Tuesday, October 26, 2004
October 26, 2004
12:10 p.m.
Hello faithful readers. I wish I was as faithful to you, as you are to me by stopping in to read my dribble.
Here is something that I thought was funny:
President Bush and Colin Powell are sitting in a bar.
A guy walks in and asks the barman, Isn't that Bush and Powell sitting
over there? The barman says, yep, that's them. So the guy walks over
and says, Wow, this is a real honor. What are you guys doing in here?
Bush says, We're planning WW III.
And the guy says, Really, what's going to happen?
Bush says, Well, we're going to kill 140 million Muslims this time and
one blonde with big breasts.
The guy exclaimed, A blonde with big breasts, why kill a blonde with
big breasts?
Bush turns to Powell and says, See, I told you no one would worry
about the 140 million Muslims
Well, that is all for now, take care, and remember the Blonde!!!
12:10 p.m.
Hello faithful readers. I wish I was as faithful to you, as you are to me by stopping in to read my dribble.
Here is something that I thought was funny:
President Bush and Colin Powell are sitting in a bar.
A guy walks in and asks the barman, Isn't that Bush and Powell sitting
over there? The barman says, yep, that's them. So the guy walks over
and says, Wow, this is a real honor. What are you guys doing in here?
Bush says, We're planning WW III.
And the guy says, Really, what's going to happen?
Bush says, Well, we're going to kill 140 million Muslims this time and
one blonde with big breasts.
The guy exclaimed, A blonde with big breasts, why kill a blonde with
big breasts?
Bush turns to Powell and says, See, I told you no one would worry
about the 140 million Muslims
Well, that is all for now, take care, and remember the Blonde!!!
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
October 20, 2004
9:15 p.m.
I did not write the following, nor have I researched the validity of the claims stated below. This is posted because of a conversation I had with our neighbor and friend Stacy Fish last night. Again, I do not lay claim to the following writings. I agree with some of the items that were written, and I disagree with some, however it doesn't hurt to see and understand other peoples opinions and views.
Enjoy...
"Dear family and friends,
For at least 6 months, I have been researching how our government has undermined the very freedoms that our veterans, including my father have fought so hard for. I have read several books, watched countless hours of news programs including C-span, CNN, Mac Neil Lehrer, NBC, CBS, Fox News and more trying to understand the divide in our country and why so many seem to be willfully ignoring what is happening. So, I ask you to please read this not as a Democrat or a Republican but as an American. I am writing as a sister, an aunt, a mother and a friend who has such deep patriotic concern for what has happened and is happening to our democracy, as we have known. I apologize now for the length and the choppy writing. This is much longer than I am sure most of you would like with your lives so busy but I urge you to read and please think about this information with an open mind. Please do not be on the defensive as if I am attacking your choice for President. I am not. I am trying to tell you just a few of the many, many reasons why so many people are baffled that Bush has such support and why we wonder why more Republicans aren’t outraged and concerned for our country’s future. I would want to investigate any allegations concerning my vote and I hope you will too. Please keep in mind I am only able to give you snap shots of these concerns. This would become a book if I went into the detail necessary to fully convey each point. If you have read this far and you do not want to finish I urge you to please read the last quote on the next to last page by Robert Kennedy…..who has nothing to gain politically anymore or to personally profit from with his writing.
NEWS MEDIA:
I believe our news media has failed us all. Some of us are getting a totally different view of the world depending on where we get our information. I have been shocked to learn that some news programs do not even mention any of the concerns I and many others are so worried about. Many of us grew up when the news was really respected, fair and balanced. Both Democrats and Republicans blame the others as “biased”…. “liberal”…. “right-winged”…or whatever....sadly, this is all probably true.
It is very scary to me when one of the most powerful billionaires (Rupert Murdoch) can dictate to 3/4ths of the world his personal political views. Murdoch owns many newspapers, TV programs and partly owns two satellites that he can broadcast what he believes to be true or he wants to be true. I was so naïve that I never dreamed this could happen in our country. Former producers and correspondents for Fox have confirmed that Murdoch will e-mail A.M. reports to all his conglomerates the topic of the week or day (such as “flip-flop”) in order for all his media outlets to bombard the airwaves with the same phrase or idea. This would be OK if people didn’t believe that Fox news was unbiased but unfortunately they do.
One of Murdoch’s newscasters, Bill O’Rielly, blatantly detests anything or anyone that is “liberal” therefore giving a very slanted view of the news. This type of journalism is extremely sloppy and dangerous. Fox gets away with it because they preface their stories with “someone said” so no one has to be accountable and they can still throw out falsehoods. Another example of Fox’s censoring of the news was when O’Rielly screamed at a son of a 911 victim and told him to “shut up” when the man started implying the government had a role in 911. O’Rielly demanded they “turn off the kid’s mic” and basically kicked him off the stage.
The Columbia Journalism Review states, “Murdoch uses his diverse holdings to promote his own financial interests at the expense of real news gathering, legal and regulatory rules, and journalistic ethics. He wields his media as instruments of influence with politicians who can aid him, and savages his competitors in his news columns. If ever someone demonstrated the danger of mass power being concentrated in a few hands, it would be Murdoch.” This is very scary. Having this much power over the media is exactly what my father and many others fought against in WWII. I too believe the politicians and policy makers have used this medium to take advantage of the very good people they are trying to inform or misinform.
The following table is an example how ill informed people can be about the real facts. The Program on International Policy Attitudes conducted a study at the University of Maryland correlating people’s misperception on Iraq with where they got their news. The poll focused on three widely held misconceptions:
1. That evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda has been found.
2. That weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
3. That world public opinion had favored the US going to war against Iraq.
Of the people who get their news primarily from NPR and PBS, 23% held one of these misconceptions. Of people who get their news primarily from Fox, 80% held at least one of these three misconceptions.
FOX CBS ABC CNN Print source NPR/PBS
None of the three 20% 30% 39% 45% 53% 77%
1 or more misconceptions 80 71 61 55 47 23
Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, Oct.2, 2003.
For those of us who see the bias in Fox and talk radio, this following quote I heard rings loudly, “the right-winged media’s lies create a world which no one needs to feel any obligation to anybody else. It’s a worldview designed to comfort the comfortable and further afflict the afflicted.” An interesting side note is that none of the agreed upon debate moderators were from Murdoch’s news programs. Fox is only just one of media conglomerates that hold such power. As we have seen recently, Sinclair Media Company is another privately owned organization perpetuating one-sided viewpoints as news. Micheal Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 has been compared to Sinclair and Murdoch’s “news” machine, but keep in mind Moore isn’t broadcasting on news networks his documentary. If you chose to see it you could at the price of a ticket and now a DVD.
WAR and WMD:
Many of us fell for the false claims for the reasons we entered the war… obviously.
Many in congress did as well. It is clear now that this was not just an intelligence failure it was also a media failure. This administration deliberately cherry picked and massaged information, pressured CIA analysts and circumvented the agency by “stove piping” faith-based intelligence gathered at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans directly to the White House.
“We found weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories…for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.” [President Bush, Interview in Poland, 5/29/03].
“David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. And David Kay goes in and says we haven’t found stockpiles yet, and there is theories as to where the weapons went. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we’ll find out.” [Bush, Meet the Press,” 2/7/04] Isn’t this a flip-flop?
After David Kay made his no WMD announcement, the Washington Post asked Colin Powell “would he have recommended the invasion of Iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction”… he said “I don’t know”. He later took the comment back. I believe Colin Powell will write his book when he no longer has to work for this administration about convincing the UN that Iraq is the real enemy to America… not the Taliban. If Iraq’s WMD were such a threat to us now, why didn’t they use them in 1991 when they actually had them and the chance? We were more threatened by them when we attacked under George H. Doesn’t it seem strange Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s dad made a war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion? Iraqi interim President Ghazi al Yawer summed up the feelings of many Iraqis when he said: “We blame the United States 100% for the security in Iraq. They occupied the country, disbanded the security agencies and for 10 months left Iraqi’s borders open for anyone to come in without a visa or even a passport.” We are paying a huge price for not stopping the looting….. extremely sad and incompetent.
COST OF WAR:
Paul Wolfowitz told the House of Appropriations Committee on March 27, 2003 that the reconstruction of Iraq would cost you and me next to nothing. “It doesn’t have to cost the taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that finances its own reconstruction and relatively soon”. Then on April 23, 2004, administration official Andrew Nations told Ted Koppel on Nightline that the entire bill to the American people for reconstruction will be $1.7 billion… and in reality that is twice what it is costing you and me a week! Interestingly, Paul Klugman (New York Times) columnist and Princeton economist confirmed that he can’t find a civilization in history of mankind that cut taxes while at war!
