A lot of the things I have been hearing about since the recent election concern "Moral Values" and "Religious Faith".
An article I just read by a former Senator from Co. makes for some good debate.
Article follows in its entirety:
___________________________________________________________________
America is a secular, not a theocratic, republic.
Because of this, it should concern us that declarations of "faith" are quickly becoming a condition for seeking public office.
Declarations of "faith" are abstractions that permit both voters and candidates to fill in the blanks with their own religious beliefs.
There are two dangers here. One is the merging of church and state. The other is rank hypocrisy.
Having claimed moral authority to achieve political victory, religious conservatives should be very careful, in their administration of the public trust, to live up to the standards they have claimed for themselves. They should also be called upon to address the teachings of Jesus and the prophets concerning care for the poor, the barriers that wealth presents to entering heaven, the blessings on the peacemakers, and the belief that no person should be left behind.
If we are to insert "faith" into the public dialogue more directly and assertively, let's not be selective. Let's go all the way. Let's not just define "faith" in terms of the law and judgment; let's define it also in terms of love, caring, forgiveness. Compassionate conservatives can believe social ills should be addressed by charity and the private sector; liberals can believe that the government has a role to play in correcting social injustice. But both can agree that human need, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and sickness must be addressed. Liberals are not against religion. They are against hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism.
They resist the notion that one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the exclusion of others. There is a great difference between Cotton Mather and John Wesley.
There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to eliminate it.
Surely Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. But there are quite a few of those still around and no one is advocating eliminating them. Neither Washington, Adams, Madison nor Jefferson saw America as the world's avenging angel. Any notion of going abroad seeking demons to destroy concerned them above all else. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number of Americans with a sense of their own history.
The religions of Abraham all teach a sense of personal and collective humility. It was a note briefly struck very early by Mr. Bush and largely abandoned thereafter. It would be well for those in the second Bush term to ponder that attribute. Whether Bush supporters care or not, people around the world now see America as arrogant, self-righteous and superior. These are not qualities of any traditional faith I am aware of.
If faith now drives our politics, at the very least let's make it a faith of inclusion, genuine compassion, humility, justice and accountability.
In the words of the prophet Micah: "He hath shown thee, O man, what is good. What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And, instead of "O man," let's insert "O America."
Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the author, most recently, of"The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the 21st Century.''
___________________________________________________________
In other words....religion and such should be included in the basic precept for the principles of a "right and just" goverment, but there is a very fine line as to how these "principles" should be included in what we say and what we do. Esp. if you are the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth. If we arent carefull, we could end up back in the dark ages again with "witch hunts, another holy inquistion and all other sorts of things we as a race should have outgrown long long ago. Hell....why not just elect the Pope to run the world.
If that were to happen....I would surly try to find another planet to live on.
That is my "Rant" for the day.
Happy Monday Everyone.
Monday, November 8, 2004
Sunday, November 7, 2004
The World Today-Sunday Novemeber 7th, 2004
Ok.......
-So the first suicide brought on by President Bush' Re election......story follows:
___________________________________________________________________
Nov 7, 12:48 PM EST
Ground Zero Suicide Driven by Election
NEW YORK (AP) --
A 25-year-old man from Georgia who was apparently distraught over President Bush's re-election shot and killed himself at ground zero. Andrew Veal's body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.
Veal's mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The New York Times in Sunday's editions.
Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.
"I'm absolutely sure it's a protest," Mary Anne Mauney, Veal's supervisor at the lab, told The Daily News. "I don't know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic for sure.
Police were investigating how Veal entered the former World Trade Center site, which is protected by high fences and owned by the Port Authority.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
___________________________________________________________________
And then.....
The Country of Iraq locked down in an Emergency situation as our administration plans an all out "assault" on Falluja.
And also....
A gunman wearing armor shoots up a "Hotel" in Milwaukee, killing not only his girlfriend, but also an innocent bystander from Germany, and wounding two others in the process AND taking another innocent bystander as a hostage.....makes me think twice of wanting to stay at a hotel, much less working at one.
And last but not least....
PLO Leader Arrafat lying close to death in a Paris hospital and people arguing about where he should be burried....Isreal says he WILL NOT be burried in Juresalem because he is a terrorist and that this city is reserverd for "Jewish Kings" and surly not a terrorisit such as Arrafat.
What is the world coming to??
-So the first suicide brought on by President Bush' Re election......story follows:
___________________________________________________________________
Nov 7, 12:48 PM EST
Ground Zero Suicide Driven by Election
NEW YORK (AP) --
A 25-year-old man from Georgia who was apparently distraught over President Bush's re-election shot and killed himself at ground zero. Andrew Veal's body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.
Veal's mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The New York Times in Sunday's editions.
Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.
"I'm absolutely sure it's a protest," Mary Anne Mauney, Veal's supervisor at the lab, told The Daily News. "I don't know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic for sure.
Police were investigating how Veal entered the former World Trade Center site, which is protected by high fences and owned by the Port Authority.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
___________________________________________________________________
And then.....
The Country of Iraq locked down in an Emergency situation as our administration plans an all out "assault" on Falluja.
And also....
A gunman wearing armor shoots up a "Hotel" in Milwaukee, killing not only his girlfriend, but also an innocent bystander from Germany, and wounding two others in the process AND taking another innocent bystander as a hostage.....makes me think twice of wanting to stay at a hotel, much less working at one.
And last but not least....
PLO Leader Arrafat lying close to death in a Paris hospital and people arguing about where he should be burried....Isreal says he WILL NOT be burried in Juresalem because he is a terrorist and that this city is reserverd for "Jewish Kings" and surly not a terrorisit such as Arrafat.
What is the world coming to??
Saturday, November 6, 2004
A Story?...An Idea?....Something to Ponder? "Creation By Intelligent Design"
An interesting article that caught my attention this morning about a school in Northern Wisconsin deciding to expand their "Science curriculum" to include theories other than evolution, made me want to dig a little more.
Link: http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/nov04/272875.asp
Right off the bat I will say that I DO BELIEVE that there HAS to be an intelligent Force behind all that is. While I have been raised to believe that this force is called "GOD" as that is what most people call this being of undendless power, a lot of the things we are learning about the universe and the origins of life are, at least for me, seem to make a bit more sense than what I was taught in School.
Another interesting link on the "Intelligent Design" process which I have just STARTED to dig into promises some interesting reading as well.
Link:http://www.caseforacreator.com/home.php
One of the more interesting hypothesizes I have read up on is what some call the "Anthropic Principle". The following article gives a pretty good (and not too long) overview of this growing theory.
link: http://michaelacorey.com/article_violin.html
This author also has a few really good books that I haven't heard of but will surly be looking for the next time I take a walk into my local "Barns and Noble" Bookstore. But they can also be ordered on line at the following link.
link: http://michaelacorey.com/books.html
On another note, it seems like we are getting "another" mini Indian Summer again today. Temps in the low 70s and sunny. A nice day indeed. I am sure it wont be too long before the snow starts flying though...at least here in Wisconsin, where the old saying goes..."If you wait a minute...the weather will change".
Happy Saturday
Link: http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/nov04/272875.asp
Right off the bat I will say that I DO BELIEVE that there HAS to be an intelligent Force behind all that is. While I have been raised to believe that this force is called "GOD" as that is what most people call this being of undendless power, a lot of the things we are learning about the universe and the origins of life are, at least for me, seem to make a bit more sense than what I was taught in School.
Another interesting link on the "Intelligent Design" process which I have just STARTED to dig into promises some interesting reading as well.
Link:http://www.caseforacreator.com/home.php
One of the more interesting hypothesizes I have read up on is what some call the "Anthropic Principle". The following article gives a pretty good (and not too long) overview of this growing theory.
link: http://michaelacorey.com/article_violin.html
This author also has a few really good books that I haven't heard of but will surly be looking for the next time I take a walk into my local "Barns and Noble" Bookstore. But they can also be ordered on line at the following link.
link: http://michaelacorey.com/books.html
On another note, it seems like we are getting "another" mini Indian Summer again today. Temps in the low 70s and sunny. A nice day indeed. I am sure it wont be too long before the snow starts flying though...at least here in Wisconsin, where the old saying goes..."If you wait a minute...the weather will change".
Happy Saturday
Friday, November 5, 2004
100 Facts on the "Current Administration"
A compilation of sorts (with back up sources) on how our current administration has faired the past four years (and what to watch for as far as changes go).
IRAQ
1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.
Source: American Progress
2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.
Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe
3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.
Source: PBS
4. Vice President Cheney said Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.
Source: The Washington Post
5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.
Source: globalsecurity.org
6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.
Source: Yahoo News
7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.
Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission
8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.
Source: New York Times
9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.
Source: USA Today
10. According to the Administration's handpicked weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is "no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, "There was a risk--a real risk--that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks."
