August 03, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


FOR CONSERVATIVES, THINKING HURTS

Conservatives like bumper sticker "thinking." "Support the troops," or other such weighty ideas are their concept of political discourse. A few days ago a right-winger had a letter in The Fresno Bee referring to the Democrats in the California legislature as "socialistic." I doubt he even knows what socialism is. He just knows it's bad and those "luminaries" like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity use the word a lot. After my experience with predatory capitalism, I'm not so sure socialism is bad. This article by David Michael Green is at www.commondreams.org:

We in the progressive community know that not everybody in America thinks the way we do. But we would probably be well served also by a recognition that some people in this country don’t want to think at all. It is possible that some of these Borg could be knee-jerk progressives instead of knee-jerk regressives were they somehow to be re-assimilated into the reality-based community, but the odds are not high. So much of progressive thinking requires careful reflection, extended analytical probing, and a collection of just plain data - factual information - about what is going on in the world. So much of regressive ‘thinking’ fits nicely, and completely, on a bumper sticker.

“Support our troops!”, to wit, and quite literally a bumper sticker seen all over the place (though noticeably less ubiquitous than it was in 2003). Literally a bumper sticker, that is, but not so literal in its meaning, especially since the most obvious way to support our troops - right here, right now - would be to pull them out of harm’s way, where they sit today for no conscionable purpose whatsoever. Otherwise, short of that, really supporting our troops today would mean screaming and hollering at the top of our lungs to make sure that they get adequate training, armor, and rest before being deployed. While we’re at it, we might even ask that they be paid at the same rate as the nearly equivalent numbers of mercenaries fighting alongside them, to the tune of three or four times the soldiers’ salary. And if we really, really wanted to support the troops, we’d call for a draft, so that we’d have a massively enlarged military, and each soldier would have far less of a share of the burden to carry. Hmmm - that may be a bit more than our friends with the bumper stickers had in mind. Perhaps that’s why they’ve been seen lately ducking out to the garage in the wee hours of the night to scrape the things off their Hummers.

DEATH FOLLOWS RIGHT WING POLICIES LIKE A SHADOW

Right-wing wars are the most obvious example of how right-wing policies are killing people. But there are other less obvious killers. The lousy health care system in the United States exists largely thanks to right-wing obstructionism in creating a national health care system. Polluted air and water, thanks to lack of regulation, kill people. The insane drug policies that we have in this country, which penalize offenders rather than treat them, kill people. Now we see the results of neglecting the country's infrastructure in the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. We neglect the public good so a few rich people can get tax breaks. This article by ABC News is at www.abcnews.go.com:

Highway engineers say the neglect of America's infrastructure costs lives every day. More than 40,000 people die in highway accidents each year.

Road conditions, the engineers say, are a factor in almost one-third of those deaths.

America's most important road system — 46,000 miles of interstate highway — is now half a century old.

A report card two years ago from the American Society of Civil Engineers said that 34 percent of major roads are in poor or mediocre condition.