PLAN FOR PEACE:
The cost in currency is one thing but the cost in lives is another. This war may possibly have been necessary; I have yet to be convinced, but if perhaps it was, then those costs are inevitable. However, it is incomprehensible that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney willfully ignored the massive planning for post invasion Iraq developed by the CIA, the Army War College and the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project. There were 13 volumes of recommendations on specific topics, plus a one volume summary and overview prepared by the previous administration if an invasion in Iraq were to occur. James Fallow wrote an article in January/ February 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly describing the scandalous story in great detail. He read over 2000 pages of the report that precisely predicted the challenges of postwar Iraq… how to establish order and prevent looting, how to get an electrical grid up and running immediately, how to disarm, demobilize and then reintegrate the military. He said “all working groups concluded that occupying Iraq would be far more difficult than invading it. Even Bush H. said the same in his memoirs!!! Wolfowitz either didn’t notice this evidence or he chose to not believe it. Rumsfeld even reprimanded representatives of the Defense Department for attending war simulating games to determine the best and worst case scenarios with emphasis on civil disorder. Why? The information would probably weaken the case for a pre-emptive war of choice. It also was probably seen by the war proponents as an anti-war undertaking.
Instead of using the invaluable information available to us, we were told the Iraqis would welcome us with flowers. Instead of using the two extra divisions requested by generals inside the Pentagon, “we went in with the minimum force to accomplish the military objectives which was a straightforward task…and then we immediately found ourselves shorthanded in the aftermath. We watched people dismantle and runoff with the country basically,” said Army Secretary Thomas White. But, remember on April 11, 2003 when Rumsfeld was asked why US soldiers were taking no action to stop looting he said “freedom is untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things….. stuff happens.” If Rumsfeld had read any of the post war planning for the occupation of Iraq he would have known that looting was a prelude to the unraveling of a society and to the deaths of American soldiers.
Richard Clarke has said Rumsfeld e-mailed the Iraqi army and told them they were going to invade and “to not resist… lay down your arms and run…and in doing so we would take care of you.” As we all know now that one of Bremer’s 1st orders on May 23, 2003 was to disband the entire Iraqi army without the care to rid it of the real personnel that would make problems. Perhaps this was in the hope to get cooperation from Shiite Muslims and minority Kurds, and they feared reconstructing the army could trigger a massive wave of reprisals. However, it backfired and thus began the 1st of many blunders after our tremendously successful beginning. Without enough troops we were unable to secure the borders, it threw many angry, defeated Iraqis out of work… thus a windfall for the budding insurgency. It concerns me that we would have a commander in chief that doesn’t even know how to go to war and arrogantly ignores the information for post war peace.
But the thing that frightens me the most is a leader unwillingly to admit his mistakes. This does not make me feel safer. It actually terrifies me. The lack of attention to details by the administration and maybe just a touch of arrogance has led to the needless death and wounding of our troops. This doesn’t seem “compassionate” or conservative to me or even close to respecting life. If this were Clinton he would have been tarred and feathered and I would be first in line with the tar.
And by the way, Bush pledged to get Osama Bin Laden, (which now is the most popular name for a newborn boys in Saudi Arabia). Why did they wait two months to “smoke” him out? Why did they on send in 11,000 troops? Well, I’m getting ahead of myself….. I will get to the Bin Ladens soon enough. Besides on August 30, Bush declared that the war on terror could not be won…but thankfully the next day Bush was back to his firm resoluteness that “we will win” the war on terror. Isn’t this a flip-flop? And while I am on resoluteness I will borrow the Fox news preface line “some people say”…that resoluteness even after a mistake is confirmed….is very typical of an alcoholic.
DIDN’T ANYONE SEE 911 COMING???:
Clinton’s administration had completed a far-reaching plan to eliminate al Qaeda a few weeks before Bush’s inauguration. They gave the plan to Bush administration assuming they would carry it out. Clinton trusted Bush to protect America. This proved nine months later to be a disastrous mistake…perhaps Clinton’s biggest. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger arranged ten briefings for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. At the briefing on terrorism, Berger told Dr. Rice, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specially, than any other subject”. Condi lied to Times when asked if she could recall a briefing with Berger, she said she had not. However, the Dec. 30 2001, in a New York Times article she said Berger did give her a warning… and specifically Mr. Bin Laden’s brand of it would consume far more of her time than she had ever imagined. Also, Richard Clarke laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. She was so impressed she asked him to stay on as head of counter-terrorism. According to Time, Richard Clarke and the Bush team took Clarke’s warnings. But outgoing Clinton officials felt that “the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism”. In fact, Pickard, acting FBI director, said that Ashcroft told him “I don’t want to hear about it (al Qaeda threat) anymore. Sadly, The Bush administration had an obsession about missile defense. Evidently, this missile obsession was causing Clarke to just about blow a gasket. He had a plan and NO ONE was paying any attention!! Feb. 15, 2001 Hart-Rudman issued its third and final report on national security. The report warned that “mass-casualty terrorism directed against the US homeland was a serious and growing concern” and he said America was woefully unprepared for a catastrophic domestic attack and urged the creation of a new federal agency: “A National Homeland Security Agency.” And what did the Bush administration do? They IGNORED these warnings! Bush said on May 8, 2001, he and Cheney would lead and anti-terrorism task force and Bush himself would “periodically chair a meeting to review the efforts.” Bush never chaired such a meeting, because Cheney’s task force never actually met!! Clarke was still trying to do what he could in spite of the Bush administration. On April 30, 2001 Clarke presented a new version of the plan to Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby; the State Dept.’s Richard Armitage; DOD’s Paul Wolfowitz; and the CIA’s John McLaughlin. They were so impressed they had 3 more meetings…but the scheduling of the meetings went very slowwwwllllly. On July 10, 2001, about 5 months after the Hart-Rudman report had warned of catastrophic, mass casualty attacks Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams sent a memo to headquarters over concerns of middle Eastern students at an Arizona flight school….and suggested that al Qaeda operatives might be trying to infiltrate the US civil aviation system. He urged FBI to contact other agencies to see if they had information relevant to his suspicions. Had Williams memo been acted upon maybe the FBI and CIA would have connected the dots. Pretty sad isn’t it. This doesn’t make me feel safe at all with this administration in command. While the administration was still IGNORING vital security information such as William’s warnings, Clarke and CIA Director George Tenet were going nuts. In mid July “George Tenet briefed Condi Rice that there was going to be a major attack,” Time said. Finally, on July 16, 2001 deputies held their long over due terrorism integration meeting and they approved Clarke’s plan. Next it would go to the Principals Committee, composed of Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Rumsfeld….which was the last hurdle before the plan could reach the President. They tried to schedule the Meeting in August (2001), but too many principals were out of town, they had taken their cue from the President… he was recharging his batteries and was taking a deserved break from pressures of protecting America…he went to Texas for all of August. This was the longest presidential vacation in thirty-two years…by the way he was on vacation 42% of his 1st 7 months in office. The meeting would have to wait until Sept. 4, 2001. August 6, 2001 Tenet delivered a report to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”. The report warned that al Qaeda might be planning to hijack airplanes. But Bush was resolute, he continued to vacation. Actually, he did follow up while sitting in a golf cart the next day. Bush told reporters “I’m working on a lot of issues, national security matters”. Then the next day, he followed up and told reporters “I’ve got a lot of national security concerns that were working on---Iraq, Macedonia, very worrisome right now.” I hope families of the 911 victims don’t hear how he was concerned about Iraq and Macedonia and not what Tenet was trying to tell him. On August 16, 2001 the INS arrested Zacharias Mousaoui, a flight school student who seemed to have little interest in learning to take off or land a plane. The arresting agent wrote that “MOUSSAOUI SEEMED LIKE THE TYPE OF PERSON WHO COULD FLY SOMETHING INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER.” THIS MINNESOTA FBI AGENT WROTE THAT “A 747 LOADED WITH FUEL COULD BE USED AS A WEAPON”…he was hoping to get the FBI headquarters attention. And sadly another ironic or tragic twist is the security guard John P. O’Neil who died in the towers had been a very strong counter-terrorism specialist for years, one of the best, along with Richard Clark. He was a little rough around the edges, which probably caused him to not go for a promotion, so he applied for the job at the Towers to earn more money… but he too had been confident the al Qaeda were going to strike the summer or fall of 2001. The CIA did share information with the FBI on August 23, 2001 that two suspected terrorists were already in the country. But never fear, Bush discussed with reporters on August 25, 2001 the difference between his two dogs…possibly trying to appear to be one of the guys…and how he was going to “go fly-fishing with Spotty” his dog. Meanwhile, back in DC, Pickard, had been privy to a top secret counter-terrorism program in the FBI, and he called for increasing the terrorism budget and on SEPT. 10, 2001 ASCROFT TURN HIM DOWN FLAT. Again, how can anyone in the Bush administration face any of the families of the 911 victims? When Bush got back from vacation he was advised to adopt the plan on anti terrorism etc…then on Sept 9, 2001, Congress proposed $600 million for the anti-terror programs. The money was to come from Rumsfeld’s missile defense program and when he heard that $0.6 billion of his missile money would go to anti terror he threaten a presidential veto. On September 10, 2001, Ashcroft sent his Justice Dept. budget request to Bush for 68 different programs and none of it dealt with terrorism. However, just to let you know Ashcroft did pass a memo around listing his 7 top priorities and of course as you can guess, terrorism didn’t make the list. Then as we all know September 11, 2001 changed America forever. And strangely enough on Sept. 12 they started blaming Clinton trying to cover their tracks. Once again, very, very sad. My father would be so sicken by this. Bush isn’t a very reassuring Commander in Chief when he says comments like the following.
