Giuliani said it’s no feat to make changes for the sake of change.
“Change is either good or bad. So I think people have to focus a little bit more carefully on, what is it that we’re promising, and what are we trying to do. Now, if the change is in the direction of lower taxes, less spending, giving parents choice over education, energy independence, these are things that are going to make a brighter future and a better America. But just the word ‘change’ doesn’t connote good or bad. You’ve got to get one step beyond that and start looking at the changes,” he said.
When the Democrats say they want “change”, it is very much like the “new direction” they campaigned on in 2006 – sounds nice, but it doesn’t actually mean anything. For someone like Giuliani, the Democrats talking about “change” has to sound a bit ridiculous – none of the top three Democratic contenders has ever had to make a decision to change anything – Giuliani has, and knows its not a magic incantation which just makes everything all right.
Take, for instance, one of the major changes the Democrats all say they want – universal health care. Fine and dandy – lets have it; but lets also have the details. And lets not tax them too highly – certainly not as highly as they plan on taxing us. We’ll start small: Hillary, John, Barack – under your universal health care plan, if there are ten people who need a colonoscopy today, and only 5 colonscopies can be done today, who decides who goes first, and who has to wait for later? If they can’t answer a simple question like that – and they can’t – then all their talk of “change” is just so much poll-tested fluff designed to sucker the credulous (ie, liberals) into voting for them.
I still haven’t settled on a candiate for 2008 (though with the caucuses just 9 days away, crunch time is coming), but in Giuliani, Thompson, Romney, McCain and Huckabee, we have candidates who have far more experience in the practical difficulties of “change” than the three leading Democrats. In simple terms of knowledge and experience, the Republican field far outclasses the Democratic field – and I think that as November approaches, this will become decisive in voters’ minds.
Blogs For Victory 
Phillip,
Incidentally, my marxist comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I forget most liberals don’t have a sense of humor, so I apologize. Your hysteria on the economy is what I find amusing. Many sectors of the economy are performing well, a few are performing very poorly. Real wages did rise in 2007, unemployment was kept low, exports increased and more jobs were created. The current tightening of credit is a good thing, but it will slow down spending which could lead to a recession. COULD. Doesn’t have to.
The following are excerpts from your post that I challenge.
[[clusters of errors occuring at once – phillip]]
Please elaborate.
[[income is shrinking – phillip]]
Yet:
Real Wages Are Rising, but Let’s Not Get Carried Away
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=12&year=2006&base_name=real_wages_are_rising_but_lets
Giuliani’s aides can’t work for free! That’s Marxist!
I see Diana is back to her cutting and pasting of irrelevant topics.
neocon,
You and Retired Spook asked for an example of a President George W. Bush lie that wasn’t “weak”. I supplied one. Care to comment on its substance?
Also, are you saying that a post about Mayor Guiliani’s campaign apparently having financial problems isn’t relevant to a post about Mayor Guiliani commenting about other Presidential candidates?
Yes,
The post about Rudys campaign finances is completely irrelevant to his defining what “change” is meaning in this campaign.
And I will continue to investigate this 2005 “Think Progress” link. I seriously am suspect about the source and context. However, as I have said before, you owe it to the country to do something about this lie, if in fact it is an impeachable offense, as you have asserted.
Your cowardice to not proceed along that vein, coupled with your incessant whining about it, reveals how juvenile you are.
btw, do you think the Clintons have ever told untruths?
neocon,
Please do “investigate”. I’m sure that the video was done with some kind of powerful liberal trickery. That’s really sad on your part. I’d have thought you’d at least rise to the President’s defense somehow. I don’t know how you could, especially given the subject matter. So, I guess that explains why you had to break the glass on the “IN CASE OF BUSH-LOOKING-DISHONEST EMERGENCY” box on the wall and reach in for the most pathetic and juvenile stance of all, “Well, they do it TOO-OO!” Ever had any children?
Diana, you posted the same link in a previous thread, but my security software doesn’t seem to like the source. Color me dense, but I don’t see any part of what you cite that is a lie. There was a great article a while back in, of all places, the Washington Post, which would fill in some of the blanks that you’re missing if I still had the link to it, which, unfortunately, I don’t. It was an interview with two of the FISA Judges in which they described their reluctance to grant the FBI a wiretap warrant when the probably cause for the warrant was an NSA intercept targeted against a know terror suspect outside the U.S. As A.J. Strata noted in this post, that was one of the reasons that 9/11 was able to occur.
I’m getting interrupted by business, but I’ll try to expand on this later. In the meantime, please tell me what part of what you posted was a lie.
neocon,
While you’re carrying out your investigation, please feel free to peruse to peruse the context and substance of that quote at this notorious liberal propaganda site:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040420-2.html
Diana,
I think Spook as just countered your hysteria quite well. I will continue to debunk your claim at a later time.
But I did notice that you completely ignored my question re: the Clintons. And ignored the fact that you again went off topic in your zeal to discredit anything conservative, which by the way, lessens your credibility and reveals your allegiance to liberal group think.
I wrote the post you’re quoting, not phillip.
But to clarify, “massive cluster of errors”, refers to a recession, or something like the current US financial markets problems in regards to housing mortgages.
