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Grubble Grubble
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004 :::
Warning...
If you are a hard-core, died in the wool, Bush-should-be-elected-god-to-avoid-the-middle-man sort of person, you may wish to consider skipping over this post.
This post is biased. This post is anti-Bush and anti-Republican. If you disagree with me, that is your right as an American. I have bled and spilled blood to defend your right to your opinion. At this juncture, however, I just really don’t give a flying crap as to what it is. As Jimmy Carter so eloquently put it, I consider this a fight for this nation’s soul.
First, I must preface with some expository information about myself. My father was vice-president of more than one bank in his lifetime. Suffice it to say, I had Republican leanings as a child and was a proud member of the Young Republicans. After high school, I served my country in the armed forces.
However, when the religious right took control of the Republican Party, my tenure, and the tenure of my banker father, ended. I have always been raised to believe in a separation of church and state. I have also been raised to accept that sometimes that is at the convenience of the state, but that is a different diatribe altogether. When the Republicans declared themselves the party of Christian values, I, as an American and as a Jew, had to say goodbye to the Republicans.
Over the last two decades, I have seen the Republicans evolve, devolve really, into a party of greedy, criminal-minded fascists. Gone are the days when the Republican leadership in Congress stood up and decried the criminal actions of a Republican President (Nixon). When men of character realized that their man was wrong and needed to be punished. Gone are the days when the Republican Party stood for personal growth and less governmental control for all Americans.
Today, Americans are fighting a war that was based on a series of lies for an administration that steadfastly refuses to admit the truth. NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION HAVE BEEN FOUND! No evidence of a program capable of producing anytime in the foreseeable future weapons of mass destruction has been found. Leaders, including Republicans, prior to George II have known that Saddam poses NO IMMEDIATE THREAT to the world.
He would scream and rant about how he was going to destroy America. So what? Gaddafi used to do the same thing in the 80’s. If we deigned to respond at all, we would drop a bomb somewhere near him and he would bluster about how he was still alive and then he would shut up again for a while. Saddam followed this same pattern.
On September 11, 2001, a terrorist organization, al Qaida, under the command of Osama bin Laden, attacked targets in the United States. We then declared war on al Qaida and terrorism in general. Osama was living at the time in Afghanistan. So, we overthrew the Taliban regime and began hunting Osama.
Then a funny thing happened. We stopped looking for Osama. Suddenly, we declared that Iraq was the dangerous man who was responsible for 9/11. Suddenly, we turned our attention away from Osama and attacked the sovereign nation of Iraq, who had no ties to the al Qaida terrorists.
Can someone tell me why?
Can someone tell me why we have 18,000 American troops in Afghanistan looking for Osama, who is the proven leader of the al Qaida terrorist group that attacked us, and over 140,000 troops in Iraq, which time and time again cannot be tied to the attacks?
There is an old joke: A very near-sighted man is looking for his glasses under a street lamp when a stranger happens upon him. The stranger asks the near-sighted man what he is doing and he tells him. The stranger then asks the near-sighted man where he lost his glasses. The near-sighted man points over toward some bushes in a dark area and tells the stranger that he lost them over there. “Well, then why are you looking for your glasses over here?” asks the stranger.
“Because the light is better over here.” replies the near-sighted man.
Why hunt in the dark for a man you may never find when you can politically make yourself look better by attacking a man who cannot run from you?
We claimed to be defending a U.N. Resolution that even the U.N. did not want us defending. How much more tenuous can we get? We do not have a coalition of nations. In fact, this war has alienated us from the rest of the world. Our reputation has been damaged and I sometimes wonder if it can ever be redeemed. If Bush is re-elected, I would say no.
And what civil liberties have we lost as a result? Benjamin Franklin once said that anyone who is willing to give up freedom for security deserves neither. Isn’t that exactly what Bush is asking of us?
The Patriot Act gives the government the right to access your private records (medical, student, even library) without a warrant, or even probable cause, and they don’t have to tell you. Since when is what we are reading a matter of national security? How long before we are told what is “not acceptable” to read?
