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• November 1, 2004 - Election day is tomorrow, and close as the race is, it isn't rocket science to decide who deserves the vote. Even billionaires made more money under Bill Clinton's presidency than they have made under George W. Bush, in spite of his tax cuts. And this year the Democrats are not only the party of the people, the party of the working citizen, the party of diversity, the party of social conscience, and the party of the environment, but Democrats are also the party of fiscal responsibility. We can't worry too much about a "tax-and-spend liberal" when we are going broke under a "borrow and give away" plunderer. Bush has plundered every business he has touched, and to him the United States is a business. He wastes it and then waits for the bail-out from his father's friends. So Democrats and fiscal conservatives all have to go with Kerry. Fortunately for us all, Kerry is quite a bit better than the requisite "not Bush:"
  
  
  • Kerry has a good plan for medical care. So what if it costs something? In the long run, if we expand access to preventive care and early treatment, shouldn't the cost of catastrophic illness diminish? Or should we all just quit brushing our teeth and watching our diet and getting our check-ups?
  
  
  
  • Kerry will be a great president for foreign policy. The world climate today needs a reflective and careful person who can find middle ground and common cause. It does not need a bull-headed know-nothing learn-nothing political gamer who is too arrogant to respect reality. George W. Bush said when he was a candidate in 2000 that to be a great president you have to be a wartime president. What he will never be able to see is the reason this is true. It is true because a difficult time (wartime) provides an opportunity for great deeds. Facilitating a civil war in Iraq is not a great deed, and being a stubborn bully is not leadership. With the support of the American people, John Kerry will be equal to the demands of a difficult time. George W. Bush could never come close.
  
  
  
  • Kerry has confidence in us. He challenges us to think and hope, and he promises us opportunity. Bush gives us half-truths, outright lies, and threats.
  
  
  And I am still not too happy about the local Republicans stealing my Kerry/Edwards yard sign. That is just not nice at all. That kind of sneaking-around-at-night taking-what-does-not-belong-to-you encourages terrorism. I am usually a peaceful person, but I was trying to figure out a way to connect the sign to the 220v circuit that runs my dryer. I am ready for a little more tolerance and a little less bullying.



• October 23, 2004 -- Like most of George W. Bush's ideas on Iraq, outsourcing a war is probably not too bright.



• October 22, 2004 - The Bush Party is wrong again. Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds By Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker in the New York Times: "BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 21 - Senior American officials are beginning to assemble a new portrait of the insurgency that has continued to inflict casualties on American and Iraqi forces, showing that it has significantly more fighters and far greater financial resources than had been estimated."
  
  Now, is the situation this bad, or are they just trying to frighten us some more?
  • If the new portrait is inaccurate, their campaign of fear is its own brand of terrorism against the American public.
  • If it accurate, and the number of insurgents is really 8,000 to 12,000 instead of the 2,000 to 7,000 that they have been telling us, and if the wealth of the Saudis is behind them and the Baath Party leaders and Saddam Hussein's relatives are still in charge, then maybe we have not even achieved the first order of business and Hussein has not been removed from power.
  I am more willing to trust the war to John Kerry because he will deal with the reality. George Bush will keep us uninformed, misinformed, isolated in the world, divided at home, and at war.



• October 21, 2004 -- I filled the gas tank yesterday. I don't know if anyone else is watching gas prices, but we all will be soon. Winter is coming, and oil and natural gas are also more expensive, and we are moving toward an energy crisis -- or at least a crisis for low-income and fixed-income people. Bush has done nothing to address the rising costs of energy, and has in fact based his energy policy on recommendations of oil companies and energy companies. John Kerry has a better energy plan. George Bush will never develop an energy plan that incorporates alternative energy sources because he and his supporters have too much invested in our continued dependence on fossil fuels.



• October 20, 2004 -- yesterday the Iraqi body count was between 13,278 and 15,357. U.S. military casualties are in the box at the top of the page. Other coalition troops had 137 casualties, and 136 more U.S. troops had died in Afghanistan. Coalition contractors had suffered 169 deaths, and 18 contract workers are missing in Iraq. The world will not be safer for any of us until it is safer for all of us.