“I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.” Source: Federal Document Clearing House, Roundtable Interview of the President by White House Press Pool.” June 4, 2003
SAUDI CONNECTION:
This part probably makes me the most sick. Craig Unger, who wrote the book House of Bush, House of Saud, he also writes for the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair and is an analyst for terrorism and Saudi American relations in the oil industry, became horrified how the media covered or didn’t cover 911. This is the reason he wrote his book. The media, Time specifically, had an article entitled Out of the Blue referring to the surprise of the attack on the World Trade Center. Unger believes it was connected to the relationship of Bush Sr. that had been building for along time… for example, Prince Bandar had a key role in the Iran contra…he put his own money in a Swiss bank to help get around the congressional amendment “bone act”… (Prince Bandar is known as “Bandar Bush” and was the Ambassador to Iraq). He is the only person that can smoke a cigar inside any of the Bush homes) and curiously, had dinner at the White House on Sept. 13, 2001. Unger started to look into these connection more closely after the 911 attacks when he came across the Carlyle Group and he saw a number of Saudi’s in the group…. he said this was the elephant in the living room that no one in the press covered. Unger realized that how could we wage war on terror if the President and family had close business relationships with Saudi’s (Bush family and friends have made a total of $1.4 billion doing business with Saudi’s) some of whom had been accused of funding terrorism. Interestingly, any past President can get the CIA daily briefings and most do not, except for George H, he does regularly ask for the report. A bit suspicious isn’t it, especially when two years after the attacks George H continued business ties with the Saudi’s. Also, James Baker’s law firm, who is a good friend of the Bush family is the defense lawyer for the Bin Ladens against the 911 families. Very strange isn’t. It makes you wonder who is working for whom? The connection between the Bush family and the Saudi’s makes me very uneasy and knowing that the Bin Laden family was not detained after 911. But instead they were given Presidential approval to fly out of the country.…and more peculiar, why weren’t they afraid to fly when everyone else was at that time??? A few other curious concerns with Bin Ladens are Maj. James R. Bath’s whose name was magic markered off the same National Guard report stating he and Bush failed to get their physical etc…. so how does this connect to Bin Laden’s??? Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens and Bath invested in many of George W. business ties: Arbusto, Harken Energy etc. The BinLadins invested in several defense companies…..so, if there was a war I guess they all would benefit…and yes Halliburton was part of the business entanglements and I can’t forget Ken Lay…who made the largest campaign donations to the Bush campaign. They all also, had business investments in the Carlyle group, especially the defense division. Which may answer the weak Afghanistan attack and slow effort to smoke Oasma out of the cave. Or is it because of the gas pipeline going from the Caspean Sea through Afghanistan that Halliburton and Ken Lay would benefit greatly. Ironically or tragically only the British Press covered it. Yes it is very complicated and I may have a few players and companies in the wrong place, but one thing is for sure the Bush and Bin Laden’s had to protect their business concerns. Investigate for yourself all about the Carlyle group and the players. Is that why Bush had to create a Bin Laden diversion?…by invading Iraq?
911 COMMISION REPORT:
So with all that said, it should be no surprise that in the 18 months following the 911 attacks Bush prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States. Richard Clarke tried to start an investigation on Sept. 12 and all Bush wanted to “talk about was how they can connect Iraq to the attacks”. Bush would not take any questions about al Qaeda. Rumsfeld piped in and said “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan”…huh? How about that cave? And keep in mind after other horrible national tragedies, such as Pearl Harbor and Kennedy’s assassination, the very same or next day the government started and encouraged and investigation. Not the Bush government. They fought the congress and then with pressure from the 911 families he had to give in. Duh! And you have to ask yourself why 28 pages of the report are not in the public document.
“It reads like a mystery, a novel. It is well written.” Bush’s assessment of the 911 Commission’s report, to an AP reporter in Crawford, Texas, July 26.
INTERNATIONAL RESPECT:
• Bush took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history). He has run the most careless foreign policy in living memory, squandering the global good-will after 911 bringing America from leading the world to America against the world. Paul Klugman, in his book the Great Unraveling, believes the last three years will be a shameful episode in our history.
• Bush is the first US President to have a majority of the people in Europe (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace. A cousin in Sweden said she hates Bush. A friend in France, Yannis, said he "hates Bush".
• He is creating angry young Arabs by witnessing the horrific war in their country.
• He basically rendered the United Nations irrelevant.
• He seemed to view the Geneva Convention as an annoyance. He refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Convention.
• Bush is the first US President in history to have the people of South Korea more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea
• He withdrew from the World Court of Law.
• He has dissolved more international treaties than any President in US history.
“I am the master of low expectations.” Source: Agence France Presse, “Bush Says Middle East Summit’Met Expectaions’, 6/4/03.
“The world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership.” Source: The Boston Globe, Oct. 29, 2003
Wow, I certainly don’t seem to have any peace and I am not in one of his war zones. He is in denial, this extremely scary, which “some people say” denial is a symptom of…oh I won’t say.
JOBS and ECONOMY:
Under the Bush presidency, over 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost creating the highest unemployment of the past decade and worst economic record since Hoover’s Great Depression.
• He cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.
• He shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history.
• Bush entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category straight down. He spent the surplus handed to him and bankrupted the treasury.
• While Governor of Texas he also cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to a tune of billions of dollars in borrowed money.
• I understand jobs going over seas have been in the works for at least a decade and the 911 attack didn’t help nor does the war, but he has total responsibility of the war and all it’s problems it brings on himself!!! And maybe he shouldn’t have gone fly-fishing in Crawford in August 2001 and heeded the warnings about an attack…. maybe we wouldn’t be in the financial dilemma resulting from an attack.
• And ironically, he has cut health benefits for war veterans. This would be OK if everyone was sacrificing in the country, but he has made sure his contributors aren’t affected financially. And this is CONSERVATISM?
• And more sadly, the Bush administration ended The Equal pay Initiative and removed fact sheets about equal pay for women workers from federal government websites. He can erase info from sites but he can’t erase his record on opposing stronger enforcement of equal pay laws and dropping sex discrimination lawsuits. Bush FY 2004 budget tried to cut the funding for after-school programs that benefit one-half million children and their parents.
• Bush opposes raising the minimum wage.
• Overtime pay is threatened if you make over $23,000. This will affect primarily women who are all ready not receiving equal pay. This would take us back to the days of 1930’s… the Fair Labor Standards. He may have already implemented this new policy, where employers can choose between overtime pay and comp time pay or a bonus or something…now if you were an employer wouldn’t you try to get your employees to take the comp pay…no standards there.
I don’t think that if you are in the middle class the economy has turned the corner.
ENVIRONMENT:
Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America’s environment for more than thirty years. He will go down in history as the worst environmental president.
This administration takes extreme care to use illusive sentences to plant ideas. They are able to lie in full view with metaphors and rhetoric such as mushroom cloud.
• He uses clever rhetoric and words such as Clear Skies Initiative. It undercuts protections against soot, smog, and toxic mercury, weakens pollution safeguards and relies on voluntary action from power plants to curb carbon dioxide emissions. Yet it does nothing to clear the skies. He believes by using the right words, he can continue to deceive the American people.
• He has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country’s air, water, public lands and wildlife.
• His administration has cut funds for cleaning toxic waste sites by 45%
• While Governor of Texas he changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. He replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog-ridden city in America. While enriching his corporate cronies and political contributors he lowered the quality of life for everyone else. Generations of Americans will pay for this corporate greed. Now after three years of ferocious attacks on US environmental laws his policies have are already diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.
• He walked out on the Kyoto Accord. He believes the jury is still out of the science global warming.
EDUCATION:
Bush has FAILED TO PROVIDE funding he promised for the most ironically named program, “No Child Left Behind”. Those very words are just one of hundreds of examples of how the Bush administration cloaks their pet political or corporate projects in deceptive rhetoric, which has been so craftily used to enable them to say one thing and do another.
• Bush supports vouchers that threaten public schools, while favoring a plan that will dismantle the Head Start program. Ironically, my great grandfather was extremely involved and a pivtol person in creating public education in Ohio.
• Bush has a new formula for financial aide (Pell grants) that will affect 84,000 low income students... So, isn’t this contrary to his point about the minimum wage discussion in the last debate… how he tried to tell us education will be the answer to better jobs…He says one thing and does another!