Sources: New York Times, White House news release
11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections regime put an "economic strangle hold" on Hussein that prevented him from developing a WMD program for more than twelve years.
Source: Los Angeles Times
TERRORISM
12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.
Source: CNN.com
13. The Bush Administration failed to commit enough troops to capture Osama bin Laden when US forces had him cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November 2001. Instead, they relied on local warlords.
Source: csmonitor.com
14. The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11.
Source: nti.org
15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million.
Source: armscontrol.org
16. The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money.
Source: Associated Press
17. According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush Administration has underfunded security at the nation's ports by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.
Source: American Progress
18. The Bush Administration did not devote the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence in the production of poppies, the raw material used to create heroin, in Afghanistan--creating a potent new source of financing for terrorists.
Source: Pakistan Tribune
19. Vice President Cheney told voters that unless they elect George Bush in November, "we'll get hit again" by terrorists.
Source: Washington Post
20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban.
Source: sfgate.com
21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11.
Source: New York Times
22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent.
Source: americanprogress.org
23. Between January 20, 2001, and September 10, 2001, the Bush Administration publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.
Source: commondreams.org
24. The Bush Administration granted the 9/11 Commission $3 million to investigate the September 11 attacks and $50 million to the commission that investigated the Columbia space shuttle crash.
Source: commondreams.org
25. More than three years after 9/11, just 5 percent of all cargo--including cargo transported on passenger planes--is screened.
Source: commondreams.org
NATIONAL SECURITY
26. During the Bush Administration, North Korea quadrupled its suspected nuclear arsenal from two to eight weapons.
Source: New York Times
27. The Bush Administration has openly opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, undermining nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
Source: commondreams.org
28. The Bush Administration has spent $7 billion this year--and plans to spend $10 billion next year--for a missile defense system that has never worked in a test that wasn't rigged.
Sources: www.gao.gov/new.items/d04409.pdf, Los Angeles Times
29. The Bush Administration underfunded the needs of the nation's first responders by $98 billion, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study.
Source: nationaldefensemagazine.org
CRONYISM AND CORRUPTION
30. The Bush Administration awarded a multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton--a company that still pays Vice President Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation each year (Cheney also has Halliburton stock options). The company then repeatedly overcharged the military for services, accepted kickbacks from subcontractors and served troops dirty food.
Sources: The Washington Post, The Tapei Times, BBC News
31. The Bush Administration told Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before telling Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Source: detnews.com
32. The Bush Administration relentlessly pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion in corporate tax breaks, much of which would have benefited major campaign contributors.
taxpayer.net, Washington Post
33. The Bush Administration paid Iraqi-exile and neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi $400,000 a month for intelligence, including fabricated claims about Iraqi WMD. It continued to pay him for months after discovering that he was providing inaccurate information.
Source: MSNBC
34. The Bush Administration installed as top officials more than 100 former lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.
Source: Source: commondreams.org
35. The Bush Administration let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay--a close friend of President Bush--help write its energy policy.
Source: MSNBC
36. Top Bush Administration officials accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other presents from the Saudi royal family in 2003, including diamond-and-sapphire jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady Laura Bush.
Source: Seattle Times
37. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge awarded lucrative contracts to several companies in which he is an investor, including Microsoft, GE, Sprint, Pfizer and Oracle.
Source: cq.com
38. President Bush used images of firefighters carrying flag-draped coffins through the rubble of the World Trade Center to score political points in a campaign advertisement.
Source: The Washington Post
THE ECONOMY
39. President Bush's top economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, said the outsourcing of American jobs abroad was "a plus for the economy in the long run."
Source: CBS News
40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.
Sources: Fortune, dfw.com
41. The Bush Administration implemented regulations that made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay.
Source: epinet.org
42. The Bush Administration has crippled state budgets by underfunding federal mandates by $175 billion.
Source: cbpp.org
43. President Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs--around 800,000--over a four-year term.
Source: The Guardian
44. The Bush Administration gave Accenture a multibillion-dollar border control contract even though the company moved its operations to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.
Sources: The New York Times, cantonrep.com
45. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." He passed the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of earners received 68 percent of the benefits.
Sources: cbpp.org, vote-smart.org
46. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to pay down the national debt to a historically low level. As of September 30, the national debt stood at $7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.
Sources: www.georgewbush.com , Bureau of the Public Debt
47. As major corporate scandals rocked the nation's economy, the Bush Administration reduced the enforcement of corporate tax law--conducting fewer audits, imposing fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions and making virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes.
Source: iht.com
48. The Bush Administration increased tax audits for the working poor.
Source: theolympian.com
49. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to protect the Social Security surplus. As President, he spent all of it.
Sources: georgewbush.com, Congressional Budget Office
50. The Bush Administration proposed slashing funding for the largest federal public housing program, putting 2 million families in danger of losing their housing.
Source: San Francisco Examiner
51. The Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the minimum wage from falling to an inflation-adjusted fifty-year low.
Source: Los Angeles Times
EDUCATION
52. The Bush Administration underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.
Source: nwitimes.com
53. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to increase the maximum federal scholarship, or Pell Grant, by 50 percent. Instead, each year he has been in office he has frozen or cut the maximum scholarship amount.
Source: Source: edworkforce.house.gov x
54. The Bush Administration's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the National Education Association--a union of teachers--a "terrorist organization."
Sources: CNN.com
HEALTHCARE
55. The Bush Administration, in violation of the law, refused to allow Medicare actuary Richard Foster to tell members of Congress the actual cost of their Medicare bill. Instead, they repeated a figure they knew was $100 billion too low.
Source: Washington Post, realcities.com
56. The nonpartisan GAO concluded the Bush Administration created illegal, covert propaganda--in the form of fake news reports--to promote its industry-backed Medicare bill.
Source: General Accounting Office
57. The Bush Administration stunted research that could lead to new treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal injuries, heart disease and muscular dystrophy by placing severe restrictions on the use of federal dollars for embryonic stem-cell research.
Source: CBS News
58. The Bush Administration reinstated the "global gag rule," which requires foreign NGOs to withhold information about legal abortion services or lose US funds for family planning.
Source: healthsciences.columbia.edu
59. The Bush Administration authorized twenty companies that have been charged with fraud at the federal or state level to offer Medicare prescription drug cards to seniors.
Source: American Progress
60. The Bush Administration created a prescription drug card for Medicare that locks seniors into one card for up to a year but allows the corporations offering the cards to change their prices once a week.
Source: Washington Post
61. The Bush Administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drug prices for seniors.
Source: American Progress
62. At the behest of the french fry industry, the Bush Administration USDA changed their definition of fresh vegetables to include frozen french fries.
Source: commondreams.org
63. In a case before the Supreme Court, the Bush Administrations sided with HMOs--arguing that patients shouldn't be allowed to sue HMOs when they are improperly denied treatment. With the Administration's help, the HMOs won.
Source: ABC News
64. The Bush Administration went to court to block lawsuits by patients who were injured by defective prescription drugs and medical devices.
Source: Washington Post
65. President Bush signed a Medicare law that allows companies that reduce healthcare benefits for retirees to receive substantial subsidies from the government.
Source: Bloomberg News
66. Since President Bush took office, more than 5 million people have lost their health insurance.
Source: CNN.com
67. The Bush Administration blocked a proposal to ban the use of arsenic-treated lumber in playground equipment, even though it conceded it posed a danger to children.
Source: Miami Herald
68. One day after President Bush bragged about his efforts to help seniors afford healthcare, the Administration announced the largest dollar increase of Medicare premiums in history.
Source: iht.com
69. The Bush Administration--at the behest of the tobacco industry--tried to water down a global treaty that aimed to help curb smoking.
Source: tobaccofreekids.org
70. The Bush Administration has spent $270 million on abstinence-only education programs even though there is no scientific evidence demonstrating that they are effective in dissuading teenagers from having sex or reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: salon.com
71. The Bush Administration slashed funding for programs that suggested ways, other than abstinence, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: LA Weekly
ENVIRONMENT
72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.
Source: cta.policy.net
73. The Bush Administration eliminated protections on more than 200 million acres of public lands.
Source: calwild.org
74. President Bush broke his promise to place limits on carbon dioxide emissions, an essential step in combating global warming.
Source: Washington Post
75. Days after 9/11, the Bush Administration told people living near Ground Zero that the air was safe--even though they knew it wasn't--subjecting hundreds of people to unnecessary, debilitating ailments.
Sierra Club , EPA
76. The Bush Administration created a massive tax loophole for SUVs--allowing, for example, the write-off of the entire cost of a new Hummer.
Source: Washington Post
77. The Bush Administration put former coal-industry big shots in the government and let them roll back safety regulations, putting miners at greater risk of black lung disease.
Source: New York Times
78. The Bush Administration said that even though the weed killer atrazine was seeping into water supplies--creating, among other bizarre creatures, hermaphroditic frogs--there was no reason to regulate it.
