Is Bush the worst President in history?

I haven't read all the posts so somebody else may have pointed this out. The Civil War was not fought over slavery or States Rights or even tariffs. It was fought over the same thing every war is fought over-power and money.
At the time of the war, the backbone of the american economy centered on two products, cotton and tobacco, both grown and controlled by the southern states. The money and manufacture of these products were controlled by the industrial north. There was no way that the nortern states could survive economically without these products and to a lesser degree the food products that came from the south as well, therefore they could not afford to allow them to be controlled by another nation.
Abraham Lincoln stated that if there was way for him to keep the Union together other than abolishing slavery, he would do it. In fact, he wanted to ship them all back to Africa. He viewed them as nothing more than animals. But he could find no other justification for declaring a war of aggression.
Keep in mind that until Iraq, the U.S. has never openly started a preemptive war. It's always that the "enemy" fired the first shot and so it was that he suckered the Confederacy into firing on Ft. Sumter, thus giving the Union the excuse it needed to declare war on the South.
In reality, the Southern farmers were enslaved to the Northern industrialists almost as much as the slaves themselves. The North controlled the prices they would pay for goods bought from and sold back to the south, southern children went to northern schools and so on.
Remember too that America was founded as a Republic of individual Nation States, not a Democracy as we have become so it was each states right under the Constitution to secede if it so chose to do so.
So in reality, whenever you hear someone use the term "War of Northern Aggression" for the Civil War, it is correct because that is just what it was- a war of aggression and conquest of one sovereign nation by another.

As far as WWII goes, in the original post, the writer said Germany never attacked us, true but they did declare war on us after we declared war on Japan.
This brings us to a whole other subject. I am sick and tired of hearing about how Japan "sneak attacked" us at PH.
FDR, with Churchill's help goaded Japan into attacking the U.S. and getting us involved in WWII. I'm not going to go into depth here because there is very good book on this called "Day Of Deceit-The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor." by Robert B. Stinnett.
This book explains the things FDR and Churchill did to goad Japan into attacking us. America no more went to war to save freedom in WWII than I played in the NC game for LSU. We went to war to save the British, French and Dutch empires in Africa and SE Asia where the oil and rubber was at, which they controlled. It was also a race war against the Yellow Horde.
You doubt this, then ask yourself these two questions-What was our beef against Japan? The war in China. America wanted Japan out of China as we felt they had no business there as a conquering people. You really believe that FDR and Churchill gave a rats ass about the Chinese people? Of course not. They just needed a reason to get involved. Japan never really wanted to get involved with Germany as they viewed Hitler as a madman or Italy but they were left with little choice but to sign the TriPartite Pact.
The second question to ask yourself is_Which country in the history of the world has conquered more land and peoples than any other? The British. At the time WWII broke out, England controlled most of N. Africa, Burma, India, Ceylon, parts of China, Malaysia and Singapore. The French controlled part of N. Africa and IndoChina. The Dutch controlled Indonesia and the Celebes.
All of these were colonies, independednt nations ruled by a foreign government. Did we tell the Brits, French or Dutch to get out? Did we place embargoes on them because they didn't? No. Because we were their allies and did business with them and because they were white,
But FDR would never have gotten the support of the American people, isolationists at the time, if he had said we were going to fight to save these empires. He had also stated in his 1940 campaign that he would never send American boys to fight in another European war. So just like Lincoln before him and Bush now, he manufactured an excuse to go to war.
Think too back to the begining of the war. Britain and France went to war to save Poland but what happened when the war was over? Poland and all of Eastern Europe fell into the hands of Stalin who was worse than Hitler and what did we do about it? Nothing.
My point in all this is not whether these wars desrved to be fought or not. Clearly Hitler, and to a lesser extent, Japan were threats to the world and had to be stopped. Is the U. S. a better place for having fought the Civil War? I would think so. But I don't like the way our leaders lie to us and I like even less the way many Americans follow them blindly in the name of patriotism. The majority of politicians ae self-serving and W is one of the worst and here we are following this guy to financial disaster and the American people are eating it up.
Because of Reagan, Bush senior and now him and I blame Clinton as well for signing onto it, we have Nafta, China with MFN status and all our good jobs are leaving here, our deficit is higher than it's ever been, we have more poverty and people without health care.
If W is not the worst president, then he isn't far behind, IMHO.

 

Re: You are so very lame

What is to prevent a President from signing a bill into law two days before he leaves office? Buchanan was still the President until March 4, 1861. He signed the Morril Tariff into law on March 2, 1861, while he was still President.

South Carolina seceded in December, 1860. Most of the other deep south states seceded in January, 1861. That means they were no longer sending representatives to Congress. The Morril Tariff was passed after they withdrew.

The South won all major tariff votes in Congress before that for the previous decade.

Now I have told you the facts. I understand that for right wingers like you , facts mean nothing. But facts are facts, nevertheless.

As for the other person here who has chimed in, your opinion, when compared alongside eminent historians like Allen Nevins and James McPherson means nothing. The Civil War was caused by slavery.

 

Here is one quote from Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy:

Stephens here was addressing those in the North who said that the phrase "All men are created equal" meant just that, "All Men," including blacks:

"Our new govenment is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery....is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, moral truth."

Jefferson Davis declared, We left the Union "to save ourselves from a revolution" that threatened to make "property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless."

 

The slaveholders in the South feared, among other things, that the non-slaveholding whites in the South would be attracted by "Black Republicanism" and would side eventually with "abolitionists."

