There are those Americans who think everything is fine and the past four years have been fine (except for 9/11) and the current president is fine.
And there are those of us who think we need a drastic change in the direction our democracy is moving, both because of and despite 9/11.
All of the reasons for believing one or the other fall into one or the other categories.
I’m voting for change. It’s as simple (and as complex) as that.
Apparently my perspectives as delineated in various posts, as well as comments here, became too complicated for some people to understand. And my pointers to non-partisan websites apparently really confused the already confused. So let me answer their question, “What were you thinking?” in the kind of simple terms they might be able to understand:
1. I link to non-partisan sites because I read about both sides and make my decisions based on who’s the bigger obfuscator. Bush wins by a mile. And so he loses my respect and anything else he might want to get from me. And those losers who thought I linked to those sites by mistake must be, well, let’s just say, shallow thinkers.
2. I have the deepest respect for the men and women of our armed forces who are prepared to defend this Constitutional democracy from attacks by other nations, groups, and individuals. I have the deepest compassion for those men and women of our armed forces who believed that they waged war on other soils for altruistic reasons and were mained and tortured for their bravery. I am afraid of those men and women of our armed forces who never learned to understand the difference between wars fought as a very last resort and wars fought for ego, oil, revenge, or any other reason based on self-serving lies and more lies — and who are not able to bring themselves to admit that military brainwashing only serves to turn them into fighting machines that can’t think for themselves when it comes to making moral decisions on the battlefield.
2. I do not want a president who
–a. believes that he is God’s co-pilot and an instrument of His will.
–b. insists that he will continue to pursue an unjust war against a country that never had the WMDs that were the reason he says he went to war in the first place
–c. will not admit he screwed up big time both nationally and internationally and internationally again.
–c. chooses the most manipulative and crooked advisors to lead him by the nose (or maybe even whisper in his ear)
–c. only could get Poland as the sole eastern European country to back up his stupid and exit-empty plan. (Even though I’m Polish and proud of it, I have to wonder: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING! It must have had a lot to do with money.)
So, even if I assume that the propaganda generated by each side cancels the other out, Kerry still comes out as the better presidential choice to:
— come up with carefully thought-out strategy to help fix the mess in Iraq and help get the country into a stable situation politically and economically
— rekindle the global respect and support we used to have for our efforts to do the above
— live his personal life by his religious beliefs BUT lead our country according to our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and democratic processes
— thoughtfully begin the long, difficult process of fixing what Bush has broken of the American infrastructure of due process, equal rights, personal choice, and economic possibilities, recognizing that everything is a trade off, and the goal is to find a balance so that no American feels disenfranchised, dismissesd, or ignored. This last one is going to be a long hard road because of the success of Bush’s single-minded, self-indulgent, and seriously misguided push toward his own peculiar vision of our country and its place in a global society
— implement a better and more effective system of protecting our country from attacks by terrorists, while at the same time, building coalitions to both help do that and increase our effectiveness as global peacebuilders rather than pre-emptive attackers
— make as one of his priorities efforts to dispel the polarization among Americans that Bush has successfully instituted with his short-term, narrow-minded, and disingenuous thinking and speaking processes
Now, we have to keep in mind that Kerry, as president, would have to lead within the context of the balance of powers provided by the Congress and the Supreme Court. As a lawyer, Kerry understands the importance of those checks and balances. Something Bush doesn’t seem to understand. What that means is, Kerry might hope and plan to do all sorts of great things, but he would not be an emperor, after all, and would not make unilateral decisions.
Well, you asked me, “What were you thinking???” Now you know.
You don’t have to follow my lead, boys. Just follow my links.
From the Cheney-recommended factcheck.org
Two Bush ads full of misleading and false statements ran more than 9,000 times in 45 cities last week.
Summary
Two misleading Bush ads accusing Kerry of supporting tax increases on gasoline and middle-class parents were running heavily last week. According to the Campaign Media Analysis Group of TNS Media Intelligence, which tracks TV ads in the top 100 markets, the two Bush ads accounted for nearly half of the estimated $16 million spent by Bush and the Republican National Committee during that week alone.
Both ads repeat claims we’ve repeatedly disputed here. They both attempt to portray Kerry as eager to raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers, which Kerry has said consistently he won’t do. One ad characterizes Kerry’s votes against proposed tax cuts as votes to “raise taxes,” an outright falsehood.
