Republicans:

The Party of the Very Rich and the Gullible

Which are you?

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2003-12-06 - 3:35 p.m.

More on the Draft

Here's another op-ed piece from Yahoo by Ted Rall about the likelihood of bringing back the draft.

This is a good reason for young people to get active politically and take back the country from this reckless and arrogant Republican administation.

This much is certain: If Bush resumes his neocolonial landgrab after "re"election, he'll have to bring back the draft. And a new generation of young men, ordered to disrupt their lives to feed the vanity and bank accounts of a cabal of gangsters, will ponder whether to flee or fight.

2003-12-04 - 5:41 p.m.

Bringing Back the Draft?

All you people of draft age better pay attention if you don't want to find yourself in uniform in Iraq. There is growing talk about reinstating the draft, as the armed forces of the United States are being stretched way too thin. Because of the disastrous war in Iraq, and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, half the military are not reenlisting, and members of the Reserves and National Guard who have been subjected to long tours of duty there, subjecting their families to great hardships, are also dropping out. That means that the draft will need to be reinstated in order to continue the Bush wars.

The Bush Administration will not talk about this, because they do not want to lose your votes, but how else can they continue their policies?

This article, Hint of draft blowing in the wind

By MARIANNE MEANS spells it out.

She says:

President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld won't go near the subject -- at least not on the record. But in November the Pentagon placed a notice on its Web site seeking "men and women in the community who might be willing to serve as members of a local draft board."

...

After the notice set off alarm bells, it was hastily pulled from the Web site without explanation.

The explanation is easy to figure out. It is well documented that morale has been plummeting among troops being asked to serve long tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and National Guard and Reserve units forced to serve for long periods away from jobs and families. The threat of falling re-enlistment levels is very real.

The Bush Administration will deny any such intention of reinstating the draft until after the election. Then, if Bush is reelected, they will push it through. This is typical of their bait and switch policies.

She goes on:

The Bush administration, however, isn't working very hard to keep the troops happy. It has been trying to cut back benefits, seeking to reduce funding for military housing and aid to schools that educate the children of military families as well as threatening presidential vetoes of bills to expand health care for reservists. Wounded reservists awaiting medical care have been housed in tumbledown barracks.

So, if you know anyone of draft age, you better alert them to what will be in store for them. Just another reason why the defeat of this reckless Republican administration in 2004 is imperative.

Read the whole article here.

2003-12-03 - 12:45 p.m.

Proud to be a Liberal

I've lifted the following quote from Steve Gilliard's blog, because I like the way he said it, and can identify with what he said. It's true that since the Reagan Administration, the word, "liberal" has been disrespected and debased, by those on the right such as Reagan himself and Rush Limbaugh. But throughout all this time, I've been proud to be a liberal, for many of the following reasons:

For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.

Bush and the people around him disdain that. They think, by accident of birth and circumstance, they were meant to rule the world and those who did not agree would suffer.

Liberal does not and has not meant weak until the conservatives said it did. Was Martin Luther King weak? Bobby Kennedy? Gene McCarthy? It was the liberals who remade this country and ended legal segregation and legal sexism. Not the conservatives, who wanted to hold on to the old ways.

It's time to regain the sprit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.

It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims.

Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi sattlelite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time.

It is time to stop looking for an accomodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?

2003-12-02 - 11:38 a.m.

Gullible Americans

If you believe that we can have a huge tax cut plus a war and grow our way out of the recession, then your gullibility borders on stupidity and you deserve to be treated like a mushroom. If you believe that the free market will solve all our problems, then you deserve to be ripped off by the new robber-barons: the unregulated energy monopolies and pharmaceutical companies. If you believe that insurance companies are more interested in quality health care than their own bottom lines, then you deserve second rate health care at premium prices. If you think huge tax cuts for fat cats will stimulate the economy, then you deserve to be trickled on by the fat cats who invest in factories in the third world and then ship your job overseas.

It is obvious that the Republicans are not offering any solutions to our problems. How much longer Americans can continue to pay top dollar for second-rate, forsale-to-the-highest-bidder government is largely a function of their own gullibility.

The above quote was lifted from a comment by regular_joe3_0 , on the article from USA Today by Kathy Kiely, entitled "Liberals finding their voice -- and it's angry" which was reposted at SmirkingChimp.com, which I thought was quite well stated and worth posting here. The comment is much longer, but this is the part I liked best.

2003-12-01 - 6:51 p.m.

This War is Not Against Terrorists

Jay Bookman, of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was one of the earliest mainstream journalists to focus on the real reasons for the war in Iraq behind this administration's deceptions about an imminent threat to the U.S.

That article, back on September 29, 2002, was called "The President's Real Goal in Iraq," and it shone the light on PNAC (the Project for the New American Century), and that neocoservative group's plans to overthrow Saddam by force in order to create an empire in the Middle East long before 9/11 gave them the excuse they were waiting for. Once Cheney took office, he placed these neocons in high administration positions.

Now, in his latest article, "This War Not Against Terrorists," Bookman spells out the current situation in Iraq clearly, again contradicting the Bush administration lies:

From the beginning, the Bush administration's inability to talk straight about its Iraq policy has generated deep and valid suspicion. Good policy doesn't need to be defended by deception; the truth will do just fine.

We didn't get the truth a year ago, when Bush officials implausibly claimed that Saddam Hussein posed a dire threat to U.S. security. We're not getting the truth today, as President Bush and others depict our struggle in Iraq as some sort of defense of the American homeland.

"We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there," Vice President Dick Cheney said a week ago, "so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities."

"You are defeating the terrorists in Iraq, so we don't have to face them in our country," President Bush likewise told U.S. troops during his lightning visit to Baghdad.

Such statements are simply false. Our men and women in uniform are not fighting for their lives against international terrorists in Iraq. They are not fighting the people who attacked us on Sept. 11, nor are they fighting allies of those people.

He goes on to back up these claims. And he eventually concludes:

The war on Iraq and the war on terror are two different struggles. Tackled separately, either would have taken us years to win. Tackling them simultaneously was tragic foolishness on a very large scale, no matter how much the president claims otherwise.

Go here to read this whole insightful article.

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