Choices in an election year

Vote your faith, not your fear.

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

Dare to know the rest of the story

I know nobody reads, but make an exception this time. Read the whole article in The New York Times, and then you will know the real story about George W. Bush and the National Guard, the story that you knew we would never know, the records being lost and destroyed and all that. Portrait of George Bush in '72: Unanchored in Turbulent Time , Published September 20, 2004:

MONTGOMERY, Ala., Sept. 17 - Nineteen seventy-two was the year George W. Bush dropped off the radar screen.

He abandoned his once-prized status as a National Guard pilot by failing to appear for a required physical.

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

Last day of summer

Photo by Glen Williams

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

The mystery of it all

We all know the content of the memos is true. The Bush White House declines to comment. Some of us hope the documents will be proven authentic, and some of us are praying that they will not. All of us know the content is accurate. I notice that nobody is questioning that.

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

Republicans Leave No Child Behind Again

That's right. No children left in school. No schools, actually. All the children were dumped.

Charter schools close in California, story from New York Times:

The businessman who used $100 million in state financing to build an empire of 60 mostly storefront schools had simply abandoned his headquarters as bankruptcy loomed, refusing to take phone calls. That left Mr. Larson, a school superintendent whose district licensed dozens of the schools, to clean up the mess.

Way to go, George W and Smiling Jack. We see now that private enterprise is the key.

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

Twilight Zone Re-run

The recent Cheney remark that if we vote for Kerry we will be attacked by terrorists was a slip of the tongue that revealed the method behind the madness. It is the Bush plan to keep Americans scared to death so they will vote for him even though we all know that he is a bully whose wrong choices have cost each of us dearly and that he has lied to us in the past and continues to lie to us.

This entry was first published on July 31, 2004. Some things are true enough to say twice.

I am tired of hearing George W. Bush talk about the threat of terrorism. Wouldn't you think he would want us to feel safe under his leadership? And, since he has misrepresented so much, wouldn't he even nudge the information to make us feel good about him? Why would he want to keep us afraid?

Someone else has been asking that question,
and you can read the report here.

Apparently, keeping us terrified is good for Bush. According to this report and the CNN story about it, people who are thinking about either 9/11 or their own death say they would vote for Bush, and people thinking about common situations like college exams or watching television say they would vote for Kerry.

The CNN story quotes Sheldon Solomon, a social psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York who specializes in terrorism: "There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat."

Does the threat work?

According to the CNN report, the study showed that it did:

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote, don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."

He wants voters to be aware of psychological pressures and how they are used.

The Vietnam War record

Now that his campaign has done the damage to Kerry, here's why George W. Bush wants us to forget about what happened during the Vietnam War and talk about more current issues:

Busted

As I said before (8/24/04), first the bully hits you, then he yells so the teacher looks and you can't hit him back. The difference is that while you did nothing wrong, the bully deserves to be hit. You are in pain, and the bully can gloat because he both injured you and made you look like a troublemaker at no cost to his reputation.

Kerry earned his purple hearts. The Bush family leveraged George W.'s honorable discharge, and they have spent thirty years lying about and covering up the record.

The way we were

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

I remember when the opportunity zone -- as well as the free speech zone -- was from sea to shining sea.

When did Republicans quit thinking?

If there is any consistent identifying feature of Republican doctrine prior to the advent of the Bush Dynasty, it is fiscal responsibility -- balancing the budget, knowing where the dollars are coming from, holding on to our credit-worthy status, being a good solid banker.

George W. Bush is not a Republican in this sense. He just talks about fiscal responsibility. Really he is leading his Republican Congress to give him the farm. (That would be the one they wouldn't have to sell to pay the inheritance tax. So much better to just give it to him up front.) The children of this country are mortgaged for the next three generations by the fiscal policies of the Bush administration. John at Thudfactor cites the Bush fakery on the $87 billion for operations in Iraq:

Bush threatened a veto of this bill. The version that passed had no legislation to indicate where that money would come from. Kerry’s vote against this bill was a vote for fiscal responsibility.

Fiscal health is our number one weapon in any war. If we have no money and no one trusts our credit, how will we field an army?

Kerry supported the bill when it was responsible, but Bush demanded a bill that was irresponsible.

John Kerry didn't "flip-flop." He just read the fine print and voted for responsible leadership. Apparently, "flip-flop" is Bush-speak for thinking about anything long enough to develop any insight. Bush worked his double-speak magic, which is pure and simple obfuscation, clouding the issue while he picked our pockets as Howard Gleckman explained in BusinessWeek Online, September 10, 2003:

There's just one problem. While Bush and Congress are fighting over every dollar, they're going to pretend the $87 billion in Iraq money doesn't count as part of the discretionary budget ceiling, even though every thing else the Pentagon does is included.

This is an accounting gimmick that would shame even Enron. "We will hold down spending," Bush and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill will say. But next to that boast will be a little imaginary asterisk that says, "For everything, that is, but Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, a fistful of trust funds, and the war in Iraq." In truth, the government will spend more than $1.3 trillion next year -- close to twice the discretionary-spending target -- on stuff that doesn't count in Washington's debates over fiscal responsibility.

No bleeding heart liberal public assistance policy in the history of the world has been so blatantly dismissive of fiscal responsibility. When you compare the cost of the Iraq war to the cost of social programs, the magnitude of the deception and waste becomes apparent. Add to this cost the fact that the Iraq war has undone all of the good effects of negotiation and containment and empowered the recruitment of terrorists. This war has increased terrorism by increasing injustice, poverty, and fear, which are the root causes of terrorism. The world is not safer. Read a newspaper once a week.

Who is still supporting George W. Bush? Are there that many people who cannot see that he is not a Republican any more than he is a Democrat? He is not a statesman at all. He demonstrates no sense of responsibility even for his own outcomes, much less the conservative Republican fiscal responsibility and committment to good management. He does not serve the universal values of peace and justice. If he gets one vote in November that vote will be have to be based upon ignorance.

Garden Spider forwarding address

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

The forwarding address for the garden spider:

Glen found the garden spider's egg case today in the shrub beside the one in which she had made her web. I learned (from Google, of course) that the eggs will hatch in a few weeks, but the baby spiders will remain in the egg case until spring, when they will disperse.

If you have been following the garden spider, here are all of the photographs of her activity that have been posted:

How a Christian might vote

Andrew Kang Bartlett, Associate for National Hunger Concerns,
Presbyterian Hunger Program in Louisville, KY sent me this note in response to my Wal-Mart item:

We all get lots of information, news and analysis about the election and voting from mainstream sources, but rarely do we get to reflect on voting based on our Christian values. "Christian Principles in an Election Year," from the National Council of Churches USA, gives 10 Christian principles and a study guide to use with your congregation. Here is the link: http://www.ncccusa.org/news/04christianprinciplesstory.html

Garden Spider Moves On

Reason of the Day to
Vote for John Kerry and John Edwards

The garden spider has moved and left no forwarding address, but I still have a few photographs. She became a lot more active before leaving, moving the center of her web several inches a couple of times when she rebuilt after a rain. She also started to move about during the early mornings instead of staying in her daytime face-downward posture on the zig-zag line in the center of her web, where she is in most of her photographs. Here is one of the more active moments: