It's what I've been saying all along, but it's nice to have people smarter than me tell that I'm right.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
I started out believing in the man, but he just got more and more shady. I'd put him in the bottom five, at the very least.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
WOO HOO! I so called this. But none of my stupid friends would believe me.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Called this back before the Iraq war began.
Then again, I also predicted that Saddam did have WMD, that he would feign a retreat from Baghdad, and then nuke/gas/infect the capital once US troops had occupied it. 50/50 isn't bad, right?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Actually, that's more like one in four.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
Called this back when Bush EDIT: stole the 2000 election
I'm not happy to be right, I'd have been far more happy being wrong.
A few parts of the article I found particularly compelling:
quote:History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. There has always been a tension over the constitutional roles of the three branches of the federal government. The Framers intended as much, as part of the system of checks and balances they expected would minimize tyranny. When Andrew Jackson took drastic measures against the nation's banking system, the Whig Senate censured him for conduct "dangerous to the liberties of the people." During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's emergency decisions to suspend habeas corpus while Congress was out of session in 1861 and 1862 has led some Americans, to this day, to regard him as a despot. Richard Nixon's conduct of the war in Southeast Asia and his covert domestic-surveillance programs prompted Congress to pass new statutes regulating executive power.
By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.
And this:
quote:Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening.
[ April 29, 2006, 07:23 PM: Message edited by: Alcon ]
Posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk (Member # 9067) on :
Oh, ease up on the guy.
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
Bush got elected? Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
Patently silly.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
I just hope we can find somebody better in a couple years, and that it won't be too late to fix things by then Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Called this back when Bush EDIT: stole the 2000 election
So you flat out don't want to be taken seriously, is that it?
quote:he Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless.
No, he really hasn't, and the people who distort the legal arguments the Bush administration has advanced in this way show either a gross misunderstanding of the issues involved or a willingness to engage in hyperbolic propoganda such that discussion with them seems pointless.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
The Bush White House may not have actually said, "The president's power as commander in chief in wartime are limitless", but they sure act that way. Bush has been doing plenty of shady dealings. How much torture, internal spying, and ignoring all accusations against him need to happen before his remaining 30-some% realize how scary this is getting?
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Dubya wasn't elected in 2000, he was anointed by five SupremeCourt"Justice"s: one of whom had a wife being paid by Dubya's inauguration committee, the second had two sons being paid by the law firm representing Dubya before the SupremeCourt, and the third heard to curse loudly at a proDubya election-night party when Florida was initially called for Gore.
Unfortunate forum-deletion of old threads, but you can ask Bob_Scopatz or anybody who was here just before the IraqWar: I strongly gave Dubya the benefit of the doubt inregard to the intelligence being released. Admittedly I didn't like doing so, and I was never pushing in favor of (or against) the war. But: I never figured that the President would deliberately manufacture "intelligence" to push the US into any war when that "intelligence" would be found to be either true or manufactured within a month or two after the launch of a war. I failed to foresee that the opposition DemocraticParty Congressmen would be so cowed by fear of losing an election over a year-and-a-half away that they would fail to vet any of the claims being made. Most of all, I never figured that the military Occupation would be so grossly bungled by interference from ideological fanatics.
There is no distortion on Dubya's position when he asserts that the constitutional protection of habeus corpus doesn't include anyone who isn't American. Nor when he asserts that the constitutional protections against self-incrimination and against cruel&unusual punishment -- along with an international treaty forbidding cruel&unusual treatment -- can be suspended by presidential whim based on an overly-broad and specious War on Terror because "Torture of a suspected combatant is okay as long as he isn't a soldier by my definition of the word."
[ April 29, 2006, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
Dagonee, There is a very strong case that Bush did steal the 2000 election. There is too much evidence for it to dissmiss it out of hand. If Bush is the worst president ever, it'll be because he doesn't know how to bury things.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
quote:So you flat out don't want to be taken seriously, is that it?
Sorry Dag, originally I had got elected there. The edit was in response to this:
quote:Bush got elected? [Confused]
It was a joke much as anything Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
I don't think it should be considered a joke if you're telling the truth.
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
Right.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:There is a very strong case that Bush did steal the 2000 election.
Please present me with any count conducted under the existing rules that had Florida going to Gore.
I've waited 5 and a half years for someone to do this, but maybe you'll be the one who finally breaks the story.
quote:The Bush White House may not have actually said, "The president's power as commander in chief in wartime are limitless", but they sure act that way.
Really? Then why would Bush push legislation by saying "We need this in the war on terror"? If he thought his powers were limitless, he wouldn't have to do this, would he?
Of course, you know he hasn't acted that way. You know that he's actually acknowledged the Supreme Court decisions that have gone against him.
quote:How much torture, internal spying, and ignoring all accusations against him need to happen before his remaining 30-some% realize how scary this is getting?
Please don't even try to pretend that everyone answering "No" to "Do you approve..." poll questions agrees with your assertion that Bush is acting as if he had limitless power.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
You're equivocating Dagonee. I'm not saying that Bush has limitless power, or that he acts like he has limitless power.
I am saying that he is grabbing power wherever he can, doing things that a lot of people are outraged by, and trying to make it seem OK, because we're in a "War on Terror."
I'm not saying the things you accuse me of saying. I'm saying that we should all be getting really worried about the state of our Nation, and our Constitution.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
quote: Really? Then why would Bush push legislation by saying "We need this in the war on terror"? If he thought his powers were limitless, he wouldn't have to do this, would he?
Because he's a bad president, not a complete idiot.
He's done this to convince people that he doesn't have all this power. He doesn't have to do that. And would have carried out his plan even if it hadn't been approved.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Actually, that's more like one in four.
Hush, you with your details. Besides, everythings 50-50. Either it happens or it doesn't. And if you try to dig yourself into a deeper hole by pointing out that even if it were true, it wouldn't apply to what I posted, I'll smite thee most grievously.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
"Ted, we are in danger of flunking most heinously."
Sorry...
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: You're equivocating Dagonee. I'm not saying that Bush has limitless power, or that he acts like he has limitless power.
I'm not equivocating at all. I specifically addressed a single sentence from the article: "The Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless."
You chose to respond to the way I addressed that point, with the words "The Bush White House may not have actually said, 'The president's power as commander in chief in wartime are limitless', but they sure act that way."
If you're really not saying that "that [Bush] acts like he has limitless power" you would be better served to correct what I can now only assume was an error in your first post to me rather than accusing me of equivocating when I respond to your words that explictly do accuse Bush of acting that way. I mean, I even quoted it for you.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:He's done this to convince people that he doesn't have all this power. He doesn't have to do that. And would have carried out his plan even if it hadn't been approved.
So you can read minds and you're prescient.
Got any hot stock tips for me?
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
Yeah, I bet Pepsi will take a hit. So, if you've got stock in Pepsi, you'd better back off now.
Otherwise, you seem to be unable to imagine that anyone would act in a way purely to manipulate someone's opinion of them.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Otherwise, you seem to be unable to imagine that anyone would act in a way purely to manipulate someone's opinion of them.
Interesting theory. Completely wrong, of course. Do I really need to explicitly point out the difference between knowing that people sometimes do "act in a way purely to manipulate someone's opinion of them" and expecting someone accusing someone else of doing that to provide even a modicum of evidence?
Posted by Bella Bee (Member # 7027) on :
All I have to say is that Bush makes me really sad to be a republican.
And I mean that in the British sense of 'republican'. He actually makes a monarchy seem not all that bad after all. Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
I don't need to provide evidence. All I'm telling you to do is to "imagine" that is what he is doing.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I don't need to provide evidence. All I'm telling you to do is to "imagine" that is what he is doing.
Really? Where does "He's done this to convince people that he doesn't have all this power" contain a hint that I should merely be imagining this?
Also, how does my disagreeing with your conclusion on that score demonstrate my inability to imagine that?
If you're just going to make imaginary complaints about Bush rather than post unsubstantiated conclusions about what his motives are, just let me know.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
Bullying people doesn't make you right. You know that?
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
The people at rolling stone are smarter than you? I'd edit that post if I were you...
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Bullying people doesn't make you right. You know that?
This isn't bullying. Trust me. You decided to make statements about what I was and wasn't capable of imagining based on my disagreeing with your unsupported assertions concerning Bush's motivations. ("you seem to be unable to imagine that anyone would act in a way purely to manipulate someone's opinion of them")
Two of your posts contain contradictory intent. I've asked you to clarify between them.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
Now, you're just being mean. If you tell me that isn't bullying, then you're either blind or you are in denial. That is just filled with, "I'm going to be mean to this kid because I'm older than him."
So, my posts contradict each other? Life doesn't go without contradictions. A number of which are left unexplained, which is how I intend this particular one to stay.
So, I suggest you stop picking on me and return to your political debate over there. *points to discussion*
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
If Bush ends up being considered the worst president ever, much of the blame should lie with Karl Rove and a Republican political machine that succeeded in convincing the public that whatever the Bush administration was doing was right, that prevented the Republican majority from dissenting from Bush's policie, and that allowed Bush to get away with extreme policies. A typical president is not capable of doing that much damage because they are restrained by many checks and balances, including Congress, the Constitution, the media, and the American people. But after 9/11, with the help of Rove and the Republican Party, Bush was able to do a lot more - and consequently was able to do far more damage than other less competent presidents could have.
Politicians should be required to read Plato's Gorgias. In it, Plato argues that the ability to convince the people to do whatever you want them to do is not truly beneficial to you. While it helps you do good things when you are wise, it also allows you to make horrible mistakes when your beliefs are mistaken. Instead, Plato suggests, true rhetorical power is the ability to help the people see the truth - so they will help you when you are truly correct, and stop you when you are truly mistaken. This simple idea is extremely applicable today, but believed by very few politicians.
The Bush administration was not primarily concerned with the truth. Instead they were primarily concerned with convincing the public to do whatever they wanted to do. They were more concerned about making the case to go into Iraq than they were concerned about whether or not they truly should. They were more concerned about convincing Americans the war was going well than whether or not it actually was. And most of all, they were more concerned with getting Bush reelected than they were with allowing Americans to figure out who was truly the best candidate.
Politicians always want to be reelected, even if they have to trick the people into reelecting them - and that's where the system goes awry. They always think they are the best candidate, but when they are not it is usually better if they don't win - especially in a prominent position like the Presidency. Had Bush not been reelected in 2004, the Republican Party would be in a much stronger position today, and the first Bush presidency would be viewed as not that bad. Katrina would not be blamed on Bush. The Iraq War problems would be handed over to the Democrats. And Republicans in general would be less tied to the foolish policies that Bush and other neoconservatives have injected into their party leadership. But because Bush had the ability to make so many more big mistakes, he did. That's how he spent his political capital. He should have realized that political capital is only good if you achieve good things with it. It only hurts you if you pursue mistaken things.
And while you can fool the American people for a while with propoganda and various political tools, the results of your policies can't be hid forever. History eventually finds out the truth.
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
Huh. I thought this was a thread about Abe Lincoln. Go figure...
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
quote:Originally posted by starLisa: Huh. I thought this was a thread about Abe Lincoln. Go figure...
Someone seems a little confused.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Leaving aside the heated debate on comrade Bush's unknowable motivation, how about looking at verifiable effects of his actions? So let's see.
Taliban out of Afghanistan - good one.
Americans not out of Iraq - not so good.
No forces available to deal with Iran, oooops.
Pissed off American allies to the point of making it politically impossible in many European countries to help the US even when that would plainly be in the best interest of the country. Not so good.
No action on energy policy, unless you count invading Iraq. I don't know if this is a plus or not - is there a stable oil supply from those fields yet? If so, a moderate plus, I suppose.
That's off the top of my head. But you can't say 'worst' from one data point. Let's compare with, say, Wilson.
Kept US out of Great War in the face of repeated losses of citizens to German torpedoes. Not good.
When he finally did join, his useless 'Fourteen Points' cluttered up the German political situation and made genuine negotiations very difficult. This prolonged the war by at least 50000 lives. Major badboy points.
Mucked up the peace process by refusing to get his hands dirty enforcing the terms - not really his fault, the Senate and the people share the blame, but still.
Pissed off the Senate to the point that the US withdrew into isolationism, dooming the world to another round of depression and then war. Grrr.
At least Bush knows to keep his foot on the throat of a defeated opponent. Though to be fair, Iraq is hardly in the league of Wilhelmine Germany. Maybe that should be, "Bush knows not to pick on nations his own size."
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers: Now, you're just being mean. If you tell me that isn't bullying, then you're either blind or you are in denial. That is just filled with, "I'm going to be mean to this kid because I'm older than him."
So, my posts contradict each other? Life doesn't go without contradictions. A number of which are left unexplained, which is how I intend this particular one to stay.
So, I suggest you stop picking on me and return to your political debate over there. *points to discussion*
*snort*
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Dagonee, it's not that you're not making flippin' awesome posts, it's the fact that you're being as obtuse and belligerent as possible. You're not really discussing any issues, you're arguing with the exact words people are using, while never addressing what they're saying.
Your posts are indeed flippin' awesome, because the more you can avoid actually discussing things with people, and instead look for ways to disagree with their phrasing or pick apart the wording of their posts, the less likely anyone is to bother replying to you.
GG
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
With Bush, the US successfully changed the government of Afghanistan -- something nobody's been able to do since the Mongol Horde -- and did it as winter was coming on. It did Persian Gulf War 2.0 with an unbelievably low number of casualties. It turned around the slump that began late in Clinton's presidency, and now has a booming economy. It has also at least temporarily stopped a genocide in western Sudan, and ended the war in the southern Sudan with an option for the southern region to secede.
It's only natural to rate Bush as the worst President ever, based on this record.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Dagonee, it's not that you're not making flippin' awesome posts, it's the fact that you're being as obtuse and belligerent as possible. You're not really discussing any issues, you're arguing with the exact words people are using, while never addressing what they're saying.
Bull. I addressed a very particular claim in the article - one that has been made many times on this board and NEVER substantiated. I'm the only one who's bothered to actually address the freakin' article, and all I've gotten is a bunch of people crying because I'm actually addressing what people have said.
How exactly are these worthy of being called "discussion"?
quote:WOO HOO! I so called this. But none of my stupid friends would believe me.
quote:The Bush White House may not have actually said, "The president's power as commander in chief in wartime are limitless", but they sure act that way.
...
You're equivocating Dagonee. I'm not saying that Bush has limitless power, or that he acts like he has limitless power.
quote:He's done this to convince people that he doesn't have all this power. He doesn't have to do that. And would have carried out his plan even if it hadn't been approved.
...
Otherwise, you seem to be unable to imagine that anyone would act in a way purely to manipulate someone's opinion of them.
...
I don't need to provide evidence. All I'm telling you to do is to "imagine" that is what he is doing.
Please.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Both the Russians and British installed friendly puppets in Kabul in the course of the nineteenth century. So did, in their time, the Persians and Chinese. Now, it's true that several of those governments didn't exactly control much of Afghanistan outside Kabul, but there again... And really, the American puppets have only been there for four years, hardly enough to judge whether they're going to be stable or not.
As for 'unbelievably low number of casualties', is this the same number that's hit 2000 dead and rising? Personally, I believe that perfectly well. I think some people might disagree with the booming economy, too - increasing government spending is not usually considered the healthiest of indicators. And for the Sudan, I really don't see how the US gets any credits for doing what the UN usually does - mouth some condemnatory phrases, that is.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:It did Persian Gulf War 2.0 with an unbelievably low number of casualties.
You say unbelievably low, I say unbelievably unnecessary.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Dag, I'd actually be interested in hearing you speculate on what the Bush Administration believes are the limits on presidential power in wartime.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I might consider that if someone were to post references to the Bush administration legal analyses that are supposedly demonstrating the administrations contention that the limits on presidential power are "limitless."
But so far all I've seen are the bald statements that this is their position. I'm not going to undertake a 40-hour plus legal research project to refute the equivalent of "Clinton wants to lock up all the Christians."
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
You mean he doesn't? Why did we consider him a good guy, again? Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
quote: By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.
Dag, ignoring the limitless sentense (which I agree with you is an exaggerated hyperbole), what do you make of the rest of that paragraph? Particularly the acusation in bold.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
quote:With Bush, the US successfully changed the government of Afghanistan -- something nobody's been able to do since the Mongol Horde -- and did it as winter was coming on. It did Persian Gulf War 2.0 with an unbelievably low number of casualties. It turned around the slump that began late in Clinton's presidency, and now has a booming economy. It has also at least temporarily stopped a genocide in western Sudan, and ended the war in the southern Sudan with an option for the southern region to secede.
It's only natural to rate Bush as the worst President ever, based on this record.
There are some people who might be more inclined to judge Bush based upon his successes, or lack thereof, within the borders of the United States of America.
