[POLL] Do you think Bush will be re-elected?

Unless you can get a candidate that knows what to do in war.

 

This is just sad. Get out of Bush's ass already and come back to reality.

 

arguably, at the time of the election, the economy will be better off than it was at the time of the last election. remember that the economy was beginning to slump before W. took office...certainly we've seen positive momentum for the markets lately...hopefully there will be a rebound.

but geez...give me a break. we were freaking attacked! did you think that would have no effect on the economy??? i still hear people saying, "we just never recovered from 9/11" when i call up my clients' debtors who aren't paying anymore.

 

I think Bush's approval rating right now is much lower than Clinton's was the day after he was impeached.


but GATER is 100% right

 

I hope to God he's not re-elected but I think he would be if we were voting today. But, it's too early to say since the opposition is only just now gearing up for the show.

 

Forget about the other things for a sec, I just wanted to address this one, which actually made me laugh out loud.


1) SJC didn't say 'successful'...that was your own spin-addition.

2) The saying has always been that we don't change Presidents in the middle of a war...no qualifier to try and make the war seem better than it is has ever been added to the best of my knowledge.

3) But dealing with that, and getting beyond the whole argument about whether or not this war is successfull (which clealry was the point you were trying to slide in sideways), I have a question about your theory; How did the voters who re-elected the Presidents you mentioned, particularly Lincoln, know in advance that the war was a successfull one?

 

U.S. stocks have lost $4.8 trillion of value since Bush took office, falling from $14.7 trillion on Jan. 20, 2001, to $9.9 trillion earlier this year, and in percentage terms, the market has fallen more in Bush's first two years than in the first two years of any modern President, including Herbert Hoover, according to Allan Sloan, Newsweek's Wall Street editor.

He also said that Bush is leading the pack in the decline of the S&P 500 at 33%, compared to Hoover's 29%, even though Hoover's first two years included the crash of 1929.

Unemployment is up more than 40% since Bush took office, gigantic projected Federal surpluses have turned to deficits, and the dollar has plunged sharply against the euro, Sloan said.

Furthermore, notes Sloan, the Bush plunge can't be blamed on 9/11, since stocks fell at a much faster rate from his inauguration through Sept. 10, 2001, than they have since; the S&P 500 fell at an annual rate of 28% before 9/11, versus less than half that rate after.

 

Heroism, and growing concern about war

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, 6/16/2003

The Christmas Eve truce of 1968 was three minutes old when mortar fire exploded around John Forbes Kerry and his five-man crew on a 50-foot aluminum boat near Cambodia. ''Where is the enemy?'' a crewmate shouted.

In the distance, an elderly man was tending his water buffalo -- and serving as human cover for a dozen Viet Cong manning a machine-gun nest.

"Open fire; let's take 'em," Kerry ordered, according to his second-in-command, James Wasser of Illinois. Wasser blasted away with his M-60, hitting the old man, who slumped into the water, presumably dead. With a clear path to the enemy, the fusillade from Kerry's Navy boat, backed by a pair of other small vessels, silenced the machine-gun nest.

When it was over, the Viet Cong were dead, wounded, or on the run. A civilian apparently was killed, and two South Vietnamese allies who had alerted Kerry's crew to the enemy were either wounded or killed.

On the same night, Kerry and his crew had come within a half-inch of being killed by "friendly fire," when some South Vietnamese allies launched several rounds into the river to celebrate the holiday.

To top it off, Kerry said, he had gone several miles inside Cambodia, which theoretically was off limits, prompting Kerry to send a sarcastic message to his superiors that he was writing from the Navy's "most inland" unit.

Back at his base, a weary, disconsolate Kerry sat at his typewriter, as he often did, and poured out his grief. "You hope that they'll courtmartial you or something because that would make sense," Kerry typed that night. He would later recall using court-martial as "a joke," because nothing made sense to him -- the war policy, the deaths, and his presence in the middle of it all.

To his crew, Kerry was one of the most daring skippers in the US Navy, relentlessly and courageously engaging the enemy. But the battles and moral dilemmas were in shades of gray, and Kerry to this day wrestles with the scenes of death he commanded.

In an intense three months of combat following that Christmas Eve battle, Kerry often would go beyond his Navy orders and beach his boat, in one case chasing and killing a teenage Viet Cong enemy who wore only a loin cloth and carried a rocket launcher. Kerry's aggressiveness in combat caused a commanding officer to wonder whether he should be given a medal or court-martialed.

Kerry would watch in despair as a crewmate killed a boy who may or may not have been an innocent civilian. He would angrily challenge a military policy that risked the death of noncombatants. And he would try to escape the fate of five of his closest friends, all killed in combat.

Along with Kerry's unquestionable and repeated bravery, he also took an action that has received far less notice: He requested and was granted a transfer out of Vietnam six months before his combat tour was slated to end on the grounds that he had earned three Purple Hearts. None of his wounds was disabling; he said one cost him two days of service and the other two did not lead to any absence.

No period better captures the internal conflicts besetting John Kerry than Vietnam. He enlisted as a Navy officer candidate despite his criticisms as Yale's class orator of America's intervention in Southeast Asia. He would become a war hero, recipient of the Silver and Bronze stars, but would also become an antiwar leader, causing some former crewmates to feel he had betrayed them.

In an effort to understand a fuller picture of Kerry's combat in Vietnam, the Globe examined thousands of recently declassified Naval documents; interviewed sailors who served alongside Kerry; conducted four interviews with Kerry; and read some previously unreleased journal entries and letters selected by the senator.

Some Clown.......................

 

True, I did not, I hope it will be successful, but I am not sure it is yet.

 

You guys just keep dreaming with your Florida lies, your "down economy, and your quagmire (yeah, right) propaganda. The American voter is seeing through it all. Until you get past that nonsense no Democrat will win a national election.

Whats strange is that Bush really is vulnerable on many issues. If Democrats would honestly debate issues and stop trying to garner cheap political points, they would have a chance. I believe Leiberman could beat him, but he's not hateful enough to win the primary.

As it is, I support Bush, but he needs to be a little more conservative. I think that is his natural tendency, but he softens his views for political purposes. This comes off as not authentic.

 

And this has what to do with Iraq? Nice spin there buddy.

 

Holy moly. Bush is *too* conservative? He is, by any standard, *the* most conservative president in history. When has he softened his views on anything?

 

Osama bin Laden is *still* out there. Hell, he's still making tapes. Oh, and Saddam Hussein is still at large.

 

but didnt dubbya declare the war as over back in may?

and didnt bush I loose out despite being the victor in iraq?

i see history repeating itself here (fingers crossed)

 

ok, Vegan...please explain to me the cause and effect.

actually, i blame the recession on the New York Yankees...since they stopped winning World Series rings, the economy has gone to hell! (sarcasm intended to show how two events may not be causally connected)

the economy was already faltering before Bush took office...how many times did we hear it said that no matter who won the election, they certainly wouldn't have as easy a go with the economy as Clinton did? i mean that was common mantra well before Election Day.

presidents can't take credit for everything that goes right while they're president...conversely, they can't be blamed for everything that goes wrong.

 

holy crap!!! he's making tapes!!!???? aw crap...call the schools...tell them to send the kids home. bin laden's making tapes again!

i'll take making tapes as compared to terrorist acts everyday.