This thread self-destructs on 3 November 2004

[Simply Joel]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1200849/posts

[samtzu]

Ahhh... so that's where all his horseshit comes from...

[Simply Joel]

August 30, 2004

Four Connected Elections
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

George W. Bush comes to the G.O.P. convention on the heels of victory in the Najaf primary.

As a young, anti-American cleric turned a revered house of worship into a fortress, thereby to seize leadership of Iraq's Shiites, the grand ayatollah slipped out of the country for medical treatment. This left the dirty work of reducing the firebrand's "Mahdi Army" to American firepower. Then, lest the final closing-in give rise to an Iraqi Alamo legend, the ayatollah neatly timed his return to lead thousands in a peaceful march into the shrine and the remnants of the occupying rebels vanished.

Not quite an electoral "primary" - the al-Sadr forces prefer bullets to ballots - but the result was political. Nobody now doubts who is the most powerful Shiite leader. And though he cannot publicly express his gratitude to the foreign soldiers who made possible his victory over the abusers of sanctuary in Najaf, the ayatollah is on the side of a general election soon.

Two other elections will affect that expression of nascent democracy in a land once known for Saddam's tyranny and sponsorship of terror.

One is in October in Afghanistan. On a recent visit to D.C., President Harmid Karzai told me he expected that seven million out of the nine million eligible Afghan voters would register to vote. That seemed a vain hope, since nobody had the habit and with opium growers and warlords roaming the precincts, voting would be risky.

What happened? So far, 9.9 million Afghans have registered, which is a little embarrassing, but the lust to get more than one registration card is only human to a populace that hid its oppressed womenfolk until the U.S. and its allies overthrew the Taliban. The Afghans don't take the right to vote for granted, as half of us do.

The other election that will influence the scheduled vote in Iraq is the one that seems to have caught the attention of the citizens of New York City. (As I write this, I can see a demonstration by a group of Chinese representing a sect oppressed by the Communist rulers in Beijing. Dressed in yellow and red costumes, they exercise gently, dance gracefully and politely hand out fliers. New Yorkers never saw such a peaceful demonstration. Other marchers bearing coffins are depressing, but for now - Go, Falun Gong!)

This is an election essentially about the political will to carry the war on terror to the sources of terror and to maintain that will despite the costs.

That is not the only issue to affect the voting decision we make. This week, President Bush is expected to rise above the dog-eat-dog days of August to present plans for medical and retirement incentives on the domestic front. (In proposed tax-free accounts, the word "private" is out; the word "personal" is in.) And the supporting stars of the G.O.P. firmament - McCain, Giuliani, Franks and Schwarzenegger - will try to get swing voters into the swing of not changing horses in mid-war.

But Bush's September song must deal with the paramount issue of the national will to carry the fight to the enemy. Though there have always been many to whom taking the offensive gives offense, a majority of Americans will be willing to "stay the course" if a persuasive leader can ennoble the cause.

In "World War IV," a brilliant, long, sweeping review of our foreign policy in the past century in the current Commentary magazine, the neoconservative Norman Podhoretz makes the historical case for optimistic assertiveness over "realistic" accommodation. He sees the roots of the Bush Doctrine in the successful Truman Doctrine, and reminds us that the sustained resolve that won the three global wars of the past century can prevail in the present generation's rendezvous with terror.

I'm more of a new libercon than an old neocon, but such a determined mindset on our time's paramount issue - of global safety in freedom - attracts me to the crowd in New York that points with pride at what we're doing rather than the bunch in Boston that viewed with alarm all we've done.

Look ahead, you guys. No culture-warring, no back-pedaling, no pouting at celebrity Bush-bashing, no poll-bounce fixation, no Kerrymandering. "In war, resolution"; in campaigning, uplift.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

August 30, 2004
THE ALASKAN
Delegate Finds a Wilderness on the Streets of New York
By ALAN FEUER

doug Isaacson touched down at La Guardia yesterday. Right away, he wanted to see the town.

Where to? the cabby asked.

"Jeez, don't know, let's go to Wall Street first and then to Central Park," he said. "I want to get the lay of the land. Can you just drive around?"

Drive around? The cabby found this fishy. "No bargains, sir," he warned.

It was agreed, no bargains - and $60 later, the cab arrived at Mr. Isaacson's hotel, the Sheraton Manhattan, in Midtown.

Mr. Isaacson, a delegate to the Republican National Convention from Alaska, had never been in a yellow cab before. He had never been to New York City. From what he had heard, the town was full of Democrats and muggers, the kind of place where crazy people lived.

Still, he was excited. "We're going to have fun," he said to his daughter, Rachelle, 19, who had come to join him from Nebraska, where she goes to college. In the cab, Ms. Isaacson was on her cellphone, talking to her boyfriend. She looked a little queasy from the ride.

"Hey, is that the Empire State?" asked Mr. Isaacson, as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. "Too cool!" Then the cab got caught in traffic on the Avenue of the Americas. Mr. Isaacson peered out the window at the police barricades. "So what's the parade for?" he asked.

It wasn't a parade, he was told, it was a protest march. A couple of hundred thousand people had just gone down the avenue in a protest against the war in Iraq, the Republican convention and the presence of delegates like him.

"Me?" he asked, incredulous. "But they don't even know me."

At the hotel, there were Secret Service agents and police officers. "Thanks for being here," Mr. Isaacson said. It was sunny, humid, very hot. He walked inside the lobby singing "New York, New York" beneath his breath.

Their room was tiny - "claustrophobic," said Ms. Isaacson. Her father sat down to use the phone and a leg fell off the desk. He was paying $200 a night for the room. "No wonder it was cheap," he said.

After settling in, they went upstairs to the Alaska suite to meet the rest of the delegation. A group was watching Fox News, and a "Terrorism Quiz" was on the screen: "A dirty bomb will kill everyone within five miles of the explosion. True or False?"

Mr. Isaacson found out they were going to see a Broadway show, "Bombay Dreams," last night. "Why not 'Beauty and the Beast'?" he asked. "I want an American slice of pie."

A fellow delegate suggested that he really ought to sit on the right - not left - side of the theater. A bit of political humor. As it happened, Mr. Isaacson's ticket said Row W. "Row W!" he said. "Look at that!"

On the way to lunch, Mr. Isaacson and his daughter stopped to have their picture taken with a Statue of Liberty mime. They stood with the mime, looking happy for the camera.

Then someone informed the mime they were Republicans - and slowly, even as the camera clicked, the mime unfurled the middle digit of his right hand.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

August 31, 2004

The Courage Factor
By DAVID BROOKS

John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the big stars of the first two days of the Republican convention, but they didn't get their prime-time slots because they're moderates. If the Republican Party had wanted to play up the moderate angle, they'd have put together the same sort of multihued and gender-balanced schmaltzfest they did in 2000. McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger are speaking because they are brave.

I don't know if you have noticed, but this whole campaign has revolved around courage. From the day Howard Dean took on the feckless Democratic establishment, through John Kerry's military-drenched convention, through McCain's and Giuliani's speeches last night, the key questions of this race have been: Who has political courage? Who's willing to fight? Who has the resolve to lead in times of war?

McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger are featured because they embody the brand of courageous conservatism the party has sought to project since 9/11. First, they are clear and self-confident in their beliefs. McCain has written that in prison he learned to trust his own judgment, and that while he has made mistakes, they have not been the mistakes of self-doubt. For the first prerequisite of this brand of political courage is to be steady amid a barrage of criticism.

Second, they know their own minds. McCain sees himself as a Teddy Roosevelt-style reformer. Schwarzenegger has an unshakable belief in economic freedom. One gets the impression they would sacrifice everything before betraying these creeds. One of Giuliani's favorite quotations comes from Abraham Lincoln: "I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me."

Third, they are obsessed with character. When they talk about problems, they talk about selfishness and dishonor. Mayor Giuliani was never so aggressive as when somebody had violated his sense of decency. Once McCain finds corrupt malefactors - like the people who concocted an outrageous Boeing defense contract - he latches onto them with his teeth and he will not let go.

Finally, they are most alive in the midst of the fray. Theodore Roosevelt once declared, "Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." All three approach their various crusades with relish. Giuliani made New York governable by launching one crusade after another until he finally exhausted everyone around him. If Schwarzenegger speaks tonight the way he has in the past, you will see a man who, far from feeling burdened by the cares of the budget wars, is actually having a gas.

There is something chivalric and archaic about this form of political courage. Churchill and Thatcher had it, so did T.R. But today it is disdained in schools, where gentler virtues are held dear. And the movement-dominated organizations that now dominate our politics hate it. It's no accident Schwarzenegger, McCain and Giuliani are Republican renegades. Fiercely independent and self-reliant, they're viewed with suspicion by the litmus-test boys. Conservative activists actually campaigned against Giuliani in his 1993 mayoral race because he wasn't right on abortion and other conservatively correct issues.

But despite a generation of enlightened edification, this sort of archaic courage still seems to inspire people. This is not the golden age of manliness, but Schwarzenegger, Giuliani and McCain are three of the most popular figures in America today.

