Today begins four more years of a great presidency. Bush's inaugural speech reminded me of JFK's wherein he also talked about freedom, liberty, and democracy and meeting any burden and paying any price to achieve the goals. It also reminded me of JFK's linking freedom and liberty to a gift of God. Great speech, great man, great President, President George Walker Bush!
You forgot to close your tag. Here ya go: </sycophant> Some "great presidency" stats: Poverty Rate 2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans 2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans Value of the Dollar 1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros 1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros Budget 2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion 2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion That's a shift of $649 billion and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war. The Debt End of 2000: $5.7 trillion Today: $7.6 trillion That's a 4 year increase of 33% American Casualties in Iraq Deaths: 1,369 Wounded: 10,252
Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! FIRST TERM ACCOMPLISHMENTS THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM In 2001, with less than a month's notice, American and British forces in Afghanistan joined with local anti-Taliban troops in an assault on the al Qaeda network and the Taliban regime that gave it safe harbor in Afghanistan. Passage of the USA Patriot Act met one of the president's goals. This law brought down the artificial wall separating law enforcement and intelligence officers and allowed them to talk to each other as they work to prevent future attacks. In 2002, President Bush proposed and Congress approved a single, unified Department of Homeland Security to improve protection against today's threats and be flexible enough to help meet the unknown threats of the future. By unifying over 22 agencies and offices, the president has improved the government's ability to guard U.S. borders and infrastructure and patrol the skies. In 2003, coalition forces acted with skill and bravery to liberate the Iraqi people and remove a grave and gathering danger to America and the world. The murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are history and more than 50 million people have been liberated. JOBS AND THE U.S. ECONOMY Between 2000 and 2003, productivity grew at the fastest three-year rate in more than 50 years. In September 2003, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported the lowest unemployment rate (5.4%) since October 2001. The president's tax relief allowed families to keep more of what they earn by cutting tax rates across the board. HELPING THE NEEDY In 2003, President Bush announced the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a five-year, $15-billion initiative to turn the tide in combating the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Just one month after Congress appropriated funds for the president's plan, $350 million was awarded to service providers for critical prevention efforts and to bring life-saving treatment to suffering people in some of the hardest-hit countries in Africa and the Caribbean. EDUCATION REFORM President Bush submitted his framework for education reform, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), three days after taking office and secured overwhelming bipartisan support less than a year later. NCLB represents the most significant overhaul of U.S. education policy since 1965, when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed. MAKING HEALTH CARE MORE ACCESSIBLE In December 2003, President Bush signed legislation that makes Health Savings Accounts available to millions of Americans. Health Savings Accounts offer flexible, affordable insurance options for small businesses and individuals. This legislation also will make prescription drug coverage available to 40 million senior citizens and people with disabilities through the Medicare healthcare system. PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT President Bush has committed America to meeting the challenge of long-term global climate change by reducing the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output, or greenhouse gas intensity, by 18 percent by 2012 compared to 2002. In December 2003, President Bush signed legislation implementing key provisions of his Healthy Forests Initiative. The President's initiative is helping restore the health and vitality of forests and rangelands, and helping reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires.
Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! Thanks serts, no need for me to respond now. I will add, the greatest number of minorities in any presidential administration in the history of this country including now the first black and woman to be fourth in line from the Oval Office!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll mail you a bottle of Pepto, Unk! Or perhaps I could prescribe 1 Tim. 5:23. Have a nice weekend a great sermon on Sunday. We may have to cancel services if the prediction of huge amounts of snow materializes.
Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! The war against terrorism: raging as never before, with a huge cost in dollars and lives. Jobs and the economy: gains are "relative." When you start out with almost no growth and a loss of jobs, relative numbers look great. Helping the needy: Bush is ok here. Education reform: no child left behind is a joke - take it from someone who has been in the classroom as a teacher in the last two years. He has imposed standards - meanwhile schools don't have the money or resources to implement them. His education chums in Texas cooked the books to make it appear that Texas was doing a good job. Protecting the environment: you have to be joking. Bush is the worst environmental president in modern times. Take a trip to the Sierra Club website if you want the lowdown.
Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! Thomas! Been awhile. How are you? I have a number of teachers in my congregtion and associate with several others. They love Bush and think No Child Left Behind is wonderful. Go figure. Asking the Sierra Club how Bush is doing on environmental issues is like asking the Ku Klux Klan how George Wallace did as Governor during his last term in office. I wonder what those who oppose the war in Iraq will say if democracy eventually comes to that country and Iraq, along with Afghanistan, stabilizes that region and we begin to see democratic movements materialize in places like Syria, Iran, etc. Just a thought.
Are you kidding? Dubya couldn't talk his way out of a plastic bag. ALL of his ideas are those of Karl Rove. I doubt he has had his own thought, or at least relayed his own thoughts since childhood. In my lifetime the best Presidential speakers were: 1. Reagan 2. Clinton 3. JFK The worst 1. GW by far 2. GHWB 3. Nixon Dubya and daddy have never been about freedom - this is just his brand of quackery. Bush and Co are all about freedom only for his kind and no one else. (his kind are the rich right winger Christians of any color). Do those nayaysers - no, I don't hate Bush. But GW is a stone cold seriously unethical liar. He reminds me of the character played by Martin Sheen in the dead zone - using his religious beleifs not for stength, but to promote an agenda of discontent and disinformation. For the record - here are a short list of Bush lies 1. WMD - Bush knew there weren't any and yet he skewed the evidence to convince a dumbed down Congress to accept his lies. 2. The connection between 9/11 and Saddam. No conclusive evidence has ever shown a direct or indirect connection other than the fact that both factions were Muslim. 3. GW's rants about his judicial appointments. GW enjoys one of the highest percentage of judical nominees that have been confirmed since JFK. Clinton couldn't be so lucky. The Cons should quite whining and crying and begin to tell the truth. 4. Any message of unity. GW is too much of a polarizer to gain any unity. I predict he will go down as one of the worst President's in the history of the United States. He does however prove that intelligent and integrity don't matter in public office.
Isn't it funny that Bush would say that he would pay any price for freedom? When it came to his time to defend freedom, he skirted his responsiblity and opted to protect the bars of Texas. Cheney dodged all together. Funny - it seems to Bush and Co that paying any price means letting someone else pay the price while he is well defended by the USSS. I thought the entire inarguration was a farce. Bush and Co set up a fortress around Washington and only had his own people in the audience. I guess he knew that he would again be pelted by eggs and other debris if he allowed anyone else in. Some unifier -
Re: Re: Four More Years First of all, I wasn't talking about elocution, I was talking about content. As a matter of fact, I posted my thoughts shortly after Bush's speech. Later that night, news analysists and politicos from both parties compared it to JFK's inaugural speech. Second, a number of Democrats, after the speech, commended the address. Third, a number of Democrats said Bush has the opportunity to end his second term on a good note and could end up going down in history as a good president, depending of course, on the final outcome of the war in Iraq. Fourth, Lanny Davis, no Bush fan, who was a big Clinton operative, had nothing but good words about Bush's integrity and serious commitment to an agenda regardless of the political consequences. He referred to this as real political character. Finally, you lost, we won. You can whine (Would you like some cheese with that?) and engage in negativity while the rest of us will enjoy life and continue being positive about our government, our leaders, and our democracy. God bless America.
Re: Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! You may wish to ask several *Republican* governors because they think otherwise. The one major problem with NCLB is that it is mathematically impossible to succeed. This is what a number of governors have already realized. Everyone can't be average and above average. Math (and life) doesn't work that way. Tom Nixon
Re: Re: Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! They're not in the classrooms educating our children, the teachers are and the ones I know have nothing but good things to say about NCLB. What's really interesing about all the hoopla re NCLB, is that by and large, the black community is behind it. This is the community that has been left out of the educational processes. Can we draw a conclusion between racisim and a dislike of NCLB? I hope not! More than likely it's a simple matter of being angry that a Republican president has once again accomplished something the Dems and leftists only talked about for years. Politics has no shame!
