Georgie Porgie, spent all the money and made them cry.

for the post, as usual. The rest is misdirection to camouflage the actual intent. S.O.P.

can't we just ignore him?

I made a mistake in including the allegation which clouded the point which is Bush is leaving us all in a disastrous financial position. I'm sorry I mentioned it. Please edit it out if you can, so we can get on with the entire article instead of my 4 or 5 badly timed words. Though, if the truth be known, I doubt you really want to discuss the financial disaster.

Rob

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that Mr. Bush used inappropriate outside resources in his academic endeavors?

None needeed for a blathering rant

don't have documentation either, just campus gossip. I grant you it's a zinger, but when you look at the man's performance: first in the Guard where he was in the bottom 25% of his entrance group and got bumped to the head of the line(that is documented by the way), and then in the "awl bidness" where he couldn't find oil even with a roadmap, and had to be bought out by Daddy's incredibly generous Saudi Arabian buddies.

And then the whole concept of making no allowances for changed circumstances after the first tax cut met the Twin Towers, and running up such a massive deficit during a war, and leaving the clean up for somebody else. I mean imagine being the Republican who takes over, and says "Thanks George, you've left a hell of a mess."

It used to be a Republican refrain that Lyndon Johnson severely damaged the national economy for years by trying to maintain the Great Society and the Viet Nam War at the same time. Nixon complained all the time about it. At least he was running up a deficit for a reason, for a principle to try to help the lowest 25% in America get on their feet. George is doing it to buy votes and reward his class.

You're all intelligent people, and you know in your hearts that if a Democrat acted the way George W. Bush is acting you'd be in the streets burning him in effigy and trying to do it for real. You'd certainly be accusing him of ruining the country's economy. Just use the critical faculty God gave you and be honest about the guy. It's not like he's got any where else to go, he's not running for anything again, but we (because I'm on the hook for taxes just like the rest of you) are going to be going through some nasty times coming up in order to pay for this man's childish self indulgence.

His father, who was a far smarter man, said "No new taxes", he didn't say, "the candy store is open and nothing that happens will change that", because to use Bush Sr rhetoric, "it wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be prudent". When the history books get written, and thank god I won't have to do that job, imprudence is only one of the charges that will be levelled.

I mentioned Dr Bergsagel to you a few days back. He practiced for more than 10 years in Texas before moving up to Canada and becoming one of the pre-eminent haematological oncologists in North America. If his retirement is an example of a retired doctor suffering under a socialist system, then I'm glad I'm suffering by proxy. A penthouse condo with a view of more than 1/3 of the city, a home full of art, oriental rugs and every new bell and whistle known to man. Even at 81 he's what is known as an ealy adopter of technology, and because of his glaucoma he subscribes to podcasts of the New Yorker magazine. I spent some time setting up his computer and his new iPod nano so he can listen to it on his walks.

While talking to his daughter in their pleasant dining room I saw a Red Tailed Hawk sail by the window about 200 yards away. And its amazing how overwhelmed the view is with trees, but that's just a plug for Toronto

And all this in the land of supposedly punitive taxation. But then we're trying to get our Military back up to scratch with new equipment because we really don't have the right stuff for Afghanistan. But that's in the cards so long as Stephen Harper doesn't take a leaf out of George's book and give it away to all the wrong people. Canada's economy is doing very well thank you, and thanks to American indiscretion the Canadian dollar, damaged decades ago by Pierre Elliott Trudeau's bilingualism and biculturalism policy, is rapidly approaching parity with the US dollar.

Look, Dr Bill, essentially what I did is I e-mailed every one of my American friends and family regardless of political opinion, even very distant acqaintances and said "How did George Bush get through Yale and Harvard if he looks this stupid now?" and the commonest reply was "It's common knowledge he bought his grades" followed "Did you see what the people in his MBA class said about him and his contributions to class? He got a lot of help somewhere."

During an interview regarding **** Cheney, there was a person interviewed on the US news who talked about Yale's "no fail policy" back then in the 60's, that they'd do everything to get a person once admitted through Yale (possibly it was only for prominent alumni, but that's what he said about it). In this case with George W. Bush I don't mean anything nefarious, I mean that they assigned him tutors and policed him amd forced him to work. Cheney himself is the great exception, he didn't want to be there, and apparently he flunked out of first year and went back to Wyoming and did it his way, worked as a lineman, got a community college degree and later a university degree. But I don't think Cheney's dumb, I think he's very very smart, and a total contrast to the President.

I wish there was documentation on the Pres. I wish there was documentation on his National Guard Service, and how he got in, and what his fitness reports were, and where he was in Alabama, and why he didn't get that physical, and all sorts of things. In fact it seems positively unnatural that there is so little documentation of the Pres's National Guard service, but neither I nor anybody else has any documentation unless Dan Rather's documents actually turn out to be true, which is a possibility however remote if you're honest about it.