There are also some people who might be more inclinced to judge Bush based upon his ability (or inability) to preserve liberties, follow the intent of the law, and represent the will of the People.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Dag, ignoring the limitless sentense (which I agree with you is an exaggerated hyperbole), what do you make of the rest of that paragraph? Particularly the acusation in bold.
It's full of misleading innuendo. For example, the article seems to imply that Bush's use of presidential signing statements is somehow uniquely bad. It doesn't even try to give an analysis.
quote:This memorandum provides you with an analysis of the legal significance of Presidential signing statements. It is addressed to the questions that have been raised about the usefulness or validity of a such statements. We believe that such statements may on appropriate occasions perform useful and legally significant functions. These functions include (1) explaining to the public, and particularly to constituencies interested in the bill, what the President believes to be the likely effects of its adoption, (2) directing subordinate officers within the Executive Branch how to interpret or administer the enactment, and (3) informing Congress and the public that the Executive believes that a particular provision would be unconstitutional in certain of its applications, or that it is unconstitutional on its face, and that the provision will not be given effect by the Executive Branch to the extent that such enforcement would create an unconstitutional condition.(1)
These functions must be carefully distinguished from a much more controversial -- and apparently recent -- use of Presidential signing statements, i.e., to create legislative history to which the courts are expected to give some weight when construing the enactment. In what follows, we outline the rationales for the first three functions, and then consider arguments for and against the fourth function.(2) The Appendix to the memorandum surveys the use of signing statements by earlier Presidents and provides examples of such statements that were intended to have legal significance or effects.
While the fourth is certainly controversial, it's not like it lacks support by legal scholars:
quote:n support of the view that signing statements can be used to create a species of legislative history, it can be argued that the President as a matter both of constitutional right and of political reality plays a critical role in the legislative process. The Constitution prescribes that the President "shall from time to time . . . recommend to [Congress's] Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." U.S. Const., art. II, § 3, cl. 1. Moreover, before a bill is enacted into law, it must be presented to the President. "If he approve it he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated." U.S. Const., art. I, § 7, cl. 2.(11) Plainly, the Constitution envisages that the President will be an important actor in the legislative process, whether in originating bills, in signing them into law, or in vetoing them. Furthermore, for much of American history the President has de facto been "a sort of prime minister or 'third House of Congress.' . . . [H]e is now expected to make detailed recommendations in the form of messages and proposed bills, to watch them closely in their tortuous progress on the floor and in committee in each house, and to use every honorable means within his power to persuade . . . Congress to give him what he wanted in the first place." Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidency, 110 (2d ed. 1960). It may therefore be appropriate for the President, when signing legislation, to explain what his (and Congress's) intention was in making the legislation law, particularly if the Administration has played a significant part in moving the legislation through Congress. And in fact several courts of appeals have relied on signing statements when construing legislation. See United States v. Story, 891 F.2d 988, 994 (2d Cir. 1989) (Newman, J.) ("though in some circumstances there is room for doubt as to the weight to be accorded a presidential signing statement in illuminating congressional intent, . . . President Reagan's views are significant here because the Executive Branch participated in the negotiation of the compromise legislation."); Berry v. Dep't of Justice, 733 F.2d 1343, 1349-50 (9th Cir. 1984) (citing President Johnson's signing statement on goals of Freedom of Information Act); Clifton D. Mayhew, Inc. v. Wirtz, 413 F.2d 658, 661-62 (4th Cir. 1969) (relying on President Truman's description in signing statement of proper legal standard to be used in Portal-to-Portal Act).
The constitutionality of using congressional legislative history is seriously questioned by very prominent legal scholars, yet no one asserts that the insertion of explanations into the congressional record with the expectation that courts will refer to it is an attempt to usurp power.
It will no doubt not surprise you that I don't find the characterization of the NSA surveillance program to be particularly complete or particularly accurate.
Quite frankly, it takes a lot if individual, complex issues, roundly decides them in a particular fashion, and then lists them with inaccurate summaries. It's trash.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
I consider George Bush the worst President of my lifetime. That's saying a lot because Nixon infested the White House during my days on the planet, as did Ronald Reagan.
Bush manages to combine the worst features of both of the previous worst Presidents of my lifetime:
- he is an habitual liar, living in deliberate isolation from not only critics, but actual facts.
- he fancies himself a warrior and believes that this defines his legacy.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Gee Bob, I would never have guessed you felt that way from your recent newspaper posts.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes, Dag, and we would never have guessed you were going to defend the comrade President. So what was your point, exactly? Speaking of excessive snark. (Not to argue from authority, but I think we all agree that I should be able to recognise that when I see it.)
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
If people would bother to pay attention, they'd see that I actually seldom defend the president so much as merely try to get people to be honest in their criticisms of him.
His policies are seldom really discussed here. Either the discussion is about a caricature of his policies or someone getting terribly upset at some latest attack on the constitution that, happens to have been fairly common for three decades and is generally accepted as constitutional.
Even when there is actual discussion going on, the threads invariably include someone doing something like, say, crowing about how stupid the people who disagreed with them are.
So pardon me when I don’t express surprise that someone who has lately posted a number of articles in new threads and used them to criticize Bush expresses his contempt for the man.
With a nice little side order of cheap pop psychology to go with it.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
That is what bothers me about him. He seems to only want to listen to his own view of the situation and surrounds himself with people who will agree with him despite the fact that his is not the only way of looking at things.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers:
quote:Originally posted by starLisa: Huh. I thought this was a thread about Abe Lincoln. Go figure...
Someone seems a little confused.
Look on the bright side Steve, maybe she'll explain her reasons, and then we at least get a good laugh out of it.
Is Bush the worst President in the history of the US? Maybe. I can't say for sure, he still has a couple years to go, but he would certainly seem to be in contention.
The first question I ask myself when discussing the goodness or badness of a president is: Is the country worse off, or better off than when he took office?
Sometimes it isn't fair, if someone else causes it to be a worse off situation, but then you're getting into the second, third, fourth questions. I'd say the answer to that question is by far, worse off. And I think a lot of that comes from bad presidential decisionmaking, to say nothing of his arrogant, prick like attitude.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
I guess this is slightly off topic, but this thread got me thinking about it... I think that the current political climate needs to make a good majority of the nation stop and really think about what influences them in their view of the president. I think it is a fair statement to say that Bush's policies have not changed in any significant way since the 2004 election. Since that time, he has lost a huge amount of public support. Sure, Iraq isn't going well but it wasn't going that well in '04 either. Bush didn't offer a timeframe for leaving so only the truly naive would have thought we'd be done by now. Bush is doing exactly what he promised and he's being heckled by many who supported him. What changed their minds?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Because their blind faith in Bush's "Stay the course" plan didn't pan out?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: If people would bother to pay attention, they'd see that I actually seldom defend the president so much as merely try to get people to be honest in their criticisms of him.
Talk about fighting on your back though Dag.
Honestly (and I mean no attack) can you find a defense for him as a president? Can you give some encouraging reasons why he isn't the worst president? I know you aren't defending him except in so far as asking everyone to be fair... but its difficult for many people to be fair in their vilifications of a man they find to be a liar and a tyrant. Obviously you need to take into account how poorly Bush has related to the public, if his enemies can barely contain their outright scorn for him in every regard. Again, not that I noticed you defending him particularly vehemently either.
It just strikes me that if the only defense of Bush is going to be "don't kick him in the head when he's down," then what's worth defending? Of course you may be right about all these things, but I think obviously the hatred and villification are coming from some other undefined sense of injustice, and this is just an excuse.
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: The people at rolling stone are smarter than you? I'd edit that post if I were you...
My thoughts exactly.
Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
quote:Originally posted by Amanecer: I think it is a fair statement to say that Bush's policies have not changed in any significant way since the 2004 election. Since that time, he has lost a huge amount of public support. Sure, Iraq isn't going well but it wasn't going that well in '04 either. Bush didn't offer a timeframe for leaving so only the truly naive would have thought we'd be done by now. Bush is doing exactly what he promised and he's being heckled by many who supported him. What changed their minds?
Easy: gas prices. If gas was $1.36 a gallon, Bush's approval rating would be 55% or better.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
Dag, I'm fairly proud of the fact that no-one has to guess my opinions of the president, or why I hold them.
They are based on observation of his behavior, character, and record to date.
If you look carefully at even the most recent articles I've posted and what I've said about them, I have put in ample caveats regarding the sources (usually Washington Post, BBC News, and NY Times, in that order -- with a smattering of other sources from time to time).
You've been quick to add caveats as well, and, if you look, I've often agreed with your assessments.
In view of that, I think I'm probably the kind of critic the President and his erstwhile supporters have the hardest time dealing with -- ones willing to cut him some slack and who still loathe him based on what they see and what they believe his actions and speaches are really saying about him.
I think one thing you've failed to give me credit for is that I often post those articles for reasons other than trying to convince someone of Bush's perfidy. Most recently, I'm posting them in hopes of sparking a discussion of another interesting phenomenon -- the distintegration of a presidential Administration.
I'm kind of in the "end-game" mode of Bush watching at this point. I believe it's become a race to see whether:
1) he does something so collosally contrary to US interests and public sentiment that we see rioting in the streets, impeachment, or worse; or
2) which of the many scandals-a-brewing garners enough general popular disgust to push him into early lame-duck irrelevance; or
3) he just gets out at the end of his term and fades into whatever "glory" is due him.
I give each of these about equal chances of occurrence.
I freely admit everything I think about him is personal opinion. I've ceased trying to convince anyone of anything.
I'm just "enjoying" watching his last days in power. If I may use a train analogy -- the question isn't whether there will be a wreck, just how much of the train will still be attached to his engine when it finally jumps track, bursts into flame, and goes sailing into the abyss.
I do have one source of bright optimism, though -- this country has recovered from presidents nearly as bad as this one and survived pretty much okay. There's no a priori reason to suspect that the damage he has caused, or will cause in his remaining days, is necessarily permanent.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I believe that by issuing a signing statement to exempt the executive branch from a law he disagrees with, rather than vetoing it (which would allow Congress the possibility of overruling him), President Bush is dismissing the Constitution and its intention of a balanced government. He has vetoed no laws, not a one, but he has issued signing statements on 750 of them, far more than any other president, and often on laws that were passed with specific checks and balances on the executive branch detailed.
One wonders why we need a Congress at all, if the President assumes sole judgment as to whether the laws they pass apply to him.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
Come on! Worst President? When we have Buchanan and Van Buren on the list? Mr. Bush is not bright enough to be the worst. Admittedly he has a group of bad friends that he allows to run arround unchocked and unattended. But, personally he is not the worst President ever.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:he has issued signing statements on 750 of them, far more than any other president
Can you cite that 750? The only source I found was John Dean, who I wouldn't cite to confirm his birthday, and his numbers said 104 through the end of 2004, leaving some 643 to have occurred in the last 18 months or so.
If you're interested in the history of signing statements, here's an interesting link. I can't vouch for some of what he cites, but some is linked back to primary source material. One key point: Bush's use of the statements isn't novel to him. Which doesn't make him right, but it is applicable to accusations that Bush is doing something uniquley despotic.
His conclusion is particularly appropriate here, I think:
quote:If a President signs a bill on the understanding that it has a particular meaning, why isn't that at least as relevant as the fact that a congressional report contains a few citations that were inserted by a congressional staffer and that no one else (in all likelihood) ever read? (That's what Scalia was complaining about in this opinion.)
BTW, Reagan issued 88, Clinton issued 105, GWHB issued 146. If Dean's numbers on Bush are correct, then he's issued more than Clinton did in 8 years, but at double Clinton's rate, not 7-fold. It's a significant difference.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Haven't found a definitive list of the signing statements in question. I also admit I don't how they're being counted. Does the 750 number include signing statements that do not violate the spirit of the law referenced? "I am proud to sign this bill into law," etc etc.
But you can search for signing statements here, although you'll also get public statements and PR releases, and the exectuive brnach exemption appears to have become boilerplate. I read through the last 50 I found and the executive branch is consistently named as the only body that can decide how to execute these laws.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Dag, I did a fairly extensive Google search last night on statements the Bush Administration has made regarding the limits of presidential power. And the only one I found which admitted to any sort of potential limit at all was the one below.
Which, if you read it, doesn't actually concede the existence of any limit, but merely admits that they aren't going to try to engage in blanket surveillance of all communications in the United States -- not necessarily because there's a limit, mind you.
The quote is most notable for what is quite carefully not said, IMO.
quote:Q: I'd like to ask you, what are the constitutional limits on this power that you see laid out in the statute and in your inherent constitutional war power? And what's to prevent you from just listening to everyone's conversation and trying to find the word "bomb," or something like that?
ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, that's a good question. This was a question that was raised in some of my discussions last night with members of Congress. The President has not authorized -- has not authorized blanket surveillance of communications here in the United States. He's been very clear about the kind of surveillance that we're going to engage in. And that surveillance is tied with our conflict with al Qaeda.
Let me again reiterate that this was the ONLY quote I could find from ANY ranking Bush Administration official which hints in ANY WAY at the existence of potential limits to presidential power.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Bush challenges hundres of laws. The Globe lists the numbers as GHW Bush at 232, Clinton at 140 and GW Bush at 750.
Haven't found a definitive list of the signing statements in question. I also admit I don't how they're being counted. Does the 750 number include signing statements that do not violate the spirit of the law referenced? "I am proud to sign this bill into law," etc etc.
But you can search for signing statements here, although you'll also get public statements and PR releases, and the exectuive brnach exemption appears to have become boilerplate. I read through the last 50 I found and the executive branch is consistently named as the only body that can decide how to execute these laws.
That link returns 144 hits from FY 2001 through 2006 on the search ""statement on signing,"" which seems to be the formula for signing statements.
This includes a few Clinton signing statements.
The article you posted starts "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office." Beyond the pernicious misstatement that sentence represents about what the signing statements actually say, the chart comparing the numbers appears to be comparing apples (the number of actual signing statements for GWHB and Clinton) to oranges (the number of individual objections contained w/in signing statements by Bush). In other words, a single Bush signing statement can be counted dozens of times.
Of course, I can't confirm that's what's happening, because they don't seem to cite the precise study, at least on the 2 pages I can read.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Tom, are you trying to argue that Bush thinks he could round up the Democratic senators, order the governor's of their states to appoint Republicans, and shoot them if they don't? If not, you're admitting that he sees the powers as limited.
There are two types of limits: what activities may be engaged in and what cricumstances allow a particular activity. All the discussions about limitations occur in the context of a particular activity. In other words, in a situation where the biggest and most important type of limit is not part of the discussion.
There are briefs out there describing the legal justifications being used for particular actions. Do ANY of them claim limitless power?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
Either Harding or Jackson are the most shameful.
Some people love Jackson and Jackson is somehow still on the twenty. I see a lot of Jackson in Bush. The controversial virtues and vices Bush exemplies, Jackson is even moreso. If you appreciate one, I imagine you'd appreciate the other.
[ April 30, 2006, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: Irami Osei-Frimpong ]
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: ... The President has not authorized -- has not authorized blanket surveillance of communications here in the United States. He's been very clear about the kind of surveillance that we're going to engage in. And that surveillance is tied with our conflict with al Qaeda.
I don't even seen any concession of limits here, personally, at least on the issue of electronic surveillance. The quote is that Bush hasn't authorized blanket surveillance of communications here in the US. There is no statement that he could not or would not do so at some future time. Just saying that the surveillance is "tied with our conflict with al Qaeda" does not mean that at some future time, Bush might not decide (he is "the decider", after all ) that he thinks that conflict requires blanket surveillance.
I'd be interested, by the way, if any of you have read Seymour Hersh's article in the April 17 New Yorker referencing what might be on the menu for Iran or Carl Bernstein's call in Vanity Fair for an investigation of the Bush administration by Congress. If so what do you think?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Edit: Aimed solely at the arrogant little dismissiveness in the treatment of the "decider" label.
[ April 30, 2006, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
quote:The people at rolling stone are smarter than you? I'd edit that post if I were you...
How about "better informed?"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Tom, are you trying to argue that Bush thinks he could round up the Democratic senators, order the governor's of their states to appoint Republicans, and shoot them if they don't? If not, you're admitting that he sees the powers as limited.
Yes. And it would be a similar exaggeration to call the sky blue, since it's really only blue in patches, and then only for part of the day in part of the world.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And it would be a similar exaggeration to call the sky blue, since it's really only blue in patches, and then only for part of the day in part of the world.
People have been defending the use of the word "limitless." You seem to have taken that tact yourself.
Are you now admitting that it's not "limitless"? Or is your rather silly and inapplicable analogy your way of saying somehow that "limitless" is appropriate even though you acknowledge that he does, in fact, recognize some limits?
Posted by collissimon (Member # 9346) on :
I wouldn't call Bush the worst President ever, but that would mainly be due to a lack of knowledge about previous US Presidents.
