[Ford Prefect]

I'm not involved. I'm just prepping you for the ****storm you've kicked up.

[Janos]

Then blow me away.   

How about the entire Iraq WMD intelligence farce. Or Katrina and the levees, just to name two big things?

[Eightball]

We don't know about the WMD thing - or no one has any proof they're willing to share.  Bush may have made a legitimate mistake (though he'd never admit even if he did).

Katrina/levees?  I forget the "lie" there - care to elaborate.

I'm not involved. I'm just prepping you for the ****storm you've kicked up.

Thanks! 

[NGTM-1R]

There's a general consensus in the military that the WMD excuse was the CIA screwing up. They genuinely believed they were there, and they were genuinely completely friggin' wrong. A product of the age of recon satellites, gentlemen; we don't listen to people on the ground much anymore, and we don't have many of them anymore either. Photos are inherently more convincing, and don't cause international incidents when discovered. But they have their restrictions too. We learned that in the first Gulf War, but the lesson didn't sink in. It doesn't seem to have sunk in this time either.

[aldo_14]

Yellowcake uranium.  Mobile biological warfare labs (incredibly implausible in any case).    Iraqs nuclear programme.  Ignoring evidence from a defector who testified to the destruction of CBW projects (yet citing other useful titbits from that defector).  Failing to provide supposed WMD intelligence to the UNSCOM inspectors and blocking French suggestions to increase the number of inspectors, as well as setting the CIA to find 'dirt' on Hans Blix (apparently Wolfowitz went mental when they failed).

Hans Blix book of his experiences at the time is very interesting, and remarkably impartial for someone treated so shoddily.

EDIt; sorry, not UNSCOM.  I forget the name of the new agency.  Worth remembering there was both an agency and a directive for the removal of WMD without war, though, and it was sidelined with nowhere near the time it required.

EDIt; sorry, that should have been 1 post up.  Top bit, which is now a mite off-context, is a list of very obvious failures that spring to mind.

[Ace]

"Raging Left-wing liberals" suggests Marxists, to me.  I don't think there were too many Marxists among the Founding Fathers.  They were liberal for their time, yes, but for some reason I don't think they'd have been big fans of Social Security, for one thing.  Or the big spending popular with both Democrats and Republicans.

Considering Jefferson's dislike of industrialization and romanticism towards farming which is similar to Marx's idealizing hunter-gatherers, they'd be more likely to swap notes.

Most of them wouldn't be irritated so much at the idea of social security itself per se, more that society deviated from the "simple ideal" to begin with. The main irritation would be the idea that such a system shouldn't be necessary to begin with.

While there was support for unregulated economics, they'd be pretty disgusted at consumerism as a side effect of industrialization. (because of it deviating so much from this ideal of the simple, noble, citizen)

There would also be the whole being ticked that Deism didn't take off too

[Eightball]

Jefferson was fairly unique, I don't know if we can generalize for the whole Founding Fathers solely on him...

Really, I think most Founding Fathers would vote Libertarian.   

[Ford Prefect]

The question of what the founding fathers would say about the present is meaningless. Their political theories and beliefs were formed by the reality in which they existed, and you can't simply extrapolate on what they said about their world to ascertain what they would say about ours. I'm not using this to defend present-day liberalism; I'm just saying that nobody in the present day is justified in claiming any of the founding fathers on ideological grounds.

[Eightball]

I didn't start it.  And I think you're right.

[Kosh]

On this point, all I have to say is don't blame the Republicans if the Democrats are incompetent.  They simply failed to shamelessly exploit the tragedy of 9/11.  It's not like they wouldn't have if they could.

So you're defending exploiting a tragedy in which 3,000+ of your own people died for political purposes? It has nothing to do with "incompetance", it has to do with ethics.

Katrina/levees?  I forget the "lie" there - care to elaborate.

How convienient. Bascially when Katrina hit New Orleans, the levees broke which caused massive flooding throughout the city. Bush told everyone that he didn't know the levess would break. A little while ago, it was discovered that the Army Corps of Engineers did tell him that they needed more money to fix the levees because they could not even stand up to a Cat 1 hurricane (much less a cat 5). In fact, they were screaming at him to give them the money to fix it (their budget was cut a few years ago). He didn't give them the money, despite the warnings that the levees would break without significant repairs.

[Eightball]

So you're defending exploiting a tragedy in which 3,000+ of your own people died for political purposes? It has nothing to do with "incompetance", it has to do with ethics.

I'm firstly not sure it has been "exploited" more than any other major event in US history.  FDR "exploited" Pearl Harbor; the Founding Fathers "exploited" the Boston Massacre; Wilson "exploited" the Lusitania; Lincoln "exploited" Fort Sumter.

Secondly, I wasn't defending it so much as saying the Dems would've done it if the shoe was on the other foot.

How convienient. Bascially when Katrina hit New Orleans, the levees broke which caused massive flooding throughout the city. Bush told everyone that he didn't know the levess would break. A little while ago, it was discovered that the Army Corps of Engineers did tell him that they needed more money to fix the levees because they could not even stand up to a Cat 1 hurricane (much less a cat 5). In fact, they were screaming at him to give them the money to fix it (their budget was cut a few years ago). He didn't give them the money, despite the warnings that the levees would break without significant repairs.

Eh, didn't remember that.  However, Congress approved the budget cut, so it's not like he was the only one to blame.  Still, OK, one lie - maybe.  I wonder why this wasn't brought up on with the other impeachment allegations?

[Kosh]

I wonder why this wasn't brought up on with the other impeachment allegations?

Most of the people who died in NO were poor black people.

[Ace]

The question of what the founding fathers would say about the present is meaningless. Their political theories and beliefs were formed by the reality in which they existed, and you can't simply extrapolate on what they said about their world to ascertain what they would say about ours. I'm not using this to defend present-day liberalism; I'm just saying that nobody in the present day is justified in claiming any of the founding fathers on ideological grounds.

Actually their political theories weren't even based on the reality that they were in considering the schisms between wanting to go agrarian (not anything based in reality) and industrialization (based on mimicing Britain).

[Ford Prefect]

You're interpreting it too specifically. People in every time and place form epistemic communities that are necessarily the product of that setting. Whether the theories are reactions, continuations, departures, or any combination of these movements, their formation is always in relation to that time and place.

[Flipside]

The times affect the people as emphatically as the people effect the times, it's kinda like the Schrodingers Cat argument with Media, does reporting (observing) the fact change the fact?