QUOTE(Lawrence @ Mar 12 2004, 09:42 AM)
Karl,
Of course, I'm entitled to a private political opinion. I posted it, then edited it out. Truth is that I voted for the current president. I looked at it like this... if the guy was my neighbor, and I lent him my power saw - it would come back cleaner than when I gave it to him. Maybe that's nieve, but personal integrity is huge in my book. Algore was just plain slimy in my book.
..............
Lawrence,
I couldn't bring myself to vote for Gore either.
But any claims that Bush has any honesty or integrity went out the window for me long before he had any public aspirations on the presidency even. His election campaign against Richards was as dirty and dishonest as they come. His stock trading fraud from his Harken days wasn't very comforting. Nor was his skanky land deal with the Rangers' stadium. And on his military service record - WTF? I mean, really, I don't give a crap if he served or not, but why the coverup?
As the days of his presidency crawl by, he proves himself more and more to have only slightly more integrity than satan. From his appointment of the criminal Poindexter to a Pentagon advisory board, to Rove, Perl, and the poster-boy for ethics; Dick Cheney -
Kerry's looking to me, as not all that bad. I'm willing to give him a chance. And I'll just hope he lays off the gun legislation.
Sure, he's has his hypocritical moments. And his voting record can't be explained by sound-bites, that's for sure. But some of the crap that's said about his stance on security is pretty far fetched. I sure don't feel safer with bin Laden running around. Had we skipped Iraq, and sent 100,000 troops to Afghanistan, and played tough-guy with Pakistan, we would have pulled bin Laden out of his spider hole by now, and maybe, just maybe, 200 Spaniards wouldn't have gotten blown to pieces on 3/11.
Most of all - DAMN I wish Jesse Ventura would run for President. He may not be the most upstanding statesman, but at least he doesn't lie about who he is and what he's done with his life. I like a straight shooter, who will tell me the good AND the bad. Bush surely ain't one of those. And I'm not very confident about Kerry on that either.
Now on changing one's personal beliefs or stance; I'd rather have a leader who can admit when they're wrong, and change, than one who stubbornly stays on a path to our mutual detriment, out of sheer pride. And these bills that come down the pipe, they're complicated stacks of paper, often with ugly attached riders that have nothing to do with the main legislation, all filled with half truths, ugly compromises, and empty promises. It's easy to say "so and so is against X", but when there's something like Y attached to X, and you can't accept Y - maybe you'd pass X without the Y, or if it also had a Z." We mere mortals listening to the corporate-dominated media usually don't get the whole story. We get the sound bite.