This is scary...really scary
This would mean 4 more years of my being unemployed and unable to get Disability.
From the Lawrence (MA) Eagle-Tribune
If Bush wins, expect more of the same old failures
By David Nyhan
Columnist
Pretend this is the morning of Nov. 3.
The news is almost all about the election, the outcome of the presidential race, the new alignments of House and Senate, a smattering of local races, the latest death toll from Iraq, then a few terse announcements from various federal agencies of bad news they wanted buried in the blizzard of political coverage.
Everyone is exhausted; the winners crow, the losers are crushed, partisans from either side of the divide exult or brood. The country at large shrugs and prepares to move on. To what?
For that, we have to wait till the morning of Jan. 21, 2005, when the papers are full of the president's inaugural speech, the initial pronouncements of the Cabinet designees, leaks from party insiders and congressional sources about new departures in governing, shifts in tax policy, rumored appointments to key regulatory posts.
The contributors whose candidate won lick their chops; those who invested more heavily in the losing side meet in gloom, preparing their defenses for the retribution sure to come in the committee rooms of Congress, and the paneled offices of the political appointees now handed four years of hands-on ability to work the levers of government.
But which way is the country to go?
If John Kerry is president, the federal government changes course dramatically across the whole landscape.
If George Bush is returned for four more years, it's more of the same, only then some. A president who cannot admit ever making a mistake, who insists everything he did in Iraq was just right, whose yes-man vice president echoes that he'd give just the very same advice all over again, that president is going to give you more of the same old same old.
A Bush victory would almost result in a big military push in Iraq, an escalation of air attacks on insurgents, and a desperate gamble to justify the invasion now seen as an occupation that turned into a Vietnam-like quagmire. Look at where the Bush administration is headed in Iraq, and you see where the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has already gone against the Palestinians: more firepower, more casualties, more retaliatory terror bombings, deeper condemnation across the world at large.
At home, with four U.S. Supreme Court justices either aging, ailing or close to leaving, the fate of a woman's right to choose an abortion hangs on the next presidential appointment. Bush refuses to say if he'd tip the scales against Roe v. Wade. Hello? Can't you figure out that means the banning of abortion?
A re-elected Bush with another Republican-controlled Congress would have no constraints on his policies; no congressional oversight worth anything, no investigations, no summoning of reluctant witnesses forced to testify about their official conduct, no meaningful probes of gaps and gaffes in government actions, no way to deflect the appointment of judges and officials whose past acts betray the sort of raw partisanship so characteristic of this Republican regime. Why do you think it took three years to get the 9-11 Commission report? This Congress covered up for Bush, who is already foot dragging on intelligence reform, hoping to get past the election without having to accede to the Commission's stern recommendations.
We've just seen a foretaste of what's to come under a re-elected Bush: the harshly partisan Republican House member, Porter Goss, has just taken over the CIA. His first act? To sideline a bunch of career professionals, and replace them with a clutch of his political henchmen from GOP ranks.
On the environment, the economy, the legalization of drug imports from Canada, the level of the minimum wage, on worker safety, education funding, student loan amounts , a Bush re-election would cement in place for another four years the same kind of repressive reward-the-rich policies we have in place today.
Assault weapons proliferate on the streets, available to would-be terrorists as well as gangsters and street thugs, because Bush caved to the NRA and allowed the Clinton-era ban to expire.
Stem cell research? Not under the Bush reign. The limited amount of stem cell research allowed by Bush was dictated by his right-wing fundamentalist anti-abortion base. Forget about U.S.-led breakthroughs on spinal injuries, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and the array of diseases researchers are eager to solve. Bush says no because Pat Robertson tells him to say no. This has to be the single greatest government-mandated retreat from science since South Africa's government ham-handedly denied the scientific evidence of AIDS, another triumph of ignorance over enlightenment.
And what of the war on terror? More supposed terrorists tortured in secret jails, the vast network of gulag outposts erected around the world to house our suspected enemies? More hostages taken, more beheadings, accelerating the cycle of more go-it-alone measures, as Tony Blair, Bush's last loyalist in Europe, goes down? Not even Bush partisans can deny that the great mass of citizens in Europe would prefer to see Bush defeated.
Richard Clarke, the top anti-terror appointee who served under Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr., told a Harvard audience last spring that a case could be made that Osama bin Laden might prefer a re-elected President Bush to the installation of a new President Kerry.
