Andy Rooney

[Jenny AU-92 0]

Another sign of the Appocalypse - I actually agreed with something Andy Rooney said last night!!! This is the relevant part, but you can read the other parts here if you like:

Andy Rooney 11-9-03

This is part of my problem with libs - the libs HATE Bush passionately, and are devastated when good things happen in this country because it makes Bush look good. Aren't we all Americans first?

And before anyone says it, yes, I do HATE Clinton, and for what I deem to be a good reason (having the morals of a goat while occupying the most powerful job in the world, among other things) - but while he was in office, I was not overjoyed when horrible things happened to this country on his watch. Kohbar Towers, the embassy bombings, etc. - I got no pleasure from that.

I don't know whether you think I'm a liberal or a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat. Whatever you think, you're probably wrong. I tend to be more liberal than conservative, but don't count on it. I'm not middle-of-the-road. I'm all over the road.

I wish Americans weren't so viciously biased, though. We're all so nasty talking politics.

If people disagree with the president, why do they have to hate him? George W. Bush is not an evil person. I don't think he's the smartest president we ever had, but I doubt if he thinks he is either. He's doing what he thinks is right even if a lot of people think he's wrong.

I actually know Democrats who felt terrible last week because the good news about the economy made President Bush look good.

And there are people taking satisfaction from the terrible news out of Iraq because that makes Bush look bad.

One of the best things about our democracy has always been that when we elect someone, that's it. The losers accept the results. We just barely elected George W. Bush, but whether we voted for him or not, we accept him as our president.

If people are really patriotic Americans and Democrats -- they bitch and complain but he's their president. They're more Americans than they are Democrats.

[rexbo 104]

I guess that's why he gets paid to write commentary, and I am stuck arguing with TigerAl and Donutboy, he just said what I have been trying to say for months!!

[Tiger Al 0]

I couldn't agree with AR more.

[Jenny AU-92 0]

Then why all the "Bush stole the election" stuff you have been writing on this site in the last week (aka Boondocks thread)??? Nothing in your past postings would EVER lead me to believe for one minute that you agree in any way with anything Rooney said. You certainly act like Bush is not your President and bad news for him is good news for you, regardless if it means bad news for America.

[Tiger Al 0]

Then why all the "Bush stole the election" stuff you have been writing on this site in the last week (aka Boondocks thread)???  Nothing in your past postings would EVER lead me to believe for one minute that you agree in any way with anything Rooney said.  You certainly act like Bush is not your President and bad news for him is good news for you, regardless if it means bad news for America.

I don't recall ever writing anything that said Bush stole the election. Feel free to peruse my posts, but I don't think it's there. "The Boondocks" I thought was funny. Others do, too, because it's very popular. While Bush did win the required electoral votes, Gore had more votes overall meaning more people wanted him to be the president. Please don't launch a diatribe about the machinations of the electoral college...I understand how it works!

Whatever you believe, I don't hate Bush. I think he's grossly underqualified for his job and he lies a lot, but, other than that, he's probably a lot of fun to hang out with.

Just the other day, when someone posted some minor positive tick in the economy and said how the liberals would hate this, I made the reply that we had to live in this economy, too. If it's great news, it's great news.

You seem to think that because you and the others in the radical right (not the mainstream Republicans) hated Clinton personally and gladly repeated any lie that was put in front of you as if it were the gospel, then Democrats who disagree with Bush MUST be following suit. WRONG!!! The reason we found out about all these Clinton "scoops" (read: LIES) was because that's all you had!!! His Presidency was sound so all the right-wing fools could come up with was story after story after story for eight years about cocaine rings, murders, Whitewater, murders, Travelgate, Filegate, more murders, rapes, first Hillary was a lesbian, then she had an affair Vince Foster, who Bill had killed, you know (wink wink).

Then, you have the nerve to believe some chickens**t concoction that the media is liberal. If they're so liberal, why didn't they so fervently report every time one of those cockenbull lies was shown for what it was? Why aren't we as familiar with the retractions? Because, they were moving on to the next juicy tale.

And, for all of it, all you got was that he had oral sex with an intern. He shouldn't have done it. He lied about it. He shouldn't have. We'll forget that most everybody else would, too. And then, he said he was sorry, which is what we'd like to see; remorse.

But the thing that galls you is that on the day of Clinton's impeachment, he had an approval rating of 71% and IF he could've run a third time, he'd have wiped up Dubya easily. The reason everyone has their head in the sand is because Bush was supposed to be the Golden Boy who would show America what a good'un was all about, except that he's had a habit of screwing up almost everything he's ever touched. His daddy's cronies are even having a tough time keeping him in line, that's why he rarely ever gives press conferences where he may actually have to answer a question. And the majority of America, albeit a small one, didn't pick him.

No, Jenny, trust me: Any dislike I have for Bush is strictly because of what he's done to us. He'll supply plenty of bad news on his own so I don't need to feign indignation.

[Jenny AU-92 0]

Just a little factoid about approval ratings - the info is from several sources, all Google-able and verifiable:

In the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll (released 11/2), President Bush’s job approval rose to 56%. As a reminder, in 1996 Bill Clinton was re-elected with a job approval of 54% right before Election Day. Further, Ronald Reagan and Clinton both had approval ratings a year out from Election Day in the forties (Reagan was at 49% and Clinton at 46%) – roughly 6 to 8 points below where President Bush is today.

