This Is Early, And Long, But......

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This Is Early, And Long, But......

Post by Michael » November 3rd, 2004, 2:38 pm

In my very first post in this column, I said I would probably enter a thread every Friday.

I know that this is Wednesday and I’m already breaking my own rule. However, I can’t bottle up the feelings today.

George W. Bush will be the president of the former United States of America. I write “former” because we are anything but united these days.

The first question that has to be asked is did George W. Bush truly receive all of the votes that were assigned to him?

I only ask this question because in August of 2003, Walden O’Dell, the CEO of Diebolt, the company that makes the electronic paperless voting machines, said that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." I think he may have kept his promise.

Of course, we all heard about the absentee ballots that were sent out to Florida voters on the Saturday before the election, much too late to get them back to the election officials. (The link doesn't take you right to the piece for some reason, but, if you go to the CommonDreams.org site, you'll see it. It's by Greg Palast).

Then there were the Republicans posing as non-partisan “voter helpers”. These scoundrels were going from door to door asking people if they’d registered to vote. If they hadn’t, they handed them a registration form and had the voter fill it out. The “voter helpers” discarded all forms that were filled out by people who said that they were affiliated with any party other than the Republican Party.

So, the first question is did George W. Bush truly receive all of the votes that were assigned to him?

Let’s say, for the sake of fantasy and argument, that he did. Where did these votes come from?

On September 11, 2001, America was devastated. We all knew who perpetrated the crime. Even Bush pointed to Al Q’aida in the eloquent speech he made immediately following the attacks.

Bush sent troops into Afghanistan to “hunt down” Osama bin Laden. He sent in about 11,000 troops who handed the search for bin Laden over to Afghan war lords. bin Laden is still on the loose and making movies.

Bush then turned his attention to Iraq.

No he didn’t!! His attention, as well as the attention of almost everyone in his administration was on Iraq on the day that Bill Clinton was sworn it for his first term as president. September 11, 2001, however it really happened, merely gave these imperialists a reason to attack Iraq.

We attacked Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power. We did this because he was harboring weapons of mass destruction, a phrase that has started to make me throw up, so I’ll be right back.

There. That’s better.

We attacked Iraq and took over Baghdad fairly quickly and with seeming ease.

Now, if Hussein had these, I can’t even type it, would he have not used them against the invading forces?

I can’t believe my ears when I hear people say that he buried them or had them moved to Syria or some such nonsense. What was he saving those things for, a rainy day? Maybe it wasn’t raining in Iraq on the day we began our illegal invasion.

We finally found Hussein in what they called a “spider hole”. He didn’t have his things with him either. We now have a man who could “launch a nuclear attack within 45 minutes” in one of our illegal prisons.

When it was painfully obvious that the reason given for attacking Iraq was bogus, Bush and Cheney, you always have to include Cheney because, well, after all, he is the real president, fabricated a story about an Al Q’aida operative and an operative of the Iraqi government meeting in Prague before September 11, 2001.

This has been discredited in many ways, but the most telling way is that, if we didn’t remove Hussein from power, Al Q’aida would have. For Al Q’aida, there is no room in The Middle East for a secular government and Iraq was a secular state. Terique Aziz, if I have the spelling correct, the former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, is a Christian. Al Q’aida and Iraq would never have formed a partnership.

Bush and Cheney finally knew that we were on to that scam, too (even though Cheney, to this day, says that there was such a partnership).

Finally, we settled on the fact that we invaded Iraq to “free Iraqis from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein” and spread democracy, American style.

How philanthropic of us. But why did we start with Iraq? There are other countries with even more than the twenty-nine million people who are under tyrannical rule.

Why didn’t we start by invading China, whose 1,300,000,000 (that’s one billion, three hundred million) people are under the rule of a government just as tyrannical as the government that was lead by Saddam Hussein?

Oh, that’s right, Arabs attacked America, so we needed to invade an Arab nation.

So why didn’t we invade the nation from which 19 of the hijackers hailed, Saudi Arabia?

We were lied to by our leadership. It should be well known. Even the mainstream media has said that there were none of those things and there was no tie between Iraq and Al Q’aida.

Then why would the majority vote for a president who lied us into an illegal war?

One reason is, even though they’ve been told that it has been proven differently, almost half of the voters in the former United States of America still believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the September 11 attacks.

I think a couple of quotes from Orwell are appropriate here.

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

“Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

But, really, now, did enough people believe Bush and Cheney’s foreign policy lies to reelect them?

No. Maybe his domestic policy was so overwhelmingly successful that people could look at Iraq and say, “Well Clinton lied but his domestic policies were so successful that he was reelected.”

Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, Jon Snow, said, basically, that outsourcing American jobs to third world countries is good for Americans.

