Bush just said goodbye!

[USS Triumphant]

You should read more.

Timelines of Bush anti-environmentalism: <snip>

Thank you for the links. I may have to reevaluate the passing grade for Bush on environmentalism that I mentioned previously. And actually, since I wrote that, I've remembered that his administration and the Republican controlled Congress allowed golf courses to be included as a portion of the wetlands that are required to be protected by federal law - thus leaving legitimate wetlands unprotected. So I probably needed to rethink that, anyway.

What a repulsive post.

In Dayton3's defense, I believe I am mostly on your side in this discussion, and I also thought you were referring to ethnic minorities. It seems a reasonable assumption, and if that is what he thought, then there was nothing racist about Dayton3 refuting part of it, since he thought you were bringing race into it first.

This goes to one of my pet peeves in political discourse. Can't we have disagreements and discussions on these topics without assuming our opponents are operating in bad faith? I consider it entirely likely that when I disagree with someone, one of us simply lacks data, or has seen reason to dismiss data as unreliable, and is making the best assessment they can with that data missing or discounted.

This isn't a Red Team vs Blue Team game, and if we keep playing like it is, the actual opponents are going to destroy us.

 

[TedShatner10]

Yeah, he has probably tapped your phone lines all last week!
I have only ever seen one provision of the Patriot act overturned in a court. Are there anymore??

Wasn't the Supreme Court packed with Republican cronies when the Patriot Act was pushed through anyway?

Completely incorrect.

And the Supreme Court can only rule on parts of the Patriot Act when someone files suit and brings it before them.

The whole "President Bush has destroyed civil liberties in the United States" is nothing but a liberal myth and the most pernicous of lies.

Uh, yeah:

TOP JUDGES ON REPUBLICAN SIDE

But that was way back in 2000 when the Republican Party had much more momentum, however the damage has been done.

 

[Plumster]

anyway.

What a repulsive post.

In Dayton3's defense, I believe I am mostly on your side in this discussion, and I also thought you were referring to ethnic minorities. It seems a reasonable assumption, and if that is what he thought, then there was nothing racist about Dayton3 refuting part of it, since he thought you were bringing race into it first.

Is it possible that only someone with those kind of predjudices would ASSUME that? It's a natural conclusion to draw in light of the enormity of Obama's election and the racial divides that STILL exist in parts of the USA today. But then many American's (like many other so-called civilised societies) are still struggling with the concept of all men created equal under God.

I believe an apparently prominant fellow called Jefferson might have said;

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

And thus America was born.......set free from the class system and stagnating influence of the English monarchy.

How easy so many of you forgot.....this is Bush's epitaph. A creep of governance into people's personal lives and the utterly despicable projection of American military power into the third world.

Even if you don't see it or comprehend it - the election of your new President has left the world hoping that America is all she is capable of being and I say that as a British person watching from afar.

Utterly inspiring and I envy the USA for the journey she is about to undertake.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-0P0jxlzMSQ&feature=related

 

[TedShatner10]

The American far right were not concerned about the chronic incompetence, callousness, corruption occuring on the local and Federal level that seriously mired the New Orleans recovery efforts, but they certainly had a lot to say about black people.

 

[USS Triumphant]

No - only someone with those kind of predjudices would ASSUME that.

I regret to inform you that you are incorrect. However, since you live in the U.K., that may be understandable.

Here in the United States, there is a large majority of the population who would be just as happy to treat everyone equally and have everyone else shut up about racial issues so they could just go away. But we have some small, but very vocal, groups who seem to delight in trying to turn anything they can into a racial issue, no matter how clear it would be to any idiot that it wasn't one until they started in on it.

Unfortunately, it is a natural consequence of this that the most reasonable and non-racist people you'd care to meet here are a bit shell-shocked by this treatment, and in turn, have become perhaps overly prepared to defend themselves and others against these morons, and too ready to assume that other people who are being vocal are the aforementioned morons. But it doesn't make them racists, not in the slightest.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Even if you don't see it or comprehend it - the election of your new President has left the world hoping that America is all she is capable of being and I say that as a British person watching from afar.

Utterly inspiring.

I see it very clearly. However, I would assert that it would be even more inspiring if Obama had been elected, and race had never even been mentioned. We're not there yet, but many of us would be, were it not for the morons I mentioned above.

The American far right were not concerned about the chronic incompetence, callousness, corruption occuring on the local and Federal level that seriously mired the New Orleans recovery efforts, but they certainly had a lot to say about black people.

True. And many of those people were racists. I fully allow that they exist. I'm just saying that, without evidence beyond what he has said in this thread, I do not believe that Dayton3 is one of them.

 

[Plumster]

No - only someone with those kind of predjudices would ASSUME that.

I regret to inform you that you are incorrect. However, since you live in the U.K., that may be understandable.

I beg your pardon?

What has living in the UK got to do with it? First it's the 'blacks' now it's the 'British'.

Whatever point you are trying to make - you are making it horribly and you are being rather offensive to boot.

The fact that Obama was seen as offering something different is the issue - and he offers so much on so many levels whether it's race - ideology or direction.

America needs to go through this process of discovery and honesty of what it's done recently to rediscover what it is to hold all these things that Jefferson spoke of as self evident. You have a process of political reinvention most European countries can only dream of.

