MichFan

Funny story from behind the scenes at Kerry's midnight appearance in Springfield, OH. Apparently a developer who owned a building behind the stage where Kerry was to speak unfurled a 60' x 40' Bush/Cheney sign at around 11:00pm. Once the organizers jaws finally closed, they managed to hurriedly move the stage to an area where the sign wouldn't be noticeable. The developer had also arranged to have a paper mache elephant suspended over the courtyard where the audience was gathered. As the crane rolled in a little later, the police got involved and talked them out of it.

Summer's over, the teachers and kids are back to school -- and these numbers are not adjusted for seasonal variation.

If this is the kind of sophomorish campaign the new advisors are going to wage, we may actually get to 60 in the Senate. Keep it up guys!

Come on, Mickey. I can't believe I just read this -- you are saying that you have ideas but I have to offer something up first. I'm willing to debate you today, but this is your thread so it's up to you to put out a little red meat aka your ideas. If that's too much to ask, I'll start my own thread on this subject later on.

More businesses=more jobs=more tax revenue Why did they need to raise propertly taxes? Why couldn't they restrain themselves to the increased revenues that came with job creation? Was it businesses fault or was it politicians creating a bigger bureaucracy to congratulate themselves for attracting more business?

Posting an actual strawman on how you think we should fight that war would start the kind of debate you are hoping for. Posting a list of "failures" in the war on terror will merely start debates on the potential motives behind your posting such a list. You are saying a whole lot of nothing in this thread because you have yet to offer up one specific strategy.

Do you have any solutions to these problems? Retrospectively, what would you have done differently that would have been better? It's pretty easy to look around the world, or just our country for that matter, and find problems. Seems that's all the libs care to do lately. Where are the solutions? Where is the hope that is supposedly on it's way? Bush gave us a pretty clear image of what that hope looks like in his mind (century of liberty part of his speach), the libs just tell us it is coming and we'll have to trust them. Show me, don't tell me!

Pardon my ignorance, but what promises did we make that we didn't keep? Can't recall anything with regards to Iraq. It's been suggested that the Afghans thought they were going to get more economic support from us, but that is not something that al Quaeda uses against us to justify their war on America. Certainly one could argue that it set conditions for the Taliban to take power which then enabled al Quaeda to accelerate it's development. I doubt giving them $5 billion would have stopped this from happening though. Are we going to be sitting here 20 years from now wondering why we put Karzai in power in Afghanistan, partnered with Putin in the war on terror, and thumbed our noses at the French? Probably not, but who knows? Decisions have to be made and lived with.

I think Mickey's just having a bad day. We are all partisan trolls at times (except for a few who seem to avoid detailing any positions ). There seems to be a relationship between where your candidate is in the polls and how "objective" you can be discussing politics. Mickey seems much more optimistic when his horse is in the lead. We'll all be much more optimistc come election time if the Bills are 5-2. Politics probably woun't matter quite as much if that is the case.

So what is either party supposed to do once they figure this out? Sit in the corner with a dunce cap on? Tell the country that we deserved what we got? Hard decisions need to be made. You can always look back and second guess them. But what if the Soviets had easily taken Afghanistan? What if Iran had defeated Iraq? Would we be better off today? I doubt it. Both parties do know these facts, but in even their worst partisanship they don't let it stop us from moving forward. You know a politician is a real hack when he/she mentions our support of Iraq in the 80's as a reason for not going to war last year.

It just never ends with this guy. Their best chance is to hide him in a cave for the next two months and just ride the anti-Bush sentiment.

So do you have anything positive to say today about the war on terror? Jeez, we are fudging up the war on terror, we fudged up Afghanistan, we fudged up Iraq. We are billsfanone, I mean D O O M E D. Dealing with this liberal PCS (post-convention-syndrome) is even worst than dealing with my wife's PMS. Look -- Kerry is the clearly best answer for you libs when it comes to the war on terror. The guy will wage the war on terror in so many conflicting ways, one of them is likely to produce some kind of positive result (and we will all know as soon as he gets any kind of result ).

Could you even begin to address many of these symptoms with Saddam in power? My personal justification for this war was that you had a guy in power who, whenever you started to form a scab on the wounds in the Middle East, would incessantly scratch it open at the first possible opportunity. If, and I know it's an if, we are able to get Iraq and Afghanistan to be reasonably stable democracies, the floodgates could open for stabilizing the broader region. Diplomatic means will probably work at this point as well, and save massive numbers of lives compared to the numbers we see in the media today.