Source: Washington Post
79. The Bush Administration has proposed cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by $600 million next year.
Source: ems.org
80. President Bush broke his campaign promise to end the maintenance backlog at national parks. He has provided just 7 percent of the funds needed, according to National Park Service estimates.
Source: bushgreenwatch.org
RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
81. Since 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft has detained 5,000 foreign nationals in antiterrorism sweeps; none have been convicted of a terrorist crime.
Source: hrwatch.org
82. The Bush Administration ignored pleas from the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop the abuse of prisoners in US custody.
Source: Wall Street Journal
83. In violation of international law, the Bush Administration hid prisoners from the Red Cross so the organization couldn't monitor their treatment.
Source: hrwatch.org
84. The Bush Administration, without ever charging him with a crime, arrested US citizen José Padilla at an airport in Chicago, held him on a naval brig in South Carolina for two years, denied him access to a lawyer and prohibited any contact with his friends and family.
Source: news.findlaw.com
85. President Bush's top legal adviser wrote a memo to the President advising him that he can legally authorize torture.
Source: news.findlaw.com
86. At the direction of Bush Administration officials, the FBI went door to door questioning people planning on protesting at the 2004 political conventions.
Source: New York Times
87. The Bush Administration refuses to support the creation of an independent commission to investigate the abuse of foreign prisoners in American custody. Instead, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld selected the members of a commission to review the conduct of his own department.
Source: humanrightsfirst.org
FLIP FLOPS
88. President Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission before he supported it, delaying an essential inquiry into one of the greatest intelligence failure in American history.
Source: americanprogressaction.org
89. President Bush said gay marriage was a state issue before he supported a constitutional amendment banning it.
Sources: CNN.com, White House
90. President Bush said he was committed to capturing Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" before he said, "I truly am not that concerned about him."
Source: americanprogressaction.org
91. President Bush said we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, before he admitted we hadn't found them.
Sources: White House, americanprogress.org
92. President Bush said, "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," before he admitted Saddam had no role in 9/11.
Sources: White House, Washington Post
BIOGRAPHY
93. George Bush didn't come close to meeting his commitments to the National Guard. Records show he performed no service in a six-month period in 1972 and a three-month period in 1973.
Source: boston.com
94. In June 1990 George Bush violated federal securities law when he failed to inform the SEC that he had sold 200,000 shares of his company, Harken Energy. Two months later the company reported significant losses and by the end of that year the stock had dropped from $3 to $1.
Source: The Guardian
95. When asked at an April 2004 press conference to name a mistake he made during his presidency, Bush couldn't think of one.
Source: White House
SECRECY
96. The Bush Administration refuses to release twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report that reportedly detail the Saudi Arabian government's connections to the 9/11 hijackers.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
97. Last year the Bush Administration spent $6.5 billion creating 14 million new classified documents and securing old secrets--the highest level of spending in ten years.
Source: openthegovernment.org
98. The Bush Administration spent $120 classifying documents for every $1 it spent declassifying documents.
Source: openthegovernment.org
99. The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars and defied numerous court orders to conceal from the public who participated in Vice President Cheney's 2001 energy task force.
Source: Washington Post
100. The Bush Administration--reversing years of bipartisan tradition--refuses to answer requests from Democratic members of Congress about how the White House is spending taxpayer money.
Source: Washington Post
IRAQ
1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq.
Source: American Progress
2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored Humvees.
Sources: Fox News, The Boston Globe
3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric Shinseki that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.
Source: PBS
4. Vice President Cheney said Americans "will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" in Iraq.
Source: The Washington Post
5. During the Bush Administration's war in Iraq, more than 1,000 US troops have lost their lives and more than 7,000 have been injured.
Source: globalsecurity.org
6. In May 2003, President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, stood under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and triumphantly announced that major combat operations were over in Iraq. Asked if he had any regrets about the stunt, Bush said he would do it all over again.
Source: Yahoo News
7. Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda.
Source: MSNBC , 9-11 Commission
8. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that high-strength aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," warning "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The government's top nuclear scientists had told the Administration the tubes were "too narrow, too heavy, too long" to be of use in developing nuclear weapons and could be used for other purposes.
Source: New York Times
9. The Bush Administration has spent just $1.1 billion of the $18.4 billion Congress approved for Iraqi reconstruction.
Source: USA Today
10. According to the Administration's handpicked weapon's inspector, Charles Duelfer, there is "no evidence that Hussein had passed illicit weapons material to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, or had any intent to do so." After the release of the report, Bush continued to insist, "There was a risk--a real risk--that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons, or materials, or information to terrorist networks."
Sources: New York Times, White House news release
11. According to Duelfer, the UN inspections regime put an "economic strangle hold" on Hussein that prevented him from developing a WMD program for more than twelve years.
Source: Los Angeles Times
TERRORISM
12. After receiving a memo from the CIA in August 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack America," President Bush continued his monthlong vacation.
Source: CNN.com
13. The Bush Administration failed to commit enough troops to capture Osama bin Laden when US forces had him cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November 2001. Instead, they relied on local warlords.
Source: csmonitor.com
14. The Bush Administration secured less nuclear material from sites around the world vulnerable to terrorists in the two years after 9/11 than were secured in the two years before 9/11.
Source: nti.org
15. The Bush Administration underfunded Nunn-Lugar--the program intended to keep the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states--by $45.5 million.
Source: armscontrol.org
16. The Bush Administration has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money.
Source: Associated Press
17. According to Congressional Research Service data, the Bush Administration has underfunded security at the nation's ports by more than $1 billion for fiscal year 2005.
Source: American Progress
18. The Bush Administration did not devote the resources necessary to prevent a resurgence in the production of poppies, the raw material used to create heroin, in Afghanistan--creating a potent new source of financing for terrorists.
Source: Pakistan Tribune
19. Vice President Cheney told voters that unless they elect George Bush in November, "we'll get hit again" by terrorists.
Source: Washington Post
20. Even though an Al Qaeda training manual suggests terrorists come to the United States and buy assault weapons, the Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the expiration of the ban.
Source: sfgate.com
21. Despite repeated calls for reinforcements, there are fewer experienced CIA agents assigned to the unit dealing with Osama bin Laden now than there were before 9/11.
Source: New York Times
22. Before 9/11, John Ashcroft proposed slashing counterterrorism funding by 23 percent.
Source: americanprogress.org
23. Between January 20, 2001, and September 10, 2001, the Bush Administration publicly mentioned Al Qaeda one time.
Source: commondreams.org
24. The Bush Administration granted the 9/11 Commission $3 million to investigate the September 11 attacks and $50 million to the commission that investigated the Columbia space shuttle crash.
Source: commondreams.org
25. More than three years after 9/11, just 5 percent of all cargo--including cargo transported on passenger planes--is screened.
Source: commondreams.org
NATIONAL SECURITY
26. During the Bush Administration, North Korea quadrupled its suspected nuclear arsenal from two to eight weapons.
Source: New York Times
27. The Bush Administration has openly opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, undermining nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
Source: commondreams.org
28. The Bush Administration has spent $7 billion this year--and plans to spend $10 billion next year--for a missile defense system that has never worked in a test that wasn't rigged.
Sources: www.gao.gov/new.items/d04409.pdf, Los Angeles Times
29. The Bush Administration underfunded the needs of the nation's first responders by $98 billion, according to a Council on Foreign Relations study.
Source: nationaldefensemagazine.org
CRONYISM AND CORRUPTION
30. The Bush Administration awarded a multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton--a company that still pays Vice President Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation each year (Cheney also has Halliburton stock options). The company then repeatedly overcharged the military for services, accepted kickbacks from subcontractors and served troops dirty food.
Sources: The Washington Post, The Tapei Times, BBC News
31. The Bush Administration told Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before telling Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Source: detnews.com
32. The Bush Administration relentlessly pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion in corporate tax breaks, much of which would have benefited major campaign contributors.
taxpayer.net, Washington Post
33. The Bush Administration paid Iraqi-exile and neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi $400,000 a month for intelligence, including fabricated claims about Iraqi WMD. It continued to pay him for months after discovering that he was providing inaccurate information.
Source: MSNBC
34. The Bush Administration installed as top officials more than 100 former lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.
Source: Source: commondreams.org
35. The Bush Administration let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay--a close friend of President Bush--help write its energy policy.
Source: MSNBC
36. Top Bush Administration officials accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other presents from the Saudi royal family in 2003, including diamond-and-sapphire jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady Laura Bush.
Source: Seattle Times
37. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge awarded lucrative contracts to several companies in which he is an investor, including Microsoft, GE, Sprint, Pfizer and Oracle.
Source: cq.com
38. President Bush used images of firefighters carrying flag-draped coffins through the rubble of the World Trade Center to score political points in a campaign advertisement.
