Okay. Have We Reached The Point of No Return.

[Solomon]

America is on the cusp of ..... what? Bush has taken us down the wrong road clearly. The question I have is, is the harm irreparable?
Even if Bush is swept out of office, is it too late to stop the trainwreck of America that he has set in motion.

Can we get it back? Can the democrats restore America to its position before its too late?

Can the democrats get us out of Iraq? Or will the consensus continue to be, "we just can't leave now that we're there"?

Can the democrats reverse the deficits again? Will democrats get rid of the patriot act?

Its obvious that if Bush wins again, America is through. Doomed.
I wonder whether a democratic winner can do anything to stop the juggernaut.

[markses]

1. We are in extremely deep trouble

That may manifest itself prior to the election. The financial conditions of the state and federal governments cannot hold with the Iraq pressure. they need to make major corrections extremely quickly (within the next month or two) or there could be severe consequences for the US and global economy.

It is a fucking mess of first magnitude.

Sorry to gloom and doom y'all, but the numbers simply don't add up. Bad financial stuff will happen not next year, but damn soon.

[Solomon]

2. I agree. I can't believe we're doing this when

we saw how Afghanistan bankrupted the Soviet Union. Is it our turn now? What idiots!

[sable302]

3. well, it was Afghanistan plus

the arms race, and loads of debt. Well, we have Afghanistan + Iraq and are developing the debt, but have no arms race. Unless, of course, Rummy gets his way and we begin developing tactical nukes. That would be the real trifecta.

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

6. But the Soviet Union also was collapsing under its own corruption and

refusal to recognize reality -- the famous example I read about was Lysenkoism (sp?), where their medicine and science wasn't based on science, but on ideology. The US sure is following that path awfully quickly!

It appears that we might be doing ourselves in with the religion of de-regulation and privatizing -- crazy economic ideology with no basis in reality. Or you could say the leaders of the country are doing it.

[sable302]

12. oh yes

well put. The iron-fisted approach to defend the ideals of the revolution. The same is true here I suppose. You see this approach to free-market capitolism, that 'business will always provide better services more efficiently than the government' (even if it doesn't!!).

Wasn't there something called 'communist biology.' I remember once reading about how Darwin survival of the fittest biology didn't fit with communism, because it involved too much competition. Therefore the idea was that the organisms that were most highly developed and survived were the ones that were made of the larger and more complex number of individual cells and bits and pieces working together for a common purpose. That was why a human was more developed than an amoeba, because the human's body illustrated a greater amount of cooperation of individual parts than an amoeba, or something like that.

Your statement reminds me of our lattest 'scientific' fad, Creation science. Yikes.

[mandyky]

4. Not quite yet

but I am not sure we can make it til election 2004. I am beginning to rethink if there will even be an election in 2004. The current administration is not above anything as far as I am concerned.

Hey, Dean campaign, get security, please.

[hang a left]

7. thats right, we can't wait see post

Call to Arms in GD. Lets get started, lets take our damn country back. Come on people!!!!!!!!!!

[AntiCoup2K4]

8. No shit!

I've heard that Dean is using a beat up old 747 on his campaign trips. I sure hope he keeps that thing behind a razor wire fence when it's not in the air. Way too many plane crashes associated with the Bush Criminal Empire.

[Jacobin]

5. Look. When the fricking IMF issues a statement of warning about your

fiscal affairs, you have a big problem.

To my knowledge, that is the first time they have issued a warning to the U.S. Normally it is issued for developing countries who are about to go bankruptcy and have 2,000 percent a year inflation or are about to default on their bonds.

Smirk has screwed things up royally. It'll take cranes, big ones, to get this train back on the track.

[NoKingGeorge]

9. And the Good news is CHANGE

The pendulum swings. This regime will be exposed. Our country is too strong with too many Patriots to be taken over for long. We survived Nixon, We survived the Raygun years.
The folowers of the neocons ,Dick,Rummy will be tried and serve time. Idiot boy will again disgrace his father. He will live in loneliness at the pig farm(and continue drinking by the way).
The guys with the big bucks see that they are in danger of being exposed so they are abandoning the idiot.They thought they were getting someone of Nixons' shrewdness.
A Republican will not be elected (or appointed) to office again for the next 30 years.
The world will applaud the American people and once again America will show why OUR Country is the Greatest Nation on earth.

