Life in the Third Layer

I live in the Bible Belt, and in case you haven’t noticed, wide belts are “in” now. There is a lot more Bible Belt than there used to be. But even when it was narrow, I was in it. So I hear quite often “I am with Kerry on the economic issues, but I am voting for Bush because I am with him on the moral issues.”
What is invisible here is the link between the economic issues and the moral issues:

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Vote your faith, not your fear.

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

I know nobody reads, but make an exception this time. Read the whole article in The New York Times, and then you will know the real story about George W. Bush and the National Guard, the story that you knew we would never know, the records being lost and destroyed and all that. Portrait of George Bush in ’72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time , Published September 20, 2004:

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Sept. 17 – Nineteen seventy-two was the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen.

He abandoned his once-prized status as a National Guard pilot by failing to appear for a required physical.

Read on…
Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

We all know the content of the memos is true. The Bush White House declines to comment. Some of us hope the documents will be proven authentic, and some of us are praying that they will not. All of us know the content is accurate. I notice that nobody is questioning that.
Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

The recent Cheney remark that if we vote for Kerry we will be attacked by terrorists was a slip of the tongue that revealed the method behind the madness. It is the Bush plan to keep Americans scared to death so they will vote for him even though we all know that he is a bully whose wrong choices have cost each of us dearly and that he has lied to us in the past and continues to lie to us.
This entry was first published on July 31, 2004. Some things are true enough to say twice.

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 you can read the report here.
Apparently, keeping us terrified is good for Bush. According to this report and the CNN story about it, 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.

Now that his campaign has done the damage to Kerry, here’s why George W. Bush wants us to forget about what happened during the Vietnam War and talk about more current issues:

Busted

As I said before (8/24/04), first the bully hits you, then he yells so the teacher looks and you can’t hit him back. The difference is that while you did nothing wrong, the bully deserves to be hit. You are in pain, and the bully can gloat because he both injured you and made you look like a troublemaker at no cost to his reputation.
Kerry earned his purple hearts. The Bush family leveraged George W.’s honorable discharge, and they have spent thirty years lying about and covering up the record.

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards
I remember when the opportunity zone — as well as the free speech zone — was from sea to shining sea.