George Bush: Worst American president in history

[Betsyjane 2]

When George was elected president, they asked his mother Barbara if she was surprised. She said "I was surprised when they elected him governor!"

[smatyas 0]

well I can see that I missed alot in this conversation...

George W Bush being elected twice as President reinforces the fact that ANYONE can be whatever they set out to be, it doesn't matter who you are or how qualified you are for the position...

I like to listen to him because he talks funny. (I'm republican)

[Boo Boo Kitty 3]

When George was elected president, they asked his mother Barbara if she was surprised. She said "I was surprised when they elected him governor!"

Good lord it says alot when even your mama doesn't believe in you! ROTFL... but I guess the real joke was on us, eh?

[green 6]

Thanks! I'm new to this site to learn about lap-banding. Now I know this is a political commentary site, with some very ignorant people. I won't need to come back here again.

Well, duh...eh. You are not welcome on this site, it seems to me.....

[green 6]

please someone tell what does this all have to do with wls (gastric banding)? i am not seeing the connection here.

A really good thing to do is to read the titles of the various of areas of this very large and well constructed site. Once you do so you will find the appropriate zones in which to post your posts.

[Betsyjane 2]

If you remain ignorant of common courtesy, let us know and we'll be happy to help.

Regards.

[Carlene 12]

Good lord it says alot when even your mama doesn't believe in you! ROTFL... but I guess the real joke was on us, eh?

A reporter asked Jimmy Carter's mom if she planned to vote for him and she said, "I don't know. It depends on who else is running."

[Carlene 12]

George W Bush being elected twice as President reinforces the fact that ANYONE can be whatever they set out to be, it doesn't matter who you are or how qualified you are for the position...

Yeah, just look at Arnold S, Ronald Reagan, and Jesse Ventura. Those guys had some major qualifications, didn't they? Did any of them even finish college?

(I'm republican)

You can be forgiven for that.

[bitteroldhag 0]

My dad was in the ARMY at the time of the Vietnam war, but he didn't get sent over there. Hmmm, he must be a war dodger too, or maybe he just followed the orders he was given, perhaps.....

Sorry to irritate you that not every man/person in the military (at the time) went to Vietnam. I'll be sure to tell my dad that his service didn't really count if he didn't actually go into combat.

Sorry to irritate you, but your father was one of the lucky ones who didn't have to go to Vietnam. A lot of folks got sent to Germany and other places, but in my small town, just about everyone who got drafted went to Vietnam. I think it's because my town was in Illinois, heavily German, and very patriotic. Or maybe our guys just weren't smart enough to qualify for better jobs. I don't know. It was the luck of the draw. Some of our guys got drafted into the Marines. Marines will tell you that the Marine Corps is totally voluntary, but I'm here to tell you some of our guys got drafted into the Marines. I later read a story about this and it is true. Amazing.

[Carlene 12]

Sorry to irritate you, but your father was one of the lucky ones who didn't have to go to Vietnam. A lot of folks got sent to Germany and other places, but in my small town, just about everyone who got drafted went to Vietnam.

My DH joined the Air Force so as not to be drafted. He spent his entire enlistment (1964-68) at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. As you said - the luck of the draw.

My brother-in-law was able to get in the National Guard (W VA) with no problem at all, and certainly no "connections". I know some guys had trouble getting in the Guard, but evidently many did not.

My brother enlisted in 1961 (also USAF). He was stationed in NJ but they sent him to Vietnam 3 times TDY (temp duty). He and my DH had the same rank and same training.

My first husband skipped from one deferment to another - married, then married with a child, then student. Later we found out that he was automatically deferred all along because he was the sole surviving son of a father killed on active duty.

[bitteroldhag 0]

Sorry to irritate you, but your father was one of the lucky ones who didn't have to go to Vietnam. A lot of folks got sent to Germany and other places, but in my small town, just about everyone who got drafted went to Vietnam. I think it's because my town was in Illinois, heavily German, and very patriotic. Or maybe our guys just weren't smart enough to qualify for better jobs. I don't know. It was the luck of the draw. Some of our guys got drafted into the Marines. Marines will tell you that the Marine Corps is totally voluntary, but I'm here to tell you some of our guys got drafted into the Marines. I later read a story about this and it is true. Amazing.