Source: The Washington Post
THE ECONOMY
39. President Bush's top economic adviser, Greg Mankiw, said the outsourcing of American jobs abroad was "a plus for the economy in the long run."
Source: CBS News
40. The Bush Administration turned a $236 billion surplus into a $422 billion deficit.
Sources: Fortune, dfw.com
41. The Bush Administration implemented regulations that made millions of workers ineligible for overtime pay.
Source: epinet.org
42. The Bush Administration has crippled state budgets by underfunding federal mandates by $175 billion.
Source: cbpp.org
43. President Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to have a net loss of jobs--around 800,000--over a four-year term.
Source: The Guardian
44. The Bush Administration gave Accenture a multibillion-dollar border control contract even though the company moved its operations to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.
Sources: The New York Times, cantonrep.com
45. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." He passed the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of earners received 68 percent of the benefits.
Sources: cbpp.org, vote-smart.org
46. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to pay down the national debt to a historically low level. As of September 30, the national debt stood at $7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.
Sources: www.georgewbush.com , Bureau of the Public Debt
47. As major corporate scandals rocked the nation's economy, the Bush Administration reduced the enforcement of corporate tax law--conducting fewer audits, imposing fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions and making virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes.
Source: iht.com
48. The Bush Administration increased tax audits for the working poor.
Source: theolympian.com
49. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to protect the Social Security surplus. As President, he spent all of it.
Sources: georgewbush.com, Congressional Budget Office
50. The Bush Administration proposed slashing funding for the largest federal public housing program, putting 2 million families in danger of losing their housing.
Source: San Francisco Examiner
51. The Bush Administration did nothing to prevent the minimum wage from falling to an inflation-adjusted fifty-year low.
Source: Los Angeles Times
EDUCATION
52. The Bush Administration underfunded the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.
Source: nwitimes.com
53. In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to increase the maximum federal scholarship, or Pell Grant, by 50 percent. Instead, each year he has been in office he has frozen or cut the maximum scholarship amount.
Source: Source: edworkforce.house.gov x
54. The Bush Administration's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the National Education Association--a union of teachers--a "terrorist organization."
Sources: CNN.com
HEALTHCARE
55. The Bush Administration, in violation of the law, refused to allow Medicare actuary Richard Foster to tell members of Congress the actual cost of their Medicare bill. Instead, they repeated a figure they knew was $100 billion too low.
Source: Washington Post, realcities.com
56. The nonpartisan GAO concluded the Bush Administration created illegal, covert propaganda--in the form of fake news reports--to promote its industry-backed Medicare bill.
Source: General Accounting Office
57. The Bush Administration stunted research that could lead to new treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, spinal injuries, heart disease and muscular dystrophy by placing severe restrictions on the use of federal dollars for embryonic stem-cell research.
Source: CBS News
58. The Bush Administration reinstated the "global gag rule," which requires foreign NGOs to withhold information about legal abortion services or lose US funds for family planning.
Source: healthsciences.columbia.edu
59. The Bush Administration authorized twenty companies that have been charged with fraud at the federal or state level to offer Medicare prescription drug cards to seniors.
Source: American Progress
60. The Bush Administration created a prescription drug card for Medicare that locks seniors into one card for up to a year but allows the corporations offering the cards to change their prices once a week.
Source: Washington Post
61. The Bush Administration blocked efforts to allow Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drug prices for seniors.
Source: American Progress
62. At the behest of the french fry industry, the Bush Administration USDA changed their definition of fresh vegetables to include frozen french fries.
Source: commondreams.org
63. In a case before the Supreme Court, the Bush Administrations sided with HMOs--arguing that patients shouldn't be allowed to sue HMOs when they are improperly denied treatment. With the Administration's help, the HMOs won.
Source: ABC News
64. The Bush Administration went to court to block lawsuits by patients who were injured by defective prescription drugs and medical devices.
Source: Washington Post
65. President Bush signed a Medicare law that allows companies that reduce healthcare benefits for retirees to receive substantial subsidies from the government.
Source: Bloomberg News
66. Since President Bush took office, more than 5 million people have lost their health insurance.
Source: CNN.com
67. The Bush Administration blocked a proposal to ban the use of arsenic-treated lumber in playground equipment, even though it conceded it posed a danger to children.
Source: Miami Herald
68. One day after President Bush bragged about his efforts to help seniors afford healthcare, the Administration announced the largest dollar increase of Medicare premiums in history.
Source: iht.com
69. The Bush Administration--at the behest of the tobacco industry--tried to water down a global treaty that aimed to help curb smoking.
Source: tobaccofreekids.org
70. The Bush Administration has spent $270 million on abstinence-only education programs even though there is no scientific evidence demonstrating that they are effective in dissuading teenagers from having sex or reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: salon.com
71. The Bush Administration slashed funding for programs that suggested ways, other than abstinence, to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
Source: LA Weekly
ENVIRONMENT
72. The Bush Administration gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.
Source: cta.policy.net
73. The Bush Administration eliminated protections on more than 200 million acres of public lands.
Source: calwild.org
74. President Bush broke his promise to place limits on carbon dioxide emissions, an essential step in combating global warming.
Source: Washington Post
75. Days after 9/11, the Bush Administration told people living near Ground Zero that the air was safe--even though they knew it wasn't--subjecting hundreds of people to unnecessary, debilitating ailments.
Sierra Club , EPA
76. The Bush Administration created a massive tax loophole for SUVs--allowing, for example, the write-off of the entire cost of a new Hummer.
Source: Washington Post
77. The Bush Administration put former coal-industry big shots in the government and let them roll back safety regulations, putting miners at greater risk of black lung disease.
Source: New York Times
78. The Bush Administration said that even though the weed killer atrazine was seeping into water supplies--creating, among other bizarre creatures, hermaphroditic frogs--there was no reason to regulate it.
Source: Washington Post
79. The Bush Administration has proposed cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by $600 million next year.
Source: ems.org
80. President Bush broke his campaign promise to end the maintenance backlog at national parks. He has provided just 7 percent of the funds needed, according to National Park Service estimates.
Source: bushgreenwatch.org
RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
81. Since 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft has detained 5,000 foreign nationals in antiterrorism sweeps; none have been convicted of a terrorist crime.
Source: hrwatch.org
82. The Bush Administration ignored pleas from the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop the abuse of prisoners in US custody.
Source: Wall Street Journal
83. In violation of international law, the Bush Administration hid prisoners from the Red Cross so the organization couldn't monitor their treatment.
Source: hrwatch.org
84. The Bush Administration, without ever charging him with a crime, arrested US citizen José Padilla at an airport in Chicago, held him on a naval brig in South Carolina for two years, denied him access to a lawyer and prohibited any contact with his friends and family.
Source: news.findlaw.com
85. President Bush's top legal adviser wrote a memo to the President advising him that he can legally authorize torture.
Source: news.findlaw.com
86. At the direction of Bush Administration officials, the FBI went door to door questioning people planning on protesting at the 2004 political conventions.
Source: New York Times
87. The Bush Administration refuses to support the creation of an independent commission to investigate the abuse of foreign prisoners in American custody. Instead, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld selected the members of a commission to review the conduct of his own department.
Source: humanrightsfirst.org
FLIP FLOPS
88. President Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission before he supported it, delaying an essential inquiry into one of the greatest intelligence failure in American history.
Source: americanprogressaction.org
89. President Bush said gay marriage was a state issue before he supported a constitutional amendment banning it.
Sources: CNN.com, White House
90. President Bush said he was committed to capturing Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" before he said, "I truly am not that concerned about him."
Source: americanprogressaction.org
91. President Bush said we had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, before he admitted we hadn't found them.
Sources: White House, americanprogress.org
92. President Bush said, "You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," before he admitted Saddam had no role in 9/11.
Sources: White House, Washington Post
BIOGRAPHY
93. George Bush didn't come close to meeting his commitments to the National Guard. Records show he performed no service in a six-month period in 1972 and a three-month period in 1973.
Source: boston.com
94. In June 1990 George Bush violated federal securities law when he failed to inform the SEC that he had sold 200,000 shares of his company, Harken Energy. Two months later the company reported significant losses and by the end of that year the stock had dropped from $3 to $1.
Source: The Guardian
95. When asked at an April 2004 press conference to name a mistake he made during his presidency, Bush couldn't think of one.
Source: White House
SECRECY
96. The Bush Administration refuses to release twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report that reportedly detail the Saudi Arabian government's connections to the 9/11 hijackers.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
97. Last year the Bush Administration spent $6.5 billion creating 14 million new classified documents and securing old secrets--the highest level of spending in ten years.
Source: openthegovernment.org
98. The Bush Administration spent $120 classifying documents for every $1 it spent declassifying documents.
Source: openthegovernment.org
99. The Bush Administration has spent millions of dollars and defied numerous court orders to conceal from the public who participated in Vice President Cheney's 2001 energy task force.