Click the link below for the full article:
http://www.factcheck.org/article286m.html
The “have-lesses” of America usually have their fingers on an important national pulse that the “have’mores” don’t have to care much about.
The United Auto Workers Union magazine, “Solidarity” offers some telling facts about the effects that the Bush regime has had on the hard workers of America. These are just a few of the article titles in their current issue:
“The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get…”
“Republicans Condem Bush”
“Things About John Kerry that George W. Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know”
“Things Bush Wants You to Forget”
There’s lots more good information here that the guys who are waging a futile war with me here don’t want to know. It’s about twenty against one (me) and I still haven’t given up. It’s the Xena in me.
Two former presidents of the UAW put in their pitch for Kerry:
[excerpt]
Why is this election so critical? Because George W. Bush has set a radical
The following excerpted from a open letter written by Brooke Campbell, whose younger brother was killed in Iraq. Read the whole thing here and watch the television ad she made to plead with Americans not to re-elect Bush.
[snip]
Ryan was scheduled to complete his one-year assignment to Iraq on April 25. But on April 11, he emailed me to let me know not to expect him in Atlanta for a May visit, because his tour of duty had been involuntarily extended. “Just do me one big favor, ok?” he wrote. “Don’t vote for Bush. No. Just don’t do it. I would not be happy with you.”
Last night, I listened to George W. Bush’s live, televised speech at the Republican National Convention. He spoke to me and my family when he announced, “I have met with parents and wives and husbands who have received a folded flag, and said a final goodbye to a soldier they loved.
[snip]
This is my reply: Mr. President, I know that you probably still “don’t do body counts,” so you may not know that almost one thousand U.S. troops have died doing what you told them they had to do to protect America. Ryan was Number 832. Liberty was, indeed, precious to the one I lost– so precious that he would rather have gone to prison than back to Iraq in February. Like you, I don’t know where the strength for “such pride” on the part of people “so burdened with sorrow” comes from; maybe I spent it all holding my mother as she wept. I last saw my loved one at the Kansas City airport, staring after me as I walked away. I could see April 29 written on his sad, sand-chapped and sunburned face. I could see that he desperately wanted to believe that if he died, it would be while “doing good,” as you put it. He wanted us to be able to be proud of him. Mr. President, you gave me and my mother a folded flag instead of the beautiful boy who called us “Moms” and “Brookster.” But worse than that, you sold my little brother a bill of goods. Not only did you cheat him of a long meaningful life, but you cheated him of a meaningful death. You are in my prayers, Mr. President, because I think that you need them more than anyone on the face of the planet. But you will never get my vote.
So to whom it may concern: Don’t vote for Bush. No. Just don’t do it. I would not be happy with you.
Campbell is a member of the Band of Sisters, a courageous group of military wives, mothers and family members from around the country who have come together to speak out about the Bush foreign policy and its impact on their lives and families. The Band of Sisters don’t just want their husbands and sons home, they want America to get Iraq right, and they’ve lost faith in George Bush to do that.
C’mon, all you mothers and wives and sisters who, in your hearts, know that sacrificing the men and women you love for this particular was is wrong. Dead wrong.
Bush sent them into the wrong country for the wrong reasons. Insisting that he will “stay the course” doesn’t make it the right course. There were no WMDs. Bush sent our troops to die for his delusions.
The Band of Sisters are taking their message of hope around the United States in the following weeks. General Wesley Clark launched the Band of Sisters tour on September 14 in Green Bay, Wisconsin and over the next month the Sisters will tour the country, visiting battleground states including Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico.
The sisters are working closely with General Clark – who will be appearing as a guest at many of the events – to bring the truth to millions of Americans concerned by President Bush
kenneth.huffmaster@shell.com
pking@kingsurety.com
grfischer@charter.net
jon@ravenstudios.ca
allones1810@hotmail.com
delsys@email.com
fsbmc@hotmail.com
vzn05zsf@verizon.net
parhead62@aol.com
Dennis.flanders@comcast.net
o_foley777@yahoo.com
Mkea4461@aol.com
All you pro-Bush guys (above and any others whom they send my way) who keep trying to convince me that you’re right and I’m wrong. You’re wasting your time. I’m nobody — I’m a nobody weblogger who likes to say what she believes up front. You don’t have to agree with me. I don’t have to agree with you. As a matter of fact, we will have to agree to disagree, ’cause none of us is going to budge a bit. And I don’t have any influence at all. So, go spend your time in a more worthwhile way, like keeping up with the truth on non-partisan web sites like these, which I got from here:
SpinSanity is a non-partisan, independent website dedicated to unraveling “the real story” from both campaigns.