And they are here in New York to say that George Bush is fighting the war against radical Islam with their sort of tenacity, their sort of constancy. For ultimately, they are suggesting that whatever mistakes he has made, he has the courage that is required, and his opponent does not.

If Sept. 11 had not happened, I doubt McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger would be as intertwined with George Bush as they have been. But it did happen. And whatever their cultural and personal differences, they do see eye to eye on the global conflict with radical Islam.

The coming weeks will be so tough because the essential contest - of which the Swift boat stuff was only a start - will be over who really has courage, who really has resolve, and who is just a fraud with a manly bearing.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Simply Joel]

PAIN IN THE HEARTLAND

Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter With Kansas?" is generally reasonable, moderate in tone, and very exasperated. The source of the exasperation is his fellow Kansans, who keep voting on social issues (therefore Republican and conservative) when Frank thinks they should be voting on their economic plight (therefore Democratic and liberal).
Like most of the Great Plains, Kansas is falling behind economically. Frank is stupefied that abortion, evolution and gay marriage are major political issues, and that 80 percent of the state's voters backed George W. Bush in 2000. Why are they wasting their voting power on cultural and social issues instead of pursuing their own self-interest?

Part of the problem is that liberals who focus sharply on economics tend to have no feel for non-economic issues that so many of us care deeply about. Right at the start of his book, Frank cites the controversy (which he apparently considers stupid) over Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ": "Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire planet must remake itself along the lines preferred by the Republican Party, U.S.A."

But "the hicks" had a point: Alleged art that traduces religion was now supported and often funded by the same sensitive people who quickly took down or painted over works of art that offended the sensibilities of blacks, American Indians or women. A new value system was descending on the culture. And under that system, not only were prayers disappearing from the schools (a good idea, in my opinion), but student valedictory speeches that included a line of praise for God were being censored, and small schoolchildren, asked to draw a picture of anyone they admired, were being reprimanded if they drew Jesus.

The impact of this cultural shift was profound. John O'Sullivan, an exceptional commentator on the culture, wrote that one morality was being replaced by another, though most of us were only dimly aware of it as it occurred. None of this was voted on or directly approved by the people (an indicator of how other dramatic change would arrive). What appeared to be a countercultural upsurge mostly confined to sex spread out to cover family, work, public affairs, welfare policies, crime, and almost the whole range of human experience.

O'Sullivan describes the combat between new vs. traditional (get ready for two laundry lists here): "Traditional morality was religious, duty-based, rooted in individual responsibility, governed by objective rules, self-controlled, ascetic, guilt-forgiving, repentant, hierarchical, patriotic and stern. The new morality was secular, rights-based, rooted in social causes, governed by subjective interpretation, self-asserting, hedonistic, guilt-denying, therapeutic, egalitarian, universalist and indulgent."

The new morality has mostly carried the day, taking over the bureaucracies, the schools, the universities, the big-time media, most legal judgment, Hollywood, and the leadership of the Democratic Party. Traditional morality still holds sway in most of the churches, small-town media, the working class, talk radio, police and firefighters, and much of the Republican Party.

Republican political dominance, however, has had amazingly little impact on the invasion. President Bush was mostly a noncombatant. But the resistance is doing better now, partly because new media now give the traditionalists heavy aid, most notably in the devastating daily eviscerations of the deeply biased and increasingly shameful big-time press.

Unsurprisingly, many Kansans, like many Americans everywhere, feel the pain of the takeover by the new morality. The left usually chalks this up to fear of change, hardening arteries, racism, or some other insulting cause. But the real reason is that ordinary Americans no longer feel that they can transmit their culture to their young -- the schools and media make that almost impossible now. (One indicator is the home-schooling movement, which includes 1.1 million children, a number sure to keep rising.)

The multicultural and universalist side of the new morality undercuts community and mocks patriotism. America and the West, we are told, are nothing to be proud of, merely entrenched systems of domination. The courts increasingly reflect the law-school culture, which is nearly as one-sided as the campus culture. And few of the issues that traditionalists care about ever seem to come up for democratic vote. Major change is imposed by courts or manipulated behind the scenes by bureaucrats loyal to the new moralists and the Democratic Party.

The late critic Christopher Lasch, who is best described as a Marxist with conservative leanings, got it right in his 1995 book, "The Revolt of the Elites." He wrote that the elites are contemptuous of ordinary Americans, are dangerously isolated from them, and are "deeply indifferent" to the prospect of national decline. He found the elites dismissive of religion and supportive of a therapeutic culture and an "analytic attitude" that developed into "an all-out assault on ideals of every kind."

Most of this has become totally obvious since Lasch wrote. The wonder is that liberals like Thomas Frank think it's weird that people would use their votes to do anything about it.

COPYRIGHT 2004 JOHN LEO

[Simply Joel]

A Speech That Delivered the Goods
By David S. Broder

NEW YORK -- It demonstrates how much confidence Karl Rove has in his candidate that he left so much of the necessary work of the Republican National Convention to be accomplished by President Bush's acceptance speech on the final night in Madison Square Garden.

The confidence was not misplaced. Bush did almost everything he could on Thursday night, with a major assist from speechwriters Michael Gerson and Karen Hughes, who can write circles around their counterparts in John Kerry's campaign.

This was not an easy assignment. On the first three nights of the convention, the major speakers had sliced and diced Democratic nominee John Kerry but otherwise had been stuck on a single note: the threat of terrorism. No one had addressed the other big public concern, the economy and jobs, which happens to be Bush's biggest vulnerability.

No one had begun to sketch what a second Bush term might bring in any area of domestic policy. And no one had figured out how to respond to the Democrats' charge that Bush had blundered into Iraq on false premises and had no plausible plan to get out.

Given his shaky ratings on both Iraq and the economy, Bush could not afford to be morning-talk-show cheerful, but he had to demonstrate confidence in what the next four years might bring.

By the end of an hour, he had done almost all those things to greater or lesser degree, while getting in a few above-the-belt shots at his opponent and reminding voters why they were drawn to him when they were first getting to know him -- his parents, his foibles and his lack of self-importance.

The weakest link in Bush's speech was his bland assurance that the economy has recovered well enough to provide more and better jobs. But Friday morning's announcement of much better job statistics did what Bush himself could not do.

As the week unfolded, the need for the president to outline a domestic agenda became more and more evident; all the previous speakers steered away from that topic. So the first half of Bush's speech sounded like a State of the Union recital of initiatives in education, health care, job training, tort reform, etc. As in a State of the Union, the speech paragraphs and backup briefing book were skimpy enough on details to make it nearly certain that unsuspecting viewers came away with an exaggerated notion of Bush's plans. He probably doesn't have the budget -- or the votes -- to do more than gesture in the direction of such far-reaching reforms, but at least he has answered those who say his cupboard of policy ideas has run bare.

After a brief recitation of the traditional values important to his conservative base, Bush turned to the topic of Iraq, about which the public has been growing restive. In an assessment that seems notably more optimistic than current news justifies, Bush suggested that by staying the course we could at some point leave Iraq and its security problems to a democratically chosen Iraqi government. That is a hopeful scenario of dubious probability, but it is no more implausible than Kerry's alternative of recruiting other countries to come in and help police the country. Both men have muddled records on Iraq, and neither has offered a sure-fire fix for the challenges posed by Iran, North Korea or other rogue states.

So it was back to terrorism for Bush and a touching evocation of the emotions of Sept. 11, the only time when he really was the president of all the people. It is, in my view, pointless for Democrats to argue that Bush's actions after that tragedy were no different from what Al Gore or anyone else would have done. The fact is that Bush was the one who rallied the country in those first critical days, and he benefits from the bonds then established.

The words he speaks on that subject come from Gerson and Hughes, but the emotion is his own, and its authenticity lifts even a partisan political speech such as this one into another and higher realm.

[Force]

What, no one's gonna comment on Cheney saying;

"If we make the wrong choice in November we could get hit again..."

intimating that voting for Kerry would instigate terrorist attacks?


Can anyone else come up with a clearer "culture of fear"-type example of such a ham-handed attempt at manipulation?

It's a shame that so many people fall for this stupid crap.

When will people wake up and realize that the reason we don't have our borders sealed is because they WANT us to get hit, which will create MORE fear, which will enable them to pass even more laws allowing them to spy on us and siphon off more money into the war machine?

Why do people actually believe that these scoundrels CARE about them, when in actuality we are nothing more than pawns and pocketbooks to them?

Or do they actually believe that these clowns really give a shit about joe-bob living in the trailer park? Please.

Or maybe even Cheney is disturbed by the current administrations' actions and the "wrong choice" he spoke of is to vote for Bush?

[Simply Joel]

September 8, 2004
In Cheney's Words: The Risk of 'the Wrong Choice'

Following is a transcript of Vice President Cheney's speech on Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, as provided by the Federal News Service.
Thank you all. (Applause.) Thank you very much. And let me thank Stan Thompson this morning for taking care of us and getting us introduced. And I know he's going to be the new congressman from this part of Iowa. (Applause.)

