Subject: Good or Bad?
I'm trying to get all this political stuff straightened out in my
head so I'll know how to vote come November.



Right now, we have one  guy saying one  thing.  Then the other guy says
something else.
Who to believe.  Lemme see; have I got this straight?
Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good...
Bush  awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad...



Clinton spends 77 billion on war in Serbia - good...

Bush spends 87 billion in Iraq - bad...



Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good...

Bush imposes regime change  in Iraq - bad...



Clinton bombs Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslim Albanian
terrorists.... good...

Bush liberates 25 million from a genocidal dictator -  bad...



Clinton bombs Chinese embassy - good...

Bush bombs terrorist camps ...bad...



Clinton commits felonies while in office - good...

Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad...



No mass graves found in Serbia - good...

No WMD found Iraq - bad...



Stock market crashes in 2000 under Clinton - good...

Economy on upswing under Bush - bad...



Clinton refuses to take custody of Bin Laden - good...

World Trade Centers fall under Bush - bad...



Clinton says Saddam has nukes - good...

Bush says Saddam has nukes -  bad...



Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good...

Bush imposes regime change  in Iraq - bad...  



Terrorist training in Afghanistan under Clinton - good...

Bush destroys training camps in Afghanistan - bad...



Milosevic not yet convicted - good...

Saddam turned over for trial ...bad...  



Ahh, it's so confusing!
Thought you would find this interesting.
Every year an independent tax watchdog group analyzes the average tax
burden on Americans, and then calculates the "Tax Freedom Day".
This is the day after which the money you earn goes to you,

not the government.



This year, tax freedom day was April 11th. That's the earliest it has
been since 1991.

It's latest day ever was May 2nd, which occurred in 2000.



Notice  anything special about those dates?
Recently, John Kerry gave a speech in which he claimed Americans
are actually paying more taxes under Bush, despite the tax cuts. He
gave no explanation and provided no data for this claim.



Another interesting fact: Both George Bush and John Kerry are wealthy
men.
Bush owns only one home, his ranch in Texas.
Kerry owns 4 mansions, all worth several million dollars. (His
ski resort,  home in Idaho is an old barn brought over from Europe in
pieces.
Not your  average A-frame).



Bush paid $250,000 in taxes this year; Kerry paid $90,000. Does
that sound right? The man who wants to raise your taxes obviously has
figured  out a way to avoid paying his own.



> > > > >  Pass this on. The election is close.

Notice I didn't say Republicans, because both sides are guilty of fact distortion.

My opinion though is that at least Democrats have the distortions based around some sort of fact and/or report, etc. While most of the Republican ones are based around assumptions, personal feelings, and just blatant lies.


Like:
The ad by the pro-Bush group Progress for America Voter Fund claims the economy was already in a recession when Bush took office, but the National Bureau of Economic Research (which dates business cycles) says the recession actually began in March 2001, after Bush took office in January.
http://www.factcheck.org/article278.html

Already in Recession ?
=======================
It's not quite true, as the ad claims, that Bush inherited "an economy already in recession (emphasis added)." It would have been accurate to say Bush inherited "an economy on the verge of recession."

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-partisan group of mostly academic economists, set  the start date of the recession as March 2001, weeks after Bush took office on Jan 20. The NBER defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

To be sure, the rate of economic growth had slowed significantly at the time Bush took office, as the longest boom in US history drew to a close. Real Gross Domestic Product, a general indicator of economic performance, grew an an unimpressive annual rate of 2.1 percent in the final quarter of 2000, after actually contracting by half a percentage point in the previous quarter. But employment was still growing when Bush was sworn in, and the economy actually added 113,000 payroll jobs between January and March 2001, before starting to decline in April.

In fact, the NBER did not even make a determination that a recession had begun until 10 months after Bush was sworn in, and said that the downturn might not even have qualified as a recession until the attacks of September 11, 2001 exacerbated the nation's economic troubles. The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee said, "Before the attacks, it is possible that the decline in the economy would have been too mild to qualify as a recession. The attacks clearly deepened the contraction and may have been an important factor in turning the episode into a recession."



-- Modified on 10/16/2004 3:31:48 PM

Have to love that quotation from the biggest failed president of the latter half of the Twentieth Century.

And the reference to the George Soros-funded lie-site.

-- Modified on 10/19/2004 6:41:57 AM

Dont' forget that the Secret Service protects all the former presidents for life with 24hr cover.  What this means is that in order to do that one must set up facilities at the residence(s) of the president.  This obviously has already been done @ Crawford.  But if Kerry wins, the Secret Service will have to set up perminant stations at all 7 Kerry mansions at an annual cost to the taxpayers in the millions of dollars.  Depending upon travel, it can cost tens of millions yearly to protect individual former presidents and their familys.  Given that Kerry has many more residents than does Bush, it will cost the Taxpayers millions more - but hey, it's only chump change.

Oh, BTW, it is pretty sad that Clinton charges the Secret Service rent in the Clinton's NY residence.  I guess that's how the Clinton's can afford that place up there when they didn't have the cash to pay for it.

Where is the Nixon Quote?  Or was it an LBJ one?  I must have missed it.

And G. Soros is smarter and more on point than just about any politico I know of.  Why diss him?  He's Warren Buffet with a social consience- and more cash!

"the biggest failed president of the latter half of the Twentieth Century."

GW Bush has surpassed him by leaps and bounds in that dept. I also doubt W will ever win a Nobel Peace Prize. More likely would be the Darwin Award.

Let's see, 50 million have been freed on GWB's watch; Afghanistan, Iran, and Nicaragua enslaved under Jimmy Carter's watch.

Unemployment rate as low or lower now than when Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996, and interest rates at lowest point in 40 years; Jimmy Carter nearly destroyed the American economy with a misery index of 21.

That's some failure.

One thing we can agree on, though.  I, too, doubt that GWB will ever win a Nobel Peace Prize.  For one thing, he won't lobby for it.  For another, he'll never surrender American security interests to satisfy the appeasers in Stockholm.

And let's see.  What other statesmen of note can be placed in the non-winner category for the Nobel Peace Prize?  Ronald Reagan; Margaret Thatcher; Sir Winston Churchill; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Harry S. Truman; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and Golda Meir.

And who has won it?  Among those truly deserving, the Nobel Committee has recognized terrorist leader Yasser Arafat; fraud Rigoberto Menchu; Frank Kellogg and Aristide Briand (of the Kellogg-Briand Pact fame, outlawing war in 1929; what a success that was); North Vietnamese Communist Le Duc Tho; and Kofi Annan.

Yeah, I'll put up my list of losers against that selected list of "winners" any day.