Re: Re: Four More Years Coming from someone who made no fewer than 20 predictions that Bush would lose ("...believe it!"), I won't lose too much sleep!
Re: Re: Re: Four More Years I guess you missed my point. The speech was pure quackery. The problem is the ideas presented were not GW's as he is not able to provide his own thoughts - he is merely providing us with Karl Rove's thoughts Without Karl, GW would just be another Texas failed businessman. I don't care what the demo's thought of the speech. I am not a demo anyway.
BTW Jimmy You have a PhD - do you refer to yourself as Dr. Jimmy? (I am not being sarcastic, I am merely asking)
Re: Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! Hi Jimmy Your friends may be teaching in districts that have $. It's generally a different story in large urban areas with lots of kids that need the extra resources. They don't exist. We have the extension of Bush's ideas and policies with Arnold. Whoopee, he saved us all money on our car taxes, but now libraries are closing. Salinas CA will soon have the distinction of being the largest city in the US without a public library. Shameful. As for the KKK comparison, who would you suggest asking about environmental issues? Chevron? Believe it or not, the Sierra Club really does give a damn about the environment. They don't just skewer Bush for the fun of it. Really, I invite you to go their website and take a look at Bush's record. If you can put a good spin on it and report back here to DI, I would certainly like to hear your explanation. But you're right. The SC is biased. They don't like presidents who ruin the environment. If you want to get your environmental info from Exxon's annual report, then I suppose I can't stop you, but I think you might get a slightly skewed point of view. Your hypothetical about Iraq is interesting. Yeah, eventually that region may stabilize. What if it takes 100 years, and a million lives? Is that worth it? What if it means that there are no more libraries in this country, and that schools continue to erode, and the poor get poorer? Worth it? After 9-11, was the welfare of Iraqi citizens the first thing that concerned you? Is that what Bush was really concerned with? Now suddenly, he has foisted his messianic ideals on the rest of us. He's like a train out of control, and paying for it with the lives of our young men and women (and Iraqi). I suppose everything works out in the end - or at least we're all dead in the end, so what does it really matter? Ergodicity says that everything sort of evens out in the end. Nevertheless, we should look at the cost along the way, not just the end result. The conservatives crack me up (not you, Jimmy). We heard so much sloppy talk about "wiping them off the face of the earth", "they're all a bunch of terrorists", "just drop a nuclear bomb on the whole region and get rid of them" etc. Now all of a sudden we are to believe that the conservatives are the most benevolent of people - that all they want is peace and freedom for all in this world (whether they have asked for it or not, we are going to shove it down their throats, but that's another story.). It's interesting, but I don't really buy it. Tom
Re: Re: Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! Right. Which is exactly what happened in Texas. The administrators cooked the books and made it appear that Texas was beating the averages - thus Bush's plan is a success. After GW was safely in the White House - well then it eventually came out that they dropped some numbers, and did some squirrelly calculations. This kind of trickery can work in isolation for a while, kind of like when Enron and WorldCom made it appear that there were profits. Eventually, it shakes out. Even without cooking the books, it can appear that the plan works for some school districts. More often than not it's just luck. Here in CA we hear some districts extolling their "progress" because they improved their scores by 2% over a year ago, or some such nonsense. Unfortunately it's often just randomness at work. It's noise, and really means nothing. They next year, the scores fall and everyone starts wringing their hands again. More noise. Bottom line, unless Bush starts putting $ where his mouth is, NCLB is just a threat that many don't, and can't, take seriously. It's like the dad screaming at his 5th grade volleyballer to hit it over the net. Well, dad, unless you take some time to work with her, no amount of screaming is going to do the job.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! You may want to go back and read what I wrote. It's Republican governors saying it doesn't work. Tom Nixon
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Here are some positive facts about OUR President!!! Yes, and it's also a shame when people don't read. You may wish to go back and read what I wrote. It's Republican governors saying that it doesn't work. Feel free to research this yourself. It's quite available on the internet. Given this, your statements above make no sense. Tom Nixon
