From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 29 2003 - 15:07:29 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 1:26 PM
Subject: Re: would you vote for this man?
> Have you been actually listening to what the man says? If he doesn't have
the
> power then he certainly doesn't disagree with much of anything that is
being
> done. Quite the opposite. If you believe the job has no real power then
why
> do we even bother with presidental elections? Ever head of executive
> orders? The president actually has a great deal of power and it can do a
> great deal of damage in the hands of the wrong person.
>
Maybe I was a bit too vague. He has executive powers, yes. But the "resume"
seemed to want to blame him for anything and everything that is going wrong
today, including the state of the economy. I really don't believe the
president has enough power to tank the economy, and if he did, why would he
do it?
> > Yes he has spent a lot of money on the military.
> > No he hasn't stepped up to the late on energy.
> > But really, the economy is it's own monster. It was slowing down prior
to
> > Bush taking office. Sept. 11 didn;t help matters.
>
> The point is that Bush administration didn't do anything that helped
either.
>
I agree, but but isn;t alone in this.
> > Sept 11 may have been an intelligence failure, but nothing is 100%. How
> > many tips do they really get on terrorist plots? How many turn out to be
> > real? How much can you change an organization like our intelligence
> > community in the 9 months that he had? You can;t shut down the airlines
> > every time someone threatens to attack our country.
> >
>
> There is more than a little material out there that his administration was
> briefed that something like this, something very much like 9/11, was in
the
> works. But in any case his administration has actively suppressed full
and
> impartial investigation into much of 9/11.
>
This is a matter of hindsight being 20/20. The government cannot protect
anyone from a single nut or a bunch of fruitcakes that decide to murder
people. Any belief otherwise is simply a false sense of security. Freedom is
a double-edged sword. They may have made mistakes, but they are human and do
make them occasionally. We all do. I think this would be a similar problem
in any admistration, not just Bush.
> > I don't think what we did in Afganistan was wrong. They had it coming.
> > Iraq is a different story, Saddam is a bastard who kills his own people
by
> > the thousands. He has needed to go for a long time. The world will be a
> > better place without him. Do the ends justify the means? I don't know.
> >
>
> I won't go into the rather strange "they had it coming" at this time.
Nobody
> said Saddam was a nice guy. But spending the US into oblivion to kick
butt
> in various parts of the MidEast to little good effect hardly seems the
mark
> of a good leader.
>
One can hardly say we are spent into oblivion. We are here. The 1980s showed
that we can function quite fine with deficits and debt. But yes, I do agree
with your point that it has had little affect and as such hasn't been a
smart thing to do.
>
> > I'm not a big fan of Bush, especially the way he invokes "God" at every
> > opportunity, but I think that this "resume" is rather juvenile and only
> > serves to polarize those that already dislike him. The President only
does
> > what he thinks he needs to do to get re-elected. That's the way the
country
> > was set up. To fix our problems, we need to change the way the people
> > think, not sit around and complain about our leaders.
> >
> >
>
> Actually it is not at all 'juvenile'. What is juvenile at best is
refusing to
> wake up and smell the coffeee. It goes far beyond "dislike". The man and
> his administration have objectively done much that lead to the reasonable
> conclusion of that they are a tremendous menace to this country, to the
world
> and to all our fondest extropic goals.
>
I disagree. I don't see them as a tremendous menace. More like a thorn in my
side. They are pretty much like the others before them. I see two menaces,
an educatinal system that fails to educate and a religious majority. Until
these are fixed, our leaders will continue to make decisions that hurt us.
And they won;t "fix" these because that is where their power comes from. It
has to come from us.
> How do you "fix how people think" without putting out viewpoints such as
this
> one you just called "juvenile". It was intended to get people to think
and
> question.
>
OK. If that was the intention, I'll grant that. It just seemed to me to be
more of a superficial attack rather than an informative piece. It doesn;t
get into the details very much.
>
>
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