Saturday, February 19, 2005
Letter to The Day of New London, Feb 18, 2005
This letter was slightly edited by the newspaper but the idea still makes its way onto the newspaper. Reaction has been good, I'm happy to say.
How about a thank you from Fishers Island? In July 2003 Congressman Rob Simmons announced that he had secured $750,000 of taxpayer money for the Fishers Island Ferry terminal. According to his web site, this was part of $ 4.75 million that Simmons boasts of securing for the ferry terminal. (Ill not comment on the merits of the project. Its a done deal and Im sure it was well research by scores of consultants, engineers and bureaucrats. How many lived in New London, let alone in downtown, is another question.) When I heard the news, I expected to see a sign-like those at other public works projects-noting the funds paid by taxpayers to build the ferry terminal. While the project has gone on for years and cost millions of tax dollars, youd never know it from visiting the terminal. At the Fishers Island Ferry District web site (http://www.fiferry.com/) I could find no mention of the funding theyve received from American taxpayers. Theres not even so much as a thank you. Visits to Fishers Island, while not banned, are certainly not encouraged. Round trip on the ferry, with a bicycle, goes for $65 or $130 a couple. Not exactly economy class, which I suspect is the point. While this island community, (one of the wealthiest on Earth) seems to welcome American tax dollars, American tax payers are another story. Ive two suggestions. For Congressman Simmons: When you siphon off more of my money for other public works projects, please ask the recipients to post a conspicuous notice thanking me and other taxpayers for the gift. Its just good manners. For the folks on Fishers Island: A thank you would have been the polite thing to do. Since that didnt happen, free, round-trip tickets, with bicycles-especially during the summer and fall weekends-would be a good way of making amends to people like me whove paid for your new terminal. Many of us would like to see, first-hand, where the heck the darn ferry goes. We promise to be off your island with the last boat. Peter Roberts New London, CT USA
How about a thank you from Fishers Island? In July 2003 Congressman Rob Simmons announced that he had secured $750,000 of taxpayer money for the Fishers Island Ferry terminal. According to his web site, this was part of $ 4.75 million that Simmons boasts of securing for the ferry terminal. (Ill not comment on the merits of the project. Its a done deal and Im sure it was well research by scores of consultants, engineers and bureaucrats. How many lived in New London, let alone in downtown, is another question.) When I heard the news, I expected to see a sign-like those at other public works projects-noting the funds paid by taxpayers to build the ferry terminal. While the project has gone on for years and cost millions of tax dollars, youd never know it from visiting the terminal. At the Fishers Island Ferry District web site (http://www.fiferry.com/) I could find no mention of the funding theyve received from American taxpayers. Theres not even so much as a thank you. Visits to Fishers Island, while not banned, are certainly not encouraged. Round trip on the ferry, with a bicycle, goes for $65 or $130 a couple. Not exactly economy class, which I suspect is the point. While this island community, (one of the wealthiest on Earth) seems to welcome American tax dollars, American tax payers are another story. Ive two suggestions. For Congressman Simmons: When you siphon off more of my money for other public works projects, please ask the recipients to post a conspicuous notice thanking me and other taxpayers for the gift. Its just good manners. For the folks on Fishers Island: A thank you would have been the polite thing to do. Since that didnt happen, free, round-trip tickets, with bicycles-especially during the summer and fall weekends-would be a good way of making amends to people like me whove paid for your new terminal. Many of us would like to see, first-hand, where the heck the darn ferry goes. We promise to be off your island with the last boat. Peter Roberts New London, CT USA
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Friedman on Bush's energy policy...this is news?
In No Mullah Left Behind By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, published on February 13, 2005 in the Times, Friedman has "rediscovered" Bush's energy policy. He even quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal about the mounds of cash that Iran is taking in because too many Americans are driving SUVs.
With all the money, they've no need to come to terms with us on weapons or other issues. They are laughing all the way to the bank, with our cash.
This is news? Where the hell has Friedman been for the last four years? Now, after supporting the invasion of Iraq and the war without end, Friedman has discovered that maybe, just maybe, our interest in the region might have something to do with our economic interest in it.
Again, this is news?
I keep looking for a success of the Bush presidency. Just one.
He's put us in the red to the tune of hundreds of billions with nothing to show for it.
We are the laughing stock of the world.
We're at war and no one believes that we're going to be out of Iraq anytime soon and as for paying for the war, well, that's off the books. He'll let others worry about it.
And after all this, are way too much for me to go on about here, Friedman takes up space in the most valuable newspaper in the world to recount Bush's energy policy and to proclaim, (gee) that it had lead to making things worse than when he was selected president.