He has, however renewed one country's dependence on Opium Poppies to support their economy. He has taken his country, and strongarmed others into an illegal war, and is thus responsible for its collapse.
He has used the deaths of people shamelessly to maintain a grip on power, presenting issues in binaries of good and evil. He has used their deaths, at home and abroad, to restrict civil liberties and human rights, unfortunately prompting other countries (namely the UK) to push a similar regime. He has set back the international agenda by refusing to sign to their contracts.
Not exactly a glowing record.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Are you now admitting that it's not "limitless"? Or is your rather silly and inapplicable analogy your way of saying somehow that "limitless" is appropriate even though you acknowledge that he does, in fact, recognize some limits?
This may be a lawyer thing for you, Dag, but I don't think anyone here, even in using the word "limitless," means to imply that Bush thinks he can walk into Congress and order everyone shot. I think they're referring to practical and/or traditional limits on presidential power, which Bush and his people certainly don't acknowledge.
And, as I said earlier, I'm really interested in hearing what you think he and his adminstration believe those practical limits to be. I can't find a single instance in which they've identified something that might NOT be justifiable. Can you find a quote from any Bush administration official that says "Heck, we don't think a president should be able to do this. It'd be a gross abuse of power, even in wartime." Because I can't, and it disturbs me that I can't.
To be honest, I don't quite understand why you -- as a lawyer -- are comfortable with the clear grabs at power that Bush and his people are making. Do you PREFER to have a great deal of power vested in a single executive?
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I suspect he simply requires clear instances where power has been grabbed, and not just "here's how many times he's done it" or "isn't it obvious" types of arguments.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The thing is, I'm fairly sure Dag is AWARE of instances where power has been grabbed. And I'm skeptical that producing a short list of the ones I consider most compelling and/or dangerous would elicit any response other than point-by-point nitpicking.
Which is, by the way, exactly how freedom dies: every single right revoked is revoked for a perfectly good, justifiable, and nearly legal reason.
Posted by David G (Member # 8872) on :
Tom: I think you phrased the issue for Dagonee improperly - in a way that is impossible to answer. There certainly are practical, traditional and legal limits on presidential power that the Bush administration acknowledges just by virtue of how it operates on a daily basis.
The only fair way to analyze this issue is on a case-by-case basis. May I suggest that you name a specific action by the Bush administration that you believe does, or may, exceed the legal or traditional limits on presidential power. Then let's debate whether that act does, in fact, exceed legal or traditional limitations on presidential power. Let's further debate whether there have been other instances in which Presidents have exercised or attempted to excersise presidential power in a similar way.
EDIT: Tom, I think your last post is a fair question. "What do you think is an inappropriate power grab?"
EDIT AGAIN: A fair question: "Do you believe that the Bush Administration has inappropriately exceeded legal and appropriate limitations on presidential power, and if so, how?"
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:This may be a lawyer thing for you, Dag, but I don't think anyone here, even in using the word "limitless," means to imply that Bush thinks he can walk into Congress and order everyone shot. I think they're referring to practical limits on presidential power.
Then they ought to use the words they mean. It's not a lawyer thing, it's an English thing.
I've made it very clear what exception I've taken to the article. People are using broad, sweeping language to make accusations of some pretty horrific things. Then, when asked to back it up, I get the stupid lawyer accusations or am told I'm devolving into semantics.
If they don't mean limitless, what do they mean? I think everyone would recognize that an authorization to use military force from Congress allows the president to do some things that he wouldn't be allowed to do absent that authrization.
The accusation has been made that he thinks that the things he can do based on that authorization are "limitless." Now I'm told the accusation isn't that they're limitless, it's that there aren't any "practical limits."
I'm sorry, but "practical limits" doesn't mean anything to me. Do you include something akin to Japanese internment (and I mean wholesale confinement and confiscation of everyone meeting a racial classification in a given region) inside "practical limits"? That was done not 70 years ago by someone recognized as one of the greatest champions for civil rights in American history.
People haven't said, "Bush has done X things that I think go beyond his presidential powers for Y reasons." They've made very serious accusations that amount to an ongoing plot to gather more personal power. The article uses the word "despot." And they've used "limitless" to justify it.
Now you want me to tell you what Bush thinks the limits are, without even giving me a subject to look at. Despite your acknowledgment that there are some limits, you're still posing a challenge that seems to rest on the assumption that Bush doesn't recognize limits.
Have you read the briefs in Hamdi, Padilla, or any of the Guantanimo cases? The legal memo justifying the NSA plan? The transcripts of the oral arguments for any of the cases? I'd bet that such a statement is in each of them.
My whole objection to most of the commentary in this thread is that it's conclusory statements using broad language that can't be supported. When I call people on that language, I'm accused of somehow not being fair.
You, yourself, Tom, decided that the NSA program was an impeachable offense within tow days of it breaking, a statement that implies not only that the program is outside the scope of the president's powers, but that it's so outside the scope of his powers that it amounted to high crimes and misdemeanors. I assume you don't think every government officer who makes an error of constitutional interpretation should be impeached, so I further assume that you thought the NSA program was clearly outside the scope of presidential powers.
And yet you were utterly unaware of some of the underlying justifications. SCOTUS upheld the indefinite detention of an American citizen without criminal charges or right to trial on the basis of the same justification the President uses for the NSA program. Clearly, the justification has some traction. Yet you were confident in condemning it as a high crime and misdemeanor.
It's this overblown reaction that I am entirely sick and tired of. Yes, I'm bitching about the word "limitless." If people don't mean "limitless," they can use another freaking word.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:The thing is, I'm fairly sure Dag is AWARE of instances where power has been grabbed. And I'm skeptical that producing a short list of the ones I consider most compelling and/or dangerous would elicit any response other than point-by-point nitpicking. Which is, by the way, exactly how freedom dies: every single right revoked is revoked for a perfectly good, justifiable, and nearly legal reason.
There we go. It's nitpicking when I point out that the underlying assumptions supporting a conclusion about Bush aren't as ironclad as people think them to be. I'm the one not being fair or engaging in the discussion in good faith, not the people who are using inaccurate facts or legal conclusions to support their claims.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The thing is, I'm fairly sure Dag is AWARE of instances where power has been grabbed. And I'm skeptical that producing a short list of the ones I consider most compelling and/or dangerous would elicit any response other than point-by-point nitpicking.
Which is, by the way, exactly how freedom dies: every single right revoked is revoked for a perfectly good, justifiable, and nearly legal reason.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
OK, so you've pretty much admitted you don't want to engage in this in good faith. Which is kind of why I've refused to even try to answer your question.
I'm pretty sure Tom is aware of many limits the Bush administration would place on its activities, many of which would be considered "practical." I'm skeptical producing a list would elicit any response other than one-line over-simplifications that studiously avoid dealing with the actual specifics.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
quote:Which is kind of why I've refused to even try to answer your question.
That's such a twisted manipulation of the argument, btw. Just from the standpoint of an observer.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Here's the problem I have with dealing with legal specifics, Dag: I don't trust the legal system to produce sensible results, because ANYONE can generate a dumb precedent based on the flawed logic of a handful of judges. (The "justification" for the NSA program, for example, falls EXACTLY into that category for me.) So far, far more important -- to me, at least -- is the general atmosphere and thrust of policy.
You've found yourself having to repeatedly justify every legal maneuver and political scandal of this administration over the last few years, often on VERY legalistic (and sometimes very, very thin) grounds. It baffles me, then, why you believe the fault for this should be directed towards critics of the administration who are simply insufficiently precise; I would make the observation instead that an administration which needs to justify its every action based on obscure or controversial legal precedent is almost certainly doing, en masse, a number of things to create a hostile atmosphere for human rights.
The mere fact that this administration's actions, even things that might be regarded by our grandchildren as obvious mistakes, can later be used as legal justifications for further actions by future administrations is something that I consider gravely unfortunate. You refer to internment -- and my reaction is "Yeah, that was a pretty horrible mistake, too. Shame it's still being used as an outer bound of precedent to justify presidential excess."
I have no doubt that a legal justification can be found for ANYTHING, however immoral, however unspeakable. I therefore have very little interest in legal precedent as a substitute for morality.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:That's such a twisted manipulation of the argument, btw. Just from the standpoint of an observer.
At least you didn't try to say "unbiased."
Tom is asking me to prove that Bush is innocent of the charges levied against him in this thread. Charges which NO ONE has bothered to even cite evidence for in this thread.
I've already said I don't have time to do it, and mentioned what someone could do to elicit a response from me in this regard. Instead of doing that, Tom has decided that it would do no good because I would actually *gasp* challenge the details of things being labeled as power grabs.
In what universe - even the universe of this thread where responding to people who call those who disagree with them "stupid" is termed "bullying" - is that discussing in good faith?
1.) Bush is said to be claiming limitless power. 2.) I say, "no he's not." 3.) Tom asks me to document what the limits of Bush's views of his power are. 4.) I say, nope, don't have time, but if someone posts a document which supports the contention that Bush is claiming unlimited power, I'll address it.
Note that at no time has ANYONE posted an analysis that supports the contention that Bush is claiming limitless power. Not once. Nor has their been any support for the contention that was Bush is doing is out of line with recent presidents except what Chris with respect to the signing statements.
And, would you believe it, there was actually a meaningful exchange about that topic, because something specific was being discussed.
I am not going to post a defense to wild accusations that no one feels the need to support. I'll merely continue to point out that those accusations are inaccurate and wait for someone who actually wants to discuss it rather than have me prove the unsubstantiated accusations.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It baffles me, then, why you believe the fault for this should be directed towards critics of the administration who are simply insufficiently precise; I would make the observation instead that an administration which needs to justify its every action based on obscure or controversial legal precedent is almost certainly doing, en masse, a number of things to create a hostile atmosphere for human rights.
Yes, but most of the criticisms levied at the administration in this thread are not about human rights, they're about separation of powers.
It's not a question of "precision." Accusing someone of seeking limitless authority - especially when using words like "despot" - is not a case of imprecise terminology with regards to questionable acts. It's an accusation of a very particular type which alludes to several transfers of democratic governments to dictatorships.
If people just meant, Bush has gone too far in X, Y, and Z ways, they could have said that. They didn't. Whether they've intended to or not, they've invoked Ceaser, Hitler, and Palpatine's conversion of Republics to Dictatorships with that language, and I'm not going to roll over for it.
quote:You refer to internment -- and my reaction is "Yeah, that was a pretty horrible mistake, too. Shame it's still being used as an outer bound of precedent to justify presidential excess."
No, it's not used as an outer bound. It's quite clearly beyond the outer bound now.
quote:I have no doubt that a legal justification can be found for ANYTHING, however immoral, however unspeakable. I therefore have very little interest in legal precedent as a substitute for morality.
Once again you fail to appreciate the point I'm making. I'm not discussing the morality of Bush's actions. I'm responding to accusations to which the defenses are, by their very nature, legal. If Bush is doing something he shouldn't be doing under the Constitution, it's a legal question.
If he's doing something he shouldn't be doing because it's wrong, then it's a moral question.
The accusations made against Bush in this thread have been mostly the former kind, not the latter.
I've used this idea from the other side many times: not everything that's constitutional should be done, and the proper remedy for most things the government does wrong is not a constitutional one.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Tom is asking me to prove that Bush is innocent of the charges levied against him in this thread.
Well, no. Specifically, I asked #3, which you correctly paraphrased as "Tom asks me to document what the limits of Bush's views of his power are." Although I'd rephrase it as "...what Bush considers outside the limit of his power."
I couldn't care less about the semantics of this thread. What I'm trying to do, to be perfectly honest, is to hopefully get you to view the bigger picture. Because I worry that you've spent years defending Bush from scandal and abuse based purely on legal technicalities, and have come to view his detractors with scorn for their imprecision instead of coming, as I would personally prefer, to wonder why the details of Bush's defense are always so thin that they consistently must rely on technicalities.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
Dag, what I'm wondering is: What would you actually accept as a real example? If we post links to newspaper articles, you nitpick semantics in the articles, and say "Nope. That's inaccurate."
Meanwhile you don't have the time to do the research to disprove the information. Your argument is just that they didn't really prove it.
When someone questions this technique, you say you refuse to play because they're not looking for real answers, they're not acting on good faith.
Nobody here has the time to do the *real* research.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
And I am unbiased, btw.
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
quote: Either Harding or Jackson are the most shameful.
Some people love Jackson and Jackson is somehow still on the twenty. I see a lot of Jackson in Bush. The controversial virtues and vices Bush exemplies, Jackson is even moreso. If you appreciate one, I imagine you'd appreciate the other.
Not to disrupt this wonderful dialouge going on, but I have to agree with this. From what I know of American history, and it definately is not my specialty, Jackson was a real bozo. I don't think it really makes sense to label Bush as the worst president in US history when his term isn't over yet. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
quote:What I'm trying to do, to be perfectly honest, is to hopefully get you to view the bigger picture. Because I worry that you've spent years defending Bush from scandal and abuse based purely on legal technicalities, and have come to view his detractors with scorn for their imprecision instead of coming, as I would personally prefer, to wonder why the details of Bush's defense are always so thin that they consistently must rely on technicalities.
Rest easy Tom. I don't discuss the full extent of my views here, so you have no particular reason to be worried on that score. The people I've come to view with scorn is a subset of his detractors, not all of them.
I've picked a very small subset of things to discuss with respect to Bush on this board.
quote:Dag, what I'm wondering is: What would you actually accept as a real example? If we post links to newspaper articles, you nitpick semantics in the articles, and say "Nope. That's inaccurate."
There are lots of articles with criticisms of Bush I accept. For some reason, though, the ones that get posted are the ones with basic, easily spottable errors. Futher, the "nitpick" accusation is really damn old now. It's not nitpicking to point to things being used to support a point and demonstrate why they aren't true, or why they don't mean what the person claimed they meant.
quote:Meanwhile you don't have the time to do the research to disprove the information.
Inaccurate. I don't have time to disprove the unsubstantiated accusations. There has been an enormous lack of information in this thread. It's mostly conclusory statements.
quote:Your argument is just that they didn't really prove it.
Yes, my argument often is that someone making an accusation didn't prove it. Seems to me that's a pretty darn good argument to make.
quote:When someone questions this technique, you say you refuse to play because they're not looking for real answers, they're not acting on good faith.
Well, no, when there are two sets of conclusory statements on the board, one an accusation and one a statement that the accusation is false, I do get a wee bit suspicious of someone who only asks for proof for one set of those conclusory statements.
quote:Nobody here has the time to do the *real* research.
But they have time to post an article containing accusations which are very serious and inaccurate. And I have the time to point that out.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
See, Flaming Toad, I could easily respond to those, but apparently that's just "nit-picking."
What the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound.
With respect to your third link, which anticipated the results of media recounts:
Remember, the accusation is that the election was STOLEN.
But that's probably nit-picking.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz: Bush manages to combine the worst features of both of the previous worst Presidents of my lifetime:
- he is an habitual liar, living in deliberate isolation from not only critics, but actual facts.
- he fancies himself a warrior and believes that this defines his legacy.
I'd like to address the "habitual liar" point, especially in regard to the article this thread references in the first post. Bush, before he was elected in 2000, said he'd give tax cuts to people, and he did. He said he'd propose an amendment to the Constitution about marriage, and he did. He said he'd try to privatize Social Security and he did try. He actually has been fairly consistent about fulfilling his campain promises. He has not disappointed conservatives in regards to those. I do not agree with any of those promises, but I admire his integrity in keeping them. He may be a poor leader, but his integrity is not the first thing I'd attack him on.
I totally disagree that "he fancies himself a warrior". He knows that it isn't all roses in Iraq , contrary to what he was told it would be. The intelligence case for WMD in Iraq wasn't "a slam dunk", contrary to what he was told it would be. Read Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward (or maybe you have already). The president hesitated before going to war and asked questions. He believes the Iraq War will define his legacy, not being a warrior. His admitted style of leadership (that I disagree with), which seems to be totally trusting the opinions of his inner circle, has led to the war.
Please don't make it seem like the Pres. Bush is a bellicose, habitual liar. I'm not saying he's never lied or misled anyone. He's a poor manager and leader, IMO, and has no business being president. Attack his job performance, not the man himself.
[ April 30, 2006, 04:45 PM: Message edited by: JonnyNotSoBravo ]
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
Dagonee, Quote: But the Times survey does offer conclusive proof that Republicans were willing to say or do anything to win Florida. And did. Even cheating on absentee ballots. We know now what we suspected all along. The election in Florida was not conducted fairly nor ended fairly. That will forever cast a cloud over the Bush presidency.
Why wasn't the election conducted fairly? why did the Republicans go out of their way to rig the absentee ballots? And why, in 1998, did Bush's campaign leader in Florida illegally remove over 50000 registered voters from the voter list, 90% of them democrats? If the Bush administration cannot back up it's claim to power, than why is it stll in power?
