... in response to Re: Texas? , posted by Jack on Jan 23, 2005[This message has been edited by LP]
...just like the "majority" "won" in Ukraine eh? 
How messed up does a cowboy state have to be to have an appreciation day for Russian women? Think about it. Especially when in my experience home grown Texan women are some of the most beautiful in the US. And I dunno about marriage agencies but TX BBQ *is* good, I'll give you that. There are also a few attributes about the men (I know many) that I admire. Their no BS attitude and politeness around women for example. However everything else about Texas is, in their own words, all hat and no cattle.
I normally stay out of political discussions but anyone who has bothered to read the 9-11 Commission's report is a bit more informed that the masses who didn't. You have read it haven't you? You know, the commission Bush and company did everything they could to prevent from being formed and later tried to undermine it's investigation into why 9/11 was allowed to happen in the first place? The commission that never would have been formed if it wasn't for pressure from the victim's familes? Why is it I get the feeling you, like many, simply couldn't be bothered to learn the truth?
Anyone who has read it knows just how outrageous Dubya's running on an anti-terrorism platform really was. He and the top level people in his administration should have been jailed for gross negligence shortly after the dust settled at the WTC. That 51% has doomed us all. I only hope when the time comes to pay (and it surely will) the 51% will have more backbone than their candidate and admit their mistake. Those of them that survive at least. Until then I leave you with these thoughts. They're not all my words but they reflect the other 49%, the ones being ignored by Bush as he shamefully and with typical arrogance continues to claim the election results validate his actions:
God Bless America...We’re gonna need it.
They say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, America has deservedly gotten a lawless cowboy to lead it further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the world. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of those forced to share the same planet. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and small nation. This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity. But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, incompetent and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.
A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes a fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity. A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources. And in foolishly backing him those 51% have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability, and most certainly another 9/11. To them I simply ask: Have you learned nothing? Do you despise your own image that much? Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves? How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?
Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health cover. He would have done something to make the country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world. Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2 billion surplus, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation. A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons. A man who flattens states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers.
America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive manhunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths. A radical Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement. Which translates into telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys as he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq.
One has to feel sorry for the millions in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out. These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a babbon when they see one. As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, we can only feel pity. Any rational person would feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets.
The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong". These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. They are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers.
Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. He and bin Laden need each other to survive. Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man. Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know.
The lines for hours to register a vote; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2 billion wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor.
Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. But is America safer today? The questions facing America are how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam. And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba. And I wonder how Bush's "good friend" Putin feels about his so called mandate to spread "liberty" throught the world?
Today is a sad day for us all, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. We had the chance to show the world a better way, instead we made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory. God Help us.
So what is one to say about today? To the horror of its well-wishers across the world the United States, once the “last, best hope of mankind”, is re-inaugurating the worst president in its history; one who has exploited an attack, the success of which its own incompetence helped enable, in order to execute an extremist agenda that is killing thousands, costing trillions and leaving all of us far more insecure than when it began. Before November 2, we could argue it was all a mistake; the guy ran as a “compassionate conservative,” misrepresented his record, and we actually voted for Gore anyway. It took the Republicans on the Supreme Court (two of whom were appointed by the guy’s dad) to stick the country with this regime filled with ideological fanatics and corrupt incompetents. But that was all before Nov 2.
Now, what are we to say? Fifty-nine million members of our nation do not mind that we were deliberately misled into a war that has drained our blood and treasure to create nothing but hatred and chaos; and that the very people who were at fault have been rewarded and promoted, encouraged to look for new targets to spread their hubristic malevolence. It defies all logic and truthfully, my ability to explain or even fully understand it. One thing is for certain: based on an virtually unanimous unwillingness to consider its past mistakes and learn from them, things are going to get far, far worse before they get better. Thousands more will die. Trillions more will be squandered. Millions more will grow to hate and revile the name of the United States of America and prepare to attack us in ways for which our government is resolutely unwilling to prepare, all the while continuing to ignore it's own intelligence agencies who're clearly stating the probable outcome.
Not that intelligence is deemed always correct. There are those who believe, amazingly, that we invoked this war based on faulty intelligence. These are the same people who haven't bothered to learn the widely available information that Bush and his cronies had their eye on Iraq well before 9-11. In fact, well before he was elected to his first term. Nor do they even know it is written into US National Security Policy that the US MUST go to war to in the name of oil resources in the Middle East. These are minor details I suppose to those who voted this thug back into office.
Avoidable catastrophe awaits this nation and its victims during the next four years as we will undoubtedly reap what we have sown. Four years from now we will be assessing the fallout from this election undoubtedly in dead Americans and additional hatred from a new breed of terrorists now being bred the world over. So indeed God Bless America, we're going to need all the help we can get.
