BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Current Events George Bush is a great president

What I ACTUALLY said was, "I do not feel justified to trash the current leaders of other countries". Here are some of the comments made on this post about Bush "(he is) freaking delusional" and "(he is) dillusional and mentally challenged". These comments do not constitute a discussion.

Brooke

I presume you really mean Chap 6 since Chap 3 is mostly about Palast's beef with McDonalds.

Obviously, I am not a big fan of Palast. In Chap 6 he makes rude comments about Texas indicating that the state smells (or at least the part of it he is in..hmmm?) and that we have our own language which, the way he writes about it, makes us sound very uneducated. At any rate, once you get past that, it seems his real issue is that Bush had some wealthy contributors. What exactly is in that chapter that would convince someone that the election had been stolen? Whatever it is, guess I missed it or just wasn't convinced. Or maybe it is in a different chapter.

Not hard to see why Palast's own town requested he pack up and leave (see chap 3).

Brooke

This is incorrect. Every employee pays the same percentage up to the SS Wage Base which is $94,200 for 2006. The reason there is a cutoff is because there is a maximum amount of benefits a person can receive and it is based on earnings. As a result, if there was no cutoff, any amount paid beyond the SSWB would be excluded from the benefit.

The 1040 is filled with thresholds for higher paid individuals. If you earn over a certain amount you do not qualify for the child tax credit, student loan interest credit, etc. Is this fair? They are also more likely to be subjected to the AMT.

Tax cuts to help those that need it most: The child tax credit was doubled, marriage penalty reduced, tax backets reduced. Reducing the tax bracket allowed more people to qualify for the earned income credit.

Brooke

I have too and it does make you demand justice. Good point Jim.

Brooke

Didn't notice your correction when I responded earlier. However, my response explains why there is a cut-off.

Brooke

Justice from whom? Iraq didn't have anything to do with it!

Those comments are opinion, which anyone on this board is justified in expressing. Discussion can then follow from the statement of opinion, either by the people stating the opinion or anyone else who wants to chime in.

It's some people's opinion that Bush is delusional, which I can understand since he seems so out of touch with what the world and the majority of Americans believe. It's like he's enclosed in a sort of bubble in which only his neo-con inner circle are allowed to penetrate. Even when he speaks publicly, anyone with a t-shirt, button, or even a bumper-sticker that in any way indicates any potential opposition to Republican viewpoints is escorted out of his vicinity. There have been MANY documented instances of this. Anyone with differing beliefs or opinion is not listened to and is just dismissed out of hand. For instance, many experienced civil servants who were experts in their field were fired as soon as Bush got into office, just because these people had worked with the Clinton administration (normally these civil servants keep their jobs not matter which party is in power). They were replaced by inexperienced Republicans who had helped raise money for Bush's campaign but had no idea how to do their jobs. The whole country suffers because of this.

This is the kind of thing that keeps Bush so out of touch with reality, and therefore under delusions that things are different from what they really are. I think that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are mostly responsible for keeping Bush so insulated, however Bush lets it happen.

Yeah, justice. Like that fact that Osama bin Laden, the man RESPONSIBLE for 9/11 is still a free man. It's just too bad the the leaders of the good ol USA didn't want justice very badly.

Quote:

I have stood at Ground Zero in New York City. Have you?


I was less than 30 blocks away, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, when it happened. I spent that day walking north, staying on the west side in order to avoid the "shadows" of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building knowing I might die at any minute, stopping at Mt. Sinai to give blood after walking 80-some blocks with a transistor radio I bought in the first hour to my ear, wondering how I was going to get the next 100 blocks if they did open the way, and where I would sleep if they didn't, wondering about the people I had worked with a few years before in the Borders at the bottom of one of the towers and the woman who worked on the 77th floor who had been in our writing group there, worrying about my husband, wondering what might happen next at any moment.

Did I or do I want vengeance? H***, No! I already knew that vengeance would do more harm to innocents than to those who were responsible.

Where I was, one of the first things people said was "Oh, God, and look who's President!" despairingly.

The next time I went to ground zero was as a demonstrator at the Republican convention. We rang tiny bells. One ring for every person who died there and one for every soldier who had died at that point. One per second. In silence. It went on for a long long time. I was on the street every day during that convention and my workplace supported me. I wore my denim jacket with a piece of artwork on the back, a flag patched with camoflage, the patches "stitched" on with the words of Mark Twain's War Prayer. Find it on the web and read it.

When the next election was stolen and people didn't stand up, even after the example of the Ukraine, and demand that it be overturned, my husband and I, having long since lost confidence in the administration in power, lost confidence in the american people and emigrated in March, 2005.

Thus far, I see no reason to regret it.

DJC in Norwich UK

Under Bush's tax and spending policies, 99% of Americans are net-losers:

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/debtus.pdf

Unless you're one of the 1% wealthiest Texans, you're a loser as well:

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/bushtaxcutstx.pdf