Atom Apple
Why does McCain seem like less of a Republican and more of a democrat?

Because he's a moderate...lol.

The polar definitions of democrat/republican and liberal/conservative rarely fit anyone perfectly... especially since the republican party of old doesn't really resemble the republican party of today; it's going through an major evolution.

McCain is pretty liberal on most social issues... and liberals tend to pick their candidates on social issues. McCain is conservative in ways that are only really important to conservatives. Overall, he's pretty much evenly divided.

To me, it seems like he's the perfect candidate to unite american and start a world healing process. And the best part, he's sincere and honest... and a firm fighter for what he firmly believes. It's hard to find a negative thing to say about McCain... other than "his penis doesn't work right anymore", which by the way, doesn't because he was viciously tortured for 5 years as a POW. :(

SIDE NOTE: His book is quite moving. I recommend it to all.

I'm sure people will disagree about McCain... this is just my take on him and american politics... and who the hell am I anyways?

Atom Apple
Why does McCain seem like less of a Republican and more of a democrat?

Oh, McCain is a republican, it's just that the social view of republicans has been flung so far to the extreme right that McCain seems rational, and sane. Fine qualities both.

Personally though, I don't think Obama will be elected. Even though our country claims to be socially liberal, old prejudices will shine through. An african American in the oval office?! Unheard of. I wish I could have faith that people would look at his political platform rather than his skin, but I'm not that idealistic anymore.

Clinton, a possibility, but I think she would make a horrible president for this term. We need someone of action, and she's too concerned about pleasing people. There is a lot of mess to be cleaned up, and it needs to be done quickly and carefully. Also, old prejudices again. I think America would be more willing to permit a woman in the oval office, but still, chances are slim.

My two cents.

-W

I'm having a hard time pinning down Obama's actual platform and stances on the issues. Most of what I've found seems vague or clandestine... like he thinks it's in his best political interest to be non-specific and thus be less likely to piss people off.

It probably IS in his best interest for now... but who can know such things?

As for an african american... I thought in the 2000 election that Colin Powell would have been a sure win if he ran; so did alot of republicans. As you know, he chose not to and now his political career is forever ruined by the whole UN anthrax thing.

I get the feeling that McCain wants to do the work, whereas Ombama just want's the job. I think if a woman or black person is ever going to get into office they're going to have to do something like Clinton, and have already established themselves as a high profile political figure. I think Powell would still have a better chance than Obama. Obama might end up better liked by the average american, but that doesn't mean h'll be better liked by the average voter (who is older, and lets face it, had racism planted in them at a young age.) Maybe 50 years from now when the average voter is people from our generation things will be different, but today, I just don't see it happening. I think the democrat's best pick is Rudy. He's the only one that isn't already crippled coming out of the gate. And he still has a high-profile name.

This has gotten a little off topic, hasn't it?

Ha! Yes, we already have a discussion going for "the next US President ". With Presidednt spelled "persident". :(

Back on topic then...

What exactly did they accomplish in that video in the first post? Is it an agreement to vote on whether to impeach? Or was it the vote to impeach? I guess I'll have to rewatch it...

EDIT: oh, it was a STATE's congress that voted for an impeachment, right? Or am I still confused?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw4Bhmm22xo

Is he playing the fool? Or is he just going senile?

kingofsnake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw4Bhmm22xo

Is he playing the fool? Or is he just going senile?

He actually was regarded by most people back before '00 as an articulate, insightful man. I remember having this debate back in 1999-2000 during his first election with my peers and friends. The past 6 years have blown me away in how dumb Bush has seemingly "become". He's always been regarded as kind of a "screw up dummy"... but as this video shows and as I recall talking about with my Army buddies back in 99 or so, Bush wasn't the dumbass he is today. If he had been to the degree he is today, he wouldn't of been "elected". I doubt he even would have been nominated by the party.

I think it's possible that something has biologically triggered this. I think it's possible that he just stopped preparing for debates and speeches cause he stopped giving a hoot.

Can you say 'cocaine'?

i think he was cloned and the original put to death
or maybe that's bush's twin

or maybe he has dementia from all that brainwashing ala manchuran candidate

but i agree...there's something wrong with him

kingofsnake
I said it too, and typically I'm democrat. Mccain just strikes me as the one least full of shit, and most willing to stand up for what he believes is correct regardless of how popular it may or may not be.

I sort of trust McCain. I mean, he's willing to go on the Daily Show and he was in the movie "Why We Fight" making some good points against the Military Industrial complex, but he's too conservative on the issues. He's against gun control, against gay marriage, for the Iraq War, and for a large military, even though he's spoken out against the large military at other times (flip flopper?)

