Progressive policies-
Ok, you mean rolling back the tax cuts on the top two percent and helping everyone get medical insurance?
Making an college education easier for people?
Actually funding federal mandates for a change instead of threatening schools with bankruptcy?
Equality for americans with disabilities, reformed immigration practices which are fair?
Better tax breaks for the middle class? More emphasis on education for high technology?
Reverse rollbacks on the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts?
There's more- you can see it here-
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/
Are they as far left as Republicans would like you to believe?
Come on, CCR, Bush is making a stump speech out of being the guy who happened to be President on 9-11. Would Gore have done the same thing? Probably.
The guy is capitalizing on a human tragedy- and did he do that great a job?
If he had been doing a great job it wouldn't have happened. If you are to credit Bush for his leadership after 9-11 than you have to criticize him for his lack of leadership before 9-11. It doesn't matter what Clinton did- even if Clinton did try to take out Osama and Clinton did raise terrorism as a national security concern and if Bush ignored terrorism up to 9-11.
The thing that matters is that George Bush was the man in charge before 9-11 happened and it happened on his watch.
But there is no accountability, no one gets fired, no one says, "I fucked up."
Look, Clinton should have resigned when he committed purgery. Fair enough, because when you are President you are responsible for upholding the law.
But when you are PResident you are also responsible for maintaining the security of the country. You can't do that by ignoring your terrorism chief when he tells you things are pretty fucked up, and things could go bad. I mean Gary Hart said that a massive terrorist attack was coming a few weeks before 9-11. What the fuck was George doing? Thinking about going to war in Iraq.
And while he's going to war with Iraq- a state that wasn't attacking the US and had no connections to terrorists, North Korea gets nuclear weapons and the Iranian get off scott free.
(By the way, did you notice the Republicans saying that Iraq was just the beginning- who is next on George's hit list? Or is this merely a policy of maintaining the US on a continuous war footing?)
So the question then becomes- is George fighting the war of terrorism the right way.
He says, "Bring it on". God that's macho.
Look at Chechnya- Bring it On means that terrorists are invited to hit our schools, our malls, our churches. And I doubt there is enough money in the budget to provide that much security.
Frankly, George saying "Bring it On" when he's protected by an army of Secret Service guys is not that impressive. The guy who has to pay the price of his policies are the ones who impress me.
So we go to war with Iraq under dubious reasons. ANd don't get me wrong- personally I sympathize- there was little that could be done besides either drop the sanctions or kick out Saddam. Fine (and note that I am a minority on this position).
But the war has been a mess since we've taken over. "Mission Accomplished?" Don't think so. So the post-war reconstruction has been buttfucked and we are slowly losing control in Iraq. Afghanistan is mostly an after-thought and those are the guys that hit us, not the Iraqis.
So this war on terrorism and the Iraq policy is a fuck up. What Bush is pulling for is to remember the "rally around the flag" affect following 9-11 when everyone was willing to give him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted- leading to a war in Iraq, a Patriot Act and a huge deficit.
It's politics. George Bush profits when we are afraid. He knows that when a person is afraid they will look to the man in office to lead.
ANd it's impressive that he's strong willed and sticks to his convictions and does what he says and says what he feels. Wonderful- but what if he's strong willed, stubborn and consistent on the wrong policies?
That's the problem CCR- Bush has had four years to prove himself, and he's lacking.
