johnfelstead

no, they have implemented a block on anyone outside the USA accessing W's website. They set that up last week. Sums up Bush's attitude to foreigners quite nicely. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3958665.stm

If this election is voted on domestic policy, which in this particular election i dont think it will be, Bush is screwed. He took a 300 billion dollar surplus and turned that into a 430 billion dollar deficit in 4 years, they will be paying that debt off for decades.

Bush isnt a tax and spend politician, he is a dont tax and spend politician, he is the first president ever during a time of war to give a tax cut, he is the first president in 70 years to lose more jobs than are created.

I love BigJoe's post, its typical neocon belief. This is an interesting case study into the diferences between Bush and Kerry suporters. http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pr...rt10_21_04.pdf

unclebuck

What a hypocritical disgrace. After all Bush's pious statements regarding freedom and liberty etc.

That's *genuinely* ironic.

UB

tiggers

Got to love conspiracy theories. The Bush website suffered a major outage mid October probably due to the load on the server so maybe, just maybe, the block since implemented is simply to ensure the site stays up for the run up to the US election so at least those voting in the election can read it.

Before anyone says anything to the contrary the US troops stationed around the world can still read it as they will be accessing via the US military network which still has access to the site no matter where they are connecting from.

Seems a little over the top to me, but I guess it's better than having the site crash in the last few days before the election.

Regards,

tiggers.

johnfelstead

like the hits from abroad are going to be THAT massive. People abroad are more likely to hit the oficial whitehouse website. It must make being a foreign journalist more dificult not being able to read one of the contenders websites.

gsm1

But we've always got this site instead:

http://www.whitehouse.org/

tiggers

John,

I'm only guessing and being in the web business I have seen people take some desperately strange decisions to keep their sites up and running.

Sorry as I should have made myself clear - I have a feeling the outage/load on the server may be have been an attempted attack on the site as the National Congress site (different server) went down at roughly the same time and there has been no official explanation. The block may well be more to do with that than anything else.

Just guessing based on the facts, but I could be totally wrong.

Regards,

tiggers.

bigJoe

John, how independent is that link?

From the web site:

PIPA's Foundation Sponsors
Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Tides Foundation
Ford Foundation
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Compton Foundation
Carnegie Corporation
Benton Foundation
Ben and Jerry's Foundation
Americans Talk Issues Foundation
Circle Foundation


Look at the web sites for these organisations, the Tides foundation even has to try and distance it’s self from Teresa Heinz-Kerry – come off it, don’t try and skew things with bias surveys – just give people the unbiased facts if you feel they need informing.

unclebuck

Ah yes, that'll be it, how foolish to think anything else, it's *bound* to be some technical reason to do with servers. I'm sure it could never simply be a healthy dose of good ol' Republican Neo Conservative Paranoia. Of course that nice Mr Bush and his stalwarts could never harbour an irrational fear of foreigners could they. After all, to think that would be just cynical.

MJW

This is the crux of the Middle East problem. On the one hand Bush denounces terrorism, but then approves of the state terrorism carried out by Israel. Is it any wonder he is considered hypocritical by certain sectors of the Arab population ?
But I can see why people would vote for Bush based on his foreign policy decisions - he's seen as the no-nonsense protector of the realm, and we all know there's nothing like a good dust-up to get the patriotic votes rolling in. And if that fails there's always ballot rigging !

tiggers

As it clearly states in my posts I am just guessing based on what I know from the technical reports, but if you want to think something different from the 'World according to Unclebuck' you are of course perfectly entitled to do so.

Regards,

tiggers.

bigJoe

MJW,

The thing is, American companies didn’t start selling arms to Israel (in a semi-free market) in November 2000 – every US government since the Jews returned to Israel has done the same and many (administrations) have also brokered peace deals with varying levels of success and we are where we are.

The fact remains though, that US policy towards Israel – right or wrong (depending on viewpoint) won’t change much, if at all depending on who’s elected – prove me wrong

unclebuck

That's right. And even as a moderator, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. That must pi$$ you off mightily....

Regards,

UB

tiggers

Sigh ... if that is what you really think then you're sadder than I thought!

unclebuck

Think? It's a no brainer... Jeez I'm sad....

Best regards


UB

tiggers

Finally - something we agree on.

Tiggers

AndyK

Do not know if this means anything to you lot but being an american resident (2 weeks and counting) I can tell you that the general views of Bush over here are very different to over there. That is why in the UK the vast majority of people would rather vote a goat in than Bush but over here the polls show that
Bush 49%
Kerry 49% from USA Today (yesterday to you lot )

For the record some one mention figuers for Iraq

U.S. Death toll in Iraq....


1104 service men broken down
848 hostile action
259 non-combat. Again USA Today.
This is printed every day with todays including 3 examples. 2 car bombs and one small arms.
Personally my vote would still go for that goat but having just got a cell phone (god forgive me for calling it that) I am constantly baraged with calls encouraging me to vote one way or the other. Also having spoken to the locals they bring up issuses such as gay marriage and not Iraq because it is generally accepted that they are there and it has to be seen through. Kerry is for gay marirage and Bush.........



Depends when you ask him he has changed his mind on this for each differnet interview even though he is meant to be 100% against! But, this is one of the important issues here.

Does anyone know what Kerry stands for or are all the votes just against Bush? Because I have no idea!

AndyK

Just checked the figures out for the death toll and I have no idea where the missing 3 are. Written as printed in the paper.
Oh, and if any one else wants to know info from USA Today I have a copy right here.

gareth123

There's info in USA Today??! Hidden among the pictures I assume?

Where in NJ have you just moved to? US resident expat myself.

