<p>What was the approval rate of Bush the Elder two years before his failed reelection? </p>
<p>What were the predictions of Zogby two weeks, one week, one DAY before the Bush-Kerry election? </p>
<p>The current polls are obviously important, but when it comes to a decision between two choices, the results can be quite different. As much as people might crow about the current polls, isn’t it sad that the “other side” would still not be picked as a … better choice to lead our country. </p>
<p>It is the realization that your party is even worse in articulating a vision for our country -any vision for that matter- that makes you so angry?</p>
No, you have it backwards, most of the dip comes from people who haven’t a clue about what is going on but see a constant barage of Bush bashing coming from their favorite news sources: Leno/Letterman/Comedy Central. </p>
<p>Granted, there is a segment of people who do follow the real news who are also growing disenchanted, but this should not be taken as some sort of “victory” of liberalism over conservatism - these are people who, like Zooser, don’t think Bush is conservative enough.</p>
<p>Another poll that I don’t see discussed is the poll regarding Congress which, taken as a whole, is less favorable than that of Bush and when asked about the Democrats in Congress it is even lower than that.</p>
<p>There will always be a segment of the American population who will support the administration in power no matter what.</p>
<p>Even during Watergate and the related crimes of that period, Nixon had an approval rating of 23%. It is only decades later that some of the apologists for the Nixon administration have come around to accepting his actions as being inexcusable.</p>
<p>The same holds true with the Vietnam war when through much of the period when young American men and women in the thousands were losing their lives, the prevailing opinion was that the war was justified and those who opposed the war were traitors and unpatriotic.</p>
<p>Perhaps it has to do with human nature which finds it difficult to acknowledge that one has made a mistake.</p>
No, Driver, I’m not avoiding “the central question” - you are. I don’t know what Roosevelt did or didn’t do 65 years ago - and I don’t care. Whatever may have happened in the past isn’t “the central question”, what’s happening now is. I recognize that you are trying to excuse or distract attention from what your boy in the White House is doing, and I decline to play your game. Past Presidents have done inexcusable things - you want to talk about Roosevelt - how about interning thousands of law abiding Japanese-Americans? Yes, it was bad. No, the fact that that was done in the 40’s would not excuse doing a similar thing now.</p>
<p>The “central question” isn’t something designed to draw attention away from what your President is doing now, it is what the American government today is doing, and what American citizens should do in response to that. Everything else is obfuscation.</p>
<p>I think people have a paternal instinct about government officials, particuarly the president. This is similar to people who cannot face up to abusive parents, and protect them or block the memories.</p>
<p>We expect paternal figures to protect us, to put our best interests forward. We don’t expect people who are supposed to be watching out for us to put us in harm’s way.</p>
<p>It is such a strong human instinct that indiviudals will go to great lengths to protect their protector, even when they have been wronged.</p>
<p>The Bush protectors cannot imagine that this admninsitration willingly sent our young men and women to war unnecessarily, or due to lies. They can’t. Those that have lost loved ones are often the most fiercely protective of Bush, because how could they live with themselves if they really believed that their children’s lives were lost for nothing?</p>
<p>Those same people can’t really accept that Bush has squandered away a lovely deficit, and left our children and grandchildren with the debt (and future presidents to clean up the messes).</p>
<p>It’s too easy to blame Kerry or Clinton LOL!</p>
<p>…and I don’t blame you for trying to change the subject, Driver. I wouldn’t want to be in the position of trying to defend Bush on the merits either.</p>
<p>Well then Kluge, using your legal-beagle mind, why not explain what the crime is? If you prefer to evade the obvious nearly-identical parallel to Roosevelt in 1940, OK, but why? Spell out the charge against Bush, then. What is wrong with working with phone companies to look for dangerous patterns in numbers? Do you think that there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” as to information that is freely given to a third party? Have you ever heard of *Smith v. Maryland<a href=“SCOTUS,%201978”>/i</a>? Moving up to Two-L material, I know.
<p>driver, you quoted the Smith v Maryland case of 1979. However, please note the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is the Act cited by Qwest as their reason for refusing the government’s request.
</p>
<p>Therefore the question is, does the information disclosed rise to the level of “proprietary information”. Qwest thought so. We don’t know whether the other carriers felt it did not; or if they agreed and were persuaded by the government’s threat (as shared by Qwest) to close them out of all future contracts.</p>
<p>I’m not so worried about whether or not the NSA has my phone records. I figure that they could have been obtained with a warrant anyway, so while they are not public records. they could become so at any time. I also am not too worried about someone listening to my international phone calls - I’ve had to exprerience that already in my dealings with a country when it was still Communist. (One of my international friends was approached by a acquaintance on the street - in that country - one day and asked for more details about another common friend that she talked about on an international telephone call. That acquaintance just happened to be the one assigned to listen in on my friend’s calls to and from the US)</p>
<p>We tend to argue over each thing as if that is the topic we need to pay attention to. But for me, the problem is so much bigger than that: It’s a President and administration who truly believes that he is above all laws and can avoid any Constitutional checks on his activities.</p>
<p>Investigation? Squash it in the bud by claiming “state secrets.” Congressional oversight? Bring out the Republican rubber stamp. Bothersome laws already on the books? Just ignore them and claim authority because of the “war on terrorism.” </p>
<p>This is the scary, dictatorial attitude that this President has.</p>
<p>I knew this guy was a bad apple from the vary beginning when one of the first things he did was to withdraw from the international court, the consequence of which is the claim that he could then never be charged with war crimes. “War crimes?” I thought. What’s this guy going to do in his administration? Now we know.</p>