Is this guy still working in the CIA or is he working for the CIA as a consultant? Bush understands that the most dangerous terrorists to America are those supported by rogue states because they can focus all their energy outside of their country. When their own government is trying to defeat them, they won't be as likely to divert their attention to us. Look at Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Russia. Aggressive wars are being waged in these countries on terrorists. Do you think these terrorists are thinking about ways of striking NYC right now? Do you think Chechnian terrorists are coming after us for supporting Putin? Palestinians for our support of Israel? If we were to get hit tommorrow, it is most likely that the planning would have taken place in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or still untouched regions of Western Pakistan. These are places where a war is not yet being aggressively waged, and where they are thinking about us. How are the U.N. and France going to do anything about these places? Resolutions don't do squat against terrorists. They can't even get Iran to stop making nukes let alone deal with Islamic terrorism... So in order of priority, you clean up the state sponsors first and deal with any individuals that may remain later. I am not denying a single fact that has been presented. Clearly we haven't won this war yet and it is an ugly one. I'm just not staying quiet while I watch people play chicken little on this issue.

Have you paid attention to the fact that the Democrats are obstructing most everything of substance in the Senate and the Republicans don't have the 60 votes needed to break a fillibuster? When something gets passed you guys treat the handful of Dems who side with the Republicans as traitors. As far as WNY goes, the region still hasn't figured out how to sustain economic development. For that matter, it hasn't even figured out how to initiate economic development... People in the area don't seem to want to "lower" themselves to doing the things that other states are doing to attract and retain jobs. The time will come when people don't see it as "lowering" themselves any longer. Then the economy of the region might turn around. Liberal taxing and spending will do nothing to help this process and only will delay it that much longer. Government projects like building a new bridge do not offer sustainable jobs if there isn't a plan to do something with the improved access. I only hope the Bills can hold on while the region learns a long and painful lesson. Seems to me Pataki has at least helped out with that. I hate to talk about my hometown in such a way, but when you go to areas that are flourishing economically and then go to the Buffalo area, it is like night and day. I don't know anything about the politics in these areas, I just know that when you talk to the average blue collar guy you hear two different ideologies on work.

Here is a link to support families of the Belsan tragedy. You can donate through PayPal. It would be nice if Americans could provide even a fraction of the support we gave the families of 9/11... http://www.moscowhelp.org

Two states that also seem to recognize that when the going gets tough, it's time to send the Dems packing and bring in Republicans to handle the man's work -- e.g., Arnold, Pataki, Guliani. Unfortunately they can't quite comprehend that concept on the Federal level yet.

This topic reads "Are the bad guys winning?". The initial post lists terrorist events that have occurred since 9/11. You are well established as an anti-Bush personality. I guess you are suggesting that this topic was not started to question the direction and leadership in the war on terror. Sorry if I saw this as a veiled attempt to make a point for your side and it really wasn't. Who the heck really knows if we are winning other than a few people with access to all the information needed to make that assessment? The author does not have access to current inside information, so he doesn't even know himself. His books are based on his knowledge being inside intelligence circles in the 80's combined with his reseach into current events. Probably interesting reads, but surely some considerable gaps in thinking. I think the more important questions are ones like who will best wage the war on terror over the next four years? Who will appoint justices to federal courts that support the war on terror (you mean there's something more important for courts to consider than abortion )? Who's foreign policy will do better at keeping Americans safe? An incomplete view of the war on terror since 9/11 doesn't help answer these questions in the best interest of America.

Kind of easy to make it look bad when you post a list of every terror strike that has been successful since 9/11 and when probably 99.9% of terror plots that have been prevented since then remain classified. Also, it is an interesting proposal that the time to track terrorism started with 9/11. It reflects the type of thinking we can't afford to put in office right now. At least one candidate's administration understands the history of global terrorism and that there is a big picture in this war on terror that is so much more than capturing bin Laden and getting the French on board.

Soros is an internationally bona fide POS and the fact that libs love having his money to spend shows where the Democratic party has fallen in search of regaining some semblance of power.

The Muslims need to take heed soon. Plan A appears to be going into terrorist/repressed countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq and providing people the room they need to promote freedom and some semblence of democracy. If these countries fail to take advantage of the opportunity granted them, how much longer will it be until America gives Russia free reign to wipe out of the Chechans, Israelis a free pass to bomb the heck out of the Palestinians, and perhaps we justify bombing the heck out of the Syrians and Iranians with much less regard to civilian casualties and winning hearts and minds.

Wow, this is the most stinging speech I have ever heard at a national convention. Why? First, it came from a person in the same party as the candidate. Second, it spoke the truth in such a plain way that anyone watching couldn't miss the meaning of every sentence. I sat there with my jaw dropped thinking oh my god he is saying this stuff about his own party's candidate. Then I saw delegates at the conference with the same expression on their faces. Ouch. Wow. Good luck shaking this one, libs. Go on the attack, say what you will, this guy is in your party and was the keynote speaker at Clinton's first convention. Good luck trying to discredit him...

Economy - tax cuts, reappointing Greenspan Social - faith based charity funding, no child left behind

That's right, OTR. As I said earlier, we have ushered in the era of deaf partisanship...

Bush has said this incessantly over the past 4 weeks. I've heard of blind partisanship, apparently the libs in this thread suffer from deaf partisanship as well.