“We want results in every single classroom so that one child is left behind” –Bush speaking in Little Rock, Arkansas, Nov. 10, 2003
I hope this was just another of hundreds of his miss-speaks.
CIVIL RIGHTS:
Last week Bush said “I think whoever is president should guard your civil liberties, must not erode your rights in American”. Then on October 15, 2004 Bush taught 3 Oregon teachers a new lesson in irony ...or tragedy. Thursday night they were removed from a Bush speech and were threatened with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said “Protect our Civil Liberties”. This is very scary!!!
Even more disconcerting is the following incident.
“All Americans need to watch what they do.”
----White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Sept. 26, 2001
This response was to a remark by Bill Maher, host of ABC’s Politically Incorrect, who said shortly after 911, “Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly,” whereas lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away –that’s cowardly.” While I think it is an inappropriate comment, Ari Fleischer’s comment seems like he is trying to silence dissent in the media. Worse yet, Ari Fleischer’s comment was removed from the White House website--- kind of censorship on censorship… Ashcroft frequently will refer to comments like Maher’s as treason and terrorism. Other examples of where the “right” media does the governments bidding is a few weeks after 911, Washington Post columnist Micheal Kelly wrote that pacifists that oppose the war “are on the side of the [terrorists] murderers”; Ann Coulter accused liberals of “20 years of treason”; Fox News host Bill O’Rielly accused antiwar protestors of being “un-American”; Rush Limbaugh referred to 3 prominent Democrats as “Abdullah Begala,” “Mustafa Stephanopoulos,” and “Sahib Carville.” These slurs seem to be as much against Arab and Muslim names signifying they are synonymous with “enemies” and “terrorist.” Joking in private is one thing but a bit frightening in a public news media.
• Bush has packed courts with far-right judges.
• Bush pushed the passage of the Patriot Act, which was originally about 800 pages and so most congressmen did not read it. Yes, some of the laws are needed, but in the name of security other non- related rights are being abused.
• He supports its infinite extension under the pretext of an endless war on terror.
• Bush also supports repressing Americans by removing from citizens our inherent right to privacy and our constitutional rights of freedom of speech and due process.
• He has removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president.
• Ashcroft offers little support for affirmative action. His Justice Department is systematically undermining affirmative action programs and anti-discrimination laws.
• Let me throw in the back door draft under civil liberties…. “Some people say that those who support this administration should relieve the National Guard units in Iraq.”
Seriously, we have to now worry about the reinstatement of the draft with whomever is president…due to this administration’s lack of planning and ability to wage war…..we will need so many troops to fill the boots.
There are so many frightening things about Ashcroft it is too numerous to write here….but as you can see it could be way off from what and American would think OUR government would do. But, after reading all that they have done in other areas of their idea of governing I think we should be very very, concerned. Fortunately, Kerry will end the ‘Era of Ashcroft’.
Maybe when Bush miss-spoke to David E. Sanger, May 28, 2002 it was a Freudian slip. He said “We hold dear what our Declaration of Independence says, that all have got uninaliennable rights, endowed by a Creator.” But he didn’t mis-speak when he said “A DICTATORSHIP would be a lot easier, there’s no question about it.” Source: Business Week Online, “A Gentleman’s “C” for “W”, Richard Dunham, July 30, 2001.
SOCIAL SECURITY:
I can’t imagine what he would do to this………God only knows. At one time he pledged not to touch social security surplus… On March 3, 2001 he said “We’re going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus.” And then he SPENDS the Social Security surplus…The New York Times reported that “the president’s new budget uses Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs every year through 2013, ultimately diverting more than $1.4 trillion in Social Security funds to other purposes.” [The New York Times, 2/6/02] Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security would hit older women especially hard, because money would be siphoned out of the system reducing the benefits and replacing it with private investments that are risky and unlikely to make up the difference. I imagine the younger family members will just have to house their aging parents, which is, I suppose, how it should be.
HEALTH CARE:
After 4 years of the Bush administration, health care costs have risen dramatically, including the price of prescription drugs, leaving 40 million Americans unable to afford health insurance. Making it illegal to buy drugs from Canada is such a joke…no one believes it is for our own safety, my God the drugs they use come from other countries like Sweden…. Do they think we are really that stupid? We all know it is just another padding of the wallet for pharmaceutical political contributors and at the expense of Americans health…how compassionate and Christian is that?
GAY MARRIAGES AND ABORTION:
The more I learn about Bush and his corporate and political friends and what type of a man he is I am convinced these two topics are just a smoke screen and a way to secure a large base of supporters as the 1% of the wealthiest American’s votes would not get him re-elected. It breaks my heart to see very religious people being scammed, but it just doesn’t surprise me any more what Bush and his friends would do. I do not approve of abortions. I do disapprove of government control over women and the use of this ploy as a way to widen their base. It actually disgusts me. I am a Christian who does not believe for a second that Jesus would approve of any of Bush’s policies. I thank God that Kerry is running for President and I pray nightly that he wins and saves this country from any more damage that this administration can do to this country. The rhetoric of pro-life or pro-choice is simply the wrong words to convey the real situation. I do not think Jesus would approve of the 152 executions and that Bush entertained friends at a party with his imitation of a Born Again Christian, Carla Fay Tucker, begging him for clemency. What a “regular likeable guy”. Governor Bush holds the record for most executions in the Western world. There have been 111 death row inmates released due to DNA. How can Bush have it both ways…Sadly, Bush’s pro-life mantra is so empty. And I ask you when a friend of mine and his wife had abortions, natural abortions that is, due to agent orange exposure in Viet Nam where was the Pro-life concern then? He hasn’t voted since coming home from Viet Nam, but he will definitely be voting on November 2 and I can be assured he will not vote for the “likeable”, life-of-the party guy.
“Bush said he…favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question.” [The Nation, 6/15/00, quoting the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal] From Then on he said “I am pro-life.” [Governor Bush, 10/3/00]
Isn’t that another flip-flop?
Bush says gay marriage is a state issue….”The state can do what they want to do. Don’t try to trap me in this state’s issue like you’re trying to get me into.” [Governor Bush on “Larry King Live,” 2/15/00
“Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife.” [President Bush, 2/24/04]
Could this be another flip-flop? What do you think?
I do happen to agree on his 2/24/04 quote, but it is not the federal governments responsibility to define marriage...it is the church’s responsibility, which as we all know is not constitutionally part of our government. Our forefathers came to this country for that very reason…. you know the history lesson about Separate Church and State.
WOMENS RIGHTS GOING BACK DECADES:
Don't worry I won’t go into all the underhanded ways the government is taking us back to a more compliant time…even though it appears to be a little like the countries policies we are trying to free. For some of you I may enclose a copy since you may not have been on the original mailing. I must say I am extremely proud of my daughter, Kristin, for trying to enlighten her women friends. She has received many, many positive responses and several not so. It is puzzling to me that women will so willingly give up their rights and not even address these very important issues. Some say it is against God’s plan and as you can see Bush’s pro-life mantra so contradicts his actions that those words become so empty. His actions to me are a blatant disregard for life. Some of it is a “bunch of crap” and I agree that what Bush has done is a “bunch of crap” and that is why she and I are desperately trying to get this information out. I am sure the countries where women’s rights have been so stunted, they wish someone had spoken up earlier. I say women wake up and research the real issues and not be fooled by their smoke screens. If I have offended anyone I do apologize but you must look at Bush and what his real choices are ….this definitely reflects his character and his true beliefs.
Robert Kennedy so well described what is happening to our beloved country in his paper on “Crimes Against Nature”, what he writes about our environment is an eye opener. But bothered me the most about his article was the connection to our democracy being threaten through this:
“administration’s attacks on science and the law have put something even greater at risk. Americans need to recognize that we are facing not just a threat to our environment but to our values, and to our democracy. Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism leads to democracy. But we’ve seen from the Bush administration, the latter proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government. America’s most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, “I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most.” Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism---ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power. Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures. Corporate capitalists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush competition by controlling government. The rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930’s offers many information lessons on how corporate power can undermine a democracy.”
I’ve said this administration has sold America’s soul to the highest bidder. Is this what we want to leave our children? So, when we hear people say “If you are not making over $200,000 you should not be voting for four more years of this government that totally disregards what is best for it’s people not just the upper 1%. Keep in mind Bush holds the all-time US and world record for the most corporate campaign donations. Bush’s biggest campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history…Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation. He spent more on polls and focus groups than any President in US history. Kerry has never taken donations from PAC groups.
“You are an impressive crowd of haves and have mores. Some people call you elite, I call you my base” --Bush greeted a white tie group of business friends.
