First, some important words:
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
T. Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149; May 7, 1918
First they came for the Jews. I was silent. I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists. I was silent. I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I was silent. I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller
And now for some partisan stuff
These words are not my own, but the sentiments match mine pretty well (the writer will remain anonymous until he gives the OK to cite his name)
I hate Bush's failed policies and what he is turning America into. The Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs and Horowitz's and all the divisive, Bible-pounding, self-righteous right wingers who have flocked to his cause in a paranoic fortress-mentality feeding frenzy are just scary. My god, they even have Maulkin justifying the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. They have accused Kerry, a war hero, of being under serving of his medals based on the flimsiest of lies while a man who did everything he could to avoid service in Vietnam is hailed as our savior from terrorism. Max Chamblis lost 3 limbs in Vietnam serving his country and he is called "clumsy" by these "Americans". We have yet to see Bush attend one single funeral of a slain serviceman from Iraq.
These Republicans have no honor nor do they adhere to any conservative principal. They have driven the budget deep into the red and engaged the US in a war that has no sign of ending anytime in the near future based on the weakest of pretenses. People are dying there every day and for what? Freedom? Democracy? We, our tax dollars, are killing women and children in Iraq and wounding many many more. We have destroyed any credibility we may have had in the Middle East: in Turkey, Bin Laden is more popular than Bush. We are losing allies in Iraq (we lost Costa Rica today) and the burden of paying for this war is falling squarely on the American taxpayer. Worse, on the taxpayers' children because of the deficit.
The only thing the Republicans are interested in is power and power only. There is no agenda. There is only fear. The present Republican party looks more like the party of totalitarians than the party I grew up knowing.
I hate everything he stands for: fear, aggression, lies, deceit, corporatism, radicalism, and religiosity.
The following is a “laundry list” of reasons why George W. Bush *is* unfit and unworthy to be our president and why the people in his administration are equally unfit and unworthy of their positions: (mostly compiled by another who shall remain anonymous until she OKs the use of her name)
• Texas redistricting done at the behest of Tom DeLay, who's been doling out illegal PAC contributions to candidates for state offices, in collusion with Dubya while Dubya was governor of Texas
• A war on free speech that denies people access to their own elected officials -- confining people who disagree with administration to "free speech zones" that are as much as a mile away from the president or his quizlings. Now the McCain-Feingold Act is being used as a club against filmmakers whose films mention political candidates, by arguing that because political candidates are the subjects of/mentioned in these films, the cannot be shown within 60 days of the elections (think Fahrenheit 9/11)
• The Medicare prescription drug scam, which confuses the hell out of seniors through its unbelievably byzantine system of coverage and which was pushed through Congress by an administration that lied about how much it would cost US taxpayers and the benefit it would provide to seniors
• Lies about the buildup to the Iraq war and the incomprehensibly ineffective way it was executed -- wasting 1,000 US lives and at least 10,000 Iraqi civilian lives and costing nearly $100 billion of US taxpayer money in a mere 18 months to subdue a nation that presented no threat to the United States. Now the US is trapped in an unwinnable war with a foe that increases exponentially precisely because the biggest buck caught in the "flypaper" strategy used to rationalize the war is the US itself.
• The invasion of Afghanistan and the pathetic manner in which that war has been conducted over the past two and a half years -- ludicrous to the point that wacko vigilante secret-ops poseurs can march about the streets of Kabul kidnapping people and torturing them without ever being distinguished from "regular" US military and intelligence operatives
• Broad-based patterns of torture, abuses, and murders of civilian detainees -- including women and children
Intelligence operations in which it's permissible to kidnap the young children of suspects and detain them indefinitely, using them as leverage in the interrogation of their family members
• The "Bush doctrine," which was crap to begin with and has slid downhill since its implementation
• The erosion of reproductive rights for women -- including allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions, denying women access to the "morning-after" pill, and legislative prohibitions on certain types of medical procedures
• Erosion of environmental protections, all to the benefit of corporations -- corporations that are, coincidentally enough, GOP donors
• The censorship/redaction and excessive editing of scientific reports that do not hew to the line of the current administration
• The secret and indefinite detentions of more than 1,000 US citizens and residents without allowing them access to due process of law and has resulted in people being locked up for as long as three years without a single charge levied against them
• A culture of secrecy that allows Dick Cheney's energy task force to deny access to its records, which include information on US energy policy influence by corporations such as Enron ... a White House that refuses to provide documents to its own tasks force on 9/11 ... "lost documents" and foot-dragging regarding the president's own National Guard service records
• The USA PATRIOT Act, which was whipped up in less than six weeks and brought more than 350 pages of prepackaged legislation to legislators just hours before it was voted on and that stands for the everything that's wrong about the Bush administration's view of civil liberties
• The switch-and-bait promise of $15 billion to combat AIDS, which turned out to be an opportunity to cut funding of already-effective HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs in favor of faith-based abstinence programs that do not work but whose implementation favor religious groups in good standing with the administration
• The theocratization of the US, including the use of tax dollars to support "faith-based" initiatives and pandering to religious conservatives through tying up legislators on a wacky amendment to deny groups of people from equal Constitutional protections
• The No Child Left Behind Act which, ironically (and tragically) risks every child being left behind
• Disregarding the UN, international law/treaty/cooperation in general; the bullying of other nations (allied or not)
