September 30, 2004
Round 1
from - Buck
The debate was much better than I anticipated. Maybe it is best to assume the worst. What you get then is not so bad. My personal opinion is that Kerry mopped the floor with Bush. In fact if I were from another planet and someone had told me that the stammering, stuttering guy was the current President and the articulate, intellectually stimulating guy was the challenger I would have thought they were kidding. If they would have then told me that the stammering, stuttering guy had an 8 point lead over the articulate, intellectually stimulating guy I would have assumed that I had landed on Bizzaro World.
Both guys agree that Saddam had to be disarmed. Maybe I am missing something but has it not been proven that he had no arms so disarming him was impossible? I laughed when Bush stammered around about how winning the war so quickly is why we are in the trouble we are in now. The reason we won the war so quickly the first time is that there was almost no resistance. Now that we are facing opposition the war has become a war and we all seemed to be astonished by how deadly war is.
Both men made it clear that the safety of Israel is certainly one their major concerns. I am sure that this is welcome news for the voters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Fighting a proxy war for Israel is not how I would like to see our military used but hell, I just help pay for it. How it is used is none of my business.
The first blogged comment I saw was by Chris Dominquez over at Rockwell’s Blog and he echoed my sentiments exactly
40 minutes in and Bush sounds like a guy who missed class all semester and then stepped into a pop-quiz in front of the whole school. He's literally pleading and whining. And this is the "leader of the free world?" God help us.
Frankly I cannot wait until the next debate. This is more fun than I thought it would be.
Posted by Buck at September 30, 2004 11:52 PM
I laughed out loud when Kerry put the "interests of Israel" in front of the "interests of the United States", myself.
That isn't to say that you and I are in complete agreement on this issue. I am with the dirty politicans in seeing that in many ways the interests of the U.S. and the interests of Israel coincide. I do believe that they have a right to exist as a secure and sovereign nation.
Nevertheless, that is the one major gaffe of Kerry's in the debate: to put Israel's interests before our own. And Bush certainly cannot afford to challenge him on it. Overall, I'm ecstatic to see John Kerry win this debate so decisively.
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Posted by smijer on September 30, 2004 11:58 PM Link to comment |
I am with the dirty politicans in seeing that in many ways the interests of the U.S. and the interests of Israel coincide.Elaborate.
I do believe that they have a right to exist as a secure and sovereign nation.
Obviously you are in the majority
Consider some of the achievements of the pro-Israeli lobby over the years. First, an estimate of the cost of Israel to US taxpayers. Since 1985, without debate or demurral, the Congress has sheepishly voted an annual foreign aid package of $3 billion to Israel, nearly two thirds of this in outright grants, and constituting one-third of all US foreign assistance. When estimated in 2001 constant dollars, the total foreign aid to Israel since 1967 adds up to $143 billion. That amounts to a transfer of $28,600 for every Jewish citizen of Israel.The official aid is only a small part of the cost of Israel to the US economy. We need to account for loan guarantees and write-offs, bribes paid to Egypt and Jordan in support of our Israeli policy, subsidies to Israel's military R&D, boost in oil prices (attributed to US support for Israel in the 1967 war), losses due to trade sanctions imposed on Israel's enemies, etc. When Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington, added up all these costs, he concluded that since 1973 Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. In per capita terms, this amounts to $320,000 for every Jewish citizen of Israel.
Given our generosity and their WMD's (the only country in the Middle East that has them by the way) I think Israel's right to exist is secure. The Palestinians will certainly never eliminate them one sidewalk cafe at a time anyway.
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Posted by Buck on October 1, 2004 01:10 AM Link to comment |