I suspect Friedman is trying to get his voice back. After singing the praises of the war for so long, he is now returning to an old standby, perhaps to rekindle some prior warmth from his readers.
Not from here.
With all the money, they've no need to come to terms with us on weapons or other issues. They are laughing all the way to the bank, with our cash.
This is news? Where the hell has Friedman been for the last four years? Now, after supporting the invasion of Iraq and the war without end, Friedman has discovered that maybe, just maybe, our interest in the region might have something to do with our economic interest in it.
Again, this is news?
I keep looking for a success of the Bush presidency. Just one.
He's put us in the red to the tune of hundreds of billions with nothing to show for it.
We are the laughing stock of the world.
We're at war and no one believes that we're going to be out of Iraq anytime soon and as for paying for the war, well, that's off the books. He'll let others worry about it.
And after all this, are way too much for me to go on about here, Friedman takes up space in the most valuable newspaper in the world to recount Bush's energy policy and to proclaim, (gee) that it had lead to making things worse than when he was selected president.
I suspect Friedman is trying to get his voice back. After singing the praises of the war for so long, he is now returning to an old standby, perhaps to rekindle some prior warmth from his readers.
Not from here.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Governor Rell does a Bush
Connecticut's Governor Rell, following Bush's lead, goes after the state's middle-class and poor in her budget message to the General Assembly. Trying to close a budget gape, she's seeking no tax increases unless one rides a train, drives a car, drinks beer, uses tobacco or lives in a nursing home. These folks will have to pay up. But a non-smoking, teetotaling, millionaire who walks to work won't pay a dime in new taxes. (If more people bought lottery tickets, the state would have nothing to worry about. Is this fun or what?)
Saturday, January 08, 2005
torture
The fact that the man who will serve as the Attorney General of the United States has to spend time and effort denying that he helped to create the "idea" of good torture, should speak to every American. Yes, we will be repaid for these and other abuses. As Jefferson said, "I fear for my country when I remember that God is just."
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Stew in their own juices
I don't know too much about any of the people who are taking up new job in the government. I do recall that our new secretary of state, Dr. Rice, prior to the war in Iraq made reference to "mushroom clouds" from the evil one calling the shots in Iraq at the time.
But the upshot of all the moves in Washington is that we're in for more of the same, and perhaps more so. I'm reminded of the old saying, "beware the man who reads but one book". Of course, perhaps for the good our nation, it is just as well that Bush is not noted as being an avid reader.
We've a family friend who just arrived in Iraq. I remember when he was born. Now he is an officer in the Marines and stationed not far from the fighting. I got he email address the other day and the darn system, after many tries, works. Mike is about as nice a guy as you could want to know. He's overthere-do you remember that line from the First World Was?-and we're overhere, waiting for the malls to open.
What's wrongs with this picture? Well, we just went over 1200 service member killed in action, the world hates us and there is no end to the bloody mess in sight. And the guy that sent these men and women to their deaths, and countless civilians in Iraq, was just reelected and has selected his right hand foreign policy aid to represent us to the world. Meanwhile, my friend Mike is "overthere" doing God knows what.
Yes, they should and no doubt will, stew in their own juices, but I pray that while they are boiling in the pot, more like Mike are not forced to cook with them.
But the upshot of all the moves in Washington is that we're in for more of the same, and perhaps more so. I'm reminded of the old saying, "beware the man who reads but one book". Of course, perhaps for the good our nation, it is just as well that Bush is not noted as being an avid reader.
We've a family friend who just arrived in Iraq. I remember when he was born. Now he is an officer in the Marines and stationed not far from the fighting. I got he email address the other day and the darn system, after many tries, works. Mike is about as nice a guy as you could want to know. He's overthere-do you remember that line from the First World Was?-and we're overhere, waiting for the malls to open.
What's wrongs with this picture? Well, we just went over 1200 service member killed in action, the world hates us and there is no end to the bloody mess in sight. And the guy that sent these men and women to their deaths, and countless civilians in Iraq, was just reelected and has selected his right hand foreign policy aid to represent us to the world. Meanwhile, my friend Mike is "overthere" doing God knows what.
Yes, they should and no doubt will, stew in their own juices, but I pray that while they are boiling in the pot, more like Mike are not forced to cook with them.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Election Editorial Enough of the Sawdust Caesar
John Kerry for President and John Edwards for Vice President
October 23, 2004
New London, CT USA
Editorial From Newenglandwow.com
We've tried to find aspects of our government and the general conditions of the country that are better than they were before George W. Bush became president. We failed. By any standard, unless one is among the very rich, our country and our world is worse off today than it was on the last day of the Clinton presidency.
