Sunday, October 30, 2005

STATE OF THE COUNTRY & PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS IN SLOW MOTION

I am not at all inclined to see what is happening to President George W. Bush's trio of men, Libby, Rove, and Cheney in a positive light probably because the truth of what happened leading up to the Iraq war and the direction this country has gone is not unwinding fast enough for me. The Democrats, for instance, Harry Reid, say they will support a conservative candidate for the Supreme Court (since Harriet Miers withdrew her name from the appontment) as long as he or she is not far right conservative. Conservative is now okay, moderate is not even mentioned anymore. Why don't the Dems call for Bush's impeachment? He is not competent to lead. The Neo Cons who took this country and led Bush to war with no other reason than they thought the USA should be more influential in the middle east and equated spreading democracy with the most aggressive hawklike move on Bagdad and Iraq since Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Theocracy reigns with Bush's blessing instead of democracy. If you don't believe in religion at all, you are now suspect in America, witness Bill Maher, the talk show host, quick exit from ABC for criticizing Bush's War and also I believe putting down religion. Bush's brain (Karl Rove) no longer has any credibility and that makes Bush bankrupt intellectually. Cheney may hang in there, although ethically he is totally corrupt, using the Iraq War as an excuse to enrich his corporate friends and companies i.e. Halliburton and Exxon.

Nothing is moving fast enough for me. Economically the country is suffering, costs of college tuition fees is going up, gas prices are outrageous, the poor continue to be shafted, health care costs continue to climb, potential retirees are losing on their pension coverage and right to health care coverage, hurricane victims still suffer, the era of abortion rights seems to be over, and it goes on and on. I don't know how we can realistically manage getting a humanitarian third party to win a presidential election or a way to, hopefully, turn this country around but we need something new to get out of the mess we are in now. The status quo has brilliantly figured out how to have a mostly uninformed public. Very belatedly people say they would have voted against Bush if only they had known then what they know now. Some of us, sadly too few of us, knew then and have know for a long time, something is wrong with the way this country is run and is running. The question now is how can we start over and move in a new direction? It will take a grassroots movement like Move-on to begin the thrust forward but we also need leaders who speak out. Where are they now and why aren't they speaking out?

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