Four More Years...

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Maybe you're just talking about the small group of intermediate people that might sway the election one way or the other, but I think most people see a huge difference between the parties, even if just in their respective general philosophies.

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See, this is where the environment one is in has a large effect on what we think.I live in a pretty progressive university town. Before that, I lived in traditionally Democratic cities. I was raised in a blue-collar family in a town where half of my friends' parents worked at the local steel mill.I have never, ever understood the appeal of the Republican party among the working class.There used to be a larger difference between the two parties, but the country has slid so far to the Right that Nixon would have had to be a pretty liberal Democrat if he were to come up in politics today.A typical moderate Democrat today would probably have been considered a moderate Republican 30 years ago.Clinton supported NAFTA and welfare cuts, and he balanced the budget, for god's sake, yet the Republicans paint him as some left-wing hippie radical.I would have voted for Dean in a heartbeat, and I'm glad that he was in the race, because he gave the Democratic party the balls it was lacking for so many years. He forced all of the other candidates to actually come out and disagree with George W. Bush.Gore spent his campaign agreeing with the Republican position on almost everything.

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dragged by the Republican Congress. At first, Clinton had grand liberal visions, but the Hillary health plan failure and the landslide loss of congressional seats at his 2-yr mark caused him to change tactics (to win a second term).

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Exactly. He became a Republican "lite". Even less difference between the parties after Clinton! AND STILL, the Republicans frame him as a left-wing hippie radical, even AFTER the shift to the right. It's ludricous.

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He was able to slide many monetary problems (such as depleting military) to the following president. Obviously, he didn't beef-up the intelligence community after the first attack on the WTC.

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A blatant falsehood.Actually, the Clinton administration identified bin Laden and Al Qaedea as a major threat, informed the incoming Bush administration, which then did nothing at all.I cite Republican administration officials below on the job the Clinton administration did WRT terrorism:
"Overall, I give them very high marks...The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger." (Robert Oakley, ambassador for counter terrorism in the Reagan State Dept; from the Washington Post, Dec 25, 2000, "Planned January 2000 Attacks Failed or were Thwarted"). In the same article, Paul Bremer (yes, Paul Bremer) disagrees and says the Clinton administration was "correctly focused on bin Laden".What did the Clinton administration do? It captured, tried and imprisoned for life the folks responsible for the WTC bombing. They stopped plots to kill the Pope, to blow up 12 U.S. jetliners simultaneously, to attack the U.N. headquarters, the FBI building, the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C., L.A. and Boston airports, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge, and a truck bombing against the U.S. embassy in Albania.ALL of these were thwarted by the Clinton administration after the WTC bombing (Washington Post, Dec 19, 2001, "Broad Effort Launched After '98 Attacks" and subsequent stories in a series).Clinton tripled the FBI's counterterrorism budget, doubled overall counterterrorism spending, eliminated 20 different al Qaeda cells, sponsored simulations to work out responses to terrorist attacks, created a national stockpile of drugs and vaccines. Clinton issued a Presidential directive authorizing the assasinataion of Osama bin Laden.And so on. The Washington Post article called Clinton's administration the "first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort."After the U.S.S. Cole incident, the Clinton team put together an ambitious plan to knock out Al Qaeda, finalized in December 2000 (check out Time, August 12, 2002), a plan which included: breaking up Al Qaeda cells and arresting their personnel, attacking the financial support and freezing their assets, stopping its funding through fake charities, give aid to governments having trouble with al Qaeda, and to scale up covert action in Afghanistan in an effort to eliminate bin Laden. This plan was never carried out by the Bush administration, which sat on it completely until AFTER the September 11th attacks, despite repeated calls by former Clinton administration officials!Oh, and the military that Clinton funded for 8 years did pretty well in Afghanistan and Iraq, don't you think? You DO realize that Bush could not have had anything to do with our military's preparedness, and that it was Clinton which built the current force, right?(Thanks to Al Franken and Teamfranken for compiling much of the info in this post in a convenient format for my referral).

Lumping Stewart's insider trading in with Worldcom's and Enron's rape of tens of thousands of workers' retirement funds isn't even close to a fair comparison.

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I wish management of corporations were more committed to ethics and morality than greed. It gets you thinking about how much corruption a capitalist democratic republic could survive. You look around the world and see that democracy and non-corrupt government is very difficult to achieve, much less sustain.

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That's human nature.That's also why we need governments to regulate business. Unregulated business WILL, with rare exceptions, screw it's workers. We have seen this, time and time again. The haves will walk all over the have-nots in order to remain the "haves".Unfortunately, this one-party system we seem to have (Republicans and Republican-'lite's') is beholden to the "haves" to provide them with millions in campaign contributions required to win elections.Major campaign finance reform is the only way, in my view, to rip the government away from the moneyed special interest groups.

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Do you expect me to believe propaganda from an avowed Bush-basher?

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Well, first you have to show me that what I wrote was actually "propaganda" and not factual.Do you consider former Reagan staffers, The Washington Post, and Time magazine "propagandists" and "avowed Bush bashers"?

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There are two sides to the events, and you presented one.

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Um, no, I didn't provide a "side", I provided facts, which you apparently can't specifically refute.Instead, it looks like you are prepared to handwave them away because they come from a messenger you don't like.

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There are plenty of questions regarding Franken's claims, which you present as facts.

