grenade thrown at Bush

[Richard 0]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7781473/

[Guest Vitamin X]

Seeing as how it was in Georgia, it was probably just a potato.

[CanadianChris 0]

100 feet from sainthood? Do you really want Cheney in charge that bad?

[Guest cosbywasmurdered]

He pretty much is already.

[C Dubya 04 0]

Well, I don't think that a grenade was actually thrown anyways. One had been discovered earlier in the day, and no one was notified.

[Stephen Joseph 0]

He pretty much is already.

that's a laugh

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

He pretty much is already.

that's a laugh

No, not really it isn't.

[Guest Undertow]

100 Feet from Sainthood indeed.

 

No one wants Cheney in full charge, but Bush is straight fucking stupid.

[Gary Floyd 0]

100 Feet from Sainthood indeed.

 

No one wants Cheney in full charge, but Bush is straight fucking stupid.

I'd rather have an idiot in charge then a man of pure evil.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

OMG RHETORIC-DEBATE.

 

WORLD'S LARGEST IDIOT VS SPAWN OF SATAN! WHO WINS?

[Gary Floyd 0]

Hey, I don't like either guy, I'm just sayin'. Besides, I don't think Bush is the biggest idiot on Earth, nor is Cheney the most evil.

[Boon 0]

No one wants Cheney in full charge, but Bush is straight fucking stupid.

Yeah- If going to Yale for undergrad and Harvard for grad makes you "straight fucking stupid"...

[Jobber of the Week 0]

No one wants Cheney in full charge, but Bush is straight fucking stupid.

Yeah- If going to Yale for undergrad and Harvard for grad makes you "straight fucking stupid"...

There's a difference between being educated and being smart.

[lomasmoney 0]

No one wants Cheney in full charge, but Bush is straight fucking stupid.

Yeah- If going to Yale for undergrad and Harvard for grad makes you "straight fucking stupid"...

There's a difference between being educated and being smart.

I agree. People always throw out that Bush went to Havard and Yale for his college studies. How does that automatically make him not stupid. Going to an elite school means nothing when it is entirely possible that he got solely because of the power and money his father had. I'm pretty sure if my dad was worth 100 million dollars and I was an average student who wanted to go to Havard that it could be arranged.

[Boon 0]

I guess I'm of the school of thought that no matter how much money a family has, you can't be "straight fucking stupid" and get into Yale and/or Harvard. Maybe I'm naive, but somewhere along the way, he was educated.

 

More people throw out the idea that he's a moron then defend his intelligence, actually. And if you're the President of the United States (re-elected, as well) then it seems to me that you have to be doing something right with your brain, and you're at least smarter then a lot of other people.

 

I won't deny that he says some bone-headed shit sometimes, and he's not my favorite conservative, but it's really ignorant to say that he's "straight fucking stupid."

[The Czech Republic 0]

hehehe Bush is dumb

 

 

Being brilliant doesn't always translate into political success. Adlai Stevenson couldn't even make a fight out of it in 1956. Richard Nixon was incredibly intelligent, and we all know what happened to him. It's all well and good if you're crazy smart, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're the best man for the job. That said, Bush is neither crazy smart nor the best man for the job, but he's better than anyone the Democrats trotted out, just because.

[Richard 0]

While Bush will never qualify for Mensa, he's not as stupid as he appears. His image was carefully constructed to make him appear to be an average joe. Bush lost his first election for a Texas congress seat because his opponent was able to portray him as an elitist yankee carpetbagger. He would never let that ever happen again, even if that meant acting like a dipshit and talking in an obviously fake accent.

[SuperJerk 0]

And if you're the President of the United States (re-elected, as well) then it seems to me that you have to be doing something right with your brain, and you're at least smarter then a lot of other people.

Or you can pay someone really well to do all your thinking for you.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Any political candidate's victory or loss is attributed way too much to the candidate themselves, at least on the national level.

[Boon 0]

Any political candidate's victory or loss is attributed way too much to the candidate themselves, at least on the national level.

Aye. Elections are quite heavily issue based, evidence in the last election.

 

Anyway- back to the original topic.

 

TBILISI, Georgia -- Was it a bid to undermine a visit by President Bush -- or evidence of a real assassination plot? A grenade found near a stage where Bush addressed crowds of Georgians on Tuesday has set off a flurry of speculation.

 

The array of potential culprits -- from disgruntled Georgians to local minorities and even Russian saboteurs -- reflects the instability of a volatile country struggling through transition.

 

The address to tens of thousands of people in Tbilisi's Freedom Square was the centerpiece of a Bush visit choreographed to cement relations between the United States and the ex-Soviet republic's new pro-Western leadership.

 

National Security Council chief Gela Bezhuashvili said Wednesday he suspected the grenade, which he described as inactive, was planted in a deliberate bid to undermine the rosy scenario.

 

"The goal is clear -- to frighten or to scare people and to attract the attention of the mass media," he said. "The goal has been reached, and that is why I'm talking to you now."

 

Bezhuashvili said neither Bush nor Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili -- who were both behind bulletproof glass -- were in any danger. The Soviet-era grenade was found about 100 feet from the stage, he added.

 

He also denied reports the grenade was thrown -- contradicting a statement from U.S. Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry, who said it hit somebody in the crowd and dropped to the ground.

 

Bush wasn't even aware of the grenade report until Secret Service agents on the plane told him about it as his plane was returning to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, spokesman Scott McClellan said, adding that the White House never believed the president's life was in danger.

