Viewing Thread:
"The Forum 100 Decide: Bush Vs Kerry"

It's a simple choice this time, who do you want as the next president of the U.S.A. ?
For those not familiar with the format, you make your choice and it's put beside your name, the votes will be counted up at a later date, 5 spaces have been left for those that want to vote but aren't on the list.
Bush or Kerry ?

32 votes
Bush - 8
Kerry - 24

Bush

Ashley - Bush
Chad Niga - Bush
Mattribute - Bush
Notorious Biggles - Bush
Archangel - Bush
Kr - Bush
Johnson - Bush
Belldandy - Bush

Kerry

Cong woman - Kerry
Dakarus Joe - Kerry
Flock - Kerry
Forest Fan - Kerry
Grix Thraves - Kerry
Light - Kerry
Lipe - Kerry
Mumbai Duck - Kerry
Rickoss - Kerry
RoJ - Kerry
Sheepy - Kerry
Silent Thunder - Kerry
Strafio - Kerry
Trish - Kerry
Very Metal - Kerry
Whitestripes DX - Kerry
Ultima Weapon - Kerry
Astoria - Kerry
Innuendo - Kerry
Yuri Fan Kerry
The Ghost - Kerry
Gamesfreak - Kerry
LSD - Kerry
Grebo - Kerry

Strafio wrote:
> And Bell's important too.
> Within the hundred "yes men" (sort of including me) patting
> you on the back, Bell then does the irreplacable task of tearing at
> every detail and forcing you both to defend every last word you've
> written.


Heh, true. The forums would suck if it weren't for Bell (and a couple of others) arguing the other side. Or at least the political bits would suck..

(This seems to be heading into some of Bell's argument about people not knowing enough about Kerry too..)



Ashley wrote:
> I'd say the majority of brits (90%+) would have failed to have
> recognise kerry 6 months to a year ago. Similar numbers would
> probably fail to tell us now his representative state, and i bet most
> couldn't tell us any of his proposed issues, with the exception of
> "i'm not bush".

Hmm. I can't say I've observed the same uninformed blind support for Kerry.

But to be honest, people know George Bush well enough to dislike him, they know Kerry is more moderate in his principles, and doesn't come off as incompetent (whether or not you agree that Bush is incompetent isn't really the point. People have good enough justification to form that opinion, if they choose).

Isn't that enough of a reason to favour him in a 2 horse race?



I know Bell's 'but does anyone else know about his policies' could go on indefinitely, so I'm not so interested in rising to the personal challenge.
But I would like to offer an explanation of what everyone else is likely to know:

Bush is Republican, Kerry Democrat. That one's pretty obvious. This strongly indicates that Kerry will be more left / socialist than Bush. Sure enough, this is confirmed when people hear about Kerry's policies (international relations, state welfare and health care, taxation).
People know that Bush is a fundamentalist christian (not to mention his 'good and evil' oversimplifications), and that Kerry isn't. This seems like a big advantage in a world where the biggest damage of note is being done by fundamentalists.

I think most people know more than you give them credit for.




On the point of recognising Kerry 6 months + ago..
That takes us back to before the race for the Democratic nomination was making British headlines, right?
If so, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have known who he was.

But then, why should I (or anyone else)? Back then he was just another American politician. Do people recognise all the current minor figures in America's (or another country's) government? Of course not, they're too numerous and insignificant to us.

But when he bacame important, people began to take notice and pick up a bit about him.


That's the way it works. Expecting Britain to have been following him when he was a less significant figure is akin to slating a fan of some band because they hadn't heard of them before they got a record deal.

Yeah, you and Goatboy.

Biggest mouths on the board! :-)



It's a nice arrangement though.
You two (and one or two others) do all the research and compress it down into nicely readable rant mixed with need to know fact and entertaining opinions.

And Bell's important too.
Within the hundred "yes men" (sort of including me) patting you on the back, Bell then does the irreplacable task of tearing at every detail and forcing you both to defend every last word you've written.

Now you could've written all these proofs and defenses in the original rant, but that would've killed it and made it boring.
Instead, those potentially boring straight facts are delivered as a series of Bell pounding punches, which sweeten the dullness of such petty details by using them to tear the guy apart.

Education seamless mixed in with entertainment.

The way it should be. :-)


And Bell continues to play sport, finding new ways to test Light and Goaties "web preaching" and end up making them more solid than before.


Hats of to Bell people. :-)

Strafio wrote:

> My 3 main sources are Mikey Moore, Light and the New Scientist, the
> New Scientist being the least biased

Heh. Are you saying I'm biased!?!

Actually, I'm hugely flattered to be included on that list of sources with 2 other such salubrious sources. Cheers man; you've sent my ego into the stratosphere!