It's great to see my old friends Bob Ray and Terry Branstad here, this morning -- great governors from the state of Iowa. (Applause.) And Lynne has known me since I was 14, but she wouldn't go out with me until I was 17 years old. (Laughter.)

But I often tell people that we have a marriage that was the direct result of Dwight Eisenhower's election victory in 1952. In 1952, I living in Lincoln, Nebraska with my folks -- just a youngster. Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service. Eisenhower got elected, he came in and reorganized the Agriculture Department, Dad got transferred to Casper, Wyoming. And that's where I met Lynne, and we grew up together, and went to high school together, and just last Sunday -- a week ago Sunday, celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. (Applause.) I explained to a group the other night that if it hadn't been for Dwight Eisenhower's tremendous victory in 1952, Lynne would have married somebody else. She said, right, and now he'd be Vice President of the United States. (Laughter and applause.) They always laugh. (Laughter.) They know it's true.

But we're delighted to be here this morning, to be back in Iowa. We were out in Clear Lake yesterday. Before that, we were up in Minnesota yesterday morning at the Minnesota State Fair. Later on today, we'll be in New Hampshire. We've now got about eight weeks -- I guess, eight weeks from today will be the election where we're going to make a very, very important decision for the nation, for the future of our country, and, indeed, for the kind of world that our children and grandchildren are going to inherit.

And as long as I've been involved in politics, and this was my eighth Republican Convention I attended this year. But I don't think -- I can't recall a time when I ever felt that the decisions we're going are as momentous as they are this time around, that there are periods in our history when things go along swimmingly. Our basic policies are in place, and elections basically are sort of an affirmation of continuity in a sense. And there are other times when circumstances have changed enough in the world that we really need to sit down and make some fundamental decisions about the direction the country is headed in, where we're faced with fundamental choices. And I think this is one of those latter kinds of periods.

What I'd like to do this morning is talk about a couple of basic areas, policy areas that I think are important. And they're reflected by the changes that we've all seen over the last few years, and then throw it open to questions so we have an opportunity to respond to your concerns and hear from you what you'd like to talk about, try to answer as many of your questions as we can during the time allotted.

It's hard -- when I think back to last four years, I signed on with the President just about four years ago at our Republican Convention in Philadelphia. He asked me to be his running mate about 10 days before the convention. And then we announced it then, so that was I guess, mid August of last year.

There wasn't any way then we could have anticipated what was about to happen, of course, on 9/11. And 9/11, in effect, has changed a lot of what we do as a nation, both in terms of how we think about defending ourselves, what the threat is, and how we deal with national security issues, but it has had a big impact here domestically, as well, too, because I think it has been at the heart of what we've had to deal with economically.

When the President and I took the oath of office, we were sliding into recession. The stock market had peaked in March of 2000, before we got there. And by the beginning of January of 2001, we were into a recession. And of course, a few months later then we got hit with 9/11, and that was a major additional blow to the economy. We lost a million jobs within a few weeks after the 9/11 attack because of the damage that that did to our tourism and travel industry, and airline industry and so forth.

So we've have to deal with that set of domestic circumstances at the same time that we've been forced to respond from a national security standpoint to the military requirements. There are operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, what we've had to do to harden the target here at home, money we've had to spend on homeland security. It's been an interesting period of problems that we did not anticipate -- nobody could have anticipated -- when we were sworn in.

But on the economic front, I think what has been absolutely crucial was the fundamental decision that the President made, and that was the call that Lynne touched upon that he made with respect that the key to our economic recovery was allowing the American taxpayers to keep more of their own money, rather than siphoning it off to Washington. (Applause.)

The tax cuts that were implemented in 2001, 2002, 2003 have been absolutely vital in terms of what we did with respect to income taxes, in particular. Everybody in America who pays income taxes got some relief on the income tax front. We cut rates across the board. We created the new 10 percent brackets that helped folks at the lower end of the spectrum. We doubled the child credit which had a huge impact on families. We reduced the marriage penalty. We quadrupled the amount that a small business could expense in terms of investing in new equipment, or trucks to be able to expand their business, a whole series of steps that were embodied in those tax changes that we put on the books that have been vital, we believe, in terms of getting the economy up and running again.

We've added over the course of the last year now about 1.7 million new jobs. We've still got a long way to go out there, but our unemployment rate now is down to 5.4 percent nationally. It's about 4.4 percent here in Iowa. We've still got areas of softness out there in the economy. We recognize that. We're committed to the proposition that we want to make certain that everybody in America who wants to work can find a job, and that's at the heart of the overall thrust of our policies.

But having taken those steps that we believe got the economy back on the right track and have seen us through the recession, we've begun to see the resumption now of economic growth in fairly significant ways. And it's beginning to help reduce the deficit. But the keys to reducing the deficit really is twofold -- on the one hand, spending restraint, which we need to pursue with respect to the federal budget; but also stimulating enough economic growth so that we generate enough revenue so we begin to close the deficit. Some may have noticed just within the last day here, the Congressional Budget Office has now announced new estimates for the federal deficit going forward. And they have reduced their estimate for the deficit by -- I believe about $56 billion for the year we're now in. That's a direct result of economic growth that came about as a result of the tax changes that the President put through, and the Congress supported.

I might add Chuck Grassley had a great deal to do with that in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He's been our key ally on Capitol Hill in terms of getting those positions, those policies in place. And he deserves a lot of credit for what we did in the Congress. (Applause.)

Going forward now, if we're going to achieve the full potential of the American economy, we've got to make certain that the United States is the best place in the world to do business, because after all, that's what it is all about --whether you're in agriculture, or manufacturing, or business. (Applause) And there shouldn't be a divide here between business and labor. This is not a zero-sum game. We all benefit. The entrepreneur, as well as the worker; the small businessman and the people he hires all benefit when our economy prospers, and when the system works the way it's supposed to work, to its maximum potential.

And the agenda for the future very much involves a series of policies that we need to aggressively address if we're going to be successful, and that the President talked about the other night at the convention in New York. It includes taking those tax changes that we made and making them permanent. Because they aren't permanent now. The way the law works, we need to go back and do that. (Applause.)

We also need to address some other issues. We need to make absolutely certain the regulatory burden is minimal so that we don't load unnecessary regulations -- whether it's on small business or farmers and ranchers, it's a lot easier if people have the opportunity to focus on doing what they set out to do economically, rather than having to spend time filling out useless paperwork that goes back to Washington, gets filed in a bureaucracy, and nobody ever reads.

We also need to deal with some other issues like health care, for example, and a key cost of doing business in this country and one of the major problems that everybody is faced with is the rising cost of health care. The President has put forward a series of proposals, and we'll be pursuing those, as well, in our second term to deal with that. Some of it, we've already done. We've established health savings accounts, for example, that allow people to set aside money tax-exempt for their own health costs. He's got a proposal now for a refundable tax credit that will allow folks at the lower of the scale to be able to use that system in order to pay for catastrophic insurance premiums. We've got a package of proposals with respect to Medicare that were enacted. Again, Senator Grassley had a major role to play in all of that, as we reformed the Medicare system, the most significant reforms that will provide prescription drug benefits in the years ahead for senior citizens, a series of those steps that have been taken that are crucial.

And one of the areas that badly needs work is this whole question of medical liability. And what has happened in so many places around the country -- I know it's true in my home state of Wyoming, it has been true in a great many other states, as well, too, is the medical liability system is broken. And it has resulted in rapid increases in the cost of malpractice insurance to the point now where many physicians simply cannot afford the malpractice insurance to be able to stay in business. It has been especially true in the OB/GYN specialties. My home state of Wyoming, our hometown of Casper, the cost of premiums for a GP -- a general practitioner has more than doubled in the last three years. They now pay $100,000 a year for an insurance policy just to be able to do business. A new doc fresh out of medical school has to come up with about $80,000 up front to be able to go into practice in my home state of Wyoming.

Now, that's true -- this is problem that's hit, I know, in Ohio. It's hit in Pennsylvania. It has been a problem across the country, and we have to find ways to deal with that. And there are ways to do it. Some states have done it successfully -- been able to cap non- economic damages in the medical liability area. You need a system that will, in fact, respond to legitimate concerns, where people need to be able to go to court and redress those grievances, and get compensation when there have been serious problems and malpractice. But there has to be limits. Or if we don't have limits, we end up in the kind of situation where we drive up the cost of health care, and we find ourselves with a significant number of people unable to acquire health care.

And it turns out that about 60 percent of all the uninsured in America are either owners of, or employees of small businesses. So part of what we have to do here is find ways to make it possible for small businesses to acquire health insurance at reasonable cost. And one of the President's proposals that we'll pursue again in the future is this notion of association health plans, of allowing small businesses to come together and pool their interest, and be able to negotiate the same kind of discounts that a big corporation can. We think that's a major idea that needs to be adopted, that would help significantly in this area. (Applause.)

