GD Bushes and the economy and Russia

[Blu]

So it looks like W wants to make this just like his daddy's administration. Currently, according to MSNBC, the market is crap (duh), and the Russian's are pissed. Gee, I can't wait until it comes time to go to Japan. Maybe he'll puke all over the diplomats too!


Blu

[jase71]

Dubya Vu: The strange sensation that we've seen this Bush before...

[sbp]

The economy has been going south for many months {duh}. As for the Russians who gives a sh!t. We beat their asses during the Cold War.

[pennypinch]

Originally posted by sbp
The economy has been going south for many months {duh}. As for the Russians who gives a sh!t. We beat their asses during the Cold War.
Thank you Pat Buchanan.

[fakesurfers]

I can guarantee you we will have problems with Russia. With Bush's (43) foreign policy team, including kremlinologists and cold warriors, they have a stake in an 'evil' Russia. Tsk. Tsk. Always fighting the last war, they seem to be stuck in the era when Bush (41) ran the CIA.

Look for even more confrontation with Russia and China. Today's diplomat move sends a very clear signal to Russia, as Bush selling advanced weaponry to Taiwan will to China. Republicans need a foreign bogeyman (witness Pat Jr. 's comment above) to obscure their anti-consumer big business worshipping at home.

[Blu]

Originally posted by sbp
The economy has been going south for many months {duh}. As for the Russians who gives a sh!t. We beat their asses during the Cold War.

I don't think anyone was "beat." People just got fed up with the concept, so it died. Both countries still have spies, and have collected buttloads of info on each other. This could be the beginning of the 2nd Cold war.

[sbp]

The advanced weaponry will allow the democratic nation of Taiwan to defend itself against the China which is intent on being belligerent to its much smaller and weaker neighbors. This policy is certainly much better than the Clinton administrations policy of cozying up to their Red Chinese buddies from whom they received illegal campaign money. We sadly know that appeasing bullies didn't work in the past and doesn't work now.

The artifical construction known as the Soviet Union allowed Russia to avoid dealing with its problems and also caused more problems to come about. But after that despicable, despised empire came to an end it all came home to roost for Russia. It is indeed lamentable that Russia won't be changing any time soon. Neighbors like Poland have moved forward but Russia seems intent on wallowing in the past instead of building a better future for itself. Russia seeks to blame America and other Western countries for its problems instead of realizing its problems have been self inflicited. Take a look at South Korea versus authoritarian North Korea to see this. They both were devastated after the Korean War ended. Yet South Korea today is free and prosperous while the authoritarian North Korea has had hundreds of thousand of its citizens die from starvation over the past few years. South Korea moved forward while the paranoid North Korea wants to exist in the Stalinist fifties. As long as Russia seeks to live in the past of its "glory days" which weren't so glorious and blame other countries it will continue to be in the wrenched state it is in with wars like Chechnya to deal with.

Yes the hegemonistic Soviet Union was beat and the world is better off for it.

[zenbooty]

Sbp, you make it all sound so simple!

(that's not a compliment, by the way)

[sbp]

That coming from a guy who thinks the Taliban destroying Buddhist statues is okay.

(that's not a compliment, by the way)

[Butch]

The expulsion of diplomats as a retaliatory measure is such old hat in diplomacy that it means nothing to countries. The specific diplomats were expelled, but they will immediately be replaced by others. It is a purely symbolic move and it is ALMOST always done after one country expels a diplomat from another country or after a country finds some wrongdoing by the diplomatic corps of another country. Nonetheless, the numbers we are expelling seems a bit excessive . . . but it's really not a big deal. Russia won't change any policies towards the US just because of that and we won't change any policies towards Russia because of that. Simply not worth it.

[OC]

Step 1 - US spies on Russia and Russia spies on US.
Step 2 - US catches Russian spy.
Step 3 - US expels Russian diplomats.
Step 4 - Russia expels US diplomat.
Step 5 - Neither side knows what the other is up to.

Level playing field or recipe for something bad? You be the judge. Film at 11.

-o

[zenbooty]

Originally posted by sbp
That coming from a guy who thinks the Taliban destroying Buddhist statues is okay.

(that's not a compliment, by the way)

Please explain this line of reasoning further, if you can.

[ravi70]

A lurker steps forth from the shadows and gives his 2 cents...

It's amazing to me just how much policy Bush and his conservative cronies have been allowed to dismantle since he stepped into office. The rights of workers and patients alike have been trampled on with wanton disregard, (to the benefit of big business alone), and they are only the first casualties in this war of vendetta. You can be sure that there will be more to come.

Bush's campaign promises were, by and large, the rhetoric of centrist non-partisanship, but his actions have been nothing more then the politics of revenge. It's shocking to me that, to date, his only discernable national policy has been to undo all of the good that Clinton did while he was in office. The extent to which the Republicans revile Clinton can not be described, but their actions have long since crossed the line that separates normal inter-party bickering, and they have taken their politics to new
levels of collectively organized spite and vindictiveness.

Were Bush a pharoah in ancient Egypt, you can be damn sure that he'd be working furiously to have his predecessor's name and likeness stricken from the historical record, I can tell you that.

Granted, the Democrats in the House and Senate are warning that they willstand against Bush and the Republicans as one in the months and years ahead if the tenor of things doesn't change, and it looks like Bush's policy (or lack thereof) with regards to the growing energy crisis in the West may just tip the balance in the Democrats' favor in the 2002 Congressional elections, but whatever happens along those lines, one thing should be clear; we're in
for some dark times ahead.