PREDICTION: Jeb Bush will be nominated and win the next presidential election.

[sm625]

It is very possible. People have repeatedly proven that they are that stupid. Especially if faced with a Hillary as the only other "choice". The fact that this possibility even exists should be proof right there that we have no functioning political system. We are in fact even worse off than the founders were when they gave the finger to King George. Most of us dont even know who our king is.

 

[Fern]

I just wanted to see if that's people's primary complaint about him, and I guess it is.
-snip-

My primary complaint is nation building and thinking those countries were capable of democracy.

I didn't care for the Paul Bremmer (sp?) that ran the Coalition Provisional Authority. I think the rebuilding etc effort was poorly done.

I understood the effort to bring democracy. I thought it had a decent chance of working in Iraq. I admit I was wrong. I don't see it working in any country over there. E.g., Egypt; vote a new guy in and in under 3 years he's ready to declare himself dictator for life.

Otherwise, I've got no problem whatsoever with kicking Saddam's azz. He was a genocidal maniac doing his best to destabilize the region and cause mayhem with his support of terror, like his payment plan for Palestinian suicide bombers.

Afghanistan: Yep, needed to blow the shiz out of the Taliban and AQ. Democracy/rebuilding was a mistake.

Fern

 

[Fern]

OP, I won't say your wrong because far too many Americans are stupidly ignorant of how the government is supposed to work.

And 49 percent of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution.

....

Suspending the Constitution is what's known as martial law. President Lincoln did it during the Civil War.

I could write more, but suffice it to say the President does have that authority under extreme conditions. So, the 49% is correct, although it may be the 'broken clock' type luck for most of the 495.

Fern

 

[Fern]

PREDICTION: Jeb Bush will be nominated and win the next presidential election.

I make no claim of being a good 'predictor'.

But at this time I don't think Hillary will win. She's not likeable. She's not a good campaigner. She's dragging around a freight train worth of baggage. And political parties have a difficult winning the presidential election after having two terms.

I also do not see Jeb winning, unless he runs as a Democrat.

If it is Hillary versus Jeb, it'll be the worst 'hold your nose and vote the least worst candidate' in our history.

Fern

 

[OBLAMA2009]

man even if jeb doesn win, they got that dude "pee" ready to go in 2020

 

[bradly1101]

I didn't feel that George I was bad. He had a lotta crap to deal with. George II, he was bad, but I'm glad that I wasn't the one in his shoes having to make the decisions. That said, I'll pass on his brother.

Instead of George II, call him George junior, he hates that.

 

[tortillasoup]

My primary complaint is nation building and thinking those countries were capable of democracy.

I didn't care for the Paul Bremmer (sp?) that ran the Coalition Provisional Authority. I think the rebuilding etc effort was poorly done.

I understood the effort to bring democracy. I thought it had a decent chance of working in Iraq. I admit I was wrong. I don't see it working in any country over there. E.g., Egypt; vote a new guy in and in under 3 years he's ready to declare himself dictator for life.

Otherwise, I've got no problem whatsoever with kicking Saddam's azz. He was a genocidal maniac doing his best to destabilize the region and cause mayhem with his support of terror, like his payment plan for Palestinian suicide bombers.

Afghanistan: Yep, needed to blow the shiz out of the Taliban and AQ. Democracy/rebuilding was a mistake.

Fern

Well hindsight is 20/20. It kind of took the Iraq wars, Afghanistan and the "Arab spring" to teach america that we're simply incapable of dealing with muslim world properly. We've had a legacy spanning over 7 decades of meddling in the middle east with consistently unpredictable and poor results.

I mostly get annoying with how people attack Bush for attempting to bring democracy to the middle east yet Obama ALMOST gets a pass when he tried arming the Syrian rebels which ended up turning out to be ISIS. We have a legacy of presidents who try to bring democracy to the middle east so I just don't think it's right to attack Bush specifically and give everyone else a pass. I'm not happy with a lot of things Bush did but the things that people complain the most about him are things that others are guilty of as well and they typically get a pass.

 

[feralkid]

Rick Perry WILL be your next President.

 

[soundforbjt]

Rick Perry WILL be your next President.

Yes, be sure to vote for Rick Parry with an "A"!