America as a notion is thrilling and awe inspiring.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I beg your pardon?

You don't have it. You appear to me to be a troll. Rather than taking the point that I have made very clearly, you have instead chosen to extend your illogical assumptions about Dayton3's motivations to me. If you are not intentionally trolling, I would suggest that a little more comprehension of what others are saying, and a little less typing to read yourself, might be in order.

To accuse me of being somehow anti-Britain is the very height of folly. I am a huge fan of many things and people from the U.K. - Monty Python, Doctor Who, Coupling, Fawlty Towers, Keeping Up Appearances, Are You Being Served?, Father Ted, Rick Astley, The Corrs, and on and on. T'Pau is my favorite musical act, period, and I have all of their albums, including the ones not released on this side of the pond. Douglas Adams was my favorite author. I have occasionally argued to friends that, upon winning the revolution, we should have used the win to gain fair representation in Parliament, rather than independence. After 9/11, when the Queen had our national anthem played for the changing of the guard as a sign of solidarity with us, I teared up. And after Katrina, when your military sent some of their rations over to the survivors, and our FDA threw them out as "unfit for human consumption", I wanted someone punished for the slight to our friends. I made phone calls, not that it did much good.

Also, don't preach to me about my country. I've been a patriot since before I could walk, and am well studied in the principles my country was founded on. I believe in them, wholeheartedly. And, I live here. I am far from being an isolationist, and I am very appreciative of the friendship offered to my country by yours and others. But I grow about as weary of your input in our internal matters as you would were I to give my opinion on allowing MPs to vote on building a third runway at Heathrow. For you, a lot of this is just some distant concept. "America as a notion is thrilling and awe inspiring." How nice for you. I work with an elderly black man whose family were sharecroppers for the family of the man who owns our company. We all call him "Uncle Will". One of the elementary schools I went to underwent desegregation while I was there. I believe I know a bit more about what constitutes racism and what doesn't in my country than you do.

 

[USS Triumphant]

^ You do realize don't you that the majority of people who died in Hurricane Katrina and in New Orleans in particular were WHITE ?

Link?

His statement isn't quite correct, from the research I've done. It would be more accurate to say that assessments done after Katrina indicated that there was probably no racial bias in rescue efforts. Also, white people did die in larger numbers when applied to the racial population ratios - only 28% of New Orleans was white when the storm hit, apparently.

Now that I think about it, that might speak to a racial disparity in who could afford beachfront housing. But that would mean that black folks would get "the last laugh" - if anyone were inclined to laugh at all, which I doubt.

 

[Kryton]

Color aside, remember what Momma Barbara said when people were seeking refuge in the SuperDome: "For many of these people, this is a step UP" or equally dismissive words to that effect. Bush=elitism and always has. Remember George senior being fascinated by barcode scanners, even though they'd been in use for a good 3 or more years?

 

[Squiggy]

Wolf Blitzer: "So many of these people are so poor. So black."

 

[CYOTI]

Remember George senior being fascinated by barcode scanners, even though they'd been in use for a good 3 or more years?

No that would be political hacks deliberately falsifying the news to make a president look bad.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscan.asp

 

[Squiggy]

Doesn't stop people like you from believing that Obama is a Muslim sleeper-agent from Kenya.

 

[CYOTI]

I don't think I have ever made any such allegations about the current president elect regarding his birthplace.

 

[Squiggy]

I don't care enough to look into your posting history. But you're of the group that was foaming at the mouth about such things so if you believed it I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[CYOTI]

You have no proof of that either.

 

[TedShatner10]

While I don't believe Obama is going to wave his magic wand and get rid of all of the troubles in the world, at the same time he would stop the unwanted stagnation if not willfull reversals the Bush Administration has induced in politics and the economy (which effects the rest of the world). The grand Friedman experiment has ground to a halt, hopefully for good, since the Neo-liberal economy had gotten so cutthroat it cut its own throat, and it was an integral reason why America got weaker and China got stronger so where's the patriotism in that?

 

[USS Triumphant]

so where's the patriotism in that?

Provided it was not intended to trash our economy from the start, then it does not negate the patriotism of people who implemented it and then watched with horror as it failed. It may negate any claims to expertise in economics, but not patriotism.

I feel sure, though, that there were those who profiteered at the expense of our national well-being. And even amongst those who intended nothing but the best for our country, there were those who flaunted the law, even the Constitution, in the Bush Administration, in the pursuit of their goals.

I eagerly await the investigations, arrests, and trials that I am uncertain Obama will allow to happen. Nixon was a dangerous precedent - Ford should have nailed his ass to the wall. But starting with Ford, each succeeding president has seemed to be afraid to look too deeply into what their predecessors did, for fear that their successor will do the same.

 

[Augustus]

I don't care enough to look into your posting history. But you're of the group that was foaming at the mouth about such things so if you believed it I wouldn't be surprised.

Is there no middle ground? Can't there be people who don't like Obama, but also don't think that he is a muslim terrorist or some other strange theory?

There are many kinds of people that don't like Obama.

 

[Squiggy]

You have no proof of that either.

My knowledge of you is all the proof I need.