Posted on 05/19/2006 1:47:25 AM PDT by balch3
There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it.
So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.
(Excerpt) Read more at kabc.com ...
Must have been in a coma during the Clinton years.
I'm against the hiring of hordes of illegal immigrations for the purpose of enlarging and cheapening our labor pool. But Micintyre is obviously more afraid of gobs of little Mexicans than he is of his city being nuked in the near future by an Islamist regime.
Funny.
MSM (KABC radio) thinks this guy really WAS a Bush voter.
Bet they believed Clinton really felt he was sorry too!
These 'gobs of little Mexicans'number 10 to 20 million and are all over this country. Not all of them are here to work at laboring jobs that Americans won't do. I don't know what the crime stats are, but in the number of illegals are a greater share of rapists, robbers, and murderers, than in our population at large. Just because they kill one or two at a time doesn't make their individual crimes any less devestating to that victim or the total toll any less disastrous to this country.
They are both threats and closing the borders will go a long way to starting to solve both.
That said, Bush isn't the worst, but he is right down there in the ten worst and will get worse if he doesn't do the right thing at the border.
He supported McCain in the 2000 primary, he liked Colin Powell at the UN, this guy is a leftist, not a conservative talk show host.
Doug makes some good points, but a lot of it is gross exaggeration.
He said he supported McCain because he wasn't familiar with Bush, not because he liked McCain better. He goes on to add he supported Bush as the Republican candidate.
The only thing he says about Colin Powell is that he was convinced by the argument he made at the UN. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were convinced by the same argument without needing to hear it from Powell. So he's in good company if the same argument convinced him.
I'm not seeing how this makes him a leftist.
In the long haul, I suspect the immigration issue is a non-issue being used by the Leftist media to rile up the conservatives against Republicans.
Whether or not we decide to absorb the illegal aliens in our midst is beside the point in the issue of whether or not certain policies affect our safety and sovereignty as a nation.
Immigration policy as the President sees it is an issue separate from the issue of national security. Immigration policy is, in his opinion, an economic issue and a future political issue. On the national security front, he, the president, considers spending money on information gathering more important than trying to chase down every single miscreant who crosses our borders illegally. Using information, the NSA finds the most likely terror suspects and then sends the FBI or Border Patrol to ferret out the threat. The fact is that we've caught muslims crossing into our country. Considering the odds against catching a muslim out of the whole bunch of illegals who make the attempt every day, I suspect the catches were made based on good intel developed from data mining and human agents in Mexico.
As for absorbing aliens, legal or illegal, it really doesn't matter what their status is prior, so long as the inflow is shut down. We can take our time to deal with the ones who are here, but in all likelihood it will be simpler to just absorb them and get on with our lives. Turning the entire population of illegals into fugitives from the law is a pretty good way to chase them right into the waiting arms of the Commies, the Left, and the Fundamentalist Muslims. The last thing we want is a festering subculture of fundamentalists, breeding in the shadows, hidden from the law, undocumented. And as much as the anti-illegal extremists say that the round up of the illegals will be simple, it won't be. Rounding up 10-20 million people, enough of whom know someone via one degree of separation that is connected to some criminal element, is going to be impossible. What you'll do is create a whole new facet for organized crime, and unless things shape up in Latin America, being a fugitive in the U.S. is still a better life than living in a tin pot banana dictatorship. And there is no way we want to give our Federal government that budget and the means to round up 10-20 million people. If you're worried about how DHS has expanded the Federal government, imagine what kind of expansion would be needed to round up 10-20 million people.
I don't like the idea of a full amnesty. I'm hoping the legislators settle for some kind of temporary worker visa, but even if it is a full amnesty - the problem solves itself in the long run, as long as the influx of illegals is shut down. Eventually, everybody becomes legal in a generation or two, and our country has a very successful conversion rate of turning immigrants into Americans. A fact that visiting a naturalization ceremony can bring home.
Here is the truth, if he can even look in retrospect and think either Gore or Kerry were a preferable vote:
He is, and was, a liberal who was too STUPID to know how he should have voted originally.
EIther that, or he is so wishy-washy that he will change his mind back again tomorrow if someone presents him with weak evidence of any kind.
The Democratic party and all liberals just love people who have no steadfast principles and convictions (not convictions in the LEGAL sense, they would vote for a convict for President...oh wait...they did...)
They Love people like Murtha. They love people like Jeffords. They love anyone who can change their mind at the drop of a hat, because it means "they are open to change and are willing to admit mistakes".
Their problem is that they are all addicted to moral relativism. They HATE It when someone makes a judgement and take a stand.
Unless, of course, that stand puts the USA in a bad light. Then it is okay.
WOW!
What a combination of WH talking points and head in the sand nonsense.
You sound like Bush. We must not allow . . . , but on the other hand, we can't really stop them, but I'll give a speech and everyone thinks that I will actually act on it. In the meantime, I have men with machine guns guarding me 24/7 and I live in a private gated community.
You give yourself away when you call people who want to defend our nation's borders and sovereignty 'extremists'.
We cannot allow an amnesty or a guest worker program because of the sheer number on family members who will be allowed to come here.
