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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MJ who wrote (654471)	10/31/2004 7:54:09 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Hi MJ, It's so refreshing to carry on an adult conversation with a SI Republican. You are such an endangered species. I can count the sane Republicans I know on SI on one hand. *** Re: QUESTION FOR YOU: If you don't trust the companies with the computers and the software for voting, then what is the alternative? The same solution that the entire rest of the planet uses. Take the responsibility for vote counting out of the hands of partisan political functionaries like elected County Clerks and Secretaries of State. And for god-damned sakes, do not let private corporate interests control the machinery of the election. This is simply an open invitation to fraud. Most other OECD countries have non-partisan, non-profit and non-political administration of the election machinery. Furthermore, America should be ashamed of itself for not declaring Election Day to be a national holiday, preferably a Sunday as is so often the case in Europe, where the overwhelming social pressure is to force people to participate in the election. In Europe, 80 to 90% of the eligible population vote in elections. Only in Great Britain is there a tendency toward the absolutely pathetic participation levels that we have come to expect in the U.S. There are three democracies in the world which have declared it a crime for people to shirk their responsibility to vote. I don't think I'd go that far. But I do think that it is absolutely appalling that the "Establishment", i.e. the corporate elite has done everything it possibly can by means of propaganda, negative advertising, etc. to suppress the vote. It is a conscious decision on the part of the oligarchs to suppress the popular will of the people, and it is shameful. This isn't "leadership", (a term which has been supremely abused by creeps like Karl Rove, Tome DeLay and Bill Frist) it is abuse of the system, for the sake of greed. *** Re: I am very proud to be a Republican and to support the values of Republicanism. And what would they be? Is it a Republican value to lead this great nation into an illegal and immoral war by means of deception? Is it a Republican value to undermine public education while hypocritically claiming to "Leave No Child Behind". Is it a Republican value to destroy the few remaining shreds of old growth forests under the guise of the "Healthy Forests Initiative"? Is it a Republican value to sicken and shorten the lives of millions of citizens with abusive schemes allowing greater air pollution under the guise of "Blue Skies Initiative"? Is it a Republican value to attack the pristine wilderness areas of the West in a dubious quest for precious little oil & gas to be extracted from tertiary recovery basins? Is it a Republican value to sequester any meaningful protection of our marine environment and the food species that depend upon non-polluted and sanely harvested nurseries, estuaries and breeding grounds? Is it a Republican value to destroy 225 years of sensible history of the separation of Church and State? Is it a Republican value to create the most gargantuan trade and fiscal deficits in the history of this nation? Just what the hell are Republican values? I sure don't see anything that is purported to be a "value" other than that silly, shallow and superstitious claptrap that is presented by the stolidly anti-Enlightenment and anti-intellectual evangelical sectarians of the fanatical Christian Right. If that's what you think of as Republican values let me remind you that these are not values, these are ancient prejudices that every decent age has overcome. Republicanism, in its essence was a progressive force. The Party of Lincoln believed in equality among the races (more-or-less), it believed during the Teddy Roosevelt era that Big Business needed to be tamed so that entrepreneurialism and commerce could flourish. It believed, when Fighting Bob LaFollette led the Progressives in Congress that the nation needed fair labor laws and that women needed to be made equal citizens. In Eisenhower's day, Republicans believed that we needed to be wary of the undue influence of the Military-Industrial Complex. And today, what do we have? A completely bi-polar party that has abandoned every shred of decency, every platform position that led to the betterment of mankind. We now have the travesty of a party that is totally obsequious to an out-of-control military machine, that is totally profligate with the nation's wealth, that coddles criminals like the Halliburton Corporation, instead of prosecuting them. That is attempting to destroy the public education system, that is attempting to destroy the Social Security system. That is trying to destroy our hard won civil liberties with obnoxious police state legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act. Just what does your Republican Party stand for that you can possibly be proud of? I don't get it. The Republican Party is morally bankrupt. It's time to cut off the head and start over again with decent people in charge, instead of the criminal mafia you've obsequiously allowed to steal your Party and our very Government. Throw the criminal leadership of your Party in jail. Then you can be proud to be a Republican once again.