I would much rather see Gore become president, because he is actually looking at things is a global sense, but he's already announced he won't run. But the dream team would be Gore and Obama.

At the moment though I'm hoping either Obama or Edwards gets the nomination.

Coke is it !

I seriously don't care how he gets out of there, just so long as he does.

Am I the only one who's wondered how he became president in the first place?

And then he came back!

I swear, when I heard he was president again, I could hear thousands of children and puppies crying out in pain and horror.

OK, that was an exageration, but still.

wow, seems like everyone forgot they were suppose to impeach this guy or what?
BUSH tricked us again!

subcultured
damn hopefully
but too late for 3,000 us soldiers that died for a lot of stupid decisions

You DO know how many Iraqis America killed right? Well, forgive me if I'm wrong, but someone who was in the army for 12 years told me that the Iraqi death toll was...100,000

I know it's not all about who killed the most, but...DAMN, I think America is winning...And didn't they kill Bin's 2nd in command, or something not too long ago?

winning loosing...americans got killed.
it's not about the death tolls, but the families that are affected by it.

thank you bush for lowering oil prices.

see, i still don't understand what we are doing there. I mean, people get killed almost every day everwhere in the world from genocidal tribes/religion/opinion.

from rhawanda, north korea, tibet...yet we picked a place where we know the US can make and keep a profit from oil. There's destablization everywhere...so why pick iraq?

let's connect some dots. major industry for texas has/had been oil. bush sr. started the gulf war and is from texas. clinton came in and wanted to smooth things over diplomatically. bush jr. came in and started gulf war 2.

both bush came from texas, cheney who is a vice president was a ceo of Haliburton. And the major politicians of our country right now are all connected to oil companies and make a good profit with protecting thier investment. The US army has been used as a private security for oil fields.

Someone
Halliburton adds value through the entire lifecycle of oil and gas reservoirs, starting with exploration and development, moving through production, operations, maintenance, conversion and refining, to infrastructure and abandonment. We operate in over 120 countries working in four major operating groups:

Someone
Halliburton consists of three business segments:

* Drilling, Evaluation and Digital Solutions
* Fluid Systems
* Production Optimization

These segments offer a broad array of products and services to upstream oil and gas customers worldwide, ranging from the manufacturing of drill bits and other downhole and completion tools to pressure pumping services.

KBR, Halliburton’s engineering subsidiary, is a global leader in construction and project management, with a strong historical position in LNG and oil and gas projects. The company is a leading government services contractor as well. Full details can be found at www.kbr.com.

I mean really, did Saddam really pose any danger to the US? where's the WMD? a weak link to 9/11?

and who supplies weapons to terrorists?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53205

subcultured
winning loosing...americans got killed.
it's not about the death tolls, but the families that are affected by it.

People die in every war. Families are affected in every war. I guess that makes World War 2 wrong. I guess that makes the civil war wrong. Hell, I guess that makes the fucking revolutionary war wrong!

Cthulhu

subcultured
damn hopefully
but too late for 3,000 us soldiers that died for a lot of stupid decisions

You DO know how many Iraqis America killed right? Well, forgive me if I'm wrong, but someone who was in the army for 12 years told me that the Iraqi death toll was...100,000

I know it's not all about who killed the most, but...DAMN, I think America is winning...And didn't they kill Bin's 2nd in command, or something not too long ago?

American soldiers have not killed 100,000 Iraqis. Its the total killed. Inculding car bombs, suicide attacks ect.

nighthawk41

subcultured
winning loosing...americans got killed.
it's not about the death tolls, but the families that are affected by it.

People die in every war. Families are affected in every war. I guess that makes World War 2 wrong. I guess that makes the civil war wrong. Hell, I guess that makes the fucking revolutionary war wrong!

actually, every war is always wrong. Wars are just where a lot of people try to kill each other, and there's no winner at all.. just dermining which side gets the blame in the end. The people that walks out of it with the least amount of losses and an type of victory is the one who gets to write how it all went down.

Take the civil war for instance. that's an prime example of how the so-called "winners" got to write the history books and justifed the war by calling it an war against slavery. That the south was the "evil" for inslaving people, etc.
when in reality--it wasn't all about slavery at all. What it really was all about, was that the president wanted all the states to unite as one nation...
But the southern states objected to this because then that would mean that they would have to abide by laws that they found to be very objectable... things that they felt was going against thier very freedom. They also wanted to remain thier own nation in a way, that way they would ensure that they would be able to keep thier way of living. Without the other states butting in to tell them what to do with thier lives.
as the North was losing their "fighting spirt" for this war, a book written during this time about an story of those fictional characters, who just happened to be slaves.... well, it caused a lot of outrage along the northerns.
the people in charge of the war, clearly took this as an oppronity to stir up thier side into being partotic again by telling them this was an war against slavery.
which leads to that whole popular myth about the civil war being about slavery.
The civil war was just basically a bunch of men with big egos whining about how the laws and rights should be written a certain way or not. Also whining about who gets to be united as one nation whenever they want it or not. Which the same men also stupidly killed each other over.

