Atlantic Monthly
This month's Atlantic Monthly has long piece on Bush's failure's in securing America and reconstructing Afghanistan, also a piece Rove's savage campaign tactics in '94 and '00 as well as the Swift Boat vets.
Is there any argument Rove did not orchestrate the Swift Boat Vet anymore?
Considering:
His long standing relationship with Robert Perry (the initial financial backer).
Two lawyers from the Bush campaign resigning b/c of consulting positions with the SBVT group.
If it looks like a duck... Ducks don't hold up in court though.
"No," you don't want to?
Same thing with WMDs, there is no evidence of WMDs in Iraq. It's still possible that some are there. (Becomes less likely as time goes on, sure.)
That being said, you know Rove & Co. aren't holding their breaths about good news from Iraq (WMD, a decrease in insurgencies, a good report from Colin Powell...), so they decided to fire up the ol' Bush Family smear machine.
Worked on Dukakis, and Gore... Don't know why it didn't work on Clinton though.
Back to The Atlantic: After reading that "Bush's Lost Year" article, was felt sicker and more disgusted with it all. I probably don't agree on everything the hawkish members of the CIA and Pentagon that were quoted, but it begs the question, If we're wage do a war, why can't we do it right? These guys are the hawks, right?
NO, I dont have to write an essay to prove it....
I can respond further if you wish after reading said article. If it makes me vote for Kerry , I'll make sure Dawn and Terry are the first to know.....
Clinton, very good speaker, hammered on the economy and won. I am curious to see if Kerry's switch in strtaegy from the Economy to Iraq will help him out, I thought Bush would take way more of a hit about the deficit under his watch...
I'll admit right now I dont know enough about Dukakis to comment. I suppose it's Willie Horton's fault he didn't get elected though.....
1)You can NEVER prove a conjecture is true by example.
2)You CAN prove a conjecture is false by finding a single counter-example.
Find a counter example. One. No essay, just a "John Q. Smith organized the SBVT."
I proved how tax cuts DO NOT lead to economic growth.
<b>Essays</b>
That's like, four paragraphs!
<b>The Atlantic article</b>
1) I think I can post it to another thread.
2) I'm not expecting someone to vote for Kerry based on one article. It's a riveting look at what are foreign policy was actually doing in 2002.
<b>Gore</b>
1) Is personality a problem for you, or a reason for his poor electoral showing?
2) I didn't vote for first lady.
3) He did not claim he "invented" the internet. More false Repubican spin. Explained <a href="http://www.dailyhowler.com/h032999_1.shtml">here</a>. The direct quote is "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." I'll admit it maybe it could be construed as a claim of invention (I don't, I take it he helped to pass legislation that enabled the infrastructure of the Internet to be developed), however, the quote was completely blown out of proportion.
<b>Kerry</b>
Kerry needs to hammer the economy as well, don't get me wrong Bush has more weaknesses than just Iraq. The problem is that Kerry has spent _way_ too much time defending his Vietnam record. It's not that he needs to return to a particular issue, he just needs to talk about _an_ issue.
<b>Dukakis</b>
I'm not blaming Dukaki's loss on the Willie Horton ad. However, we've seen consistently over the last twenty years that smear campaigns are effective in altering the voter's perceptions of a candidate. While smear campaigns don't turn elections, they do make a percentage of persuadable voters out of reach for a candidate. Since the tactic relies on half-truths and lies instead of honest disagreement on issues (yeah, them again), I can't say I think highly of them.
<b>Math Theory</b>
1) Maybe I should have stuck with an analogy I know more about. I was thinking along the lines of how it's difficult to prove that something doesn't exists, lack of experimental results doesn't necessarily mean lack of existence, just lack of conditions where the existence in question is evident.
2) "Conjecture" in the math sense is different than "conjecture" in the I'm-accusing-you-of-wrong-doing sense. I fully support the idea that K. Rove worked to get the SBVT running. It may have been saying something like "Hey, get John O'Neill in touch with moneybags Robert Perry", to one of his campaign lieutenants. I can't prove that, though. It wouldn't stand in a court of law even if it seemed fairly likely. Reminds me of a math joke... I haven't seen direct evidence linking Rove to SBVT. It's all circumstantial. I think the burden of proof would have to be the accuser.
2) There are causal links between tax cuts, tax revenues, government spending and economic grwoth. Those links where explained. If there were no evident causal links between those items, one could say "tax cuts have a bearing on economic growth" and still be possibly right b/c maybe there is some unknown evidence about the link that has yet to be discovered.
My apologies for this laundry list, hey, I'm a programmer.