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I read the relevant sections of your site, and while it may have brought up some minor factual errors, it also argues agains some straw men.For instance, nowhere in "Lies" does Franken imply that the Bush regime did nothing at all with regards to terrorism before 9/11. The point the chpter makes is that the Clinton team had identified bin Laden specifically as a major threat and had planns to take him out, yet the Bush regime chose to not implement this plan.Can you show me evidence which shows that Clinton didn't in fact have this plan, or that Bush actually did enact it?Your website mentions the attack on the Pope as an example of an inaccuracy, which may be true. However, what about all of the other thwarted terrorist plots I mentioned?Additionally, you made the claim that Clinton got us into this mess by leaving us unprepared for terrorism.According to the Washington Post, Clinton beefed up funding for all sorts of anti-terrorism defense and created a stockpile of drugs and vaccines.Are you going to just ignore this evidence and refuse to admit that you were wrong?Lastly, please note that the person who constructed the website you cited in his "free time", according to him, used a LOT of quotes from Condoleeza Rice in press conferences as evidence to counter Franken's claims. There are also a lot of quotes from various conservative popular press books, and also several instances of the website author apparently not understaning satire.I don't know about you, but I'm maybe thinking that maybe the professional spin doctor of the whitehouse's job isn't to present all the facts, so maybe her version of things might be less trustworthy than, oh, The Washington Post's or Time magazine's.Ironically, the following website, which was listed as an "excellent" source by your website, generally gives "Lies" high marks for accuracy. It does list an error, which I acknowledge.http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_09_07_archive.html"For the most part, Franken does get his facts right."The reason it's ironic that your site lists this site is because this site reams Bush a new one all over the the place.

Ooops, sorry.

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Perhaps I am a bit oversimplistic, but Republican ideology is the Religious right, whereas Democratic ideology is secular humanism.

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Certainly the Republicans have made their deal with the devil (religious right), but it's really the god of supply-side Reaganomics that they worship.

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I do not have the time or interest to play ping pong with you with facts and opinions on this topic.

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Translation:"I don't want to admit that I am wrong."

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That are people in the political arena who will do that for both sides. Go argue with them.

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Hey, you were the one who made the factual claim about Clinton's record.I pointed out how you were very, very wrong.You tried to counter with a pretty poor website, which nonetheless pointed out a couple of errors, which I acknowledged.Most of what I originally claimed about Clinton's record on bin Laden, terrorism, and the current Clinton-built US military still stands.

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Just because my interests lie elsewhere does NOT mean you are right!

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No, the facts, which you cannot or will not refute, make me right.

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I stand by my point that there are different points of view on what actually happened and who knew what and when.

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Sorry you decided to forfeit the game just when it was your turn at bat.

I certainly take what you say to heart Percy, but I really think you are giving ThingsChange a bit too much credit.He has thrown numerous comments and claims around as if he knows the truth, and then when challenged, hides behind "Nobody really knows the whole truth about anything."To me, this is a plain case of his wanting to say whatever he wants to about Clinton, Democrats, or whatever, yet he also never wants to be challenged to back up what he says. I'm more than happy to accept evidence which shows me that my views are wrong, and did so in this very thread.If he doesn't want to have to defend his claims, then he shouldn't make them on a debate board.

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But isn't an appropriate counter to his book something from a corresponding right-wing buffoon, perhaps Limbaugh?

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No, no, no, absolutely not. To equate a book by Limbaugh to this book by Franken is like countering a popular press book by Dawkins with Kent Hovind's website. Sure, Dawkins' book might be a little loose and lack the vigor of a peer-reviewed article, but generally he makes a strong effort to be accurate. Hovind, by contrast, does not.Franken makes a real and mostly successful effort to be accurate while pleading his case, and Limbaugh does not.Have you read Franken's latest book, Percy, because it doesn't sound like you have.Limbaugh was thoroughly flogged by the non-partisan Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting media watchdog group for misleading and lying on his radio show and in his books. Have a gander here:Page not found - FAIRFranken wrote the book and researched it while he was a fellow at his alma mater, Harvard University.So, he's a really smart, passionate, politically progressive guy who also happens to be funny.Please don't equate him with a sloppy hack like Rush Limbaugh. Maybe George Will, who isn't funny, but is at least intelligent.

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I grant you that he has some strong anti-Clinton opinions, and by and large I would agree that once made he should stay and defend them, but your counter was a book by a left-wing comedian.

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Perhaps you will notice that the entierety of my reply was a list of referenced facts, not quotes of Al Franken's opinion of anything. If I hadn't listed my source at the bottom, I wonder if ThingsChange would have so easily ignored the list of quotes from the Washington Post and former Reagan officials?Please also notice that, when provided a properly-referenced website (which I had to dig around and find as it was embedded in the lame, poorly-referenced website ThingsChange provided) which uncovered several errors in Franken's facts, I immediately acknowledged them.See, I don't immediately discount a source just because of political bent, regardless of the strength of the evidence, like ThingsChange seems to do. I'm interested in learning as much of the truth as I can.I'm not really ready to throw up my hands in defeat and stop trying to figure things out just because there's information I will never be privy to.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-26-2004]

Satire, Percy.The book is a political satire.Political satire is a near-lost, intelligent form of comedy that used to be a traditional part of politics in this country.Where is the rule that states you can't be funny, satirical, and factually accurate all at the same time?Lenny Bruce did a pretty good job, don't you think?

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Citing Franken as a source tells me the discussion is probably taking a turn that I'm not interested in following.

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I'll just be sure to not list Franken as a source next time, and stick to the primary citations of the Washington Post, etc.That way folks won't immediately reject the message just because it it coming from someone who is also funny.(?)I hope that's true if Al Franken decides to move back to Minnesota to run for a Senate seat.Page not found - Chicago Sun-Times[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-27-2004]