Exactly. I fear- -Another Laker championship -Kerry getting elected (a catatrosophe in the making) -running away from our war against terrorism (the Kerry approach)
Out of curiousity, how do you feel that immigration is hurting us to the point of leading to our demise? I don't understand that. Also, I don't see how you can fear the "Mexi-merica" that your kids will grow up in. They grow up in what is essentially a white America today because the overwhelming majority of the American population is white. As the Hispanic numbers grow (and they are definitely doing so), it would be only fitting for a "Mexi-merica" that represents a more complete picture of our nation. Having more hispanics leads to more hispanic influence. It's pretty much inescapable, and I would much rather have this country slowly assimilated into the Hispanic culture than be forcefully taken over by some other nation (if I were choosing how the USA as we know it should end).
My greatest fear: Bush steals another election. Actually, an even bigger fear is that the majority of Americans rise to a higher level of stupidity (if that is possible), and elect Bush for real this time. Bush remaining in power would signal the beginning of the end of America, and that would be a devastating and terribly sad tragedy for this once-great country.
The erosion of political debate into such rabid hyperbole that it becomes a waste of time to even engage in it: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085972009652 Eye on the Media: Just like Stalingrad By BRET STEPHENS According to Sidney Blumenthal, a one-time adviser to president Bill Clinton who now writes a column for Britain's Guardian newspaper, President George W. Bush today runs "what is in effect a gulag," stretching "from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world." Blumenthal says "there has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union." Advertisement In another column, Blumenthal compares the April death toll for American soldiers in Iraq to the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Bush's "splendid little war," he writes, "has entered a Stalingrad-like phase of urban siege and house-to-house combat." The factual bases for these claims are, first, that the US holds some 10,000 "enemy combatants" prisoner; and second, that 122 US soldiers were killed in action in April. As I write, I have before me a copy of "The Black Book of Communism," which relates that on "1 January 1940 some 1,670,000 prisoners were being held in the 53 groups of corrective work camps and 425 collective work colonies . In addition, the prisons held 200,000 people awaiting trial or a transfer to camp. Finally, the NKVD komandatury were in charge of approximately 1.2 million 'specially displaced people.'" As for Stalingrad, German deaths between January 10 and February 2, 1943, numbered 100,000, according to British historian John Keegan. And those were just the final agonizing days of a battle that had raged since the previous August. Blumenthal is not alone. Former vice president Al Gore this week accused Bush of creating "more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation." Every single column written by the New York Times's Paul Krugman is an anti-Bush screed; apparently, there isn't anything else worth writing about. A bumper sticker I saw the other day in Manhattan reads: "If you aren't outraged, you're not paying attention." THERE ARE two explanations for all this. One is that Bush really is as bad as Sid, Al and Paul say: the dumbest, most feckless, most fanatical, most incompetent and most calamitous president the nation has ever known. A second is that Sid, Al and Paul are insane. The best test of the first argument is the state of the nation Bush leads. In the first quarter of 2004, the US economy grew by an annualized 4.4%. By contrast, the 12-nation eurozone grew by 1.3% – and that's their highest growth rate in three years. In the US, unemployment hovers around 5.6%. In the eurozone, it is 8.8%. In a recent column, Krugman wrote that the US economic figures aren't quite as good as they seem. But even granting that, the Bush economy is manifestly healthy by historical and current international standards. There is the situation in Iraq, where the US has lost about 750 soldiers in action over the course of more than a year, as well as about 5,500 Iraqis. The fact that events have not gone well over the past two months is somehow taken as proof that they've gone disastrously. Yet in the run-up to the war, the German Foreign Ministry was issuing predictions of about two million Iraqi deaths, making the actual Iraqi death rate 3.6% of that anticipated total. As for the American rate, the US lost more than 6,000 soldiers in Vietnam in 1966, the year US troop strength there was comparable to what it is now in Iraq. That's about nine times as many fatalities as the US has so far sustained in Iraq. There is the charge that, under Bush, the United States has qualified for most-hated nation status. Maybe so. But it is not entirely clear why this should be so decisive in measuring the accomplishments or failures of the administration. Reagan was also unpopular internationally back in his day. Nor is Israel an especially popular country. But that's no argument for Israel to measure itself according to what Jordanians or Egyptians think of it. The point here is not that Bush has a flawless or even a good record or that his critics don't have