As we write these words, the number of American military killed in the Iraq war has exceeded eleven hundred (1,103) and the count of American wounded, many of horrific conditions, stands at 7,532.
We do not mean to discount the killed and wounded from Iraq (numbering in the tens of thousands) and from other countries. But we note the loss of these Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines because they serve our country and were sent to fight in Iraq by President Bush. He sent them to war by convincing the American people and the Congress that Iraq posed an immediate danger to our country.
Passed on October 16, 2002, PUBLIC LAW 107243
AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 made much of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the country's support for terrorists.
Although we suspected then and know for certain now, these justifications were false. Bush, Cheney, Rice and many other spokespersons for the administration sent this county to war for reasons that they knew then, or should have known, were based on bad intelligence and overblown assumptions. Why President Bush allowed these lies and groundless speculations to become the basis of American foreign policy is less important to us than the actualities of the events they precipitated.
Going to war is the most important decision a president can make. All of Mr. Bush's predecessors took this action with tremendous reluctance. Even President Johnson, who inherited our involvement in Vietnam from the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, struggled with the actualities of his war and how to bring the troops home. His decisions were wrong and cost thousands of lives. His decision in 1968 to not seek reelection was an admission of the political reality the war caused and an admission of a failed presidency.
Not so our President Bush of 2004. He has shown, from the start of his presidency, a callous disregard for the real world and has asked the American people and the American military to buy into his delusional visions of an American Empire.
As was said of another failed depot, Bush has become a Sawdust Caesar, seeking to make bluster into substance and spin into policy.
Make no mistake. This war is Mr. Bush's doing and there is no end in sight. Even if our country, in other respects, were on a sound foundation, this travesty alone is enough to justify an end to the presidency of George W. Bush. Had President Clinton done likewise, he would have been condemned, with good reason, by the republican congress.
The United States of America is a troubled country. We are a confused, blindfolded giant, stumbling in the woods with no idea of where we are going or the dangers that are ahead. We grope helplessly, hoping that our sheer size and weight will somehow offset our inability to see what is before us. We trip, fall and rant at the unfairness of our plight but we continue to "move on" forgetting that in our haste, that in order to see, we must first remove the blindfolds covering our eyes.
George Bush either doesn't understand or refuses to acknowledge the blindfolds he wears. The abyss grows ever nearer.
The litany of our decline under president Bush is all encompassing.
-Bush's tax cuts on the federal level, largely benefiting the wealthy, have been more than made up by increases in state and local taxes and decreased government services. Few communities and local governments have been able to maintain tax rates and the most fortunate have kept tax increases within the reasonable range of inflation.
-Bush has overseen an actual loss of the number of private sector jobs since become president. That's a feat unmatched since President Hoover. Interestingly, for a conservative, anti-government president, the largest job growth has been in government employment.
-Bush took a federal budget that was printed surplus, black ink and made us the largest debtor nation on earth. Our government is financed by foreign investors who largely control, via their purse strings, what our government and economy can and can not do. Significantly, this huge debt will be paid for by younger Americans-most in their twenties and thirties-and by others not yet even born.
To put the Bush record in more dollars and cents terms, according to U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK every citizen's share of this debt is $25,262.82.
The National Debt has increased by $1.70 billion per day since September 30, 2003.
-Health care, housing, transportation, agriculture, life in both our urban and rural states and regions, education at all levels and the quality of our environment are in general decline or clutching desperately to "no loss, for now". This is the best we can do under President Bush.
The president has presented schemes for sending space ships to the moon and Mars and there is little doubt, if you listen to him, for whom God would be voting on November 2 were the Supreme Being registered to vote. (God would be wise to bring a photo ID and an additional proof of residency and citizenship, just to be on the safe side, before trying to exercise the franchise.)
It is tempting, given the Bush/Cheney record, to say that because John Kerry is not George Bush, that is enough to warrant our support. But like many Americans, especially after the debates, our interest in his campaign and the prospects for our country under a Kerry Presidency have grown into a sense of genuine relief that is enthusiastic and heartfelt.
Importantly, the Senator understands our current conditions as a people and a country and has developed realistic proposals to combat our decided and undeniable decline.
He will seek to stem the flow of American jobs overseas with a taxing policy that rewards and encourages American companies to hire American workers. This seems to us a logical idea, long overdue.
