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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (31046)	11/5/2003 11:08:23 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

buzzflash.com Liberal Thinking: A Reply to a Conservative A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY by Patty Evans via Sharion Hardaway This is a letter my daughter wrote in reply to a letter in the Bradenton Herald from a conservative trying to explain what liberals think. I thought the reply was wonderful (she didn't send it but I sent it to Governor Dean's campaign) and am sending it to BuzzFlash because I think it says a lot: Let me tell you a bit about "liberal" thinking. Liberal thinking wrote the "Declaration of Independence" and began a revolution against tyranny and persecution. Liberal thinking wrote our "Constitution" embracing a bold new concept by giving government to the people and creating a system of checks and balances so that future generations would be protected. Liberal thinking gave us the right to vote. It wrote "The Bill of Rights" to ensure very specific freedoms would always be safe. Liberal thinking forged a new and promising Country, it colonized the West. It created cutting edge technology and promising new medicines. It gave us a "New Deal" when times were hard and capitalism alone wasn’t working. It created a highway system. Liberal thinking took us out to the stars and to the depths of the ocean. It was responsible for the Internet. It has given us many great leaders, patriots, humanitarians, soldiers, policemen, firemen, teachers, authors, musicians, actors and physicians. Liberal thinking feeds the poor, protects the children and takes care of the elderly. It safeguards the environment and protects our planet with all of its magnificent creatures, beautiful forests and fresh air so that our children and their children may one day share in the wonders of this precious gift from our Creator...our Earth. It is compassion, tolerance and understanding for people and situations even though they may be different. Liberal thinking walked among us as a man healing the sick, feeding the poor and taught us many important lessons about faith, forgiveness and being careful not to judge others, be greedy or fall prey to false prophets. It died for our sins. Liberal thinking is frustration, pain and sadness for a Country that shows so much promise but has strayed from the correct path and is determined to screw up and destroy everything it has ever fought for, died for and believed in. However, as liberal thinking individuals we always believe in hope, the promise of a new day, a better tomorrow and an honest election next year. Oh and by the way, since most liberals tend to have a distinct distaste for hypocrites, we would never presume to explain what rightwing, neo-conservative republicans happen to think or feel. Thanks, Sharion Hardaway on behalf of Patty Evans A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (31046)	11/5/2003 7:39:03 PM
From: No Mo Mo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

If you want to see an amazing movie about how the media shapes "reality", check out www.chavezthefilm.com It's a documentary about the coup in Venezuela in April, 2001. It just played here in SF and, I think it's still in the Bay area. You will not believe how brazen the oil/media elite in Venezuela are in lying to remove a very popular leader. And you will be disgusted to see our own state dept. from Powell down tacitly urging the removal (coup) of Chavez. People in the theater were cheering.

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (31046)	11/5/2003 11:25:01 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Escape by Voice Vote ___________________________________ By Harold Meyerson Editorial The Washington Post Wednesday, November 5, 2003 ____________________________________ If defeat is an orphan, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, for which the Senate appropriated $87 billion by a voice vote on Monday, should already go down in the loss column. By rejecting the normal option of a recorded vote, America's senators decided that they did not want to be held individually accountable for our continuing presence in Iraq. That decision speaks far louder than their decision to actually fund our forces there and the Iraqi reconstruction. What a difference a year makes! In the fall of 2002, the administration was positively gleeful about forcing Congress to go on record to authorize the coming war, and Democrats from swing states or districts knew they voted no at their own peril. This week no such pressure was forthcoming. Those Republicans who live by the wedge issue understand when they could die by it, too. There was simply no percentage in compelling members to vote yes on a floundering occupation that could easily grow far worse. It's instructive, though, that opponents of the occupation weren't exactly clamoring to be recorded against it either. Only old Robert Byrd stood on the Senate floor and shouted no when the vote was taken, but Byrd has been casting recorded votes since the waning days of the Roman Republic, and it's a hard habit to break. What was striking Monday was that Byrd's colleagues were scuttling away from all sides of this debate, and it's not hard to understand why. The administration's handling of both the war and occupation has been so deeply flawed that it has created a situation to which not only its own policy but all the existing alternatives are clearly inadequate. Bush and his neos have given us a kind of Gothic horror version of Goldilocks, in which the policy alternatives are either too big or too small, while their own is just wrong. Plainly, the U.S. force in Iraq is spread too thin to protect our own troops, the employees of international aid agencies and those Iraqis who have cast their lot with the new order. But there's no political support, either in the United States or Iraq, for increasing the number of U.S. troops there, and rightly so. It's not just that more troops means more targets. It's also that any such act would be viewed as a step back from Iraqi sovereignty, which would only further inflame the situation there. Those who argued that the administration needed international approval for a war against Saddam Hussein -- the better, in part, to de-Americanize the occupation -- have been all too grimly vindicated. The problem is the occupation has proved so rocky that it's hard to envision the United Nations rushing into Iraq if we now admit we fear to tread there. Bush's decisions -- to wage a unilateral war and exercise unilateral political power during the post-Hussein reconstruction -- have not merely failed in themselves but have dimmed the prospects for more sustainable multinational alternatives. Historians will have to determine the precise mix of White House hubris, xenophobia and mistrust of allies that contributed to our determination to hold sole control in post-Hussein Iraq. (Of course, the anti-Americanism rampant among many of our longtime allies played a role, too, but anyone with a long memory -- one that goes back at least three years -- can recall a time when the United States actually had the respect of the global community.) Now a new factor has popped up for historians' future consideration when they ponder why we wanted the occupation to ourselves. It turns out that Paul Bremer, our man in Baghdad, has decreed that come next year Iraq shall have a flat tax on individuals and businesses of 15 percent. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Is Iraq to become a laboratory for all those right-wing brainstorms that have gone nowhere in this country but that we are free to impose there during our short-order mandate? While we're at it, we could also outlaw stem cell research and elevate Charles Pickering to the Baghdad bench. Already, the administration is beginning to blame its critics at home for its problems in Iraq. The criticisms voiced by the Democratic presidential candidates, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Georgetown students last week, send "a very unsettling message to Iraqis that our elections might decide their future." But it was Wolfowitz, along with a handful of others, who so inextricably linked America's future -- on which, the last time I looked, Americans had a right to vote -- to a disastrous policy in Iraq. And it wasn't Democratic critics who forced a Republican-run Senate to cast an unrecorded vote on the occupation. It was Republicans, who voted for the funding but who lack all confidence in the president's chosen course. meyersonh@washpost.com © 2003 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com