their points. The point is that, at this stage in his presidency, Bush cannot credibly be described as some kind of world-historical disaster on a par with James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover, nor can he credibly be accused of the things of which he is accused. This brings us to our second hypothesis, which is that his critics are insane. This is an easier case to make. Blumenthal, for instance, is the man who described Clinton's as the most consequential, the most inspiring and the most moral American presidency of the 20th century, only possibly excepting FDR's. Krugman spent his first couple of years as a columnist writing tirades about how the US economy was on the point of Argentina-style collapse. What makes these arguments insane – I use the word advisedly – isn't that they don't contain some possible germ of truth. One can argue that Clinton was a reasonably good president. And one can argue that Bush economic policy has not been a success. But you have to be insane to argue that Clinton was FDR incarnate, and you have to be insane to argue Bush has brought the US to its lowest economic point since 1932. This style of hyperbole is a symptom of madness, because it displays such palpable disconnect from observable reality. If you have to go looking for outrage, the outrage probably isn't there. That which is truly outrageous tends to have the quality of obviousness. So here is one aspect of this insanity: no sense of proportion. For Blumenthal, Fallujah isn't merely like Stalingrad. It may as well be Stalingrad, just as Guantanamo may as well be Lefertovo and Abu Ghraib may as well be Buchenwald, and Bush may as well be Hitler and Hoover combined, and Iraq may as well be Vietnam and Bill Clinton may as well be Franklin Roosevelt. The absence of proportion stems, in turn, from a problem of perspective. If you have no idea where you stand in relation to certain objects, then an elephant may seem as small as a fly and a fly may seem as large as an elephant. Similarly, Blumenthal can only compare the American detention infrastructure to the Gulag archipelago if he has no concept of the actual size of things. And he can have no concept of the size of things because he neither knows enough about them nor where he stands in relation to them. What is the vantage point from which Blumenthal observes the world? It is one where Fallujah is "Stalingrad-like." How does one manage to see the world this way? By standing too close to Fallujah and too far from Stalingrad. By being consumed by the present. By losing not just the sense, but the possibility, of judgment. CARE FOR language is more than a concern for purity. When one describes President Bush as a fascist, what words remain for real fascists? When one describes Fallujah as Stalingrad-like, how can we express, in the words that remain to the language, what Stalingrad was like? And while I'm at it, when we call Shimon Peres or Yossi Beilin or now Ariel Sharon a "traitor," how much more invisible do actual traitors become? George Orwell wrote that the English language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." In taking care with language, we take care of ourselves.
Life has been good to me lately. My greatest fear right now is that my fandango'd Harry Potter tickets don't print at the theatre on Friday. Riddikulus
I think that would go for any administration. If I supported an administration and it turned out they fixed the elections, I'd definitely stop supporting them as that would completely undermine the idea of a democracy. Why do you people still cry that the Bush Admin. "stole" the elections last year? It was done the normal right way. Geez, I thought this was settled when a few of the Democrat/Liberal posters on this board clarified it. Get over it, he won fairly.
Seriously, I am worried about this camping trip i'm going on in a few days. I'm terrified of owls....... Last time I went camping, i took a late night walk in the woods and heard one of those miserable owls make that "hoot" sound. Good God I almost pi**ed myself! That's one of my greater fears for the coming week. Long term: Terrorism in the US Bush getting a second term Lakers championship *People thinking it's okay to use the "n word" because Dave Chapelle uses it in some of his skits. Cod
Where in his post did he talk about or even hint about the 2000 elections? There have been public statements from the maker of the voting machines that he will do "whatever it takes to make sure Ohio goes to Bush" and you jump on this like someone shouted "Gore was robbed!" I am worried that there will be improprieties in the voting, too.
My second paragraph was in reference to whining, idiot utterings such as this: There are too many of these. It's annoying, stupid, and redundant. My second paragraph was addressing the many that I see continually even though their fellow liberals have pointed out the facts. This just shows the ignorance of people. The second paragraph wasn't relevant to the first although the statement that I responded to makes me sick and annoyed to think that people actually have the notion that the votes will be tampered with or fixed by the Bush Administration.
That WOULD be awful... if election results were somehow altered.... some horrible alternate dimension where we have a president, the WRONG president, that does a horrible job and defacates on the U.S.'s reputation almost weekly. Whew, I'm glad this is only a thread.