Why? Because Bush has made bin Laden a hero to the Muslim masses stretching from Europe to Indonesia. The claim by Vice President Cheney that a Kerry victory would trigger more terror attacks are patently self-serving and beneath contempt.
One of Kerry's biggest applause lines on the stump is his vow to remove John Ashcroft as attorney general. The Justice Department is the federal agency where a Kerry win would result in the most dramatic changes on the domestic front. The changes Kerry would make at the Pentagon and State Department would determine the course of U.S. war policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in dealing with the terror threat.
No one can predict the course of the Iraq insurgency, the pace of training Iraqi troops and police to take over security concerns, and the political situation after the election scheduled in January. The continuing cost of American casualties and of the war in terms of money will put great pressure on whoever is elected to set a firm pullout date.
Frankly, it seems the only way the United States can end this drain on American lives and treasure is to leave a lot sooner than either presidential candidate can prudently acknowledge before the election. My hunch is that Kerry, not having launched the war, and being far more critical of its conduct, will get Americans home a lot sooner than Bush would. The four- to five-year occupation that the administration foresees is simply not sustainable in terms of U.S. politics, no matter which man wins Nov. 2.
Bush invaded Iraq for publicly stated reasons that have not held up: no WMD, no nuke program worth worrying about, no Saddam-bin Laden connection, no tie to 9-11. I've argued previously Bush may have had a hidden, smoldering, personal reason to dethrone Saddam: the bitter memory of Saddam remaining in power after Bush's father, author of the first Gulf War, languished in defeat.
And I have no doubt that a re-elected Bush Jr., with his path cleared by the acknowledgment of Cheney that he cannot plausibly run for president himself, opens the way for Bush the Second to pave the course for his brother Jeb, the Florida governor, to capture the GOP nomination in 2008. Any guy who'll start a war apparently to avenge his father's defeat should have no compunction about doing everything he can to crowbar his brother into the White House. Bush III? No thanks. Two are enough.
David Nyhan is a longtime Boston political commentator.
=====================
I really like what this man has to say. He says everything I've been thinking since the Presidential race began almost 2 years ago. As I said above, a Bush victory will be a detriment to me personally. This country cannot afford four more years of this. I cannot afford four more years of this. Can you?
--MorelaterZ--
From the Lawrence (MA) Eagle-Tribune
If Bush wins, expect more of the same old failures
By David Nyhan
Columnist
Pretend this is the morning of Nov. 3.
The news is almost all about the election, the outcome of the presidential race, the new alignments of House and Senate, a smattering of local races, the latest death toll from Iraq, then a few terse announcements from various federal agencies of bad news they wanted buried in the blizzard of political coverage.
Everyone is exhausted; the winners crow, the losers are crushed, partisans from either side of the divide exult or brood. The country at large shrugs and prepares to move on. To what?
For that, we have to wait till the morning of Jan. 21, 2005, when the papers are full of the president's inaugural speech, the initial pronouncements of the Cabinet designees, leaks from party insiders and congressional sources about new departures in governing, shifts in tax policy, rumored appointments to key regulatory posts.
The contributors whose candidate won lick their chops; those who invested more heavily in the losing side meet in gloom, preparing their defenses for the retribution sure to come in the committee rooms of Congress, and the paneled offices of the political appointees now handed four years of hands-on ability to work the levers of government.
But which way is the country to go?
If John Kerry is president, the federal government changes course dramatically across the whole landscape.
If George Bush is returned for four more years, it's more of the same, only then some. A president who cannot admit ever making a mistake, who insists everything he did in Iraq was just right, whose yes-man vice president echoes that he'd give just the very same advice all over again, that president is going to give you more of the same old same old.
A Bush victory would almost result in a big military push in Iraq, an escalation of air attacks on insurgents, and a desperate gamble to justify the invasion now seen as an occupation that turned into a Vietnam-like quagmire. Look at where the Bush administration is headed in Iraq, and you see where the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has already gone against the Palestinians: more firepower, more casualties, more retaliatory terror bombings, deeper condemnation across the world at large.
At home, with four U.S. Supreme Court justices either aging, ailing or close to leaving, the fate of a woman's right to choose an abortion hangs on the next presidential appointment. Bush refuses to say if he'd tip the scales against Roe v. Wade. Hello? Can't you figure out that means the banning of abortion?