I don't mind nit-picking, as long as it's relevant. You were accused of using a trivial contradiction in order to dispute the entire article.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
FToaS, there are 5 links in play here about the election - which one is tha quote from?
quote:You were accused of using a trivial contradiction in order to dispute the entire article.
I didn't dispute the entire article.
Posted by Kristen (Member # 9200) on :
When I saw this, I thought it was a survey, so I shall answer it as such (which is more interesting to me):
Lincoln, FDR, Johnson.
I think it's pretty easy to pinpoint my political beliefs from that. Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kristen: When I saw this, I thought it was a survey, so I shall answer it as such (which is more interesting to me):
Lincoln, FDR, Johnson.
I think it's pretty easy to pinpoint my political beliefs from that.
So your political beliefs are that you are a slave owning Nazi that thinks the Civil Rights Act should never have been signed? J/K! Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I'd say regardless of political beliefs, that's a fairly drastic thing to say. Well, maybe not so much Johnson, but Lincoln and FDR?
Why?
Posted by Kristen (Member # 9200) on :
Jonny:
Lyr: I have a French paper to finish, so I shall make this brief. They really really increased the national government's boundaries beyond what was even fathomably permissable in the Constitution more than any other president (but I think a lot of others are pretty bad too! There are plenty of honorable mentions).
They weren't bad people from what I know and they did do things which I approve of (such as FDR entering WWII), but I think their expansions of the government were most lasting in terms of precedents set.
EDIT: I didn't even think that sounded drastic! Man, I am such a paleo-conservative that I didn't even think twice. I really wanted to start off a tangent which included other's answers to that question as well Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
FDR??
Whoa!
I can't even IMAGINE what your political beliefs are.
How about starting a new thread so we can debate the merits of the Presidency of FDR?
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: See, Flaming Toad, I could easily respond to those, but apparently that's just "nit-picking."
It seems that the best way to win an argument is to throw out your own beliefs, then refuse to engage anyone else.
You say something I don't like? Well I'm not going to answer that, or I'm going to pick apart the words you use so that I don't have to say anything.
I'm right, and I challenge you make me admit that I'm not!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It seems that the best way to win an argument is to throw out your own beliefs, then refuse to engage anyone else.
That's exactly what several people have done in this thread. When I've engaged on the issue, I've been called a bully. As we saw last night, YOU are the one who threw out your beliefs about the "limitless" power, then you claimed you weren't saying Bush acted like he had limitless power.
quote:You say something I don't like? Well I'm not going to answer that, or I'm going to pick apart the words you use so that I don't have to say anything.
Well, actually, your response when someone says something you don't like is apparently to say something, claim you didn't say it, then respond by simply accusing the other poster of being obtuse and belligerent.
quote:I'm right, and I challenge you make me admit that I'm not!
That would be the exact attitude I responded to. Apparently, it's OK for a bunch of people to post one-sentence, unsupported conclusions about Bush, but not OK for me to post the opposite conclusions. You haven't deigned to even bother to TRY to support your claims about Bush. You've simply attacked me for responding to what you've said instead of what you come up with afterwards to cover for the inaccuracy of what you've said.
Remember, this thread started out with someone calling people who didn't agree with him "stupid."
BTW, I actually responded to Toad's so-called "proof." You conveniently left that out of your little rant.
As for being right, I've basically made two claims in this thread:
1.) Bush does not act as if or believe that he has limitless power as commander in chief.
2.) Bush did not steal the election in 2000.
So far, there's been sketchy posts regarding the second, and no evidence at all refuting the first.
Posted by Mighty Robot Lords (Member # 9228) on :
I haven't seen YOU provide any evidence to support your claims.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I haven't seen YOU provide any evidence to support your claims.
Not true. I posted on the issue of signing statements and I posted on the issue of the election.
As to the limitless power issue, I've already stated I'm not going to do a bunch of research to disprove a ridiculous accusation that no one cares enough to back up.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
He may not have stolen the election. But you must admit that he shouldn't have gone to the Supreme Court about it. That was just silly. He might have won anyway. But that's not the way it's supposed to be done.
I studied American Government earlier this year. And it is clearly stated in the Constitution, one of the amendments I think, that the House of Representatives is supposed to make the decision in a case like in 2000.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:But you must admit that he shouldn't have gone to the Supreme Court about it. That was just silly. He might have won anyway. But that's not the way it's supposed to be done.
Only if you'll admit Gore should have stopped going to the Florida Supreme Court.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
I never said that Gore did anything right either. I'm just saying that what Bush did is clearly outlined as being wrong somewhere in the Constitution.
It should have been the House. He would have been elected anyway, but that doesn't make what he did any less wrong. He purposely evaded text out of the Constitution.
And was thus put in office.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I never said that Gore did anything right either. I'm just saying that what Bush did is clearly outlined as being wrong somewhere in the Constitution.
That's not really true. The House makes the decision about which electoral votes to accept, but I don't think there was a chance that Florida would send up two sets of ballots. They're also supposed to choose in a 1 vote per state vote if there's no electoral majority winner.
The issue before the Court was before there was a determination about electoral majority, so it hadn't reached the House yet as an issue.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
But why was the Court involved at all? I was only ten when this happened, so my memory is a little sketchy.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
Edit: Aimed solely at the arrogant little dismissiveness in the treatment of the "decider" label.
Hey, Bush is the one that came out with that little gem. I was just trying to inject a little needed levity into the discussion. And I think calling what I said arrogant is just a little bit of projection, to be honest.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Actually, Dag, of the articles linked, I'm FAR more interested in your response to this one:
quote:On its face, this theory that Bush as a "wartime" President has the right to break the law squarely contradicts their insistence that they are not advocating for monarchic rule. Once you advocate a theory that authorizes a President, even during times of an undeclared and endless war, to violate any Congressional laws he wants as long as he says -- with no judicial review possible -- that doing so is for the sake of our security, what possible checks or limitations on Presidential power are left?
Except that the President has followed the Court's statements on actions he has taken under his wartime power.
Further, this portion:
quote:To their credit, there are Administration defenders who are nakedly honest about what they see as the limitlessness of George Bush’s "wartime" power. The Vice President, for one, certainly doesn’t seem to think there any such limits and has no problem saying so:
"I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it -- and to some extent that we have an obligation as the administration to pass on the offices we hold to our successors in as good of shape as we found them," Cheney said. In wartime, he said, the president "needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired."
empahsis mine. The article states explicitly that this quotation stands for the contention that Bush's powers are limitless.
However, the bolded portion clearly acknowledges the limits. His constitutional powers must be unimpaired.
Posted by Peek (Member # 7688) on :
do all the dudes and dudettes agree that peek would be the best?
Dude peekaboo
Yeah!
Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
If we want to determine the 'worst' on the basis of abuse of power, then FDR's court-packing attempt certainly puts him way up there.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
How did he abuse power? (edit: with the court packing scheme only, I mean) I'm not a big fan of the reason he wanted to pack the court, but he was attempting to make a change to the structure of government in the manner prescribed by the Constitution.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kristen: Jonny:
Lyr: I have a French paper to finish, so I shall make this brief. They really really increased the national government's boundaries beyond what was even fathomably permissable in the Constitution more than any other president (but I think a lot of others are pretty bad too! There are plenty of honorable mentions).
They weren't bad people from what I know and they did do things which I approve of (such as FDR entering WWII), but I think their expansions of the government were most lasting in terms of precedents set.
EDIT: I didn't even think that sounded drastic! Man, I am such a paleo-conservative that I didn't even think twice. I really wanted to start off a tangent which included other's answers to that question as well
If that is your criteria, then Bush should really be your enemy. He's overseen the greatest expansion of the Federal government since FDR. He's increased the debt by a larger percentage or what not than all previous presidents COMBINED.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: How did he abuse power? (edit: with the court packing scheme only, I mean) I'm not a big fan of the reason he wanted to pack the court, but he was attempting to make a change to the structure of government in the manner prescribed by the Constitution.
The constitution allows itself to be ammended, so it would be perfectly constitutional to try to get the American people to ammend the constitution, and alter out understanding of it to eliminate any and all rights.
I believe the expression is: "The devil can use scripture to suit any purpose"
This is what I was talking about when I said you substitute legality for morality. You can use the law to abolish the law, that doesn't make it ok.
Posted by Infrared (Member # 9196) on :
There seems to be a lot of discussion of Bush and FDR in recent threads...
From an economic policy standpoint, they seem to be travelling opposing routes (e.g. "Not the New Deal"). However, there is no denying that both administrations share alarming trends of too much power. FDR's Terms caused a later amendment to the Constitution to prevent future presidents from becoming lifelong leaders. Bush has walked a fine line around Civil Liberties (or shat upon them, depending on whom you talk to) in the name of National Security. Both worked/are-working "the system" that is our Government, Constitution, and society (FDR through strategies like court-packing; Bush via American Pride [9-11 to start War on Terrorism], Apathy [re-election, protests to his Admin's actions, etc.], & Fear).
So far the major political difference I see is that FDR appeased the majority of the public with government programs while power-grabbing. Bush, as yet, hasn't taken any major Democratic-party-style action; his home-front reforms seem just a little (or a lot) targeted at the rich and/or republican.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Well, whilst the key comparison is the alarming growth in government, the key difference is that in the beginning, FDR's war was domestic, whereas from the outset, Bush's has been foreign.
Yes, after we got into WW2, FDR's main problem was foreign as well, but it didn't start that way, he was elected as the President that had to fix a collapsing country with millions out of work and starving, and this he did with amazing speed and I'd say even incredible efficiency. Much as Bush likes to say the market will correct itself all the time, fact is the market wasn't correcting itself, though I don't really know if 1930's economics and 2000's economics really are comparable. But the fact of the matter is that FDR saved lives, gave people jobs, and kept food on the tables, all the while vastly improving America's infrastructure in ways I think few would have imagined before he took office.
He then dovetailed that into the war, and then Truman took the next step in the larger confrontation with the Soviet Union, which demanded a strong and powerful government. The fact that Bush has done what he has, WITHOUT a Great Depression that needed fixing, and WITHOUT a world war in Europe to fight I think leads to giving FDR the benefit of the doubt. He did what he had to do for excellent reasons, whereas many of Bush's have either been manfactured, or just plain unecessary.
If you look at every President in the history of this nation, I think you'd almost have to agree that regardless of the problems you have with his administration, FDR left the country with the greatest increase in goodness (in that, he left it in better condition than when he got there), than any other president in history. And that, DESPITE all the problems he had thrown at him.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Part of my problem with Bush is just what your saying Lyrhawn- He campaigned as the guy who was going to solve all the big problems in 2004, even though he was responsible for alot of them, and for making alot of them worse.
Nobody could have helped 9/11, however the justification for his actions based on that have long, long, long since run out. If there is an invasion or bombing of Iran, its almost certain that the connection between Iran and 9/11 will be only notional.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
It's certainly one of the ironies of the Bush reelection. He screws up a bunch of stuff, then tells the nation to have enough faith in him to fix his own mistakes, and America believed in a second time, this, after going back on most of the campaign promises he made the first time around. America has only itself to blame I think, for falling for it. Bush said it himself, "fool me once shame on...shame on you?" If only the fool me couldn't have gotten fooled again.
The only nation he could possibly invade and claim a connection to 9/11 is Saudia Arabia, which is probably the one he should have started with anyway. I don't see that happening.
Actually, to be honest, if he REALLY wanted to screw with Middle Eastern politics in a real way, but in my opinion a real positive way, he would have recognized Kurdistan as a nation, and supported the creation of a Kurdish state out of their old territories in Iran and Iraq. Turkey is a dicier issue, if you ask me I'd tell the Kurds there to relocate if they really wanted to live in an independent state, it's the only way to make the most people happy.
He would have pissed off the Iraqis and the Iranians, but what would they have done about it? Neither nation has the power to invade to invade the new Kurdistan if there was an American peacekeeping force there. Many Kurds are still bitter about what America let happen to them after the Gulf War ended. We told them to rise up, they did, we did nothing to help, and Saddam gassed thousands of them.
Bush could have promoted democracy, gained us a major ally in the middle of the danger zone, and we'd finally have a major oil producing friendly state in the middle east with a secular government. The Kurdish north in Iraq has always been more of an independent territory anyway, even Saddam left them largely alone when he was in power. If anything, it would have made a move to oust Saddam even easier if you took away a third of his nation and left him with a lot of enemy Shiites to deal with.
We would have had far less deaths, we wouldn't have the terrorist issues that have right now, and we could have built a safe, stable and secure democracy without the commitments we have there now. Now you may ask, "why is that Lyrhawn?" Because we already have a lot of military assets in baes in the Middle East that could easily be shifted to the new Kurdish state. Our army forces in Saudi Arabia and our air force base at Incirlik could all be moved to Kurdistan. Hell, that is ONLY good news for us. The Saudi people don't want us there anyway, so it's good PR for us, and the Kurds would be much more apt to let us operate airplanes since they'll want a no-fly zone in place, whereas the Turks tell us no every so often.
At the same time we're bolstering a military presence in an oil rich nation, gaining a friend who has nothing but hatred for both Iran and Iraq, and we can claim a moral victory at having liberated a politically stifled people and for creating a relatively secular, pro-Western democracy in the middle east.
It would have been insanely cheaper (in manpower and in money), using far less assets, and would have netted far better results.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Assuming, of course, you think Iran and Iraq would give up territory willingly because we asked nicely. If not, we're back to invading, with the commitment of having to guard this fledgling nation's borders from very hostile neighboring states.
I'm going to tentatively say your idea had (has?) merits, but I don't think it'd be quite as easy as that.
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
quote:Assuming, of course, you think Iran and Iraq would give up territory willingly because we asked nicely. If not, we're back to invading, with the commitment of having to guard this fledgling nation's borders from very hostile neighboring states.
I'm going to tentatively say your idea had (has?) merits, but I don't think it'd be quite as easy as that.
Not to mention the enormous simian barrel we'd open by legitimizing a people and giving them a nation by forcing other nations to "donate" land.
We'd best wait until, say, we have a Hegemony, and the leader of said Hegemony forms a universal nation - we could call it the Free People of Earth.
Posted by Infrared (Member # 9196) on :
Wait, didn't we already try this legitimize people and force land donation thing? ...Ohhh! Riiight. I think we called it "Israel" and gave its people lots of military support and are currently trying to broker peace between peoples that have been at war for millennia and recently find themselves neighbors again...
Posted by Dr. Evil (Member # 8095) on :
How about Jimmy Carter? This guy was a horrendous President who did NOTHING during his tenure. Clinton...same thing. Name one ground breaking move that he made.
Under Bush, there has been a prescription drug program for seniors that was never in place before. My Mother In Law, who has MS, is now taken care of far better than she was under Clinton. And the No Child Left Behind seeks to create a standard for education that never existed previously.
Funny how the Dems who say they are so for education and health care, couldn't put these things through.
IMO however, it is a shame that the federal government has to get involved at this level though.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
odd I always thought Dagonne was an hispanic woman...
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:This is what I was talking about when I said you substitute legality for morality. You can use the law to abolish the law, that doesn't make it ok.
Please. The accusation wasn't that he did something wrong. It was that he "abused power."
He did no such thing.
And, in fact, I didn't say that what he did was correct or moral. Merely that it wasn't an abuse of power.
You've really got to get over this thing you have with thinking that refuting one criticism of an act implies moral approval of the act.
Oh, and you also need to get over your absilutely unsustainable premise that I substitute legality for morality. You are the one who seems to have them confused, since you interpret statements about legality as being about morality.
Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's certainly one of the ironies of the Bush reelection. He screws up a bunch of stuff, then tells the nation to have enough faith in him to fix his own mistakes, and America believed in a second time
I think it was more a matter of the Democrats having put up an amazingly terrible candidate against him. Any decent Democrat would have won that election. America didn't so much 'believe' in Dubya as choose to stick with Bad instead of going to Worse.
quote:...this, after going back on most of the campaign promises he made the first time around.
Actually, Bush stuck to his campaign promises pretty well -- which is both good and bad.
Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: How did he abuse power? (edit: with the court packing scheme only, I mean) I'm not a big fan of the reason he wanted to pack the court, but he was attempting to make a change to the structure of government in the manner prescribed by the Constitution.
I'm not suggesting that FDR broke the law by trying to get seats added to SCOTUS. I mean that attempting to undermine the separation of powers, for the purpose of facilitating an unconstitutional agenda, was an abusive misuse of his power, IMO.
If we want to talk about overt criminality, Lincoln's actions during the war are probably the worst.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:And, in fact, I didn't say that what he did was correct or moral. Merely that it wasn't an abuse of power.