• October 19, 2004 -- Even a Democrat who is a slave to the values of the reality-based community can believe in a couple of things that can't be proven. I believe at least two.
  • First, I believe that if Al Gore had become President he would have continued the intelligence and security practices that were in place under Clinton, when the capture of a group of terrorists at LAX was just a passing headline that almost nobody noticed. If these practices had been continued, the 9/11 hijackers would have just been a passing headline, "Hijacker Plot Foiled."
  • Second, I believe that if God does talk to George Bush, George Bush puts his own spin on the conversation. For example, God says, "George, I love poor people, and they are my special concern." And George Bush takes that to mean that God wants more of them, so that becomes the goal of his economic policy -- make more poor people. So far, he's doing great.
  
  
  
• October 18, 2004 -- Ron Suskind, former national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal and author of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill in The New York Times October 17, 2004, article, "Without a Doubt" quoting Jim Wallis of the Sojourners:

  Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, '''but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on terrorism.'''
  
  Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.
  
  ''No, Mr. President,'' Wallis says he told Bush, ''We need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never defeat the threat of terrorism.''
  
  Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that.




• October 17, 2004 -- The New York Times endorses John Kerry for President.



• October 16, 2004 -- American personnel in Iraq refused a mission, as reported in the New York Times today, Inquiry Opens After Reservists Balk in Baghdad By NEELA BANERJEE and ARIEL HART:

  The Army is investigating members of a Reserve unit in Iraq who refused to deliver a fuel shipment north of Baghdad under conditions they considered unsafe, the Pentagon and relatives of the soldiers said Friday. Several soldiers called it a "suicide mission," relatives said.
  
  Some 18 members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in Rock Hill, S.C., were detained at gunpoint for nearly two days after disobeying orders to drive trucks that they said had not been serviced and were not being escorted by armed vehicles to Taji, about 15 miles north of Baghdad, relatives said after speaking to some of the soldiers.

  This is a Reserve unit, so these people know what a soldier is supposed to do. They did not refuse the order lightly, because they know orders are to be obeyed. But they know also what we learned in Vietnam, that orders are not to be obeyed blindly and obedience to an order is not an excuse for doing what should not be done. American soldiers are not to be deployed ill-prepared and poorly equipped. They know that, their officers know that, and their Commander in Chief ought to know it as well.
  
  John Kerry has promised to increase troops in Iraq to an effective level and equip them to win a lasting peace by increasing our active duty strength and by bringing the U.N. and our allies in Europe back into the process in Iraq. He is aware of the realities on the ground, which George W. Bush denies and has asked news media to deny. We need a President who is in touch with reality.



• October 15, 2004 -- John Kerry has been very consistent on the issues from the beginning of his campaign and through the debates. This comparative listing provided by CNN.COM is a good place to start if you aren't yet up on the issues in this campaign.



• October 14, 2004 -- After the third debate, John Kerry has left no doubt that he has the strength and character we need in a President as well as a heart for the American people. He knows the facts and can see the problems. He brings hope and optimism, not continued fear and uncertainty, and he will fight for middle class families. He won the debate by presenting real solutions to real problems, including immigration, No Child Left Behind, equal pay for women and the minimum wage.
  
  President Bush continued to deny that we have problems. At least three times during the third debate he turned a question on job loss to the tired topic of re-educating the work force. Our workforce is not uneducated. People losing jobs are not low-skilled people. We are seeing the skilled jobs vanish. Suggesting that a skilled worker whose job has been shipped overseas go to the Community College to improve basic skills so that he can enhance his employability for a job that no longer exists just shows that the President does not understand the problem.
  
  John Kerry's plan would encourage keeping jobs here by reversing the tax incentive that now moves jobs overseas. It will also promote hiring by picking up some of the burden of health care for employers. Kerry's plan is a "win-win" option for both workers and employers, and it is a plan that shows Kerry understands the problem. We need a President who understands the problems.



