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lonestar iconoclast's 2004 presidential endorsement cont'd
president bush has announced plans to change the social security system as we know it by privatizing it, which when considering all the tangents related to such a change, would put the entire economy in a dramatic tailspin.
the social security trust fund actually lends money to the rest of the government in exchange for government bonds, which is how the system must work by law, but how do you later repay social security while you are running a huge deficit? it's impossible, without raising taxes sometime in the future or becoming fiscally responsible now. social security money is being used to escalate our deficit and, at the same time, mask a much larger government deficit, instead of paying down the national debt, which would be a proper use, to guarantee a future gain.
privatization is problematic in that it would subject social security to the ups, downs, and outright crashes of the stock market. it would take millions in brokerage fees and commissions out of the system, and, unless we have assurance that the ivan boeskys and ken lays of the world will be caught and punished as a deterrent, subject both the market and the social security fund to fraud and market manipulation, not to mention devastate and ruin multitudes of american families that would find their lives lost to starvation, shame, and isolation.
kerry wants to keep social security, which each of us already owns. he says that the program is manageable, since it is projected to be solvent through 2042, with use of its trust funds. this would give ample time to strengthen the economy, reduce the budget deficit the bush administration has created, and, therefore, bolster the program as needed to fit ever-changing demographics.
our senior citizens depend upon social security. bush's answer is radical and uncalled for, and would result in chaos as americans have never experienced. do we really want to risk the future of social security on bush by spinning the wheel of uncertainty?
in those dark hours after the world trade center attacks, americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. we were ready to follow bush's lead through any travail.
he let us down.
when he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.
he did not trust us to be ready to sacrifice, build up our public and private security infrastructure, or cut down on our energy use to put economic pressure on the enemy in all the nations where he hides. he merely told us to shop, spend, and pretend nothing was wrong.
rather than using the billions of dollars expended on the invasion of iraq to shore up our boundaries and go after osama bin laden and the saudi arabian terrorists, the funds were used to initiate a war with what bush called a more immediate menace, saddam hussein, in oil-rich iraq. after all, bush said iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on america. we believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that iraq was the heart of terrorism. we trusted him.
the iconoclast, the president's hometown newspaper, took bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. the newspaper's publisher promoted bush and the invasion of iraq to londoners in a bbc interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of prime minister tony blair.
again, he let us down.
we presumed the president had solid proof of the existence of these weapons, what and where they were, even as the search continued. otherwise, our troops would be in much greater danger and the premise for a hurried-up invasion would be moot, allowing more time to solicit assistance from our allies.
instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda.
now he argues unconvincingly that iraq was providing safe harbor to terrorists, his new key justification for the invasion. it is like arguing that america provided safe harbor to terrorists leading to 9/11.
once and for all, george bush was president of the united states on that day. no one else. he had been president nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. as president, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.
we should expect that a sitting president would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a "wartime president." america is in service 365 days a year. we don't need a part-time president who does not show up for duty as commander-in-chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don't get done.
what has evolved from the virtual go-it-alone conquest of iraq is more gruesome than a stain on a white house intern's dress. america's reputation and influence in the world has diminished, leaving us with brute force as our most persuasive voice.
iraq is now a quagmire: no wmds, no substantive link between saddam and osama, and no workable plan for the withdrawal of our troops. we are asked to go along on faith. but remember, blind patriotism can be a dangerous thing and "spin" will not bring back to life a dead soldier; certainly not a thousand of them.
kerry has remained true to his vote granting the president the authority to use the threat of war to intimidate saddam hussein into allowing weapons inspections. he believes president bush rushed into war before the inspectors finished their jobs.
kerry also voted against president bush's $87 billion for troop funding because the bill promoted poor policy in iraq, privileged halliburton and other corporate friends of the bush administration to profiteer from the war, and forced debt upon future generations of americans.
kerry's four-point plan for iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. with the help from our european and middle eastern allies, his plan is to train iraqi security forces, involve iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive iraq's multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with iraq's neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for iraq's borders and non-interference in iraq's internal affairs.
the publishers of the iconoclast differ with bush on other issues, including the denial of stem cell research, shortchanging veterans' entitlements, cutting school programs and grants, dictating what our children learn through a thought-controlling "test" from washington rather than allowing local school boards and parents to decide how young people should be taught, ignoring the environment, and creating extraneous language in the patriot act that removes some of the very freedoms that our founding fathers and generations of soldiers fought so hard to preserve.
