<p>“principles” don’t get me going on principles and GWB…at least he is semi-consistent, he sticks to his guns even if he was wrong, is wrong, and going to be wrong, that is a quality to be in awe of, when it is not going right or getting better, it is better to stay the wrong course than admit it was the wrong course</p>
<p>FountainSiren, let’s talk in twenty years, when we’re all retired and you and your generation get to try to pay for the nation’s needs and deal with social security and the accumulated impact of lax environmental policies all at the same time, while having one and a half hands tied behind your back by the obligation to pay the interest on the national debt run up by the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations for no reason other than to inflate the economy to make themselves look good. Interest on the debt is over $400B this year - with no debt, we could have a balanced budget, or even a surplus to invest against the shortfalls due to arrive in a few years due to the demographic changes in the nation. But with the accumulated Republican debt, we’re in a hole and sinking deeper every year.</p>
<p>Guess how deep we’ll be in 2026? In twenty years all the side shows and “wedge issues” will be correctly swept aside as the trivia they are. What’s going to be left is the colossal greed and shortsidedness of the Republican Party over the past 25 years, and the permanent damage they have done – which your generation is going to have to clean up. We’re still a little short of time for “history” to have made its final assessment of the last 25 years.</p>
<p>“it is better to stay the wrong course than admit it was the wrong course”</p>
<p>Oh, don’t believe that claptrap. They’re positioning to “cut-n-run”. Got James Baker on board. They’ll get the generals to mouth platitudes about the “readiness” of the Iraqi military. They’ve already allocated $20 mil for the vict’ry party (hope I’m invited). Speaker Pelosi will be invited, too.</p>
<p>The lame quail Prez won’t want the Iraq necklace strung around the Party of Appeasement and Family Values neck come 2008. The new lies will be unveiled soon, we’ll be treated to a Snowjob, and everything will be hunky-dory (except for the 600,000 dead.)</p>
<p>At the rate we’re going, many of us 50ish types will still be needing to work in 20 years, right along side the FS types, who will then be middle aged (alright, <em>getting</em> to middle age). This collective mess, created by the Republicans over the past 25 years, will belong to all of us, our children and grandchildren, for the next two or three generations.</p>
<p>Parent2noles,</p>
<p>This is such a minor point - from several pages back - but there is a difference between Southern Democrats and Texas Democrats. In addition, Laura Welch was raised in Midland, a town that voted Republican even in the days when Texas was largely a Democratic state. So it is unusual that she was raised in Midland by a Democratic family. I agree, however, that it might not be relevant. It was a long time ago.</p>
<p>It seems many people who comment at CC lean liberal or Democratic. CC is also a website where the commenters are more interested in elite/Ivy or California colleges. Coincidence? Probably not, but it took me a long time to figure it out. I initially believed that the common bond for people who comment here (even at the Cafe) is an interest in education, especially higher education, but I realize now that my assumption was probably incorrect.</p>
<p>AM and kluge, you are worried about the future and Social Security but then ignore the fact that it is primarily the dems who don’t have the conviction to touch “the third rail” and prefer to just say either “it’s not a problem” or “if you want to fix it, it’s my way or the highway - I won’t even talk to you if you bring up any form of optional privatization”. So, when SS goes bust and all those who depend on it are eating cat food, we will be able to thank Harry Reid and his not-so-merry band.</p>
<p>DRJ4 I agree. I am coming to the conclusion that most, maybe, are blue-state folks. Some of us are not. </p>
<p>The left-leaning political vitriol on the CC amazes me sometimes. That stuff will never persuade people.</p>
<p>I didn’t know about old-time Texas Democrats…thanks. I am a bit more familiar with Florida Dixiecrats.</p>
<p>No, P2N, we have just woken up and are willing to enter into the same spirit of “bi-partisanship” espoused by this administration, looking forward to the day when Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and all who sail with them are treated like characters in “Grand Theft Auto.” </p>
<p>Bush/Cheney/etc. decided to make a partisan game out of Iraq. Fine. Don’t start a game you don’t want others to finish.</p>
<p>One thing I like about Bush is that he is intelligent; in fact, smarter than John Kerry.</p>
<p><Mr. Bush’s score on the Air Force Qualifying Test at age 22 again suggests that his I.Q. was the mid 120’s, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry’s I.Q. was about 120, inthe 91st percentile according to mr. Salier’s extrapolation of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test.</p>
<p>Linda Gottredson, an I.Q. expert at the University of Delaware, called it a creditable analysis and said she was not surprised at the results or that so many people had assumed Kerry was smarter. “People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can’t understand,” Professor Gottredson said.> ;)</p>
<p>“Secret Weapon for Bush”
NY Times Oct. 24, 2004</p>
<p>Fundingfather, the working stiffs who have paid enough into social security to paper over a big chunk of the “on-budget” deficit deserve payback. If the Republicans hadn’t successfully driven the budget into a hole the temporary demographic problem posed by the boomers could have been bridged by simply reversing the flow of surplus from “off-budget to on-budget” to “on-budget to off-budget” for a while. But the hidden truth - that social security tax, flat rate, no deductions and all, is an integral part of the income tax budget calculation - just can’t be admitted. All the Republican “solutions” ignore the obvious: it’s time for non-earned income recipients to pay back for the subsidy they have gotten from every wage earner in America for decades. </p>
<p>The only Republican “solutions” I’ve seen so far have been ways to jigger the system so as to milk that same gravy train some more, and add in a higher risk for those with little or nothing other than social security to fall back on in retirement. How about this for a solution instead: balance the damn budget, pay off the deficit, then add a tax surcharge on unearned income sufficent to subsidize social security for the same number of years that wage earners have been subsidizing the budget through social security surpluses?</p>
<p>HH, with all due respect, if GWB’s IQ is in the 120’s, I’m the Queen of Sheba.</p>
<p>His grades were on par with Kerry’s too.