The Center for Public Integrity is a non-partisan website that dedicates itself to investigative journalism in the public interest. It is a great place to go for economic analysis and ethical issues on a federal and state level.
Opensecrets.com tracks money in the political process. Find out who is giving to whom. You can also do this at the Campaign Finance Information Center
The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan group, dedicated to educating the public on the candidates and the issues. Not just for women.
Project Vote Smart provides non-partisan, relevant information to help you sort through all the information put out by the campaigns. Check out their voter self-defense manual.
And, of course, there’s alwayswww.factcheck.org.
Both Kerry and Bush are politicians trying to get elected. The difference is that Kerry thinks carefully before he acts; Bush acts without sufficient thinking. Kerry believes in God but doesn’t assume God advises him. Bush sees himself as the instrument of God. There are lots more differences like those — maybe too subtle for some people to get, but they are fundamental to the personalities and leadership styles of the two men. I’ll take Kerry’s leadership over Bush’s any day. I’ll also trust the advisors Kerry will surround himself with over Bush’s cronies any day.
So, if Kerry wins, you guys, I will send you all an I TOLD YOU SO! email covered with smiley faces.
If Bush wins, I’m going into hiding for the next four years so that I can pretend he doesn’t exist and that my country is not totally imploding. Then I’ll resurface when there’s a chance for me to participate in rebuilding America into what it’s supposed to be.
In the meanwhile, waste your time commenting away here. Makes me no nevermind.
She’s always been my role model, but I have to say that’s it’s pretty exhausting and time consuming defending myself and my beliefs against the onslaught in my comments.
OK, it’s not exactly an onslaught, but I’ll bet that post is the reason I’m getting between 30 and 40 hits a day — which hasn’t happened since I was hanging around the fringes of the “A” bloggers and getting interviewed by the NY Times.
It’s awfully hard to keep being nice to people who call me a hypocrite bitch. But I do believe in Christian charity and the necessity to hold up to the mirror of truth to the misguided and destructive nature of our very own Shrub.
And so, for all of those who keep telling me how they, as Vets, support Bush, I send them to these links, reminding them that we tend NOT TO SEE the world as IT IS, but rather AS WE ARE:
http://veteransforkerry.home.att.net/
http://usveteransfortruth.home.att.net/
http://veteransforkerry.home.att.net/truth_about__slime_boat_sailors_.htm
http://veteransforkerry.home.att.net/war_heroes_of_the_republican_par.htm
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Youmans_012804,00.html
I particularly like this site, which documents the way the Swift Boater guys had manipulated truths about Kerry and his service in Vietnam. Holy Moley! These guys need to be hooked up to lie detectors!! Although they probably believe their own lies; after all, it’s to their advantage to do so.
So, how about reading the account of Kerry and his Swift Boat by someone who was actually there on February 28, 1969 on the Dong Cung River: William Rood, also a Swift Boat officer.
He begins his article, (which was published in the Chicago Tribune) with this:
There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago–three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.
One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.
He also makes this telling statement:
Known over radio circuits by the call sign “Latch,” then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the task force commander, fired off a message congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a “shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy” and that it “may be the most efficacious method of dealing with small numbers of ambushers.”
Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry’s and now says that what the boats did on that day demonstrated Kerry’s inclination to be impulsive to a fault.
Our decision to use that tactic under the right circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of all three boat officers.
Let’s hope the truth will out.
Addendum: Whether we support Bush or Kerry, we all seem to be convinced we are in the know and in the right. (see discussion here).
Further discussion there is futile because:
1. We are what we believe.
2. We do not see the world as it is; we see it as we are.
3. One man’s fat slob (see comments here) is another man’s hero.
Vote for someone with conscience and compassion; with the intelligence, eloquence, and perspective to lead a nation that must be a crucial contributor to global cooperation; who has personally experienced the horrors of war; who believes in the separation of church and state; who is not in the pockets of the “haves and have mores.”