He is actually addressing the health care crisis in America. This huge and complicated issue will not go away and will only become more troublesome as baby boomers reach retirement. Simply put, the Senator seeks to provide affordable coverage for all Americans by expanding the Federal programs that are enjoyed by members of Congress and others in the federal government.
Will this concept be expensive? Of course. Will it require legislative refinement. Yes again! Does it recognize a national problem and offer a workable solution. Another yes. Is it the "be all and end all" for the American Health Crisis? No, but it is a start and unmatched by anything we've seen from the GOP and President Bush.
Kerry will also seek to put some semblance of rationally into the finances of the budget. He will seek to increase the taxes paid by the wealthy and cut the lucrative tax "loopholes" that many corporations and individuals enjoy at the expense of everyone else.
As he had made very clear, a president Kerry will seek to increase international involvement into the reconstruction of Iraq and its society-not an easy task after the Bush presidency-and to develop a sound "exit strategy" for American involvement there.
More important for this country, he will reinvigorate and refocus our military and intelligence services-in partnership with other countries-in the war that really matters; the war on global terrorism. He understands, as we believe most Americans do, that Iraq posed no threat to us at the start of this war and that it has taken valuable resources from combating the ten of thousands of "true believers" who seek our destruction.
The next president will face enormous challenges and we believe that Senator Kerry is more than up to the task. He has, unlike President Bush and Vice President Cheney, sought to speak the truth and level with the American people about the difficult road ahead.
But John Kerry is not alone on the ballot. We cast our vote for two men. One to serve as president and the other to serve as our vice president.
Earlier in our history the office was little more than a ceremonial reward for years of devoted party service. Not any longer. The vice president has tremendous influence on what our government does and does not do and aside from his power to break a tie vote in the Senate, he must be ready to assume the office of president at any time.
While we fear the prospects of another four years of George Bush, we remind our fellow citizens that Bush comes with Cheney and that should anything happen to the president, Mr. Cheney would assume the leadership of our country.
While the president's policies and leadership is largely a resume of failure, he is at least, modestly cuddly and congenially photogenic, making his abominable performance appear less sinister and ominous.
Vice President Cheney, his physical persona aside, is deficient in even the most rudimentary skills of leadership that would be required should he become president. In a political career of more than three decades, and especially since becoming Vice President, Mr. Cheney has sought to vilify anyone who dared to differ with him and the president. Like the president, he is well connected with various elites and has profited handsomely by his cozy relationships with them.
During the campaign he has repeatedly suggested that a vote for Senator Kerry will encourage terrorist attacks on this country: a brand of fear skullduggery that is but the tip of his iceberg of hypocrisy.
And we remind the Vice President and his supporter of his statement on the March 16 edition of NBC's Meet The Press;
"The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."
The messages of welcoming have been all too familiar and deadly.
Senator Kerry wisely countered the divisive Dick Cheney with Senator John Edwards as his running mate. In Edwards we see openness, intelligence and a diligence that is lacking in Cheney. We believe that should he be called, a President Edwards would seek to unite our country and clarify our national purpose. We believe he would be better able to reach across party and social lines to form a consensus that would reflect the best that is within us. Vice President Cheney, given the baggage of his past, is simply not capable of achieving any measure of national unity.
Cheney, like the president, has managed to alienate our foreign friends and give more reasons for many to hate and despise our country. Faced with a nation or international crisis on a par with the 9/11 attacks or some other calamity, a President Cheney would meet, we believe, with begrudging support at best and given his history of polemics in foreign affairs, outright hostility from many of our closest friends in the international community.
If we seem too alarmed at the possibility of a Cheney Presidency, consider this.
President Clinton recently had a quadruple coronary artery bypass operation. An ordinarily healthy man for his age, the operation was performed with some haste after his heart condition was discovered.
President Clinton and President Bush differ on many things but they have one thing in common. They were both born in 1946. Bush was born on July 6th of that year, making him slightly older than Clinton, who was born on August 19.
While we have no reason to believe that President Bush would not live out his term or lose his capacity to govern, stranger things happen everyday to healthy men in their fifties. While we don't like the way the president has governed our country, the mere possibility of Dick Cheney stepping into the presidency, even for a brief period, makes the reelection of president Bush totally unacceptable.
The founding fathers worked tirelessly to construct a three tier system of government that would not allow any one interest to have an overriding control of the United States. They sought to check the temporary power of an elected interest or party in the presidency or congress with a relatively equal balance of power in the Supreme Court and Senate.