If you made it this far, I am forever grateful, however if you are now fuming because your information is so opposed to what I have researched and written then I say please for a moment stop thinking this is anti-American and remember there were many times in history people should have tried harder to help inform people of what their government was up to. Differing views is patriotic. That is the cornerstone to our freedom. More hopefully, I hope you are fuming and outraged because we have been so duped by this administration. It is not a Democrat or Republican concern it is our very democracy that is threatened!!! I URGE all of us to continue to learn and inform each other, because without the use of many sources other than mainstream media, we will not get all the truth…..I hope and pray to God that all of this is so wrong…but sadly, there is so many different sources coming to the same conclusions. That is so very frightening to me. This is so unprecedented. It has taken me a very long time to investigate and research to do my best to help us and the country I love. It takes a lot of time to research, which I think is why so many of us just get a few sound bytes and make very crucial decisions based on weak information….or worse yet vote how our spouse or friend is voting. A sign in my classroom reads, “YOUR CHOICES REFLECT YOUR CHARACTER”. May God bless you and our country."
I don't know the person who wrote this, it is presented here for you to read, research and observe.
Take care...
9:15 p.m.
I did not write the following, nor have I researched the validity of the claims stated below. This is posted because of a conversation I had with our neighbor and friend Stacy Fish last night. Again, I do not lay claim to the following writings. I agree with some of the items that were written, and I disagree with some, however it doesn't hurt to see and understand other peoples opinions and views.
Enjoy...
"Dear family and friends,
For at least 6 months, I have been researching how our government has undermined the very freedoms that our veterans, including my father have fought so hard for. I have read several books, watched countless hours of news programs including C-span, CNN, Mac Neil Lehrer, NBC, CBS, Fox News and more trying to understand the divide in our country and why so many seem to be willfully ignoring what is happening. So, I ask you to please read this not as a Democrat or a Republican but as an American. I am writing as a sister, an aunt, a mother and a friend who has such deep patriotic concern for what has happened and is happening to our democracy, as we have known. I apologize now for the length and the choppy writing. This is much longer than I am sure most of you would like with your lives so busy but I urge you to read and please think about this information with an open mind. Please do not be on the defensive as if I am attacking your choice for President. I am not. I am trying to tell you just a few of the many, many reasons why so many people are baffled that Bush has such support and why we wonder why more Republicans aren’t outraged and concerned for our country’s future. I would want to investigate any allegations concerning my vote and I hope you will too. Please keep in mind I am only able to give you snap shots of these concerns. This would become a book if I went into the detail necessary to fully convey each point. If you have read this far and you do not want to finish I urge you to please read the last quote on the next to last page by Robert Kennedy…..who has nothing to gain politically anymore or to personally profit from with his writing.
NEWS MEDIA:
I believe our news media has failed us all. Some of us are getting a totally different view of the world depending on where we get our information. I have been shocked to learn that some news programs do not even mention any of the concerns I and many others are so worried about. Many of us grew up when the news was really respected, fair and balanced. Both Democrats and Republicans blame the others as “biased”…. “liberal”…. “right-winged”…or whatever....sadly, this is all probably true.
It is very scary to me when one of the most powerful billionaires (Rupert Murdoch) can dictate to 3/4ths of the world his personal political views. Murdoch owns many newspapers, TV programs and partly owns two satellites that he can broadcast what he believes to be true or he wants to be true. I was so naïve that I never dreamed this could happen in our country. Former producers and correspondents for Fox have confirmed that Murdoch will e-mail A.M. reports to all his conglomerates the topic of the week or day (such as “flip-flop”) in order for all his media outlets to bombard the airwaves with the same phrase or idea. This would be OK if people didn’t believe that Fox news was unbiased but unfortunately they do.
One of Murdoch’s newscasters, Bill O’Rielly, blatantly detests anything or anyone that is “liberal” therefore giving a very slanted view of the news. This type of journalism is extremely sloppy and dangerous. Fox gets away with it because they preface their stories with “someone said” so no one has to be accountable and they can still throw out falsehoods. Another example of Fox’s censoring of the news was when O’Rielly screamed at a son of a 911 victim and told him to “shut up” when the man started implying the government had a role in 911. O’Rielly demanded they “turn off the kid’s mic” and basically kicked him off the stage.
The Columbia Journalism Review states, “Murdoch uses his diverse holdings to promote his own financial interests at the expense of real news gathering, legal and regulatory rules, and journalistic ethics. He wields his media as instruments of influence with politicians who can aid him, and savages his competitors in his news columns. If ever someone demonstrated the danger of mass power being concentrated in a few hands, it would be Murdoch.” This is very scary. Having this much power over the media is exactly what my father and many others fought against in WWII. I too believe the politicians and policy makers have used this medium to take advantage of the very good people they are trying to inform or misinform.
The following table is an example how ill informed people can be about the real facts. The Program on International Policy Attitudes conducted a study at the University of Maryland correlating people’s misperception on Iraq with where they got their news. The poll focused on three widely held misconceptions:
1. That evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda has been found.
2. That weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
3. That world public opinion had favored the US going to war against Iraq.
Of the people who get their news primarily from NPR and PBS, 23% held one of these misconceptions. Of people who get their news primarily from Fox, 80% held at least one of these three misconceptions.
FOX CBS ABC CNN Print source NPR/PBS
None of the three 20% 30% 39% 45% 53% 77%
1 or more misconceptions 80 71 61 55 47 23
Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, Oct.2, 2003.
For those of us who see the bias in Fox and talk radio, this following quote I heard rings loudly, “the right-winged media’s lies create a world which no one needs to feel any obligation to anybody else. It’s a worldview designed to comfort the comfortable and further afflict the afflicted.” An interesting side note is that none of the agreed upon debate moderators were from Murdoch’s news programs. Fox is only just one of media conglomerates that hold such power. As we have seen recently, Sinclair Media Company is another privately owned organization perpetuating one-sided viewpoints as news. Micheal Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 has been compared to Sinclair and Murdoch’s “news” machine, but keep in mind Moore isn’t broadcasting on news networks his documentary. If you chose to see it you could at the price of a ticket and now a DVD.
WAR and WMD:
Many of us fell for the false claims for the reasons we entered the war… obviously.
Many in congress did as well. It is clear now that this was not just an intelligence failure it was also a media failure. This administration deliberately cherry picked and massaged information, pressured CIA analysts and circumvented the agency by “stove piping” faith-based intelligence gathered at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans directly to the White House.
“We found weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories…for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.” [President Bush, Interview in Poland, 5/29/03].
“David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. And David Kay goes in and says we haven’t found stockpiles yet, and there is theories as to where the weapons went. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we’ll find out.” [Bush, Meet the Press,” 2/7/04] Isn’t this a flip-flop?
After David Kay made his no WMD announcement, the Washington Post asked Colin Powell “would he have recommended the invasion of Iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction”… he said “I don’t know”. He later took the comment back. I believe Colin Powell will write his book when he no longer has to work for this administration about convincing the UN that Iraq is the real enemy to America… not the Taliban. If Iraq’s WMD were such a threat to us now, why didn’t they use them in 1991 when they actually had them and the chance? We were more threatened by them when we attacked under George H. Doesn’t it seem strange Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s dad made a war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion? Iraqi interim President Ghazi al Yawer summed up the feelings of many Iraqis when he said: “We blame the United States 100% for the security in Iraq. They occupied the country, disbanded the security agencies and for 10 months left Iraqi’s borders open for anyone to come in without a visa or even a passport.” We are paying a huge price for not stopping the looting….. extremely sad and incompetent.
COST OF WAR:
Paul Wolfowitz told the House of Appropriations Committee on March 27, 2003 that the reconstruction of Iraq would cost you and me next to nothing. “It doesn’t have to cost the taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that finances its own reconstruction and relatively soon”. Then on April 23, 2004, administration official Andrew Nations told Ted Koppel on Nightline that the entire bill to the American people for reconstruction will be $1.7 billion… and in reality that is twice what it is costing you and me a week! Interestingly, Paul Klugman (New York Times) columnist and Princeton economist confirmed that he can’t find a civilization in history of mankind that cut taxes while at war!
PLAN FOR PEACE:
The cost in currency is one thing but the cost in lives is another. This war may possibly have been necessary; I have yet to be convinced, but if perhaps it was, then those costs are inevitable. However, it is incomprehensible that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney willfully ignored the massive planning for post invasion Iraq developed by the CIA, the Army War College and the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project. There were 13 volumes of recommendations on specific topics, plus a one volume summary and overview prepared by the previous administration if an invasion in Iraq were to occur. James Fallow wrote an article in January/ February 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly describing the scandalous story in great detail. He read over 2000 pages of the report that precisely predicted the challenges of postwar Iraq… how to establish order and prevent looting, how to get an electrical grid up and running immediately, how to disarm, demobilize and then reintegrate the military. He said “all working groups concluded that occupying Iraq would be far more difficult than invading it. Even Bush H. said the same in his memoirs!!! Wolfowitz either didn’t notice this evidence or he chose to not believe it. Rumsfeld even reprimanded representatives of the Defense Department for attending war simulating games to determine the best and worst case scenarios with emphasis on civil disorder. Why? The information would probably weaken the case for a pre-emptive war of choice. It also was probably seen by the war proponents as an anti-war undertaking.