As long as the government classifies it as “intelligence purposes” the Patriot Act gives them the right to wiretap American citizens without warrant or probable cause. Patriot gives the government a right to secretly search your home or business without first advising you. The government does not even have to show that searching our private records is related to criminal activity.
Surveillance can be conducted on Americans based on the books they read, the websites they visit, the letters they write… Is this American Democracy? No, this is Fascism. This is Soviet Communism. This is Naziism!
Does anyone remember Operation TIPS? This was the brainchild of John Ashcroft. It was to be “test marketed” in 8 cities with a total population of 24 million people. The idea was to recruit one million volunteers, who work in jobs that give them access to private homes and spaces, to spy on their fellow Americans and report any suspicious activities.
That is a 1:24 ratio. The Stasi (Soviet secret police) did not have that many people informing for them at the height of Communism. I am just glad that this program was exposed to light and killed. By the by, for those that grouse about postal rates, the head of the postal service stated that no postal workers would take part in this program. Kudos to the postal workers.
Iraq and 9/11 aside, this administration has been systematically weakening what America is.
Our energy policy was basically set by the oil industry. If Cheney has nothing to hide on this subject, why did a lawsuit requesting those records have to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court? Since when did we become a government of secrets and cover-ups?
This administration continuously tries to put its own religious values on all of America. First, Bush is still trying to give government money to programs that offer faith-based counseling. I am not against faith-based initiatives, just as long as they are not supported by a secular government.
Bush has steadfastly fought against stem cell research, claiming that it was tantamount to human cloning. He claims that stem cell research creates children just to exploit them medically. This is just not true. Blank cells are created in a lab.
I do find some irony here, however. It was Ronald Reagan who first let the religious right find a power-base in the Republican Party. It is the seeds he sewed that stopped the research that could have gone on to help him as he slipped into Alzheimer’s. I do not revel in this. I find it sad.
Bush cannot directly end abortion in this country, but he is trying several backdoor methods to make it illegal. He has helped pass laws giving legal status to fetuses and making it a separate crime to harm a fetus when harming the mother. While I believe that those who would harm a pregnant woman should be punished to the full extent of the law, I do not agree with Bush’s desire to make abortion a crime.
Now he is trying to bring the full weight of the government to bear against gay marriage. If the Republicans are the party that wants to limit government control in people’s lives, then why are they trying to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage? It has now failed once and the efforts are being renewed.
Why are they doing it? Because gay marriage is a sin against god. Well, what happened to keeping religion out of American politics? Oh, I forgot. This is Bush.
Who will be hurt by allowing gays the same basic rights we, as heterosexuals, take for granted? NO ONE! Unless it is going on in my bedroom, I don’t care.
The religious right is saying that if gay marriage is allowed, then it opens the door for polyamorous and polygamous marriages. I cannot see how since marriage is still a union of two committed individuals. My favorite argument is when the religious right claims this opens the door for bestiality and other, more loathsome forms of sexual degeneration.
In the end, these are the exact same arguments that were used to oppose inter-racial relationships. And in the end, we have proven that they are NOT valid arguments.
Bush and his Republican cronies are attacking Medicare by trying to push low-income seniors onto state Medicaid rolls. This would further burden already stressed state budgets.
Why is it considered good policy to make healthcare accessible to all Iraqis and socialist to make health care accessible to all Americans? The cost of healthcare is skyrocketing and more Americans are losing their coverage. Why?
During the Bush Administration, we have had the first job deficit in modern history. Jobs are being outsourced overseas and financial incentives are being given to American companies to do so. I do not blame Bush for outsourcing since it has been around for a long time, but I do blame him for accelerating it and not doing anything to stem the tide.
He claims to create new jobs, but let’s look at these jobs. Most of them are low-paying service industry jobs. How does it help a formerly middle-class tech worker to take a job that offers no insurance and cannot pay enough to support his/her family?
Ok, at this point, I am too spent to continue ranting. If this offended you, I am not sorry.
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