But there are a lot of areas we can talk about -- the whole education field. I know Iowa has been one of the leaders in education nationally. That's a vital area of interest. The President, I think, deserves a lot of credit for what he did when he first came to office. His first priority was the No Child Left Behind Act. And we can talk about that some more if you would like, as well.

But let me take just a few minutes, before we open it up to questions, and talk a little bit about the national security situation -- what has come to be called the war on terror, and the set of circumstances that we're faced with today and what we've tried to do over the course of the last three-and-a-half years now.

Again, 9/11 changed everything in the sense that it forced us to deal with, and face the brand new threat of the terrorists -- in this case the al Qaeda organization -- that had struck the United States several times before, going back probably to the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993; but certainly, when they hit our embassies in East Africa in '98; or the USS Cole, in Yemen in 1990 -- excuse me, in 2000.

And the attack that they launched on us on 9/11 was one that had been in the works for about five years. They first started talking about it in 1996. And of course, that morning we lost 3,000 Americans -- more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. And subsequent to that, it became necessary for us to figure out how we could best respond to this dramatic new threat that had never before faced the United States, at least not in that form.

Added to that was that we learned shortly after 9/11, as a result of people that we captured and interrogated, or documents we found when we went into Afghanistan, that the organization, the terrorists were trying to acquire deadlier weapons than anything they had ever had before, that they were trying to get their hands on chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to use against us.

And they know no restraint. There's no reason in the world why they would hold back and not use something like that if they could get their hands on it. So the biggest threat we face today is the possibility of a terrorist cell setting up shop inside one of our own cities, with one of those truly deadly weapons -- a biological agent of some kind, say, or even a nuclear weapon that cost perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives, not just 3,000, if they were to launch such an attack.

It's a whole different scale of threat, a different kind of problem than we've had to deal with in the past. The President did a number of things by way of starting us on the course that I think has been absolutely essential in safeguarding the nation.

We've been successful now for about three years at avoiding any attacks, but they're still out there. They're doing everything they can to try to find another way to launch further attacks against the United States. And we must not let our guard down.

What the President did, among other things, obviously, we moved aggressively here at home to strengthen our defenses. We've created the Department of Homeland Security, the biggest reorganization of the federal government in 50 years. We passed the Patriot Act, that gives law enforcement the tools they need to be able to prosecute and put terrorists in jail. We passed a thing called Project BioShield that spends a lot of money investing in new technologies to be able to defend ourselves against attack with biological weapons in the future. We've strengthened our intelligence capabilities. We're in the business now of reorganizing the intelligence community to improve our capabilities there -- a whole series of things that are defensive, that are sound policies that need to be done.

But a good defense is not enough. And the lesson the President has driven home to all of us is to remind us that it's absolutely that if we, in fact, are going to succeed in this conflict with these terrorists, we have to go on offense, as well. (Applause.)

If you think about it, if we're successful 99.9 percent of the time on defense, if they get through one-tenth of 1 percent of the time, that's enough to do enormous damage -- given the scale of the threat that we're forced to deal with here. So going on offense has meant using U.S. military force to go after the terrorists wherever they plan and train and organize. It also has meant going after those who support terror. This is a new departure. For a long time, the civilized world had sort of ignored those who were sponsoring terror out there. We'd go after terrorists, but states that sponsored terror were able to get away with sort of turning the other cheek and acting like they hadn't had any involvement in these enterprises. The President said no more. He said, henceforth, what we're going to have a key component of our policy is that we will go after those who sponsor terror or support terror or provide sanctuary and safe harbor for terrorists.

And the first place we went, of course, was Afghanistan. And we told the Taliban, either give up the al Qaeda or else. They said, no, they wouldn't give up the al Qaeda. So the Taliban is out of business. The al Qaeda is shut down. (Applause.) The al Qaeda camps that they had operated in the last half of the '90s have been closed. We've got a new government stood up in Afghanistan. President Karzai in charge now. They'll hold free elections next month in October -- the first elections in Afghanistan, I guess, probably in history. And they're on their way to getting a new Afghan national army stood up so they can take over responsibility for their own national security, which is a key part of the strategy. And we're moving forward in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, we were faced with a situation where we had in Saddam Hussein a man who had started two wars, a man who had previously produced and used weapons of mass destruction. He used chemical weapons on his own people, and on the Iranians -- a man who had been a sponsor of terror. He was paying $25,000 a pop to the families of suicide bombers. He had previously provided sanctuary in Iraq for the Abu Nidal organization, other terrorists organizations, had a relationship with al Qaeda. And we went into Iraq, obviously, and Saddam Hussein today is in jail, which is in fact where he belongs. (Applause.)

We've got a new government stood up in Iraq, an interim government with Mr. Allawi in charge as the Prime Minister. The Iraqis now control all of their ministries. They're involved in making a lot of the key decisions with respect to their government. We're working very aggressively, as well, to train Iraqi forces, and to stand up their own security forces so they can take on the responsibility that our guys are having to bear now. And that's going to be vital in the future. We can only take the process like this so far, and then ultimately they've got to be willing to take on responsibility for their own governance, their own political system, and for their own security system. And that's the direction we're headed in there, as well, too.

I don't want to underestimate for anybody how difficult these tasks are. These are tough, challenging places to operate. We're up against some very tough and murderous types, if you will, when we see what is happening in various places in terms of the conflict that's going there. But it is absolutely essential we get it right -- because what we have to do here, the ultimate solution isn't just to kill terrorists. You can do that all day long. The ultimate solution here is to make certain that we change the circumstances on the ground in places like Iraq and Afghanistan so they never again become breeding grounds for the terrorists that launched those deadly attacks not only against the United States, but obviously, for the kinds of terrorist attacks that we've seen around the world.

This is not just a U.S. problem. There was a bit of a tendency, I think there, perhaps, at the outset to think, well, they hit the United States, the United States is the bogie man here, and they're going to come after us. Well, they'll probably come after us more than anybody else just because of who we are and what we believe, but just look at what has transpired around the world since 9/11 with the attacks in Madrid, in Casablanca, in Mombassa, in Istanbul, in Riyadh, in Bali, in Jakarta, and most recently, of course, in Baslan, in Russia, this week where they slaughtered hundreds of school children. We don't yet know exactly what the relationship is between the groups that launched that attack and whether or not al Qaeda is involved. That jury is still out on all of that. The Russians seem to think there may be some connections there. But obviously, it's another example of the kind of problem we've got with those who resort to terror to try achieve their political objectives as happened in that case.

It's vitally important that the decision we make going forward this year -- get it right. Because there are fundamental differences between the way the President wants to proceed and the way we've operated now for the last three years, and the way Senator Kerry would approach these problems. I think the record is pretty clear.

I have previously said, and I will say again today, all of us want to thank Senator Kerry for his service in Vietnam. He talked about it a lot at his convention. And it deserves praise. And we want to honor his service. We do that for all of our veterans, regardless of what their political views might be. And certainly, Senator Kerry is entitled to same treatment, judgment. The problem I have with Senator Kerry's record is what happened after he got to the United States Senate, and what he did for 20 years in the Senate.

If I want a judgment made about how an individual who is seeking the post of Commander-in-Chief, who wants to be President of the United States, how he'll conduct himself on the basic fundamental issues that I'm concerned about, and I think most Americans are concerned about these days, I look back at how he has voted when he's been given the opportunity on these kinds of issues about national security, about our military forces, about our intelligence capabilities, about when to use force and under what circumstances as guides for trying to assess how he would function as President of the United States -- and what has he said about Iraq, and how he operated in terms of the war on terror. And when I look at that record, it's pretty clear that Senator Kerry has frequently been at odds with what I think -- and what I think most Americans believe -- has been the proper approach. We can go back to the period of the 1980s when he arrived in the Senate, when he opposed virtually every major weapons system that Ronald Reagan put forward that turned out to be crucial in terms of our success, both in the Cold War, but also in terms of the kinds of capabilities that we have today to deal with the current set of circumstances that we're required to deal with.

Senator Kerry and others have said, well, when he voted against those systems back in the '80s, those were just the systems that Cheney cancelled when he was Secretary of Defense. Huge difference here. It's important to look at the distinction. Because in fact, when he was voting against those systems back in the '80s, I was voting for them. I was a member of the House of Representatives. And by the time I became Secretary of Defense, the Cold War had ended.

The Soviet threat had gone away, and we needed new forces and new kinds of capabilities. So don't let anybody tell you that what he did in the 1980s when he -- at one point put out a press release that opposed -- I think this was in connection with his '84 campaign, opposed some 65 separate weapons systems, that that in any way is a parallel to the action that I undertook when I was Secretary of Defense, back in 1989 to 1993 -- very different proposition.

It's also important if you look at the other kinds of issues that he's had to deal with. When we had the first Gulf crisis -- 1990 and '91 -- and we put together the coalition, and we went and liberated Kuwait and sent the Iraqis back into Iraq, John Kerry voted against that. He stood up and argued that we should not have done what we did in Operation Desert Storm, which is one I followed fairly closely since I was Secretary of Defense then. He was on the wrong side of that issue.