we are concerned about the vast exportation of jobs to other countries, due in large part to policies carried out by bush appointees. funds previously geared at retention of small companies are being given to larger concerns, such as halliburton - companies with strong ties to oil and gas. job training has been cut every year that bush has resided at the white house.
then there is his resolve to inadequately finance homeland security and to cut the community oriented policing program (cops) by 94 percent, to reduce money for rural development, to slash appropriations for the small business administration, and to under-fund veterans' programs.
likewise troubling is that president bush fought against the creation of the 9/11 commission and is yet to embrace its recommendations.
vice president cheney's halliburton has been awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without undergoing any meaningful bid process - an enormous conflict of interest - plus the company has been significantly raiding the funds of export-import bank of america, reducing investment that could have gone toward small business trade.
when examined based on all the facts, kerry's voting record is enviable and echoes that of many bush allies who are aghast at how the bush administration has destroyed the american economy. compared to bush on economic issues, kerry would be an arch-conservative, providing for americans first. he has what it takes to right our wronged economy.
the re-election of george w. bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. we cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. we need to be moving in the opposite direction.
john kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the american people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in america the dignity she so craves and deserves. he has served us well as a highly decorated vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.
kerry has a positive vision for america, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.
that's why the iconoclast urges texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.
the iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses john kerry.source: the lonestar iconoclast.
# posted by j @ 16:17 et / | 
by tim grieve for salon.com.
01 october 2004 | coral gables, florida. -- john kerry didn't destroy george w bush in the presidential debate thursday night. john kerry didn't turn water into wine, and he might not have turned any red states blue. but for 90 minutes, john kerry put george w bush on the defensive. for 90 minutes, john kerry looked like he could be president. and for the moment -- for the moment -- a race that once seemed lost suddenly seems alive again.
john kerry won.
it happened slowly, and sometimes it seemed that it wasn't happening at all. kerry opened in fits and starts. he answered moderator jim lehrer's first question with the sort of strong, clear, declarative sentence that seems to evade him -- lehrer asked kerry if he thought he could make america safer, and kerry said, "yes, i do" -- but then interrupted himself to offer expressions of gratitude to the hosts of the debate. later, kerry waited way too long to respond to bush's "flip-flop" charge, and his first few swings at it were ineffective. "i believe in being strong and resolute and determined," kerry said at one point. "we have to be steadfast and resolved, and i am," he said at another.
but as the night went on -- as bush smirked and stumbled and even seemed to sigh -- kerry hit his stride and found his strength. the moment came about half an hour in, when lehrer asked bush about his policy of preemptive war. bush said he had "never dreamt" of starting a war before 11 september -- "but the enemy attacked us, jim."
kerry was on it, and his response was devastating. "the president just said something extraordinarily revealing and frankly very important in this debate," kerry said. "in answer to your question about iraq and sending people into iraq, he just said, 'the enemy attacked us.' saddam hussein didn't attack us. osama bin laden attacked us. al-qaida attacked us. and when we had osama bin laden cornered in the mountains of tora bora, 1,000 of his cohorts with him in those mountains, with the american military forces nearby and in the field, we didn't use the best trained troops in the world to go kill the world's number one criminal and terrorist ... that's the enemy that attacked us. that's the enemy that was allowed to walk out of those mountains."
bush had no response, at least no intelligent one. "of course i know osama bin laden attacked us," he said. "i know that." but it wasn't so clear sometimes that bush did know that. earlier in the debate, he had mixed up saddam hussein and osama bin laden and had to stop to correct himself.
it wasn't bush's only low point. bush's message discipline has served him well in this campaign -- every man, woman and child in america knows that john kerry is a "flip-flopper" -- but thursday night, message discipline looked like mindless repetition. bush used the words "mixed signals" or "mixes messages" nearly a dozen times, and it seemed like a lot more. he accused kerry of changing positions eight times. and he complained seven times about kerry's calling iraq "the wrong war at the wrong time."
again and again, bush jumped on the end of kerry's answers, asking lehrer for time to respond, then found himself with nothing to say. the president sputtered, stared off into the distance -- invoking nothing more than that footage of him listening to "the pet goat" -- then inevitably returned to the riff he repeated all night long. in case you hadn't heard, kerry changes his positions and sends "mixed messages."