I started linking from a comment left on a previous post of mine, and discovered the Center for Media and Democracy, where it says:
Disinfopedia: It’s Wiki Cool
Big corporations and governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars on deceptive propaganda campaigns waged through front groups and industry-funded think tanks to sell wars (Iraqi National Congress), trash organic agriculture (Center for Global Food Issues), smear activists as terrorists (ActivistCash.com), tell the public that mad cow disease is no big deal (Harvard Center for Risk Analysis), and push right-wing policy agendas (Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and American Enterprise Institute, to name just a few). These well-funded and strategic disinformation campaigns mislead and confuse the press and the public and prevent social change. Identifying and exposing the thousands of individuals, corporations and PR firms behind this propaganda has been almost impossible — until now. The Center for Media and Democracy has launched a new on-line research project, the Disinfopedia, which uses innovative “wiki” technology to create a virtual community of collaborating citizen researchers and journalists. Visit the Disinfopedia, and join our growing team of online muckrakers.
So, I signed up for their weekly emails:
Welcome to the Weekly-Spin@prwatch.org mailing list! The Weekly Spin is a free email tip sheet compiled by the staff of PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) to help expose the public relations manipulations behind current news stories.
The Weekly Spin is excerpted each Wednesday from “Spin of the Day,” which is updated daily on our website. Current stories and archives of Spin of the Day can be found at http://www.prwatch.org/spin/index.html
Issues of our quarterly newsletter, PR Watch, are also archived on our website at http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues
Much of my 30 odd years in the workforce was spent creating propaganda of one sort or another. Spinning straw into gold, we called it. Marketing firms do it all of the time; that’s what getting consumers to buy stuff seems to require. But I wasn’t selling a product. I was selling ideas, policies, perspectives — for legislators, administrators, and educators. Luckily for my moral equilibrium, I believed in what I was selling most of the time. But it was still propaganda — knowing what not to say as well as how to positively and creatively manipulate words and images to reach the hearts, as well as the minds, of our “consumers.”
So, I’m am fascinated by the current flood of carefully crafted disinformation being churned out by those trying to get Bush re-elected. Information. Propaganda. Disinformation. It’s so easy to be confused by the flood of it all.
Now, what’s all this wiki stuff you ask? I still haven’t figured it out. I can barely keep up with Microsoft updates and weblogging.
It may well be that speaking the hard truth winds up hurting an honest Sinclair Exec, according to a post at talkingpointsmemo.com:
The DC Bureau chief of Sinclair Broadcasting, Jon Lieberman, is denouncing his employer’s plan to air an hourlong, unpaid Swift Boat ad later this week, according to the Baltimore Sun.
“It’s biased political propaganda, with clear intentions to sway this election … For me, it’s not about right or left — it’s about what’s right or wrong in news coverage this close to an election.”
Sinclair News VP Joe DeFeo has told Lieberman he risks being canned for speaking out and refusing to participate in the presentation of the ‘documentary.’
Which leads me to an email I got today:
Whatever happened to things like journalistic integrity, bipartisanship, even THE LAW? Sinclair Broadcasting Group seems to have forgotten these important aspects of broadcasting, and is forcing their 62 local stations to air the faux documentary
In 1990, I gave a speech to the members of the New York State Reading Association. I just found a copy in some papers I was throwing out. It was a good speech, and I ended it with these Concrete Blonde lyrics (originally by Leonard Cohen) from the soundtrack of Pump Up the Volume. My theme was the movie’s theme: Truth is a Virus. Talk Hard.
Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over.
Everybody knows that the good guys lost.
Everybody knows that the fight is fixed,
the poor stay poor and the rich get rich.
That’s how it goes.
Everybody knows the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows the captain died.
Everybody’s got this broken feeling
like their mama or their dog just died.
Everybody’s hands are in their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
or a long-stemmed rose.
Everybody knows.
That’s how it goes.
Everybody knows.
Everybody knows it’s now or never.
Everybody knows it’s me or you.
Everybody knows that you’ll live forever
when you have a line or two.
Everybody knows the deal is rotten:
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ coton
for your ribbons and bows.
Everybody knows.
Truth is a virus. Talk hard.
Elect John Kerry and change what the citizens of the next decade will know.