When we get down to the situation with respect to Iraq, what we've seen is that initially he voted for the resolution to authorize the President to use force against Saddam Hussein. But then a few months later, when it came time to vote for the funds the President requested to equip the troops with what they needed once they had been committed to combat, he voted no. Now, there were only four members of the United States Senate that voted on one hand to commit the troops, and then came back around later on and voted against giving them the resources they needed to do what we'd asked them to do for us -- only four senators -- one was Senator Kerry and the other was Senator Edwards, two out of the four.

The bottom line in my estimation is, based on the way he's operated as a senator, his view of the world, I don't believe he has demonstrated the kind of commitment and capability and philosophy and world view, frankly, that I think is essential if we're going to have the kind of very tough policy that we need going forward if we're going to successfully defend the United States against the kind of threat we're faced with today. (Applause.)

Now, he's said that he would use military force. He'd like to do it in the fairly traditional way, when the U.S. is attacked. My argument would be, we've already been attacked. We suffered 3,000 casualties. (Applause.) And the success of our efforts, and something that I think every American cares about, our ability to be able to ensure that our children and grandchildren are going to be able to live in a safe and secure world depends upon the basic fundamental decisions we're making now.

We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world. They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11 -- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right. We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is at stake in this election. (Applause.)

Now, I at this point would be happy to stop. And we can get into questions. You ought to throw some questions at Lynne, too. She's brighter than I am.

MRS. CHENEY: Yes. (Laughter.)

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Yes. (Laughter.)

Q I'm from Des Moines, Iowa. And first of all, I just want to thank you for your leadership -- both you and Lynne, and the Bushes for your leadership and integrity that we see demonstrated in Washington, D.C., that we need so much in our country.

My question is, last week, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that a 144,000 new jobs were created, which to me is a step in the right direction. But at the same time, Senator Kerry has put these ads out saying that we have the worst economy since the Great Depression, basically. And I just wanted to know how you respond to that, and why he is basically trying to come out and mislead the United States on this issue?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, I obviously, disagree with him. I think to say this is the worst economy since the Great Depression -- I'm trying to think of how I can appropriately -- (Laughter.) Lynne says he's been too busy windsurfing. (Laughter and applause.)

The fact is the unemployment rate today, 5.4 percent nationally, is exactly what it was when Bill Clinton ran for reelection in 1996 -- 5.4 percent. (Applause.) The unemployment has come down fairly significantly now over the course of the last year. We've had 12 months of steady growth. We've added 1.7 million new jobs since last August. I think they've got a vested interest in trying to portray things in a very bleak fashion, and that they've got to be able to demonstrate that there's something wrong, or that there's some fundamental problem here I supposed if they're trying to build support for the proposition that he ought to be elected President. But I just don't think the rhetoric fits with the reality. There's no question we got work to do on the economy. We always do. There's always more that we can do to improve the quality of life, to improve opportunities for people, to improve our educational system so that our kids can take advantage of our economy when they finally do get out of school, so we can train people to be able to fill those jobs that are being created. But to suggest that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, I didn't live through the Depression. I was born in 1941. But my parents did. And I've got to tell you, I just -- I think that's rhetoric that's over the top. I don't buy it. I don't think most people do. (Applause.)

Q I'm from West Des Moines, appreciate you being here in Iowa and showing us that Iowa is important. Mrs. Cheney, I've got a question for you. No Child Left Behind certainly is something that helps improve the education of our students, and shows us that the President values education. But there's been a lot of complaints about endorsed testing. Do you think there's an over-reliance on testing to measure kids' progress?

MRS. CHENEY: One of my favorite anecdotes that I think helps make the point about why testing is important is about a doctor. His name is John Canal (ph). He lives in West Virginia, and -- oh, it was 15 years ago, he started noticing that when parents brought their kids in, and he said, well, how are you kids doing in school, the answer he always got was, well, they're above average.

Well, think about that. Pretty soon you figure out that something is not quite right. Everybody has an elevated opinion of how his child or her child is learning. There were also many surveys done that showed that if you ask people how schools were doing, they said, well, they could do better. He said, how is your kids' school doing? People said, great. Now, again, it can't quite be right. What we had was a situation where parents, where teachers didn't really have the kind of information they needed to understand if kids were learning as much as they should -- as much as they need to be able to compete in a global economy.

And what testing does, I think, and what the President has shown in Texas, and we're getting some results here already, too, what testing does is show us how kids are doing. You know now how they're doing, instead of having to just have an impression of how they're doing.

You've got have them with high standards. And you in Iowa have set a mighty goal for the whole nation with your schools. You have very fine schools here in Iowa. And your kids always do very well at the top in national comparisons. Those high standards are important.

Testing to see if kids have met them worked in Texas to bring everybody, every child up, but also to close the achievement gap between Africa America kids and Anglo kids, and Hispanic kids and Anglo kids -- closed those achievement gaps, began to close them. They're not closed yet. And early results show that that's beginning to happen nationwide, too. So testing is a central part of it. I know -- I didn't always like to have to spend time when I was in school taking tests. It was more fun to do an arts project. But it is really important for us to understand how well our schools are doing so that we can encourage to do ever better for our children. (Applause.)

Q Illegal immigration, border safety and the President's amnesty policy, if the government doesn't come down hard on the people who are employing the illegal immigrants, and what is to prevent them, or what is the disincentive for them coming here?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, we've tightened up significantly on the borders since 9/11. We've had to. We've significantly beefed up our border security and so forth. But it continues to be a problem. Part of the difficulty that we're faced with, and one of the things that the President talked about with respect to the immigration policy is that we've got so many people coming across illegally -- primarily for economic reasons, that want to come to work in the United States. But we have no idea who is here. We have no idea what they do once they get here. We have no idea how long they're going to stay, and that there was a need to try to regularize this process. And what he has suggested is that we ought to consider the possibility of having what, in effect, would be a guest worker program so we'd know who was coming in, and that once here, then, they'd stay for a specific period of time. And they they'd have to go back home once their period of time was ended. They could not become citizens. But we would have track of who, in fact, was in the country. That's been proposed. Now, it's just an idea, a concept.

It hasn't gone anyplace legislatively at this point. And the problem we're faced with is that we need to find ways going forward to make sure we do, in fact, have knowledge of who is in the country and whether or not they've stayed, and how long they've stayed and what they're doing while they're here. And at present that's a very hard thing to do because of the enormous flow of people we've got back and forth. We've improved our system with respect to those that come in legally by visas and so forth. But we still don't have as good a grip as we need on all of those who come into the United States illegally, stay for a period of time, and then go back home.

And we need to do a better job than we are to make certain we screen out terrorists to the maximum extent possible. So it's an attempt to try to address that problem. It's not clear yet exactly how it ultimately gets sorted out or gets resolved. But that's at the heart of what is being talked about here.

Q I live in Altoona, Iowa. And I got my first paycheck for about $250. And the government took out about $50 from that. According to my math, that's about one-fifth. That means I work two days for the government. What can I do to change that? (Laughter and applause.)

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: How would you like to be Secretary of the Treasury? (Laughter.) No, we're -- that's a lesson we all learn when we first go to work. And I think most Americans don't mind paying taxes if they think that the money is well spent, and if they think that it's not excessive -- that is to say that you don't mind working for a certain amount, if you will, to go for the common purpose -- those things we need like schools, and defense and so forth. But you lose confidence, or you become aggravated -- I know I went through the same process starting out -- I had a paper route. It was my first job. That was before Lynne knew me even -- and you get that check and not only were income taxes taken out, but you also -- the payroll tax to pay for Social Security. And now Medicare comes out of it, as well, too. And I think the thing is to support the kind of sound, sane policy and philosophy when you look at public officials to see whether or not they agree with your general view of what right balance is. And I think George Bush is the man.

I believe seriously if you look at tax policy over the years. You look at what the President has done. You look at what his opponents have suggested and recommended. Again, look at Senator Kerry's record in the Senate. He voted -- 20 years in the Senate, he voted 98 times for higher taxes, and about 130 times against various proposals to reduce taxes. He's said -- now, he's campaigning on the basis that he's going to raise taxes for at least a portion of the population. And if you add up all of the numbers, he's recommended two $2 trillion in new spending, and he's going to cut the deficit in half at the same time, the only way he can do that is to raise taxes pretty much across the board on everybody because the folks at the top don't pay enough to be able to make up that huge difference. You're going to have to go out and tax the vast majority of Americans. So I think there's a clear choice there with respect to tax policy. I think you've got in George Bush a man who will do everything he can to make certain that we don't overburden the American taxpayer with taxes because we believe very deeply that the genius of our society resides not inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C., or what government does with your money, it resides primarily with what the American people do for themselves, and the opportunities that we create for ourselves, and businesses that are created. The best anti-poverty program I know is a job. And jobs aren't created by Uncle Sam and the federal government, jobs are created out there in the private sector. And so I think that's the key -- (Applause.)

