

People drive in 4x4s because that's what the American dream, promoted by idiotic conservative politicians, suggests they should do. Also, expanding domestic drilling would do virtually nothing for an oil crisis like we had over the summer, since that's driven by a combination of speculation, OPEC's belligerence, low surplus margins, and, perhaps most significantly, the Iraq war. Oil prices have collapsed in the last few weeks with virtually no increase in supply, just a huge drop in demand - $100 a barrel off because world oil use is down by near double digit percentages, last time I checked. Opening up another .1% of current world oil capacity, and destroying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of long-term ecological value, such as coastal fisheries, just to drop gas prices by 10c a gallon over several years? Not my cup of tea.

 

If not as many low income people weren't trying to live in mansions, wouldn't the housing bubble have been smaller?

 

Who pushed the housing bubble down our throats? If you said "Bush and banks," you're correct. And for every story of a guy making $20,000 a year buying a $600,000 house, there are 20 stories of someone making $30,000 buying a $100,000 house, then getting their rates hiked by 5% a year by a bank that conveniently forgot to point out the small print of the mortgage. The entire crisis was created by corporations which happily squeezed people until they couldn't take it anymore, and then ran begging to the government when their source of revenue collapsed because of their own manipulations. Trying to pin this on the poor would be like pinning WW2 on Poland (which, by the way, Pat Buchanan does.. but that's another story).

 

If the UAW weren't robbing their companies blind, wouldn't the Big 3 be more able to do business? Would they have more money to do R&D if they didn't have to pay double salaries as their competitors?

 

Jesus, do people still believe this shit? Link Learn to do some research before buying the talking points you hear on Papa Rush's show, please.

 

If the Democrats weren't opposing every Rebublican proposal as a matter of principle, and vice versa, would more things get done?

 

How about we reverse this - "If the Republicans hadn't ignored the Democrats from 1994-2006, and then filibustered / blocked every Democratic initiative from 2006 to the present, all while crying about how the Democrats didn't want to cooperate, don't you think we could have gotten more done?" The hypocrisy of the Republican party is both pathetic and laughable. The only problem is that laughing at something like this is, by implication, not stopping it. The only way we could get this country moving again would be to totally destroy the Republican party and create some new kind of conservative organization to replace it - one that gives a fuck about something other than the big businesses sponsoring it.

 

PS - happy holidays, did you find out whether you're going to Afghanistan?

Edited December 23, 2008 by Finland My BorgInvasion

[NBVegita]

Erm your link about the auto industry didn't really help your case or hurt Ail's. He never stated a number, just that they are overpaid and your article dictates that.

 

As for the Dem's and Rep's there really isn't any one side to blame. They're all at just as much fault as the next one is.

 

But that is all off topic.

 

Also don't get your panties in a bundle: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2008/2008-11-10-01.asp

 

"President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team are already reviewing all of President Bush's executive orders, considering which will be allowed to stand and which will be overturned, the head of his transition team, John Podesta said on Sunday. Obama's decisions could invalidate environmentally damaging orders issued by the current president. "

 

Also: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...0,4163433.story

 

"Although it remains unclear how much the administration will be able to accomplish in the coming weeks, the last-minute rush appears to involve fewer regulations than Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, approved at the end of his tenure."

 

It's usually good to read more than one news source.

 

Overall I'm not worried. Obama can overrule any orders that would be immensly negative and I have a feeling that Obama will have the humility to allow non critial republican orders to go through to appease both sides.

 

All of this excitement over something that isn't all that exciting.

[Aceflyer]

Yeah, there's all this excitement over something that really isn't all that exciting. All modern Presidents have done this; President Bush is hardly the first to do so, and he won't be the last to do so.

[FMBI]

Speaking of "reading everything", Veg - note that the handy little chart provided with the article shows that, rather than being paid "twice as much", as Aileron did say, American autoworkers are paid about $5 more per hour. Additionally, their auto production costs overall are actually lower than equivalent foreign automakers, which invalidates his (or, rather, Bill O'Reilly's, Sean Hannity's, and Rush Limbaugh's) whole argument. The problem isn't with the unions, it's with the idiotic executives who ignored the future in hopes of making bigger profits in the short run. Furthermore, the unions have already made tons of concessions over the last several years, ranging from pay cuts to lower retirement packages - while the nearly-bankrupt automakers are desperately pumping bonuses and pay hikes into lower-level executives (since that $50 million they were gonna give to the CEOs has to go somewhere, after all).

 

Also, by most counts I've seen, Bush is set to end up with far more regulations than Clinton - Clinton attempted to put in a lot, but he didn't get them by the end of his turn, so Bush just threw them out and that was the end of it.

 

Bush, on the other hand, has been running this game for several months now to finish up the process before Obama gets in. And, contrary to what you are suggesting, Obama can't just flip a switch and make these things go away - the process to dump midnight regulations is so complicated that it makes the everyday Congressional process look like a piece of cake. It could easily take him his entire first term, and immense amounts of "political capital" (oh, what a lovely term) to get rid of things that should never have existed in the first place.

Edited December 23, 2008 by Finland My BorgInvasion