Bush Brags: We Can Be So Proud
Did he really say this?
I could see if he wanted to make a joke about the world's greediest or richest country, something a capitalist could brag about. But "the world's biggest polluter?" Is he proud of that? I can't believe that any American would see that as a positive thing, even if you were in favor of mining all the oil in the planet. I would think anyone would feel a little bad about the mess we're making, even if that feeling is overwhelmed by the thrill of profit-making.
The rest of the world thinks we're all like that, you know. They were sympathetic after the 2000 elections, but when we re-elected this guy in 2004 we lost all credibility as a society.
It was his final summit with the Group of 8, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia as well as the United States. President Bush, the most senior member of the group, was attending his eighth summit, and for years he withstood pressure to take a firmer stand against global warming.
It was the topic on the minds of summit partners and demonstrators.
His final words to the likes of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."
That was the report from the British press, citing "senior sources" who said Bush made the private joke as he was about to leave Japan on Wednesday. Bush to partners: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter'
I could see if he wanted to make a joke about the world's greediest or richest country, something a capitalist could brag about. But "the world's biggest polluter?" Is he proud of that? I can't believe that any American would see that as a positive thing, even if you were in favor of mining all the oil in the planet. I would think anyone would feel a little bad about the mess we're making, even if that feeling is overwhelmed by the thrill of profit-making.
The rest of the world thinks we're all like that, you know. They were sympathetic after the 2000 elections, but when we re-elected this guy in 2004 we lost all credibility as a society.
posted by JimK at 7:57 AM
33 Comments:
Did you know, Jimbo, that Democrats will lose the Presidential election and may get surprised in the congressional races because they don't have an energy policy?
Yep, they're against everything including any solution!
For a parallel, try the McKinley-Jennings race in 1896. After that, the Republicans ruled until 1932.
More fallout from the "comprehensive sex ed" craze that teaches sexuality from a valueless perspective. For years, since the early 90s, the increasing popularity of ab-only programs drove down teen pregnancy. Then, about three years ago, TTF-type groups starting harping publicly about how kids are just going to have sex no matter what and guess what? The kids said, "hey cool"! Our parents don't care anyway!:
"Teen pregnancies rose in the United States for the first time since 1991, the National Institutes of Health reported Friday.
The teen pregnancy rate is up for the first time since 1991, according to a report released Friday by the National Institutes of Health. In 2006, the number of teenage girls between the ages 15 to 17 having babies rose to about 139,000 from about 133,000 in 2005.
The report comes after a spate of high-profile teen pregnancies: that of 17-year-old TV star Jamie Lynn Spears, who recently gave birth to a daughter, as well as the pregnancies of numerous students at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts.
Federal health experts said they don't know why the teen pregnancy numbers went up from 2005 to 2006, and that not enough data have been collected to say whether it's a trend.
"It may be a blip in the data, and it may come down," Edward J. Sondik, Director of the National Center for Health Statistics in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.
Pregnant teens aged 15 to 19 are less likely to get prenatal care and gain appropriate weight, experts say. They are also more likely to smoke than pregnant women aged 20 years or older.
Teen pregnancy is "one of the key indicators for the health of the teen population because it not only reflects their health at this point, but it reflects their health and well-being for the next 20 to 40 years," Sondik said.
The numbers also say something about the health of these teenagers' children, who are more likely to have a low birth weight, said Sondik, which is a "cause of concern."
Low birth weight infants, defined as less than 5 pounds 8 ounces, are at increased risk for infant death and such lifelong disabilities as blindness, deafness and cerebral palsy. The report also showed an overall increase in low birth weight infants.
In 2005, the number of births for girls aged 15 to 17 was about 133,000, or 21 for every 1,000 girls. That number rose to nearly 139,000, or 22 for every 1,000 girls, in 2006.
Along the same lines, 1/3 of girls in the United States got pregnant before age 20, and more than 435,000 babies were born to teens between 15 and 19 years in 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
Good job, TTF!!!
Once again, you've got it all wrong, AnonBigot.
Yes, it is the highest rate SINCE 1991.