I have the feeling that you were born after Vietnam and have no idea what life was like then. I am grateful for your father's service, but Vietnam was a civil war that the French couldn't handle so the Americans got involved and we couldn't handle it either. We lost 58,000 men, one of whom I might have married, but didn't because he was dead. My own father was in the Signal Corps on New Guinea in WWII. He was not in combat except for the air raids on his base. But I study combat memoirs as a Ph.D. in English and I can say that men who were in combat are different from those who were not. If you want to read some of these memoirs, I'll be glad to send you 50-60 titles. I have talked with men who were in combat and they aren't the same as they were before that. They still have nightmares. They still leap out of bed and crouch in the corner and threaten their wives because they think they are enemy soldiers. Has you father done that? I am against war in general, unless it really, really is necessary because I don't want anyone to ever have to suffer like these veterans have. Believe me, I am really pleased that your father did not have to experience combat. I'm really, really glad that mine didn't have to. And I really, really sympathize with those who did have to suffer through it.

[BJean 16]

Since we're posting about Viet Nam war service, I'll tell you about my experience. My DH (at the time) and I were 2 years into college, i.e. married and in college. He got drafted anyway... luck of the draw? Most of the time. However we knew people who were able to use influence to either get a deferment or get into the National Guard. Some who were totally opposed to the war figured out a way to get a medical deferment with the help of a doctor, or claimed to be of a religious persuasion that killing was against their religion. Some who didn't have influence somewhere to get a deferment or get into the National Guard, or pull one of the other schemes, either got drafted or went to Canada to escape.

My DH got drafted and went directly to boot camp in El Paso and after that went directly to combat training in Louisiana. I went down to DeRitter, LA, rented the first available trailer just outside of post. Had a 18 yr. old pregnant girl from GA move in with me so that she could get to know her husband before he got killed in Viet Nam. The pregnancy was a total accident and they barely knew each other. I got to hold her hand and help her with money and tried to help her not miss her mommie so much. I was a couple of years older than she.

The whole experience was an horrific nightmare that some still haven't been able to shake off. My DH was so terrified and convinced that he wouldn't come home, he talked my patriotic little self into getting pregnant so that there would be something of him to live on. Can you even begin to realize what that mindset was like?

I had our son a couple of months before his father came home. He and one other guy in his platoon were the only guys who survived. His CO's wife was pregnant and supposed to deliver almost to the day that I was. His CO got killed when he was hit going out to meet a helicopter a few days after his wife delivered their little girl and I had delivered a little boy.

When DH came back, he was indeed a changed man. Nightmares, yes, incredible, scary, sad nightmares. We tried very hard to make a go of it. But it was like living with a stranger. He was so traumatized that he only wanted to drink and smoke pot (which had helped him and thousands of others be able to live with all the death in Viet Nam). No, he had never smoked pot and never drank before Viet Nam.

Not only was the killing traumatizing for them, the realization that most of the Vietnamese didn't want all this killing in their fields, was a hellish thing to realize. They wanted to be left in peace to just live. But none of the Vietnamese were immune to the nightmare that surrounded them every day. And yes, sometimes they took the other side and were responsible for killing the very men who were sent there supposedly to help them. Our men never knew for sure if a car bomb, a bomb planted on a baby or a hole in the ground was going to end their very existence or blow off a limb. Speaking of which, there were men who found the fighting and killing so impossible to endure that they would shoot off their own foot or hand to get out of there.

A year after he returned home, we wound up divorced. I became a single parent which I had been, in a way, since the day he was shipped out. He spent years trying to recover and figure out what he should do with his life now that God has spared him and obviously had a larger plan for him. Almost fanatical religion was the road to his future and the end for me as his wife. I was a Methodist and I believed, but I was not ready to live the Spartan life and move to a third world country to devote myself and my child in the way that he was.

People say that Iraq isn't Viet Nam. But if you are living it, there's very little difference. Death is final, loss of limb or your mind is difficult for those who experience it and the people who love them. And for WHAT?! What did we gain from all that we lost in Viet Nam? If we had even learned a good lesson it might have been for something. But it's been long enough that we Americans have forgotten that nothing good came of that huge mistake. We have thousands of scarred families to underscore that realization, but we don't look at them and we don't talk about it.

9/11 made most of us so mad and made us feel so vulnerable that it took away our ability to reason and think clearly. GW and his cronies took advantage of that sensibility, pure and simple.

I for one know what it is like to lose some of my personal freedoms. It's unAmerican and when someone takes away some of those freedoms, it is my job to fight it. If any of you think it is unpatriotic, I am sad for you. Because we let them do it to us in the 60s and they're doing it again to us and our young men and women today. Not only that... they want to take us back to the time of coat hanger abortions. And with our current Surpreme Court, it's only a matter of time before that is revisited in a very real way. They want to stop stem cell research. They can live with the fact that they have put Americans in harm's way for their own personal gain. We should be rising up and marching on Washington instead of venting our spleens here. If you think they're something to be afraid of now, I promise you it CAN get worse!