 

[soundforbjt]

Well just an FYI, WMDs were obviously found and only recently were officially admitted to their existence. What wasn't found was an active weapons program. I suppose the ongoing debate is whether people think the Bush administration fabricated evidence of an active weapons program in Iraq. To me, it's not clear cut that there was any sort of fabrication of information and that I genuinely feel the people in the administration really were thinking they were being honest and trying their best. It's entirely possible there is a mix of truth and lies where a handful of people who report to senior officials used their "gut instinct" and reported unverifiable information which was then used to support the idea of war.

I remember 9/11 and the lead up and the actual war in Iraq and I remember thinking of the implication of how the fall of Iraq could lead to a power vacuum in the middle east against Iran. That hopefully the cure is better than the disease.

Those were left over from the Iran/Iraq war and we knew about those before we went in.
Hell, an American company sold them (Iraq) the chemicals...

 

[tortillasoup]

Those were left over from the Iran/Iraq war and we knew about those before we went in.
Hell, an American company sold them (Iraq) the chemicals...

I don't know about an american company selling them WMDs but as far as knowing about their old stock piles before we went in, there were and are a lot of people who literally believed that Iraq had literally no WMDS of any sort which I thought was ridiculous assertion. Like when you argued with these people, I thought I was arguing with them on the basis that we knew that they had an old stock pile of WMDs but that we went in to Iraq to seek and destroy a presumed active WMD program. However, they'd interrupt the conversation and back up the whole conversation and flat out say, Iraq has NO WMDS of any kind, nor did they ever which sort of baffled me as we knew they used them on their own people at one point.

 

[Fern]

Those were left over from the Iran/Iraq war and we knew about those before we went in.
Hell, an American company sold them (Iraq) the chemicals...

It doesn't matter where they got them etc. Iraq had been ordered under numerous UN Security Council Resolution to disarm and Iraq did not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1441

Fern

 

[Black Octagon]

Well just an FYI, WMDs were obviously found and only recently were officially admitted to their existence. What wasn't found was an active weapons program. I suppose the ongoing debate is whether people think the Bush administration fabricated evidence of an active weapons program in Iraq. To me, it's not clear cut that there was any sort of fabrication of information and that I genuinely feel the people in the administration really were thinking they were being honest and trying their best. It's entirely possible there is a mix of truth and lies where a handful of people who report to senior officials used their "gut instinct" and reported unverifiable information which was then used to support the idea of war.

I remember 9/11 and the lead up and the actual war in Iraq and I remember thinking of the implication of how the fall of Iraq could lead to a power vacuum in the middle east against Iran. That hopefully the cure is better than the disease.

Yes I read that. As I understand it, these were remnants of old sarin nerve agent stockpiles from Saddam's 1980s production, plus a few Al-Borak rockets potentially capable of delibering the sarin. The problem is that sarin loses much of its potency in a few weeks after production, and continues to degrade over a period of months. The NY Times article that first reported this quotes purity levels of 13% and 4% for the sarin recovered after the invasion. Old degraded leftovers from the 1980s hardly constitute an active and viable WMD capability as the Administration tried to allege in 2001-2003, but fair enough, WMD are WMD.

The point is that the US' own intelligence agencies were in full alignment through 2001-2003 that there was no substantive evidence that Iraq posed a viable WMD threat to anyone. The 'intelligence' that the neocons and Cheney chose to rely on was unvetted material from folks like Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. That was because it suited their purpose of getting military forces into Iraq, whatever the reason the Administration could agree on. This, combined with the deliberate and well-planned propaganda campaign that was going on, tells me that these guys were letting their policy objectives drive the intelligence, rather than vice-versa

So while you may have legitimate doubts as to whether there was any wholesale fabrication of information, there were certainly some people pushing an agenda in spite of what the intelligence community was saying. Were there non-neocons in the Administration struggling to make sense of things and who potentially got swept up in the party line? Most probably. While I ultimately hold Bush and the Administration 'responsible' for deciding to follow the neocons' war drum, the necons are the ones I ultimately 'blame,' for the way in which they seized on people's emotions and confusion after 9/11.

But enough about this as it's getting way off-topic. I have no clue whether Jeb Bush will be elected but it should be crystal clear by now that such a scenario scares the hell out of me.

 

[nageov3t]

a Jeb Bush general election race would be a clusterfuck, with the entire thing serving as a referendum against the GWB presidency (aka: one of the host hated Presidents ever by the time he left office)

nominate anyone else and I think the GE campaign will be competitive, and history certainly isn't on the Dem's side with how rare it is for a single party to hold the White House for 3+ terms, but I think an Anyone vs Jeb election would be a landslide for Anyone Else.