Source: Washington Post
100. The Bush Administration--reversing years of bipartisan tradition--refuses to answer requests from Democratic members of Congress about how the White House is spending taxpayer money.
Source: Washington Post
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Let these Points Speak for Themselves
I did not write this but I wish I had. The time that this person took to explore these things is amazing. Let the stories speak for themselves. Culled from a lot of different sources.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Hello. My name is George Bush and I'm running for President. Please consider my accomplishments as set forth in the following resume.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EARLY RECORD
Please See Attached Page
POLITICAL RECORD (DOMESTIC)
I ran for President in 2000. My campaign was destined to be a miserable failure until I used a whispering campaign of lies in the South Carolina Presidential Primary organized by my chief political strategist, Karl Rove, to destroy genuine war hero and fellow Republican John McCain, claiming he had fathered an illegitimate negro child was emotionally unstable due to his torture as a POW in Vietnam and a possible brainwashed Manchurian Candidate.
In July 2001 I appointed Harvey Pitt to be the chairman of a "kinder, gentler SEC" to ease regulation of foreign businesses. The results have been the largest and most miserable failures of corporate accountability in modern corporate history: Enron, Worldcom, and now Fannie Mae.
I am the first President to unconstitutionally restrict my opponents' First Amendment rights by allowing my supporters to remain at the venue while restricting my detractors to "free speech zones," fenced-off areas up to half mile away from the media, the audience, and especially myself.
I've communicated less with the American people than any other president in the history of televised news, holding only one White House press conference every 3.25 months, compared to my father's 1.6 per month.
To prevent activist judges from rewriting the constitution to serve an agenda that Congress would never approve, I attempted to rewrite the constitution to serve an agenda they never came close to approving. My campaign for the Federal Marriage Amendment was a miserable failure: it failed to pass either house of congress. In the Senate the cloture call to end debate yielded only 48 votes, not the 67 required to pass the Senate, not the 60 votes required for cloture, not even the 50 votes of a simple majority.
My 2004 budget set the record for the largest deficit in history: either $477 billion or $521 billion (CBO and OMB numbers, respectively).
The value of the dollar has collapsed 30% during my term.
Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since I took office in January 2001. Real GDP growth during my term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of my inauguration. The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown.
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE (FOREIGN)
As president I ignored Clinton's warnings about Al Qaeda, mentioning that organization only once in public statements on national security between January 20, 2001 and September 10, 2001. In the same time period I mentioned Saddam Hussein 104 times and missile defense 101 times.
On August 6, 2001 I received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" which warned that "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking." For one month I dealt with numerous other issues until the unfolding of the most successful terrorist attack in US history on September 11, 2001.
With broad international approval I temporarily disrupted the Taliban government, which has now re-emerged to control much of southern Afghanistan after I abandoned this campaign for Iraq.
I campaigned strongly for war in Iraq. I claimed that:
Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (none have been found).
Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda (Iraq opposed Al Qaeda and successfully kept their operatives out of the country before September 2001. The strongest claim to support a connection came from Czech intelligence services and is now retracted. The 9/11 commission "did not believe that such a meeting occurred".)
Iraq would give their weapons of mass destruction to terrorists (A secular Saddam would never give his "ace card" to religious elements he opposed throughout his life and could not control)
The war would be "self-financing" through oil sales ($200 billion total has been allocated, and $138 billion has already been spent with more to follow).
The war would end quickly, with troop deployments down to 30,000 troops by Autumn 2003 (March 2004 troop deployment: 114,000 US plus 23,000 Coalition troops in Iraq; 26,000 US and Coalition logistical support troops in Kuwait).
Americans would be greeted as liberators (Public perception of Americans as liberators dropped from 43% at the time of invasion to 2% after Abu Ghraib).
By invading I would make it more difficult for terrorists to obtain Weapons of Mass Destruction (The only WMD 'discovered' in Iraq was successfully obtained by terrorists and used against Americans. As a result of the invasion, nuclear equipment and materials in Iraq formerly monitored by the IAEA has disappeared and may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or rogue countries. The results have been overwhelmingly negative for U.S. interests.)
I punished those who spoke unwelcome truth:
I sent Joseph Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium, where Wilson determined that those claims were based on forged documents. Despite his report I continued to make public Iraq/Nigeria statements as late as January 2003. When Wilson publicly contradicted me, one of my senior officials exposed the CIA cover of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, in an article written by Robert Novak and printed in the New York Times on July 14 2003. No one is sure which senior White House official leaked the order or who was aware, but the fact that I hired James Sharp in June 2004 to represent me as a personal criminal defense attorney is significant when you consider that there is no attorney-client privilege between a president and a White House counsel that allows the counsel to withhold information from a Federal grand jury.
I fired Lawrence Lindsey as my economics advisor in early December 2002 for claiming that the Iraq War would cost between $100 and $200 billion. ($138 billion has been spent and $200 billion has been budgeted... so far)
I fired Jay Garner as US Administrator of Iraq in March 2004 for calling for immediate elections instead of allowing American companies to privatize government-owned assets. (American privatization and lack of a legitimate Iraqi government is one of the major reasons for unrest in Iraq.)
I made US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki a lame duck in June 2003, defying precedent and announcing his successor 14 months in advance of his retirement after he announced that "several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq".
I threatened to have Medicare analyst Richard Foster fired if he replied to Congressional requests and reported that the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill would cost $551 billion, $156 billion over the White House's favored estimate of $395 billion.
After the Iraq Health Ministry released figures showing that US and Coalition forces killed twice as many Iraqis as the Insurgents the Iraqis are supposedly being protected from, I acted decisively by ordering the Iraq Health Ministry to not release any more figures.
I rewarded those who spoke welcome lies, paying Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month for their false intelligence gathered about Iraq. Although Chalabi and the INC had been dropped from the CIA payroll in 1996 for being an unreliable source and also dismissed by the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) for the same reason, I continued to use Chalabi and the INC to support claims of WMDs in Iraq. Even after their information proved false and no weapons were found I remained so close to Chalabi that he sat with Laura Bush as my "Special Guest" during my September 2003 State of the Union address. I continued to pay the INC regularly until May 2004, when allegations surfaced that Chalabi had passed classified American intelligence to Iran.
I put tremendous pressure on the CIA to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted (as determined by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq). When the CIA and DIA refused to verify intelligence items I wanted to believe, Donald Rumsfeld and I created the Office of Special Plans. This independent department within the Pentagon was designed to bypass the CIA and feed the discredited and unreliable information I wanted to believe was true back into the intelligence stream in order to support conclusions that the CIA and DIA could not. The OSP took much of the discredited information from Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.
I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security for nine months, before turning around to take credit for its creation.
I opposed the creation of an independent 9/11 panel. After being forced to accept the commission, I gave it only $12 million in funding to do its work (compared to $50 million combined for Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky investigation) before turning around to take credit for its creation.
My war against Al Qaeda has been a miserable failure:
The International Institute for Strategic Studies' most conservative estimate (May 25, 2004) is that the occupation of Iraq has helped Al Qaeda recruit 18,000 operatives in more than 60 countries.
The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University has found that The war in Iraq did not damage international terror groups, but instead distracted the United States from confronting other hotbeds of Islamic militancy and actually "created momentum" for many terrorists. On a strategic level as well as an operational level, the war in Iraq is hurting the war on international terrorism.
By my State Department's own estimates, world terror attacks are now at their highest level in 20 years, up 36% since 2001.
I have held 660 prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba for over two years without trial or formal charge. My prisoners, several of whom were between the ages of 13 and 16, have never been formally charged. They are kept in steel cages, subjected to ongoing torture, and denied access to legal counsel in opposition to Supreme Court rulings (Rasul v. Bush). These prisoners are "the worst of the worst", "hard core, well trained terrorists" and their guilt is beyond doubt, which is why I've set 87 of them free without explanation or apology.
In the past year I claim to have trained 100,000 Iraqi police forces, but only 8,169 of those have passed the required 8-week training course. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained".
My Secretary of Defense is the first in US history to have acknowledged ordering an intentional violation of the Geneva Conventions, in which Abu Ghraib prisoners were held "off the books" and hidden from the Red Cross. When this order was made public I refused to discipline him in any way, instead complimenting him on his job performance.
After being informed of abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16 (first reported on January 13) which included "Threatening male detainees with rape" and "Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick" I made "freedom from torture chambers and rape rooms" a centerpiece in my speeches until April 29 when the story finally broke on 60 Minutes II.
My administration is the first since the Civil War to imprison US Citizens (Jose Padilla) as "enemy combatants" without charges, trial, or access to legal counsel. In a 5-4 decision (Rumsfeld v. Padilla) the Supreme Court dodged the opportunity to rule on the legality, ruling that the case had been improperly filed.