Instead of using the invaluable information available to us, we were told the Iraqis would welcome us with flowers. Instead of using the two extra divisions requested by generals inside the Pentagon, “we went in with the minimum force to accomplish the military objectives which was a straightforward task…and then we immediately found ourselves shorthanded in the aftermath. We watched people dismantle and runoff with the country basically,” said Army Secretary Thomas White. But, remember on April 11, 2003 when Rumsfeld was asked why US soldiers were taking no action to stop looting he said “freedom is untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things….. stuff happens.” If Rumsfeld had read any of the post war planning for the occupation of Iraq he would have known that looting was a prelude to the unraveling of a society and to the deaths of American soldiers.
Richard Clarke has said Rumsfeld e-mailed the Iraqi army and told them they were going to invade and “to not resist… lay down your arms and run…and in doing so we would take care of you.” As we all know now that one of Bremer’s 1st orders on May 23, 2003 was to disband the entire Iraqi army without the care to rid it of the real personnel that would make problems. Perhaps this was in the hope to get cooperation from Shiite Muslims and minority Kurds, and they feared reconstructing the army could trigger a massive wave of reprisals. However, it backfired and thus began the 1st of many blunders after our tremendously successful beginning. Without enough troops we were unable to secure the borders, it threw many angry, defeated Iraqis out of work… thus a windfall for the budding insurgency. It concerns me that we would have a commander in chief that doesn’t even know how to go to war and arrogantly ignores the information for post war peace.
But the thing that frightens me the most is a leader unwillingly to admit his mistakes. This does not make me feel safer. It actually terrifies me. The lack of attention to details by the administration and maybe just a touch of arrogance has led to the needless death and wounding of our troops. This doesn’t seem “compassionate” or conservative to me or even close to respecting life. If this were Clinton he would have been tarred and feathered and I would be first in line with the tar.
And by the way, Bush pledged to get Osama Bin Laden, (which now is the most popular name for a newborn boys in Saudi Arabia). Why did they wait two months to “smoke” him out? Why did they on send in 11,000 troops? Well, I’m getting ahead of myself….. I will get to the Bin Ladens soon enough. Besides on August 30, Bush declared that the war on terror could not be won…but thankfully the next day Bush was back to his firm resoluteness that “we will win” the war on terror. Isn’t this a flip-flop? And while I am on resoluteness I will borrow the Fox news preface line “some people say”…that resoluteness even after a mistake is confirmed….is very typical of an alcoholic.
DIDN’T ANYONE SEE 911 COMING???:
Clinton’s administration had completed a far-reaching plan to eliminate al Qaeda a few weeks before Bush’s inauguration. They gave the plan to Bush administration assuming they would carry it out. Clinton trusted Bush to protect America. This proved nine months later to be a disastrous mistake…perhaps Clinton’s biggest. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger arranged ten briefings for his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. At the briefing on terrorism, Berger told Dr. Rice, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specially, than any other subject”. Condi lied to Times when asked if she could recall a briefing with Berger, she said she had not. However, the Dec. 30 2001, in a New York Times article she said Berger did give her a warning… and specifically Mr. Bin Laden’s brand of it would consume far more of her time than she had ever imagined. Also, Richard Clarke laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. She was so impressed she asked him to stay on as head of counter-terrorism. According to Time, Richard Clarke and the Bush team took Clarke’s warnings. But outgoing Clinton officials felt that “the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism”. In fact, Pickard, acting FBI director, said that Ashcroft told him “I don’t want to hear about it (al Qaeda threat) anymore. Sadly, The Bush administration had an obsession about missile defense. Evidently, this missile obsession was causing Clarke to just about blow a gasket. He had a plan and NO ONE was paying any attention!! Feb. 15, 2001 Hart-Rudman issued its third and final report on national security. The report warned that “mass-casualty terrorism directed against the US homeland was a serious and growing concern” and he said America was woefully unprepared for a catastrophic domestic attack and urged the creation of a new federal agency: “A National Homeland Security Agency.” And what did the Bush administration do? They IGNORED these warnings! Bush said on May 8, 2001, he and Cheney would lead and anti-terrorism task force and Bush himself would “periodically chair a meeting to review the efforts.” Bush never chaired such a meeting, because Cheney’s task force never actually met!! Clarke was still trying to do what he could in spite of the Bush administration. On April 30, 2001 Clarke presented a new version of the plan to Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby; the State Dept.’s Richard Armitage; DOD’s Paul Wolfowitz; and the CIA’s John McLaughlin. They were so impressed they had 3 more meetings…but the scheduling of the meetings went very slowwwwllllly. On July 10, 2001, about 5 months after the Hart-Rudman report had warned of catastrophic, mass casualty attacks Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams sent a memo to headquarters over concerns of middle Eastern students at an Arizona flight school….and suggested that al Qaeda operatives might be trying to infiltrate the US civil aviation system. He urged FBI to contact other agencies to see if they had information relevant to his suspicions. Had Williams memo been acted upon maybe the FBI and CIA would have connected the dots. Pretty sad isn’t it. This doesn’t make me feel safe at all with this administration in command. While the administration was still IGNORING vital security information such as William’s warnings, Clarke and CIA Director George Tenet were going nuts. In mid July “George Tenet briefed Condi Rice that there was going to be a major attack,” Time said. Finally, on July 16, 2001 deputies held their long over due terrorism integration meeting and they approved Clarke’s plan. Next it would go to the Principals Committee, composed of Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Rumsfeld….which was the last hurdle before the plan could reach the President. They tried to schedule the Meeting in August (2001), but too many principals were out of town, they had taken their cue from the President… he was recharging his batteries and was taking a deserved break from pressures of protecting America…he went to Texas for all of August. This was the longest presidential vacation in thirty-two years…by the way he was on vacation 42% of his 1st 7 months in office. The meeting would have to wait until Sept. 4, 2001. August 6, 2001 Tenet delivered a report to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”. The report warned that al Qaeda might be planning to hijack airplanes. But Bush was resolute, he continued to vacation. Actually, he did follow up while sitting in a golf cart the next day. Bush told reporters “I’m working on a lot of issues, national security matters”. Then the next day, he followed up and told reporters “I’ve got a lot of national security concerns that were working on---Iraq, Macedonia, very worrisome right now.” I hope families of the 911 victims don’t hear how he was concerned about Iraq and Macedonia and not what Tenet was trying to tell him. On August 16, 2001 the INS arrested Zacharias Mousaoui, a flight school student who seemed to have little interest in learning to take off or land a plane. The arresting agent wrote that “MOUSSAOUI SEEMED LIKE THE TYPE OF PERSON WHO COULD FLY SOMETHING INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER.” THIS MINNESOTA FBI AGENT WROTE THAT “A 747 LOADED WITH FUEL COULD BE USED AS A WEAPON”…he was hoping to get the FBI headquarters attention. And sadly another ironic or tragic twist is the security guard John P. O’Neil who died in the towers had been a very strong counter-terrorism specialist for years, one of the best, along with Richard Clark. He was a little rough around the edges, which probably caused him to not go for a promotion, so he applied for the job at the Towers to earn more money… but he too had been confident the al Qaeda were going to strike the summer or fall of 2001. The CIA did share information with the FBI on August 23, 2001 that two suspected terrorists were already in the country. But never fear, Bush discussed with reporters on August 25, 2001 the difference between his two dogs…possibly trying to appear to be one of the guys…and how he was going to “go fly-fishing with Spotty” his dog. Meanwhile, back in DC, Pickard, had been privy to a top secret counter-terrorism program in the FBI, and he called for increasing the terrorism budget and on SEPT. 10, 2001 ASCROFT TURN HIM DOWN FLAT. Again, how can anyone in the Bush administration face any of the families of the 911 victims? When Bush got back from vacation he was advised to adopt the plan on anti terrorism etc…then on Sept 9, 2001, Congress proposed $600 million for the anti-terror programs. The money was to come from Rumsfeld’s missile defense program and when he heard that $0.6 billion of his missile money would go to anti terror he threaten a presidential veto. On September 10, 2001, Ashcroft sent his Justice Dept. budget request to Bush for 68 different programs and none of it dealt with terrorism. However, just to let you know Ashcroft did pass a memo around listing his 7 top priorities and of course as you can guess, terrorism didn’t make the list. Then as we all know September 11, 2001 changed America forever. And strangely enough on Sept. 12 they started blaming Clinton trying to cover their tracks. Once again, very, very sad. My father would be so sicken by this. Bush isn’t a very reassuring Commander in Chief when he says comments like the following.