Do you believe it was correct or moral? That's a much more interesting question to me, because I believe such things ARE abuses of power, even if technically legal.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
The Supreme Court is given enormous amounts of power. There are very few checks on that power once a justice is appointed:
1.) Impeachment, which should only be for criminal acts. 2.) Altering the jurisdiction of the Court, which Congress is empowered to do but should be very leery of. 3.) Adding justices to the Court via an act of Congress.
Do I think it's immoral for a President elected with a huge mandate to attempt to use the framework of the Constitution to alter the makeup of the Court in order to stop it from using questionable constitutional reasoning to strike down the programs intended to meet that mandate?
No. It's a political check, and attempts to wield the check to a political end are what it's there for. As it turns out, FDR's popularity wasn't enough to push his court-packing attempt through. In other words, the political check worked exactly as intended - to make it possible but difficult for a President to alter the Court.* That's what it's there for, and there's nothing immoral about an attempt to use it.
*And Orincoro, that's not legal analysis, that's political science analysis.
Do I think it was the correct policy choice? No. Am I glad it failed? Yes.
BTW, Tom, you keep saying you'd be far more interested in my opinion on X. Yet, when I address X, it seems you never have anything to say about it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:BTW, Tom, you keep saying you'd be far more interested in my opinion on X. Yet, when I address X, it seems you never have anything to say about it.
Because you rarely ever give your actual opinion on the issue I've asked you to address, preferring instead to nitpick individual words. "Discussing" the link above, for example, you gave us two lines of extremely pithy and meaningless nitpicking on word choice without addressing the point, larger intent, or otherwise factual issues within. Frankly, I assume you're always dodging.
Consider your defense of the second quote, in which you assume that "unrestrained constitutional power" is a limit insofar as the president's powers are recognized as being limited by the constitution. And yet this president is DELIBERATELY pushing those recognized powers, and is relying on a Supreme Court of questionable talent to put checks on it. Can you explain why I might be comforted by that purely hypothetical limit, especially considering that any interpretation of the constitution which results in justifications of expanded presidential power become precedents to justify further abuse, in the same way that Roosevelt's misdeeds in office are used to justify Bush's today?
Edit: to clarify, perhaps, I should point out that one of the things which scares me MOST about this, long-term, is the fact that the things this president can make a case for getting away with are going to be used in the same way that the things Roosevelt got away with are being used to justify what Bush is trying to do now.
[ May 01, 2006, 10:12 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Because you rarely ever give your actual opinion on the issue I've asked you to address, preferring instead to nitpick individual words. "Discussing" the link above, for example, you gave us two lines of extremely pithy and meaningless nitpicking on word choice without addressing the point, larger intent, or otherwise factual issues within. Frankly, I assume you're always dodging.
Tom, you asked me to respond to the article in connection with a discussion about "limitless" power. It really pisses me off that you call that dodging. I'm not a mind reader, and I can only respond to what's given to me.
Why don't you stop trying to interrogate me and offer your own opinion, using the words you actually want me to respond to. Or, if that's too much to ask, maybe you could respond to what I've posted at your request with either your own thoughts or a request for clarification that actually indicates what you want clarified.
I posted a detailed response about the court packing issue, and all you could do was bitch - again - about my "nit picking," this time on a different topic you hadn't bothered to respond to.
quote:Consider your defense of the second quote, in which you assume that "unrestrained constitutional power" is a limit insofar as the president's powers are recognized as being limited by the constitution. And yet this president is DELIBERATELY pushing those recognized powers, and is relying on a Supreme Court of questionable talent to put checks on it. Can you explain why I might be comforted by that purely hypothetical limit, especially considering that any interpretation of the constitution which results in justifications of expanded presidential power become precedents to justify further abuse, in the same way that Roosevelt's misdeeds in office are used to justify Bush's today?
What limit do you want, Tom? The limit is the Constitution. It's how we define the limits on government. The entity that defines what that means for 99.9% of the issues is the Supreme Court.
You say he's "DELIBERATELY pushing those powers," emphasizing "DELIBERATELY" as if that's supposed to be a bad thing. I want the President to be deliberate in how he approaches the limit of his power. And I want the President to use that power.
There are numerous political checks available, some of which are absolute. As a country, we've elected a Congress that's mostly sympathetic to the President. They will take that into account in exercising those political checks.
This stuff isn't theoretical to me. It isn't about nit picking. It isn't about lawyer things. It's about the government we've elected. It's about the Constitution. And it's about criticisms that are grounded in the Constitution being honest about what the limits of the Constitution are.
The reason I homed in on that quote is because the way it was misrepresented highlights a fundamental flaw in the author's method of thinking: that the expression of a desire to use the constitutional powers to their limits is something we need to worry about at a structural level (and his argument is structural, about changes to the fabric of government, not about whether the policies being implemented with those powers are good and bad).
The quote utterly highlights the mistake being made in the attempts to turn disagreements over policy into attempts to conduct a coup against the Constitution. It's why I picked it when YOU asked ME to "respond" to it.
But, no, I suppose disagreeing with the fundamental, unstated premise underlying the entire critique is just "dodging."
As to Supreme Court of "questionable talent," you must be smoking something. This is still the most balanced and intellectually capable Supreme Court we've ever had.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Tom, you asked me to respond to the article in connection with a discussion about "limitless" power.
Well, no, I didn't. In fact, I specifically said that I couldn't care less about the specific wording of "limitless," but in fact cared a great deal more about practical limits -- a term that you found unworkable, but that's not really my problem.
quote:that the expression of a desire to use the constitutional powers to their limits is something we need to worry about at a structural level
I think the problem here is that, as you reveal below, you believe that our Supreme Court is currently capable of properly interpreting sane limits on those constitutional powers. I have little to no faith in the court as it's now populated, and worry that if the "limit" on our power is merely "constitutional" -- which in the modern climate means "the Supreme Court says you can get away with it" -- then that limit, for all intents and purposes, does not practically exist. Moreover, every time Bush DOES get away with something because of some legal nitpickery, that makes it easier for future presidents to cite his own slimy power grabs as evidence that what they want to do is perfectly "okay."
I do not believe in the premise that the practice of law is the ultimate defense of our Republic and its freedoms. I think, far too often, law as it is practiced represents attempts to subvert morality with technicality. While this is of course necessary, using the technicalities of law as justification for behavior is something I find fairly reprehensible in a president.
quote:As to Supreme Court of "questionable talent," you must be smoking something. This is still the most balanced and intellectually capable Supreme Court we've ever had.
That would be an assertion I'm afraid I reject, as above.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Well, no, I didn't. In fact, I specifically said that I couldn't care less about the specific wording of "limitless," but in fact cared a great deal more about practical limits -- a term that you found unworkable, but that's not really my problem.
Yes, in another post you had stated that you couldn't care less about "limitless." In the post I responded to, however, you included a link whose premise is wholly concentrated on "limitless."
As to practical limits not being workable yet not your problem, you might have attempted to simply define what you meant by practical limits. Instead, you decided to elicit discussion from me with an article that goes back to limitless, and whose central premise is bound up with that word.
quote:I do not believe in the premise that the practice of law is the ultimate defense of our Republic and its freedoms. I think, far too often, law as it is practiced represents attempts to subvert morality with technicality. While this is of course necessary, using the technicalities of law as justification for behavior is something I find fairly reprehensible in a president.
The behavior is not being justified by the "technicalities of the law" (a term as meaningless as "practical limits" in this discussion - the law is technical). The behavior is being justified by policy considerations.
It is being defended from attacks grounded in the "technicalities of the law" by using the same mechanism. It's very different.
I disagree with the wiretapping. I disagree with the detainee policy. Pretty much every attack on those policies I've responded to, however, hasn't been about why the policies are bad, but rather has been about why the policies are unconstitutional. And as soon as someone says the policies are unconstitutional, they've moved into a ground that is littered with what you dismiss as "technicalities."
Even your attack in the previous post you are not attacking the policies. You are attacking the actions as being outside the bounds of the President's power. You can try to say all you want that this doesn't need to involve the law, but you're wrong. It's a legal question, by design.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
My concern with the election of 2000 was less with the vote counting and more with the broadbrush and often wildly inaccurate purging of the voter rolls in Florida by DBT/ChoicepPoint.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:That would be an assertion I'm afraid I reject, as above.
OK, which court has been more intellectually capable or balanced?
Certainly there have been SCOTUS justices who could easily be classified as greater legal intellects, but look at the courts as a whole.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:In the post I responded to, however, you included a link whose premise is wholly concentrated on "limitless."
No, not really. The article itself has a much broader point.
quote:You are attacking the actions as being outside the bounds of the President's power. You can try to say all you want that this doesn't need to involve the law, but you're wrong. It's a legal question, by design.
My assertion, Dag, is that are very few things I can imagine this court, in this environment, concluding are outside the bounds of the President's power -- and even fewer things that I can imagine being brought before this court in a timely fashion in the first place. In other words, I don't trust what the current court calls "law" to speak for "law" in this case.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Irregardless:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's certainly one of the ironies of the Bush reelection. He screws up a bunch of stuff, then tells the nation to have enough faith in him to fix his own mistakes, and America believed in a second time
I think it was more a matter of the Democrats having put up an amazingly terrible candidate against him. Any decent Democrat would have won that election. America didn't so much 'believe' in Dubya as choose to stick with Bad instead of going to Worse.
quote:...this, after going back on most of the campaign promises he made the first time around.
Actually, Bush stuck to his campaign promises pretty well -- which is both good and bad.
Kerry's policies were fine. He was a bit of a stick in the mud, but people gave him a raw deal as far as I'm cocerned. I give credit for that to the media and the Republican hack machine, which is better than the Dem hack machine.
As for campaign promises, are you serious? Serious? Bush campaigned as a small government, domestic policy president who started a bunch of losing foreign wars aimed at a Christian themed nation building after specifically saying in the second debate in 1999 that he thinks nation building is wrong, and NOT the correct use of American troops.
He said he would eliminate the "death tax" and when Congress failed to kill it right out of the gate he let it die without so much as a mention at a press conference. He's overseen the greatest expansion of federal power in the last fifty years. If he had campaigned on the positions he actually took, on the surface you'd think he was a 1940's democrat. He most certainly did not live up to the majority or hell, even a minority of his major campaign promises.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Infrared: Wait, didn't we already try this legitimize people and force land donation thing? ...Ohhh! Riiight. I think we called it "Israel" and gave its people lots of military support and are currently trying to broker peace between peoples that have been at war for millennia and recently find themselves neighbors again...
Insanely different circumstance. Israel was formed out of an area that has been Arab controlled for hundreds of years, and Jews flocked there. They forced out the current occupants and made their homes there, and the displaced peoples wanted their land back.
As far as Kurdistan goes, this has nothing to do with displaced peoples and new inhabitants. It's merely a matter of national boundaries and political control. The areas that make up the former nation of Kurdistan are made up of a high majority of ethnic Kurds. No one would be moved in, no one would be displaced, with the possible exception of the Turkish Kurd population, that'd be the only sticking point.
The situations aren't even comparable, not for the argument you're trying to make.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by erosomniac:
quote:Assuming, of course, you think Iran and Iraq would give up territory willingly because we asked nicely. If not, we're back to invading, with the commitment of having to guard this fledgling nation's borders from very hostile neighboring states.
I'm going to tentatively say your idea had (has?) merits, but I don't think it'd be quite as easy as that.
Not to mention the enormous simian barrel we'd open by legitimizing a people and giving them a nation by forcing other nations to "donate" land.
We'd best wait until, say, we have a Hegemony, and the leader of said Hegemony forms a universal nation - we could call it the Free People of Earth.
Not that big a problem, on both fronts. First of all, less than a hundred years ago, there was a free Kurdistan. There are still people living there who remember what it was like to be an independent nation and not part of Iraq or Iran, or Turkey. Their land was stolen from them by the world's worst cartographer, Britain, and summarily made into other nations. You'd be forcing them to donate land that should never have been there's to begin with.
Besides, we supported Kuwait as independent nation when historically southern Iraq included both Kuwait and the Basra region of Iraq. So how is it okay for us to support Kuwait as an independent nation, but an independent Kurdistan is suddenly all fraught with worry and wrongness? Looks hypocritical to me.
So far as the argument of hostile enemies go. Whoopdie do, we have military forces all over the Middle East surrounded by hostile forces. The big difference is in Kurdistan we'd finally have a friendly native population who wouldn't mind having a US military presence. We have military forces in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, and in some of the stans that could all or partially be moved to a new Kurdistan. It certainly would have cost us the billions upon billions of dollars that Iraq has cost, and Iraq is thus far a failure, even more so for all the money we've wasted.
Iraq and Iran don't have anything even close to challenging even a heavy US division and fighter wing in Kurdistan. They'd never band together to attack, they were still mortal enemies until now.
The whole point of the betterness of this idea I summarized in my first post. It's cheaper, by FAR cheaper, it nets better results, it gets us an ally in the Middle East, it eases tensions with nations who have a US military presence and their citizens don't want us there, it creates a stable democracy with a mostly secular government, and from there we could have kept a close eye on Iran and Iraq. It would have made any eventual war in Iraq 1,000 times easier. We would have had a better jumping off point, the Kurds might have even joined the venture. We would have had less area to search, less area to secure, and natives to help guide us and help actually get us good intelligence assuming we still wanted to go in.
The pros so massively outweigh the cons it's a featherweight vs. a heavyweight match.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I'd vote FDR for best President *and* worst President.
He established the welfare state, showed contempt for the Constitution, and packed the Court with others who made sure it was no longer law of the land. He did Japanese internment.
He also kicked Hitler's rear, and if he hadn't, I don't even want to think about the consequences.
I think I might rank Washington as #2 in both cases as well. He founded the country; well worth doing. And then, during his time in office, what was the primary item in the federal budget? Killing Indians and burning their villages.
I wouldn't rank Lincoln as #3 in the good department, but he *was* an emancipationist, and the first such President in our history. He also rendered Amendment 10 ineffective by ignoring it; fought an illegal war; criminalized dissent (New York draft protests); vastly increased the power of the federal government.
Wilson's somewhere up there, too, at least if US involvement in WWI was a good idea; I'm not sure. But he ordered needless invasions of Latin American countries, one after another, and he fired all black federal marshals for being black.
Teddy R.'s another prominent example. National Park Service, and Panama Canal. And then there's the Nobel Peace Prize he got for telling Japan, "You want to invade Korea? Go right ahead."
I think I prefer Coolidge. Remember his Presidency? Neither does anyone else.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Oh, and you also need to get over your absilutely unsustainable premise that I substitute legality for morality. You are the one who seems to have them confused, since you interpret statements about legality as being about morality.
If you offered somethings substantive to a discussion other than to pick apart every argument and call it worthless, then I could more easily recognize when your opinions are being expressed. As it is all you do is ridicule others for having opinions at all, just because those opinions aren't always informed by your detailed knowledge of the letter of the law. You usually miss the spirit and intent of such arguments, because you're too busy picking them to peices.
Please forgive me for interpreting your troubling surrender to the will of a malevolent despot because he can manipulate the law in way which satisfies a superficial need to "follow the rules," without actually being limited by anything but what he can get away with doing. The fact that you consistently argue based on the ever changeable law, even when questions of obvious right and wrong are at the heart of the issue, is why I react this way.
edit: I see that in a recent post you pointed out that each attack on the president is an attack on his view of the consitution, and that is why you defend him. Consider though that some view the issue through the spirit of the constitution, ie: he is breaking with the spirit of the constitution, if not the letter or precedent of law. In this way, an argument about constitutionality is still valid, even if not everyone is an expert on the latest reading of it.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Will B: I wouldn't rank Lincoln as #3 in the good department, but he *was* an emancipationist, and the first such President in our history. He also rendered Amendment 10 ineffective by ignoring it; fought an illegal war; criminalized dissent (New York draft protests); vastly increased the power of the federal government.
Not sure I agree with that. Lincoln was not in favor of emancipation, he only did it to save the union.
And many presidents before him were emancipationists, certainly John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were, though more the former than the latter. But both the constitution and the fact that they'd just barely established the new nation stopped them from coming for with a strong emancipationist agenda. I can't speak as to the other presidents' emancipationist tendencies, but I don't think it is accurate to call Lincoln the first emacipationist president.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's certainly one of the ironies of the Bush reelection. He screws up a bunch of stuff, then tells the nation to have enough faith in him to fix his own mistakes, and America believed in a second time, this, after going back on most of the campaign promises he made the first time around. America has only itself to blame I think, for falling for it.
Emphasis mine. Do you wanna back that up, Lyrhawn? I think it's more likely that he kept more campaign promises then he broke. If you want to jump on Bush, that's fine. Just please do it with the facts handy instead of just dogpiling.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bob_Scopatz: Bush manages to combine the worst features of both of the previous worst Presidents of my lifetime:
- he is an habitual liar, living in deliberate isolation from not only critics, but actual facts.
