Republicans:

The Party of the Very Rich and the Gullible

Which are you?

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2004-01-21 - 7:10 p.m.

State of the Union at Home

This New York Times editorial takes a tough look at President Bush's State of the Union address.

Some excerpts follow:

This time, such evenhandedness seems impossible. The president's domestic policy comes down to one disastrous fact: his insistence on huge tax cuts for the wealthy has robbed the country of the money it needs to address its problems and has threatened its long-term economic security. Everything else is beside the point.

...

It is actually a cruel hoax to pretend that Washington can afford to do anything new, even with the modest grab bag of small new initiatives and familiar retreads suggested by the president. In that context, his decision last night to re-endorse the Social Security overhaul plan from his last campaign was terrifying.

Go here to read the whole editorial.

2004-01-18 - 4:02 p.m.

A Dishonest War

Senator Edward Kennedy tells it like it is again, in this powerful op-ed piece in the Washington Post.

Some excerpts follow:

Of the many issues competing for attention in this new and defining year, one is of a unique order of magnitude: President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The facts demonstrate how dishonest that decision was.

...

In the following months, although bin Laden was still at large, the drumbeat on Iraq gradually drowned out those who felt Hussein was no imminent threat. On Sept. 12 the president told the United Nations: "Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents and has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." He said Iraq could build a nuclear weapon "within a year" if Hussein obtained such material.

...

Election politics prevailed over foreign policy and national security. The administration insisted on a vote in Congress to authorize the war before Congress adjourned for the elections. Why? Because the debate would distract attention from the troubled economy and the failed effort to capture bin Laden. The shift in focus to Iraq could help Republicans and divide Democrats.

...

The final step in the march to war was a feint to the United Nations. But Cheney, Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had convinced the president that war would be a cakewalk, with or without the United Nations, and that our forces would be welcomed as liberators. In March the war began.

Senator Kennedy concludes as follows:

Hussein's brutal regime was not an adequate justification for war, and the administration did not seriously try to make it one until long after the war began and all the false justifications began to fall apart. There was no imminent threat. Hussein had no nuclear weapons, no arsenals of chemical or biological weapons, no connection to Sept. 11 and no plausible link to al Qaeda. We never should have gone to war for ideological reasons driven by politics and based on manipulated intelligence.

Vast resources have been spent on the war that should have been spent on priorities at home. Our forces are stretched thin. Precious lives have been lost. The war has made America more hated in the world and made the war on terrorism harder to win. As Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in announcing the latest higher alert: "Al Qaeda's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland is perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11th."

The most fundamental decision a president ever makes is the decision to go to war. President Bush violated the trust that must exist between government and the people. If Congress and the American people had known the truth, America would never have gone to war in Iraq. No president who does that to our country deserves to be reelected.

Go here to read the whole powerful article:

2004-01-16 - 9:07 p.m.

President, GOP Are Stomping on Democracy

In this article in Newsday, by Walter Williams, who is professor emeritus at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs and the author of "Reaganism and the Death of Representative Democracy," is shown the danger to our democracy that is represented by the Bush Administration and its policies.

Some excerpts follow:

What is so surprising is that he has done more in his first term to degrade democracy and foster secrecy in national government than any other postwar president during a comparable period of time.

...

None of the three basic requirements to sustain representative democracy are now being met. The serious erosion started with Ronald Reagan in 1981.

In the next two decades, the nation's political institutions were badly battered. Once Bush came to the Oval Office, his administration's actions wreaked havoc on the American political system.

Excessive business deregulation and the massive 1981 Reagan income tax cut began supplying the funds used by the super-rich and corporate America to give huge campaign contributions to politicians, especially incumbents, to gain special advantage in the White House and Congress.

President Bush's tax cuts for the rich have exceeded those of Reagan and have brought the greatest disparities in income since the 1920s. Big money rules Washington with an iron hand.

...

Aided and abetted, and sometimes driven by Bush, the Republican congressional leadership went the next step to reduce the Democrats to second-class status. In a Nov. 26, 2003, editorial, The Washington Post wrote: "Democrats have been excluded from conference committees, where the majority seems to view them as a pesky irrelevance. ...Debate is abridged to the point of parody." The Republicans' blatant effort at iron control swept away the Madisonian concept of reasoned debate.

America has been shrouded in secrecy during the Bush presidency, robbing the public and Congress of needed decision-making information in the areas of safety, health and the environment.

The administration continues to invoke national security as the justification for withholding information, but the push for secrecy - now at its most restrictive in decades - began months before Sept. 11. Its efforts to hide information has halted the decades of increasing openness in government.

The foundation needed for representative democracy to survive has crumbled. Bush, the self-proclaimed champion of democratizing the world, has morphed into the foremost enemy of democracy at home. Pundits and the public have failed to recognize the extent of the damage to American constitutional governance. It is a national tragedy.

2004-01-15 - 8:15 p.m.

Michael Moore Endorses Wesley Clark

In a very articulate letter, Michael Moore explains why he feels that Wesley Clark is the best candidate to take the White House back from George Bush. He is very persuasive. Here are some excerpts:

I have decided to cast my vote in the primary for Wesley Clark. That's right, a peacenik is voting for a general. What a country!

I believe that Wesley Clark will end this war. He will make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. He will stand up for the rights of women, African Americans, and the working people of this country.

And he will cream George W. Bush.

I have met Clark and spoken to him on a number of occasions, feeling him out on the issues but, more importantly, getting a sense of him as a human being. And I have to tell you I have found him to be the real deal, someone whom I'm convinced all of you would like, both as a person and as the individual leading this country. He is an honest, decent, honorable man who would be a breath of fresh air in the White House. He is clearly not a professional politician. He is clearly not from Park Avenue. And he is clearly the absolute best hope we have of defeating George W. Bush.

...

There are times to vote to make a statement, there are times to vote for the underdog and there are times to vote to save the country from catastrophe. This time we can and must do all three. I still believe that each one of us must vote his or her heart and conscience. If we fail to do that, we will continue to be stuck with spineless politicians who stand for nothing and no one (except those who write them the biggest checks).

My vote for Clark is one of conscience. I feel so strongly about this that I'm going to devote the next few weeks of my life to do everything I can to help Wesley Clark win. I would love it if you would join me on this mission.

Here are just a few of the reasons why I feel this way about Wes Clark:

Go here to read some very good reasons.

He concludes:

In addition to voting for Wesley Clark, I will also be spending part of my Bush tax cut to help him out. You can join me, if you like, by going to his website to learn more about him, to volunteer, or to donate. To find out about when your state’s presidential primaries are, visit Vote Smart.

I strongly urge you to vote for Wes Clark. Let's join together to ensure that we are putting forth our BEST chance to defeat Bush on the November ballot. It is, at this point, for the sake of the world, a moral imperative.

Yours,

Michael Moore

www.michaelmoore.com

mmflint@aol.com

P.S. To register to vote visit www.yourvotematters.org.

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