There's better election info at http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Aztec Performance Ltd

iTrader: (234)

I'll try not to pre-jude your intelligence on that alone


Strong?...yes. Also very selfish, unintelligent, trigger happy, oil hungery tw@t.

Gets the job done?...whats the state of the US economy

Bush finds Bin Laden and then leaves it to the Taliban to capture him (which they failed), whilst Bush concentrated on stomping an illegal war on Iraq which has abosolutely NOTHING to do with terrorism. You call that good leadership?

(am really starting to doubt your intelligence now)

The world would be at war for sure.

The majority of the non-US world!


I understand him alright. He is one of the most stupid people I have ever seen. He is unable to string sentences together and has many financial interests (personal) in Oil. Did you see how he responded to the 9/11 'attacks'? Just sets there with his stupid face on, not knowing what to do until told. That about sums him up.


He is a better man for the job than trigger happy, dumb *** Bush. At least Kerry sees the value of a more united world rather than the "God bless America, and **** everybody else" view.

The head to head live debate were just too funny. Even Beckham would have one a debate against stupid Bush. "errrr....ummmmm.......eeerrrrrr....ummm"

Bob

Senior_AP

Who cares.

One's a thick f$ck, the other is a democrat **** bandit.

tiggers

Talking of stringing sentences together - it's 'won' not 'one'. People in glass houses ....

Senior_AP

Bush is good at everything required to be a president.

More clever than most of us on this site put together however not as clever as many, many people.

To succeed in Politics in the USA you need 2 things:

1. Primary - money!!!!

2. Secondary - You can talk the talk.

Daryl

All this talk of how bad America is, got me thinking - who else would we rather have as the most powerful nation on earth?

I wonder what it would be like if it was China, Russia or even France?

Perhaps it's a case of 'better the devil...'

Holy Ghost

now here's an interesting site:

www.betavote.com - a worldwide online vote that's attracted over 400,000 votes.

it's kerry all the way with the sole exception of Niger (ironic, bearing in mind the spat over the alleged attempts at uranium yellow cake purchases).

however, there seem to be too many public doubts about kerry (real and imagined) that will prevent him getting over the gain line. for better or for worse, i suspect that this will be michael dukakis in 1988 all over again - ie a convincing bush landslide.

another consideration is that democracies rarely change leaders during times of crisis/war. (perhaps there's a wider trend to what happened to aznar in spain earlier this year but i doubt it).

personally i don't think kerry's up to it: he's a career senatorial flip-flop bit-player with even less gumption than gore. it says a lot for the ditch the democrats are in that he's the best they could agree on. so, bush for the lack of a genuinely better option.

watch this space for hillary clinton in 2008: she's ballsy, smart, articulate, media-savvy, the right age and absolutely as hard-as-nails. she can mobilise, carry and unify the democratic vote; the women's vote; the pro-choice vote; and the black & ethnic vote pretty much all in one. she's a potent potential force and if she stands, she'll win the nomination and the presidency.

i reckon. for what it's worth. think i'm in for a late night tonight.

bigJoe

Bob’5

You don’t seem to have a high opinion of President Bush – if he’s such a dumb *** maybe you think you could go head to head with him in a TV debate. It sounds like you have a lot of well thought out arguments that the world needs to hear, since you must be at least as clever as David Beckham as you can use the internet, right?

hotsam

If Kerry wins one more state than Gore did (and he leads in Florida and Ohio), he will win the election. This will not be a repeat of 1988.

the moose

A good soundbite, but despite the Bush machine, Kerry's proven that actually, he IS effective, if not even a pale shadow of the previous Democratic presidential incumbent. The war has proven not to be the vote-winner than Bush thought it would be, and since Bush has little to offer other than how he's going to beat the bogeyman, he's at the point of losing to the weakest Democratic candidate since Carter (incidentally, one of the great unsung heroes of the 20th Century, despite, like Michael Foot, being fundamentally unsuited to leading a country).

I'll have a little wager with you, if you're interested. Far from being a landslide, as you assert, I'd suggest that it'll still be being fought over on Friday, and that no candidate will have conceded until the weekend.

I'll put my money on Kerry squeaking home with 290 electoral college votes, no more.

gsm1

This nonsense about Bush being a strong leader who doesn't care what others think makes me laugh. It must have emanated from the Rumsfeld Ministry of Propaganda because I've heard it all over the place. What exactly does it mean? You could say the same about Hitler, Pol Pot or any other fruitcake as well.

There's no doubt about Bush's level of intelligence. Even republican voters after his bout with Kerry said he came across as an idiot. Remember the interview where he couldn't even remember the names of other world leaders? I bet after 9/11 he probably called up Colon Powell and asked him to make contact with the A-Team.

Holy Ghost

soundbite? sorry, you mistake largely uninterested, intelligent observance for crap-quotables from someone with a tabloid brain.

landslide? kerry can come a very close second in the majority of electoral colleges but still loose, overall, by an effective landslide (eg carter/reagan or bush/dukakis).

whatever happens, the transatlantic relationship will stay the same (as it always has since WWII). that's all that's ultimately important to the UK.

no wager, sorry. all i care is that the next administration does the *right* thing and leaves, ultimately, an iraq that can govern itself following the absolutely correct overthrow of a homicidal loon. even if that means that things are only starting to work out by 2014+. after all, we can't expect the arabs to be as accomodating as the the post-**** germans were. because the desert heat makes arabs (and israelis) barking mad.

and always has done: FFS, Christ wasn't crucified in the wet gloom of Stoke-on-Trent, was he?

Holy Ghost

democrats should've lead with edwards. bright-spark-sharp-media-sexy-young-guy: i wish they had.