I know a lot of my posts seem a bit inflammatory, but I wanted to do a brief, but serious reflection for this Sunday. We, as a nation, are in serious trouble. That's not a partisan assertion, that's the considered, rational observation of a person who has lived here for 51 years and can see the changes in the last four years. Our economy is in the dump.

From TimesUnion.com (see the link)
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=280825&" title="http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=280825&" target="_blank"http://www.timesunion.com/Asp...;category=OPINION&BCC ode=&newsdate=8/29/20 04
"Here are the numbers, a sober and powerful counter-argument to any declaration that the recession is long over and good times are back for everyone. Poverty is up in the United States for the third consecutive year, the Census Bureau says, with 40 million people now afflicted. Median household income is stagnant at a little more than $43,000 a year. That, after three years of decline and still lower than it was in 1999. And the number of Americans without medical insurance is up, too, as it has been each year since 2001, to 45 million."

We are quickly becoming a nation of CONSUMERS ONLY, and when you have nothing to sell, neither services nor goods, you are headed for national bankruptcy...money out and not in...it doesn't take that long. Pile on top of this the fact that we are hemorrhaging money in Iraq, have lost almost a thousand Americans there, with no real end in sight, and the comparison to VietNam is clear.

The polices of the current administration are a prescription for ruination. A recent expose on the "No Child Left Behind" program in the model programs in Houston Schools, showed that fraud was involved in one school outright, if not in the others, and in fact, the Houston schools, held up as models of this program, had to admit that their reported
dropout rates were incorrect. For example, in Sharpstown, they reported ZERO dropouts, and the rate was more like half of the students were dropping out. The person who was in charge of the Houston schools was promoted to a cabinet post by Bush, and refused to be interviewed for the story.

This president has bragged he is a "war president". Well, there is an old saying that if you keep on doing what you been doing, you will keep on getting what you been getting. Historically, if a country becomes a belligerent against the world, and looks for war, just as a bully looking for fights, they will find it, and, just as a bully looking for fights, eventually they meet an opponent that has is in it for the full fight and has enough endurance, or fighting ability, to extract serious damage.

We've had four years of what this President has in store for us. Some say we cannot blame 9/11 on him. I DO. 9/11 did not just happen. It was planned. It did not spring wholecloth from the ground in one instant like dragon's teeth. Regardless of the Bush-Bin Laden long standing relationship, regardless of the Cheney-Halliburton connection...
the fact is that in the second year of King George's reign, around three thousand Americans lost their lives in one city, and this happened even though, the administration had people warning in reports, that Bin Laden intended to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. Why were terrorists training at military and non-military facilities here in the United States?

Our constitutional rights have been severely affected under this president. As General Tommy Franks said, if we have one more serious attack, they will institute martial law, and there goes ALL your constitutional rights.

As a result of the current administration's contempt for our rights, we have Supreme Court decisions that we must "show our papers" as in Nazi Germany, even without probable cause. In five states, warrantless searches of our homes has been declared legal. Your car can be searched without you in it. Sneak and peek, knock and talk, FBI intimidation of private citizens, "free speech zonee", Total Information Awareness/Terrorist Information Awareness/cum black ops project, petabyte crunching "The Thing", Under the Eagle's Eye, and on and on ad nauseum.

I honestly believe the current administration feels our rights are merely ugly flowers to be trampled on by virtual movers who are boxing up our country and moving it to the house of Bush, a secret dictatorship.

We cannot continue in this current direction. Outsourcing of jobs has been proclaimed as good by this administration. I've said it before. Our current status is such that we are in a car, headed for a cliff at 120 miles an hour, and the driver is on serious medication and trying to play chicken with other drivers /countries, on the road, heading at them headon and screaming "bring it on"...except in our case, he is remote controlling the car and we are the ones in danger, as passengers.

From Copyright infringement madness, where the FBI is making "protection of intellectual property" as its number three priority, only behind terrorism and counterintelligence, to the bizarre, 1984-like monitoring of everyone, and everything they do, say, buy, read, etc., we are quickly losing the country I have cherished and loved for half a century.

The Iraqi "war", undeclared by Congress as was the Korean "war", and the Vietnam "war", has served as a catalyst to cause the hatred of the US to grow many fold. Recently, Bush was talking about there being an Iraqi soccer team at the Olympics, as if he made it all happen, and yet, when the soccer players were interviewed, we heard their anger at Bush.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/wr iters/08/19/iraq/index.html" title="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/wr iters/08/19/iraq/index.html" target="_blank"http://sportsillustrated.cnn....

"Afterward, Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements.

In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

"..."Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."

and later in that article....
"But they also find it offensive that Bush is using Iraq for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions. "My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. "The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it?" Bush said. "It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted."

What is clear is this. Bush exploits anyone and everything for his own personal, mad political goals, like a modern Ahab chasing the White Whale of his father's accomplishments. Unlike his father who was good at sports, was allegedly a "war hero", the son, in a sort of twisted Greek tragedy, has been a failure in trying to chase after his father's accomplishments. He was a failed businessman, bought a sports team when he himself proved to be no good as an athlete, hid from the VietNam war stateside, and went into Iraq, apparently trying to complete the attack on Sadaam his father started, making public note that these are the people "...who tried to kill my dad".

It's like a psychotic version of a cross between Bonanaza and the Cartwriights, and the Beverly Hillbillies. Indeed, it is said that at the Bohemian Grove club, the Bush family and their hangers on, go under the codename of "The Hillbillies".

We saw a petulant, mentally unstable Bush storm off the stage when a journalist asked him about his relationship with Ken Lay, and after a message including an expletive demanding that those "motherfuckers" be kept away from him, he stormed off. Later, the White House physician had to put him on serious psychoactive medications to deal with the malignant depression that, per reports, has him in its grasp.

We don't need a medicated, mentally unstable , failure with a personal vendetta, having his finger hovering over the button that could start World War III.

It's more than time for a change, and many are feeling that the "anyone but Bush" sentiment, means that no matter who is placed in the Oval Office, will be an improvement over President Queeg.

I agree.

~CodeWarrior
29/August/2004