While few of the Founders would be happy with our party system, we suspect that they would be aghast at the current state of the Federal distribution of power in 2004. The Republican Party controls both houses of congress, has a decided majority in the Supreme Court (with more appointments soon to follow the election) and the party is lead by the president of the United States.
Given the real possibility of continued one-party rule, at least for the next two years if not much longer on the Court, we think that nothing less that the very fiber of our republic is at stake in this election.
We think it is time to return the balance of power back to the Democratic Party in the Congress, if for no other reason than to correct the excesses that Republican Congresses have inflicted on our government, our financial security and the well-being of our people. Republican candidates, especially office-holders, should be turned out and encouraged to seek other lines of employment.
We endorse Senator John Kerry for President and Senator John Edwards for Vice President. We believe they have the intelligence and understanding needed to protect us at home and to introduce and expand a positive and enlightened American agenda overseas.
But from our "gut" we would like, once again, to be proud of our country. We wish to revel, as we have before, in an unabashed pride of our nation; its people, traditions, accomplishments, sacrifices and resolves. We would, perhaps in the childlike adoration many of us feel from time to time, like to be again the exceptional nation on the planet, sought after, admired and even cherished by billions of people, including the fortunate few who can say with an boastful swagger, "I am an American".
October 23, 2004
New London, CT USA
Editorial From Newenglandwow.com
We've tried to find aspects of our government and the general conditions of the country that are better than they were before George W. Bush became president. We failed. By any standard, unless one is among the very rich, our country and our world is worse off today than it was on the last day of the Clinton presidency.
As we write these words, the number of American military killed in the Iraq war has exceeded eleven hundred (1,103) and the count of American wounded, many of horrific conditions, stands at 7,532.
We do not mean to discount the killed and wounded from Iraq (numbering in the tens of thousands) and from other countries. But we note the loss of these Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines because they serve our country and were sent to fight in Iraq by President Bush. He sent them to war by convincing the American people and the Congress that Iraq posed an immediate danger to our country.
Passed on October 16, 2002, PUBLIC LAW 107243
AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 made much of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the country's support for terrorists.
Although we suspected then and know for certain now, these justifications were false. Bush, Cheney, Rice and many other spokespersons for the administration sent this county to war for reasons that they knew then, or should have known, were based on bad intelligence and overblown assumptions. Why President Bush allowed these lies and groundless speculations to become the basis of American foreign policy is less important to us than the actualities of the events they precipitated.
Going to war is the most important decision a president can make. All of Mr. Bush's predecessors took this action with tremendous reluctance. Even President Johnson, who inherited our involvement in Vietnam from the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, struggled with the actualities of his war and how to bring the troops home. His decisions were wrong and cost thousands of lives. His decision in 1968 to not seek reelection was an admission of the political reality the war caused and an admission of a failed presidency.
Not so our President Bush of 2004. He has shown, from the start of his presidency, a callous disregard for the real world and has asked the American people and the American military to buy into his delusional visions of an American Empire.
As was said of another failed depot, Bush has become a Sawdust Caesar, seeking to make bluster into substance and spin into policy.
Make no mistake. This war is Mr. Bush's doing and there is no end in sight. Even if our country, in other respects, were on a sound foundation, this travesty alone is enough to justify an end to the presidency of George W. Bush. Had President Clinton done likewise, he would have been condemned, with good reason, by the republican congress.
The United States of America is a troubled country. We are a confused, blindfolded giant, stumbling in the woods with no idea of where we are going or the dangers that are ahead. We grope helplessly, hoping that our sheer size and weight will somehow offset our inability to see what is before us. We trip, fall and rant at the unfairness of our plight but we continue to "move on" forgetting that in our haste, that in order to see, we must first remove the blindfolds covering our eyes.
George Bush either doesn't understand or refuses to acknowledge the blindfolds he wears. The abyss grows ever nearer.
The litany of our decline under president Bush is all encompassing.
-Bush's tax cuts on the federal level, largely benefiting the wealthy, have been more than made up by increases in state and local taxes and decreased government services. Few communities and local governments have been able to maintain tax rates and the most fortunate have kept tax increases within the reasonable range of inflation.
-Bush has overseen an actual loss of the number of private sector jobs since become president. That's a feat unmatched since President Hoover. Interestingly, for a conservative, anti-government president, the largest job growth has been in government employment.
-Bush took a federal budget that was printed surplus, black ink and made us the largest debtor nation on earth. Our government is financed by foreign investors who largely control, via their purse strings, what our government and economy can and can not do. Significantly, this huge debt will be paid for by younger Americans-most in their twenties and thirties-and by others not yet even born.