Furthermore, I say hurrah for Nancy Reagan and her daughter for being vocal about the need for stem cell research. At least they're doing something they know is right, in spite of going against their own political party. If you call that unpatriotic I believe you are wrong.

[Carlene 12]

People say that Iraq isn't Viet Nam. But if you are living it, there's very little difference. Death is final, loss of limb or your mind is difficult for those who experience it and the people who love them. And for WHAT?! What did we gain from all that we lost in Viet Nam? If we had even learned a good lesson it might have been for something. But it's been long enough that we Americans have forgotten that nothing good came of that huge mistake. We have thousands of scarred families to underscore that realization, but we don't look at them and we don't talk about it.

Right on. It is no accident that families directly impacted by Vietnam are most likely to oppose the war in Iraq.

President Bush just completed a state visit to Vietnam and I must say, the press coverage made me gag. That this man, who did everything but flee to Canada to avoid setting foot on Vietnamese soil, has the nerve to parade himself all over Hanoi now just makes my blood boil. He, of all people, should not be allowed to desecrate that ground made sacred by American blood.

Vietnam is now a hot spot for tourism. Is that what all those young men died for? So they could build McDonald's 40 years later and pretend we have always been the best of friends? If you think the same thing won't happen in Iraq, just wait and see. And it won't take 40 years, either.

In the long run, civil war is unwinnable by outside forces. Unless we drop an atomic bomb on Iraq and start all over, nothing will change - no matter how long we occupy their lousy, God-forsaken country. We are, and have long been, the most powerful, well-equipped military power in the world. But we lost in Vietnam....lost badly. To a bunch of rag-tag guerrilla fighters without proper training, decent armament, or air/naval support. Like the Iraqis, those people had nothing left to lose. They couldn't pull out and go home....that WAS their home. They would have fought until hell froze over....until there was not a single man, woman, or child left standing.

The question now is...are we prepared to sacrifice another generation to a civil war in a foreign country? It's much, much easier to support the war in Iraq if you don't know anyone personally who died in Vietnam. Maybe right where they've built that new KFC. You could go visit. Have a Coke and a smile. And think about the 58,000 Americans who came home from their tour of Vietnam in a body bag.

[Betsyjane 2]

BRAVA, BJEAN.:clap2:

[BJean 16]

Carlene I really don't think that people who either weren't born yet or don't understand how it really was during Viet Nam, can understand why we protest against the Iraqi war and why we think that GW has sold us down the river in so many ways.

But even my daughter who wasn't alive during the Viet Nam War, my darling daughter who's a good Catholic endoctrinated girl, can understand how having the legislature and Supreme Court make a completely personal decision for a few pregnant women can impact all American women.

She can understand why George Bush and people like him making such extreme right wing decisions for all Americans about abortion, stem cell research, social security, medicare or declaring war on a country can make our blood boil. She doesn't dislike George W., mind you, but to watch people defend his actions at this point, is truly mind boggling to her. All I can tell her is that maybe: 1) They don't understand how he has compromised the freedom that our Bill of Rights and Constitution have promised; 2) That GW wasn't willing to serve in any real capacity during the Viet Nam or Korean Wars but is way too quick to commit Americans to fighting anywhere anytime that HE has decided is prudent, even with all evidence and intelligence pointing to the contrary; 3) That he uses his Christian faith to justify and even glorify the decisions he has made that go against many Americans' beliefs, and that he even thinks that he was given the Presidency because God deemed it his divine right, and 4) That he and his cronies quite loudly pronounce that anyone who does not support the Iraq war is scornful of all American troops and that if anyone disagrees with his war mongering policies that they are labeled traitors and pointed to as anti-American.

We've discussed the fact that perhaps those same people who don't find fault with any of the above, and those who claim that George W. is brilliant (truly mind boggling) must obviously agree with his decision-making and agree with his work toward the furtherance of extreme right wing interests. Those pro-Bush people must also be fooled into thinking that a vote for George W. is a vote for less government and lower taxes. We all hoped for that. But while I can understand totally a person's desire for less government and lower taxes, his actions have proven that he has given us nothing but the opposite, to an extreme. Good thing most of us aren't reading his lips.

What got me so spun up today you might ask... more bombing, more death, less stability, no possible chance of reasonable negotiations for our withdrawal from Iraq.