• October 13, 2004 -- John Kerry will not privatize Social Security. In case you missed it, since it was mentioned in the debate so briefly, the "gap" that Kerry referenced in Bush's plan occurs when the working generation, under the Bush plan, would presumably take money out of Social Security for the proposed private investment accounts. Since the working generation pays for the retiring generation, this money re-directed to private investment accounts would result in a loss of funds to support Social Security payments to the retiring generation. If privatizing were eventually to prove successful, the gap would last until the retiring generation for whom there was no money passed away and the private Social Security investment accounts started paying out.
  
  Like all Bush initiatives, privatizing Social Security would produce more of a gap between the "haves" and the "have nots." A person with a $25,000.00 a year income and two children would not have much to invest, but a person with $100,000.00 would do well if the investment decisions were consistently wise. If not, well, that's the way it goes in private investment. You win some, you lose some. It wouldn't really be security at all, just another way to produce more poor people and richer rich people.



• October 12, 2004 -- Did I say I think John Kerry will be a good President? His message is becoming more defined, he is stepping into the role, and he really looks ready to take on the task.



• October 11, 2004 -- I understand that it is occasionally necessary for government to withhold information from public view in matters of national security:

  WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has promoted its education law with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money.
  
  The government used a similar approach this year in promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.

  I believe that John Kerry will have more respect for the contract between government and citizens.



• October 10, 2004 -- I just finished listening to the Audible edition of Chain of Command:The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh. This book leaves no doubt that in June 2004 when George W. Bush said the United States would "investigate and prosecute all acts of torture and undertake to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment in all territory under our jurisdiction," he, Rumsfeld, and Cheney had approved interrogations using torture and knew that they were being conducted.



• October 9, 2004 -- Quote from Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman, environmentalist and advocate for women's rights and democracy, and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday

  "People are fighting over water, over food and over other natural resources," she told Norwegian television. "When our resources become scarce, we fight over them. In managing our resources and in sustainable development, we plant the seeds of peace."

  Both Kerry and Bush are wealthy people whose lives are very different from the lives of common people. However, Kerry believes in democratic principles that facilitate work and sustainable development. On the other hand, Bush has been able throughout his life to destroy even the good systems he found in place, as we have seen him do over the past four years in the economy, the military, and the intelligence system. I won't get into what he has done to the public education system, and what he plans to do, on the same model, for higher education. John Kerry has a better plan for sustainable development and planting the seeds of peace.



• October 8, 2004 -- Bush lied, he keeps changing the lie, but he cannot make it the truth. Quote from John Kerry, New York Times: Bush and Cheney "may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."
  
  Not only can they not face the truth, they need a dictionary. They told us they had "proof" -- that means they were certain, not suspicious -- that Hussein "had" weapons of mass destruction. Now we see they just meant that he "wanted" them. Isn't "had" the opposite of "wanted"? In whose language are these two words synonyms?



• October 7, 2004 -- Did I already say I don't like the way George W. Bush uses religion? After reading this article in The Guardian Unlimited, I understand it more and like it less.



• October 6, 2004 -- An article from The Army Times,06/27/2003, "Nothing But Lip Service for Our Soldiers", available in full on the web site of Veterans for Common Sense:

  In recent months, President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap -- and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately.
  
  For example, the White House griped that various pay-and-benefits incentives added to the 2004 defense budget by Congress are wasteful and unnecessary -- including a modest proposal to double the $6,000 gratuity paid to families of troops who die on active duty. This comes at a time when Americans continue to die in Iraq at a rate of about one a day.
  
  Similarly, the administration announced that on Oct. 1 it wants to roll back recent modest increases in monthly imminent-danger pay (from $225 to $150) and family-separation allowance (from $250 to $100) for troops getting shot at in combat zones.

  The article concludes:

  Taken piecemeal, all these corner-cutting moves might be viewed as mere flesh wounds. But even flesh wounds are fatal if you suffer enough of them. It adds up to a troubling pattern that eventually will hurt morale -- especially if the current breakneck operations tempo also rolls on unchecked and the tense situations in Iraq and Afghanistan do not ease.
  
  Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Texas, who notes that the House passed a resolution in March pledging "unequivocal support" to service members and their families, puts it this way: "American military men and women don't deserve to be saluted with our words and insulted by our actions."
  
  Translation: Money talks -- and we all know what walks.

  Can we say again, this article was published in The Army Times on June 27, 2003, 17 months ago.