My administration broke new legal ground by using material witness warrants to give effective life sentences to US citizens without charge, trial, access to legal counsel, or even plans to prosecute.
My justice department was the first in US history to attempt to enforce federal regulations while refusing to disclose what those regulations are.
My legal war against terror has been a miserable failure: I have detained more than 5,000 people on suspicion of terrorist ties, some of whom have been held without charge or without access to a lawyer. I have successfully convicted zero.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Hello. My name is George Bush and I'm running for President. Please consider my accomplishments as set forth in the following resume.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EARLY RECORD
Please See Attached Page
POLITICAL RECORD (DOMESTIC)
I ran for President in 2000. My campaign was destined to be a miserable failure until I used a whispering campaign of lies in the South Carolina Presidential Primary organized by my chief political strategist, Karl Rove, to destroy genuine war hero and fellow Republican John McCain, claiming he had fathered an illegitimate negro child was emotionally unstable due to his torture as a POW in Vietnam and a possible brainwashed Manchurian Candidate.
In July 2001 I appointed Harvey Pitt to be the chairman of a "kinder, gentler SEC" to ease regulation of foreign businesses. The results have been the largest and most miserable failures of corporate accountability in modern corporate history: Enron, Worldcom, and now Fannie Mae.
I am the first President to unconstitutionally restrict my opponents' First Amendment rights by allowing my supporters to remain at the venue while restricting my detractors to "free speech zones," fenced-off areas up to half mile away from the media, the audience, and especially myself.
I've communicated less with the American people than any other president in the history of televised news, holding only one White House press conference every 3.25 months, compared to my father's 1.6 per month.
To prevent activist judges from rewriting the constitution to serve an agenda that Congress would never approve, I attempted to rewrite the constitution to serve an agenda they never came close to approving. My campaign for the Federal Marriage Amendment was a miserable failure: it failed to pass either house of congress. In the Senate the cloture call to end debate yielded only 48 votes, not the 67 required to pass the Senate, not the 60 votes required for cloture, not even the 50 votes of a simple majority.
My 2004 budget set the record for the largest deficit in history: either $477 billion or $521 billion (CBO and OMB numbers, respectively).
The value of the dollar has collapsed 30% during my term.
Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since I took office in January 2001. Real GDP growth during my term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of my inauguration. The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown.
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE (FOREIGN)
As president I ignored Clinton's warnings about Al Qaeda, mentioning that organization only once in public statements on national security between January 20, 2001 and September 10, 2001. In the same time period I mentioned Saddam Hussein 104 times and missile defense 101 times.
On August 6, 2001 I received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" which warned that "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking." For one month I dealt with numerous other issues until the unfolding of the most successful terrorist attack in US history on September 11, 2001.
With broad international approval I temporarily disrupted the Taliban government, which has now re-emerged to control much of southern Afghanistan after I abandoned this campaign for Iraq.
I campaigned strongly for war in Iraq. I claimed that:
Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (none have been found).
Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda (Iraq opposed Al Qaeda and successfully kept their operatives out of the country before September 2001. The strongest claim to support a connection came from Czech intelligence services and is now retracted. The 9/11 commission "did not believe that such a meeting occurred".)
Iraq would give their weapons of mass destruction to terrorists (A secular Saddam would never give his "ace card" to religious elements he opposed throughout his life and could not control)
The war would be "self-financing" through oil sales ($200 billion total has been allocated, and $138 billion has already been spent with more to follow).
The war would end quickly, with troop deployments down to 30,000 troops by Autumn 2003 (March 2004 troop deployment: 114,000 US plus 23,000 Coalition troops in Iraq; 26,000 US and Coalition logistical support troops in Kuwait).
Americans would be greeted as liberators (Public perception of Americans as liberators dropped from 43% at the time of invasion to 2% after Abu Ghraib).
By invading I would make it more difficult for terrorists to obtain Weapons of Mass Destruction (The only WMD 'discovered' in Iraq was successfully obtained by terrorists and used against Americans. As a result of the invasion, nuclear equipment and materials in Iraq formerly monitored by the IAEA has disappeared and may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or rogue countries. The results have been overwhelmingly negative for U.S. interests.)
I punished those who spoke unwelcome truth:
I sent Joseph Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium, where Wilson determined that those claims were based on forged documents. Despite his report I continued to make public Iraq/Nigeria statements as late as January 2003. When Wilson publicly contradicted me, one of my senior officials exposed the CIA cover of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, in an article written by Robert Novak and printed in the New York Times on July 14 2003. No one is sure which senior White House official leaked the order or who was aware, but the fact that I hired James Sharp in June 2004 to represent me as a personal criminal defense attorney is significant when you consider that there is no attorney-client privilege between a president and a White House counsel that allows the counsel to withhold information from a Federal grand jury.
I fired Lawrence Lindsey as my economics advisor in early December 2002 for claiming that the Iraq War would cost between $100 and $200 billion. ($138 billion has been spent and $200 billion has been budgeted... so far)
I fired Jay Garner as US Administrator of Iraq in March 2004 for calling for immediate elections instead of allowing American companies to privatize government-owned assets. (American privatization and lack of a legitimate Iraqi government is one of the major reasons for unrest in Iraq.)
I made US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki a lame duck in June 2003, defying precedent and announcing his successor 14 months in advance of his retirement after he announced that "several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq".
I threatened to have Medicare analyst Richard Foster fired if he replied to Congressional requests and reported that the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill would cost $551 billion, $156 billion over the White House's favored estimate of $395 billion.
After the Iraq Health Ministry released figures showing that US and Coalition forces killed twice as many Iraqis as the Insurgents the Iraqis are supposedly being protected from, I acted decisively by ordering the Iraq Health Ministry to not release any more figures.
I rewarded those who spoke welcome lies, paying Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month for their false intelligence gathered about Iraq. Although Chalabi and the INC had been dropped from the CIA payroll in 1996 for being an unreliable source and also dismissed by the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) for the same reason, I continued to use Chalabi and the INC to support claims of WMDs in Iraq. Even after their information proved false and no weapons were found I remained so close to Chalabi that he sat with Laura Bush as my "Special Guest" during my September 2003 State of the Union address. I continued to pay the INC regularly until May 2004, when allegations surfaced that Chalabi had passed classified American intelligence to Iran.
I put tremendous pressure on the CIA to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted (as determined by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq). When the CIA and DIA refused to verify intelligence items I wanted to believe, Donald Rumsfeld and I created the Office of Special Plans. This independent department within the Pentagon was designed to bypass the CIA and feed the discredited and unreliable information I wanted to believe was true back into the intelligence stream in order to support conclusions that the CIA and DIA could not. The OSP took much of the discredited information from Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.
I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security for nine months, before turning around to take credit for its creation.
I opposed the creation of an independent 9/11 panel. After being forced to accept the commission, I gave it only $12 million in funding to do its work (compared to $50 million combined for Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky investigation) before turning around to take credit for its creation.
My war against Al Qaeda has been a miserable failure:
The International Institute for Strategic Studies' most conservative estimate (May 25, 2004) is that the occupation of Iraq has helped Al Qaeda recruit 18,000 operatives in more than 60 countries.
The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University has found that The war in Iraq did not damage international terror groups, but instead distracted the United States from confronting other hotbeds of Islamic militancy and actually "created momentum" for many terrorists. On a strategic level as well as an operational level, the war in Iraq is hurting the war on international terrorism.
By my State Department's own estimates, world terror attacks are now at their highest level in 20 years, up 36% since 2001.
I have held 660 prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba for over two years without trial or formal charge. My prisoners, several of whom were between the ages of 13 and 16, have never been formally charged. They are kept in steel cages, subjected to ongoing torture, and denied access to legal counsel in opposition to Supreme Court rulings (Rasul v. Bush). These prisoners are "the worst of the worst", "hard core, well trained terrorists" and their guilt is beyond doubt, which is why I've set 87 of them free without explanation or apology.
In the past year I claim to have trained 100,000 Iraqi police forces, but only 8,169 of those have passed the required 8-week training course. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained".
My Secretary of Defense is the first in US history to have acknowledged ordering an intentional violation of the Geneva Conventions, in which Abu Ghraib prisoners were held "off the books" and hidden from the Red Cross. When this order was made public I refused to discipline him in any way, instead complimenting him on his job performance.
After being informed of abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16 (first reported on January 13) which included "Threatening male detainees with rape" and "Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick" I made "freedom from torture chambers and rape rooms" a centerpiece in my speeches until April 29 when the story finally broke on 60 Minutes II.
My administration is the first since the Civil War to imprison US Citizens (Jose Padilla) as "enemy combatants" without charges, trial, or access to legal counsel. In a 5-4 decision (Rumsfeld v. Padilla) the Supreme Court dodged the opportunity to rule on the legality, ruling that the case had been improperly filed.