To put the Bush record in more dollars and cents terms, according to U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK every citizen's share of this debt is $25,262.82.
The National Debt has increased by $1.70 billion per day since September 30, 2003.
-Health care, housing, transportation, agriculture, life in both our urban and rural states and regions, education at all levels and the quality of our environment are in general decline or clutching desperately to "no loss, for now". This is the best we can do under President Bush.
The president has presented schemes for sending space ships to the moon and Mars and there is little doubt, if you listen to him, for whom God would be voting on November 2 were the Supreme Being registered to vote. (God would be wise to bring a photo ID and an additional proof of residency and citizenship, just to be on the safe side, before trying to exercise the franchise.)
It is tempting, given the Bush/Cheney record, to say that because John Kerry is not George Bush, that is enough to warrant our support. But like many Americans, especially after the debates, our interest in his campaign and the prospects for our country under a Kerry Presidency have grown into a sense of genuine relief that is enthusiastic and heartfelt.
Importantly, the Senator understands our current conditions as a people and a country and has developed realistic proposals to combat our decided and undeniable decline.
He will seek to stem the flow of American jobs overseas with a taxing policy that rewards and encourages American companies to hire American workers. This seems to us a logical idea, long overdue.
He is actually addressing the health care crisis in America. This huge and complicated issue will not go away and will only become more troublesome as baby boomers reach retirement. Simply put, the Senator seeks to provide affordable coverage for all Americans by expanding the Federal programs that are enjoyed by members of Congress and others in the federal government.
Will this concept be expensive? Of course. Will it require legislative refinement. Yes again! Does it recognize a national problem and offer a workable solution. Another yes. Is it the "be all and end all" for the American Health Crisis? No, but it is a start and unmatched by anything we've seen from the GOP and President Bush.
Kerry will also seek to put some semblance of rationally into the finances of the budget. He will seek to increase the taxes paid by the wealthy and cut the lucrative tax "loopholes" that many corporations and individuals enjoy at the expense of everyone else.
As he had made very clear, a president Kerry will seek to increase international involvement into the reconstruction of Iraq and its society-not an easy task after the Bush presidency-and to develop a sound "exit strategy" for American involvement there.
More important for this country, he will reinvigorate and refocus our military and intelligence services-in partnership with other countries-in the war that really matters; the war on global terrorism. He understands, as we believe most Americans do, that Iraq posed no threat to us at the start of this war and that it has taken valuable resources from combating the ten of thousands of "true believers" who seek our destruction.
The next president will face enormous challenges and we believe that Senator Kerry is more than up to the task. He has, unlike President Bush and Vice President Cheney, sought to speak the truth and level with the American people about the difficult road ahead.
But John Kerry is not alone on the ballot. We cast our vote for two men. One to serve as president and the other to serve as our vice president.
Earlier in our history the office was little more than a ceremonial reward for years of devoted party service. Not any longer. The vice president has tremendous influence on what our government does and does not do and aside from his power to break a tie vote in the Senate, he must be ready to assume the office of president at any time.
While we fear the prospects of another four years of George Bush, we remind our fellow citizens that Bush comes with Cheney and that should anything happen to the president, Mr. Cheney would assume the leadership of our country.
While the president's policies and leadership is largely a resume of failure, he is at least, modestly cuddly and congenially photogenic, making his abominable performance appear less sinister and ominous.
Vice President Cheney, his physical persona aside, is deficient in even the most rudimentary skills of leadership that would be required should he become president. In a political career of more than three decades, and especially since becoming Vice President, Mr. Cheney has sought to vilify anyone who dared to differ with him and the president. Like the president, he is well connected with various elites and has profited handsomely by his cozy relationships with them.
During the campaign he has repeatedly suggested that a vote for Senator Kerry will encourage terrorist attacks on this country: a brand of fear skullduggery that is but the tip of his iceberg of hypocrisy.
And we remind the Vice President and his supporter of his statement on the March 16 edition of NBC's Meet The Press;
"The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."
The messages of welcoming have been all too familiar and deadly.
Senator Kerry wisely countered the divisive Dick Cheney with Senator John Edwards as his running mate. In Edwards we see openness, intelligence and a diligence that is lacking in Cheney. We believe that should he be called, a President Edwards would seek to unite our country and clarify our national purpose. We believe he would be better able to reach across party and social lines to form a consensus that would reflect the best that is within us. Vice President Cheney, given the baggage of his past, is simply not capable of achieving any measure of national unity.