- he fancies himself a warrior and believes that this defines his legacy.
Clinton and Carter?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I think it's more likely that he kept more campaign promises then he broke.
Actually, the form of dishonesty I'm more concerned about with Bush is of the "talking out of the side of my mouth" kind, the sort he displayed so winkingly in his first State of the Union address -- where he attempted to spin opening national forests to logging and recreational vehicles as an eco-friendly fire-protection measure.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I think of presenting arguments before Dagonnee like this: assume you're trying to present your arguments in an impeachment process. Just an accusation isn't enough. You have to have documented references that back up your statement; anything less and your testimony will be ignored.
Dagonnee has, in numerous previous threads, drawn a distinction between what he thought was legal and what he thought was right. If you want the legal opinion, you have to present the legal case.
Which is, as TomD has mentioned, part of the problem. I'd be willing to bet that everything this adminstration has done is legal, one way or another. It's the atmosphere of monarchy and perception of arrogance that is bothering people, I think, and that's difficult to present in a courtroom.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:If you offered somethings substantive to a discussion other than to pick apart every argument and call it worthless, then I could more easily recognize when your opinions are being expressed. As it is all you do is ridicule others for having opinions at all
If you were at all familiar with me, you would realize that I deal with opinions based on how they are presented. When they are presented in the fashion prevalent on the first page of this thread, I treat them with the respect they deserve: not much. One line condemnations of Bush don't elicit my detailed thoughts on the administration. It's not worth my time or effort, because the person throwing out a one-line condemnation hasn't expressed or implied a willingess to discuss anything.
I do, however, do the quick and dirty refutation, and for a single reason: silence implies consent, and I'd hate people to think I'm consenting to a single line conclusion about a subject that invokes every single important aspect of our government.
If you haven't seen my posts involving detailed discussion, or not had them addressed at you, you can draw your own conclusions based on what I've said in this post.
If you want detailed reason as to why I have that opinion, just look to "your troubling surrender to the will of a malevolent despot" and your perception that I "consistently argue based on the ever changeable law, even when questions of obvious right and wrong are at the heart of the issue." You're flat out not worth the time or effort to invest in in-depth discussion as long as you have those perceptions.
The sad thing is that Tom is worth the effort if he would just engage instead of interrogating or tossing out the one-liners. Still, there's more content in a single sentence from Tom than in most posts of yours I've bothered to read.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:posted by Lyrhawn: First of all, less than a hundred years ago, there was a free Kurdistan. There are still people living there who remember what it was like to be an independent nation and not part of Iraq or Iran, or Turkey. Their land was stolen from them by the world's worst cartographer, Britain, and summarily made into other nations. You'd be forcing them to donate land that should never have been there's to begin with.
Besides, we supported Kuwait as independent nation when historically southern Iraq included both Kuwait and the Basra region of Iraq. So how is it okay for us to support Kuwait as an independent nation, but an independent Kurdistan is suddenly all fraught with worry and wrongness? Looks hypocritical to me.
Possession is 9/10s of the law, neh? A seceding nation of people is something Americans can identify with. That's quite different from us taking the land and giving it to the Kurds. And I hope you didn't expect to go to Iran and Iraq and say, "The Brits wrongfully gave you this land 100 years ago. Their bad. Please give it back now." They'd laugh in our face. It'd just come down to invading Iraq AND Iran.
quote:The pros so massively outweigh the cons it's a featherweight vs. a heavyweight match.
It's not about pros vs cons, it's about the feasibility.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
And don't forget that Turkey (a nominal ally) might have a big problem with that as well.
Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: The accusation wasn't that he did something wrong. It was that he "abused power."
He did no such thing.
And, in fact, I didn't say that what he did was correct or moral. Merely that it wasn't an abuse of power.
I think your assumption that "abuse of power" implies illegality is poorly founded. We do not speak of someone who robs a convenience store as being guilty of an "abuse of power", because he never had any rightful "power" to get money from the store in the first place. Similarly, Bush having Democrat Senators shot so they could be replaced by GOP governors would *not* be an abuse of power, because Bush doesn't have such authority. It'd be plain old murder, no different from it would be if committed by someone else. It is arguably impossible to abuse power that one doesn't possess.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It is arguably impossible to abuse power that one doesn't possess.
Then FDR couldn't have abused power in the court situation, because he had no power to change th number of justices.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Then FDR couldn't have abused power in the court situation, because he had no power to change th number of justices.
I'm willing to concede this, for given definitions of "power." It was arguably an abuse of power, but not an abuse of presidential power.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:First of all, less than a hundred years ago, there was a free Kurdistan. There are still people living there who remember what it was like to be an independent nation and not part of Iraq or Iran, or Turkey. Their land was stolen from them by the world's worst cartographer, Britain, and summarily made into other nations. You'd be forcing them to donate land that should never have been there's to begin with.
When would this have been? In the 7th century, the Kurds were conquered by the Arabs. Over the following centuries they were occupied by Seljuk Turks, the Mongols, the Safavid dynasty, and, beginning in the late 13th century, the Ottoman Empire. Kurdistan was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century until the end of WWII, as were Turkey, Iraq, Iran and all of the middle east. In 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres proposed an independent Kurdistan but this treaty was never accepted or implemented. In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne created the modern countries of Turkey, Iraq and Iran and divide Kurdistan between them.
Kurdistan has not been an independent nation since the 7th century. Although they were promised an independent nation following WWI, it never happened.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Besides, we supported Kuwait as independent nation when historically southern Iraq included both Kuwait and the Basra region of Iraq.
Once again, I ask at what point in time Kuwait was part of Iraq. Prior to WW I, Iraq and Kuwait were part of the Ottoman empire. The modern boundaries between Iraq and Kuwait were established by the Treaty of Lausannne in 1923. At what point was Kuwait part of Iraq and when did we (the US) support its succession from Iraq?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: [QUOTE] The sad thing is that Tom is worth the effort if he would just engage instead of interrogating or tossing out the one-liners. Still, there's more content in a single sentence from Tom than in most posts of yours I've bothered to read.
Ditto. Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I think one od the greatest allies of the Bush administration has been it's opponents seeming inability to maintain focus on many of the awful things that it has done as opposed to engaging in hyperbolic distortions and getting drawn into irrelevant tangents.
There are reasons, for example, why Dag has been mostly successful in supporting the President without almost ever offering any positive statements in support of him. I think they're many of the same reasons why George Bush could run a successful re-election campaign as an incumbent President while largely avoiding any mention of his record as President.
To me this is more of the same. Who cares if he's the worst President ever? That he is a very bad President is, at least to me, what is important. I don't need to compare him against Jackson or Taft or Harding.
I still think a winning strategy, even now although especially during the 2004 campaign, would be to say something along the lines of "There have been many allegations of dishonesty, irresponsibility, and drastic mistakes. The President and his people have denied all of them. For myself, I'll say I agree with that. I think that this is the best President Bush could have done."
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: There are reasons, for example, why Dag has been mostly successful in supporting the President without almost ever offering any positive statements in support of him. I think they're many of the same reasons why George Bush could run a successful re-election campaign as an incumbent President while largely avoiding any mention of his record as President.
How very sad that is too... Its true that the opposition to the president has no unified and standard set of grievances, and we are mostly not experts on the law, or government beaurocracy. I obviously approach it a little differently, for example: I think the idea of torturing detainees and holding prisoners without counsel is morally repugnant. I think Dag feels much the same way, however its also clear that I am not competent to argue the legal points which allow the U.S. government to get away with doing this. I know they must at least seem to be there, since these things are happening and the public is aware of them, however it seems that something has left us paralyzed to argue rationally against that. Part of it is: Yes I have no law degree, and I don't know enough about it to tell you why its a crime. But I know its WRONG, and though I wish I knew legally why its wrong, I fear that it may not be illegal. If it isn't, then the law is wrong, or it has been interpreted badly, and I have to say something about that.
I think people are so often baffled by this administration because it seems that the spirit and intent of the law is less important than how it can be interpreted to the advantage of a policy which allows the president to do something. This is to me, an obvious breach of trust between the president, and congress and the people. I have no doubt that sound and reasoned precedent and interpretation of the law allows the president to seem to have the right to do many things I don't like, and which I think are morally wrong. However that seems to make the law meaningless (at least to me). Certainly if it can be manipulated to allow the government to do what is clearly inhuman and un-american, then what good is defending that interpretation? This, you will have to forgive as the observation of a non-expert.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
It's not the non-expert angle that I was talking about, but rather the hysterical nature of many of the accusations thrown at the Bush administration. Their actions and the results of these actions have been bad enough that even taking the "I believe they did the best they could." route is incredibly damning. Their best defense has been to allow their opponents to shoot themselves in the foot by making overblown accusations and going down irrelevant tangents.
The failures, both moral and practical, of this administration need no enhancement. And yet, time and again, we see people going to the extreme with them, trying to make them sound as bad as possible. Not content with him being a poor president, Bush's opponents try to make him out to be a monster, an idiot, or a tyrant. It's this very extremism that makes it so, when the milder facts turn up, their impact is greatly diluted. In addition, the behavior of many of the President's opponents makes them seem largely irrational as well as personally undesirable.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
What if I really do believe he is an idiot, a tyrant, and a monster? I really honestly have come to that conclusion. I haven't offered any idiotic reasons for it (I haven't offered any reasons here), but is that immoderate claim in itself too much to take?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
It depends. Are your criticisms aimed at affecting him negatively or making yourself feel better? If the former, I'd suggest you consider the effects of your criticisms at least as much as how much you believe them.
I've little doubr that many of the people whom I'm decrying for making overblown accusations believe those accusations.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Orincoro-
I keep thinking about the confrontation between Will Roper and Thomas More in Man for All Seasons. I wish I could remember all the dialogue, because it's very relevant. Roper challenges More, saying "I suppose you would give the devil the benefit of the law." To which More replies he would, because the law, specifically the words of the law, are precisely what protect us. To say the words are irrelevant, and only mean what you think they should mean and not what they say, is the doorway to true abuses of the law.
<edit> I looked it up:
quote:William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law! Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that! Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
</edit>
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:To which Moore replies he would, because the law, specifically the words of the law, are precisely what protect us.
Specifically, I think the words of the law offer no protection at all. It's respect for the intent of law that protects us.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
My roomate is one of those "bush planned 9/11" types. I don't go that far, it would be ridiculous. However I continue to express my dissatisfaction with most of what he has done or tried because I disagree with it, and I wish he would resign or be impeached. I certainly can't make myself feel better or smarter by trashing him, quite the opposite in fact, I feel dumber every time I think about him .
Edit to add: I completely agree with Tom on that.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Of course, Moore was talking about convicting someone of a crime, not about evaluating the conduct of the most powerful member of your representative government. I'd suggest that the latter position should involve somewhat stricter standards than "We can't be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that he broke the law." and "Though damaging to the country and, if not immoral, at least unethical, ultimately not technically against the law."
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
This is why we need to be more careful about checking the power of the President. Its this feeling of wide authority which might allow him to act and then find legal justification for it later. Plus if he is the one writing the laws.... then he can just do whatever the heck he wants, right?
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Specifically, I think the words of the law offer no protection at all. It's respect for the intent of law that protects us.
Is "no protection" hyperbole? I think the only protection we can or ought to expect is in the words. I don't much believe in the intent abstracted away from actual text. Applehood and mother pie is all well and good but it's not a predictable or stable method of governance.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I still think a winning strategy, even now although especially during the 2004 campaign, would be to say something along the lines of "There have been many allegations of dishonesty, irresponsibility, and drastic mistakes. The President and his people have denied all of them. For myself, I'll say I agree with that. I think that this is the best President Bush could have done."
I would be very inclined to listen to that (presumably this opening would be followed by a list of why Bush's fundamental positions resulted in poor choices wand how the candidates choices would be better). I could see Joseph Lieberman doing this.
Unfortunately for both sides I don't think you're going to hear it. Or at least not past the point where Lieberman withdraws from the primary (if he's even running again).
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Of course, Moore was talking about convicting someone of a crime, not about evaluating the conduct of the most powerful member of your representative government.
He was specifically talking about an indictment of the conduct of Henry VIII, his chief executive. I find the two situations more similar than not. Roper was arguing what the king had done was unethical, even if not illegal, and that the citizenry should reprimand him through revolt. More was urging him to caution, to a realization that we might not like the ways the laws protect activities we don't like, but it's the bargain we enter into by being part of a civil society.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Of course, that's not the only quote from A Man for All Seasons that is applicable to this discussion. Here's another I particularly like:
quote:Sir Thomas More: I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Yet again we see a call for impeachment from someone who thinks this isn't a legal discussion, and we saw one two days into the NSA disclosure from the other primary opponent of applying the words of the law.
Impeachment is a criminal charge, removal is a conviction, and the standards for that should require proof that the law was violated, not some nebulous "spirit" of the law.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Senoj,
quote:He was specifically talking about an indictment of the conduct of Henry VIII, his chief executive. I find the two situations more similar than not. Roper was arguing what the king had done was unethical, even if not illegal, and that the citizenry should reprimand him through revolt. More was urging him to caution, to a realization that we might not like the ways the laws protect activities we don't like, but it's the bargain we enter into by being part of a civil society.
I fear we must have very different versions of the A Man For All Seasons. In my verision, the part you quoted follows Roper and Alice urging More to arrest Richard Rich on the grounds that he is a dangerous and bad man and More refusing to because he hasn't broken any laws.
Or at least, that's what I remembered, so I went looking for it and found a more complete account of that section:
quote:(RICH exits. All watch him; the others turn to MORE, their faces alert)
Roper: Arrest him.
Alice: Yes!
More: For what?
Alice: He's dangerous!
Roper: For libel; he's a spy.
Alice: He is! Arrest him!
Margaret: Father, that man's bad.
More: There is no law against that.
Roper: There is! God's law!
More: Then God can arrest him.
Roper: Sophistication upon sophistication.
More: No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal, not what's right. And I'll stick to what's legal.
Roper: Then you set man's law above God's!
More: No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact -- I'm not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a forrester.I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God.
Alice: While you talk, he's gone!
More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
I think the version you're describing must have, besides a very different preceding section to what you quoted, a very different conflict between More and Roper and a very different situation with More vis-a-vis the law and the king. Not having read yours, I have to admit I have a biased preference towards the version I've read.
(edit: I looked it up in the book version I have and found that the quote I presented, although not differing substantively, didn't completely jive with that version, so I made the necessary changes.)
[ May 01, 2006, 11:08 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonnyNotSoBravo:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's certainly one of the ironies of the Bush reelection. He screws up a bunch of stuff, then tells the nation to have enough faith in him to fix his own mistakes, and America believed in a second time, this, after going back on most of the campaign promises he made the first time around. America has only itself to blame I think, for falling for it.
Emphasis mine. Do you wanna back that up, Lyrhawn? I think it's more likely that he kept more campaign promises then he broke. If you want to jump on Bush, that's fine. Just please do it with the facts handy instead of just dogpiling.
I'm going to point you back to the post I made maybe three or four posts after that one:
quote:As for campaign promises, are you serious? Serious? Bush campaigned as a small government, domestic policy president who started a bunch of losing foreign wars aimed at a Christian themed nation building after specifically saying in the second debate in 1999 that he thinks nation building is wrong, and NOT the correct use of American troops.
He said he would eliminate the "death tax" and when Congress failed to kill it right out of the gate he let it die without so much as a mention at a press conference. He's overseen the greatest expansion of federal power in the last fifty years. If he had campaigned on the positions he actually took, on the surface you'd think he was a 1940's democrat. He most certainly did not live up to the majority or hell, even a minority of his major campaign promises.
Maybe if you just looked around more...?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:First of all, less than a hundred years ago, there was a free Kurdistan. There are still people living there who remember what it was like to be an independent nation and not part of Iraq or Iran, or Turkey. Their land was stolen from them by the world's worst cartographer, Britain, and summarily made into other nations. You'd be forcing them to donate land that should never have been there's to begin with.
When would this have been? In the 7th century, the Kurds were conquered by the Arabs. Over the following centuries they were occupied by Seljuk Turks, the Mongols, the Safavid dynasty, and, beginning in the late 13th century, the Ottoman Empire. Kurdistan was part of the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century until the end of WWII, as were Turkey, Iraq, Iran and all of the middle east. In 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres proposed an independent Kurdistan but this treaty was never accepted or implemented. In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne created the modern countries of Turkey, Iraq and Iran and divide Kurdistan between them.
Kurdistan has not been an independent nation since the 7th century. Although they were promised an independent nation following WWI, it never happened.
Ehh, err, my bad. Alright, so there has never been an official nation of Kurds. But I don't think that hurts my overarching theme at all.