• October 5, 2004 - "At Least 26 Die as 3 Car Bombs Explode in Iraq," by EDWARD WONG, New York Times October 5, 2004:

  BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 4 - Three powerful car bombs exploded across Iraq on Monday morning, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 100 others in a day of carnage that demonstrated the relative ease with which insurgents are striking in the hearts of major cities.

• October 4, 2004 -- I live in the Bible Belt, and in case you haven't noticed, wide belts are "in" now. There is a lot more Bible Belt than there used to be. But even when it was narrow, I was in it. So I hear quite often "I am with Kerry on the economic issues, but I am voting for Bush because I am with him on the moral issues." Usually the person is speaking of just three moral issues: abortion rights, education, and gay marriage.

  There is the link between the economic issues and the moral issues:

  • abortion -- abortions are, always have been, and will continue to be available to women of privilege. Laws that make it difficult to obtain an abortion or stop funding affect mostly low-income women. Abortion choices are linked to economic issues of work, income, family, and poverty. A mother who knows that another baby -- medical costs, time lost from work, child care costs, etc., would spell financial ruin for herself and her family may consider abortion because of economics. Women are nuts over children, and abortions are not recreational. There are serious and painful reasons behind a decision to terminate a pregnancy. Bush economic policy has pushed many more mothers and children into poverty, which is frequently one of those serious and painful reasons. Abortion is more likely to be curtailed by a guarantee of medical care, food, housing, and education for all children than by overturning Roe v. Wade.
  • education -- accountability aside, (indeed it is aside from the real issues in education and is politically useful only because it is "measurable" and "actionable") the real issues in education are all economic. The single factor that always has a positive correlation with academic success in schools is socioeconomic status. You cannot leave children behind economically and expect them to advance academically. George W. Bush has created more families with children at the poverty and near-poverty level while providing tax cuts to the very wealthy. Lost jobs mean families without money to care for their children. Kerry promises to roll back the tax cuts for people making over $200,000.00 and expand medical insurance. When fewer children are poor, more children will do better in school. Accountability neither begins nor ends with schools.
  • gay marriage -- marriage is an economic issue, and the marriage partner has many economic benefits that are not available to unmarried partners. Most of these benefits are benefits to society as well, encouraging sexual partners to form secure and stable economic units for mutual support, medical insurance, home ownership, tas filing, etc. There is no benefit to society in denying this level of committed caring to a large segment of the population. You can continue to believe gay marriage is immoral and against God's law. But there is no rationale for making it against the law of the United States. We are a civil government with a legislature that is committed to seeking the common good. We are not a military state or a theocracy, and if you read history at all, you don't want to be either one of those.
  I am with Kerry on the economic issues, and the economic issues are the moral issues.



• October 3, 2004 -- AP news article:

  The editor of the Crawford, Texas, weekly that bills itself as Bush's hometown newspaper says he has no regrets about endorsing Kerry, even after a dozen business pulled their advertising from the publication.
  
  "I'd do it again," Leon Smith, publisher of the Lone Star Iconoclast, told the Waco Tribune-Herald in Sunday's editions.
  
  The Iconoclast, which endorsed Bush in 2000, said it now supports the Democrat because of disillusionment with the war and Bush's actions on Social Security, the economy and other issues. An editorial dated Sept. 29 accuses the president of having a "smoke-screened agenda" and leading the United States into a "quagmire" in Iraq on flimsy pretenses.

  Thank you to ArtMachine for the link!

• October 2, 2004 -- Repeatedly during the foreign policy debate, George W. Bush contended that the United States had strong allies and John Kerry expressed a need to mend fences with other countries whose opinions of us have been damaged by the Iraq war. "Serious US image problem abroad," by Daniel Schorr, published in Christian Science Monitor, October 01, 2004, reports international opinion statistics.



• October 1, 2004 -- There are two good reasons to vote for Kerry/Edwards. The first is that I agree with Kerry on the issues, domestic and international. The second is that after the debate last night I am even more certain that we cannot afford another four years of the Bush administration.

• Reason of the Day Archive for September 2004
• Reason of the Day Archive for August 2004