“I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.” Source: Federal Document Clearing House, Roundtable Interview of the President by White House Press Pool.” June 4, 2003
SAUDI CONNECTION:
This part probably makes me the most sick. Craig Unger, who wrote the book House of Bush, House of Saud, he also writes for the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair and is an analyst for terrorism and Saudi American relations in the oil industry, became horrified how the media covered or didn’t cover 911. This is the reason he wrote his book. The media, Time specifically, had an article entitled Out of the Blue referring to the surprise of the attack on the World Trade Center. Unger believes it was connected to the relationship of Bush Sr. that had been building for along time… for example, Prince Bandar had a key role in the Iran contra…he put his own money in a Swiss bank to help get around the congressional amendment “bone act”… (Prince Bandar is known as “Bandar Bush” and was the Ambassador to Iraq). He is the only person that can smoke a cigar inside any of the Bush homes) and curiously, had dinner at the White House on Sept. 13, 2001. Unger started to look into these connection more closely after the 911 attacks when he came across the Carlyle Group and he saw a number of Saudi’s in the group…. he said this was the elephant in the living room that no one in the press covered. Unger realized that how could we wage war on terror if the President and family had close business relationships with Saudi’s (Bush family and friends have made a total of $1.4 billion doing business with Saudi’s) some of whom had been accused of funding terrorism. Interestingly, any past President can get the CIA daily briefings and most do not, except for George H, he does regularly ask for the report. A bit suspicious isn’t it, especially when two years after the attacks George H continued business ties with the Saudi’s. Also, James Baker’s law firm, who is a good friend of the Bush family is the defense lawyer for the Bin Ladens against the 911 families. Very strange isn’t. It makes you wonder who is working for whom? The connection between the Bush family and the Saudi’s makes me very uneasy and knowing that the Bin Laden family was not detained after 911. But instead they were given Presidential approval to fly out of the country.…and more peculiar, why weren’t they afraid to fly when everyone else was at that time??? A few other curious concerns with Bin Ladens are Maj. James R. Bath’s whose name was magic markered off the same National Guard report stating he and Bush failed to get their physical etc…. so how does this connect to Bin Laden’s??? Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens and Bath invested in many of George W. business ties: Arbusto, Harken Energy etc. The BinLadins invested in several defense companies…..so, if there was a war I guess they all would benefit…and yes Halliburton was part of the business entanglements and I can’t forget Ken Lay…who made the largest campaign donations to the Bush campaign. They all also, had business investments in the Carlyle group, especially the defense division. Which may answer the weak Afghanistan attack and slow effort to smoke Oasma out of the cave. Or is it because of the gas pipeline going from the Caspean Sea through Afghanistan that Halliburton and Ken Lay would benefit greatly. Ironically or tragically only the British Press covered it. Yes it is very complicated and I may have a few players and companies in the wrong place, but one thing is for sure the Bush and Bin Laden’s had to protect their business concerns. Investigate for yourself all about the Carlyle group and the players. Is that why Bush had to create a Bin Laden diversion?…by invading Iraq?
911 COMMISION REPORT:
So with all that said, it should be no surprise that in the 18 months following the 911 attacks Bush prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States. Richard Clarke tried to start an investigation on Sept. 12 and all Bush wanted to “talk about was how they can connect Iraq to the attacks”. Bush would not take any questions about al Qaeda. Rumsfeld piped in and said “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan”…huh? How about that cave? And keep in mind after other horrible national tragedies, such as Pearl Harbor and Kennedy’s assassination, the very same or next day the government started and encouraged and investigation. Not the Bush government. They fought the congress and then with pressure from the 911 families he had to give in. Duh! And you have to ask yourself why 28 pages of the report are not in the public document.
“It reads like a mystery, a novel. It is well written.” Bush’s assessment of the 911 Commission’s report, to an AP reporter in Crawford, Texas, July 26.
INTERNATIONAL RESPECT:
• Bush took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history). He has run the most careless foreign policy in living memory, squandering the global good-will after 911 bringing America from leading the world to America against the world. Paul Klugman, in his book the Great Unraveling, believes the last three years will be a shameful episode in our history.
• Bush is the first US President to have a majority of the people in Europe (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace. A cousin in Sweden said she hates Bush. A friend in France, Yannis, said he "hates Bush".
• He is creating angry young Arabs by witnessing the horrific war in their country.
• He basically rendered the United Nations irrelevant.
• He seemed to view the Geneva Convention as an annoyance. He refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Convention.
• Bush is the first US President in history to have the people of South Korea more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea
• He withdrew from the World Court of Law.
• He has dissolved more international treaties than any President in US history.
“I am the master of low expectations.” Source: Agence France Presse, “Bush Says Middle East Summit’Met Expectaions’, 6/4/03.
“The world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership.” Source: The Boston Globe, Oct. 29, 2003
Wow, I certainly don’t seem to have any peace and I am not in one of his war zones. He is in denial, this extremely scary, which “some people say” denial is a symptom of…oh I won’t say.
JOBS and ECONOMY:
Under the Bush presidency, over 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost creating the highest unemployment of the past decade and worst economic record since Hoover’s Great Depression.
• He cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.
• He shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history.
• Bush entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category straight down. He spent the surplus handed to him and bankrupted the treasury.
• While Governor of Texas he also cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to a tune of billions of dollars in borrowed money.
• I understand jobs going over seas have been in the works for at least a decade and the 911 attack didn’t help nor does the war, but he has total responsibility of the war and all it’s problems it brings on himself!!! And maybe he shouldn’t have gone fly-fishing in Crawford in August 2001 and heeded the warnings about an attack…. maybe we wouldn’t be in the financial dilemma resulting from an attack.
• And ironically, he has cut health benefits for war veterans. This would be OK if everyone was sacrificing in the country, but he has made sure his contributors aren’t affected financially. And this is CONSERVATISM?
• And more sadly, the Bush administration ended The Equal pay Initiative and removed fact sheets about equal pay for women workers from federal government websites. He can erase info from sites but he can’t erase his record on opposing stronger enforcement of equal pay laws and dropping sex discrimination lawsuits. Bush FY 2004 budget tried to cut the funding for after-school programs that benefit one-half million children and their parents.
• Bush opposes raising the minimum wage.
• Overtime pay is threatened if you make over $23,000. This will affect primarily women who are all ready not receiving equal pay. This would take us back to the days of 1930’s… the Fair Labor Standards. He may have already implemented this new policy, where employers can choose between overtime pay and comp time pay or a bonus or something…now if you were an employer wouldn’t you try to get your employees to take the comp pay…no standards there.
I don’t think that if you are in the middle class the economy has turned the corner.
ENVIRONMENT:
Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America’s environment for more than thirty years. He will go down in history as the worst environmental president.
This administration takes extreme care to use illusive sentences to plant ideas. They are able to lie in full view with metaphors and rhetoric such as mushroom cloud.
• He uses clever rhetoric and words such as Clear Skies Initiative. It undercuts protections against soot, smog, and toxic mercury, weakens pollution safeguards and relies on voluntary action from power plants to curb carbon dioxide emissions. Yet it does nothing to clear the skies. He believes by using the right words, he can continue to deceive the American people.
• He has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country’s air, water, public lands and wildlife.
• His administration has cut funds for cleaning toxic waste sites by 45%
• While Governor of Texas he changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. He replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog-ridden city in America. While enriching his corporate cronies and political contributors he lowered the quality of life for everyone else. Generations of Americans will pay for this corporate greed. Now after three years of ferocious attacks on US environmental laws his policies have are already diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.
• He walked out on the Kyoto Accord. He believes the jury is still out of the science global warming.
EDUCATION:
Bush has FAILED TO PROVIDE funding he promised for the most ironically named program, “No Child Left Behind”. Those very words are just one of hundreds of examples of how the Bush administration cloaks their pet political or corporate projects in deceptive rhetoric, which has been so craftily used to enable them to say one thing and do another.
• Bush supports vouchers that threaten public schools, while favoring a plan that will dismantle the Head Start program. Ironically, my great grandfather was extremely involved and a pivtol person in creating public education in Ohio.
• Bush has a new formula for financial aide (Pell grants) that will affect 84,000 low income students... So, isn’t this contrary to his point about the minimum wage discussion in the last debate… how he tried to tell us education will be the answer to better jobs…He says one thing and does another!
“We want results in every single classroom so that one child is left behind” –Bush speaking in Little Rock, Arkansas, Nov. 10, 2003
I hope this was just another of hundreds of his miss-speaks.
CIVIL RIGHTS:
Last week Bush said “I think whoever is president should guard your civil liberties, must not erode your rights in American”. Then on October 15, 2004 Bush taught 3 Oregon teachers a new lesson in irony ...or tragedy. Thursday night they were removed from a Bush speech and were threatened with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said “Protect our Civil Liberties”. This is very scary!!!
Even more disconcerting is the following incident.
“All Americans need to watch what they do.”