Bush has NOT screwed up everything he has ever touched - that is YOUR perception. There certainly seem to be plenty of us who think otherwise and I don't just mean on this board. You seem to be laboring under the impression that most all Americans think like you - obviously not. Bush has done the best he can with what he has been given to work with - I doubt that even your hero Bill could have done any better with the current situation. The economy was already headed south before Bill left office - had he been elected to a third term, just how do you think he could have stopped that, considering the impact outside events have had on this economy (9/11, Enron, etc.) Oh, wait, Enron wouldn't have happened if Bush hadn't have been President. Oh, and 9/11 wouldn't have happened either since Clinton had SUCH a great plan for dealing with Osama (playing golf) and appeasing Saddam Hussein (bombing an asprin factory).

Quite honestly, your liberal head in the sand ideas about appeasement and Howard Dean being the savior of this nation because GWB is the antichrist are just too far out there for me, but as someone posted on a different thread, I have come to accept that nothing I say will ever change your mind, and there is no way in hell you would or could EVER change mine. So I am mostly going to start ignoring your pipedreams about the utopia that could have been and your biased rants about Bush and big oil and how this country is headed to hell in a hand basket, because they are just biased crap. I wonder some times if you are really that liberal or if you are just trying to pick a fight, but honestly, I don't have time to waste these days trying to figure it out. And the debate really isn't that great either, just spin, spin, spin.

So have fun - maybe someone else on the board will continue this exercise in futility.

[Tiger Al 0]

You seem to be laboring under the impression that most all Americans think like you - obviously not. 

You're right...only 50-66% do. I'll take those numbers any election!!!

Born in Connecticut in 1946 but raised in Texas, he followed his father to military school and then Yale but concentrated more on fraternity duties than his studies. Bush later joined the National Guard but failed to get posted to Vietnam. Armed instead with a Harvard business degree, Junior followed his father into the oil industry. After various job failures he could be found in local bars, complaining, "I'm all name but no money".

Bush trusted his gut at four different companies--Arbusto, Bush Exploration, Spectrum 7 and Harken. Guess what? His gut failed him every single time. He failed to make a dime for his investors, drilled dry hole after dry hole, bumbled from collapse to catastrophe...and got rich in the process. How? Bush was always bailed out by his daddy's pals, who obviously figured that, with his family connections, he might become useful.

Bush drilled a lot of dry holes, had companies that had to be bailed out financially, and may have usd his father's influence (because he was in the White House at the time) to get special consideration for some business dealings. He denies any wrongdoing. Will his record in the business world help or hurt his potential Presidency?

The Bush tax cut legacy in Texas has left the government in such dire straits that State Senator Chris Harris, a leading Texas conservative Republican, has proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would roll back Bush's 1997 property-tax-relief legislation. At the start of the Bush tenure in Texas, the state already had low taxes and a correspondingly low level state government services. Rather than use the period of relative prosperity in the state to improve services, the Bush administration promoted tax cuts. Bush's tax cuts in 1997 and 1999 reduced revenue available over the next two-year period by an estimated $2.6 billion.

[CCTAU 3,369]

I couldn't agree with AR more.

Your posts usually exhibit a demoncrat first, american second type of attitude. You have NEVER said you support the president in any way.

[Tiger Al 0]

I couldn't agree with AR more.

Your posts usually exhibit a demoncrat first, american second type of attitude. You have NEVER said you support the president in any way.

And suppose you explain to me what being a "Good American" is all about.

[channonc 466]

I don't understand why some of you can't open up your mind for 2 seconds. Everything is not a purely black and white issue. Its amazing to see some of the posts. Bush has not done everything horribly: I do agree that going into Iraq was the best decision at the time. Heck, even Congress voted that way. But I do think Bush should have done a better job of investigating the intelligence he was getting. Whether he knew the intelligence was bad at the time or not can be debated, but either way it definately shouldn't have been completely relied upon. I will not argue that Saddam was an evil guy and its best that he is gone, I think we all agree on that one. I think Bush thought he would have more time to think of a plan for "post-war" and it now appears he didn't have the time he expected or needed.

As for the economy, economists on both sides will debate their party's propaganda. Me, I think the seemingly bettering of the economy has been because of 2 things, government spending and increase of consumer spending. Whether or not that spending was fueled by the tax cuts can again be debated on both sides. It depends on who you are reading and how you think the economy works. What do I think? Well, I think the tax cuts probably helped, however, at the cost of putting our country even more in debt. Unfortuantely, the president wants to pay for the war and give everyone a tax cut on top of funding every spending program that passes his desk. He wants his cake and wants to eat it too which doesn't seem possible. The war in Iraq was necessary at the time, and unexpected in terms of the national budget, that being said, Bush should have held off on his tax cut venture. We cannot put a price tag on a war no matter what you guys think. You won't know till its over how much it actually costs. Let me throw out a senario... you are the provider for a family of four, middle class income, living comfortably. You find out that someone in the family has cancer. While you have insurance, there will still be major out of pocket expenses. do you continue getting the new car, and proceeding as you would have normally, or do you make cuts in spending where you could to help pay for this unexpected cost? I vote make cuts now, especially since you have no idea what kind of treatments will be necessary and have no idea how much the whole ordeal will cost you until its over.

I guess getting back to the point of the thread is, I think everyone should try to take a look at both sides. consider the alternative seriously and then decide whether or not you agree with it. I think too many people tow the party line and just buy into its propaganda. Don't get sucked up into the politician's spin, in the end its your vote they really want!