As for Kuwait, before the British got there, Kuwait was a part of the province of Basra. Historically those people were regionally part of the same area, but then the British came along, carved out Basra from Kuwait, made Kuwait its own nation, then combined Baghdad, Basra and then the southern area of the area thought of as Kurdistan and created Iraq out of nothing. In the same way that they helped deny Kurdistan statehood.
So far as a war with Iran/Iraq. So what? We were willing to invade and attempt to occupy Iraq anyway weren't we? So what's the big deal with invading just a small portion of the country, with a mostly docile population who would ACTUALLY greet us as liberators? And so we take a little bit of Iran, that is almost entirely composed of ethnic Kurds whose families have been there for literally thousands of years. Hell we might end up invading them too, why not do it the safer way? They couldn't stop us militarily.
Regardless, it still strikes me as the safest, easiest, best plan for all.
Edit to add: The US supported it by giving them legitimacy, and by defending them from invasion against Iraq. Give how Iraq went about doing it, I think it was the right decision to make, but that doesn't change the results.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Is "no protection" hyperbole? I think the only protection we can or ought to expect is in the words.
Again, the words provide no protection whatsoever. Respect for the intent of the words provides any protection implied by the words themselves, and justifies the application of force to those words. Concern for the WORDING of law is not, as far as I'm concerned, the same thing as concern for law.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I don't know if Bush is the worst president ever; the Great Depression was too tremendous an event for Hoover's dismissal, and I'm not an ace student of all periods in American history.
I do feel that he's the worst in my lifetime. Unnecessary wars, massive deficits, strong suggestions of corruption, and a generally vindictive outlook that defies the need to justify anything it does to anyone. For a start.
But the real tragedy is that with all evidence of the above in plain sight, we allowed ourselves to elect him again. I see the polls of his falling ratings and want to shake people. "What could have changed your mind that wasn't readily evident before? Hello?!"
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Impeachment is a criminal charge, removal is a conviction, and the standards for that should require proof that the law was violated, not some nebulous "spirit" of the law.
I have to abide by what I feel is the spirit of the law, even if Bush hasn't. The legal recourse of the people is clear, we have the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
If Bush abuses his power and changes the law so that he never actually violates it, and if he makes impeachment truly an impossible undertaking, even if he has violated the trust of the people and the spirit of the constitution, peaceful non-cooperation, and then violent rebellion would be a solution. Thankfully I don't see it coming to that.
This is what I don't get about your argument though Dag, do you think that despotic leaders haven't altered laws in the past so that they can continue to rule as they please, in effect, above legal reproach? Do you think for some reason that an American president is somehow above trying this, or allowing it to happen? It seems that if he can manipulate the law enough, we shouldn't object to it, since nothing he does is illegal... and why does it surprise you that I find this to be utterly lacking in logic?
Please, present me with a way that I can effect change in a system where the opponent rewrites the rules as we go along.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It seems that if he can manipulate the law enough, we shouldn't object to it,
For the last time, I've never said we shouldn't object to actions that aren't illegal.
I'm done with you until you can demonstrate that you understand this distinction.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I fear we must have very different versions of the A Man For All Seasons. In my verision, the part you quoted follows Roper and Alice urging More to arrest Richard Rich on the grounds that he is a dangerous and bad man and More refusing to because he hasn't broken any laws.
I sit corrected. Thanks, Squick.
quote:I think the version you're describing must have, besides a very different preceding section to what you quoted, a very different conflict between More and Roper and a very different situation with More vis-a-vis the law and the king.
I'm not sure what you mean by "very different." I'm also not sure how tongue in cheek this statement is. My "version", or at least the moral I take from the play and movie as I've seen them performed, is that our role as individuals is to follow our private consciences within the law, not to rewrite law or rebel against law based on our belief of what was intended. To again quote More:
quote:Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and, yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping.
All this business of nitpicking and arguing over semantics is, I believe, exactly what makes a civil society viable. The intent, or spirit, might make a society livable, but the words are what make it viable.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:For the last time, I've never said we shouldn't object to actions that aren't illegal.
I guess the problem here, Dag, is that while I think people are aware of your belief in this principle, it's rare to actually see you object to actions that aren't illegal.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Impeachment is a criminal charge, removal is a conviction, and the standards for that should require proof that the law was violated, not some nebulous "spirit" of the law.
I don't know. Clinton committed felony perjury and we have it on videotape; he took money from the Chinese and provided them with secret US military technology. Bush prosecuted a war Democrats voted to authorize, and agreed with them about things they later changed their minds about. Which is the greater crime?
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: Which is the greater crime?
From what I am reading in this thread it must be the accusations made against President Bush. Not that the accusations are true, or proven at all, it's enough just to accuse him and that makes him guilty of whatever crime you want him to be guilty of. Like Domestic Spying for instance
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
WIll B: last I checked, what Clinton lied about wasn't material to the trial, making it not felony perjury. And I suspect you'll find we still sell arms tech to the Chinese under Bush.
As for Bush, I have yet to catch the man himself in a lie, but I can easily prove several important people in his administration lied or were entirely incompetent, misrepresenting evidence to (among others) the Democrats in Congress in order to persuade them to go to war. One is Vice President, and the other got promoted to Secretary of State.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I guess the problem here, Dag, is that while I think people are aware of your belief in this principle, it's rare to actually see you object to actions that aren't illegal.
1.) My principle position in free speech threads is a combination of 1) in general, it should be legal to say almost anything, and 2) given that it should be legal to say X, it is often wrong - even immoral - to say X. There's also a heaping helping of dislike for the idea of government funding for purely expressive activities, something which is constitutional yet that I think shouldn't be done. I've written on this topic extensively.
2.) Going at it from the other direction, I support the legalization of several things I consider to be immoral. No one seems to mind when I stick to the legal sides of those issues, and I say with a small amount of both pride and discomfort that my posts on certain subjects fitting that description have caused people to either change their minds or at least be far more open to the idea of legalization of certain things. Pride (again, small amount) because it means I have been an effective advocate, and that my focus on understanding objections to legalization and addressing rather than condemning them has borne fruit at least a few times. Discomfort (again, small) because it demonstrates that what I say matters, and if I'm wrong there are consequences.
3.) Do I even need elaborate on why the abortion topic demonstrates your statement to be false?
4.) I haven't heard you condemn the practice of keeping immigrants in household slavery. I am assuming you don't think this is an acceptable practice nonetheless.
Perhaps it would help if you were to remember that I don't post everything I think, post count notwithstanding. I don't post about every post I disagree with nor about every post I agree with. I also don't participate in every single possible facet of any given discussion. Nor do I expect that anyone else here has done so. Therefore, it is probably inaccurate to assume one knows the beliefs of anyone on a topic they haven't posted.
Another helpful reminder - not one I think you need yourself but which others seem to - is that refuting a particular attack on position X does not mean that one supports position X.
[ May 02, 2006, 12:31 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Senoj, I was being tounge in cheek, but also somewhat serious. I've always regarded A Man For All Seasons as sort of an anti-tragedy and I really don't think it fits with your interpretation at all.
In a classical tragedy, a person of great prominence in brought down by his fatal flaw. In Seasons, Sir Thomas More is brought down by his virtue of integrity.
What happens to More is not right, not just. But it is all legal (excepting the perjury on Rich's part). More is not a free actor. He is rather trapped by forces he has little control over. The king commands and he has no choice but to obey, no matter the rightness of the king's commands. He uses strict adherence to the technicalities of the law as a defense, but it is a feeble one. Through the workings of the legal system, they take away his home and fortune, then lock him away, and then kill him. I don't see how you can come away with the play thinking that this is the way things are supposed to be.
The president, as I seem to have to keep reminding Bush supporters, is not a king. His power is theoretically derived from the people who choose him to represent them. King Henry was a power unto himself, more or less beholden to no one but himself and theoretically God. Not so with the President of the United States. Rather, the President, due to the responsibilities of his position, is obligated to follow some pretty high standards. He does not hold power in and of himself, but only so much as he represents the interests of the people he represents.
To take an example from a previous discussion, it may be technically legal for the President to give all the names of our undercover agents to China or aL Queda or whomever, but him doing so is a gross betrayal of the public trust and would lead to him almost immediately being thrown out of office.
Now obviously, that's just a minimum bound. There is certainly much more expected of a President. For myself, I'd count acting in the best interests of the country, taking responsibility, and demonstrating trustworthiness as the central obligations of the President.
And, the wonderful thing is, the President is not a king. As such, even by the barest minimal "follow the law" standards, there are a whole ton of things I can legally do to make his life hell and his Presidency ineffective if he does not fulfill these obligations. If you're going to say that the only standards that the most powerful person in our government has to live up to is to technically not break the law, surely I as a private citizen should be held to the same standard.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Squick-
I certainly agree with your assessment, but I see it less as an indictment of an unfair society than an ode to the quality of the man. More himself never laments the unfairness of his own situation. When Cromwell threatens him, he responds by saying "You should threaten like a servant of the court; with justice." When Cromwell replies, "It's with justice you are threatened," More states, "then I am not threatened." He understood the law, and understood that despite the immorality of what was happening, the law would protect him.
He never spoke to the morality of the society or the law, until the very end. At that point justice didn't fail him, but rather an external agent (Rich) thwarted the system by undertaking a manifestly unjust and illegal action. Until then More operated within the system. But the system only serves the individual as long as the individuals within it obey the rules. When Rich broke them, then More was sunk and thus was free to declare the inherent immorality of what was happening. Until then he would not, not because he didn't think what was happening was immoral, but because he believed it to be immaterial.
Your point about the difference between a monarchy and democracy is well taken, but I think it's unfair to characterize the President as only having power in "so much as he represents the interests of the people he represents." The President holds power of himself, at the discretion of the people he represents. He can exercise that power as he sees fit, and the people are free to vote him out of office if they disagree with the usage of the power they've invested in him. The standards of conduct to which we hold the president with regards to reelection are exactly those you outline; the standards of conduct we should hold the president to for impeachment are the legality of his conduct. Thus if it's legal for the President to give the names of our undercover agents to China, he should not be impeached and immediately removed from office for doing so; he should be voted out of office at the next election cycle (assuming "the people" believe his action did not serve the nation's interests). Impeachment should be reserved (IMO) for illegal actions, not immoral ones.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Senoj, When Rich committed perjury, everyone in the courtroom knew he was lying. However, there was no actual proof that he was lying. From the standpoint of the technicalities of the law, everything the members of the system did was legal. But it was hardly only the perjury of Rich, an individual, that was to blame. More's defense in law failed, not because these people didn't follow the letter of the law, but because they didn't respect the spirit.
And, keep in mind, that was only on the matter of whether or not More was to be executed. He had already sufferred greatly through workings of the legal system free from any corruption. The system had already taken away everything he owned and thrown him in jail. Perhaps you saw that as justice, but I did not.
---
I'm not willing to accept any system of government that is willing to countenance one its members flagrantly working for the destruction of the people he is supposed to serve so long as that person doesn't break any laws. If the President were found to have contacted al Queda and given them a list of all of our undercover operatives working to inflitrate their organization, I'd vote to recall him in a second. As you apparently support waiting until he's up for re-election, I honestly don't know where to go from there. I just don't see winning an election as a blank check to do whatever you want for the next 2, 4, or 6 years, so long as you don't get caught breaking the law.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: But it was hardly only the perjury of Rich, an individual, that was to blame. More's defense in law failed, not because these people didn't follow the letter of the law, but because they didn't respect the spirit.
Fascinating. I would say that the perjury of Rich was precisely what was to blame for the failure of the system. That until that point the system worked as it should have, admittedly imperfectly and non-ideally, but as it was designed to work nonetheless. That the system was unfair was a reason for attempting to change the system, not for trying to avoid the consequences of it.
quote: And, keep in mind, that was only on the matter of whether or not More was to be executed. He had already sufferred greatly through workings of the legal system free from any corruption. The system had already taken away everything he owned and thrown him in jail. Perhaps you saw that as justice, but I did not.
More gave up everything he owned, it wasn't taken from him. He could have chosen to take the oath, but chose not to, knowing the consequence of this would be his inevitable resignation as Lord Chancellor (?). He never complained about this or the other penalties, IMO, because he believed in the law, he believed it was the foundation of the nation, even when it treats us unfairly. It was when the law was finally broken (by Rich) that the system broke down, and then More finally stood up and spoke his piece about the immorality of it all.
quote:If the President were found to have contacted al Queda and given them a list of all of our undercover operatives working to inflitrate their organization, I'd vote to recall him in a second.
If there is a law that allows us to vote to recall the president, I think that's a perfectly reasonable and appropriate response. But impeachment isn't a vote to recall the president, it is an allegation of illegal behavior. If giving a list of our operatives to al Qaida is illegal, the (hypothetical) president should be impeached. But impeachment, and judicial review in general, should only answer the question of illegality, not attempt to arbitrate morality.
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
I've got a question here. It isn't a particularly moral one, but I think it does matter in terms of labelling W. the "worst" president.
Is the economic condition of the US currently "good" or "bad"?
How long does it take an administration's economic policy to be felt?
Would you be economically better off if (hypothetically) we had 8 years more of Clinton/Gore economic policy?
AJ
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
In as much as we wouldn't be riding a massive deficit while trying to fund multiple military operations and disaster relief projects, yes, we would be better off.
Do I think the "Internet Bubble" would have continued if Clinton/Gore were still in power? No.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: In as much as we wouldn't be riding a massive deficit while trying to fund multiple military operations and disaster relief projects, yes, we would be better off.
You think Gore would not have reacted militarily to 9/11? Or that, had Gore been elected, he wouldn't have attempted to provide disaster relief in Indonesia, Pakistan and New Orleans? I think the primary difference between Bush and Gore would be the tax cut; whether Bush's cut ultimately helped or hurt the economy is debatable, but I think these other investments (with the probable exception of Iraqi war expenditures) wouldn't have changed with Gore in the presidency.
quote:Do I think the "Internet Bubble" would have continued if Clinton/Gore were still in power? No.
That's a pretty safe bet since the bubble began to burst while Clinton was still in office. IIRC, the first quarter of the eventual recession was Clinton's last in office.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Gore wouldn't have been as spend crazy as Bush is. He would have pushed major environmental reform, and probably would have made energy policy a priority, instead of something to foist off on Congress and whine about from the White House press briefing room.
He would've vetoed overspending. He wouldn't have spent hundreds of billions on a war in Iraq, which in itself I think is a key enough difference.
And he would have chosen far different judges for the Supreme Court bench. His reactions to 9/11 probably would have been far less militaristic. I could see him attacking Afghanistan, and staying there to secure it, instead of pulling most of the troops out and leaving it for the warlords.
Let's not pretend that Gore would've done the same thing, and certainly not pretend that he would've been WORSE than Bush. We'll never know, but we can make some judgement based on his policies and speeches since 2000.
Posted by Griffin (Member # 7166) on :
It's what I've been saying all along, but it's nice to have people smarter than me tell that I'm right.
wow! you think the rolling stones are smarter than you., I'm sorry.
If you had bothered to read the article, you would recognize that author of the article is a Princeton history professor, not the Rolling Stones (either the band or the magazine editorial staff).
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:And he would have chosen far different judges for the Supreme Court bench.
Yep.
Perhaps Dag, you should wait and see what the Bush appointees do before you smile. Supreme court justices are notorious for disappointing.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Therefore, it is probably inaccurate to assume one knows the beliefs of anyone on a topic they haven't posted.
Didn't you say earlier that silence is a form of consent? I myself was going to make this assertion above if you hadn't beat me to it. It is also very difficult to guage the opinions of a person who is only interested in playing referee in a particular discussion. It would be nice if you made it clear (for us less perceptive participants ) that you were arguing on a point of fact instead of a point of belief or opinion. If you feel annoyed that others continually express their frustration with the government by making legal arguments, then remember that you often encourage people to substantiate their claims this way. Society often encourages people to make the distinction between "right" and "legal," (hence the anti-drinking ads aimed at underage college kids in California which list legality as the main reason why it is wrong to drink) This is also the only way that some people feel they can make their ideas sound more credible, even if they are mistaken about the legal details... You can hardly blame a person for being confused about that.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:And he would have chosen far different judges for the Supreme Court bench.
Yep.
Perhaps Dag, you should wait and see what the Bush appointees do before you smile. Supreme court justices are notorious for disappointing.
True, but based on what I know so far, I'm at this point in time far happier than if Gore had appointed two justices (although O'Connor might not have quit).
Further, I have far more faith in each of these than I ever did in Souter. And there's still time for Kennedy to step back from the brink.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It is also very difficult to guage the opinions of a person who is only interested in playing referee in a particular discussion.
I was basically interested in stopping the smug echo chamber when I entered this thread.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Do you feel you've accomplished that goal?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Just imagine if the Democrats hadn't provided the necessary pressure to make Miers withdraw, Dag .