Q Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, welcome to Iowa. And as a former Democrat, I would first like to honor your 40 years of marriage. Congratulations. (Applause.) I did vote for Bush, and I am now Republican. My question is, I am a volunteer voter registration coordinator at my church. And I would like to know what I can do to ensure, encourage more Christians to get out to vote to -- I think which will win Iowa. I would like to know what I could do, or we could do to ensure that.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, you've done a lot already by signing up the voter registration effort. What I like to remind people -- I still run into a lot of people. And of course, I've been involved in public life and politics and ran for Congress six times in Wyoming. And I've spent most of my career in it, and I suppose I've got a special affection for the political process and the political system. I just think it's important to remind people that it is a unique privilege. Very, very few civilizations in the history of the world have ever had the privilege we have of deciding who our leaders are going to be, and then hold them accountable for their performance. To live in the finest democracy the world has ever known is such a privilege. And for so many people to take that for granted, always offends me a bit. I like to remind people that what each individual does in fact matter. And all you have to do is look at the last election. It got decided by 537 votes in Florida. And when somebody comes to me and says, well, it's a big country, there are millions of Americans out there. It doesn't really matter what I do. I say, wait a minute, all you got to do is look at the election of 2000 and think about how close that election was; think about how momentous the events have been since then; and how important it is to have the right leadership, make the right decisions, and then tell everybody, look every vote matters. Every phone call matters. Every hour of volunteer time, every dollar that's contributed -- all of that goes to the success of this process, and that as Americans we ought to want a strong, vigorous election. We ought to want the candidates out there competing as aggressively as possible with respect to what they believe in, and what they stand for and what their platforms are. That's how we can educate ourselves, and also how we can ultimately hold them accountable.

If you can get a few minutes with a small group of people to try to convey that to them. And all we're asking them to do is to register to vote and then show up at the polls on Election Day, or in those states that have early voting, participate through that process. And it's such a privilege for us to be able to do that. You travel the world, and if you know anything about history, of you've spent any time looking at how people live in so many parts of the world, under dictatorships, oppressive regimes, no rights, no protections against the sovereign power of the state, to get to function and live your life as an American and participate in that process is just such a special privilege that nobody should take it for granted. (Applause.)

Q Yes, as a proud uncle of a niece and nephew who graduated from Annapolis; they're serving right now, I'd like to ask the question: the advent of the Cold War and the end of SALT II, will we continue with weapons systems by leading the world -- as the Switch Blade and the F-22 Raptor -- the Raptor, itself, to be able to offer three versions of it to our allies, rather than have them shop around?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Do I think we will do that?

Q Yes.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Yes, I think the Raptor is the next generation aircraft for the Air Force. I supported it strongly when I was Secretary of Defense. It is now, I guess, getting into production now. And it has been in development for a long time. And it will be the state of the art aircraft for the United States Air Force, probably for the next 30, 40 years anyway. The F-15 has been the backbone of the Air Force. I saw it first rolled out about 1974-75 down at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, when I worked for President Ford. And it has been in the Force now for 30 some years. It will continue to be part of the Force. But the Raptor is the next generation, if you will, after that. And we have in this administration protected it. It has been an important part of the defense budget each year. I have no reason to believe that's going to change.

Q I have more of a comment than I do a question. My son is a lance corporal in the Marine Corps. He's being deployed today. And I just want thank you and President Bush for everything that you've done for our troops. And I pray to God that you will be in there the next four years to finish.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, thank you very much. (Applause.) I hope you'll thank him on behalf of all of us for what he's doing for the nation. (Applause.)

And again, I want to thank all of you for being here today, for giving us some of your time. This last comment is, I think, a reminder to all of us that -- how important this election is this year. And we appreciate you being here this morning.


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[DVD Burner]

What, no one's gonna comment on Cheney saying;

"If we make the wrong choice in November we could get hit again..."

intimating that voting for Kerry would instigate terrorist attacks?

Is'nt doing something like this called "Blackmail"?

[buckethead alien]

Yeah. I read about Cheney's comments and thought, hmmmm, al qaeda doesn't give a fuck who's president.

[Simply Joel]

Yeah. I read about Cheney's comments and thought, hmmmm, al qaeda doesn't give a fuck who's president.

BA, I agree with your statement... yet due to an entirely different perspective... As David Brooks has written about terrorism...

"We should by now have become used to the death cult that is thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world. This is the cult of people who are proud to declare, "You love life, but we love death." This is the cult that sent waves of defenseless children to be mowed down on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, that trains kindergartners to become bombs, that fetishizes death, that sends people off joyfully to commit mass murder.

This cult attaches itself to a political cause but parasitically strangles it. The death cult has strangled the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide bombers have not brought peace to Palestine; they've brought reprisals. The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of Iraq; they're forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is now strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not independence but blood.

But that's the idea. Because the death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying."

http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic. ... start=1140

So, BA, it seems our thoughts crossed, but for entirely different reasons... or maybe not...

[Simply Joel]

What, no one's gonna comment on Cheney saying;

"If we make the wrong choice in November we could get hit again..."

intimating that voting for Kerry would instigate terrorist attacks?

Is'nt doing something like this called "Blackmail"?

excerpted from the text above.... and what the news media left out... the statement in dark red put a context to the ones of which everyone's hair caught on fire... blackmail, no... reality from my perspective.

"We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again. That we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

We have to understand it is a war. It's different than anything we've ever fought before. But they mean to do everything they can to destroy our way of life. They don't agree with our view of the world. They've got an extremist view in terms of their religion. They have no concept or tolerance for religious freedom. They don't believe women ought to have any rights. They've got a fundamentally different view of the world, and they will slaughter -- as they demonstrated on 9/11 -- anybody who stands in their way. So we've got to get it right. We've got to succeed here. We've got to prevail. And that's what is at stake in this election."

I believe in the context stated, the VP is correct in his assertions.

To further explain his perspective, I believe investing the time to read this article might help.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/podhoretz.htm

and yeah, i read it over vacation...

[Force]

I don't care how you rationalize it, intimating that people will die unless they reelect Bush is wrong.

It also goes to show how desperate they are that they can't make their case for reelection without resorting to this kind of stupid-ass caveman/kindergarden thinking.

Kindly explain to me the difference between a terrorist saying do what I want or I'll kill this kid and Cheney saying do what we want or people die?

Oh, wait, that's right, you don't have conversations, you just like posting other people's stuff here.

[DVD Burner]

Oh, wait, that's right, you don't have conversations, you just like posting other people's stuff here.

[Simply Joel]

Force, my posts are meant to be informative... and besides... in a battle of wits, who fights an unarmed man?

Actually, I agree with Cheney... the democrats don't have a plan to battle terrorism... admittedly, the Repubilcans don't execute their plan well...

i would have preferred overwhelning force in Iraq unlike what Rumsfield sent... maybe 500K troops intially, then taper off.

however, as said by Brooks in another informative post of mine... the left simply chooses to look away from the difficulties and focus on something more platable, like blaming the USA for all these illls.

I am hoping that free Iraqis will soon take the side of stablilty and boot the insurgents out which willl alow Amercian forces to withdraw...

I don't see that happening soon, yet... it is pretty hard to be pro-demoncracy when any jerkoff with an AK-47 can walk over to your house and blow you away.

The long term stability of Iraq and the region, is in fact, their responsibility... and I believe, in time, the moderates will gain the uper hand.

No other nation in the world, but the USA, has the resources and the will to assist them in bringing representative government to their soil.

As for rationalizing.... a definition is required

Main Entry: ra·tio·nal·ize
Pronunciation: 'rash-n&-"lIz, 'ra-sh&-n&l-"Iz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -ized; -iz·ing
transitive senses
1 : to free (a mathematical expression) from irrational parts <rationalize a denominator>
2 : to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable: as a : to substitute a natural for a supernatural explanation of <rationalize a myth> b : to attribute (one's actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives <rationalized his dislike of his brother>
3 : to apply the principles of scientific management to (as an industry or its operations) for a desired result (as increased efficiency)
intransitive senses : to provide plausible but untrue reasons for conduct


Difference between the VP and Cheney... he has sovreignty on his side.

[Force]

Force, my posts are meant to be informative... and besides... in a battle of wits, who fights an unarmed man?

I agree with you. That's why my posts are directed more towards those who might be swayed by you than they are at changing your brainwashed mind.

In this battle, you are the child with the supersoaker who thinks he's hot stuff, and I am the adult who lounges by the pool patiently and endures your antics on a hot day, occasionally rising to toss you into the far end of the pool... and smiles knowing that I could go into the house and get the shotgun...

Actually, I agree with Cheney... the democrats don't have a plan to battle terrorism... admittedly, the Repubilcans don't execute their plan well...

I don't see that happening soon, yet... it is pretty hard to be pro-demoncracy when any jerkoff with an AK-47 can walk over to your house and blow you away.

Yes, you're right, the republican's failure to seal our borders is a mystifyingly simple step in protecting America that has not been taken. What is your rationalization for why they haven't done this, and instead have sent our sons and brothers and friends to die in a foreign land? I'm truly interested in how your brainwashed mind makes sense of this...

Difference between the VP and Cheney... he has sovreignty on his side.