Stranger In Paradise wrote:
> Again, I'd ask that, as so many want Kerry to win, WHY do you want
> Kerry to win and can the reasons please be more intelligible than
> "he's not Bush" or "Michael Moore told me so"
> etc.

And again, I'll admit that I don't really know everything (or really anything) about it. Because it's an election I've no part of then it's not quite compulsory learning.

Yeah, the only reason I have for choosing Kerry is that it'll keep dangerous Georgie away from the power he's been abusing so long.
And yeah, I don't even know the whole story about Bushio.
My 3 main sources are Mikey Moore, Light and the New Scientist, the New Scientist being the least biased (and they focus purely on the job being done of the US government, keep anything and everything personal out of it) but I don't pretend I know it all.

This is just a poll for who would YOU choose.

Few people are pretending to be experts.

And sure, there is a bandwagon but there's no smoke without fire.
Especially not in this case.

Stranger In Paradise wrote:
> So, 1 point to Light for actually managing to name one thing Kerry
> will actually do, kind of. Quite how Kerry would include a place like
> Iran - currently trying to stop UN inspectors getting into a what the
> Iranians say is a nuclear power plant project (strangely miles from
> anywhere and with no physical way of moving the power) and the rest
> of the world suspects is basically the first step in making a nuclear
> weapon.

Well, the EU (both as a whole, and as individual nations, UK included) have fostered extremely good links with Iran over the last decade. They are using those trade links to put pressure on Iran. And they're doing it successfully. Maybe Kerry would take a leaf out of their book to achieve that rather than threatening any nation made up of 90%+ brown people with war?

And, as I say, Dubya has left us with the lesson that countries with nukes get left alone (North Korea). Being as how Dubya and the US have interfered with Iranian politics since the 50's, can you blame them for wanting to have nukes if it means that the he can't send in the troops in order to safeguard their oil for the western world?

But hey, nice one for trying to pick what you imagine to be the most extreme example possible for international co-operation and stating "this won't work, ergo he will be a failure". What, would you prefer to see them invaded and converted to Christianity by force (as the current head of the US forces in Iraq has stated should have been done to the Iraqi people)?

>
> You simply cannot "include" such nations easily without
> effort on their part, and right now Iran's rulers are rather worried
> about the fact they've got a democracy springing up along their
> border.

I think you'll find that the conservative clergy are far more concerned about the democracy that President Kharzai has been trying to impliment from within for the last 5 years. Oh, and the fact that Iraq is now an utterly chaotic nation with very little in the way of rule of law and so the resultant lawlessness threatens to destablise their borders.

No, you can't simply "include" nations. Nor can you simply order them about as Dubya has tried to do. Kerry promises to be rather more diplomatic. Tell me, are you trying to say that if he fails to get every nation on the globe round to his way of thinking, he'll be a failure? Cos if you are, doesn't that make Dubya one of the biggest failures in world history?
>
> So, anyone else actually know a thing about Kerry?

So what's this? Someone answers your queries and blasts your dogmatic half truths and bald faced lies into atoms, and now you move the goalposts and say "ah, but does anyone else know anything about Kerry!"? Why should that matter? And why haven't you got anything to say about Dubya's anti-science and pro-evangelical approach to legislation?

Face it Bell; your initial argument of "Kerry will do nothing differently to Dubya" had been answered and dismissed. Your point about people only wanting Kerry in because Dubya has been demonised has also been answered.

So; got any reasons for us to vote for Dubya that;

- Aren't "Kerry will be no different therefore just keep Dubya"
- Haven't already been addressed in this thread?

So, 1 point to Light for actually managing to name one thing Kerry will actually do, kind of. Quite how Kerry would include a place like Iran - currently trying to stop UN inspectors getting into a what the Iranians say is a nuclear power plant project (strangely miles from anywhere and with no physical way of moving the power) and the rest of the world suspects is basically the first step in making a nuclear weapon.

You simply cannot "include" such nations easily without effort on their part, and right now Iran's rulers are rather worried about the fact they've got a democracy springing up along their border.

So, anyone else actually know a thing about Kerry?

A couple of things:

To answer the whining "But...but Kerry won't do anything different to Dubya" approach, I have two words; International. Co-operation.

Kerry has stated that he will be a damn side more inclusive than the semi-isolationist approach of Dubya. If you remember the outpouring of global sympathy after 9/11 (even Tehran held a candlelit vigil for the victims for Gods sake...), Dubya has p!ssed it all away. Now the world hates the US even more than they did prior to that date. Which is quite an achievement really.