Cheney, like the president, has managed to alienate our foreign friends and give more reasons for many to hate and despise our country. Faced with a nation or international crisis on a par with the 9/11 attacks or some other calamity, a President Cheney would meet, we believe, with begrudging support at best and given his history of polemics in foreign affairs, outright hostility from many of our closest friends in the international community.
If we seem too alarmed at the possibility of a Cheney Presidency, consider this.
President Clinton recently had a quadruple coronary artery bypass operation. An ordinarily healthy man for his age, the operation was performed with some haste after his heart condition was discovered.
President Clinton and President Bush differ on many things but they have one thing in common. They were both born in 1946. Bush was born on July 6th of that year, making him slightly older than Clinton, who was born on August 19.
While we have no reason to believe that President Bush would not live out his term or lose his capacity to govern, stranger things happen everyday to healthy men in their fifties. While we don't like the way the president has governed our country, the mere possibility of Dick Cheney stepping into the presidency, even for a brief period, makes the reelection of president Bush totally unacceptable.
The founding fathers worked tirelessly to construct a three tier system of government that would not allow any one interest to have an overriding control of the United States. They sought to check the temporary power of an elected interest or party in the presidency or congress with a relatively equal balance of power in the Supreme Court and Senate.
While few of the Founders would be happy with our party system, we suspect that they would be aghast at the current state of the Federal distribution of power in 2004. The Republican Party controls both houses of congress, has a decided majority in the Supreme Court (with more appointments soon to follow the election) and the party is lead by the president of the United States.
Given the real possibility of continued one-party rule, at least for the next two years if not much longer on the Court, we think that nothing less that the very fiber of our republic is at stake in this election.
We think it is time to return the balance of power back to the Democratic Party in the Congress, if for no other reason than to correct the excesses that Republican Congresses have inflicted on our government, our financial security and the well-being of our people. Republican candidates, especially office-holders, should be turned out and encouraged to seek other lines of employment.
We endorse Senator John Kerry for President and Senator John Edwards for Vice President. We believe they have the intelligence and understanding needed to protect us at home and to introduce and expand a positive and enlightened American agenda overseas.
But from our "gut" we would like, once again, to be proud of our country. We wish to revel, as we have before, in an unabashed pride of our nation; its people, traditions, accomplishments, sacrifices and resolves. We would, perhaps in the childlike adoration many of us feel from time to time, like to be again the exceptional nation on the planet, sought after, admired and even cherished by billions of people, including the fortunate few who can say with an boastful swagger, "I am an American".
Monday, August 16, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44160-2004Aug5.html
This was reprinted in The Day of New London, CT in their Sunday, August 15 edition. First published in the Washington Post on August 5.
I just had to reply. Not sure if it will make it in the newspaper but in any case, here it is.
To the editor:
Gary Alan Fine’s The Politics Of Hatred (Op-ed, The Day, August 15) suggests that the hatred of President Bush by so many Americans is an outgrowth of Bush’s follies during his charmed youth.
He says the Bush Administration is “free from scandals” (What! Billions in ‘no bid’ contracts, huge cost-overruns and secret energy deals) and actually credit’s the president for not eliminating various federal programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts. (A classic example of using a negative to promote a positive. That he‘s not held up a liquor store is commendable, but not reason to like the chap.)
Fine and other apologists for the president, is playing the a variation on the class warfare theme. The logic goes like this. If you oppose the president then you must be “for” the terrorists and not a “true” American patriot. Opponents of the president have sunk into the depths of class hatred. Since hatred is an emotion and not an intellectual exercise, their views are misguided and should be ignored.
Hate is a strong word and I suspect is over used in this instance. But let’s look at it this way. What’s to “like” about President Bush and his record in office?
We’re at war with no end in sight. The reasons for the starting the war, as even Bush patriots are beginning to admit, are at best controversial if not based on outright lies.
We’re broke. The piper is starting to demand payment now and federal deficits stretch into the future as far as the bean-counters can see.
We’ve blown our good name among most of the people on the planet. We cuddle up to the Saudi’s and our government is viewed by others with a mixture of fear and distain.
We’re divide (red and blue states) and Bush has done nothing to ease these divisions or to seek common ground.
Our national parks are in a dramatic state of decline.
We’ve no energy policy worthy of the name.
Our military is so depleted it has forced soldiers to stay in past their discharge. (As a former Army Sergeant I can say with some expertise that this is unlikely to stimulate future recruitment and retention.)
Tax burdens have shifted from the wealthy to the middle class and poor. (Republican suggestion for a national sales tax will only increase the income percentage paid by the non-rich on gas, utilities, goods and services.)