I'm not sure what this means.

Let us eat cake while our sons and brothers and friends die?

Wow. Or are you just baiting me with that?

I'm assuming you meant to compare Cheney with the terrorists and not himself- your confused mind trips you up again...

[Simply Joel]

Force, my posts are meant to be informative... and besides... in a battle of wits, who fights an unarmed man?

I agree with you. That's why my posts are directed more towards those who might be swayed by you than they are at changing your brainwashed mind.

whoa dude, i am not trying to sway anyone's opinion... on the other hand, i am making the reader aware of other perspectives from pundits and journalists... of which are held in high regard by a significant number of people beyond, yet including the burning man community.

In this battle, you are the child with the supersoaker who thinks he's hot stuff, and I am the adult who lounges by the pool patiently and endures your antics on a hot day, occasionally rising to toss you into the far end of the pool... and smiles knowing that I could go into the house and get the shotgun...

uh huh.

Actually, I agree with Cheney... the democrats don't have a plan to battle terrorism... admittedly, the Repubilcans don't execute their plan well...

I don't see that happening soon, yet... it is pretty hard to be pro-demoncracy when any jerkoff with an AK-47 can walk over to your house and blow you away.

Yes, you're right, the republican's failure to seal our borders is a mystifyingly simple step in protecting America that has not been taken. What is your rationalization for why they haven't done this, and instead have sent our sons and brothers and friends to die in a foreign land? I'm truly interested in how your brainwashed mind makes sense of this...

I sincerely doubt the ACLU would allow such a liberty curtainling action like sealing our borders. Would you actually endorse such a radical step in isolating us from our neighbors? of which political philosophy would support such a radical idea? Pat Buchanan from the right I am sure.... As President Bush has stated, if you had listened... "we took the fight to them"

i really doubt your interest in me or any personality trait i possess.

Difference between the VP and Cheney... he has sovereignty on his side.

I'm not sure what this means.

It means VP Cheney represents a sovereign state while terrorists do not. Terrorists lack sovereignty, unless of couse, you are state which supports terrorism.
and to assist you, a defintion.

Main Entry: sov·er·eign·ty
Variant(s): also sov·ran·ty /-tE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Middle English soverainte, from Middle French soveraineté, from Old French, from soverain
1 obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it
2 a : supreme power especially over a body politic b : freedom from external control : AUTONOMY c : controlling influence
3 : one that is sovereign; especially : an autonomous state

Let us eat cake while our sons and brothers and friends die?

no, not at all.

Wow. Or are you just baiting me with that?

no, not at all... i think baiting you would require me to place value on your posts.

I'm assuming you meant to compare Cheney with the terrorists and not himself- your confused mind trips you up again...

actually, because you did not understand my comments about sovereignty... it is you, not me, that is confused.

[geekster]

I didn't read all the posts. I would be in favor of repeal of the 17th ammendment that made senators elected directly by the people. For the first hundred years or so we got along just fine with the senators being elected by the state legislatures. The state governments need to be a check/balance on the federal government. This also keeps down the number of federally mandated programs shoved down the throats of the states that they are forced to pay for. If the senators had to answer to their state government, they might also be able to take positions that aren't popular in the polls but are best in the long term. The congress was designed for the people to have their house and for the states to have theirs. I think it should be put back that way. Otherwise, there is really no point to having a senate at all.

As for the exectoral college, we have to have it, I think. If we didn't, we would be in a position where the candidates would campaign in New York, LA, Chicago and a few other cities and that is it. The vast heartland of the country would have no say.

The one major problem I see with the current system is with absentee ballots. Where I live in California, if there are not enough absentee ballots to make a difference in a race, they are thrown away uncounted. In California alone, I believe that 2 million absentee ballots were thrown away uncounted after the last presidential election. The truth is that nobody knows who really won the popular vote because more absentee ballots nationwide were thrown away than the difference between the candidates popular vote results but election districts only operate on a district by district basis. If there were not enough absentee ballots in a district to tip the balance, they are tossed out even if the aggregated number of absentee ballots nationwide would change the popular vote.

I seem to remember absentee ballots for the presidential race being counted in only a few places, Florida and New Mexico come to mind, maybe a couple of other places. The simple truth is that nobody knows who really won the popular vote last election because not all the votes were counted and more votes were thrown away than the difference. COUNT ALL ABSENTEE BALLOTS every time, please.

[geekster]

Force, my posts are meant to be informative... and besides... in a battle of wits, who fights an unarmed man?

Actually, I agree with Cheney... the democrats don't have a plan to battle terrorism... admittedly, the Repubilcans don't execute their plan well...

i would have preferred overwhelning force in Iraq unlike what Rumsfield sent... maybe 500K troops intially, then taper off.

Well, if 5 years ago ... or even after the end of the 1st Gulf War ... anyone that said you could take the entire country of Iraq and hold it for nearly 2 years and loose only 1000 in the process, would have been told that they were nuts, that you would loose more than that in one day in Baghdad alone. Forgetting emotion and applying only logic here, it has been a brilliant millitary success if not a political one. As for overwhelming force, sure, if the 4th Infantry had been able to stage in Turkey as the original plan called for, things might have been way different. Having a huge force in the north and west of the contry might have made it difficult for the insurgents and foreign elements to get organized.

As for a lot of the current fighting, one has to follow the money. A lot of it has to do with power and control among the Shi'a clerics. It kind of goes like this ... when people go to the mosque, they often give offerings of money or other valuables. This might not be much different than people see with the passing of the collection plate in American Christian churches. Najaf is special in that people from all over make pilgrimages to that mosque. Whoever controls that mosque makes a LOT of dough. Whichever faction controls the most number of mosques gets a lot of resources with which to do a lot of things and whichever holds the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf holds the mother lode.

There are several things going on at the same time. There are foreign elements there that just want to disrupt things and make sure that there is chaos and disorder and to see that the US is unsuccessful in pretty much anything. There is a fight for dominance by the various factions in the Shi'a community. There is a fight for dominance by the overall Shi'a population to have a greater role in the government that they have been denied for decades. There is a general criminal element that is well armed and taking advantage of the situation to take hostages for ransom, extort businesses, steal supplies and raw materials for profit, etc.

The people there are, I believe, so used to being powerless that it just hasn't dawned on them yet that they can simply say "enough is enough" and stop putting up with the crap. The Iraqi security forces have to get strong enough so that 1. they are confident in their own ability and 2. the people are confident enough in them that they start to come forward and help them clean up the mess. Corruption is another issue. The recent arrest of a police chief for corruption opened some eyes. I think if the people see an honest effort to clean up corruption and crime being delt with by Iraqis and not foreigners, trust will develop and things will get better. Overall, I believe that the recent creation of the 100 member council was a good sign. The fact that it went on in spite of the fighting in Najaf was a great tribute to the Iraqis that took part in it. It showed that there are people there seriously interested in buildding a country and less interested in simply making a political point at the expense of the welfare of the population or in being intimidated by thugs.

One problem I have is people that try to draw parallels with Viet Nam. Viet Nam is a different country with a different story and with different people with a different history. In Viet Nam we were proping up an unpopular government. In Iraq we took down an unpopular government and are trying to hold things together long enough for the people themselves to build a new one.

As for WMD ... after the 1st Gulf War we inventoried a bunch of shit. We KNEW it was there, we saw it, touched it, counted it. Iraq prevented the inspectors from keeping track of it so they left. After 9/11, the inspectors returned under pressure on Iraq from the UN. World security demanded that that much WMD could not simply go unaccounted for. When the inspectors returned they are told that it is all gone but not given any records of its disposition. What happened to it all? Nobody could get a straight answer. So now you have a few tons of anthrax gone missing and nobody knows where it went AND you have your Director of Central Intelligence telling you that it is still there ... that it is a "slam dunk" in his words. A president would be irresponsible NOT to do something under those circumstances. The CIA totally and completely fucked up. It seems like they got lead down the garden path somehow. We operated with UNANAMOUS consent of the security council. Leading up to combat, there were several resolutions passed. The last one giving member states the right to take action. A joint Spain/US resolution SPECIFICALLY authorizing the invasion was never voted on.

In my opinion, what happened was probably right in a logical sense. The people of Iraq will probably be much better off in 5 years than they would have been otherwise. But the fact remains that George Tenat fucked up bigtime and, thankfully, has resigned. In my opinion a special seat should be constructed in the temple next year so that he may witness the burn from the inside.

Now ... having said all that ... I am no Bush fan and I am damned sure not a Kerry fan. I would say my leanings are more Libertarian and I would vote that way if they ever ran a non-nut for office. If you ever get the chance you might want to dig around a bit at http://www.cato.org for some interesting reading here and there.

[samtzu]

geekster wrote:

Well, if 5 years ago ... or even after the end of the 1st Gulf War ... anyone that said you could take the entire country of Iraq and hold it for nearly 2 years and loose only 1000 in the process, would have been told that they were nuts, that you would loose more than that in one day in Baghdad alone. Forgetting emotion and applying only logic here, it has been a brilliant millitary success if not a political one.