You also assume that they are here merely to become part of our communities and assimilate. You're wrong. They don't want to assimilate. They are here to take over the southwest part of the country. Maybe some of them do not come with that intent, but their communist leaders sure plan to work them up to do that. Who do you think is behind the rallies they've held. Who do you think provided the signs that were the same in every city? Why do you think that they were carrying Mexican flags?
Stop the flood. Build the wall. Then start with the criminal element. Send them and their families back. Confiscate their property. They don't all need to rounded up at once, but they cannot be allowed to stay with impunity or in front of those who abide by the rules.
Actually, I only called the ones who want to try to round up every single illegal and deport them extremists.
Everyone who wants to try and do this rationally are not that extreme. While deporting all the illegals would certainly be ideal, it isn't practical, and only extremists think it would be possible without grossly increasing the size and power of our government in areas that have absolutely nothing to do with security against foreign threats.
I want our Federal government focused on securing us against foreign threats. Illegal aliens are a domestic nuisance but not a critical threat. We can take our time to deal with them, so long as we shut off the flow coming across the border.
Liberals would paint the terrorist threat as a domestic nuisance too, and lower the problems caused by illegal immigration to less than that. Right wing extremists elevate illegal immigration to a threat exceeding the terrorist threat, out of proportion to its actual impact on our security. Yes, illegals are a problem, but they're a smaller problem than terrorists. Terrorists can't be fought by allocating scarce resources to rounding up illegals willy nilly.
If you want to round up 10-20 million illegals in this country, be prepared for the largest expansion of federal government power ever, and be prepared for its intrusion into our lives to be far in excess than what it takes to locate and neutralize domestic terror threats, as it will require a broad, widespread law enforcement program to identify, locate, and catch illegals. On the flip side, this will cause an expansion in the criminal economy that steals and fakes identities and documentation, transports illegals, and this will result in a ready resource of people for socialist propagandists and Islamic recruiters. Both of whom will take advantage of the fact that our government will no doubt execute the rounding up of illegals in its usual inefficient and incompetent way, and the end result will be the creation of a huge hidden class of potential recruits into the jihad or into the socialist party's fold.
A rational approach with an eye on avoiding the pitfalls in the long term must be taken. We may not like it now, but foresight now is better than hindsight later.
Come on guys. He's just trying to get his girlfriend back.
Really? You think so? I disagree strongly with you, but I shouldn't be surprised after reading your tagline.
He was President during the worst attack on American soil, and brought us together, provided examplary leadership, and pulled us through.
He has taken a moral, unequivocal stand on terrorism and Islamofacism. He has attacked two major countries, freed the people and has had to preside over policies that absorbed that financial impact.
In doing so he ousted two tyrannical regimes, that of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and in the process of accomplishing that, had relatively few losses (comparatively speaking) to the military in historical relation to the types of military operations they were. We lost nearly three times as many men on Iwo Jima in 36 days as we have since we sent our men into Afghanistan and Iraq beginning back in 2001.
He has had to face multiple events that have had a huge economic impact...the financial impact of 9/11 alone is staggering, add on to that THREE major hurricanes doing major damage in one year, then add in Hurricane Katrina, along with all the other operations that we pay for. Do you think sending Aircraft carriers to places like we did for Tsunami relief is free? It is exorbitantly expensive.
The cost of rebuilding the countries has fallen under his watch, and he has had to figure out how to do it.
His administration has had to figure out ways to pay for all the offshoots of 9/11, from changes in General Avation and airport security to revamping our intelligence policies and agencies, not to mention the military.
Through all this, in spite of the fiscal irresponsibility of our elected officials including him, the US Economy has performed brilliantly, even though energy costs have gone through the roof, lately as a result of the demagoguery of people like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But jobs have and are being created...productivity is up and unemployment is under 5%, which is statsitically close to full employment.
And so on, and so on. And he has done this without the support of an EXTREMELY antagonistic minority party that has taken the stance that merely obstructing policy implementation is their preferred, official and ONLY modus operandi. When was the last time you heard them present a plan on anything as an alternative? That President Bush has got ANYTHING done militarily and economically is notable, because he has had to TWIST THEIR ARMS FOR EVERY SINGLE THING, using the pre-election vote on Iraq that pissed off the Democrats, because he MADE them do it, and they HAD to vote his way or risk the wrath of the American voters.
He has had two Supreme Court appointees who look very, very good at this point. Sure, Harriet Miers was a disasterous mistake. Yes, he has made a lot of mistakes. People who accomplish a lot also make a lot of mistakes. I disagree strongly with his stance on the immigration issue and am going to let him and my elected officials know it (although being from Massachusetts, that form of political masturbation won't do the cause any good)
So, down there in the ten worst presidents? No.
History is going to judge George W. Bush kindly. I think he will be one of our greatest presidents, depending on how the experiment in the Middle East works out. Even if it fails, history will see what he was trying to do and give him credit for it, even if people in this country and around the world will not.
And we, as conservatives who care about the future of this country, need to find ways to make him, and other elected officials see how we feel about this immigration issue, to ensure President Bush does not preside over an immigration debacle. We did it with Harriet Miers, we can do it with Illegal Immigration.
I would like to know when or where merely following the law of the land became an "extremist" position.
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