A re-elected Bush with another Republican-controlled Congress would have no constraints on his policies; no congressional oversight worth anything, no investigations, no summoning of reluctant witnesses forced to testify about their official conduct, no meaningful probes of gaps and gaffes in government actions, no way to deflect the appointment of judges and officials whose past acts betray the sort of raw partisanship so characteristic of this Republican regime. Why do you think it took three years to get the 9-11 Commission report? This Congress covered up for Bush, who is already foot dragging on intelligence reform, hoping to get past the election without having to accede to the Commission's stern recommendations.
We've just seen a foretaste of what's to come under a re-elected Bush: the harshly partisan Republican House member, Porter Goss, has just taken over the CIA. His first act? To sideline a bunch of career professionals, and replace them with a clutch of his political henchmen from GOP ranks.
On the environment, the economy, the legalization of drug imports from Canada, the level of the minimum wage, on worker safety, education funding, student loan amounts , a Bush re-election would cement in place for another four years the same kind of repressive reward-the-rich policies we have in place today.
Assault weapons proliferate on the streets, available to would-be terrorists as well as gangsters and street thugs, because Bush caved to the NRA and allowed the Clinton-era ban to expire.
Stem cell research? Not under the Bush reign. The limited amount of stem cell research allowed by Bush was dictated by his right-wing fundamentalist anti-abortion base. Forget about U.S.-led breakthroughs on spinal injuries, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and the array of diseases researchers are eager to solve. Bush says no because Pat Robertson tells him to say no. This has to be the single greatest government-mandated retreat from science since South Africa's government ham-handedly denied the scientific evidence of AIDS, another triumph of ignorance over enlightenment.
And what of the war on terror? More supposed terrorists tortured in secret jails, the vast network of gulag outposts erected around the world to house our suspected enemies? More hostages taken, more beheadings, accelerating the cycle of more go-it-alone measures, as Tony Blair, Bush's last loyalist in Europe, goes down? Not even Bush partisans can deny that the great mass of citizens in Europe would prefer to see Bush defeated.
Richard Clarke, the top anti-terror appointee who served under Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr., told a Harvard audience last spring that a case could be made that Osama bin Laden might prefer a re-elected President Bush to the installation of a new President Kerry.
Why? Because Bush has made bin Laden a hero to the Muslim masses stretching from Europe to Indonesia. The claim by Vice President Cheney that a Kerry victory would trigger more terror attacks are patently self-serving and beneath contempt.
One of Kerry's biggest applause lines on the stump is his vow to remove John Ashcroft as attorney general. The Justice Department is the federal agency where a Kerry win would result in the most dramatic changes on the domestic front. The changes Kerry would make at the Pentagon and State Department would determine the course of U.S. war policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in dealing with the terror threat.
No one can predict the course of the Iraq insurgency, the pace of training Iraqi troops and police to take over security concerns, and the political situation after the election scheduled in January. The continuing cost of American casualties and of the war in terms of money will put great pressure on whoever is elected to set a firm pullout date.
Frankly, it seems the only way the United States can end this drain on American lives and treasure is to leave a lot sooner than either presidential candidate can prudently acknowledge before the election. My hunch is that Kerry, not having launched the war, and being far more critical of its conduct, will get Americans home a lot sooner than Bush would. The four- to five-year occupation that the administration foresees is simply not sustainable in terms of U.S. politics, no matter which man wins Nov. 2.
Bush invaded Iraq for publicly stated reasons that have not held up: no WMD, no nuke program worth worrying about, no Saddam-bin Laden connection, no tie to 9-11. I've argued previously Bush may have had a hidden, smoldering, personal reason to dethrone Saddam: the bitter memory of Saddam remaining in power after Bush's father, author of the first Gulf War, languished in defeat.
And I have no doubt that a re-elected Bush Jr., with his path cleared by the acknowledgment of Cheney that he cannot plausibly run for president himself, opens the way for Bush the Second to pave the course for his brother Jeb, the Florida governor, to capture the GOP nomination in 2008. Any guy who'll start a war apparently to avenge his father's defeat should have no compunction about doing everything he can to crowbar his brother into the White House. Bush III? No thanks. Two are enough.
David Nyhan is a longtime Boston political commentator.
=====================
I really like what this man has to say. He says everything I've been thinking since the Presidential race began almost 2 years ago. As I said above, a Bush victory will be a detriment to me personally. This country cannot afford four more years of this. I cannot afford four more years of this. Can you?
--MorelaterZ--
My name is Stef, and I approve this post. Posted @ 3:44 PM
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