That means the last eights years with little Bush and his pro ab-only stance (and allies) has made that number of teen pregnancies INCREASE.
Kids are going to have sex, if you (AnonBigot), crazy Theresa or nutty Ruth or loca Regina like it or not. You can't be in all their bedrooms at all times (you people seem so obsessed with the sex lives of others)...so why not GIVE THEM THE POWER and EDUCATION to protect themselves????
You're still ass-backwards.
The world will be a much better place when Obama is president.
Anon writes:
"For a parallel, try the McKinley-Jennings race in 1896. After that, the Republicans ruled until 1932."
Let's see. Who was this Jennings guy? Oh, I guess Anon means William Jennings Bryan.
1932? Who was elected President in 1912 and served two terms until March 1921? Which Republican was that? Taft was reelected in 1912? Oops. Oh, yeah, that was Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Let's take a look at 1896. The incumbent President, Grover Cleveland, presided over an economic collapse. The incumbent party then nominated a candidate known as a "maverick" from the orthodoxy of his own party (although Bryan was a true maverick, as opposed to McCain, who has lashed himself to Bush's most unpopular and ineffective policies). The maverick nominee of the incumbent party lost and lost big, leading to 20 uninterrupted years in power in the hands of the challenger party (albeit 7 of those under Theodore Roosevelt, who governed like the progressive Democrat who succeeded Taft in 1912).
So Anon might want to be a little more careful about relying on historical analogies.
David
Wilson was like Clinton. He didn't win the support of the majority of Americans and was only elected because a third party candidate split the vote. The country was Republican-oriented until 1932 just like it has been since 1980.
McKinley was a war hero like McCain. Bryan was a brilliant orator with little experience. Neither was the incumbent P or VP.
It's exactly like now.
Obama the Blur will also be the blink of an eye in history.
Looks like more people on the Supreme Court that want to take the Constitution literally, just like J Kennedy!
McKinley's campaign was not based around McKinley's service in the Civil War; it was based around the economic collapse under Grover Cleveland via the 1893 crash.
So now the argument is that the country was "Republican oriented," and that Wilson was simply the product of the three-way race in 1912? Let's remember the basis for Theodore Roosevelt's run in 1912. After governing as a progressive, and being reelected as a progressive in 1904 -- he was far more liberal than the Democratic candidate Alton Parker in 1904 -- TR viewed his hand-picked successor Taft as having betrayed progressive principles. If anything, the vote in 1912, in which two progressives (Wilson and Roosevelt) ran against the incumbent conservative (Taft) and received a huge majority of the vote showed that the moderate left was in ascendancy. (Although I must concede that much, perhaps most, of Wilson's vote in the South was racist carryover from Reconstruction.) (Also, for all of McCain's references to TR in the past, they seem to have disappeared as he has flip-flopped himself to be more Taft than TR.)
It was the public's disillusion with our involvement in World War I which led to the victory of Warren Harding in 1920, ushering in a decade of Republican ascendancy (and continuing defection, over time, of progressives from the Republican Party), which resulted in the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's victory in 1932. The FDR coalition essentially remained in power until 1968, when another foreign war shattered the coalition. (While Eisenhower held the presidency from 1953-1961, he only had two years in which the Democrats did not control both houses of Congress, and he pretty much governed as a centrist.)
The Republicans now face a situation in which they have (1) the distaste for a foreign war problem the Democrats had in 1920, 1952, and 1968 (and which greatly led to the Republican victories in those years) and (2) the economic problems the Republicans had in 1932 and 1992, which led to Democratic victories in those years. This does not bode well for the Republican Party.
I suspect that as more and more people hear Obama unfiltered, the modest-to-small lead he has over McCain will grow -- just as the Reagan lead over Carter grew as the campaign in 1980 got closer to November.
Finally, Anon, thanks for your support of Justice Kennedy, who wrote the Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas.
One other thing:
The economic issue in the 1896 campaign centered around whether to base our currency on silver or gold.
Because silver, prior to 1896, was far more plentiful, the Democrats, appealing to the borrower classes (particularly farmers), argued for silver. That was the point of Bryan's Cross of Gold speech at the Democratic National Convention.
