Enemies at NMA.

[Megatron]

why don't you pm them HATE so there eye-brows slant, there lips yank back and foam starts spurting from various orfices!

[Aneurysm]

If the gringos at nma stopped quoting the economist , they would be exactly like dac , but without the dark humor

[Ozrat]

Wait, why am I not on the NMA Enemies Hate List anymore? Have I been adopted or something?

[Jimmyjay86]

Wait, why am I not on the NMA Enemies Hate List anymore? Have I been adopted or something?

There is no list dumbass but if you really want one, we'll make one just for you...

[atoga]

Wait, why am I not on the NMA Enemies Hate List anymore? Have I been adopted or something?

You're so amazingly sexed up that we couldn't resist.

The past few weeks have been miserable for John Kerry. Not calamitous or terminal. But since he won the Democratic primaries on a wave of Bush-beating acclaim, Mr Kerry has failed to show either the character or policies of which winning campaigns are made. It has been, at the least, a period of lost opportunities.

In early March, Mr Kerry was around five points ahead of George Bush, near or outside the margin of error. By mid-April he was roughly five points behind. A ten-point swing in just over a month is unusually large. What is happening?

A more detailed look at the polls confirms Mr Kerry's problems, though it suggests that direct comparisons with the president may exaggerate his perceived weaknesses. In early March, Mr Kerry was 12 points ahead on the question of handling the economy and 20 points ahead on health care. Now the two men are tied on the economy and Mr Kerry's lead on health care has dropped to six points. More people still think Mr Kerry understands the problems of ordinary people better than Mr Bush, but his advantage has dropped from 17 to ten points. In other words, Mr Kerry's position is not bad, but it is plainly less good than it was.

To be sure, Mr Bush does not have that much to smile about: his job-approval rating has risen�the latest survey from the Pew Research Centre pushes him back up to 48% from the low of 43% it touched in early April�but more people dislike than like his handling of Iraq, Social Security, health, taxes, jobs, the budget deficit and prescription drugs.

But why isn't Mr Kerry doing better? After all, the past few weeks have been among the worst of Mr Bush's presidency. The September 11th commission has aired all manner of accusations, and the news from Iraq has been grim. This week saw yet another embarrassing landmark�the anniversary of Mr Bush's disastrous “Mission Accomplished� speech.

Conventional wisdom in Washington has an explanation for Mr Bush's lead: there must be something profoundly wrong with Mr Kerry. He was not properly tested in the primaries; he appeals only to dyed-in-the-wool Democrats; the more you know him, the less you like him; he is another Al Gore, a lacklustre Washington insider unable to inspire swing voters.

These fears may yet come true, but there are two more direct explanations for Mr Kerry's dismal performance. First, Mr Bush has been the beneficiary of a rally-round-the-flag response to news from Iraq. Two weeks ago, he gave a televised prime-time press conference. In Washington, he was derided for failing to answer detailed questions. But beyond the Beltway, voters reacted more positively. Mr Bush sounded resolute, said he was determined to stay the course�and they responded. Twice as many now think he “takes a position and sticks with it� than think that of Mr Kerry. Two-thirds see him as a strong leader, while only half say it of his challenger. In other words, the “bad news�, this time, has helped Mr Bush.

The second explanation is the $50m Mr Bush has just spent on television advertising�as much as was bought in the whole of the 2000 election. The TV campaign portrayed Mr Kerry as a flip-flopper and tax-raiser, which seems to have had some effect. By 58% to 29%, voters think a President Kerry would increase taxes.

The chances are that both these effects could be short-lived. Even the Bush campaign cannot spend $50m every month trashing Mr Kerry (it has now scaled back its advertising while Mr Kerry has started a TV blitz of his own). As for Iraq, more bad news could undermine the patriotic rally, replacing it with an erosion of confidence.

So it seems best to view the recent poll movements not as a decisive shift to Mr Bush but an oscillation around the mean. In March, Mr Kerry had an historically unprecedented lead that he could not sustain. Now, Mr Bush has his own version. Incumbents are usually ahead early on because they are known, and their supporters have already made up their minds. But challengers are not known and people who decide at the last minute tend to break for them. In 2000, the lead bounced back and forth throughout the campaign.

If, as seems likely, the dynamic of a close race has not changed, Mr Kerry can take solace from two shifts that are more profound than the horse-race numbers. There has been, first, a long-term increase in the number of people saying the country is on the “wrong track�. In April, 57% said this, compared with an average of 46% in the first four months of 2003, even though job growth spurted in that period.