 

"The Secret Service and FBI are continuing to look into it," McClellan said Wednesday. "There have been different reports about what happened and what exactly it was."

 

David Losaberidze, an analyst at the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, said the culprit was likely an angry Georgian.

 

"The idea is, 'Look, the government is celebrating, holding a grandiose show while we go hungry,'" he said.

 

Seen as a land of plenty in Soviet times, Georgia was plunged into poverty as the communist system fell apart and is still struggling to survive economically.

 

Its people have placed huge hopes in Saakashvili, reflected in his landslide January 2004 election, but his failure to bring swift economic improvement has strained his popularity.

 

The country's location in the Caucasus Mountains, at the crossroads of Russia and the Middle East and on a promising westward route for Caspian Sea oil riches, has made it a target in struggles for influence in the wake of the 1991 Soviet collapse.

 

Other observers blamed the grenade incident on a more influential group of disgruntled Georgians: members of the former elite Saakashvili has fired in government shake-ups aimed in part at stemming the corruption plaguing the country.

 

Seems it was just an act of protest against Saakashvili, not Bush. Way to make a scene, though.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Any political candidate's victory or loss is attributed way too much to the candidate themselves, at least on the national level.

Aye. Elections are quite heavily issue based, evidence in the last election.

A better statement would be that elections are heavily based upon the issues that each candidate presses as urgent.

[Boon 0]

Any political candidate's victory or loss is attributed way too much to the candidate themselves, at least on the national level.

Aye. Elections are quite heavily issue based, evidence in the last election.

A better statement would be that elections are heavily based upon the issues that each candidate presses as urgent.

Meh- I think people vote on what they feel is important to them more than one would think. At least, myself and my friends are that way. Most of the campaigning centered around the war, which typically works in favor of an incumbent President. I think if Kerry had gone after the economy (attacking the deficit), the environment, and other social issues, he probably would've won. Instead, both candidates went with the war, and Kerry just came out worse.

[SuperJerk 0]

No.

 

The natural human desire for physical safety overrides every other need we have. In a time of war, all other issues become irrelevant.

 

Bush's campaign message was: "I may have made a few mistakes, but I'll keep you safer than Kerry will."

 

51% believed him, and 49% didn't.

[Boon 0]

Thank you for speaking on behalf of the entire human race. Seriously, I'm not an independent human being with my own thoughts and feelings. I'm glad you're here to tell the entire world what we care about.

 

If the war was being fought on American soil- maybe. But if you really believe that every American voted solely on the war, give me some of that acid you're dropping. The war is thousands of miles away, and there are people that don't have family there, and don't really think that their super-power, hegemonic home country is in grave danger, b/c they believe 9/11 was a fluke and that it couldn't happen again. Whether or not they're right isn't the issue- some people voted based on how they could support their families and preserve the little bubble that they live in. For many of them, that bubble does not include Iraq.

[SuperJerk 0]

I wasn't talking about the war in Iraq, but the "War on Terrorism".

 

 

I guaran-fucking-tee that just 3 years after 9/11, 100% of the voters cared about the threat from terrorism.

 

they believe 9/11 was a fluke and that it couldn't happen again.

 

I'd count those 12 or so people in the 49% group I mentioned that voted for Kerry or Nader.

Edited May 16, 2005 by RobotJerk

[Boon 0]

I wasn't talking about the war in Iraq, but the "War on Terrorism".

 

 

I guaran-fucking-tee that just 3 years after 9/11, 100% of the voters cared about the threat from terrorism.

Cared about? Absolutely.

 

Voted based solely on it? Not all of them.

[Boon 0]

Time Poll conducted by Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas (SRBI) Public Affairs. Oct. 19-21, 2004. N=1,059 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.

 

       

"Which of the following issues is most important to you in deciding how you might vote for president in November? . . ."

 

  10/19-21/04      10/14-15/04      9/21-23/04      8/31-9/2/04

 

The economy 24%, 26, 26, 25

The war on terrorism 24%, 22, 23, 24

The situation in Iraq 18%, 20, 20, 17

Health care costs 14%, 14, 12, 11

Moral values issues, such as gay marriage and abortion 14%, 12, 15, 16

Other (vol.) 3%, 2, 2, 3

Unsure 3%, 5, 3, 4

 

Here's some other polls, too.

 

[SuperJerk 0]

On a subconscious level, I think they did.

 

This is purely conjecture on my part based on my understanding of political science, sociology, and psychology.

 

Maybe 100% is an exaggeration, but I think the majority of voters were worried about terrorism, and it would have been impossible for Kerry to win without making national security his number 1 issue.

 

Basically, I'm saying I think that the poll is wrong.

[Boon 0]

On a subconscious level, I think they did.

 

This is purely conjecture on my part based on my understanding of political science, sociology, and psychology.

 

Maybe 100% is an exaggeration, but I think the majority of voters were worried about terrorism, and it would have been impssoble for Kerry to win without making national security his number 1 issue.

So, you're saying it was impossible for him to win, then?

 

51-48 seems awfully close. I really do think he could've pulled it off if he had paid a little more attention to the economy/deficit, as well as social security and health care. In war time, incumbent Presidents tend to do better on war/security issues, b/c people feel that if they change leadership there will be a time of weakness. If he had been a good Democrat focusing on social issues, I think he could've pulled off those missing votes.

[SuperJerk 0]

No. If Kerry had done a better job selling his national security plan, THEN he could've won, IMO.

 

My theory states that most of the people who voted for him felt safer with him in charge than with Bush in charge.