My administration broke new legal ground by using material witness warrants to give effective life sentences to US citizens without charge, trial, access to legal counsel, or even plans to prosecute.
My justice department was the first in US history to attempt to enforce federal regulations while refusing to disclose what those regulations are.
My legal war against terror has been a miserable failure: I have detained more than 5,000 people on suspicion of terrorist ties, some of whom have been held without charge or without access to a lawyer. I have successfully convicted zero.
A New Day and A New World?- President Bush Elected for Another 4 Years OR as I am going to start calling the next 4 years: "The Great Republic"
Well, it is official. George Bush has been chosen by the masses to lead our great country for another 4 years.
This election seemed like a civil war of sorts, between various cross sections of our country. There was a lot of backstabbing, hate mongering, negativity and political bashing that will take years to overcome. I do think that this country is bitterly devided across the spectrum, more so than in any time that I remember in my life. There are so many issues that people are so passionate about, and while that is a good thing in certain circumstances, this void is so large that it seems, at least to me, that there are two completely separate kinds of people that call this great country home.
Some of my values are as follows and yes, I consider myself liberal, and am not afraid to voice my opinions.
-Separation of church and state (I believe that we MUST keep these separate. A leader can not lead, GUIDED by FAITH as the current president has said he does)
-Gay Rights (I believe people weather they are gay or straight should have the same rights, equal rights, under the law. They should be able to marry..not just civil unions but legitimate church sanctioned unions and equal benefits under the law)
-Stem Cell Research (I believe that we need to do all we can to further medical advances to help eradicate diseases across the world)
-The Right to Abortion (I won't get into this one)
-Tax breaks for the middle and lower classes so we can stop living from paycheck to paycheck
(I believe that anyone who makes 60,000 Dollars or more a year should be required to shoulder a bigger burden of the taxes to make our country run efficiently. And those that are in the 100,000 Dollar or more a year should be responsible to pay a "Rich person penalty" to be given to those that make less than 40,000 Dollars a year so they can pay their bills and go out to a restaurant once in a while)
-Universal Health Care for the same (paid for by the people who make the bucco bucks)
-Stronger Social Security and Medicare benefits for the elderly (Does anyone realize how hard it is to live on 900.00 a month, esp. when that is their total income!) FYI: There are close to 70 Million "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire and their social security benefits will be their only means of income....
-A free College education for all people (or at least the lower classes)
-An open Government with less secrecy (there is too much we are not being told. Does anyone think that "we the people" are really in charge of our government. There is not enough accountability...I will say no more on this).
-A dedicated urgency to the protection of our environment and the planet as a whole (before it is too late)
-Repeal of all "Right to carry laws". People don't kill people contrary to popular conservative belief.....GUNS do!!
-And last but certainly not least because there are many more things I am passionate about: Stopping the "Right Wingers" from forcing their "values" on the rest of the population!! Stop the "morality call". Let individuals choose what is morally right and wrong for them. We are not the pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock. Enough already!
I voted for the other guy (Senator John Kerry) not so much because I am a democrat, but more so because I felt (and do still feel) that this country needed a change. A new direction so to speak, one that Kerry talked about that actually sounded like he and his group could possibly pull off. Though I do not agree with some of their issues, I feel there platform was the lesser of two evils.
And....I have never voted before this election as politics have really never interested me all that much, but there was so much that was being talked about this time...the state of our country, the war in Iraq, 911, and on and on..that I felt I NEEDED to make my voice heard. And I did. Rather loudly in some circles.
So hear I sit, contemplating the next four years for this great country of ours. I worry that the war in Iraq is out of control, that Osama BinLaden has not been caught yet, the strife of all the people in the 3rd world countries such as Sudan and other areas of Africa, our individual rights are being taken away, a lot of the progress that has been made in the advancement of our world has been halted or reversed, such as our need to explore the cosmos, and last but not least, the growing poverty and unemployment of the people of this country continues to deepen and worsen, at least for some.
I am going to be cautiously optimistic that Mr. Bush can pull us out of, what I see as a downward spiral, and help bring the world and our country to be a more peaceful and balanced world. I don't see much balance right now anywhere and that is what worries me. He has a very formidable and daunting task ahead of him these next four years. I know there will always be war, famine, poverty and unrest in the world-at least in my lifetime.
I just hope that this administration can lessen all of that just a little in the next four years.
I also realize that many of the voters who support Mr. Bush are just as unhappy about economic uncertainties, lost jobs and the number of people who have no health insurance, as the people who voted for Mr. Kerry. Vast majorities of Americans want to keep the federal deficit under control, make Social Security financially sound, protect benefits like Medicare and Medicaid and lessen government intrusion into our daily lives.
And after reading the following article (which I think has a lot of valid points, and though a lot of it is one person's musings) I highly doubt that many (if none at all) of the issues that are important to me, and I am sure others, will be fully addressed in these next four years. But maybe, just maybe...our president will take a more moderate route the next four years and touch upon some of these things in a more positive manner.
If not there is always hope for 2008 I guess.
The mentioned article follows:
_________________________________________________________________
The Red Zone
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON POST ONLINE
November 4th, 2004
With the Democratic Party splattered at his feet in little blue puddles, John Kerry told the crushed crowd at Faneuil Hall in Boston about his concession call to President Bush.
"We had a good conversation," the senator said. "And we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing."
Democrat: Heal thyself.
W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman.
The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.
W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."
The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don't get their way.
If W. didn't reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a "broad, nationwide victory"?
While Mr. Bush was making his little speech about reaching out, Republicans said they had "the green light" to pursue their conservative agenda, like drilling in Alaska's wilderness and rewriting the tax code.
"He'll be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now," one Bush insider predicts. "He'll raze Falluja if he has to. He feels that the election results endorsed his version of the war." Never mind that the more insurgents American troops kill, the more they create.
Just listen to Dick (Oh, lordy, is this cuckoo clock still vice president?) Cheney, introducing the Man for his victory speech: "This has been a consequential presidency which has revitalized our economy and reasserted a confident American role in the world." Well, it has revitalized the Halliburton segment of the economy, anyhow. And "confident" is not the first word that comes to mind for the foreign policy of a country that has alienated everyone except Fiji.
Vice continued, "Now we move forward to serve and to guard the country we love." Only Dick Cheney can make "to serve and to guard" sound like "to rape and to pillage."
He's creating the sort of "democracy" he likes. One party controls all power in the country. One network serves as state TV. One nation dominates the world as a hyperpower. One firm controls contracts in Iraq.
Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.
Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that "the gay agenda" would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between "good and evil" and said he had heard there was "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma schools.
Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, "I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children."
John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or "servant leader," as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage.
Seeing the exit polls, the Democrats immediately started talking about values and religion.
Their sudden passion for wooing Southern white Christian soldiers may put a crimp in Hillary's 2008 campaign (nothing but a wooden stake would stop it). Meanwhile, the blue puddle is comforting itself with the expectation that this loony bunch will fatally overreach, just as Newt Gingrich did in the 90's.
But with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would constitute overreaching.
Invading France?
___________________________________________________________
The above quotes by some of our new "leaders" really frightens me. This lady seems to raise some very interesting questions. Where is the world headed in the next four years?
Time will tell.
Welcome to the "Republic"!!!
P.S.: How long did it take Rome to fall under Alexander the Great???????
This election seemed like a civil war of sorts, between various cross sections of our country. There was a lot of backstabbing, hate mongering, negativity and political bashing that will take years to overcome. I do think that this country is bitterly devided across the spectrum, more so than in any time that I remember in my life. There are so many issues that people are so passionate about, and while that is a good thing in certain circumstances, this void is so large that it seems, at least to me, that there are two completely separate kinds of people that call this great country home.
Some of my values are as follows and yes, I consider myself liberal, and am not afraid to voice my opinions.
-Separation of church and state (I believe that we MUST keep these separate. A leader can not lead, GUIDED by FAITH as the current president has said he does)
-Gay Rights (I believe people weather they are gay or straight should have the same rights, equal rights, under the law. They should be able to marry..not just civil unions but legitimate church sanctioned unions and equal benefits under the law)
-Stem Cell Research (I believe that we need to do all we can to further medical advances to help eradicate diseases across the world)
-The Right to Abortion (I won't get into this one)
-Tax breaks for the middle and lower classes so we can stop living from paycheck to paycheck
(I believe that anyone who makes 60,000 Dollars or more a year should be required to shoulder a bigger burden of the taxes to make our country run efficiently. And those that are in the 100,000 Dollar or more a year should be responsible to pay a "Rich person penalty" to be given to those that make less than 40,000 Dollars a year so they can pay their bills and go out to a restaurant once in a while)
-Universal Health Care for the same (paid for by the people who make the bucco bucks)
-Stronger Social Security and Medicare benefits for the elderly (Does anyone realize how hard it is to live on 900.00 a month, esp. when that is their total income!) FYI: There are close to 70 Million "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire and their social security benefits will be their only means of income....