And I’m talking about incomes to the financial markets shrinking. Again this has alot to do with securitized mortages that financial firms are holding that are losing value, like in the original post that started this conversation…
I don’t know at all if there will be a recession or not. What I’m trying to say is that it’s kind of up to the fed. What I’m also trying to say is that if the fed quit making open market operation or pretty much quit “printing money” that this may very well cause a recession. This is why the fed would never do this under Bush, so don’t worry, I garauntee that we will not have a hard recession under Bush. What I’m also trying to say is that the recession wouldn’t be a bad thing in the long run at all. All this money printing is just subsidizing certian parts of the market that benifit from cheap credit at the expense of everyone else through general inflation. If the fed quits inflating and these places go under, it means they were not economically justified. The temporary reorganization of the markets from ones that are based on government fiat, to markets based on consumer prefrences will cause a recession. When Russia went capitalist it suffered a 40% loss of GDP in 1 year, of course our economy isn’t nearly as skewed towards government fiat as theirs was, but no capitalist economist would argue that they should have just stayed communist to stave off the recession.
That’s my whole point, subsidies distort activity, and when you remove the subsidy people get hurt. The trick isn’t smarter bureaucrats at the fed making better rules, the trick is quit doing anything. And when it comes to credit subsidies, saving gets us genuine growth, credit expansion gets us boom and bust.
Mark,
I hope you will indulge Diana and me in our off-topic discussion about President Bush’s “lies” with regard to warrantless wiretaps. This time it was not Diana who went OT, but Phil who brought up the fact that President Bush is such a “straightforward liar”. This subject hasn’t been broached in while, and, quite frankly, I thought it had been laid to rest a year or two ago.
Diana, I read your WhiteHouse.org piece 4 years ago when it was originally posted. I just scanned it again, and I don’t see anything in it that buttresses your assertions.
I’m still looking for the WAPO article, but, in the mean time, here is another StrataSphere post that cites an interview with DNI Mike McConnell.
BTW, Mark, if you want to create a new “Bush lied, people died — debunked” thread, that would be fine with me. I think it’s time to put this to rest once and for all, and it’s every bit as important as Rudy defining “change”.
Retired Spook,
The issue of the interrelationship between the FBI and intelligence agencies was the primary issue being dealt with in In Re Sealed Case No. 002-01. The question is not whether or not the FISA statute can and should be modified. The question is, do you or do you not approve of the fact that the President ordered violations of FISA which, as the law states, “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance, as defined in 50 U.S.C. § 1801(f)… and the intercept of domestic [communications] may be conducted.” The FISC has held that FISA is constitutional. So, the President, as I said, gratuitously lied. He didn’t have to say what he did, but he chose to do so for reasons known only to him.
There is no question of whether or not the violations occurred. The Administration has acknowledged that on multiple occasions. They just make a claim, based on analysis offered by the President’s lawyers that he has the authority to violate the law. That claim awaits a full legal review.
neocon,
The point about your grasping at the Clintons is relevance. So? Do you want to bring in all Presidential lies including those of President Reagan, President Nixon and President Johnson? Explain the relevance other than trying to deflect criticism from the current President, who is still in office and capable of affecting the government, that you venerate.
Hey Diana, got a comment about this link?
http://www.cmpa.com/releases.html
Sorry guys, it’s off topic, but I am just dying to heat her flippant remarks…
That would be the Center for Media and Public Affairs which receives much funding from the highly conservative Sarah Scaife and John M Olin foundations.
They just make a claim, based on analysis offered by the President’s lawyers that he has the authority to violate the law. That claim awaits a full legal review.
I think a better way to word that would be that “based on analysis offered by the President’s lawyers that what he did was not a violation of the law.”
And, as you note, it awaits full legal review.
The FISC has held that FISA is constitutional.
Isn’t that sort of like the fox saying it’s OK to raid the hen house?
There is no question of whether or not the violations occurred.
Again, according to whom — you?
Retired Spook,
To minimize the cuts with pastes that people seem to object to, here is the President referring to the activities on December 19th, 2005, three days after the New York Times reporting the warrantless surveillance, in which he defends the program’s legality without denying the essential core of the program which was that it was not using warrants:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html
here is then-Attorney General Gonzales’ defense of the legality of the so-called TSP on February 6, 2006 before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/nsa/gonz20606stmnt.html
Retired Spook,
To minimize the cuts with pastes that people seem to object to, here is the President referring to the activities on December 19th, 2005, three days after the New York Times reporting the warrantless surveillance, in which he defends the program’s legality without denying the essential core of the program which was that it was not using warrants:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html
here is then-Attorney General Gonzales’ defense of the legality of the so-called TSP on February 6, 2006 before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/nsa/gonz20606stmnt.html
Admiral McConnell’s letter to Senator Leahy of July 31, 2007 referring to interceptions “without a court order”:
Click to access NID_Specter073107.pdf
The testimony of former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey in May 15, 2007 describing the efforts to get a hospitalized Attorney General John Aschcroft to override Comey and reauthorize the program:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501043.html
Then-Press Secretary Tony Snow on January 17, 2007 (emphasis added):
if there are ten people who need a colonoscopy today, and only 5 colonscopies can be done today, who decides who goes first, and who has to wait for later?
This is no different than the situation is decided today. Today, the person who can pay for colonoscopy gets it. The person who cannot does not. You people pretend that all you have to do is show up and you get all the medical care you desire is childish in the way it misunderstands our current medical system. People are denied necessary healthcare in America all the time, adn they die from that all the time. And you continue to repeat fantasies of rationing as if there was no rationing ongoing today