Arjay:

"Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out... and the corporations sit there in their... in their corporation buildings, and... and, and see, they're all corporation-y... and they make money" - "Tim Robbins" (Trey Parker), "Team America: World Police".

Doug Casey wrote: "People will blame the full suite of disasters Bush caused on the free market simply because Bush constantly said he believed in it."

A lot of the disasters were due to the free market regardless of whether Bush said he believed in it or not. Reckless subprime lending, unregulated hedge funds and other market excesses contributed to the financial debacle. A president who believed that the market needed more regulation might have prevented some of the disasters.

Arjay wrote: When are people going to realise that it is not US Presidents who make policy.

Answer: When people adopt Arjay's conspiratorial view.

Otonoko is right. Bush did not do it alone.

Was the American electorate the worst electorate in history? Somehow, I think the German electorate that elected Hitler was worse.

Since when has it been OK to torture people? Detention without charge? Scrap the Geneva Convention? Kill civilians indiscriminately?
Baxter Sin,
I'd say it's justified whenever someone causes undeserved grief to another. After all, retaliation is always carried out in the hope that more grief can be prevented. if you care to brush up on your german then go to "wie du mir, so ich dir" I'll make it easy for you. It means "i'll do to you as you did to me". I believe the Aboriginal system was along those very sensible lines until the academic do-gooders got imposed onto this great land's hard working society.
George Bush & John Howard inherited a very difficult balancing act. Yes, there could have been other options but as per normal the theorizing do-gooders oppose anything that works in practice & after they managed to de-rail it all they blame those who made a decision despite all the odds.

You're quite mistaken there, blairbar. I strongly recommend you read this article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen/print

Why didn't Kerry complain? Firstly, a lot of the evidence didn't emerge until well after his concession. Secondly, as Keith Olbermann at MSNBC commented, "You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble...you cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our electoral system."

By saying Bush "was elected democratically in probably the freest nation on the planet", you're perpetuating the refusal to question US electoral integrity that allows this sort of corruption to flourish.

There's a reason we know that so many supposedly free and fair elections in the Middle East and Africa are shams - exit polling. It's rigorous, reliable, and when applied to the 2004 US election, it clearly shows an unexplained and highly suspicious tendency for Kerry votes to end up with Bush. And that's before you even begin taking in the many reported cases of outright anti-Democrat coercion, removal of independent oversights, and Democrat votes being awarded to the Republicans by the voting machines _right_in_front_of_the_voters'_eyes_.

If it had been the Democrats in bed with the voting machine manufacturers, shutting down polling stations to tamper with votes, and mass-distributing fake leaflets to discourage minority voters from polling, I'm sure you'd be all over it.

Jacky Kellie didn't have to look far for electoral fraud ideas in the 2007 Oz election.

david f

<< Arjay wrote: When are people going to realise that it is not US Presidents who make policy.

Answer: When people adopt Arjay's conspiratorial view. >>

I don't agree with a lot of what Arjay has to say, but I do on this one. Corporate lobbyists wield enormous influence over policy formulation. They mightn't be directly involved in writing and voting for legislative change, but they spend enormous amounts of money and effort in lobbying those who are.

The strong regulatory framework, which had controlled the US banking system and served the economy well since being introduced after the 1930s crash, was only dismantled, piece-by-piece, due to the persistent efforts of powerful banking lobbyists. It was this process, that began in the seventies and continued right through the eighties and into the nineties, which led directly to the recent financial collapse.

Already it's becoming clear that a lot of Obama's wonderful rhetoric is not getting translated into action. The big corporates are pulling out all stops to see it never does. They mightn't be making the policy but they're certainly calling the shots.

individual

<< I believe the Aboriginal system was along those very sensible lines until the academic do-gooders got imposed onto this great land's hard working society. >>

What a nonsense. Academics had nothing to do with the dismantling of the aboriginal system of governance, which I agree was an eminently sensible one in many respects and had certainly stood the test of time and served its people well. The aboriginal way of life was destroyed by the greed and ignorance of early white settlers. I doubt there were many 'academic do-gooders' around then. By the time any academics became involved in aboriginal affairs, the damage had long been done.

It's very convenient, not to mention lazy, to label every grievance onto those pesky 'do-gooders'. It does nothing whatever to advance your argument though. Who is their counterpart? The 'do-badders'?

Everyone is motivated by the urge to do good in the world, whether it's purely within their own sphere of influence or whether it extends more broadly. There are many who selflessly look beyond their own immediate circumstances and seek quite legitimately to improve the world for others and just as well. The world would be a much poorer place without them.