If the south had won, America would had basically had been split up into half... one nation of united States, and the lower bottoms would had been an union of separate indenpendent states. I'm sure that slavery would had ended eventually regardless of the outcome, anyway... why? because Slavery isn't always so economical in the long run.

At least this is just the way I see it.

Cthulhu
You DO know how many Iraqis America killed right? Well, forgive me if I'm wrong, but someone who was in the army for 12 years told me that the Iraqi death toll was...100,000

But do you know how many of those were civillians? When Baghdad was bombed all of the bombs that were sent out went off course. We talk about "smart" bombing, but we still have no idea how to make our bombs go exactly where we want.

In the bombing of Baghdad and it's immediate aftermath, 1,700 civilians were killed, and 8,000 injured. That's a lot. Those aren't soldiers, those are innocent people who didn't want anything to do with this war.

Yes some bombs did off course and thats terrible, and innocents were killed. But as weird as this sounds the US is not totally to blame. The Iraqi propoganda minister Saeed was telling the people of Iraq that the US was loosing and they had nothing to fear because the jets were being shot down. Hence people were no longer taking cover from air strikes. And were killed because they were told nothing was to fear.

Same thing happened when the 3rdID armor punched into Baghdad. The people were told that the American army was not in the city and they were being killed hundreds of miles away. So when people left their houses going to work they didn't know they would be driving into a warzone. Many innocent people were killed when they wondered into tank formations rolling down the street.

So its not all the Americans fault.

More on Mr.Saeed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Saeed_al-Sahaf [en.wikipedia.org]

nighthawk41

subcultured
winning loosing...americans got killed.
it's not about the death tolls, but the families that are affected by it.

People die in every war. Families are affected in every war. I guess that makes World War 2 wrong. I guess that makes the civil war wrong. Hell, I guess that makes the fucking revolutionary war wrong!

yes, they were wrong. poeple died, although some good came out of it, the action of war is still wrong. and you would think that in today's advance age that such thing as war would be abolished as with horse and carriage and thinking tabacco was healthy.

why is it wrong? because for all the big ideas that the big politicians want to get across, they don't send in their own flesh and blood to fight the war. Also the taking of innocent lives is wrong. it creates a chain reaction with the families of people who died.

the civil rights movement (not war) was a great time in our history where we can create drastic changes (and they were) without resulting to mass riots and setting up factions to battle it out in the battlefield. This was the one instance that the former slaves were begining to be treated as equal and not after the civil war.

although this might not work out on all occasions, it is much wiser to see if a conflict can be tamed without resorting to war.

You could also state that it was a strategy to free the slaves and not to just better the wrongs. It would ruin the economy of the south so they would synergize with the north creating the reconstruction era in the south

ian_feverdream

Phantom Penguin
Thats never going to happen. Hes a bad president, but he never did anything ilegal enough to warrent a impeachment.

# Bush lied to Congress and the American public about the reasons for invading Iraq.
# Bush conducted illegal wiretaps of American citizens.
# Bush violated the Geneva Convention by torturing prisoners of war.
# Bush violated International Law by invading a sovereign country for illegal purposes.

I am continually amazed at how Repubs and the media give Bush and his administration a pass, while if Clinton had been doing this, they would have screamed bloody murder. They tried to impeach Clinton for lying over a personal matter, why don't they impeach over Bush for spying on Americans.
I am continually amazed at how spineless the Democratic party is, STILL.

-He was fed false information by the CIA. And only one of the reasons we invaded Iraq have been proven false.
-The wiretaps was a paperwork mess. So much so no one could lead it back to Bush.
-Again, it was set up so there is no proof he ordered the torturing of POWs.
-He was given approval from senate to invade Iraq. Making it not illegal. Furthermore there is no proof we invaded Iraq for illegal proposes.

Phantom Penguin
-He was fed false information by the CIA. And only one of the reasons we invaded Iraq have been proven false.

That's not true PP. The CIA info was fairly straightforward initially, it only turned all nasty and false after it'd been bounced back from the whitehouse to the CIA and other intelligence agencies anf then back and foward a few times more. It's sort of like this:
Intelligence Community: "There's no reason to invade Iraq"
Whitehouse: "That's not good enough, try again."

