Advantage Bush

The Weekly Standard ^ | February 2, 2004 | Fred Barnes

[Gunslingr3]

Folks born after ~1971

Just as I thought.

Are you ignorant of the fact that Social Security is a pyramid scheme built by FDR as a revenue grab during the Great Depression and that it has only been preserved as a net revenue gain to government thus far by continually pushing back the date at which disbursement can begin and time and again raising the taxation rate to fund it? Are you further ignorant of the fact this pyramid scheme is just a few years away from running into a demographic time bomb?

George Will summed up the problem nicely: "When you turned the page on the calendar Wednesday night, the first page of 2004 should have had printed -- in large letters, in red ink -- this insomnia-producing warning: "DEMOGRAPHY IS DESTINY AND IT IS NOW JUST FOUR YEARS BEFORE THE DEMOGRAPHIC DELUGE -- THE BEGINNING OF THE RETIREMENT OF 77 MILLION BABY BOOMERS.""

"The baby boom generation is twice as large as the generation it follows and 50 percent larger than the one that is following it."

Maybe math isn't your strongsuit, but methinks you haven't given it any thought whatsoever...

[alnick]

Gee, you got all that out of a four-word post?

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Great goals. And you can't be impeached for striving for them.

Ah but you can be impeached for anything. That attempt at impeachment of Jackson and Johnson are a case in point. TexasForever wanted three things, but of course I'd propose a heck of lot more, as I'm sure many conservatives would. Repeal of the 16th and income tax codes. I'd certainly attempt to abolish or completely neuter many Federal departments and programs.

And I'd never get reelected and some other person will come in and just go back to the same old spending because, face it, that is what the voters want.

I agree and have no illusions that I'd be successful. The Presidency is after all still a very weak position. My veto would be overridden, bills dead on arrival, and there'd be marches every weekend in Washington by some group addicted to a federal teat. Can you imagine our press. We'd be reviled and vilified day in and day out by the 4th estate.

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" or "Legally Blonde 2" notwithstanding.

It's a nice fantasy though. :-)

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

And just think of the Legacy you will leave behind?

Perhaps only just a wonderful collection of speeches and ideas that would have made Washington and Jefferson proud, but would be completely alien and irrelevant to most Americans today.

Now if my appointment of Miss Coulter to the Supreme Court happened to succeed then we might be talking legacy. ;-)

[Gunslingr3]

Under GWB's leadership, we've diminished Al Qaeda by 70%.

'According to experts', right? What did you think of Rumsfeld's memo where he talked about the lack of even a metric to even know how effective the war on terrorism is, to know whether their actions were creating more terrorists, or destroying them? One lackey peddles out a number pulled from his ass and you're going to tout that as evidence the WoT's progress?

Here's a newsflash: They're fighting us because we're there. It wasn't a coincidence that OBL declared war on the U.S. after 1991 when we left military bases in Saudi. They see this as merely another step in hundreds of years of war to expel 'Western Crusaders'. They'll keep fighting us as long as we're there.

[alnick]

Well of course you would mischaracterize Rummy's memo.

Look, we don't need your kind of defeatism. That's the kind of thing that loses wars.

Grow up.

[Gunslingr3]

Well of course you would mischaracterize Rummy's memo.

Alright, you tell me how you characterize this:

"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

"Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."

[alnick]

The point about Rummy's memo is that he was playing devil's advocate, which is what he should do. I believe that to try to use the memo as evidence that we're not making the progress against Al Qaeda that is being reported by the administration is wrong.

Now that I've said that, I owe you an apology for the insults that I threw at you yesterday. I do continue to disagree with you, but the insults were unnecessary.
:-)

[Gunslingr3]

The point about Rummy's memo is that he was playing devil's advocate, which is what he should do. I believe that to try to use the memo as evidence that we're not making the progress against Al Qaeda that is being reported by the administration is wrong.

Clarification, I didn't say or suggest we're not making progress, just that, as Rumsfeld noted, we don't really have a way to measure it. Some state department guy touting '70% of AQ' destroyed seems pretty ludicrous when we don't have a nosecount to begin with.

Now that I've said that, I owe you an apology for the insults that I threw at you yesterday. I do continue to disagree with you, but the insults were unnecessary.

Apology accepted. I can fling bombs with the best of them, but prefer to discuss things instead.