I am so depressed today I feel sick! I spent the day cleaning out my

[saracat]

closets to help the evacuees. Damn, I am ashamed of this government. I can't believe the polls aren't really in the toilet. I am so upset and so is DH. I don't think I want to stay here any longer. These people are repugnant. Thank god for this group. You guys are the only bastian of sanity I see. I just wish I felt there was ANYTHING to feel positive about.

[fedupinBushcountry]

1. The one thing that makes me positive

is coming to this forum. Some days I wonder is anyone listening? Then I come here and I find reasoning and common sense. Then I realize I'm not alone and I also realize what a wonderful group of Americans John Kerry brought together.

Hang in there we'll survive this rollercoaster together. :hug:

[rox63]

2. It's been a tough week all around

I lost it a couple of times last week. I keep wondering when we're going to wake up from the nightmare. Unfortunately, that nightmare is our reality.

We are here for you, saracat. :grouphug:

[TayTay]

3. Honey, turn on C-Span

Every caller to this station is reeming Bush a new one. One calle rsaid he should be in a 'mental institution' and the Rethug being interviewed had to respond.

I have never, ever heard such anger in the country and I also remember Watergate, the hostage crisis under Carter and so forth. C-Span keeps bringing on Rethugs who are spinning that this could not be forseen and the callers, with all kinds of national accents, are buying NONE of it. None of it.

These people are toast.

[karynnj]

4. I so needed to read this

I made the mistake of turning on talk radio yesterday while driving to and from the grocery store and heard different people saying precisely the same thing - that the mayor and Governor both did nothing until Bush called the Governor because they didn't know they needed to. The words were literally near the same. I guess the anguish the media covered as Bush did nothing overwhelmed even the Rove machine.

I just hope that the Congressional Democrats use the anger to jolt some of their Republican peers to see that we need to rebuild, give aid to the affected people and rethink deferred maintenance elsewhere. With the cost of the hurricane and the war (neither of which were in the dishonest budget), they need to roll back the tax cuts. Unfortunately, the Republicans will likely try to go for program cuts.

[TayTay]

5. Again, on C-Span

All programs are under re-evaluation. There will be no estate tax repeal on the agenda this morning. There will be a re-call up of the Transportation bill and a reconsideration of those Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.

This is one of the biggest events in American history. Sure, some people are fooled. Some people are ALWAYS fooled. Always. But not enough, not this time. The screwup was too big and too public.

Gawd, listen to the C-Span call in shows. Even the Bush lines are clogged with people who can't wait to tear him a new one.

Again people: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
LOUDER and LOUDER.

[karynnj]

6. I also wonder if those who believed the most, might not end up

the angriest. Some of the people interviewed last year spoke of Bush as a Godly man and gave him attributes that we never saw. They seemed to genuinely believe it.

[karynnj]

7. Are you listening to Biden on CSPAN-2?

How can anyone say he is easy to understand? Every time I think I know where he's going I find he has switched 180 degrees. He is railing against Bush's policies, but then he goes off on tangents and I can't parse what the hell he is saying. This after finding Kerry crystal clear and insightful - every time he speaks.

[TayTay]

8. I turned it off for a little bit

to listen to STephanie Miller. (A break and some needed humor.) Got it back on now. I always Biden was not the best speaker. He is passionate, but his sentence structure trips him up. Then again, I thought maybe it was a regional thing and I was hearing him as a New Englander. (Hey, it happens. Some people play better and sound more natural in their native regions.)

[karynnj]

12. NJ touches Delaware and I can't follow him

Part of the problem is that I think he either doesn't spend enough time thinking through what he wants to say before he starts to write his speech or maybe that he his reasoning is non-linear. It just seems that he writes observations that are not necessarily compatible on small pieces of papers, then throws them up in the air and, then adds them randomly. (I doubt he really does this but the results seem that way).

It may be my problem, but I found Kerry consistently crystal clear and was amazed at his ability to look at how things interact and then find solutions that work on many dimensions. Because he seems to do that often his message was far more complicated, but he articulated it beautifully. Biden just gives me a headache.

[Mass]

9. I'm mad as hell at Biden.

His web site still has nothing on NO. I was hoping he would say something here, as it is pertinent, but all he had to say was that we have to learn from the lessons and then he moved on.

As for the rest, Biden always struck me as somebody who speaks for the pleasure of hearing himself. Kerry is by far clearer and more direct. Unfortunately, he is a lot less in the limelights and people dont get to hear him. It is silly as it creates Biden fatigue. I used to be a big fan of Biden, but there are a lot of other people I'd like to hear and now I am tired of him.

[TayTay]

10. I wonder if Kerry will make a floor speech today.

It seems the Senate is reserving the time from 12-5:30 for floor speeches on the aftermath of Katrina. I wonder if Kerry will speak.

Maybe KerryGoddess knows. He did, after all, bash the Bushies stupid last year over being unprepared for a catastrophe. (And there is little difference between being ready for the aftermath of a dirty bomb or terrorist attack on the infrastructure as to what actually happened.

[karynnj]

11. He also doesn't seem to see the logical contradiction

between literally swooning over the Bush Inaugeral vision - saying it sounded like JFK with a different accent - saying he feels we need to "reform" rogue nations and his comments the Iraq will not have a democracy no matter what we do. He doesn't seem to extrapolate from Iraq that imposing democracy may not be too likely to succeed. He then used the word neo-con as different than himself than embraced their main policy!

He tried to place himself as a centrist by saying the Bush administration isn't comprised of war mongers but then kept referring to Iraq as a war of choice.

The problem is this was a prepared speech - the contradictions, though still disturbing, would be a littel more forgivable in off the cuff statements. Before he started writing words you would think he would decide what his position was and stick to it. I think the basic problem is that he really had embraced the neo-con policies and he still is somewhat seduced by them even as he sees they are not working.

Foreign policy is Biden's strong suit - so his inability to be coherent on it are damning. Could you imagine him in the debates?