I'm happy with Alito, I remain skeptical on Roberts. I'm pretty certain Gore (no idea on Kerry) would have appointed a judge just as good as Roberts.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by JonnyNotSoBravo:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's certainly one of the ironies of the Bush reelection. He screws up a bunch of stuff, then tells the nation to have enough faith in him to fix his own mistakes, and America believed in a second time, this, after going back on most of the campaign promises he made the first time around. America has only itself to blame I think, for falling for it.
Emphasis mine. Do you wanna back that up, Lyrhawn? I think it's more likely that he kept more campaign promises then he broke. If you want to jump on Bush, that's fine. Just please do it with the facts handy instead of just dogpiling.
I'm going to point you back to the post I made maybe three or four posts after that one:
quote:As for campaign promises, are you serious? Serious? Bush campaigned as a small government, domestic policy president who started a bunch of losing foreign wars aimed at a Christian themed nation building after specifically saying in the second debate in 1999 that he thinks nation building is wrong, and NOT the correct use of American troops.
He said he would eliminate the "death tax" and when Congress failed to kill it right out of the gate he let it die without so much as a mention at a press conference. He's overseen the greatest expansion of federal power in the last fifty years. If he had campaigned on the positions he actually took, on the surface you'd think he was a 1940's democrat. He most certainly did not live up to the majority or hell, even a minority of his major campaign promises.
Maybe if you just looked around more...?
I did look at that. You offered anecdotal evidence, no links, just more of your opinion. Nothing to back up the "most" part of your claim. I just did a google search, taking me 20 seconds. Here's what I found: Bush made 46% of his 2000 campaign promises after four years in office. "Despite his mixed record of success, the president has at least tried to follow through on nearly all of his commitments. Most have been presented to Congress as part of his annual budget or as legislation." Do you call going back on something as presenting it to Congress? Do you call most 54%? I was wrong about it being a majority the other way, but it's not like Bush didn't try at all. I chose that link because it actually listed the campaign promises. A lot of sites had rhetoric that didn't list the actual promises from 2000.
Thursday, September 2, 2004 Washington Post: "Thursday night, President Bush will accept the party's nomination for a second term here with a mixed record on those hard issues. On some -- tax cuts and education -- he made enormous progress toward his goals. On others -- Medicare, the military and his "compassion" agenda -- he made partial progress. And on the rest -- Social Security and attempting to "change the tone" of Washington -- nothing much has changed." And that was with 9/11 happening, radically changing his preidency. "Mixed record" is certainly not most. Tha man's no peach, but you're hardly being fair.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Well, technically I was still right, and it wasn't opinion or anecdotal evidence, it was a statement of fact, regardless of the fact that I didn't offer a link to back up the now proven fact that I was right. And yeah, I'd call a majority "most." Maybe not the decisive number I was looking for, but still good enough.
Plus that list doesn't include the rhetoric that he used in the election, unless you contend that rhetoric doesn't count as a campaign promise? I think it does. He said the American military would be used for nation building, and in dramatic fashion he reversed that promise and spend hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to do so. He said he was for small government, instead he reversed that decision and oversaw the greatest increase in the government since FDR. Those are not anecdotes or opinions, they are facts. Facts that I don't think anyone disputes.
As for that actual list of broken and fulfilled promises, on a cut and dry manner the numbers bear me out. However, not every issue is equally important or carries equal weight. A farm bill initiative isn't the same thing as the war in Iraq. The list is too long to do line by line, but I'll go back later and cover the major issues.
I give him a bit of a break for 9/11 happening, but that's not a carte blanche excuse.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Just imagine if the Democrats hadn't provided the necessary pressure to make Miers withdraw, Dag
Last time I checked alot of republicans were scowling when Bush announced Miers was being selected.
I still hold Buchannan as the worst president in American History.
Watched with his head in his hands as the Union crumbled, and the only assertive thing he could do was send an Army to Utah on the strength of 3 witnesses (I mean no need to send an official government inspectiion commitee), just send an army have them ignore the mini civil war going on in Kansas and go to Utah.
Oh and when people actually start succeding from the Union, dont use troops then, just sit around dispondent in office.
Apprently he said to Lincoln while he was leaving "If you are as happy going into the presidency as I am leaving it, you are truely happy."
Sounds like a man who spent his 4 years well.
[ May 03, 2006, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: BlackBlade ]
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: You think Gore would not have reacted militarily to 9/11? Or that, had Gore been elected, he wouldn't have attempted to provide disaster relief in Indonesia, Pakistan and New Orleans?
Did I say any of that? No. But it's unlikely he would have used the spectre of 9/11 to push for a unilateral invasion of Iraq. The costs of that have been so high they don't even acknowledge parts of the budget. It also seems unlikely he would have attempted to bribe U.S. taxpayers with paybacks that would later end up taken back by local taxes in many places. It's just remotely possible we would have had some tiny fraction of the surplus built up during the Clinton presidency left when the various disasters hit.
If the article's claim that Bush has built up a larger deficit than every president before him combined is true, Bush has performed with a truly stunning level of financial incompetence. Or perhaps stunningly well, if he's following the alleged neoconservative agenda of crippling the federal government to the point it will be incapable of action.
Ultimately, fair means or foul, Bush took office. Anything Clinton or Gore would or wouldn't have done remains speculation. But even by a fairly generous standard, Bush's performance has been abysmal.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
BlackBlade: yeah, but its likely neither side would have had the oomph to force her away if the other side hadn't opposed her.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If the article's claim that Bush has built up a larger deficit than every president before him combined is true, Bush has performed with a truly stunning level of financial incompetence.
There is no doubt that the Bush administration has overseen an enormous increase in the national debt, but it's not greater than all presidents before him combined. In Sept. 2001, the national debt was 5.8 trillion dollars. (This would the be the beginning of the first fiscal year under Bush's leadership). As of today, the national debt clock says the debt 8.35 trillion. If the debt continues to grow at the same rate through the end of Bush's presidency (assuming he does not leave office prematurely), the National Debt will be around 10 trillion, not quite double what it was when he entered office.
For comparison, During Reagan's administration (9/81 - 9/89), the debt rose from 1 trillion to 2.89 trillion. During Bush I administration, (9/89 to 9/93) the debt rose from 2.89 trillion to 4.4 trillion.
Reagan wins hands down for the largest % increase in the national debt. Bush I oversaw an impress growth in the debt but he still comes in behind Reagan in terms of percent growth and behind his son in terms of dollars per year in office. Bush II is way out in front in terms of total dollars added to the debt.
[ May 03, 2006, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
One more fact. 71% of 8.3 trillion dollars outstanding national debt was incurred under just three presidents.
Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I bow to your superior research, Rabbit. Especially in the face of my current lethargy with regard to doing research. (Forgive me, I'm recovering from stomach flu.)
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
JohnynotsoBravo:
" I just did a google search, taking me 20 seconds. Here's what I found: Bush made 46% of his 2000 campaign promises after four years in office."
I bow before the divining power that is google...but this such a subjective judgment, you can't really claim it as "evidence." Think about what that statment assumes, even if it from a major newspaper. Which promises are counted as being made, and which how must a promise be kept? What is a promise and not a goal? What is a categorical pledge?
There is no great big list called "campaign promises" with a bunch of items next to check boxes. If you're trying to imply that what you did is research... I wouldn't be too sure.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:posted by The Rabbit: There is no doubt that the Bush administration has overseen an enormous increase in the national debt, but it's not greater than all presidents before him combined.
The article didn't say he increased the national debt more than all other presidents. It said he borrowed more between 2001 and 2005 (about 1.05 trillion) than all other presidents combined.
Posted by JonnyNotSoBravo (Member # 5715) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: JohnynotsoBravo:
" I just did a google search, taking me 20 seconds. Here's what I found: Bush made 46% of his 2000 campaign promises after four years in office."
I bow before the divining power that is google...but this such a subjective judgment, you can't really claim it as "evidence." Think about what that statment assumes, even if it from a major newspaper. Which promises are counted as being made, and which how must a promise be kept? What is a promise and not a goal? What is a categorical pledge?
There is no great big list called "campaign promises" with a bunch of items next to check boxes. If you're trying to imply that what you did is research... I wouldn't be too sure.
Read the article. It very clearly said it was talking about specific statements made by then Texas Gov. Bush while campaigning. Knight Ridder has been compiling these kinds of articles about campaigns for a while now. It very clearly lists the specific promise that was kept or not. The article did not deal in vague generalites like making American government honest again or something like that.
If you don't trust newspapers, take a journalism class and find out what you have to do to meet standards at a major newspaper for research. When I did at the University of Washington (which isn't high on the list of schools who give Communications/Journalism degrees), anyone who so much as misspelled a name (as you did my username above) in their written article got an "F" for that piece.
I didn't call what I did research. I merely offered more evidence than opinion about Lyrhawn's claim. I did the very minimum to get Lyrhawn to clarify, as he did above, that "most" only meant a majority. To me, "most" means "almost all" or at the minimum "greater than 75%" otherwise I would have used "majority." For example, "Joe, eat most of your dinner before you get dessert," would mean eating almost all of dinner.
I understand that the article's measure seems subjective in that it involves some judgement, but then I would venture to ask which of the claims you would question, and what evidence you would have of those claims being false. Is there evidence of partisanship or bias? Or are you objecting to the article purely on principle and not practice?
Also, if there is no measure of whether a candidate has fulfilled his/her campaign promises, why would you vote for a candidate at least in part on his/her campaign promises? No measure of whether a campaign promise was kept would also mean that Lyrhawn's comment about broken campaign promises was meaningless because one could argue that they were ALL kept.
[ May 04, 2006, 06:24 PM: Message edited by: JonnyNotSoBravo ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose:
quote:posted by The Rabbit: There is no doubt that the Bush administration has overseen an enormous increase in the national debt, but it's not greater than all presidents before him combined.
The article didn't say he increased the national debt more than all other presidents. It said he borrowed more between 2001 and 2005 (about 1.05 trillion) than all other presidents combined.
Juxtapose, The increase in the National Debt and the amount the government borrows are, to the best of my knowledge, the same thing. The only way the national debt can increase is by borrowing.
At the beginning of Bush first fiscal year (9/30/2001), the outstanding federal debt (i.e that cumulative amount borrowed but not repaid by all previous presidents was 5.8 trillion dollars). Bt 9/30/2005, that amount had increase to 7.9 trillion. Unless there is someway to incur debt without borrow, the numbers indicate that Federal Government, under Bush, borrowed 4.1 trillion dollars between 2001 and 2005. This is much more than the number cited in the article, but still not more than all his predicessors combined.
I'm not claiming, by any means that Bush hasn't been singularly irresponsible in his fiscal policy. He has borrowed more than any other single president, even when adjusted for inflation. But Reagan and Bush I borrowed so much that its no longer easy for any president to borrow more than all others combined.
It would be accurate to say that Bush I and Bush II combined borrowed more than all other presidents combined. It is also noteworthy that Reagan, Bush I and Bush II combined, borrowed nearly three times the amoung borrowed by all other presidents combined.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Juxtapose, The increase in the National Debt and the amount the government borrows are, to the best of my knowledge, the same thing. The only way the national debt can increase is by borrowing.
I always kind of thought the same thing. But when a Princeton professor of History uses it to mean something different, I'm willing to take his word for it unless/until I learn differently. Perhaps in the context of government operations only certain kinds of transactions qualify as "borrowing." I'm trying to do a search on it now, so we'll see.
EDIT - He might not have been counting government bonds. Bonds are nearly always spoken of as bought or sold. If so, he could be considering them commodities for sale, rather than loans, though I'm not sure. The search continues.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonnyNotSoBravo: If you don't trust newspapers, take a journalism class and find out what you have to do to meet standards at a major newspaper for research. When I did at the University of Washington (which isn't high on the list of schools who give Communications/Journalism degrees), anyone who so much as misspelled a name (as you did my username above) in their written article got an "F" for that piece.
It my experience, the "rigorous" standards of major newspapers can't save journalists from being blissfully ignorant of what is important, or relevant or human about any given story. A paper can be "correct" and can pass muster based on hard standards for accuracy, but as you must know if you took a jouralism class, or if you are a human being, this is not going to stop the journalist from getting almost everything wrong. Wrong in a different sense than is plainly important to a major paper or a news network though, wrong in the sense that doesn't stop selling papers and ads.
Its hard for me to be too specific about this because it is a generalized observation and complaint about the media, but I feel that the media's perception of itself, its place in the fabric of our lives is far different from the reality. If you've ever been the focus of a newspaper article, you'll probably agree that the picture painted in that article is different from what you felt was important. The fact that you remember spelling as the life or death of an article tells me that form and presentation were emphasized, rather than the real world value of the content.
Failing that, you'll acknowledge that the mere fact of the media, having the media present and the possibility of having an article written about something changes the nature of that thing. In the laws of human interaction, Heisenberg plays a key role. That is why I NEVER trust judgements like the one you posted, even though I read the articles and try to figure out why some of the things in them got there. I fear that few go that far, few think about why the article is written, who writes it and why. The power in media, the power of free speech is huge, beyond political power in the role of shaping public perception, but that power is virtually unfocused. That's not a bad thing, but it is an important thing, I feel, to keep in mind when dealing with what I am told.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonnyNotSoBravo:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: JohnynotsoBravo:
" I just did a google search, taking me 20 seconds. Here's what I found: Bush made 46% of his 2000 campaign promises after four years in office."
I bow before the divining power that is google...but this such a subjective judgment, you can't really claim it as "evidence." Think about what that statment assumes, even if it from a major newspaper. Which promises are counted as being made, and which how must a promise be kept? What is a promise and not a goal? What is a categorical pledge?
There is no great big list called "campaign promises" with a bunch of items next to check boxes. If you're trying to imply that what you did is research... I wouldn't be too sure.
Read the article. It very clearly said it was talking about specific statements made by then Texas Gov. Bush while campaigning. Knight Ridder has been compiling these kinds of articles about campaigns for a while now. It very clearly lists the specific promise that was kept or not. The article did not deal in vague generalites like making American government honest again or something like that.
If you don't trust newspapers, take a journalism class and find out what you have to do to meet standards at a major newspaper for research. When I did at the University of Washington (which isn't high on the list of schools who give Communications/Journalism degrees), anyone who so much as misspelled a name (as you did my username above) in their written article got an "F" for that piece.
I didn't call what I did research. I merely offered more evidence than opinion about Lyrhawn's claim. I did the very minimum to get Lyrhawn to clarify, as he did above, that "most" only meant a majority. To me, "most" means "almost all" or at the minimum "greater than 75%" otherwise I would have used "majority." For example, "Joe, eat most of your dinner before you get dessert," would mean eating almost all of dinner.
I understand that the article's measure seems subjective in that it involves some judgement, but then I would venture to ask which of the claims you would question, and what evidence you would have of those claims being false. Is there evidence of partisanship or bias? Or are you objecting to the article purely on principle and not practice?
Also, if there is no measure of whether a candidate has fulfilled his/her campaign promises, why would you vote for a candidate at least in part on his/her campaign promises? No measure of whether a campaign promise was kept would also mean that Lyrhawn's comment about broken campaign promises was meaningless because one could argue that they were ALL kept.
One could argue that yes, but it would be a ridiculous argument with no traction whatsoever. When Bush says that he doesn't think US troops should be used for nation building, that is a campaign promise to me. He doesn't actually come out and pledge it officially, he's telling you his position right there. When he changes it, it's a reversal.
When the president calls democrats irresponsible when it comes to the economy and spending, and then oversees a massive increase in the debt and budget without vetoing a single bill, and cuts taxes for the rich to boot, I call that a breaking of a campaign promise.
And these are major issues, that I give far more weight to than promising to make $500 dollars worth of school supplies deductable for school teachers. That, while important, cannot change the fate of the entire nation in a shot. You can't do that in a cut and dry method. Some promises are more important than others.
Orincoro is right too, in, what do you consider a promise? So far as I'm concerned, his rhetoric is a promise too. If he doesn't mean it, he shouldn't say it, or he's being dishonest, and should be held accountable for it.
Posted by Nato (Member # 1448) on :
quote:One could argue that yes, but it would be a ridiculous argument with no traction whatsoever. When Bush says that he doesn't think US troops should be used for nation building, that is a campaign promise to me. He doesn't actually come out and pledge it officially, he's telling you his position right there. When he changes it, it's a reversal.
Technicalities aside, I still don't want troops used for nation building, so Bush's reversal on this issue is disappointing.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I'm somewhat more ambivilent when it comes to nation building, but I think that any nationing building we may do with our troops should have a detailed plan behind it that that has undergone extremely intense scrutiny, rather than a general idea that everyone there is going to greet us with flowers and open arms. Said plan should involve, for example, having an ample supply of people who speak the language.
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