America change is going to do you good
Given the conduct of Bush and his Administration these past 8 years in office, I wonder how clear thinking, intelligent and rational it would be not to stand for change and to vote accordingly? It doesn’t seem to me that voting for more of the same Republican antics would be a wise thing to do.
Economic mismanagement
(1) Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have reduced annual tax revenue available for public needs hundreds of billions each year. McCain and Palin’s plan is more of the same.
(2) Bush/Cheney’s occupation of Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq plan has cost citizens trillions of dollars of debt and interest. This is not to mention the human loss of men and women being sent home in body bags who would have otherwise lived, worked and paid taxes. The tab is estimated to be well into the trillions when you add rehabilitation for injured vets, replacement of military hardware, and the value of things Americans could have produced but didn’t. The vets returning home are not getting the medical help they need. McCain and Palin’s plan is more of the same.
(3) Bush and his buddies finished off the deregulation of banking that began in earnest during Clinton’s presidency. This ideological madness has caused the collapse of investment funds, banks, and the stock value of corporations that depend on them (which is to say most of Wall Street and much of the financial world), as well as a steep decline in the value of most homes in America and a sharp rise in the cost of living in them, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. Now the Bush administration has bailed the big guys out, while McCain claimed the economy is fundamentally sound, and postured that he had to suspend his campaign, when in fact, this was nonsense.
Energy
(4) President Bush lied in his September 6th radio address when he said that the oil in the offshore protected areas is equal to 10 years of current production. It’s not true. The Energy Information Agency, which is the government agency responsible for making estimates of oil reserves, says there are approximately 8 billion of barrels of oil in the protected areas. Current production is approximately 3 billion barrels a year and that means the oil in the offshore protected areas is equal to less than 3 years of annual production, not ten years. Is It News When the President Makes Untrue Statements (i.e. lies)?
America’s Oil and Gas Supply: “American Innovation Creating American Energy, American Jobs, and American Wealth” PDF
Republicans like McCain and Palin are pushing offshore drilling in environmentally sensitive areas as part “an ‘all of the above’ strategy to lower gasoline prices and decrease dependence on imported oil. It can’t be true, because there is not enough oil in these areas to have more than a minimal impact on gas prices (e.g. 3-4 cents per gallon) and even this benefit will not be realized for close to two decades.
When Wall Street Needs Money, Rules of Journalism No Longer Apply
Abortion, Contraception and Dirty Politics
(5) Bush is attempting to redefine contraception as abortion. Can you imagine living in a place where birth control is considered an “abortion” and health insurers won’t cover it? Where even rape victims are denied emergency contraception?
It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine “abortion” to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect reproductive freedom for women and also protect rape victims. Access to basic health care for millions of women would be jeopardized. And it’s being pushed as a “rule change”—meaning, it doesn’t need congressional approval. The Bush administration’s draft regulations on abortion and contraception can be read at rhrealitycheck.
It would seem that McCain and Palin’s religious choices and their positions on these issues propose more of the same dirty politics when it comes to eliminating reproductive freedom for women.
War
(6) Bush and his Administration sacrificed America’s finest young men and women on the altar of oil while lying and saying that there were WMD when there weren’t. (Note these statistics are in a state of flux.)
U.S. Confirmed Deaths
Reported Deaths: 4168
Confirmed Deaths: 4161
Pending Confirmation: 7
(7) Bush and his administration are responsible for American 30,324 casualties re: the war on Iraq. (Note these statistics are in a state of flux.)
(8) Civilian death toll - Bush and his administration are responsible for the slaying of between 87,558 and 95,557 Iraqi’s to attempt to build American oil hegemony in the middle east and to secure a strategic position from which an attack Iran could be launched (primarily women and children ). (Note these statistics are in a state of flux.)
www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
McCain’s position and voting record on the war Iraq are found here at on the issues.
McCain strongly disagrees with those who advocate withdrawing American troops at this time. His strategy for victory (cough) in Iraq is more of the same of what the Bush administration has produced and Palin is in agreement with him.
Abuse of power
(9) For the past eight years, Americans have witnessed the dangerous consequences of an overreaching vice president who has sought at every turn to enhance executive power at the expense of constitutional, legal and ethical safeguards.
Palin has a record of abuse of power as the Governor of Alaska. The “Troopergate” (video analysis link) Troopergate report PDF, investigation report conducted by an independent investigator and released Friday by a bipartisan legislative committee, tells the tale. It documents the campaign that Palin and her husband Todd waged to get her former brother-in-law fired from the Alaska state troopers. voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/10/palin_too_close_for_comfort….
IMO Americans deserve much better representation in the Oval Office than the same kind of behavior that they received under Bush, so I do hope they do vote for Obama and his Blueprint for Change because all McCain and Palin propose is more of the same.
Related posts found in this blog: Gay Rights: Equality or Hypocrisy?
Oct 14th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I agree with you 100%, timethief. Getting out of the various messes we are in will take time, however.
Oct 14th, 2008 at 7:50 am
@Jennifer
First there has to be a paradigm shift between the ears of the voters. My fingers are crossed.