On July, 9, 2004, the president, himself, said “Pennsylvania's unemployment rate is 5.1 percent. That's good news for people who are trying to find jobs.”

He is, indeed, the first president since Herbert Hoover to have lost jobs, a negative net job “gain”. I know it’s an oxymoron, but it’s the best way I know how to say it.

People say, as I have written in this column, that outsourcing is philanthropic. By giving our jobs to people in the third world, we are creating parity among nations.

Since corporations don’t outsource to lose money, they are taking advantage of the low wages that third world country workers will accept. Corporations are not outsourcing jobs to help third world countries. They really don’t care about the working conditions of the people in the third world who are making their product.

I do agree, though, that outsourcing will eventually create parity among nations. In addition to keeping the third world population impoverished while extracting goods from their sweat and blood, American corporations are, by that very same endeavor, driving what used to be middle class Americans towards the same impoverishment suffered in the third world.

What does this have to do with Bush?

He allows it. He rewards it. He has recently sent a bill to congress that would give even greater tax breaks to these very same corporations.

Can he do anything about it?

Of course he can. He can make it so that the borders aren’t so opened. He can not reward corporations who outsource American jobs.

If it’s his domestic policy that people love, it certainly doesn’t have to do with the security of their employment.

Maybe it’s his protection of those less fortunate people. And, obviously, since he condones outsourcing and, consequently, putting Americans out of work, he must be beefing up social programs to help the increasing unemployed.

Social Security was enacted, along with a number of “I am my brother’s keeper” laws by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. President Roosevelt knew that, no matter how the economy faired, there would always be people, who, for one reason or another, couldn’t work at certain points in their lives. So he started taking money from those who were working and putting it aside to help those who weren’t and those who retired. He actually enabled retirement with impunity.

George W. Bush wants to stop taking money from those who work for the purpose of putting it in a fund for those less fortunate. He wants people to take responsibility for their own welfare, using their income as they deem necessary.

This would include putting money aside in case your job is outsourced.

This means putting money aside for when you retire from the job that…oh, that’s right, your job was outsourced. You didn’t get a chance to retire.

He wants to privatize Social Security so that, like HMOs, social security corporations can make money from the money you’re putting aside in case you see bleaker days.

We all know how HMOs work. They know better than your own doctor what’s best for you. They know well enough to deny you services and medications that your doctor says you need.

Well how do we think social security “HMOs” are going to work? Their first responsibility will be to their profit. Will they charge you interest to hold on to your “rainy day” money? You put money into one of these accounts and, when and if you need it, you withdraw significantly less than you put in.

Yes, you don’t receive the wage you were making from the present government run unemployment system when you’re laid off. And, yes, the government decides if you’re really eligible to receive social security, disability or any other governmental payout.

I can assure you, though, that corporations whose CEOs feel the “need” to be paid millions of dollars in wages and perks will treat you with the same respect that HMOs treat you with now. In my experience, that respect has been very grudging.

So, let’s see, Bush thinks it’s OK to move jobs from the former US to third world countries, even though the CEOs and top executives of the companies who do so are paid outrages wages and perks. He wants to put the safety net of Social Security into the hands of these very same CEOs and top executives, which can only lead to making social security something more difficult to acquire.

Maybe it’s his health plan that moved over half of the nation to vote for him.

Bush knows that people can get prescription medications from Canada at prices that are much lower than the costs of getting those same medications in the former US, but he opposes making it legal to do so because he’s worried about your safety.

Folks, we’re talking Canada here. I don’t know if anyone is suggesting that we get our prescription medications from Ghana. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say that Ghana doesn’t have enough medication for its own people.

Canada is an industrialized nation whose pharmaceutical practices at least equal those of the former US, if not surpass them.

I write this because George W. Bush, along with giving corporations enormous tax breaks, no matter how they hurt the American worker, wants to help those same corporations even more by taking the burden of environmental and other regulations off their shoulders.

So, this begs the question are Canadian pharmacies, which are tightly regulated by the government, really dispensing prescription medications that are less safe than those dispensed in the former US?

It appears that the Bush/Cheney foreign policy is getting a lot of people killed based on a lie and that his domestic policies aren’t really geared to help Americans either. So why does half of the country think that Bush deserves their votes?

Bush is a Christian and a born again one at that. Far too many people vote for Bush because he is a Christian, he wears his Christianity on his sleeve and people falsely believe that the former United States of America is a “Christian nation.”

I don’t understand how anyone could not have learned at some point in life that the people who jump started this nation made damn sure that The United States of America was not and could never become a theocracy.

Yet, people say we’re a Christian nation.