Interesting that Kerry, however, is so esteemed by the blue staters as an “intellectual” and Bush is derided by our elites as a dummy.
Look it up, AM; it’s true. (Sorry!)
No better source than the NY Times, right?
Of course, you can just dismiss it out-of-hand, if you so choose, I suppose. :)</p>
<p>I think the political vitriol flows both ways on CC, I don’t see it as exclusively left-leaning. If it seems that there are many here who are unhappy with the current administration, I don’t think that should be surprising. GWB’s approval rating has been below 40% for a while now, so the comments here are a reflection of how people across the country are feeling. On a related note, we got our absentee ballots today! It’s funny, after all these years of voting, it’s still exciting for me.</p>
<p>drj, what do you think the common bond is here, if not education? Perhaps there isn’t a common bond? I admit, I’ve never really thought too much about it.</p>
<p>Bush vs. Kerry intelligence:</p>
<p>Yes, at age 22 it appears that Bush and Kerry tested equally smart. What happened?</p>
<p>Two things in my mind: First, is it possible that his decades of alcoholism have impaired his thinking? </p>
<p>Second, and this may be most important–there’s been a lot written these days about “emotional intelligence.” How “smart” people do dumb things because they let their emotions rule them. Bob Woodward–who wrote very kind books toward this administration previously–declares in his most recent book that Bush’s downfall, the wreck of Iraq from which one wonders if this country will ever recover–is due to his “certitude.” He is emotionally driven to play out something through his Iraq invasion. Time and again he refused to hear the facts as the war was planned, as high-level military begged for more troops to secure the city, etc., etc. Bush’s “emotional intelligence” is low.</p>
<p>anyone whoe bragas about not reading much is dumb in my book</p>
<p>just wondering citygirlsmom where you got that woefully inaccurate piece of information. I think it had to do with a quote taken out of context where Bush said that he doesn’t read the newspaper commentary about himself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again, the stereotypical kind of misinformation that comes out of the mouths of libs all the time about how “dumb” Bush is. And many want to believe it, so they don’t bother to see if it’s true. Just curious… have you read 60 books this year as of August?</p>
<p>^^ Eureka! That’s Bush’s problem - he’s a really, really smart guy stuck in a dumb guy’s body.</p>
<p>One of my favorite web sites, when I need a grin:
<a href=“http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm[/url]”>http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.htm</a></p>
<p>FS: I think you picked the wrong year when you asked about 1987. Yes, in 1987 everyone, including me, was in official dudgeon about Iran-Contra, and Reagan’s lame-duck period had set in. Reagan was looking removed and out-of-touch personally, and his A team was beginning to leech away, and the Iran-Contra stuff WAS both embarassing and constitutionally inappropriate. So, sure, his this-minute poll numbers refected that. But in 1987, the economy was revving up, most of his agenda had been enacted, and it was becoming apparent that there had been a real, fundamental change in the USSR. I was pretty sure that his Presidency had been successful on the whole. If you had asked me what I thought about Reagan in 1983 or 1984, I would have had to answer that it was a toss-up between the Devil Incarnate and a doddering actor with a great producer and some evil writers.</p>
<p>Jimmy Carter: Sorry, the 18% inflation wasn’t Carter’s fault, or Ford’s. That was pure Nixon and Johnson legacy. You can blame Carter for failing to fix it, but that’s one of the things on which Reagan (and team) were iconoclastic but right. Carter didn’t cause that problem. </p>
<p>Then, you’re upset about the foreign policy that allowed the Shah to fall? How were we supposed to prevent the Shah from falling? That was one major popular uprising, one of the few that was universal across the political spectrums (it was only in the aftermath that Khomeini emerged with total control). Better to blame Carter, and Ford, and Nixon, and Johnson for a foreign policy that tied us inexorably to someone who was basically a corrupt, unpopular dictator. We continue to be tied inexorably to corrupt, unpopular dictators throughout the Middle East, and we have plenty of problems stemming from it, problems that could easily get worse.</p>
<p>Then there’s the awful humiliation of the embassy takeover. Yes, that humiliation was awful. Boo-hoo-hoo. And all Carter did was send a few helicopters that crashed in the desert. Not a proud moment. Clearly, what he should have done was either (a) spend $400 billion, kill millions of people, and waste trillions of capital invading Iran, or (b) bribe the mullahs with some high-tech weapons through a back channel, and ask their help in setting up an unaccountable black ops fund. In my mind, Carter did no real harm in the choices he made. I am very happy he didn’t take the George W. Bush approach. (I suppose I admire the ingenuity and effectiveness of Reagan’s method. But, frankly, it was easy for him. The Iranian government wanted the situation resolved, and it could save face by waiting a few months to deal with a new President.)</p>
<p>I don’t think IQ is a good measure of a President. In all seriousness, Jimmy Carter probably had the highest IQ of any President since the founding generation, and Hoover may well have been #2. (All of you engineering partisans out there should probably agree.) That didn’t make either of them a great President. (I know a couple of ultra-high-level Bushies personally, and I know from experience they are very, very smart. Maybe as smart as Robert McNamara. Sadly, very, very smart people are capable of being very, very wrong sometimes.)</p>
<p>Just because someone publishes a list of books doesn’t mean that Bush has read them. Or undestood their import if he did.</p>
<p>But given how light Bush’s work day is, I can certainly believe that he has at least time to read books.</p>