Oct 15th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Bush was not able to run ANY of his bussinesses successfully. I have no clue as to why anyone would think he could or should run the business of America.
Until recently, there has been an attitude of “I don’t care who wins” in America. The majority of Americans make a lot less than $250,000 you would think their voices would be heard. I think there was a hopelessness about it.
Education about who is doing what is important. In the area in which I live this does not typically happen. In my area people vote the way their parents do which means little to no research on the issues.
In the last election people were turned away because somebody felt they would vote democratic. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again.
Oct 15th, 2008 at 10:43 am
@Shirley
I agree with you. It’s really disturbing to witness the animosity, lies and venom that have poured out of the McCain camp during this campaign. I have been following closely and I’m hard pressed to find any strategies that McCain and Palin have come up with on their own. They are simply Bush clones and it’s under Bush’s Administration that Americans have experienced not only what I listed in the post but much much more besides. Consider the loss of privacy, and the most pervasive incursion into government by religion that one could ever imagine in any democracy. I plan to blog about this in an upcoming post.
Instead of focusing on his own platform from the outset McCain sent out his bloodhounds to bay and howl the most emotive, racist and bigoted crud I have ever read in my life. His advertisements make it clear that his campaign has been a smear Obama campaign from beginning to end.
Palin is under qualified, has glaring character flaws and has displayed a heavy handed gubnernatorial and mayoralty style in Alaska. The soccer mom stuff and the down home winking and chattiness does little to cover up that fact that she is not suitable to serve in this office. Good grief she cannot even pronounce English words properly so who cares that she’s an attractive woman? (I laugh when I hear people say she’s such a looker. It’s tempting me to post an image of myself because I’m older than she is. I’m by far better looking and I’m vain lol :P) . Her religious views and parental skills don’t impress me at all. Setting that aside, what is her platform aside from riding the same old Republican background and dragging her religious beliefs and family affairs into office with her?
I’ve spent a lot of time in the Blog Catalog political forum witnessing globalgirl’s paranoia and addiction to conspiracy theories that barely mask the bigotry that she is in denial about. Set in the context of her on again off again Christianity I find her outpourings agaisnt Obama to be unsubstantiated, poisonous and bearing no resemblance whatsoever to walking the talk.
TheBigRuskie is not the sharpest knife in the drawer ’tis true. Worse still is his deviousness that inclines him to post on non-issues trumped up by right wing Christian fundamentalists. He seems to lack the ethics to quote original sources and instead posts biased Christian bastardizations of news reports. He also lacks either the inclination or ability to discern his own fallacious statements and to communicate in a manner one would expect of a educated adult. The titles of his religious posts to the BC forums smack of the baying bloodhounds style of sensationalism designed to mislead that characterize the Republican camp, and yet, he postures that he’s not a Republican. One would have to be a fool several times over to believe that Christians in America are being persecuted. They are an elite that is endlessly trying to remove all separation of state and religion and Bush has been succesful when it comes to driving their wedge into the dark regions of policy.
Thanks goodness that there are sensible and civilized BC members posting to the BC forums as well. However, it’s too bad that they have to spend so many hours each day correcting the misbehaviors of others, some of whom, like csiuntac, who appear to have abandoned their former blogging in favor of camping out in that forum and spouting right wing vitriol for weeks on end.
One thing I can say for sure is that getting to know what the extreme right wing contingent Americans are truly like and how they think through Blog Catalog has been a learning curve. I’m astonished every day that such mean spirited and self centered people reveal that they typify those who will vote for more of the same old, same old Bush bullshit.
Rome is falling and those who can see that it is will vote for change. It will be difficult to affect change and it will take time but it can be done and ought to be done on behalf of the generations to come. The others have their heads do firmly implanted up their backsides that they fail to smell the stench they create will vote for the same old, same old.
Oct 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am
A lot of what I see lately is based on greed and it angers me quite a bit. Trickle down doesn’t work and a lot of people think that if you donate to specific charities the right people will get it. That isn’t always the case. I dread a day when I would have to go to Salvation Army for food. I have done it for my children but I’d rather not. If they would stop cutting funding where it is needed then it wouldn’t be a problem. I’m all for helping others but it’s time to worry about what is happening here and war isn’t helping ANYONE. America doesn’t seem to understand that we are in Iraq based on a lie and no one except Obama has asked Where is Osama Bin Laden? The good news is my state, a typically republican state, is projected as voting democratic this go around. Yay!
Oct 17th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I’m with you all the way, timethief.
And we don’t want to risk a moose rifle finger on the big red button, either.
Oct 17th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
@Roads
It has been extremely disconcerting to watch McCain during the debates. IMO he has a bad temper and is too short fused for “button” duty. Moreover, he ran a despicable smear campaign against Obama, rather than presenting his own platform. IMO lacks the character traits that a Presidential candidate ought to have.
Have you read this? Pinocchio-Nosed Protesters To Greet McCain In NYC - Members of a local New York City group plan to don Pinocchio noses to challenge Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin’s recent alleged spate of lies, joining a growing national outrage to what many Americans are calling ‘dirty’ campaign tactics.