To shortstop this, they had been spreading wild horrific propaganda with dire predictions of what would happen if the slaves were freed:

Georgia Governor Brown: Slavery "is the poor man's best government. Among us the poor white laborer...does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal....He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men."

One southern newspaper editor said: "Do you love your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter?" If Georgia remained in the Union "ruled by Lincoln and his crew....in ten years or less our children will be slaves of negroes."

South Carolina Baptist clergyman James Furman: "Abolition preachers will be at hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters to black husbands." He continued, "Submit to have our wives and daughters choose between death and gratifying the hellish lust of the negro!!!....Better ten thousand deaths than submission to Black Republicanism."

 

General comment: Someone get a net for this one. What a loon.

 

And you are a right wing nut who knows nothing about the facts. I pity the country that you are around.

Bush ignored the threat from Al Qaida. Bush had been President for 9 months when 911 happened. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought and won with Clinton's military. It is a lie that Clinton left us defenseless.

911 was Bush's fault, if anyone's.

 

Like I have said, when someone starts saying that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, I know exactly where they are coming from: they enter at the door of Orval Faubus, the George Wallace who stood in the school house door, Lester Maddox, David Duke, and every other white racist around.

There is no other reason for making this claim, which flies in the face of the words of the Southern secessionists themselves. They told you what the Civil War was about and why they started it by seceding.

They did it to maintain slavery here and to extend slavery into Cuba, Mexico and other Latin countries.

 

Reply: Bullshit. The supremacy clause of the US Constitution clearly says that the Federal Govts power is supreme over the states.

Reply: Ignorant bullshit.

Cottonbowl,
I would suggest that you get a better understanding of how contracts work.

When you enter into a contract, you are only bound by the expressed terms of the contract.
It isn`t necessary for every other 'right' that you possess to be spelled out, only the ones that you are CONTRACTING over.

Lets say that you and I enter into contract whereby you agree to allow me the use of your back 40 acres for corn planting each spring, and the right to harvest that corn in the fall, for the sum of $100.00 per year, per acre.
My rights under the contract only go as far as planting and harvesting corn. I cannot simply declare that it would be a whole lot easier for me to watch over my crop, if I built me a house on the edge of your property overlooking those 40 acres.
The law understands that you hold all other rights unto yourself, and are only bound to oblige me within the stated terms of the contract.
The contract does not need to say that your front 40 are off limits to me, does it?
I can`t arbitrarily begin planting my corn there, and then say that we have a contract, because the contract only effects your BACK 40 .
You still possess all of the rights the you had prior to our agreement over your back 40 acres.

You simply do not have a good grasp on contractual law.

The 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution state clearly that:
1. These are not the only rights that the people and the States possess, and ;
2. The people and the States continue to possess all rights EXCEPT those delegated to the central government.

That is as simple as I know how to put it.

The right to secede from the Union was in this way made clear at many of the original 13 colonies legislatures during the original ratification process. South Carolina for one refused to ratify the constitution until states rights were explained to the delegates in much the same way they were just explained to you here today. State soverignty was that important to our founding fathers.

The war, as are all wars, was fought over money. There was no income tax in those days and tariff money was the engine that paid for the federal govt. Since the South exported far more than the North, conversely they imported far more as well, (ships arrive with goods, then offload and reload with export goods) so the tariffs were a dispoprtionately large burden on the Southern states. The fear in the North at the time was that without the South's tariff revenue, the government would collapse.

Why should the Southern states secede over slavery? There was no attempt by the govt. to abolish slavery until after the conclusion of the conflict.

The South was sick and tired of paying the lion's share of the cost for the federal govt. and getting a miniscule return on their investment. This was not a recent problem either. South Carolina had come very close to seceding from the Union in the 1820s over tariff issues, and due to the disparity of population and money between the two regions, things didn't look to improve at any time in the near future. It is not insignificant that Fort Sumpter was in fact a tariff collection station in the port of Charleston.

I am not saying nor have I ever said that slavery was not a major factor in the Civil War, but once again follow the money. There you will find the cause of all wars fought in the last 200 years. To say that the Civil War was fought over slavery alone is to oversimplify an incredibly complex issue.

 

Of all the ignorant posts you have made, this one is the bell ringer, the blue ribbon winner, the tops, a real hummmmmmm-dinger. 9/11 (911 by the way is an emergency phone number) happened because Klinton was staring at the top of a blue beret instead of paying attention to significant events in the middle east which signaled trouble. Al Qaeda was mobilizing, planning and executing it's evil, largely undetected, because the Democrats had castrated the CIA leaving the agency as nothing more a whimpering eunuch. Even then, he was warned that Bin Laden had to be removed and he chose to do nothing. He was more interested in going to the prom with Monica and keeping Hillary from finding out.
By the way, Phatcat. That was an excellent post but all you'll get for your trouble is to be called a racist. And, its clear that you are a liberal democrat and no fan of Bush, but I won't hold that against you.

 

I just proved to you that the Morril Tariff was passed after the South seceded. You are wrong. Since you ignore this fact I tought I would point it out because you cannot make something too obvious for your pointy headed little right wing allies here.

The South threatened secession in 1850 and it was over whether slavery would be extended into the territories.

The South threatened to secede on other occasions also. It was always over some aspect of slavery. I have posted direct quotes form Southerners that say in their own words that they seceded over slavery.

The discussion is over. You don't know crap about this subject, or I should say, "you don't want to know crap about it." You are just another segregationist who wants to claim that the South fought in some noble cause in which it was oppressed by the monolithic Federal Govt and that Southerners were fighting for all of our freedom.

The South was fighting to keep slavery, and to extend slavery into many neighboring countries.