and when kerry turned the tables on bush -- when he challenged him on iraq or north korea -- bush seemed to have little to say beyond his first line of defense. the president seemed either unwilling or unable to deal with the tragedy of iraq. on a day when 41 iraqis were killed in car bombings -- 34 of them children getting candy from u.s. troops -- bush said nothing at all about the suffering of the iraqi people. he described iraq in the way that some people talk of losing weight: "it's hard work."
it's really hard work, so hard that bush used the phrase 11 times. and bush said he understands it's hard. "i get the casualty reports every day," he said. "i see on the tv screens how hard it is." bush seemed to save himself from the emotion-free zone a few minutes later, when he got choked up talking about his meeting with a woman who had lost a son in iraq. but then he bungled it with another "hard work" and a little bushism to boot. "you know," he said, "it's hard work to try to love her as best as i can, knowing full well that the decision i made caused her loved one to be in harm's way."
but it wasn't bush's stumbles that mattered thursday night. bush has bumbled and fumbled in a million other speeches and press conferences and interviews, and it hasn't done a thing to undercut his support with his half of the electorate. people -- some people -- even find it endearing.
what mattered thursday was kerry's performance. kerry had the chance to share the stage with the president, and he had to look like he belonged there. just before the debate, kerry advisor mike mccurry acknowledged that voters "don't put kerry in the context right now of commander in chief." mccurry wrote it off to the "usual life cycle" of a presidential election, but it was more than that. whether in the caricature the republicans have drawn for him or in his own meandering style, kerry had failed to come across as fully presidential. when he'd say something like, "when i'm president," it seemed, well, off.
in the run-up to the debate, it was unclear that kerry would be able to change that. first, matt drudge and lynne cheney suggested that kerry had taken on some kind of artificial orangey glow. then, on "good morning america" wednesday morning, kerry flubbed a question he should have been ready to nail. asked about his infamous "i actually voted for the $87 billion before i voted against it" comment, kerry said he'd made it in "one of those inarticulate moments late in the evening when i was dead tired." kerry was wrong; he'd made the comment early one afternoon.
and thursday, the kerry campaign managed to get into a spat over the timing lights. the two campaigns had agreed that the lights would be visible to the television audience; the kerry campaign hadn't contemplated that they'd be mounted on the lecterns. in the view of reporters, mike mccurry and a team of kerry aides fought it out with a handful of bush advisors. the lights stayed, and kerry looked both hyper-technical and weak for raising the issue
but all that disappeared as kerry found his stride -- his presidential style -- thursday night. as bush got angry, kerry got stronger. with bush deep in heavy-repetition mode on north korea and iran, kerry stepped back and explained the crises in the two countries calmly, methodically and with a confidence that came from knowledge. and somehow, he did it without devolving into gore-ian condescension. while kerry didn't score any ha-ha one-liners -- it's not his style, and he looks goofy when he tries -- he nailed bush a couple of times with simple, clear condemnations. going after bush's budget priorities, kerry said: "we didn't need that tax cut. america needed to be safe."
kerry advisor tad devine said that kerry "looked and acted like a president," that he had counteracted in 90 minutes the $150 million in republican advertising. while karl rove would never go that far, he clearly understood that john kerry had kept himself in -- or put himself back in -- the race thursday night. "this is going to be a close, hard-fought race right down to the end," a subdued rove told salon. "i think people are going to look at each one of these and sort of draw an opinion from each one. there's going to be very little movement one way or the other."
that's not so clear. while polling in the presidential race won't be available for a few days, the networks' instant polls held considerable promise for kerry. cnn polled 615 registered voters right after the debate; they said kerry won, 53-37. and the pundits seem to be on board, too. all through the day, kerry's team talked of the importance of the post-debate spin, a lesson learned four years ago when gore won the debate but lost in the war of the talking heads. but by the time team kerry rolled into spin alley, their candidate had made their job easy. devine pronounced kerry's debate as "the best wire-to-wire performance i've ever seen in a debate." even john mccain, on hand as a bush surrogate, conceded that kerry had done a good job.
karl rove and the republicans will certainly fire back friday. they'll call kerry on a factual flub or two -- when kerry said he'd never called bush a liar, you knew that the republicans would find a time that he did, and they did -- and they'll get back on their flip-flop talking points. but for one night, at least, john kerry has taken control.
tim grieve is a senior writer for salon based in san francisco.
# posted by j @ 03:02 et / |