I understand your sentiments, and, logically, you are correct. However, as someone who almost wound up amongst the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial, the price we have paid in Iraq (and continue to pay) is too high.

Numbers are easy... individuals are hard... very hard. To lose one is to lose a world of imagination, love, life itself. I refuse to look at the numbers as 'reasonable'. Each one is a person, just like each of us, who will no longer be able to enjoy the limited freedoms that we enjoy. If this was a true battle for our own nation, then the cost would be looked at in a different light, and I would even be willing to put my own aged ass on the line... but it is not a battle for our nation. It is a political battle in which oil and power are the prizes, and real human lives are lost. REAL human lives, not numbers.

Yes, I know that that is a very emotional approach to the situation, but it is an approach I have locked myself into willingly. I can accept no other. Perhaps it is a good thing that I am not President, because I would pull the whole circus out today; lock, stock, and smoking barrel. One life lost in this assinine war is one life too many.

[Simply Joel]

I don't consider this war asinine, yet I do believe the manner by which it has been wages is... and I am really amazed the legislature hasn't been present and accounted for in its oversight responsibilities.

Main Entry: as·i·nine
Pronunciation: 'a-s&n-"In
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin asininus, from asinus ass
1 : marked by inexcusable failure to exercise intelligence or sound judgment <an asinine excuse>
2 : of, relating to, or resembling an ass
synonym see SIMPLE
- as·i·nine·ly adverb
- as·i·nin·i·ty /"a-s&-'ni-n&-tE/ noun

[samtzu]

Joel Wrote:

Etymology:Latin asininus, from asinus ass
1 : marked by inexcusable failure to exercise intelligence or sound judgment <an asinine excuse>
2 : of, relating to, or resembling an ass
synonym see SIMPLE

I LIKE IT!!!!! And I still think it is an assinine war... per the definition.

You, on the other hand, are not assinine and I hope you continue to post whatever the fuck you feel like posting, whether it is your material or someone else's!!

Some attacks made on this thread are like a dog peeing on your leg: embarassing, annoying, but not really dangerous. Keeping on keeping on, Joel! (Like you need me to tell you that!)

[Simply Joel]

i just remember that sometimes the dog pees on the electric fence....

shocking news to the dog, don't you know!

[samtzu]

Doesn't this go on the 'dick joke' thread?

Oh, that's right... this is the Dick joke thread!

God, I love politics!!

[geekster]

Numbers are easy... individuals are hard... very hard. To lose one is to lose a world of imagination, love, life itself. I refuse to look at the numbers as 'reasonable'. Each one is a person, just like each of us, who will no longer be able to enjoy the limited freedoms that we enjoy.

Well, here is the problem with that logic (sorry to have to go back to the logic thing again): If what you are REALLY getting at is senseless killing, then there are MUCH bigger fish to fry than the war in Iraq. Since that war started probably somewhere near 70,000 Americans have been killed in automobile accidents. In 2002 alone 1.2 million world-wide were killed in traffic accidents and 85-90% were low and middle income. Where is the outrage? These are in many cases innocent children, babies, mothers and fathers, grandparents and a few assholes sprinkled in just to make it not completely terrible.

Nobody in Iraq was drafted. Every single one of them, inclucing the called up IRR troops knew that when they joined the Armed Forces that they might be called upon to gift a little lead and might get some in return. It isn't like people were just rounded up without their consent and shoved into harm's way.

While I will agree that it is certainly a damned shame when any of them are killed and it is a great loss to their family, friends, and loved ones; the fact that people in the military are often commanded to engage in activites that can result in death should not have been a complete surprise to them. This as opposed to the sleeping kid in the van broadsided by the drunk. Yes, every single life is precious beyond calculation. I believe that with all my heart.

But if you are really interested in stopping senseless killing, start at the big causes and work your way down the list. More Americans are gunned down in California cities every year than in Iraq. Just keep things in perspective.

If you are politically opposed to the war, GREAT. Just be honest and say so. I have a problem with people that seem to be using a peripheral issue such as death and disfigurement as their issue of opposition when that is a pretty weak angle in this case. Give us the REAL reason you are opposed even if it is as simple as "a group of people I really like are all opposed to it so I want to join them in their opposition too" ... whatever the reason just be honest. Going on the "because war kills people" angle is pretty high up there in the duh! department. Oppose the war on political grounds with reason. Tell us what could have been done instead. Tell us why things would have been better if things had been done your way, I am genuinely interested in hearing it. THAT should be the debate. War is a tool used to solve a problem. It should be the tool of last resort. I am not convinced it was the last resort in this case but I don't know that more than 1000 Americans wouldn't be dead now if we didn't go in there ... or at least I didn't know that at the time they went in (hindsight is always 20/20). Actually there is also a bigger issue. There is not a single Arab democracy that I know of in the Middle East. Maybe now there will be one.

If it is senseless killing you want to stop, there are some bigger fish to be fried, brother.

[Force]

Actually, I agree with Cheney... the democrats don't have a plan to battle terrorism... admittedly, the Repubilcans don't execute their plan well...

I don't see that happening soon, yet... it is pretty hard to be pro-demoncracy when any jerkoff with an AK-47 can walk over to your house and blow you away.

Yes, you're right, the republican's failure to seal our borders is a mystifyingly simple step in protecting America that has not been taken. What is your rationalization for why they haven't done this, and instead have sent our sons and brothers and friends to die in a foreign land? I'm truly interested in how your brainwashed mind makes sense of this...

I sincerely doubt the ACLU would allow such a liberty curtainling action like sealing our borders. Would you actually endorse such a radical step in isolating us from our neighbors? of which political philosophy would support such a radical idea? Pat Buchanan from the right I am sure.... As President Bush has stated, if you had listened... "we took the fight to them

And left our flank (America) undefended. Why? Why are our borders neglected while at the airports people have to take off their shoes, endure rigorous screening, etc.?

I'll tell you why- the only explanation that makes sense is that the power elite, or the military/industrial complex, or whatever you want to call it, WANTS us to be hit again, so they can have an excuse to send our sons and brothers and friends to die so that they can control an oil-producing country.

Difference between the VP and Cheney... he has sovereignty on his side.

It means VP Cheney represents a sovereign state while terrorists do not. Terrorists lack sovereignty, unless of couse, you are state which supports terrorism.

Ah, so what you're saying is that because he was elected to office by the people (supposedly anyway, that's a whole different issue there) it's ok for him to act like a terrorist and tell people to vote for him or die?

Nobody in Iraq was drafted. Every single one of them, inclucing the called up IRR troops knew that when they joined the Armed Forces that they might be called upon to gift a little lead and might get some in return. It isn't like people were just rounded up without their consent and shoved into harm's way.

Actually it's a lot like that, since the armed forces' job is SUPPOSED to be defending America, not taking over oil countries for Bush and Haliburton.

[Force]

Oh, and I wasn't talking about sealing our borders so that no one gets in or out, I'm just pointing out that if they really were so concerned about the citizenry being protected, there wouldn't be thousands of miles of completely undefended borders.

Oh, wait, to be fair, I guess at least some of the roads from Canada to the US have orange cones blocking them at night when there's no one on duty at the checkpoints, so technically that counts as a defense.

[Simply Joel]

Force, i am glad you have it all figured out.

[samtzu]

Geekster:

One of us here doesn't get it.

You are treating this war as if it were an academic exercise played with moving numbers and concepts. You see it as a legitimate human enterprise. I do not. I find very few human enterprises to be 'legitimate'. War is a very real occurance with very real humans losing their very real lives, while their very real family and loved ones grieve. It is not comparable to automobile statistics, unless all the drivers are pairing off in teams, trying to take control of the roads by killing off all the other drivers not on their team.

I find politics to be repulsive. It is the struggle for power, in which manipulation of others is the primary goal. Power for Power's sake. Politics has never made a better world for anyone, the United States of America not withstanding. (It didn't do the native population any good)

I do not look at the world situation as simply a struggle between different people. It is a situation that involves the people, the animals, the plants, the water, and the very air above us. In short, the entire planetary ecosystem. Any 'solution' to 'make the world a better place in which to live' (which is needed simply because of the primate manipulation over the eons, resulting in a ecological mess and a bad place for most life forms) that doesn't encompass the entire range of existence on this planet is vastly short sighted.

By the way, the only solution I can come up with (after studying this 'situation' over and over, for years) is the biblical one: massive destruction of the human race. It would give the planet enough time to cleanse itself and get going again. This is not the same as war. War is Us doing it; this cleansing would have to be a huge natural catastrophe for it to be effective: a huge caldera, a raging virus, a big assed meteorite.

And finally, I do not debate. Although debate might be thought of as two primates trying to draw each other into the other's way of thinking, it is, in actuality, simply two primates screaming at each other until one of them walks away defeated. I don't know of anyone that I have brought over to my point of view... EVER!, and I actually don't want to be with anyone who has my point of view. They would be one scary motherfucker.

Debate? Debate?? Fuck that... I hereby walk away... defeated. Your logic has won. Enjoy