Second, opinion about Iraq is changing. Though a small majority still thinks war was justified, that compares with three-quarters a year ago. Some 53% want to keep troops in Iraq until a stable government is established, compared with 63% in January. Americans seem schizophrenic, continuing to support the president on a war that they are turning against. If they want to extricate themselves from Iraq by November (and do not think the handover of sovereignty on June 30th counts), then Mr Kerry could benefit hugely.

But this will happen only if he can improve his campaign�and this is where real worries about his performance set in. The past few weeks have seen voters form impressions about Mr Kerry. As he concedes, “a lot of people don't really know who I am,� despite 19 years in the Senate. Those impressions have often been unflattering. Mr Kerry comes across as aloof and longwinded. He lacks the sunny optimism of Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan.

That weakness can be moderated or hidden: Richard Nixon hardly had a sunny personality. What is more worrying is Mr Kerry's failure to project a coherent message or a reason for running. Whatever one thought about Mr Clinton's Third Way centrism, it represented something new and distinctive in the Democratic Party. Mr Kerry claims to be following in that tradition�a muscular internationalist, a deficit hawk and a middle-class-tax cutter.

Yet as the next article points out, Mr Kerry's economic policy is less Clintonian than it looks. His muscular internationalism is muddied by vagueness on Iraq. His claim not to be “a redistribution Democrat,� as he puts it, is undermined by his rhetoric and by a team of advisers drawn extensively from Mr Gore's populist ranks. The result, as some of his supporters concede, is that he comes across as just a generic Democrat. No one can finish the sentence “I support John Kerry because...� except to say “...he is not George Bush.�

If the election is just a referendum on Mr Bush, none of this may matter. Mr Kerry is raising huge amounts of money�a record $55m in the first quarter�which may be all that is necessary if the Republicans defeat themselves. But there are big risks to running a message-free campaign. It could depress Democratic turnout. It lets Mr Bush define Mr Kerry. And if he wants to fulfil the Democrats' pledge to “take back the country�, and seize the political initiative, Mr Kerry will need a governing strategy on inauguration day. To do all that, he needs to start imposing what he stands for on the party. That is the opportunity fast disappearing.

I concur. WANNA TALK POLITICS, ASSHOLE?

[S4ur0n27]

Who the fuck is this Economist arse?
There's absolutely NO WAY I'm gonna read a post as long as that, except if written by Menno or Hammer maybe, or by SP or Killz with a title like "FO3 IN TEH MADE".

[avenger69ie]

maybe its a news reporter for some economic type rag?? lol

[atoga]

It's The Economist with capital letters, you douchebags. I could copy some more shit off of their site if you like.

[Nicolai]

u'd be so ded faget

[S4ur0n27]

I wouldn't like it atoga.

[avenger69ie]

It's The Economist with capital letters, you douchebags. I could copy some more shit off of their site if you like.

like i said, UBER DOUCHEBAG, blindy

maybe its a news reporter for some economic type rag?? replace rag with site

[MurPHy]

It's The Economist with capital letters, you douchebags. I could copy some more shit off of their site if you like.

u'd be so ded faget

Now this is the kind of thing that ExtremeDrinker was trying to point out when he made this topic (I think...). If the above two related statements were said on NMA by two of THEIR douchebags, they would have gotten all pissy over nothing and had a flame-war of about 5 pages or so.

Here, it is simple humor, if a bit dark (the kind that I like!).

[S4ur0n27]

You mean we're doucebags?

[atoga]

I disagree that it's even humor to begin with. I call everyone a fucking asshole, a dork, or a douchebag in real life anyway, so why not continue that laughable practice here? No need to be uptight about it.

[avenger69ie]

Douchebag

[Mandalorian FaLLouT GoD]

Douchebag

dork.

[avenger69ie]

is fucking asshole next? or do we create our own?

[atoga]

I'll sue you fucking assholes to jail.

They're a good three words, though, since everybody is invariably at least one of them.

[Stainless]

Meh, I can't stand NMA. No idea why. Just can't. Maybe because here I wield some form of power on the Fallout forum... *rwar*

[avenger69ie]

and because your a dork-hole and an douche-ass
or something ?

havent seen you in a bit stainless, how many mods do we have here btw?