Also, we have the fact that Dubya is in hoc to the Christian Right. Here we have a man who has done more to erode the separation of Church and State than any other President. Numerous states teach an evangelically influence curriculum now, and having a blinkered and unthinking God botherer in the White House and upper echelons of government (particularly John Ashcroft) gives those people more encouragement. Dubya is anti-science in that regard (look at the mish-mash stem cell legislation), and Kerry will be FAR more pro-science and pro-research.

So, off the top of my head, there are 2 reasons Kerry is better than Dubya.

Bell, your arguments rely on ignorance of what Dubya stands for, and nothing more. As to your Michael Moore comments...well, once again you show how blinkered you are by commenting on something you only know about via the anti-Moore media that you parrot. Your borrowed condescention of his media-manipulation would certainly give you the moral high ground were it not for the fact that you cheerfully ignore the same tricks by your own political affiliation. What was it you said about having to be even-handed when arguing?

Oh, and:

>Bush, it's easy - on the foreign policy side he's had the balls to do >what should have been done six or seven years ago

Yup; he's guaranteed big money for Haliburton, and has made sure the US has sole control of Iraq's oil. What's that? He got rid of Saddam? Hmm...a pity how his government have gone on record stating that ridding Iraq of Saddam was not in itself a good enough reason to go to war, and all the other reasons he's put forward are now discredited.

>, he's fostered a great >new relationship with the UK and others

Which others would they be then?

>, overseen the largest foreign aid donations in recent history

Most of which, coincidentally, were prior to the UN votes on Iraq. Bribery is a good thing now?

>, given billions to Africa to fight AIDS

This one I can't and won't argue with; on the other hand, it would be nice if he also put through legislation stopping those US companies from obstructing poor countries from using cheaper retroviral drugs. Oh, and if he hadn't limited the money only to programs that preach abstinance (which is UTTERLY unrealistic in Africa, not to say the world), that would have been nice too.


, >brought many Eastern European countries into the international community

Huh? What in Gods name are you talking about? I assume you're trying to claim the Polish et al support of the land grab as Dubya's big achievement. Well, I suppose bribing countries into supporting you is quite an achievement. However, as the EU have been in negotiation for EU entry with all of these countries and more for a few years, I hardly think Dubya can claim credit, do you?

, >stood down North Korea,

Bwahahahahahahahaaaa! They threaten to nuke the US if they impose sanctions. No sanctions are imposed and food aid is given to them by the US. Yeah, he REALLY faced them down...

> focused on WMD proliferation

How did he do that exactly? I believe Pakistan and India still have their nukes. Saddam didn't have any in the first place. The lesson of his presidency seems to be "If you have nukes like North Korea, we won't invade. If you don't, like Iraq, you're screwed". Seems to me he's encouraged proliferation.

>, comitted the US to greater involvement in UN operations

Yeah, cos once he realised he'd committed FAR too few forces to keep peace in Iraq, he needed someone to pick up the pieces.

>, and much more, on the domestic side

True enough; he's caused a massive trade deficit, given tax breaks to the richest 2%, kept his people in fear with vague terror alerts based on 4 year old intel...


>he's a president with some kind of morals at last

Yup. The morals being "I want me and my family and friends to make epic amounts of money".

>, he says what he thinks

Which, when one looks at his multitude of gaffes, is not something to boast about.

>other words he is human, he's helped the economy through a very tought >time, numerous policy reforms etc

Helped it how? By screwing it utterly, giving the richest 2% more money and making the majority of people poorer? His policy reforms? What, the ones giving cash to Christian right charities?

Strafio wrote:
> Most notably how if you're going to be ass-raped, then the least they
> can do is use some vaseline...
>
>
> :-D

Again, I'd ask that, as so many want Kerry to win, WHY do you want Kerry to win and can the reasons please be more intelligible than "he's not Bush" or "Michael Moore told me so" etc.

I mean there's about 18 people so far for Kerry, I'm genuinely interested in why Kerry is so good.

Bush, it's easy - on the foreign policy side he's had the balls to do what should have been done six or seven years ago, he's fostered a great new relationship with the UK and others, overseen the largest foreign aid donations in recent history, given billions to Africa to fight AIDS, brought many Eastern European countries into the international community, stood down North Korea, focused on WMD proliferation, comitted the US to greater involvement in UN operations, and much more, on the domestic side he's a president with some kind of morals at last, he says what he thinks there and then instead of what's on a teleprompter or his script - in other words he is human, he's helped the economy through a very tought time, numerous policy reforms etc

I've been on the Anti-bush(George W Bush) wagon before the wagon was built, i said before he was elected he was a di**head and would only cause trouble, i had this arguement with my dad and i'm going to have to remind him sometime.