[JW77]

Conservative and Liberal thread discussion reminder While the "haven threads" are safe areas where issues from your side of the political spectrum can be discussed openly, without worry of having to defend your views, there are still limits when it comes to comments about fellow posters. Attacks, whether they specifically mention other posters by name or not, will not be tolerated on any thread. On that same note, discussion of posts and issues that deal with posters that you may disagree with is not what these threads exist for. Doing those things can create a negative environment...and we don't want that. Please keep the discussion of those issues to PMs, email, or any other form of communication of that nature. Any further mention of these issues on the haven threads, or other areas of the board, may be reason enough for posts to be edited. If you have any questions about this reminder, feel free to PM one of the board moderators. Thanks.

The other thread hit its limit....which is a good thing. Glad this thread is moving a bit better lately.

By the way, if you guys want to make the thread title a little less plain, just let me know and I'll change it.

[86amanda86]

How about, 'Distributing bumper stickers across the nation...'

[WalkingOnSunshine]

Originally Posted by 86amanda86 How about, 'Distributing bumper stickers across the nation...'

I haven't seen any lately. What about you guys?

[sum1]

Notice something. The Lebanon/Syria thing is big news now, as is the connected topic of a rising democracy trend in the Middle East. And it makes Bush, America, the Iraq war and the Bush approach to the Midlle East/terrorism look a lot more right than a lot of people thought they were. But this left-wing dominated board is ignoring the topic, instead focusing attention on minor news issues. And the only Middle East topic that's getting attention is the accidental American shooting of the Italian secret service agent in Iraq, which is being twisted into some evil plot by America.

Hardly coincidence.

[JW77]

Yeah, I was going to post the "What Bush Got Right" article from Newsweek a couple of days ago, but I didn't think it would get much attention.

Maybe I'll go ahead and post it now just to see what kind of discussion we can get going on it.

[sum1]

Originally Posted by JW77 Yeah, I was going to post the "What Bush Got Right" article from Newsweek a couple of days ago, but I didn't think it would get much attention.

With a title like that, it's likely to attract frenzied attacks.

[sum1]

A sample of left wing logic: Nothing good can come of war, because anything that comes of war can't be good -because it comes of war and nothing good can come of war.

[JW77]

I found that funny for some reason.

[sum1]

[WalkingOnSunshine]

Originally Posted by sum1

I took a little break from all the politics, but am back now. It is March though so with all the Basketball I don't know if I can focus too much on the political side.

[Dana_Lana]

Just popping in to say hello.
And give some support to this thread.

[sum1]

::popping in to say hello too::

Hello.

[sum1]

Thanks to pressure from Bush, the European Union has given up (at least for now) on it plan to lift the arms embargo on China. In other words, thanks to Bush, Europe isn't going to rush to sell China arms to use to attack Taiwan.

[Arch-Rival]

Could this describe perfectly our friends at the other side of the spectrum at FF?:

http://www.nationalledger.com/commen...cle_1237.shtml

The Trustfunder Left by Michael Barone Mar 21, 2005 Examining the political map of America, as I am obliged to do as I write the chapters of "The Almanac of American Politics 2006," reveals a previously unidentified segment of the American electorate, one which has been growing for some years now but has reached a critical mass and become a major force in one of our two great political parties: the trustfunder left. Who are the trustfunders? People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want. The "nomadic affluent," as demographic analyst Joel Kotkin calls them. These people tend to be very liberal politically. Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt. At the elite private or public high schools they attend, and even more at their colleges and universities, they are propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization, and the virtues of environmentalism and pacifism. Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism. Their loyalties, as Samuel Huntington explains in "Who Are We?," are not national, but transnational -- they are citizens of the world with contempt for those who feel chills up their spines when they hear "The Star Spangled Banner." They are taught to have contempt for the economic contribution they make to their country as investors and to feel guilty if they make no other contribution. Their penance is that they must vote left. Where can you find trustfunders? Not scattered randomly around the country, but heavily concentrated in certain areas. Places with kicky restaurants, places tolerant of alternative lifestyles, places with lots of art galleries and organic food stores and Starbucks competitors. The heaviest concentration is in the San Francisco Bay area, which, Kotkin says, has the largest percentage of trustfunders of any major metro area in the country. The Bay area stands out in stark relief on the political map. It voted 70 percent to 29 percent for John Kerry in 2004, up from the 64 percent to 30 percent margin it cast for Al Gore in 2000. Without the Bay area's 1.15 million-vote margin for Kerry, California would have come within 82,000 votes of voting for George W. Bush. Trustfunders stand out even more vividly when you look at the political map of the Rocky Mountain states. In Idaho and Wyoming, each state's wealthiest county was also the only county to vote for John Kerry: Blaine County, Idaho (Sun Valley), where Kerry stayed at his wife's imported Cotswold farmhouse on his much photographed skiing and snowboarding vacation, and Teton County, Wyo. (Jackson Hole), where Dick Cheney has a house and where Bill Clinton took a pre-election holiday after his pollster Dick Morris reported that a trip to the mountains focus-grouped better than Martha's Vineyard. Speaking of Martha's Vineyard, it voted 73 percent for Kerry, and nearby Nantucket, where Kerry's wife has another house, voted 63 percent for him -- indeed, Nantucket was one of only three of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties that did not vote for George W. Bush. Massachusetts Catholics gave their fellow Massachusetts Catholic Kerry only 51 percent of their votes, but he won 77 percent in Boston, 85 percent in Cambridge, and 69 percent and 73 percent in trustfunder-heavy Hampshire and Berkshire Counties in the western mountains. Where Democrats had a good year in 2004 they owed much to trustfunders. In Colorado, they captured a Senate and a House seat and both houses of the legislature. Their political base in that state is increasingly not the oppressed proletariat of Denver, but the trustfunder-heavy counties that contain Aspen (68 percent for Kerry), Telluride (72 percent) and Boulder (66 percent). You can see the trustfunders' imprint as well in New York. In 56 of the state's 62 counties, the Republican popular vote margin increased or the Democratic margin fell between 2000 and 2004. Five of the six counties that moved away from George W. Bush are trustfunder havens: New York (Manhattan), Ulster (Woodstock), Columbia (trendy Hudson River country), Otsego (Cooperstown) and Tompkins (Cornell University). The political map shows the trustfunders' impact. So, I suspect, would an analysis of the sources of the vast amounts of money that flowed in through the Internet first to Howard Dean and then to John Kerry and to outfits like MoveOn.org. The good news for Democrats is that they have found a new source of votes and money. The bad news is that an important part of their core constituency has the characteristic that the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ascribed to the press, "power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages." Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. ©2005 Creators Syndicate

[sum1]

Yeah, I'm sick of the bullcrap about Republican = rich. It's more Democrat = rich. Rich enough to be able to indulge in unrealistic politics.