-A free College education for all people (or at least the lower classes)
-An open Government with less secrecy (there is too much we are not being told. Does anyone think that "we the people" are really in charge of our government. There is not enough accountability...I will say no more on this).
-A dedicated urgency to the protection of our environment and the planet as a whole (before it is too late)
-Repeal of all "Right to carry laws". People don't kill people contrary to popular conservative belief.....GUNS do!!
-And last but certainly not least because there are many more things I am passionate about: Stopping the "Right Wingers" from forcing their "values" on the rest of the population!! Stop the "morality call". Let individuals choose what is morally right and wrong for them. We are not the pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock. Enough already!
I voted for the other guy (Senator John Kerry) not so much because I am a democrat, but more so because I felt (and do still feel) that this country needed a change. A new direction so to speak, one that Kerry talked about that actually sounded like he and his group could possibly pull off. Though I do not agree with some of their issues, I feel there platform was the lesser of two evils.
And....I have never voted before this election as politics have really never interested me all that much, but there was so much that was being talked about this time...the state of our country, the war in Iraq, 911, and on and on..that I felt I NEEDED to make my voice heard. And I did. Rather loudly in some circles.
So hear I sit, contemplating the next four years for this great country of ours. I worry that the war in Iraq is out of control, that Osama BinLaden has not been caught yet, the strife of all the people in the 3rd world countries such as Sudan and other areas of Africa, our individual rights are being taken away, a lot of the progress that has been made in the advancement of our world has been halted or reversed, such as our need to explore the cosmos, and last but not least, the growing poverty and unemployment of the people of this country continues to deepen and worsen, at least for some.
I am going to be cautiously optimistic that Mr. Bush can pull us out of, what I see as a downward spiral, and help bring the world and our country to be a more peaceful and balanced world. I don't see much balance right now anywhere and that is what worries me. He has a very formidable and daunting task ahead of him these next four years. I know there will always be war, famine, poverty and unrest in the world-at least in my lifetime.
I just hope that this administration can lessen all of that just a little in the next four years.
I also realize that many of the voters who support Mr. Bush are just as unhappy about economic uncertainties, lost jobs and the number of people who have no health insurance, as the people who voted for Mr. Kerry. Vast majorities of Americans want to keep the federal deficit under control, make Social Security financially sound, protect benefits like Medicare and Medicaid and lessen government intrusion into our daily lives.
And after reading the following article (which I think has a lot of valid points, and though a lot of it is one person's musings) I highly doubt that many (if none at all) of the issues that are important to me, and I am sure others, will be fully addressed in these next four years. But maybe, just maybe...our president will take a more moderate route the next four years and touch upon some of these things in a more positive manner.
If not there is always hope for 2008 I guess.
The mentioned article follows:
_________________________________________________________________
The Red Zone
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON POST ONLINE
November 4th, 2004
With the Democratic Party splattered at his feet in little blue puddles, John Kerry told the crushed crowd at Faneuil Hall in Boston about his concession call to President Bush.
"We had a good conversation," the senator said. "And we talked about the danger of division in our country and the need, the desperate need, for unity, for finding the common ground, coming together. Today I hope that we can begin the healing."
Democrat: Heal thyself.
W. doesn't see division as a danger. He sees it as a wingman.
The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.
W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."
The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don't get their way.
If W. didn't reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a "broad, nationwide victory"?
While Mr. Bush was making his little speech about reaching out, Republicans said they had "the green light" to pursue their conservative agenda, like drilling in Alaska's wilderness and rewriting the tax code.
"He'll be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now," one Bush insider predicts. "He'll raze Falluja if he has to. He feels that the election results endorsed his version of the war." Never mind that the more insurgents American troops kill, the more they create.
Just listen to Dick (Oh, lordy, is this cuckoo clock still vice president?) Cheney, introducing the Man for his victory speech: "This has been a consequential presidency which has revitalized our economy and reasserted a confident American role in the world." Well, it has revitalized the Halliburton segment of the economy, anyhow. And "confident" is not the first word that comes to mind for the foreign policy of a country that has alienated everyone except Fiji.
Vice continued, "Now we move forward to serve and to guard the country we love." Only Dick Cheney can make "to serve and to guard" sound like "to rape and to pillage."
He's creating the sort of "democracy" he likes. One party controls all power in the country. One network serves as state TV. One nation dominates the world as a hyperpower. One firm controls contracts in Iraq.
Just as Zell Miller was so over the top at the G.O.P. convention that he made Mr. Cheney seem reasonable, so several new members of Congress will make W. seem moderate.
Tom Coburn, the new senator from Oklahoma, has advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and warned that "the gay agenda" would undermine the country. He also characterized his race as a choice between "good and evil" and said he had heard there was "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma schools.
Jim DeMint, the new senator from South Carolina, said during his campaign that he supported a state G.O.P. platform plank banning gays from teaching in public schools. He explained, "I would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend should be hired to teach my third-grade children."
John Thune, who toppled Tom Daschle, is an anti-abortion Christian conservative - or "servant leader," as he was hailed in a campaign ad - who supports constitutional amendments banning flag burning and gay marriage.
Seeing the exit polls, the Democrats immediately started talking about values and religion.
Their sudden passion for wooing Southern white Christian soldiers may put a crimp in Hillary's 2008 campaign (nothing but a wooden stake would stop it). Meanwhile, the blue puddle is comforting itself with the expectation that this loony bunch will fatally overreach, just as Newt Gingrich did in the 90's.
But with this crowd, it's hard to imagine what would constitute overreaching.
Invading France?
___________________________________________________________
The above quotes by some of our new "leaders" really frightens me. This lady seems to raise some very interesting questions. Where is the world headed in the next four years?
Time will tell.
Welcome to the "Republic"!!!
P.S.: How long did it take Rome to fall under Alexander the Great???????
Monday, November 1, 2004
Hobbits were Real?? (18,000 Year old Skeletal Remains Found)
The more advanced we become, the more we are finding out about how strange and sometimes true history is.........the things we all read about as Myths and Fairy Tails are slowly being discovered to have a grain of truth to them??
From CNN and AP News Reports:
_____________________________________________________________________
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/27/dwarf.cavewoman.ap/index.html
Scientists uncover possible new species of human Dwarf skeleton is 18,000 years old AP) --
In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.
One tiny specimen, an adult female measuring about 3 feet tall, is described as "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest. This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.
She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals. Scientists have named the new species Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man. The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old. "So the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of 'freak' that we just happened to stumble across," said one of the discoverers, radiocarbon dating expert Richard G. Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was about a quarter the size of the brain of our species, Homo sapiens. It is closer in size with the brains of transitional prehuman species in Africa more than 3 million years ago. Yet evidence suggests Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organized group hunts for meat. Just how this primitive, remnant species managed to hang on and whether it crossed paths with modern humans is uncertain. Geologic evidence suggests a massive volcanic eruption sealed its fate some 12,000 years ago, along with other unusual species on the island.
Still, researchers say the perseverance of Flores Man smashes the conventional wisdom that modern humans began to systematically crowd out other upright-walking species 160,000 years ago and have dominated the planet alone for tens of thousands of years.
And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how -- and where -- we came to be. "It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently. Contued at link provided above.
___________________________________________________________________
Wow....I wonder if they will find a Ring or a Unicorn next??
From CNN and AP News Reports:
_____________________________________________________________________
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/27/dwarf.cavewoman.ap/index.html
Scientists uncover possible new species of human Dwarf skeleton is 18,000 years old AP) --
In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.
One tiny specimen, an adult female measuring about 3 feet tall, is described as "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest. This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.
She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals. Scientists have named the new species Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man. The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old. "So the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of 'freak' that we just happened to stumble across," said one of the discoverers, radiocarbon dating expert Richard G. Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was about a quarter the size of the brain of our species, Homo sapiens. It is closer in size with the brains of transitional prehuman species in Africa more than 3 million years ago. Yet evidence suggests Flores Man made stone tools, lit fires and organized group hunts for meat. Just how this primitive, remnant species managed to hang on and whether it crossed paths with modern humans is uncertain. Geologic evidence suggests a massive volcanic eruption sealed its fate some 12,000 years ago, along with other unusual species on the island.
Still, researchers say the perseverance of Flores Man smashes the conventional wisdom that modern humans began to systematically crowd out other upright-walking species 160,000 years ago and have dominated the planet alone for tens of thousands of years.
And it demonstrates that Africa, the acknowledged cradle of humanity, does not hold all the answers to persistent questions of how -- and where -- we came to be. "It is arguably the most significant discovery concerning our own genus in my lifetime," said anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who reviewed the research independently. Contued at link provided above.
___________________________________________________________________
Wow....I wonder if they will find a Ring or a Unicorn next??
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)