Hello 1jfuddle,
The responses are of the typical neocon variety, which essentially means that they use a few technical terms with erroneous assumptions to build an argument meant to intimidate. If you simply address each thing that they say, one piece at a time, and force them to analyze what they are really arguing, then you will have no problems.
For instance, "The news is owned by left leaning groups/individuals." By the news, are we to assume he means all media outlets available in the US that purport to report news? That would include Fox News and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Is he suggesting that these news outlets are owned by left leaning groups and individuals? If not, then his argument is already reduced by having to qualify his original statement to now read, "some news outlets are owned by left leaning groups." Is it a majority of news outlets? If so, then how can he explain that Bush received more favorable press than Gore in the 2000 election as illustrated in Franken's "Liars, etc." book? Furthermore, the burden of proof falls on him to show that left leaning organizations are biased in favor of left leaning politicians. To make a blank statement that organizations are run by left leaning groups, he is trying to force people to accept his assumption that such a situation indisputably causes leftist bias in the reporting. If we are to accept that as true, then he must be willing to accept that right leaning organizations provide biased news in favor of right leaning politicians (and therefore Fox, WSJ, NY Post, etc. are inherently untrustworthy to the same extent as other publications that he dismisses because they are supposedly leftist in orientation.
As to the substance of his other arguments:
Productivity and economic well-being are two very different things. Neocons often point to productivity as a measure of economic prosperity because it is one of those things that can go up without necessarily being correlated with any other positive economic indicators. Productivity goes up by paying fewer people to do more work. More important to real people in the US are other factors:
Has the total number of employed people steadily improved? Is the percentage of the total population that works a full time job higher that in 2000? Has median household income increased since 2000? Are bankruptcies declining in frequency? Is the average length of time someone is unemployed becoming shorter? Are new jobs paying better than old jobs that were lost during the recession? The answer to all of these questions is no.
We are not the world's police. That is the role of the UN and world court. There is no legislation anywhere on earth that dictates that the US is responsible for policing the world. If he thinks otherwise, have him produce this magical piece of legislation.
We are not healthier than any other people in the world. We have the highest rate of infant mortality and one of the lowest life expectancies of any industrialized country on earth. One out of seven people do not have access to health care in the US. One out of eight people live below the poverty line in the US.
"WMDs were not the only reason we invaded Iraq." That was the only reason given by the administration prior to our invasion. It is highly unlikely that Congress would have approved funding his Middle East experiment if not for that reason, and that reason alone.
"The primary reason was to depose Saddam so that we could leave Saudi bases, so that we could relieve that tense situation. The US being in Saudi to patrol the No Fly Zones was the 'reason' Al Quaida used to do 9-11. We were in their holy ground." So, our reason to invade Iraq was so we could leave Al Quaida holy ground? By invading Iraq, Bush has announced that we have a responsibility to stay there for at least a generation. Instead of leaving that holy ground, we are in more of it and are supposed to stay for at least 25 more years. How does he reconcile these two incredibly divergent "facts"?
"WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENT FROM THIS POINT FORWARD? HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE POLICY?" We are not the President. It is not little old you and me's duty to change policy. However, I think maybe I would have listened to the best policy advisers available instead of the chicken hawks in the cabinet. I think I would have continued the Clinton administration plans to locate, target, and assassinate OBL. I think I would spend $100,000,000,000 on building the world's greatest spy network through the CIA rather than wasting it killing civilians and torturing POWs in Iraq.
"Defecit Spending: started with Franklin D. Roosevelt" Categorical lie. Go to
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm to see the history of the public debt. As of January 1, 1791, the Us had over $75 million in national debt. As of the beginning of Reagan's presidency, the national debt was less than $1 trillion. By the time he left, it was almost $3 trillion. Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II alone account for more than 2/3 of the entire national debt accrued during the entire history of the US. You can look up the growth of the national debt on the page above. It grows the most during Republican administrations. You cannot say that it is the Congress who determines the budget, because they simply react to the budget given to them by the administration. They might make changes, but the majority of spending and taxing priorities are matters decided upon by the WH.
Bush got into Yale and Harvard based on connections, not grades or test scores. His grades were average. His test scores were only slightly higher than a decent large public university student's scores. His work experience actually shows one bailout after another. He was not a successful business person other than the success given to him through family connections. Plenty of people with Ph D's from Ivy League schools have called his ideas flawed, including many Nobel prize winners.
All of these arguments are just a last ditch attempt by neocons to convince themselves that he is not the worst President in US history. His record proves that he is, they just don't like the facts.
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