Democrats versus Republicans

[sck5]

by the way - There werent any suicide bombers in Iraq before we got there.

Keep on with those "facts"

And my comment was intended to show the mismatch between what you guys say and a random look at headlines. I just clicked for the headlines when I read the thread and it looked like things were the oppposite of what you were claiming. Whether you are right or not (and "better" isnt the same as "good") the average voter will probably detect a mismatch between Republican rhetoric and what they actually see happening. You can blame it all on the media if you like but I doubt they are making up out of whole cloth, and even if they are the media we have is what people see.

[wind_magic]

I'd like to see Dem & Repug Congressmen pass one new tax law change ...

New law: on April 15th of every year, you now have a choice of where to send your tax payment - you can either send it to the United States Treasury as you usually do for use by the government to fund it's programs *OR* you can make your check payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt for the purpose of paying off the public debt which now stands at 9,370,288,314,000.78$us. Your choice, the tax will either fund programs, or pay off the debt, and the new law shackles Congress so that they can't just borrow more to draw "equity" out of the decreasing national public debt, that is to say ... they aren't allowed to essentially force you to send it to the Treasury by just borrowing more to make up the "loss", instead they have to cut spending.

[cardiacpaul]

"and what they actually see happening"

Therein lies the rub...

The complainers and some disgruntled vets coming home is what makes the news. The mother of a VOLUNTEER that gets killed, demonstrating... makes the news.

Not the 1700 water wells, the 3000 schools with girls attending, most for the very first time. The electric plants operating more now than when Hussein had "peace" going on over there...

My nephew was royally torqued when he came home for visits... So much so that he went to local TV stations and contacted CNN so he could give "his" version... He never recieved a call back. He wrote his local papers, nada. Not even the letters to the editors. Nobody wanted to hear any "good" news, it was all doom and flippin' gloom.

CNN contacted by brother and sister in law after his death, they wanted to "run a story" the day after thanksgiving.

My brother was on the phone with them for 30 minutes, sister in law, over 15.

funny thing, story never ran.

[chucklesR]

SCK, what papers do you read?
Do you have a news source that fills your head with this rubbish or do you just spout it out?
Kurdish, Shia and Sunni's have been pounding each other in Iraq long before we got there.

As to since then:
[quote]
Every religion has had its martyrs—think of the early Christians and Jews defying the Roman Empire—and Islam too has its pantheon of martyrs. But the Koran categorically forbids suicide. Until al-Qaeda began turning religious texts on their heads, martyrdom was accepted only as the last resort of a cornered Muslim warrior and not as a willfully planned death. This radical change in the concept of martyrdom has been viewed by many commentators as the license for modern Islamic terrorism.

Before September 11, al-Qaeda carried out suicide missions, but it also fought its jihad on the conventional battlefield, supporting allies such as the Taliban government, the Kashmiri terrorists, and the Somali warlords. The extremists from the 1990s depicted in the books by Nasiri and Lia would never have considered throwing their lives away in a deliberate suicide attack—their lives meant too much to them and they were having too much fun spreading the global jihad around the world.

Of course al-Qaeda is still engaged in conventional guerrilla wars, fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but today, seven years after September 11, jihad for al-Qaeda and its worldwide allies increasingly means one thing—suicide bombing. This is the change that must be confronted. Now you are not a good jihadi until you kill yourself in the act of killing many others. Thus in the period after September 11 the extremist interpretation of jihad has undergone yet another metamorphosis, degenerating into a cult of suicide bombing against which there is often no plausible defense.
[\quote]
from Jihadi Suicide Bombers: The New Wave - The New York Review of Books

[PBzeer]

When even rags such as the NYT and Wash Post, admit to progress in Iraq, that means it's probably double what they'll admit to. At this point in time, only the willfully ignorant dispute the improvements that have occurred in Iraq.

Funny, how since your position is so strong and righteous, that you have to resort to distortions, cherry-picked headlines and ever moving goalposts, to buttress it. But then, one of the advantages to being on the Left, is that one need not accept the reality of what is, but can rather, have their own reality that fits what they want.

[SailorMitch]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

Funny, how since your position is so strong and righteous, that you have to resort to distortions, cherry-picked headlines and ever moving goalposts, to buttress it.

those of us to the left of sway(it takes very little to be left of him) learned those tactics from the repubs. bush in particular has perfected all that.

[PBzeer]

Such shenanigans where prevalent long before there was a United States Mitch. Afraid you can't blame that one on the GOP. What is interesting though, is the continual references to Bush's "stupidity", while crediting him with all manner of political skill. There's a disconnect there somewhere.

[cardiacpaul]

you know, I'd take a guy that got ANY grades at Yale...
but what troubles me is that not much was made of the tidbit that GWB's grades were HIGHER than the Oh so very intelligent fella from Mass... what was his name? Oh yeah, Kerry...

And, if he's such a dumb-ass, how come no one seems to notice that...

HE AIN'T RUNNIN' FOR NUTTIN'

Keep your eye on that little clock & calendar, please lemme know when Obama et all will admit that GWB is leaving office and to run a campaign on "GWB screwed up" ain't gunna cut much butter.

Yes, McCain is of the same party, but his views are decidedly less in line with GWB.

So, Barak wants to meet with level headed fellas like that little wanker in N. Korea?
Oh, ducky.

Lets see how that worked out last time...
Clinton sends Jimmy "we can all just git along" Carter to N.Korea, with a bag full o'money and some plans for some nuke plants... fine and dandy, all tht little pissant has to do is promise to use the force luke, not build bombs with it...
No problem-o says little Kim, we only use our nuke plns for gooood. thanks so much for the wheelbarrow full o'cash...you know I was just kiddin' about no makin' that
bomb stuff, eh?

And this, from the peace prize winner Carter, who's gotta know a couple of pages more than Barak does about foreign policy.

Sell the farm maw, the gubbmint wants to give it sumbuddy.

[SailorMitch]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

Such shenanigans where prevalent long before there was a United States Mitch. Afraid you can't blame that one on the GOP. What is interesting though, is the continual references to Bush's "stupidity", while crediting him with all manner of political skill. There's a disconnect there somewhere.

you sre leaving out the "brain trust" of cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz, et al? agreed bush isn't capable of coming up with all those spins/ distortions on his own. he has lots of help.
also agreed on how long this kind of thing has perverted politics. but in the modern era as it were, the repubs have led the way. remember "I am not a crook!!!"?

[PBzeer]

Well Mitch, while I certainly remember Nixon's famous phrase, what comes more readily to mind, is LBJ's TV ad smearing Goldwater on the use of Nuclear Weapons. A total distortion of Goldwater's position.

The larger point is though, that it has no place in honest discussion. It matters little who excels at it, or who is the progenitor of it.