But, luckily for the Republicans, huge amounts of gold were discovered in Alaska early in 1896, making gold so plentiful that the pressure on borrowers eased, thus bringing the economy back and making Bryan's pitch irrelevant to most of the electorate. I don't see any deus ex machina bailing the Republicans out in 2008.
Try out the energy issue, David. Republicans have for years tried to open up offshore drilling and get nuclear energy revved up but we've had to become more and more dependent on foreign oil because of Democratic opposition. We could even tap the greatest wind power reserves in the world, the Great Plains, but the Democrats are afraid a few birds might be hurt.
The spike in oil because of the rising middle class in China and India will be the issue that seals it for Mccain.
Of course, we shouldn't be surprised if Obama were to blur to the Republican position but that would help too. After the summer's over, Obama's flip-flops aren't going to look very good.
"That means the last eights years with little Bush and his pro ab-only stance (and allies) has made that number of teen pregnancies INCREASE."
Bush didn't start ab-only programs. They started in the late eighties and began to really catch on in the early nineties. The timing just like the early seventies introduction of comp sex ed, doesn't look good for TTF-type philosophy from any objective point of view.
"Kids are going to have sex,...so why not GIVE THEM THE POWER and EDUCATION to protect themselves????"
That would be fine if we also empowered them with a values foundation. The valueless approach is to the detriment of society.
TTF is irresponsible.
CRC is responsible.
That's the facts!
"McKinley's campaign was not based around McKinley's service in the Civil War; it was based around the economic collapse under Grover Cleveland via the 1893 crash."
McCain's campaign won't be based on his miltary service either but, like McKinley's, it is already well-known and well-regarded by the public. There is a solid foundation of good will based on a long familiarity.
"Franklin Roosevelt's victory in 1932. The FDR coalition essentially remained in power until 1968, when another foreign war shattered the coalition."
As you said, Eisenhower was a centrist and Nixon even more so. He instituted wage and price controls for crying out loud!
The country was Democratically oriented from 1932-1980 when it all unravelled in Jimmy Carter's embrassment in Iran and his triple double digit misery index. This is when Americans realized that we can't rely on government to solve all our problems. Polls show most of these attitudes still hold.
"The Republicans now face a situation in which they have (1) the distaste for a foreign war problem the Democrats had in 1920, 1952, and 1968 (and which greatly led to the Republican victories in those years)"
No comparison. There was a draft for service in Vietnam and we're winning in Iraq. And even if they don't want us there forever, Iraqis are happy we took out Saddam. In the past two decades, Americans have, through direct intervention and without compulsory military service, liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. That's not to mention unchaining the Soviet empire through indirect means, which happened after two terms of Reagan hardball. We're on a roll.
And the latest thing is that Obama's changing his tune about the war. Polls show the war is declining as an issue, as it should. Come November, things will look much different.
"and (2) the economic problems the Republicans had in 1932 and 1992, which led to Democratic victories in those years."
Things are actually not that bad. It looks like we might be entering a recession after 25 years of mostly uninterupted growth. That's historic and the majority of the world has now adopted the low marginal tax rate that the Republicans introduced to get the ball rolling. I doubt Americans want to be the first country to return to top marginal tax rates of over 50%, as Obama has suggested, and few will believe that is the solution to our problems- because it's not.
David, Obama's strategy is to blur the distinction between himself and McCain so the November vote will be the cool young guy who hits nothin' but net versus the old crotchety guy who lobs air balls.
That never worked before. It won't this time, either.
Bryan was raining threes. The old Civil War general won anyway.
That's the facts!
"CRC is responsible.
That's the facts!"
You want to talk facts? OK, let's!
Let's all remember what a bang-up job CRC did getting the curriculum to remain as they wanted it to remain. They liked the curriculum that had been written back in the 1990's, even though it was filled with outdated information about contraceptives that are no longer available and had no mention of sexual orientation.
