Defending Ourselves?

"Joe": Can't wait for Nov 3rd to get here. The election will be over .... well, the voting will be over with, let's say that. No matter what the size of Bush's victory, and I do expect he will squeak by, the Dems will unleash their Trial Lawyers Assn volunteers on the process, so it'll probably be tied up in the courts for months.

For this we have the wonderful lunatic Al Gore to thank, since he took the 2000 election to court. I didn't think Gore could make himself a more reviled politician than Richard Nixon, for example, but he has. The Kennedy/Nixon 1960 election was so close that Nixon could have turned to the courts, like Gore did. To Nixon's credit, he didn't pursue it legally, and the reason he didn't is precisely because he was concerned about the effect of such action on the electoral process such as what happened in 2000.

We're about to see the same thing this year, except worse than 2000.
The Dems can't win elections through the force of their stand on the issues, and persuasion of the electorate to vote them into office, so they have to resort to legal maneuvers to try to claim victory.

It's a pathetic state of affairs, and I think it will take a long time for any kind of sanity to return to the Democrat Party. Makes me long for the like of Scoop Jackson and John Kennedy, who at least believed we should defend ourselves in the world.

The people in charge of the Party are nothing but a bunch of appeasers. They're living in their own Sept 10th world.
It's amazing to me how Kerry has managed to make this race as close as he has. It means gobs of Americans are either so consumed with hatred for President Bush, or actually believe what Kerry is saying, or both, that they've entered some kind of "dark and nether region in their minds", in my view.
When I ask Kerry voters why they are voting for Kerry, without fail they say, "well, because Bush this, or Bush that, etc." The veins pop out on their necks and temples, they get red, and the rage simply takes over. I haven't heard anyone explain attributes of Kerry that make him the better man for the job...not one.

Jeremy: First, on the issue of neverending elections, not only do we have Al
Gore to thank, but the Supreme Court of the United States, who
decidedly made elections a court issue (rather than a legislative
issue, as is laid out in the Constitution) by calling an end to the
recounts. If they had thrown it back to the Florida legislature, as
the Constitution calls for, it would have set a precedent which made
it much harder to go to the courts after a Presidential Election.

Second, on the issue of "defending ourselves". Persian Gulf II was hardly defending ourselves. We took offensive action against a nation who had never attacked us and wasn't aggressing anyone at the time. I understand that Saddam was not complying with UN resolutions, but let the UN take care of that. There were far greater threats for us to pay attention to (i.e.--Iran and North Korea), not to mention finding Bin Laden and bringing him to justice."

I don't particularly like Bush or Kerry. They both supported the
pre-emptive strikes on Iraq (although who knows where Kerry stands on
the issue from minute to minute--don't know whether you saw the
Saturday Night Live debate where Kerry said "What George Bush doesn't
tell you is that whenever I've supported the war it's been in front of
a pro-war audience and whenver I've been against the war it's been in
front of an anti-war audience. That's not flip-flopping, it's
pandering, and you deserve a president who knows the difference!")

I'll tell you why I support Michael Badnarik. He believes in keeping
our troops at home to actually defend us instead of sending them all
around the world in offense. I understand that in sports the best
defense is a good offense. However, this is real life-and-death we are
talking about, and not only do I think that it's not right to go to war against
and kill civilians in a country that has not attacked us, but I also
think it flares up bad feelings that provoke our enemies. While I
like Bush's "spreading democracy and freedom" in theory, I think that
our government will prove to be as inept at doing this as it is in
delivering mail and providing health care. People must come to want
freedom so much that they rise up and fight for it themselves before
they will ever be ready for it.

While I don't agree with the Libertarian plan to immediately remove
all of our troops from Iraq, I don't believe this plan will really
harm things any more than Bush or Kerry's plans there (and actually
he's given vague notions of inspiring volunteers who believe in the
rebuilding effort to go help out), and I do agree with the Libertarian
plans for future defense of our country, which includes tracking down
actual terrorists against our nation rather than tromping all around
the world in a vague, never-ending "War on Terror" that will be about
as successful as the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Poverty".