• GWB has turned down every invitation to visit the NAACP since becoming President (his only visit came on the campaign trail of his bid for appointment to the Office of the President), may not seem like much, I personally just have a hard time with someone who will not meet with such an established & generally respected group
• I also have some issues with his and his administration’s connection with PNAC; the way he came to the Office of the President; the way his administration exploits people’s fears/concerns of terrorists to their political advantage; the coincidental timing of [vague] warnings
• Wasting a surplus that could have been used in a time of need (such as after a terrorist attack or a drastic downturn in the markets); tax-cuts that benefit the already financially secure & disadvantaging the financially struggling; doing very little to actually help the struggling cope with the downturn in the economy; while not being the cause of the downturn, certainly acting in such a way that has hurt it more than helped-well, hurt the working class, working poor & many middle class people
• Going back on promises to survivors & family members of victims of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks re: financial help (NYFD & NYPD are still struggling financially and the funding GWB promised hasn’t arrived and doesn’t look to)
• Creation of a worthless Department of Homeland Security and not even attempting to do anything to fix the FBI & CIA (and indeed setting the CIA up to take the fall for the Bush Admin.’s bad policies
Are you still here? Then I highly recommend that you visit these web sites:
Project Vote Smart, a non-partisan helpful guide to general info about who wants to represent you at the state and national levels
The Electoral Vote
US Troop Casualties in Iraq
Iraqi Civilian Casualties
US Nat’l Debt Clock
About the media and a few decent news sources:
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Media Matters
ACLU
People for the American Way
The New York Times
The Washington Post
Salon.Com
(Foreign news outlets report very well on US nat’l news, covering stories our media either glosses over or ignores. The overall quality of Journalism particularly in Britain & Canada is very good.)
The Guardian
The BBC
The CBC
(This one is just funny, except when the “fake” news begins to resemble the “real” news.)
The Onion
Some interesting blogs from some well-informed (and often entertaining) folks
This Modern World
Atrios
dailykos
The Memory Hole
Jesus's General (political humor/satire)
This is some important information I think you should know:
U.S. has false al-Qaeda view, ex-agent says
excerpts:
Most Americans have a false idea of the shadowy, worldwide terrorist network led by al-Qaeda, according to a former CIA operative who collected the life histories of almost 400 members of the movement.
The stereotype that these terrorists are poor, desperate, single young men from Third World countries, vulnerable to brainwashing, is wrong, Dr. Marc Sageman told an international terrorism conference in Washington last week.
Most Arab terrorists he studied were well-educated, married men from middle-or upper-class families, in their mid-20s and psychologically stable, said Sageman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Many of them knew several languages and traveled widely.
This little tidbit was provide to me via a BBS (the remarks after the link are not mine, but I did have much the same reaction [the name of the person I’m quoting will remain anonymous until he gives the OK to cite it].)
State Dept website lists countries where al Qaeda is active
Looks like the site went up in early October of 2001. Note the list of countries at the bottom, including:
India
Iran
Ireland
Italy
Oops, what's missing there...it's on the tip of my tongue.
Regarding Iraq:
Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."
W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.
"We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."
…
"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."
General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.
Bush did not mention the intelligence report at the rally, but White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he disagreed with its pessimistic assessment.
"The Iraqi people are proving that those scenarios are wrong by the progress that they are making to build a better future," McClellan told reporters.
Regarding the safety of the Highways in the skies:
The Bush administration wants to trim the Federal Aviation Administration's budget for buying new air traffic control equipment at a time when more planes are in the air.
Yes, something sinister *did* happen in Florida and it doesn’t seem like its getting better (reports from earliest to most recent):
Report 1
Report 2
Report 3
Report 4
Report 5
How much do you know about Valerie Plame? An undercover CIA agent outed by, well, amazingly, there is a serious lack of investigation. Yep, CIA outed, mission destroyed, matter of national security, but where is the outrage? Where is the intense investigation?
Here is an interesting report:
July 25, 2004
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Dario Cruz has lived in the United States for 16 years, but just became a citizen last week as he and about 200 other immigrants were naturalized.
One of the things he had always wanted to do was register to vote, but when he was offered the chance to do that right outside the ceremony, he knew something wasn't right -- the place on the form where you're asked to choose Democrat, Republican or independent was already filled out.
I’d like to take this opportunity to provide you with some info about John Kerry
Navy: Kerry medals approved properly
The Navy's chief investigator concluded Friday that procedures were followed properly in the approval of Sen. John Kerry's Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals, according to an internal Navy memo.
Vice Adm. R.A. Route, the Navy inspector general, conducted the review of Kerry's Vietnam-ear military service awards at the request of Judicial Watch, a public interest group. The group has also asked for the release of additional records documenting the Democratic presidential candidate's military service.
Judicial Watch had requested in August that the Navy open an investigation of the matter, but Route said in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press that he saw no reason for a full-scale probe.
Bet the Swift Boat Veterans of Liars & Obfuscators are not happy about that! The official Kerry site
Some stuff from NYTimes
Some stuff from the official DNC site
In conclusion: John Kerry for President! Get the brown-shirts and jackboots out of the White House. Let’s live up to the lofty, noble & respectable ideals this country was supposedly founded on. (And if you wanna call me a pinko-commie leftist tree-hugging liberal dove, then I guess I’ll just have to reply: Hey, if I have to chose between being a war-mongering fascist or a peace-loving hippie, then pass the patchouli.)