It used to be a truism that nobody could keep a secret. Well it seems to me that there are an awful lot of secrets being very well kept out there.

Rob

I'm not the first to introduce gossip into a story (what else was the Swift Boat Vets attack on John Kerry). But the real issue is the article and the budgetary disaster on its way.

I acknowledge I shouldn't have mixed the issues, not least because you may be inclined to dump the one because of the other. Please ignore my zinger at Bush and concentrate on the financial difficulties implicit in having the lowes tax rate in the civilized world while conducting an expensive war half way round the world, because that is what we're likely to live to regret, especially if we have to go in and sort out Iran.

Rob

... are with the social spending that is "promised" for the future.

band aid kerry is was and allways be a coward.

those making the allegations had endorsed his senate campaign on previous occasions. The documents of the time don't indicate any of the assertions made in the Swift Boat ads.

Rob

band aid kerry do know the truth

as a nam vet i resent his lies

in any of the last four U.S. Presidential elections?

Don Erickson

again you spread lies knowingly that there lies.

kerrys a coward and told lies ask me how i know, i was in country same time that bastered said "all soldiers were comiting atrocities"!lies like that self inflicted wounds thank the stars the american people didnt vote him into power.
and rob i ask you this if kerrys so proud why hasnt he released his records?

You're forced to admit you can't back up one charge, and then blithely make a half dozen more charges that you also cannot back up. If you have anything at all to back up your charges, it's a lot of confused speculation that has no basis in fact.

The sad part is that you can't seem to see the irrational gush you are spewing. It certainly looks like you need some serious help.

when the pile is so high already?

downtrodden doctor (your assessment of the position of doctors in a National Health Care scheme) in his early 80's living a truly glorious life courtesy of the economy that you all think is the road to perdition. Hope we do as well, despite starting a little later.

As for the rest of your disquisition I'll pass, not because I can't reply but because I don't wish to be offensive. Obviously I think you're wrong.

Rob

says that the tax cuts do NOT pay for themselves, Evie:
Studies contest Bush's tax cut assertions.

>> Economists analyze President Bush's assertion that capital gains and dividend tax cuts pay for themselves. They found that isn't the case at all.

At a ceremony on the White House lawn, Bush said his tax cuts had helped the economy grow, ``which means more tax revenue for the federal Treasury.''

That's just not true. A host of studies, some of them written by economists who served in the Bush administration, have concluded that tax reductions mean less money for the Treasury.

The cuts Bush extended Wednesday will cost the Treasury an estimated $70 billion over five years. They may help spur economic growth, but they still lose more revenue than they generate. And unless they're matched by lower federal spending, they worsen federal budget deficits.

To be sure, tax revenues grew by $274 billion in 2005, a 15 percent increase over the previous year, and receipts are growing this year too. But does that mean the president's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts generated enough additional revenue to pay for themselves?

''No,'' said Douglas Holtz-Eakin. He was the chief economist for Bush's Council of Economic Advisers in 2001 and 2002, then the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office until late last year. Holtz-Eakin said other factors were behind the surge in tax revenues. One is that revenues rise as the population and the economy grow. Revenues would have risen in the post-2001 economic recovery with or without tax reductions, just as they did in the '90s. <<

Another conservative myth debunked!

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

This guy's argument is basically that revenues would have been up anyway. Just not true. History has shown three times now that lower taxes spur growth and increase revenues. Also, see Ireland vs. the EU.

We need to hold the line on "entitlement" spending. It's a dirty little secret that under Bush the welfare state has seen its greatest expansion since LBJ.

Just because A and B happen simultaneously (even on three occasions) doesn't mean that A causes B, as any student of logic will tell you. The only proof is to find an exactly parallel situation and show that in the absence of A, B does not happen. In fact, you'd find quite the opposite -- if you look back to the post-WWII years, when taxes were increased, total revenues to the Treasury increased at a faster rate than they did on the occasions when taxes were cut. The stimulatory effect of pent-up demand for consumer goods, the "baby boom," plus that provided to our own economy by rebuilding Europe and Japan via the Marshall Plan, more than overcame any negative effects of the tax hikes.

There's also a time-dependent effect in some cases, particulary with the capital gains tax cut, as that cut encourages people to take long-term profits, rather than holding on to the investment to avaoid paying the tax. But that effect is only temporary, in the period shortly after the cut takes place, and later goes the other way, since the assets that otherwise would have been sold later have already been sold.

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

... than the global warming theory you blindly accept.

What you CANNOT claim is that the tax RATE cuts had a deleterious effect on the budget by reducing revenues. Revenues increased. A LOT. As they tend to do in thriving economies like we have now.

Now if they would stop spending.

all of my money out of the United States before the economy tanks completely, after it does then I'll buy back in. I figure I should do very well thank you.

Rob

And, btw, the policy you advocate is one that our own government routinely rails against when foreign government put restrictions on the ability of Americans to buy stocks overseas!

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!