Category Archives: Politics

Anybody who has been in first grade knows that first the bully hits you, then he yells to get everybody’s attention so you can’t hit him back:

This is the second time in recent days that an individual associated with the Bush re-election effort has acknowledged working with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

It is difficult to move significant quantities of money from one pocket to another. Say, for example, you are the United States and you have a few thousand moldy million lying around, and you (or at least your leadership) wants to give it to good buddy Halliburton. People would look askance if you just handed it over directly. So you go find a small country that is ruled by an evil dictator, who is also an infidel. It helps that this evil infidel dictator is already killing his people pretty much on the whim of the day. You start a war, move in, and take out the evil dictator. Because he is already killing people, your actions fit well with the principles of compassionate conservatism, putting a lot of them out of their misery more quickly and liberating the rest. Also, because he is an infidel, you look like a crusader. Then you set up a new government that looks wise and experienced, but which, in fact, has no understanding of western-style cost accounting. You give them the money, and you let Halliburton send them invoices. They pay the invoices, money changes pockets, and you are a hero.

George Bush has announced that he is bringing the boys home,” thousands of American military people coming home to their families. Many — perhaps most — of the people who will be returning home are accompanied by their families in countries where our allies provide us a base of operations. These American bases in Europe and Asia are the friendly and supportive link between us and our allies.
We already know there are not enough soldiers to send to Iraq. When these military families come home, the military member will get a new assignment to Iraq, unaccompanied of course, since Iraq is a combat zone to which spouses and children cannot travel.
That is, President Bush is bringing our military home from friendly bases that keep the doors open for cooperation between ourselves and other nations, no doubt closing some of those doors as we exit Then he is going to send them back to a combat zone where he has created a war. But first he is going to get the election year political advantage of announcing that they are coming home.

Always pay attention to the news on Friday. That is when they say anything that they don’t really want you to hear. The Friday story last week was that the TAX CUT for people in the top 1 percent is roughly equal to 1.5 times the total income of people in the middle 20 percent and almost 5 times the total income of people in the bottom 20 percent.

The median income in the United States is around 40,000.00 to 42,000.00. That is a real family value, one that can be measured. $42,000.00 is what the median American family has to feed, house, educate, entertain, and sustain itself for a year. Car and house payments and clothes for work and play, groceries, medical and dental costs, medications and glasses, haircuts, ballet lessons, soccer uniforms, church and charitable contributions, cable and Internet access, vacations, Christmas, Easter, college tuition, graduations, weddings, and funerals come out of this amount.
Of course, federal and state income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, etc. come out of this amount also. Since most families in this income bracket use all of their money, there isn’t much left to shelter in an IRA, a trust fund, or a foundation. Each dollar of the $42,000.00 is reduced by the amount of the cumulative tax burden. John Kerry promises this family a tax cut. Bush says they already have gotten one from him, but take a closer look.
The median tax cut in the median income range is not equal to the median increase in the cost of additional child care a family is paying because this administration has cut after-school programs. And when the median increase in the cost of health care kicks in, this family is paying median health care, child care, and tax dollars to subsidize the federal income tax cut for people who make over a million dollars a year.
Dick Cheney says that more people are keeping more of their money due to the Bush tax cuts, but that is not true. More money is being kept, but fewer people are keeping it.
Based solely on the tax policy, anyone whose family income is less than $150,000.00 for 2004 obviously should vote for John Kerry in November, and people above that income but not quite to the million dollar mark probably would benefit from the Kerry policies. People with over a million dollars in income should vote for John Kerry because Kerry’s tax plan will create a fair and sustainable system with the potential for steady growth. A government can only rob the poor and middle class to give to the rich up to a certain level of discomfort, and the system becomes unstable and the top falls in. ( If you want a link, I think that you can find something at HISTORY.COM)

Whether you believe torture is a legitimate way of getting information or not, one thing is apparent from this article in the New England Journal of Medicine. That one thing is that the abuse in American prisons was not (is not) the work of a few bad apples.

Well, it’s been great watching the Democrats on CSPAN and the rush onto the campaign trail. All of us Democrats have been watching and cheering!
Meanwhile, the Associated Press report printed in our local paper (Bristol Herald Courier) says that on Friday July 30, George Bush announced his intentions to make 20 appointments during the congressional recess. He has had these emergencies before while the Congress is in recess. I don’t know what the emergency is this time, or why he can’t wait until Congress comes back. I could speculate that he does these recess appointments because he is appointing people that even his own Republican legislators would not approve. Or maybe there is a real emergency. Who would know?
Also in this busy time when we are all catching up on issues we should have been paying attention to for the past ten years, the ban on the sale of assault weapons is about to expire. When Congress comes back, we will have 8 working days until it expires, at midnight on September 13. Maybe since Congress won’t have all those appointments to consider, we can get a bead on this assault weapon thing.
Now if I understand the news release from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, on September 14 that deer hunter who wants an assault rifle because he can’t learn to sight a hunting rifle can buy himself a new gun that can get the deer and clear away the underbrush. And 24 hours after the purchase, we won’t know much about the person who bought the gun because of the new “24-hour rule” protecting the privacy of gun owners. The 24-hour rule (supported by Bush and Ashcroft) was a rider to the FY 2004 Justice Department appropriations bill. It requires that the background check records of gun purchasers be destroyed within 24 hours of the purchase.

I am tired of hearing George W. Bush talk about the threat of terrorism. Wouldn’t you think he would want us to feel safe under his leadership? And, since he has misrepresented so much, wouldn’t he even nudge the information to make us feel good about him? Why would he want to keep us afraid?
Someone else has been asking that question, and
and you can read the report here.
Apparently, keeping us terrified is good for Bush. According to this story, people who are thinking about either 9/11 or their own death say they would vote for Bush, and people thinking about common situations like college exams or watching television say they would vote for Kerry.
The CNN story quotes Sheldon Solomon, a social psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York who specializes in terrorism: “There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat.”
Does the threat work?
According to the CNN report, the study showed that it did:

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person’s political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.
“I think this should concern anybody,” Solomon said. “If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don’t care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq.”
He wants voters to be aware of psychological pressures and how they are used.

Watching the Democratic Convention (which I watched on CSPAN, not one of the entertainment news networks) I saw a lot of people who both understand and mean what they say about patriotism and citizenship. We can use a little of that in Washington.
The vote this November will be about human dignity, inclusion, and civil rights. It will be about whether we want to live in a democracy that honors life, liberty, equality under the law, opportunity, and justice for everyone. This is what Kerry promises.
The alternative the Republican administration offers is a corporate despotism in which a few people with great wealth make decisions based on influence peddling and concerned only with raising their own profit margins. This fact is demonstrated in the rush to war in Iraq, enriching favored corporate interests at the cost of American lives, American security at home and abroad, and American self-respect as we watch our government behave like a spoiled brat in international relations. It is demonstrated in the Medicare drug benefit which, as predicted, has not encouraged competition among drug manufacturers and has not lowered drug prices. There are many more examples readily available, if you are not too glued to the entertainment news.
Let’s face it, the most universal reason for voting for John Kerry is that we want American democracy back. On the floor of the Democratic Convention, there was, as the entertainment news said, a “dance party.” That’s what hope looks like when you haven’t seen it for a while.