----White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Sept. 26, 2001
This response was to a remark by Bill Maher, host of ABC’s Politically Incorrect, who said shortly after 911, “Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly,” whereas lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away –that’s cowardly.” While I think it is an inappropriate comment, Ari Fleischer’s comment seems like he is trying to silence dissent in the media. Worse yet, Ari Fleischer’s comment was removed from the White House website--- kind of censorship on censorship… Ashcroft frequently will refer to comments like Maher’s as treason and terrorism. Other examples of where the “right” media does the governments bidding is a few weeks after 911, Washington Post columnist Micheal Kelly wrote that pacifists that oppose the war “are on the side of the [terrorists] murderers”; Ann Coulter accused liberals of “20 years of treason”; Fox News host Bill O’Rielly accused antiwar protestors of being “un-American”; Rush Limbaugh referred to 3 prominent Democrats as “Abdullah Begala,” “Mustafa Stephanopoulos,” and “Sahib Carville.” These slurs seem to be as much against Arab and Muslim names signifying they are synonymous with “enemies” and “terrorist.” Joking in private is one thing but a bit frightening in a public news media.
• Bush has packed courts with far-right judges.
• Bush pushed the passage of the Patriot Act, which was originally about 800 pages and so most congressmen did not read it. Yes, some of the laws are needed, but in the name of security other non- related rights are being abused.
• He supports its infinite extension under the pretext of an endless war on terror.
• Bush also supports repressing Americans by removing from citizens our inherent right to privacy and our constitutional rights of freedom of speech and due process.
• He has removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president.
• Ashcroft offers little support for affirmative action. His Justice Department is systematically undermining affirmative action programs and anti-discrimination laws.
• Let me throw in the back door draft under civil liberties…. “Some people say that those who support this administration should relieve the National Guard units in Iraq.”
Seriously, we have to now worry about the reinstatement of the draft with whomever is president…due to this administration’s lack of planning and ability to wage war…..we will need so many troops to fill the boots.
There are so many frightening things about Ashcroft it is too numerous to write here….but as you can see it could be way off from what and American would think OUR government would do. But, after reading all that they have done in other areas of their idea of governing I think we should be very very, concerned. Fortunately, Kerry will end the ‘Era of Ashcroft’.
Maybe when Bush miss-spoke to David E. Sanger, May 28, 2002 it was a Freudian slip. He said “We hold dear what our Declaration of Independence says, that all have got uninaliennable rights, endowed by a Creator.” But he didn’t mis-speak when he said “A DICTATORSHIP would be a lot easier, there’s no question about it.” Source: Business Week Online, “A Gentleman’s “C” for “W”, Richard Dunham, July 30, 2001.
SOCIAL SECURITY:
I can’t imagine what he would do to this………God only knows. At one time he pledged not to touch social security surplus… On March 3, 2001 he said “We’re going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus.” And then he SPENDS the Social Security surplus…The New York Times reported that “the president’s new budget uses Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs every year through 2013, ultimately diverting more than $1.4 trillion in Social Security funds to other purposes.” [The New York Times, 2/6/02] Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security would hit older women especially hard, because money would be siphoned out of the system reducing the benefits and replacing it with private investments that are risky and unlikely to make up the difference. I imagine the younger family members will just have to house their aging parents, which is, I suppose, how it should be.
HEALTH CARE:
After 4 years of the Bush administration, health care costs have risen dramatically, including the price of prescription drugs, leaving 40 million Americans unable to afford health insurance. Making it illegal to buy drugs from Canada is such a joke…no one believes it is for our own safety, my God the drugs they use come from other countries like Sweden…. Do they think we are really that stupid? We all know it is just another padding of the wallet for pharmaceutical political contributors and at the expense of Americans health…how compassionate and Christian is that?
GAY MARRIAGES AND ABORTION:
The more I learn about Bush and his corporate and political friends and what type of a man he is I am convinced these two topics are just a smoke screen and a way to secure a large base of supporters as the 1% of the wealthiest American’s votes would not get him re-elected. It breaks my heart to see very religious people being scammed, but it just doesn’t surprise me any more what Bush and his friends would do. I do not approve of abortions. I do disapprove of government control over women and the use of this ploy as a way to widen their base. It actually disgusts me. I am a Christian who does not believe for a second that Jesus would approve of any of Bush’s policies. I thank God that Kerry is running for President and I pray nightly that he wins and saves this country from any more damage that this administration can do to this country. The rhetoric of pro-life or pro-choice is simply the wrong words to convey the real situation. I do not think Jesus would approve of the 152 executions and that Bush entertained friends at a party with his imitation of a Born Again Christian, Carla Fay Tucker, begging him for clemency. What a “regular likeable guy”. Governor Bush holds the record for most executions in the Western world. There have been 111 death row inmates released due to DNA. How can Bush have it both ways…Sadly, Bush’s pro-life mantra is so empty. And I ask you when a friend of mine and his wife had abortions, natural abortions that is, due to agent orange exposure in Viet Nam where was the Pro-life concern then? He hasn’t voted since coming home from Viet Nam, but he will definitely be voting on November 2 and I can be assured he will not vote for the “likeable”, life-of-the party guy.
“Bush said he…favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question.” [The Nation, 6/15/00, quoting the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal] From Then on he said “I am pro-life.” [Governor Bush, 10/3/00]
Isn’t that another flip-flop?
Bush says gay marriage is a state issue….”The state can do what they want to do. Don’t try to trap me in this state’s issue like you’re trying to get me into.” [Governor Bush on “Larry King Live,” 2/15/00
“Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife.” [President Bush, 2/24/04]
Could this be another flip-flop? What do you think?
I do happen to agree on his 2/24/04 quote, but it is not the federal governments responsibility to define marriage...it is the church’s responsibility, which as we all know is not constitutionally part of our government. Our forefathers came to this country for that very reason…. you know the history lesson about Separate Church and State.
WOMENS RIGHTS GOING BACK DECADES:
Don't worry I won’t go into all the underhanded ways the government is taking us back to a more compliant time…even though it appears to be a little like the countries policies we are trying to free. For some of you I may enclose a copy since you may not have been on the original mailing. I must say I am extremely proud of my daughter, Kristin, for trying to enlighten her women friends. She has received many, many positive responses and several not so. It is puzzling to me that women will so willingly give up their rights and not even address these very important issues. Some say it is against God’s plan and as you can see Bush’s pro-life mantra so contradicts his actions that those words become so empty. His actions to me are a blatant disregard for life. Some of it is a “bunch of crap” and I agree that what Bush has done is a “bunch of crap” and that is why she and I are desperately trying to get this information out. I am sure the countries where women’s rights have been so stunted, they wish someone had spoken up earlier. I say women wake up and research the real issues and not be fooled by their smoke screens. If I have offended anyone I do apologize but you must look at Bush and what his real choices are ….this definitely reflects his character and his true beliefs.
Robert Kennedy so well described what is happening to our beloved country in his paper on “Crimes Against Nature”, what he writes about our environment is an eye opener. But bothered me the most about his article was the connection to our democracy being threaten through this:
“administration’s attacks on science and the law have put something even greater at risk. Americans need to recognize that we are facing not just a threat to our environment but to our values, and to our democracy. Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism leads to democracy. But we’ve seen from the Bush administration, the latter proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government. America’s most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, “I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most.” Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that “the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism---ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power. Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures. Corporate capitalists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush competition by controlling government. The rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930’s offers many information lessons on how corporate power can undermine a democracy.”
I’ve said this administration has sold America’s soul to the highest bidder. Is this what we want to leave our children? So, when we hear people say “If you are not making over $200,000 you should not be voting for four more years of this government that totally disregards what is best for it’s people not just the upper 1%. Keep in mind Bush holds the all-time US and world record for the most corporate campaign donations. Bush’s biggest campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history…Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation. He spent more on polls and focus groups than any President in US history. Kerry has never taken donations from PAC groups.
“You are an impressive crowd of haves and have mores. Some people call you elite, I call you my base” --Bush greeted a white tie group of business friends.
If you made it this far, I am forever grateful, however if you are now fuming because your information is so opposed to what I have researched and written then I say please for a moment stop thinking this is anti-American and remember there were many times in history people should have tried harder to help inform people of what their government was up to. Differing views is patriotic. That is the cornerstone to our freedom. More hopefully, I hope you are fuming and outraged because we have been so duped by this administration. It is not a Democrat or Republican concern it is our very democracy that is threatened!!! I URGE all of us to continue to learn and inform each other, because without the use of many sources other than mainstream media, we will not get all the truth…..I hope and pray to God that all of this is so wrong…but sadly, there is so many different sources coming to the same conclusions. That is so very frightening to me. This is so unprecedented. It has taken me a very long time to investigate and research to do my best to help us and the country I love. It takes a lot of time to research, which I think is why so many of us just get a few sound bytes and make very crucial decisions based on weak information….or worse yet vote how our spouse or friend is voting. A sign in my classroom reads, “YOUR CHOICES REFLECT YOUR CHARACTER”. May God bless you and our country."
I don't know the person who wrote this, it is presented here for you to read, research and observe.
Take care...
