Could you please post a source or somehow support a factcheck on those above-mentioned claims?
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
Could you please post a source or somehow support a factcheck on those above-mentioned claims?
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
Seconding Southack's request for a response to his questions posed in #94.
You wrote "When we think of Bush's character, we're likely to focus on the administration's proposed budget cuts for veterans, the children indefinitely detained at Abu Ghraib, maybe the story of how the young lad Bush loaded up live frogs with firecrackers in order to watch them explode."
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1) Budget cuts for veterans. Everyone who follows politics knows that there is huge argument over what constitutes a "budget cut"; both parties play the game of calling shortchanging increases cuts. Dismiss my use of it if you wish. But my favorite invocation of the SPIRIT of the Bush veterans budget comes from no less than the Veterans of Foreign Wars:
VFW TERMS PRESIDENT'S VA BUDGET PROPOSAL HARMFUL TO VETS
VFW Appeals to Congress for Relief
Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2004--"The President ignored veterans in the State
of the Union Address and with today's release of his 2005 budget, it is
further evident that veterans are no longer a priority with this
administration," said the leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the
U.S., expressing dismay at the disgraceful 1.8% increase in veterans'
medical care funding. "We look to Congress to reject the President's
inadequate proposal and to provide a budget that fully acknowledges the debt
our nation owes its veterans."
VFW Commander-in-Chief Edward S. Banas, Sr., of Voluntown, Conn., said that
with only a $500 million increase in medical funding, the administration's
budget falls $2.6 billion short of what the Independent Budget recommends is
needed to fully meet the demands for quality veterans' health care. "This
funding package is a disgrace and a sham," Banas said.
"This deplorable budget will do nothing to alleviate the many thousands of
veterans who are waiting six months or more for basic health care
appointments with VA. Instead, the budget seeks to drive veterans from the
system by realigning funding, charging enrollment fees for access and more
than doubling the prescription drug copayment. This is inexcusable,
especially when no member of this administration or Congress would wait this
long for their health care.
"What the administration is proposing for veterans is a shell game.
Veterans are being asked to pay for their own health care to make up for
shortages in the budget. We are adamantly opposed to charging veterans an
enrollment fee and we are opposed to increasing payments that veterans make
for prescriptions and for other health care services, especially when
millions of this nation's veterans are already locked out of the system,"
Banas said. "To ask this nation's veterans to subsidize their health care
is outrageous. They have already paid for their health care with their
sweat and with their blood.
"This budget indefensibly will not meet the increasing health care needs of
our veterans, nor will it lessen the many months they wait for disability
benefits.
"As our veteran population ages and service men and women return from
Afghanistan and Iraq, we must have a system that meets the health care needs
of all veterans. It is clear that, just as we fought on the battlefields,
we must now bring the fight to the halls of Congress to rectify this
disgraceful budget. Having traveled throughout the nation, I know that the
American people will not tolerate this shoddy treatment of America's
veterans, especially at a time of war," Banas said.
You wrote "When we think of Bush's character, we're likely to focus on the administration's proposed budget cuts for veterans, the children indefinitely detained at Abu Ghraib, maybe the story of how the young lad Bush loaded up live frogs with firecrackers in order to watch them explode."
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2) Everyone at Abu Ghbraib is "indefinetly detained"--or at least was until the recent Supreme Court decisions. Are you denying there are children at Abu Ghraib? That's an uphill argument for you. Do you want to make it?
You wrote "When we think of Bush's character, we're likely to focus on the administration's proposed budget cuts for veterans, the children indefinitely detained at Abu Ghraib, maybe the story of how the young lad Bush loaded up live frogs with firecrackers in order to watch them explode."
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3) frog: that was W's childhood pal Terry Throckmorton to Nick Kristoff in the May 21, 2000 New York Times.
Where I grew up, that was called "being a boy". Goes hand-in-hand with skinning knees, playing in mud, climbing trees and the like.
At some point a boy grows out of it. I did. An incident, an experience, an epiphany. And lo, I was on my way to becoming a man. Some don't - they may take these actions on to other animals, pets, and people. Which ain't a Good Thing (TM). There's a whole generation going to grow up without these life experiences to shape them. They will instead have outcome-based education, and games sanctioned by personal-injury lawyers. I don't know what the outcome will be.
It's nonsensical to project current mores onto bygone eras, and it's a great height of conceit (and a chief liberal failing) to believe that we are living in the greatest, most-enlightened age and should apply our Superior Wisdom (TM) to all that has gone and all that's to come. It simply doesn't work. The one constant through all ages is human nature.
As long as we're painting with broad brushstrokes, I will give me own opinion regarding the three greatest defining traits of the modern liberal.
1. Hypocrisy - The end justifies the means if the means is noble enough. This is moral relativism, and I do not subscribe to it. I believe in absolute truths, and while I recognize shades of gray, it is the rarest of them that is not shaded more white or more black. Every anti-racism initiative of the left is by definition an hypocrisy, because it assumes that every individual is first and foremost not an individual, but a subset of a larger recognizable race-based (or whatever) identity group. This is the polar-opposite of being color-blind. I'd bet you if MLK could speak to the situation, he'd find more conservatives following his ideals than liberals.
2. Narcissism - There is more than we will ever know than we can even conceive of. I do not pretend to have all the answers, let alone try to inflict them on others through social engineering programs and the like. Again, it's the height of conceit for me to believe that I know what's better for anyone else than they themselves do. Many liberals are convinced that conservates are consumed with how much we hate liberals, and it's simply not the case. It's narcissistic to think I obsess on these philosophical differences. I don't care a whit what they do, right up until they start reaching into my wallet and telling me what I can't do. Which is entirely too often these days.
3. Socialism - Goes without saying, huh? I don't know, maybe those who need to identify with a greater group don't have a strong enough sense of self to say "I do what I need, and apart from that, I do what I want." I define myself less a conservative, than an anti-socialist. Subverting the individual to the group is tyranny. Confiscation of merited properties for group-based redistribution is tyranny. Political correctness is tyranny. Conservatives and liberals both have fallen into this trap. My rights were granted by God, and I don't remember the one about the right to Prescription Drugs. We're cascading into a society that confuses rights with entitlements, freedom with irresponsibility. I have no potential answer for that.
Somewhere along the way, the germination of some lofty and noble ideas was co-opted and corrupted and became the modern liberal left that we see today. It's a difficult task to argue to them that any moral high ground they claim was built with straw on a house of cards on a floodplain, because the ones I know are filled the conviction of the True Believer (a trait of the so-called 'Religious Right' as well). That, and a really visceral hatred of George W. Bush.
My own concept of conservatism is summed by the motto "Mind Your Business". Take personal responsibility for your actions and the outcomes of your actions - it's not McDonald's fault you dropped your coffee, and I think even near-sighted illiterate Bantu tribesman are aware that cigarette smoking poses certain health risks. Ultimately, not enough people have the wherewithall to say "This Bad Thing that happened to me is nobody's problem but mine," and deal with it.
There's a greater machination behind all of these societal symptoms (unseen hand, anyone?) we're pointing out that won't be clear until long after we've fossilized on the bedrock of time. But sure it's fun to speculate on where the Big Ship is headed. Some of even try to steer it a little. Me, I have a little cabin on a nondescript midships deck, and I'm going to look after it. That's my contribution. A conservative contribution, if you will.