Oh oops! That's right! The FACT is CRC failed to keep the out-of-date curriculum in effect and another FACT is they failed in their efforts to add a "chastity until holy opposite sex matrimony" section to the newly revised curriculum. Instead, another FACT is that MCPS now has an updated and factual health education curriculum that teaches teens how to protect themselves and their loved ones from STDs and teaches them to have respect for differences in human sexuality.
The FACT is CRC isn't responsible. The FACT is CRC is a group of losers. The FACT is in the end, CRC lost their battle over the MCPS sex education curriculum, in spite of their frivolous lawsuits and requests of governing bodies. But who cares? The FACT is their kids don't attend MCPS anyway. The FACT is CRC supporters either private-school or home-school their kids so they can be sure to indoctrinate them into the homophobic lifestyle.
MCPS Mom
There is a solid foundation of good will based on a long familiarity.
What's also known about McCain is his legendary temper. Now temper flare ups should be expected from a hero who suffered such severe torture at the hands of our enemies, but how does that qualify him to be President? I think his legendary temper raises important questions about his fitness for office and doubt that someone with a hair trigger temper should have his finger on the nuclear "button."
Can anyone tell me if McCain has ever undergone counseling to get over his effects of his years of tortured imprisonment?
"Instead, another FACT is that MCPS now has an updated and factual health education curriculum that teaches teens how to protect themselves and their loved ones from STDs and teaches them to have respect for differences in human sexuality."
And, yet, teen pregnancy and AIDS in young gays is on the rise.
And it all started when groups like TTF started getting alot of attention after losing the 2004 election.
Kids don't care what their sex ed teacher says. They do, however, take note when parents start publicly saying promiscuity and homosexuality are normal and should be accepted.
The question is do you save more lives by providing strategies to make premarital sex and homosexuality safer or by encouraging and enabling a society with conventional morality. We've been experimenting and seen the results of each approach since the early seventies.
If you value empirical evidence, TTF is wrong.
That's the facts!
"It was his final summit with the Group of 8, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia as well as the United States. President Bush, the most senior member of the group, was attending his eighth summit, and for years he withstood pressure to take a firmer stand against global warming."
You gotta wonder where Dim Kennedy gets his chutzpah.
President Bush has now gotten the rest of G-8 to accept his approach to greenhouse gases. Namely, Bush has contended all along that a pact without China and India and that didn't depend on technolgical progress was pointless. The rest of G-8 has now followed hos lead.
One problem with Kyoto is that it only included developed countries. If Italy wanted to reduce its carbon output all it had to do was move manufacturing plants to India. Globally, this does nothing for the human race.
And how has Bush's solution worked. Well, for the years between 2000 and 2006, the U.S. reduced its carbon emmissions 3%.
Among the 17 nations that produce 80% of the world's carbon emmissions, only France did better. BTW, France's President loves America!
The bottom line story from last week's G-8 summit: Bush was right on greenhouse gases.
That's the facts!
"Now temper flare ups should be expected from a hero who suffered such severe torture at the hands of our enemies, but how does that qualify him to be President?"
There's no evidence that McCain's passion to his causes hasn't been channeled constructively. Americans like his approach.
How does Obama's close friendship with terrorists who say the problem is that the Weather Underground didn't bomb enough banks in the 60s or his 20-year financial support of a fellow who replaces "God bless America" with "God damn America", qualify him to be President?
I only ask because his experience doesn't. No candidate has ever won the Presidency with less experience.
A woman with more experience than him and equivalent views and political skills applied for the job of Democratic nominee and wasn't hired.
That's sexism!
How many female GOP Presidential candidates ran in the 2008 primaries? None!
Now that's sexism!
In 2000, Bush reneged on his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide. As the Washington Post reported Bush "almost immediately dropped his pledge to put limits on carbon dioxide emissions; the White House said the original promise to do so had been a mistake."
Now that's flipflopping!
McCain continues this Bush family flipflopping tradition ("Read my lips, no new taxes!") on W's tax cuts, Iraq war, evangelical Christians, stem cells, immigration, you name it. And if your 3% cut figure in CO2 is correct, tell us how much of that is due to Calfornia's 2006 cap on CO2, which was fought against tooth and nail by California's GOP legislators.