Are they implying that Hindu/Americans, Muslim/Americans, Jewish/Americans, Atheist/Americans should all leave this land? I’m sure I’ve left out other beliefs and I apologize for that, but you get the point.

But people voted for Bush because he’s a Christian.

People voted for Bush because they don’t want to allow men to marry men and women to marry women.

Let’s back up. I firmly believe that it’s anyone’s right to disagree with another person. That’s what this nations was founded upon. If you don’t believe that same sex marriage is “right”, that’s your prerogative.

How does the marriage of a man to a man or a woman to a woman affect those who are so opposed to it? Other than the fact that they don’t like to view this phenomenon, it doesn’t. The couple living in the house next door to you does not have an affect on your life unless they’re unruly, loud, criminals or otherwise intrusively obnoxious. If the couple happens to be made up of members of the same sex and they don’t bother you, then why do you want to make their partnership illegal?

It’s because The Bible says it’s wrong.

Well, guess what? Do you remember the statement about theocracy and the founders of this nation? Since we’re not a theocracy and, consequently, not a Christian nation, not everyone reads and/or believes what’s in your bible, nor should they be expected to.

People voted for Bush because the candidate against whom he was running is a member of the same party, just a different “arm”.

John Kerry takes money from corporations and, folks, you can bet that, if he was elected, he’d be paying up, just like George.

John Kerry believes that the war in Iraq is the right war, no matter what he says on occasion. He voted for it. Yes, he says he expected Bush to try harder at diplomacy than he did, but Kerry lies. He speaks about fighting the Iraq war in a “smarter” way.

Well, if it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, why fight it at all?

Kerry also tries to overcome his aloof persona with Bush type John Wayne talk.

He’s going to hunt people down and kill ‘em.

Neither “candidate” wants to admit that we’re doing to the average person in The Middle East what many of our ancestors did to the indigenous people of North America. Our leaders are making deals with their leaders that make their leaders very wealthy. Meanwhile, our ownership of their resources is keeping the average Middle Eastern occupant in poverty.

When they show their opposition to this unfair alliance, we bomb their cities and ruin what possessions they do own. We kill their citizenry when it gets in the way of our extortion, just like we did to the Native American.

We’re told that they attack us because they despise our freedom.

They attack us, ladies and gentlemen, because they want us to give them their freedom and that shouldn’t even be up to us, but it is. It is because we support the tyrannical governments that govern them. We enrich those governments so that we can hoard the resources of their land.

It’s odd, isn’t it? We are losing Americans and killing Iraqis to free them from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein, yet we enrich other tyrannical governments.

Finally, here’s what I think’s gonna happen.

The people who voted for Bush in 2004 will begin to see things differently.

First, they’ll see Bush trying to amend the twenty-second amendment of the constitution. That’s the amendment that says that presidents can only be elected to two four year terms.

With everything being Republican from the Senate to The House of Representatives to The Supreme Court (The Supreme Court is supposed to be non-partisan, but it’s really Republican and will shortly become more so), Bush may be able to pull that one off.

If people who voted for Bush don’t see that because he can’t pull it off, they’ll see Jeb running in 2008. He’ll use the same unethical tactics used by George in the 2000 primaries, in the 2000 general election, in the 2002 mid term elections and in the 2004 general election.

But, will they vote for Jeb? Will there be even more Diebolt Bush machines and will it matter if they vote for Jeb or not?

Before they see any of that, I think that they’ll see that same sex marriage, Christianity and other so called “family values” that led them to vote for Bush in 2004 will begin to become less and less important.

What they will see is their jobs disappear.

What they will see are their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters dying trying to spread democracy, American style, to the rest of the world.

What they will see is a system of medical care that is all but inaccessible. Maybe the basics will still be there, but, looking at the flu vaccine crisis of 2004, in spite of warnings that this administration had that this crisis was imminent, I don’t even know about the basics.

What they will see is a super stratified society in which a few people are very, very wealthy while others, including themselves, are poor.

What they will see, as mentioned, is that they are not able to change any of that through balloting. Voting will be useless because the outcome will be already determined.

What they will feel is their blood boiling because they aren’t used to living under a fascist dictatorship.

What they will ultimately see is the following quote from Thomas Jefferson become reality.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Ladies and gentleman, I tell you today, November 3, 2004, the final day of existence for the United States of America as envisioned by those who ordained it, that the next national change of government will be a violent one. The tyranny that was so readily allowed to continue in 2004 will not be able to be removed by any other means.

hester_prynne

Post by hester_prynne » November 4th, 2004, 1:14 am

Michael,
This is an incredible read.
Indeed, it is the end of the United States, and indeed, I fear your projections of what's to come are right on.
Thank you for posting this. I hope alot of people read it.
H

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