Schools have cut teachers, books, classes and many have started to charge parents so their children can play football, take music or join the chess club. (This is directly related to the shifting tax revenues back onto local and state governments)
Our transportation system resembles a third world country and the nation’s environmental policy consists of “hoping” things don’t get too hot or too dirty too soon.
The 9/11 commission (a commission Bush opposed) politely (in the interests of unanimity), suggested that Bush and his cadre of intelligence and foreign policy experts were fiddling while terrorists were planning the burnings of New York and Washington. And Bush says we’re safer today.
No, this is not the politics of hatred. It is the politics of reality. Tens of millions of Americans have taken a look at Bush and his achievements. We don’t hate the man. We hate the things he had done. More important, we love our country.
Peter Roberts
New London, CT
Newenglandwow.com
This was reprinted in The Day of New London, CT in their Sunday, August 15 edition. First published in the Washington Post on August 5.
I just had to reply. Not sure if it will make it in the newspaper but in any case, here it is.
To the editor:
Gary Alan Fine’s The Politics Of Hatred (Op-ed, The Day, August 15) suggests that the hatred of President Bush by so many Americans is an outgrowth of Bush’s follies during his charmed youth.
He says the Bush Administration is “free from scandals” (What! Billions in ‘no bid’ contracts, huge cost-overruns and secret energy deals) and actually credit’s the president for not eliminating various federal programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts. (A classic example of using a negative to promote a positive. That he‘s not held up a liquor store is commendable, but not reason to like the chap.)
Fine and other apologists for the president, is playing the a variation on the class warfare theme. The logic goes like this. If you oppose the president then you must be “for” the terrorists and not a “true” American patriot. Opponents of the president have sunk into the depths of class hatred. Since hatred is an emotion and not an intellectual exercise, their views are misguided and should be ignored.
Hate is a strong word and I suspect is over used in this instance. But let’s look at it this way. What’s to “like” about President Bush and his record in office?
We’re at war with no end in sight. The reasons for the starting the war, as even Bush patriots are beginning to admit, are at best controversial if not based on outright lies.
We’re broke. The piper is starting to demand payment now and federal deficits stretch into the future as far as the bean-counters can see.
We’ve blown our good name among most of the people on the planet. We cuddle up to the Saudi’s and our government is viewed by others with a mixture of fear and distain.
We’re divide (red and blue states) and Bush has done nothing to ease these divisions or to seek common ground.
Our national parks are in a dramatic state of decline.
We’ve no energy policy worthy of the name.
Our military is so depleted it has forced soldiers to stay in past their discharge. (As a former Army Sergeant I can say with some expertise that this is unlikely to stimulate future recruitment and retention.)
Tax burdens have shifted from the wealthy to the middle class and poor. (Republican suggestion for a national sales tax will only increase the income percentage paid by the non-rich on gas, utilities, goods and services.)
Schools have cut teachers, books, classes and many have started to charge parents so their children can play football, take music or join the chess club. (This is directly related to the shifting tax revenues back onto local and state governments)
Our transportation system resembles a third world country and the nation’s environmental policy consists of “hoping” things don’t get too hot or too dirty too soon.
The 9/11 commission (a commission Bush opposed) politely (in the interests of unanimity), suggested that Bush and his cadre of intelligence and foreign policy experts were fiddling while terrorists were planning the burnings of New York and Washington. And Bush says we’re safer today.
No, this is not the politics of hatred. It is the politics of reality. Tens of millions of Americans have taken a look at Bush and his achievements. We don’t hate the man. We hate the things he had done. More important, we love our country.
Peter Roberts
New London, CT
Newenglandwow.com
Resignation bandwagon
Maybe former Connecticut Governor John Rowland started something. Now we have New Jersey's Governor James McGreevey taking an early exit from government. Earlier this year we had a forced change in California. Are Ashcroft and others listening in Washington?
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers
Must reading for everyone. The report is about the FBI interviewing people who "might" have knowledge about political violence at the conventions or during the election. A domestic version of going after WMDs before they are used, if there were any.
Another example of how far we've come. We're all to march in lockstep with Bush and the ones who don't had better watch out because the FBI may come a calling. They are just so afraid of the people and what might happen should they lose their power.
Must reading for everyone. The report is about the FBI interviewing people who "might" have knowledge about political violence at the conventions or during the election. A domestic version of going after WMDs before they are used, if there were any.
Another example of how far we've come. We're all to march in lockstep with Bush and the ones who don't had better watch out because the FBI may come a calling. They are just so afraid of the people and what might happen should they lose their power.