 

[soulcougher73]

Some one is showing his racist flag.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Let's hope the puppeteers behind his daddy and brother don't succeed this time. Jeb Bush getting power is as bad as IS getting nukes.

 

[fskimospy]

My primary complaint is nation building and thinking those countries were capable of democracy.

I didn't care for the Paul Bremmer (sp?) that ran the Coalition Provisional Authority. I think the rebuilding etc effort was poorly done.

I understood the effort to bring democracy. I thought it had a decent chance of working in Iraq. I admit I was wrong. I don't see it working in any country over there. E.g., Egypt; vote a new guy in and in under 3 years he's ready to declare himself dictator for life.

Otherwise, I've got no problem whatsoever with kicking Saddam's azz. He was a genocidal maniac doing his best to destabilize the region and cause mayhem with his support of terror, like his payment plan for Palestinian suicide bombers.

Afghanistan: Yep, needed to blow the shiz out of the Taliban and AQ. Democracy/rebuilding was a mistake.

Fern

Well say we aren't going to bring them democracy after destroying their government. What would we do instead? Install a preferred strongman and end up with another Shah of Iran situation? Just leave and leave it in chaos?

Attacking Iraq was a catastrophic mistake, and an entirely preventable one. As I've mentioned before, the historical record strongly indicates the Bush administration was using the WMD thing as an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway. (They never even asked for an NIE on the matter)

 

[PricklyPete]

I think I've had enough bush at this point.

 

[Pens1566]

Suspending the Constitution is what's known as martial law. President Lincoln did it during the Civil War.

I could write more, but suffice it to say the President does have that authority under extreme conditions. So, the 49% is correct, although it may be the 'broken clock' type luck for most of the 495.

Fern

Not really that simple. Congress authorized it as well. And parts of it were still later deemed unconstitutional.

 

[bshole]

I make no claim of being a good 'predictor'.

But at this time I don't think Hillary will win. She's not likeable. She's not a good campaigner. She's dragging around a freight train worth of baggage. And political parties have a difficult winning the presidential election after having two terms.

I also do not see Jeb winning, unless he runs as a Democrat.

If it is Hillary versus Jeb, it'll be the worst 'hold your nose and vote the least worst candidate' in our history.

Fern

I think if Bill Clinton ran again, he would win. Not sure about Hillary. She lacks Bill's charisma.

I would take Jeb over Scott Walker. Scott is full on scary.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

I'm waiting for the third George Bush to be elected.....George P Bush.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Bush

 

[Sonikku]

Don't want Jeb as your corporate mouth piece? That's ok, we can find another.

 

[FerrelGeek]

Don't want Jeb as your corporate mouth piece? That's ok, we can find another.

Party doesn't matter. You can't mount a campaign these days without being bought by the donor class, be it big corps, unions, the .1%ers, or the chambers of commerce.

 

[First]

Not only will Clinton win, she'll run away with it barring illness or a completely unknown Republican superhero coming to the rescue. She's a known quantity, her favorable/unfavorables aren't going to make a big move one way or another because she's been around forever, making near double digit leads against all GOP contenders formidable, if not insurmountable. All known GOP challengers' image can be molded by a campaign, with the most likely nominee (Jeb Bush) having to deal with years of poor performance and baggage from his family that Clinton won't sniff because of the superior Clinton record.

 

[irishScott]

Not only will Clinton win, she'll run away with it barring illness or a completely unknown Republican superhero coming to the rescue. She's a known quantity, her favorable/unfavorables aren't going to make a big move one way or another because she's been around forever, making near double digit leads against all GOP contenders formidable, if not insurmountable. All known GOP challengers' image can be molded by a campaign, with the most likely nominee (Jeb Bush) having to deal with years of poor performance and baggage from his family that Clinton won't sniff because of the superior Clinton record.

Jeb Bush would likely carry Florida and Texas, as well as pretty much any right-leaning state over Clinton. She would hardly "run away with it" even if she did win.

There's also the possibility of Romney, who doesn't have Bush's family baggage.

There's also the fact that Hillary has all the emotional connection and charisma of an eggplant. Even Romney beats her in this department. Call it minor, but people make decisions based on such factors. How do you think Obama won? People latched onto him because he looked like something new and different, both in manner and appearance. Hillary would be the first woman, so she has that, but in manner she might as be the female version of John McCain.