Intelligence Community: "Ok, maybe there could be a reason if we fudge it a bit for you...?"
Whitehouse: "You're getting the idea, try some more."

Intelligence Community: "We can't lie to you but we can make it sound sort of suspicious by using outdated, discredited info."
Whitehouse: "We like it but you're just not giving us enough"

Intelligence Community: "Ok then, we can't actually prove anything, but we can give you unsubstantiated guesses that are favourable and some enthusiastic hyperbole."
Whitehouse: "Oh alright then, that'll have to do I suppose, we'll spin the rest. And by the way, we'll sell you out when it all goes wrong. SUCKERS!"

lol!

And as to "And only one of the reasons we invaded Iraq have been proven false." Really? o_O
What about the mobile chemical weapons labs they were actively developing? The active atomic weapons program? The Missles topped with chemical or nuclear warheads they could launch at NATO countries within 45 minutes? The active strong links between Al Quaida and Saddam Hussain? Brining democracy and peace to Iraq? etc. etc...
All these reasons have been conclusively proved to be pure fantasy.

American, Iraqi, and British lives have been thrown away for nothing...

The young Bush shouldn't be impeached, he should be hung for war crimes.

I'm not a republican. I just know he twisted the law, yes. But so has every other president in history. And when they do it, they do in so there is no solid proof of THEM being invovled.

Yes Bush has done plenty of wrong. But he did it in such a way were he could not get in trouble for it. Clinton did the same thing, but he lied about it and got caught.

I do care but has long as there is one man with that much power, hes going to push it beyond.

ozoneocean

Phantom Penguin
-He was fed false information by the CIA. And only one of the reasons we invaded Iraq have been proven false.

That's not true PP. The CIA info was fairly straightforward initially, it only turned all nasty and false after it'd been bounced back from the whitehouse to the CIA and other intelligence agencies anf then back and foward a few times more. It's sort of like this:
Intelligence Community: "There's no reason to invade Iraq"
Whitehouse: "That's not good enough, try again."

Intelligence Community: "Ok, maybe there could be a reason if we fudge it a bit for you...?"
Whitehouse: "You're getting the idea, try some more."

Intelligence Community: "We can't lie to you but we can make it sound sort of suspicious by using outdated, discredited info."
Whitehouse: "We like it but you're just not giving us enough"

Intelligence Community: "Ok then, we can't actually prove anything, but we can give you unsubstantiated guesses that are favourable and some enthusiastic hyperbole."
Whitehouse: "Oh alright then, that'll have to do I suppose, we'll spin the rest. And by the way, we'll sell you out when it all goes wrong. SUCKERS!"

lol!

And as to "And only one of the reasons we invaded Iraq have been proven false." Really? o_O
What about the mobile chemical weapons labs they were actively developing? The active atomic weapons program? The Missles topped with chemical or nuclear warheads they could launch at NATO countries within 45 minutes? The active strong links between Al Quaida and Saddam Hussain? Brining democracy and peace to Iraq? etc. etc...
All these reasons have been conclusively proved to be pure fantasy.

American, Iraqi, and British lives have been thrown away for nothing...

The young Bush shouldn't be impeached, he should be hung for war crimes.

The whole CIA thing has been twisted to the point no one is ever going to be pointed at and be told "YOU DID IT!".

The reasons you listed all fell under the WMDs which has been proven false quite awhile ago. Strong links between Al-Quaida will never be proven since the man was greased, so that one will be in the dark forever.

Being democracy to Iraq? Well that we have tryed, and to the sense that Iraqis had free elections, have done that. But the government is in factions and is pretty damn corrupt. But no matter the planning we couldn't have seen it coming.

I don't support the war, but saying that the man should be killed for it is a bit steep. Its not been proven that he has really done anything THAT illegal. At least to the extent that other world leaders havn't done before and gotten away with it.

clinton lied about an affair, bush gets people killed..ummm priorities?

Phantom Penguin
I'm not a republican. I just know he twisted the law, yes. But so has every other president in history. And when they do it, they do in so there is no solid proof of THEM being invovled.

Yes Bush has done plenty of wrong. But he did it in such a way were he could not get in trouble for it. Clinton did the same thing, but he lied about it and got caught.

I do care but has long as there is one man with that much power, hes going to push it beyond.

that's why washington didn't want to do alot with his position. i mean that's one of the reasons why america wanted to leave a monarchy and create a democracy.

one person with absolute power corrupts most of the time. that's why checks and balances were placed and over time it has eroded and the president controls almost everything....even the judicial system. that's messed up.

Tons of little loopholes are always going to be found and used. Its disgusting to think, but it will always be that way.

"absolute power corrupts absolutely"