You think that MCPS's revised sex education curriculum has had an effect on the nation's teen pregnancy and STD rates since 2004 when it wasn't even presented in health classes until the 2007-8 school year?
Now that's idiotic!
What's impacted teen pregnancy and STD rates on a nationwide basis since the 2004 election is the Bush Adminstration's insistence that the ONLY information provided to teens about condoms be questionable failure rates. The millions of dollars wasted on ineffective abstinence-only programs -- that are in direct conflict with the CDC's recommendation that condoms be used correctly and consistently for every non-procreative sexual encounter -- is the reason these rates are climbing. This is one more failure due to the arrogance of this anti-science administration.
LMAO You are so pathetic! "For a parallel, try the McKinley-Jennings race."
Ya think that's "a parallel" campaign? What were they paying for a gallon of gas back then?
I hate to tell you, but it's the economy, stupid. We're all spending our grocery money to fill up the family station wagon's gas tank while the oil companies, the GOP's biggest campaign contributors, are awash in record-breaking profits, and everybody knows it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
What an idiot! The economy is not even in a recession. Inflation, interest rates, unemployment are all low by historic standards.
You don't like gas prices? It's lower than most places in the world. Democrats would like them higher so you won't use so much.
We'd have more control if Democrats would stop fighting steps like offshore drilling, nuclear energy and windmills to make us energy independent.
A pro basketball player named Micheal (yes, that’s the way he spells it) Ray Richardson once famously said of the New York Knicks franchise: “The ship be sinking.”
When a reporter asked him how far it could sink, Richardson reportedly replied: “Sky’s the limit.”
Something similar might be said about today’s economy, although Phil Gramm, a remarkably out-of-touch former senator from Micheal Ray’s home state of Texas, would beg to differ. You may have lost your job or the family home. Or maybe you’re behind in your car payment or your health insurance premium. Perhaps you can’t afford the gas to get to work.
Phil Gramm will have none of your complaints: Get over it! Stop whining and eat your gruel. This recession’s all in your head.
No one (not even John McCain, who tended toward the rapturous when describing Mr. Gramm’s economic bona fides) could mistake this sour-visaged investment banker for a populist.
“We’re the only nation in the world,” Mr. Gramm once said, “where all our poor people are fat.”
During one of the many Republican assaults on Social Security, the issue of cutting back benefits for the elderly came up in the Senate. “They are 80-year-olds,” howled Mr. Gramm. “Most people don’t have the luxury of living to be 80 years old, so it’s hard for me to feel sorry for them.”
John McCain, whose Straight Talk Express ran out of gas long ago, tried to paper over the implications of Mr. Gramm’s unseemly outburst this week about the very real suffering that has descended on millions of Americans. “Phil Gramm does not speak for me,” said Senator McCain. “I speak for me.”
But the truth is that Mr. Gramm, a close friend of Senator McCain’s for many years, has had a very loud say in the economic policies of the McCain presidential campaign. And those policies are an extension of the G.O.P. orthodoxy that is threatening to sink the ship of state, even as the very wealthy are dancing mindlessly to the music of another Gilded Age.
In the real world, somewhere outside of Phil Gramm’s field of vision, increasing numbers of Americans are working two and three jobs to make ends meet; struggling families are worried sick in July about what it will cost to heat their homes in January; food costs and home foreclosures are soaring; the job market has tanked; and the stock markets are running with the bears.
In that kind of atmosphere, it’s beyond obscene to have to listen to some platinum-card-carrying fat cat tell us, in a tone dripping with condescension: “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession.”
Gramm's right. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Last quarter the U.S. had positive growth. The media thinks and acts like we're in one but we're not.
Gas prices are a concern but it's not something that was avoidable. The solution is to find new sources which Democrats oppose in every form.
Housing prices are down but still up significantly since the trun of the century.
Anything else?
Sometimes you really ought to take head out of the sand and see what's going on in America, not just in your imagination.
Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years
Housing Foreclosures Jumped 90% in May from Year Ago
How subprime killed Bear Stearns
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae future may rest with US Treasury
It's all back to the energy crisis, my friend.
McCain's got ideas.
Obama has none.
And, again, we may be headed for the first real recession since Jimmy Carter but we're not there yet.
You want to see what a real economic crisis is like?
Elect Obama and increase marginal tax rates to 60%.
McCain=Bush
Obama=Jimmy Carter
Good with inner city housing.
Bad with running a country.
Obama=JFK
McCain flip flops from straight talker to McBush 61 flip flops and counting
Let us know when Barack the Flippin' Fish flops into JFK territory.
That'll be when he decides we should bear any burden, pay any price to secure the blessing of liberty for the world and when he decides to support a cut in capital gain tax to encourage investment.
You guys really engage in breathtaking hypocrisy when you say McCain is a flip-flopper. Any person in public life may go through an evolution of views. This is not the same as this phenomena with Obama who said things to get the nomination and then changes position a few short months later to try to deceive responsible citizens into voting for him.
What a liar!
We really don't need another Clintonian presidency.
Not to worry. This will be discussed at length this fall.
Looks like the Dems done did it again!
Ut-oh!
Looks like trouble in Lunatic Land!
"(July 14) -- A new Newsweek poll shows that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads Republican rival John McCain by just 3 percentage points, a statistical dead heat -- and a sharp drop from the 15-point lead Obama held in June."
Like a dog with a bone, Anon.
Well, like a dog anyway.
You're a hoot, Bea!
I posted one sentence from the article.
Your response: he's hiding the truth and then you post up a bunch of out of context parts of the article, acting like everything's great.
How sad!
Here are the important parts of the article:
The race is a dead heat
McCain has the momentum
McCain leads among independets
Voters believe Obama is cynically changing positions for political advantage
Let me know if I got any of that wrong.
Believe me. At Obama HQ, they're in panic mode today!
Let's see,
Kerry
Gore
Dukakis
take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
down the foggy ruins of time
McBush has the soft support because of his long standing rift with the religious wrong.
61 percent of registered voters who support Obama say they support him strongly, compared to just 39 percent who say they strongly support McCain
And here's what Dobson said about McBush. He said if the race came down to McBush vs. Hillary or Obama, "I simply will not cast a ballot for President for the first time in my life."
Ooops, that was me, Aunt Bea, cleaning up after Sybil's explosion.
Freudian slip, Bea
wink-wink
Freud's got Anon's diagnosis:
Reaction formation
Sexual identity
A man who is overly aroused by pornographic material who utilizes reaction formation may take on an attitude of criticism toward the topic. He may end up sacrificing many of the positive things in his life, including family relationships, by traveling around the country to anti-pornography rallies. This view may become an obsession, whereby the man eventually does nothing but travel from rally to rally speaking out against pornography. He continues to do this, but only feels temporary relief, because the deeply rooted arousal to an "unacceptable" behaviour such as watching pornography is still present, and underlying the implementation of the defense. At that point he can be said to have developed an obsessional personality above and beyond the defense mechanism.
An example of Freud's theory is when a "heterosexual" individual supports and maintains strong "homophobic" beliefs as a way to cover-up their deep-seated and often untouched homosexual desires. A reaction formation is used to balance the ego-id-superego emotion of this "homosexual" living as a "heterosexual" in order to relieve the individual's anxiety.[2]
The case of prominent Congressman Mark Foley (R-Florida), in 2006, might also be considered an example of reaction formation. As chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, Foley had introduced legislation to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect. His resignation followed the revelation that he exchanged sexually explicit electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page, and that he had engaged in potentially inappropriate contact with pages for a number of years.
A possibility may also be Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-New York), who spent many years cracking down on prostitution, only be to allegedly identified as "Client Number 9", engaging in sexual acts with prostitutes totalling up to $80,000.
Another possibility could be Ted Haggard for engaging in homosexual activities while at the same time preaching against homosexuality as the pastor for a prominent church in Colorado Springs. Ted Haggard also used methamphetamine purchased from his male prostitute lovers.
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