perfidy

Over in the comments to my recent post of exit poll results, Ross had this to say:

So we can have more Bush? Give me a break. The man can't add (budgeting), can't spell (never written a damn thing), and can't read (intelligence or treasury reports).

Three straight years of being dead wrong on budgets. Three years of being dead wrong on the economy. Federal revenue is down by 25%, and spending is up by more than 25%. You can bitch about 9/11 all you want to, but that fact is that the GDP hasn't shifted around all that much. What's changed is the massive tax breaks given out, in the name of vote buying.

He's not exactly a "buck stops here" kind of President, either. You can be honestly wrong about something, but you're still wrong. Bush's style is to blame everyone else; the GOP's style is to eat that crap up.

There is no question that John Kerry would make a significantly better President than Bush. So would Edwards, and so would Clark or Dean, for that matter.

Really Ross? No question? I think there are many here who would question that. As I've said before, questioning his policies is one thing - and I do that myself. But making ridiculous accusations of illiteracy is, well, ridiculous. This is the same kind of rhetoric that got you involved in that frank exchange of views over at Winds of Change.

I'll give you wrong on budgets - he has spent far too much on programs that you advocate. He's half wrong on the economy - he increased farm subsidies, steel tariffs and other departures from free trade thinking are all very bad - though not disastrous. Clinton doesn't get the credit for the good economy in the late nineties, and Bush shouldn't get the blame for a cyclical downturn in the economy that started before he entered office. Tax cuts are recognized by nearly all non-Marxist economists as an economic stimulus. They may argue about their efficacy related to other measures, but there is little argument that they are a stimulus. And they are cuts, which help people because their money is in their pockets and isn't feeding the beast in Washington. That revenue is down is not a bad thing, and in any event will go back up with the economy. We do need to control spending.

And I won't stop "bitching" about 9/11 - because it is *the* issue confronting us right now. How do we protect ourselves from ruthless individuals that have declared us their enemy? How do we stop them, and how do we promote peace and freedom in a region that is violent, poor, and halfway to insanity?

9/11 trumps every other issue facing this nation. We can muddle through with our mostly ineffective educational system. The old can get their kids to buy them drugs. We can put off the reckoning with social security. But we can't sit back and do nothing while people with a proven capacity and intention to commit massive violence against American citizens plot their evil. Not being serious about the defense of our nation is unacceptable. Bush will continue to prosecute the war on terror. He will work against terror groups and the states that sponsor them. There is an international network of terror - as the recent revelations that Pakistan's premier bomb designer sold the technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The terror groups shared training facilities throughout the Middle East for the last several decades. Al Qaida connected group Ansar al-Islam just hit two of the Kurdish political parties - the groups that are working to make Iraq into a sane and liberal society.

We leave this alone, and go back to launching random cruise missiles and trying to arrest terrorists, and we'll lose a city.

Kerry seems to think that the terror threat is overrated, and that civilian police methods are adequate. Well that kind of thinking led to the death of 3000 of my countrymen. That, and John Kerry, are unacceptable. Clark is a micromanaging general officer who is roundly disliked by everyone he served with. Carter on steroids, and also not good enough. Dean's national security credibility is fractionally better than Kucinich's - he thinks that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam. Personally, I think freedom from arbitrary murder and torture is better. But remember, just like in Cuba, everyone had free health care. Edwards has yet to say anything substantial about national security beyond bland platitudes, and that is hardly encouraging.