[Karenina]

10. I remember a ballot in Santa Monica

where you had to vote YES if you DID NOT want the hotel corporations to take private access to the beach. I simply KNEW enough of my fellow citizens were clever enough to see through the ruse. The measure FAILED. That is the knowledge of my fellow Americans that I would be heart-broken to surrender. Zur Zeit ist Califonia a bloody fickin' media circus. I can only clasp my face in my hands. This CANNOT be happening... This CANNOT be happening... This CANNOT be happening... This CANNOT be happening...This CANNOT be happening... This CANNOT be happening... FULL STOP. Bitte. NO on the recall. It is a perversion and a rump romp.

[dbt]

11. I think Poppy lost it when that Hillbilly beat him in '92

Bush The Elected's second term was going to be a very profitable one. Those four years would have seen his benefactors repaid for their generosity and Poppy's personal fortunes replenished. Like a radio station owner once told me, "The second year (of your contract) is where you make your money." I think Poppy was operating under that principle--and fully expected a second term as his Divine Right.

Bad enough to lose the '92 election--but to lose to one of what Bar calls "those people" really rubbed his nose in it! So Daddy began plotting his revenge. By God, he'd show this country what happens when it strays from the Righteous Path. He began grooming his precious Little Georgie to be "president" someday! (By any means necessary.)

With the Bush Bloodline back in the White Haus, the gloves would come off. Not only would profits be taken this time, there would also be Plundering, Pillaging and Looting. Poppy's plan is not only to bankrupt the US, but to leave it so fucked up as to be beyond repair no matter who wins in '04. If Little George wins again, it's just icing on the cake. If a Democrat wins, Daddy gets to watch him squirm and to revel in the satisfaction of teaching those commoners a thing or two!

:freak:
dbt

[Nederland]

13. Remember Reagan?

Perhaps you're too young.

Anyway, I heard the same sort of doomsday crap from people about Reagan-Bush. Then we got Clinton and we had eight years of peace and prosperity and I wondered what happened to all those people that said Reagan was do "irreparable harm" to America.

Fact of the matter is this: Presidents don't have as much power as most people think they do. They get way too much credit when things are going well, and way too much blame when things are going bad.

[markses]

16. Oh, I remember Reagan

I also remember a Democratic congress that did put a check on his more obnoxious activities, and I remember that Reagan was much more fiscally and militarily moderate than Bush Jr. (as was Poppy).

The problem now is a perfect storm of factors, and historical analogy to Reagan is not particularly useful. I'm not a doomsday fanatic. In fact, I think most "Oh, woe!" posts are ill-considered and paranoiac.

However, I think between the "impossible to exaggerate" costs revealed by Bremer in his WP interview, the UN bombing (perhaps the most successfully conceived and executed terrorist attack in history), the eye-popping federal deficit and concomitant IMF nervousness, and the global economic situation generally, we have real material conditions for severe crisis and rapid deterioration.

With Reagan, the hullaballoo was generally ideologically driven, though it did, of course, have very real effects. With bush, the ideology trips after itself; we are in a real material crisis that has no real historical analogue, since it is utterly singular in its composition.

[Nederland]

18. Obviously you don't

Reagan was much more fiscally and militarily moderate than Bush Jr.

Obviously you don't remember Reagan very well.

[markses]

19. Well, yes, I do

"More" is a relative term, after all.

[TreasonousBastard]

20. I remember Reagan very well,

and while he pissed away billions on battleships and other stupidity, he didn't get us mired into a war a year.

He also realized that taxes had to be raised again toward the end. And was not as violently opposed to social programs and the environment that this putz is. Nor did he do everything in his power to piss off our friends and allies.

Never in my worst nightmares did I ever think I would feel nostalgia for the Reagan years, but I actually do.

I didn't agree with much of what they did or stood for, but at least they weren't as incompetant as this crew is. They played the game well, and didn't destroy the playing fields.

[proud patriot]

14. Never Surrender to Hopelessness

Dag Nabit

[markses]

17. I am not hopeless

If the poster asks whether irreparable harm is being done, the answer is YES, and worse will come.

That is not hopelessness. One can maintain hope, energy and activity despite "irreparable harm." One just has to live and build new hopes out of that harm.

[jiacinto]

15. Yes

Nothing is ever that hoepless, although the damage to the environment might be.